Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic

384 Pages·2012·4.31 MB·English

by  Robert Stam

Race in Translation
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Race in Translation
Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic
Robert Stam|Ella Shohat
a
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York and London
www.nyupress.org
© 2012 by Robert Stam/Ella Shohat
All rights reserved
References to Internet Websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stam, Robert, 1941-
Race in translation : culture wars around the postcolonial Atlantic / Robert Stam and
Ella Shohat.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8147-9837-9 (cl : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8147-9838-6 (pb : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8147-2392-0 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-8147-2525-2 (ebook)
1.  Race. 2.  Culture. 3.  Postcolonialism — Atlantic Ocean Region.
4. Multiculturalism — Atlantic Ocean Region.
5.  Ethnicity — Atlantic Ocean Region.  I. Shohat, Ella, 1959- II. Title.
CB195.S73 2012
305.8009163 — dc23 2011050487
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials
to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Manufactured in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Jacob
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xiii
 The Atlantic Enlightenment 1
The Red Atlantic 2
The Indigene and the Epistemological Crisis 7
The Black Atlantic and the Aporias of the Universal 13
Antinomies of the Enlightenment 17
White Voices against Imperial Reason 22
 A Tale of Three Republics 26
Franco-Brazilian Liaisons 31
Brazilo-American Encontros 38
Diasporic Longings 42
From Black Orpheus to Barack Obama 49
Between Anglo-Saxonism and Latinism 51
Racing Translation 57
 The Seismic Shift and the Decolonization of Knowledge 61
The Protocols of Eurocentrism 61
The Postwar Rupture 68
The Radicalization of the Disciplines 75
Multiculturalism and the Decolonizing Corpus 82
Situating Postcolonial Studies 85
 Identity Politics and the Right/Left Convergence 93
The Politics of Scapegoating 96
Troubling Diversity 101
The Bourdieu/Wacquant Polemic 106
An “American” Discourse? 113
Žižek and the Universal Imaginary 118
The Ghosting of the Particular 126
 France, the United States, and the Culture Wars 132
Sobbing for the White Man 134
Minorities and the Specter of Identitarianism 137
vii
The Anxieties behind an Antagonism 142
Hip-Hop and the Racialization of the Everyday 146
Allegorical Crossings: Blacks, Jews, Muslims 154
“From Mao to Moses”: Neocons and the Nouveaux Philosophes 162
France’s Multicultural Turn 172
 Brazil, the United States, and the Culture Wars 175
“Racial Democracy” and Black Consciousness 175
The Anatomy of Skepticism 179
The Uses and Abuses of Comparison 183
Desire, Denial, and Linked Analogies 189
Popular Culture, Tropicália, and the Rainbow Atlantic 194
Scholarship and the Persistence of Race 206
 From Affirmative Action to Interrogating Whiteness 209
Remedial Measures and the Legacy of Affirmative Whiteness 209
The Quotas Debate in Brazil 216
The American Foil 222
The Advent of Whiteness Studies 229
Debating Whiteness, Blackness, and Mestiçagem 233
The Critique of Normative Frenchness 238
 French Intellectuals and the Postcolonial 244
Ironies of an Aversion 245
Decolonizing la République 248
The Hesitation-Waltz of French Postcolonial Studies 255
The Quarrel over Genealogy 261
Genres of Postcolonial Écriture 265
 The Transnational Traffic of Ideas 270
France, the United States, and Brazil Studies 270
French Theory In and Out of Place 272
Allegories of Intrusion 276
Cultural Studies and Critical Utopias 284
Triangular Readings 289
Theorizing Cross-Border Interlocution 293
Translational Relationalities 298
Notes 301
Index 335
About the Authors 363
viii Contents
Acknowledgments
in the long process of gestation of this book—going back to its
first conceptualization realized in an essay (“Travelling Multiculturalism: French
Intellectuals and the U.S. Culture Wars”) published in Black Renaissance Noire in
2001—we have received the support of many friends, colleagues, and institutions.
We would like to thank the following for offering insightful commentary on ear-
lier drafts or sections or on oral presentations of the project: Christopher Dunn,
Patrick Erouart, Ismail Xavier, Jim Cohen, Manthia Diawara, Ziad Elmarsafy,
Sérgio Costa, James Stam, Anne Donadey, Marcelo Fiorini, Randal Johnson,
George Yúdice, Diana Taylor, Neil Smith, Michael Hanchard, Yaël Bitton, Randy
Martin, Robert Young, and Rajeswari Sunder. Various readers for NYU Press—
notably Arturo Escobar, Minoo Moallem, and Dilip Gaonkar—made useful sug-
gestions. We are also grateful for the indispensible assistance we have received at
various stages from Benjamin Minh Ha, Cecilia Sayad, Paulina Suarez-Hesketh,
Karen Wang, Sandra Ruiz, Leili Kashani, Karim Tartoussieh, and Leo Gold-
smith, and especially from Jennifer Kelly, who has been wonderfully helpful dur-
ing the diverse stages of the project, including up through the demanding work of
indexing. We are also grateful to NYU Press editor in chief Eric Zinner for his
support and patience and to managing editor Despina Papazoglou Gimbel and
copyeditor Andrew Katz for their meticulous work.
The intellectual conversations promoted by various centers at NYU have been
an endless source of stimulation and inspiration. Here we would like to cite La
Maison Française, the Institute of French Studies, the Center for Latin American
and Caribbean Studies, the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics,
the Juan Carlos of Spain Center, the Center for Media, Culture and History, and
the Center for Art and Public Policy in Tisch School of the Arts, along with vari-
ous seminars and discussion groups such as the Postcolonial Studies Seminar
and the Comparative Race Studies Group. Our warm appreciation also goes to
the following: Evelyn Alsultany, Awam Amkpa, Vincent Carelli, Ernesto Ignacio
de Carvalho, Moncef Cheikrouhou, Luiz Antonio Coelho, Marc Cohen, Ama-
lia Cordova, Karel Depollo, Ayse Franko, Eti and Selim Franko, Faye Ginsburg,
Inderpal Grewal, Maurice Hazan, Caren Kaplan, Kate Lyra, Ivone Margulies,
Anne McClintock, Rob Nixon, Yigal Nizri, Marcelle Pithon, Mary Louise Pratt,
Yvette Raby, Jolene Ricard, Ilda Santos, Eyal Sivan, Shouleh Vatanabadi, João
Luiz Vieira, and Anne Wax.
ix