Category: articles

by Erel, Umut; Haritaworn, Jin; Rodríguez, Encarnación Gutiérrez and Klesse, Christian

Queer theory ofers itself as a radical epistemology to uncover pervasive forms of power, not only around sexuality but also around ‘race’ and transgender. Queer of colour theorists and some trans theorists have re- mained sceptical about these grand claims, and pointed out the notorious silence about racism and transphobia in the mainstream of queer theorising (Helen (charles) 1993, Cathy Cohen 2001, Jin Haritaworn 2007). Their critique echoes an older tradition of theorising multiple relations of oppression that has been particularly advocated by lesbians of colour like Audre Lorde (1984), Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott and Barbara Smith (1982; 1983). While the anti-racist feminisms of the 1980s have produced their own silences, especially around transgender and dissident sexualities, we will here argue that their call to positionality is vital in developing a queer theory and research practice that addresses the silences around raciality subject to this volume. This article is an attempt to ind a language for our dissatisfaction with the silencing of the knowledge productions and political activisms of trans people of colour, queers of colour, women of colour and migrant women in the UK and Germany, as at the same time it is about exploring the possibilities and limits of the concept of ‘intersectionality‘. In nearly two decades of critical debate about how multiple oppressions around gender, ‘race‘ and class interlock, ‘intersectionality‘ has emerged as a concept which promises a comprehensive theorising of various power relations. In this article we explore the potential of an ‘intersectionality perspective‘ for critical queer theorising and research practice. We argue that the concept has been used as an umbrella term for divergent debates and political projects, both radical and hegemonic ones. This is relected in its reception and dissemination in diferent political, cultural and historical contexts.

Aquest dissabte, en el marc de la jornada del primer aniversari del desallotjament de la nau del carrer Puigcerdà, que va celebrar-se al nou Espai de l’Immigrant del barri del Raval de Barcelona, es va presentarl’informe “Vulneracions de drets humans a la frontera sud- Melilla”. Aquest informe, elaborat per la Comissió d’Observadores de Drets Humans (CODH), posa fi a un projecte que va tenir el seu origen a la segona trobada Frontera Sud Melilla i Drets Humans, duta a terme a Melilla del 2 al 6 de juliol. La comissió ha estat formada per membres de la Campanya Estatal pel Tancament dels CIEs, la Coordinadora Estatal per la Prevenció i Denúncia de la Tortura (CPDT), el Grup d’Acció Comunitària (GAC) i l’Observatori del Sistema Penal i els Drets Humans de la Universitat de Barcelona (OSPDH). L’informe, dividit en cinc àrees temàtiques, pretén posar llum a la fosca situació dels drets humans que es viu a la ciutat fronterera de Melilla. Després de la introducció feta per Ana Fornés, membre de la CODH, per explicar la fonamentació i la metodologia emprades per elaborar l’informe, la resta de membres de la comissió va exposar les diferents àrees […]

by Achille Mbembe

The utopian ideal of a world free of the burden of race has powered the struggles of the oppressed since the advent of the modern age. It gave meaning and purpose to the campaigns for the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. It was central to the decolonisation struggle, the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and some of the radical attempts to change the world in the 20th century.

As racism has kept mutating, though, so have forms of intersections between race, class and gender. Although local in its manifestations, racism has always been a global phenomenon and part of its persistence is a result of its globalisation. Furthermore, the force of racism in our world stems from its capacity to mutate and to reappear constantly in ever-changing forms in the most unexpected sites of everyday life.

The weakness of most antiracist struggles is the result of our inability to keep up with the mutating structures of racism and their virulence. As racism worldwide takes on a genomic turn and is now propelled by the war on terror, various anti-migratory policies, the resurgence of compensatory forms of nationalism and mass incarceration, South Africa is caught between various contradictory processes. […]

by David Theo Goldberg

In the age of the post-racial – of colourblindness and post-apartheid, an Obama presidency and majority rule – racist expression continues to proliferate. How is it that citizens of modern states, sometimes as agents of the state themselves, so readily engage in racist expression and practice?

One response is this, inspired by Hannah Arendt’s reflections on the Eichmann trial: racisms constitute thoughtlessness in the Arendtian sense of failing to exercise (self-)reflective critical judgment.

Those expressing themselves in racist ways and engaging in racist acts lack critical and indeed self-critical imagination, refusing or failing to take account of the other as having equal standing; they are an ignorant or arrogant refusal to consider conditions beyond one’s own.

Racisms, it could be said, are narcissisms: nihilistic self-regard of especially extreme kinds.

There is, to follow Arendt’s line, a banality to much racism, the shocking ordinariness of its everyday occurrences and the ordinariness with which its culture of shock has come to be received, to the point of oversight, neglect, a shrug. The shocking quality is buried in the ordinary, everyday, unresisting acceptance of the reduction of people to data points in the schedule of instrumental operation.[…]