The Somatechnics Of Whiteness And Race

Investigating the emergence of a specific mestiza/mestizo whiteness that facilitates relations between the Philippines and Western nations, this book examines the ways in which the construction of a particular form of Philippine whiteness serves to deploy positions of exclusion, privilege and solidarity. Through Filipino, Filipino-Australian, and Filipino-American experiences, the author explores the operation of whiteness, showing how a mixed-race identity becomes the means through which racialised privileges, authority and power are embodied in the Philippine context, and examines the ways in which colonial and imperial technologies of the past frame contemporary practices such as skin-bleaching, the use of different languages, discourses of bilateral relations, secularism, development, and the movement of Filipino, Australian and American bodies between and within nations. Drawing on key ideas expressed in critical race and whiteness studies, together with the theoretical concepts of somatechnics, biopolitics and governmentality, The Somatechnics of Whiteness and Race sheds light on the impact of colonial and imperial histories on contemporary international relations, and calls for a 'queering' or resignification of whiteness, which acknowledges permutations of whiteness fostered within national boundaries, as well as through various nation-state alliances and fractures. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural studies, sociology and politics with interests in whiteness, postcolonialism and race.

Investigating the emergence of a specific mestiza/mestizo whiteness that facilitates relations between the Philippines and Western nations, this book examines the ways in which the construction of a particular form of Philippine whiteness serves to deploy positions of exclusion, privilege and solidarity. Through Filipino, Filipino-Australian, and Filipino-American experiences, the author explores the operation of whiteness, showing how a mixed-race identity becomes the means through which racialised privileges, authority and power are embodied in the Philippine context, and examines the ways in which colonial and imperial technologies of the past frame contemporary practices such as skin-bleaching, the use of different languages, discourses of bilateral relations, secularism, development, and the movement of Filipino, Australian and American bodies between and within nations. Drawing on key ideas expressed in critical race and whiteness studies, together with the theoretical concepts of somatechnics, biopolitics and governmentality, The Somatechnics of Whiteness and Race sheds light on the impact of colonial and imperial histories on contemporary international relations, and calls for a 'queering' or resignification of whiteness, which acknowledges permutations of whiteness fostered within national boundaries, as well as through various nation-state alliances and fractures. As such, it will appeal to scholars of cultural studies, sociology and politics with interests in whiteness, postcolonialism and race.

Whiteness Fractured examines the many ways in which whiteness is conceptualized today and how it is understood to operate and to effect social relationships. Exploring the intersections between whiteness, social class, ethnicity and psychosocial phenomena, this book is framed by the question of how whiteness works and what it does. With attention to central concepts and the history of whiteness, it explains the four ways in which whiteness works. In its examination of the outward and inward fractures of whiteness, the book sheds light on both its connections with social class and ethnicity and with the 'epistemology of ignorance' and the psychoanalytic. Representing the long career of whiteness on the one hand and investigating its expansion into new areas on the other, Whiteness Fractured reflects the growing maturity of critical whiteness studies. It undertakes a critical analysis of approaches to whiteness and proposes new directions for future action and enquiry. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, intersectionality, colonialism and post-colonialism, and cultural studies.

Theologies are constructed in and from lived contexts, and contexts are shaped by borders. While borders are barriers, they are also steppingstones for crossing over and invitations for moving further. This book offers theological and cultural reflections from the intersections of borders (real and imagined), bodies (physical, cultural, religious, ideological, political), and voices (that endorse as well as talk back). With and in the interests of natives and migrants, the authors of this book embrace bordered bodies and stir bothered voices. The essays are divided into four overlapping clusters that express the shared drives between the authors—Noble borders: some borders are not experienced as constricting because they are seen as noble; Negotiating bodies: bodies constantly negotiate and relocate borders; Troubling voices: bothered voices cannot be muted or silenced; Riotous bodies: embracing the wisdom in and of rejected and wounded bodies is a riot that this book invites. The authors engage their subjects out of their experiences as migrants and natives. This book is thus a step toward—and an invitation for more work on—migrant and native theologies.

