Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning

by David Theo Goldberg

Racist Culture offers an anti-essentialist and non-reductionist account of racialized discourse and racist expression. Goldberg demonstrates that racial thinking is a function of the transforming categories and conceptions of social subjectivity throughout modernity. He shows that rascisms are often not aberrant or irrational but consistent with prevailing social conceptions, particularly of the reasonable and the normal. He shows too how this process is being extended and renewed by categories dominant in present day social sciences: "the West"; "the underclass"; and "the primitive". This normalization of racism reflected in the West mirrors South Africa an its use and conception of space. Goldberg concludes with an extended argument for a pragmatic, antiracist practice.

Genres: Philosophy, Race, Sociology, Nonfiction, History, European History, Politics

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

*Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the University of California system-wide research facility for the human sciences and theoretical research in the arts.
*Professor of Comparative Literature and of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine, where he is a Fellow of the UCI Critical Theory Institute

Reviews

[Brian Elswick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely an interesting book with several really important points but written in such a style that it is not accessible, which really is disappointing. It seemed the author buried careful thinking under burdensome writing and in the process hid what would have beneficial for many. I couldn't recommend this book, not because of its content but its style.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boring and dense.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for uni. dense. too dense. but some interesting points and reflections made.