coldhearted scientist وداد

Here is part of the MLA proposal I had just written when I lost my way in life a second or third time. But early April 2004, still in Lent, was the last time I was able to concentrate as I am now. I was so happy to be working again and although I did not really like my own presentation proposal, I was pleased with the panel proposal and mostly, I enjoyed writing it the way I enjoyed writing my recent NEH proposal, the way I had always enjoyed writing until being taught I should not.

I never got to the 2004 MLA, where the panel actually took place. Physically weather prevented travel, and mentally I had not had the energy since late April 2004 to do very much else at all, including think the paper through. It was not a “writing problem” — it was that I had not had the time or peace of mind to finish the reading and think out the ideas.

Now we are taking up the same threads again, and I actually think my current ideas are a better version of these. Nonetheless it is good to start from this point. (And I really do believe that every alleged writing problem I have ever had, had to do with not allowing myself to believe my own perceptions, when it was not about not allowing myself to do the actual research and reflection. This is why my academic advice is to respect one’s own ideas and allow oneself to reflect upon them, as opposed to rush to get something out just because it will be something out.)

Postethnicity and Critical Race Theory: Transnational Perspectives on the Americas

This panel considers the light two critical perspectives, “postethnicity” and critical race theory, may shed on ethnoracial dynamics and their articulation in contemporary literature and cultural theory from Latin America and the Caribbean basin as well as the United States. The idea for the panel grew from a conversation about Livio Sansone’s study Blackness Without Ethnicity (2003), which takes a postethnic view of contemporary race relations in Brazil and the negotiation of black identities there.

One of our questions was whether the postethnic perspective, attractive for its critique of essentialized ethnic identities, were adequate to address questions of race in contexts where institutional racism is still powerful. Another question was to what extent, in practice, a postethnic perspective depended on the prior assumption of an assimilationist paradigm. A third was whether the flexible cultural identifications postethnicity embraces had the effect of legitimating the selective appropriation of minority cultural practices by dominant groups while the dominant culture—and race—still retain the most prestige.

Our hypothesis is that the answers to these questions depend upon context, that is, on the specificity of particular situations. When considering questions of migration and creolization we find the postethnic perspective useful. But the perspective of critical race theory, which also sees “race” and ethnicity as constructions or “formations” (Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 1994) and not essences, seems indispensable to us when we turn our attention to the legacies of slavery, the conquest of native peoples, and institutional racism.

Is it possible to speak of racial equality and cultural heterogeneity in the same breath? From the point of view of civil rights, the answer to this question is yes. Yet this response is not so evident as it may seem. How to create a common civic culture in a culturally heterogeneous and racially hierarchized society has been a central question in cultural and political debates throughout the Americas for the last two centuries.

Theories of mestizaje, imbricated with state ideologies and nation building projects since Independence, imagined unified cultures based on a concept of mixture. The idea was to enable a national concensus by eliminating the basis for racial division. It was assumed, and sometimes directly stated, that racial and cultural differences must be bleached out, or at least mixed to a light shade of brown, before an egalitarian society could be created. In this sense mestizaje was anything but inclusive. The ideological focus on mixture and cultural unity drove the discussion of racism underground.

In Postethnic America (2000) David Hollinger points out that the emphasis on cultural diversity as opposed to antiracism in United States institutions since the 1978 Bakke case leaves the impression that it is culture and not race that is the issue. In that sense, his call for the creation of a “postethnic America” is as pertinent to mainstream Latin American thought on race and culture as it is in the U.S. And indeed, there are now political movements of indigenous groups with decidedly postethnic features, while critical race theory as well as créolité and other postethnic perspectives are supplanting older theories of hybridity and mixture in both academic research and political expression.

Our presentations will consider the questions outlined here as they appear in a series of specific situations or “loci of enunciation” (Mignolo). Earlier studies have primarily contrasted North and South American formulations of race and cultural identity. Yet there is at least as much contrast within Latin America and the Caribbean as between North and South, there are parallels between North and South whose consideration may be productive. This panel engages very recent literary and theoretical production, and attempts to reframe the North/South debates.
…
Engaging theoretical work on race and cultural heterogeneity from Peru (Cornejo Polar), Brazil (Guimarães) and the French Caribbean including Louisiana (Chamoiseau, Hall), [my own presentation will emphasize] the different meanings “creolization” and “heterogeneity” have and have had, and the differences these meanings make.

The paper concedes that the separation of color and culture is necessary to combat racism in, for instance, the legal arena. But when “color” is separated from “culture” in such a way as to transfer cultural capital upwards, and when that transfer is then invoked to legitimate the power of the elites, class positions are maintained while precise loci of enunciation are blurred.

Axé.