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Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line
After all the “progress” made since World War II in matters pertaining to race, why are we still conspiring to divide humanity into different identity groups based on skin color? Did all the good done by the Civil Rights Movement and the decolonization of the Third World have such little lasting effect?
In this provocative book, Paul Gilroy contends that race-thinking has distorted the finest promises of modern democracy. He compels us to see that fascism was the principal political innovation of the twentieth century―and that its power to seduce did not die in a bunker in Berlin. Aren’t we in fact using the same devices the Nazis used in their movies and advertisements when we make spectacles of our identities and differences? Gilroy examines the ways in which media and commodity culture have become preeminent in our lives in the years since the 1960s and especially in the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop and other militancies. With this trend, he contends, much that was wonderful about black culture has been sacrificed in the service of corporate interests and new forms of cultural expression tied to visual technologies. He argues that the triumph of the image spells death to politics and reduces people to mere symbols.
At its heart, Against Race is a utopian project calling for the renunciation of race. Gilroy champions a new humanism, global and cosmopolitan, and he offers a new political language and a new moral vision for what was once called “anti-racism.”
In this provocative book, Paul Gilroy contends that race-thinking has distorted the finest promises of modern democracy. He compels us to see that fascism was the principal political innovation of the twentieth century―and that its power to seduce did not die in a bunker in Berlin. Aren’t we in fact using the same devices the Nazis used in their movies and advertisements when we make spectacles of our identities and differences? Gilroy examines the ways in which media and commodity culture have become preeminent in our lives in the years since the 1960s and especially in the 1980s with the rise of hip-hop and other militancies. With this trend, he contends, much that was wonderful about black culture has been sacrificed in the service of corporate interests and new forms of cultural expression tied to visual technologies. He argues that the triumph of the image spells death to politics and reduces people to mere symbols.
At its heart, Against Race is a utopian project calling for the renunciation of race. Gilroy champions a new humanism, global and cosmopolitan, and he offers a new political language and a new moral vision for what was once called “anti-racism.”
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Paul Gilroy
65 books165 followersPaul Gilroy is an English sociologist and cultural studies scholar who is Professor of the Humanities and the founding Director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Race and Racism at University College, London.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 2, 2007
This book explores the recent history of race-thinking, and presents the argument summarized by its title: that viewing humans through the lens of "race" has had, and continues to have terrible consequences for human freedom. Gilroy is not just describing racism here, but a whole system of thought that regrettably pervades social thought. His essays take on a broad range of sometimes unlikely proponents of race-thinking - from fascist filmmakers to hip-hop artists to geneticists. This is a beautifully-written, complex and historically grounded critique of contemporary politics. I can't stop thinking about it.
abandoned
September 5, 2020Only got 40 or so pages in.
Interesting stuff, maybe, but far too academic and long-winded for me.
Interesting stuff, maybe, but far too academic and long-winded for me.
June 10, 2012
There are some insights in this large tome, but it's lack of clarity makes it disappointing. It's written in a ponderous style, post-modernist in some ways, tho not as impenetrable as a lot of pomo writing. His discussion of authoritarian & proto-fascist tendencies in black politics, such as Garvey's movement in the '20s is interesting. He sees black nationalism as simply accepting, or being the other side of the coin, the "raciology" as he calls it invented by European colonizing powers to subjugate non-Europeans and justify slavery, rather than rejecting a racial definition of a project of liberation. At the end he hints at the need for what he calls looking to the future, that is, for black communities to try to define what future world they want. Given that he's a sociologist, i was surprised there wasn't more about the severe economic problems & severe inequality still faced by the black American working class.
April 19, 2013
Gilroy and I don't have the best relationship. His language can be impenetrable and I wish he did a better job of historicizing in The Black Atlantic, but the outlining of "raceology" in Against Race is enlightening. After, the debocial of "identifying" the Boston bombers, who appear at this stage NOT to be the "race" assumed, is it not more evident to everyone that now is this time to restructure our vocabulary on pheno-descriptors? There is zero science behind race, the enlightenment taught us that. All we're working on is historical association that skin shade is meant to correspond to a scientific understanding of race.
June 20, 2019
Rarely have I read a more opaque work of sociology. This is really some of the worst that academic writing has to offer. It was difficult to know what Gilroy was even arguing, since he is extremely verbose and opts not to concisely define his thesis (or even terms). It's clear enough from the title that he is problematized with our current concept of "race," but it takes very careful reading to understand precisely why. And I never did determine what he actually proposes instead.