Naming whiteness is becoming an increasingly pressing issue across a variety of social and political contexts. In this book, an international set of authors discuss how and why this has come to be the case. Studying whiteness, as either a social identity or political ideology, is a relatively recent area of scholarship. Unusually, within the fields of race and ethnicity, it is a concept that sits at an intersection between historical privilege and identity. At the same time, ‘white privilege’ is not universally shared in (or can be distant to) how many white people feel they experience their identities. Whiteness as a site of privilege is therefore not absolute, but rather cross-cut by a range of other concerns, too. Nonetheless, recent political developments serve to illustrate the political potency of appeals to whiteness, in a way that suggests whiteness coupled with nationhood is a central social and political topic. In this book, authors from the USA, Australia and Europe consider the contemporary relationships between whiteness and national identity by focusing on mainstream electoral politics, the ‘normalisation’ of white supremacy and where whiteness stands in relation to pluralised national identities. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.

No longer content with accepting whiteness as the norm, critical scholars have turned their attention to whiteness itself. In Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror, numerous thinkers, including Toni Morrison, Eric Foner, Peggy McIntosh, Andrew Hacker, Ruth Frankenberg, John Howard Griffin, David Roediger, Kathleen Heal Cleaver, Noel Ignatiev, Cherrie Moraga, and Reginald Horsman, attack such questions as: *How was whiteness invented, and why? *How has the category whiteness changed over time? *Why did some immigrant groups, such as the Irish and Jews, start out as nonwhite and later became white? *Can some individual people be both white and nonwhite at different times, and what does it mean to "pass for white"? *At what point does pride in being white cross the line into white power or white supremacy? *What can whites concerned over racial inequity or white privilege do about it? Science and pseudoscience are presented side by side to demonstrate how our views on whiteness often reflect preconception, not fact. For example, most scientists hold that race is not a valid scientific category -- genetic differences between races are insignificant compared to those within them. Yet, the "one drop" rule, whereby those with any nonwhite heritage are classified as nonwhite, persists even today. As the bell curve controversy shows, race concepts die hard, especially when power and prestige lie behind them. A sweeping portrait of the emerging field of whiteness studies, Critical White Studies presents, for the first time, the best work from sociology, law, history, cultural studies, and literature. Delgado and Stefancic expressly offer critical white studies as the next step in critical race theory. In focusing on whiteness, not only do they ask nonwhites to investigate more closely for what it means for others to be white, but also they invite whites to examine themselves more searchingly and to "look behind the mirror."

Since its foundation as an academic field in the 1990s, critical race theory has developed enormously and has, among others, been supplemented by and (dis)integrated with critical whiteness studies. At the same time, the field has moved beyond its origins in Anglo-Saxon environments, to be taken up and re-developed in various parts of the world – leading to not only new empirical material but also new theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches. Gathering these new and global perspectives, this book presents a much-needed collection of the various forms, sophisticated theoretical developments and nuanced analyses that the field of critical race and whiteness theories and studies offers today. Organized around the themes of emotions, technologies, consumption, institutions, crisis, identities and on the margin, this presentation of critical race and whiteness theories and studies in its true interdisciplinary and international form provides the latest empirical and theoretical research, as well as new analytical approaches. Illustrating the strength of the field and embodying its future research directions, The Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in race and whiteness.

What is ‘life’ and how do we define its boundaries? Is life immeasurable or are there levels of ‘liveliness’? How should we relate to entities that are not technically alive at all? As the world becomes increasingly technologized, questions about what counts as ‘life’ and ‘living’ have become a key field of inquiry in contemporary philosophical and arts discourse. As Mel Chen acknowledges in Animacies (2012), the "continued rethinking of life and death’s proper boundaries" has increasingly been recognized as a priority in twenty-first-century North American, European and Australasian critical theory. Indeed, the contributors of this volume go as far as to argue that the question of life has become the central problematic of recent feminist biopolitics, alongside discussions of scientific ethics and technological/organic power relationships. This volume explores points of intersection and divergence between critical conceptions of time and technology, drawing on a range of perspectives and approaches to examine our mediated and material embodied entanglements with key questions about life and death. It is a significant new contribution to the study of corporeality in gender studies and feminism, and will be of interest to academics, researchers and advanced students of philosophy, gender studies, literary theory, and politics. It was originally published as a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies.