Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection PDF
Preview Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection
RACIAL IMPERATIVES RACIAL IMPERATIVES D discipline, performativity, and struggles against subjection Nadine Ehlers Indiana University Press bloomington and indianapolis This book is a publication of Manufactured in the United States of America Indiana University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication 601 North Morton Street Data Bloomington, Indiana 47404-3797 usa Ehlers, Nadine. Racial imperatives : discipline, perfor- iupress.indiana.edu mativity, and struggles against subjection / Nadine Ehlers. Telephone orders 800-842-6796 p. cm. Fax orders 812-855-7931 Includes bibliographical references and index. ∫ 2012 by Nadine Ehlers isbn 978-0-253-35656-7 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-253-22336-4 (paper : alk. paper) All rights reserved isbn 978-0-253-00536-6 (e-book) No part of this book may be reproduced or 1. United States—Race relations. 2. African utilized in any form or by any means, elec- Americans—Race identity. 3. Whites—Race tronic or mechanical, including photocopying identity. 4. Racism—United States. 5. Race and recording, or by any information storage discrimination—Law and legislation—United and retrieval system, without permission in States. 6. Race—Philosophy. 7. Discipline— writing from the publisher. The Association of Philosophy. 8. Performative (Philosophy) American University Presses’ Resolution on 9. Jones, Alice Beatrice—Trials, litigation, etc. Permissions constitutes the only exception to 10. Passing (Identity)—United States—Case this prohibition. studies. I. Title. e184.a1e37 2011 ! The paper used in this publication meets the 305.800973—dc23 minimum requirements of the American 2011030457 National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library 1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13 12 Materials, ansi z39.48–1992. In memory of my mother, Maria Ehlers D This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix D Introduction 1 ∞ Racial Disciplinarity 15 ≤ Racial Knowledges: Securing the Body in Law 32 ≥ Passing through Racial Performatives 51 ∂ Domesticating Liminality: Somatic Defiance in Rhinelander v. Rhinelander 73 ∑ Passing Phantasms: Rhinelander and Ontological Insecurity 87 ∏ Imagining Racial Agency 106 π Practicing Problematization: Resignifying Race 124 D Notes 143 Bibliography 169 Index 181 This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the support, friendship, and guidance of Joseph Pugliese (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia). I am extremely grateful for his unwavering encouragement and his political commit- ment to the urgency of academic writing, which has always challenged and inspired me. For their reading of drafts of an earlier incarnation of this project, and their extensive and invaluable criticism, I would like to thank Elin Diamond (Rutgers University), Dwight McBride (Northwestern University), and Moya Lloyd (then at Queen Mary, University of London and now at Loughborough University). The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University provided me with the opportunity to continue working on this project as a Visiting Scholar, and to teach material from the book in a summer course. Don Kulick, the then director of the Center, and Philip Brian Harper who was then director of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis generously supported my work. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown Uni- versity—particularly Leslie Byers, Pamela Fox, Dana Luciano, You-Me Park, and Elizabeth Velez—for the community they provide and their advocacy on my behalf. I would like to thank Robert Sloan, Editorial Director at Indiana University Press, for his enthusiasm for this project. I also thank Sarah Wyatt Swanson, assistant sponsoring editor, for her dedication to detail, and Frank B. Wilderson III and an anonymous reader for the press, who productively engaged the project in ways that helped me to clarify my arguments. My deepest gratitude goes to the friends who sustain me: Kirsty Nowlan, my rock and my academic interlocutor; Donette Francis, an intellectual ally, and a steadfast and enabling support; and Shiloh Krupar, who has given me a new energy for academic inquiry. Together they have read more drafts of this project than a friendship deserves, and their encouragement and critical engagement with the book (and its surrounding questions) strengthened its outcome. Clare Armitage and Nikolai Haddad have provided crucial sustenance over our years of friendship and they have helped me craft this project in unanticipated ways.
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