What I eventually deciphered, about 2/3 of the way through in Chapter 6, is that he's worried that our current concept of race will lead antiracist movements and organizations to become fascist, as did Garvey's movement in the 1920s, and Farrakhan's Nation of Islam later. This strikes me as an exceedingly minor concern, and not one that justifies 400 pages of political philosophy. Keep in mind, this is all deeply buried in a long history of fascism, and racism, and Hip Hop culture as well (that latter is weird enough, as he spends dozens of pages in serious theoretical analysis of R. Kelly, Snoop Dogg, and Ice Cube).
This comes across to me as one of the most egregious "Why don't we cross that bridge when we get there?" problems I've ever seen. Antiracist organizations have virtually no power relatively-speaking, so maybe we should worry about them achieving their major aims of justice and equality before we worry about Black Separatists creating their own armies. I'm trying to remain diplomatic here because I respect Gilroy's scholarship on some level -- it just boggles my mind how he prioritizes these problems. He also does not at all discuss how we might achieve racial equality while also ceasing use of our past concept of race.
Gilroy gets close to admitting this shortcoming himself, when in a narrower sense on p. 229 he says, "I recognize that while there are still plenty of openly active, self-confessed fascists around, this degree of reflexivity may be seen as a luxury that antiracist politics cannot afford." His rebuttal to this objection is not compelling. He also, on p. 219, appears to support the concept of reverse racism, which makes me strain my eyes from rolling them. Basically, his entire discussion is an academic exercise about a hypothetical, concept-transforming paradigm shift, but one that is entirely divorced from the material conditions of our racial struggle.
Ultimately, this is a book that in very many words and pages says, "Hey, y'know, once we overcome this seemingly insurmountable obstacle that we've been fighting for literally centuries, we may also want to keep in mind this potential byproduct that could conceivably, hypothetically happen afterward. Y'know, just some day."
To which, if it were one paragraph I would say, "Okay I guess?" But stretched over hundreds of pages I say. . . "Huh?"
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
What I eventually deciphered, about 2/3 of the way through in Chapter 6, is that he's worried that our current concept of race will lead antiracist movements and organizations to become fascist, as did Garvey's movement in the 1920s, and Farrakhan's Nation of Islam later. This strikes me as an exceedingly minor concern, and not one that justifies 400 pages of political philosophy. Keep in mind, this is all deeply buried in a long history of fascism, and racism, and Hip Hop culture as well (that latter is weird enough, as he spends dozens of pages in serious theoretical analysis of R. Kelly, Snoop Dogg, and Ice Cube).
This comes across to me as one of the most egregious "Why don't we cross that bridge when we get there?" problems I've ever seen. Antiracist organizations have virtually no power relatively-speaking, so maybe we should worry about them achieving their major aims of justice and equality before we worry about Black Separatists creating their own armies. I'm trying to remain diplomatic here because I respect Gilroy's scholarship on some level -- it just boggles my mind how he prioritizes these problems. He also does not at all discuss how we might achieve racial equality while also ceasing use of our past concept of race.
Gilroy gets close to admitting this shortcoming himself, when in a narrower sense on p. 229 he says, "I recognize that while there are still plenty of openly active, self-confessed fascists around, this degree of reflexivity may be seen as a luxury that antiracist politics cannot afford." His rebuttal to this objection is not compelling. He also, on p. 219, appears to support the concept of reverse racism, which makes me strain my eyes from rolling them. Basically, his entire discussion is an academic exercise about a hypothetical, concept-transforming paradigm shift, but one that is entirely divorced from the material conditions of our racial struggle.
Ultimately, this is a book that in very many words and pages says, "Hey, y'know, once we overcome this seemingly insurmountable obstacle that we've been fighting for literally centuries, we may also want to keep in mind this potential byproduct that could conceivably, hypothetically happen afterward. Y'know, just some day."
To which, if it were one paragraph I would say, "Okay I guess?" But stretched over hundreds of pages I say. . . "Huh?"
Not Bad Reviews
@pointblaek
July 23, 2010
This is a thick book; I've only read sections of it, preparing for a class in the history of science. But we know race is not biologically real, so this book is good for considering how we can erase the social construct of race, the centuries of trying to "Prove" reasons for prejudice, and all the destructive results. [I feel that anything that causes us to feel more separate from one another cannot be True.:]
March 6, 2009
A controversial, intellectually challenging analysis of race and what the author calls "raciality". This work continues to blow my mind.
More to come...
More to come...
June 10, 2022
A difficult and extraordinary text that requires multiple readings to truly grasp the author's point. Which mean, I need to read this again. And again. Good stuff.
May 18, 2017
A thought-provoking argument against "race," raciology, and race-thinking. A must-read for those who believe that giving up "race" is the same thing as advocating "color blindness" (spoiler: it's not). Gilroy advocates for an anti racist, radically nonracial, diasporic, universalist humanism.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews