Coleman encompasses much of what we have already discussed. For me, treating race as a technology leads powerfully toward the possibility of real social action, but it does so in part because it organically interrogates race as part of a wide system of causes and effects that are not necessarily raciological. Race as technology draws together race, class, gender, science, media and other seemingly disparate systems into a single understanding of the technology of the modern world.
The central contention for Coleman seems to be that “race” is an algorithm of the Enlightenment, and that because of its nature as a tool, a lever, a procedure—rather than as a biological fact—the “race algorithm” can be rewritten from actioning “inheritance” to “insurrection” (184). Then this logic rests on the idea that once we remove the “overdetermined history of ‘lack’” (199), which is the socially constructed meaning of “what any child can see” (193), we will be able to eliminate the negative effects of race.
The whole scope of technological difference, visual and otherwise, is made to hinge on the ethical imperative to include all persons as equals in the social contract. But can absolute equality under the law change “what any child can see,” or will visual difference continue to acquire new meaning even under a perfectly ethical system. To what extent are xenophobic tendencies social, or genetic? Can we really achieve equality while differentiation is screened only by ethics (using race as technology “for good”), or must we actually make such differentiation a physical impossibility (destroying race)?
No comments:
Post a Comment