I was on the roundtable plenary for the #Afterlives conference hosted by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies @CSULB. During Q&A we were asked whether we can think about race or whiteness in the premodern in the way they seem to have been 1/
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reified or fixed in our own moment, particularly the seemingly monolithic category of white/whiteness. The example proposed was that ethnic differences seemed more relevant, such as the construction of those living in the Basque region as "black." 2/
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I'm satisfied with the answer I gave, which is that whiteness is being constructed and made specific and particular in these moments. I also pointed out how utilizing terms like "Ethiope" in Shakespeare always has a racial register, even if we reduce it to 3/
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only meaning "sunburnt." It contains within in it different geographical registers of difference, cultural ones, and somatic ones. Moreover, the contrast actively instantiates whiteness. What I didn't have the chance to point out, is that even if we are 4/
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talking about ethnic differences, we need to think about what the descriptor black is doing in the example of Basque invoked by my interlocutor. Even here, I think Black is doing race work. What is the point of conjuring Black as a marker of difference? 5/
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These are moments of racial thinking. This is how race gets made. This is also how our work gets unmade, because this question points out the inconsistency of what we are saying, which then means that it can't be legitimate. It demands consistency of racial 6/
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discourses or it demands that race doesn't exist. Race, however, as has been shown by so many of our early modern CRT scholars is not consistent now and was not then. The demand of consistency like that of historicizing, by the dominant group 7/
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seeks to undermine our work. Again, it is a demand of proof that is unwilling to read what is right there in front of them in the use of the word Black. I'm not suggesting that there's only one fixed meaning of Black, but I am suggesting that this meaning 8/
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is important and should not be ignored. If we refuse to see how difference is articulated through race in our periods and to read race as capacious and inconsistent, then we will continue to reproduce racial (white) formations of the past, while denying them. 9/
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I don't think the person who asked us that question was being insincere in his inquiry. But I am suspicious of claims that use the promiscuous circulation and application of Black to Euro identities as evidence of an unraced premodern period. 10/ 10
#ShakeRace3 replies 1 retweet 11 likesShow this thread
SIGH. All I can say is folks are not reading the last 60 years of critical race theory. That "ethnicity" thing is so neoconservative BS. Also, groups go in and out of racialization folks. Oh the spectacle of authority when they have not done the critical research.
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