Naming Race, Naming Racisms

Book excerpt: Eschewing social scientific approaches, which tend to examine race and racism in terms of quasi-static ideal types, this book surveys differing historical contexts from the era of scientific racism in the nineteenth-century to the post-racial racism of the post 9/11 period, and from Europe to the United States, in order to understand how racism has been articulated in differing situations. It is distinguished by the attention it pays to the on-going power of racial discourse in the contemporary period as a legitimating factor in oppression. It exemplifies methodological openness, combining the work of historians, philosophers, religious scholars, and literary critics, and includes differing theoretical models in pursuing a critical approach to race: cultural studies; trauma theory and psychoanalysis; critical theory and consideration of the "new racism"; and postcolonialism and the literature on globalization. It brings together the work of leading academics with younger practitioners and is capped off by an interview with world-renowned intellectual Cornel West on black intellectuals in America. This book was previously published as a special issue of Patterns of Prejudice.