After Whiteness : Unmaking an American Majority

by Hill, Mike

• ISBN13: 9780814735428
• ISBN10: 0814735428
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

View the Table of Contents . Read the Introduction ."Beautifully written and rigorously argued,After Whitenessis the most important theoretical statement on white racial formation since 'whiteness studies' began its current academic sojourn. By reading debates about multiculturalism, ethnicity, and the desire for difference as part of the material practices of the U.S. university system, it engages questions of race, humanistic inquiry, intellectual labor, and the democratic function of critical thought. The result is a critically nuanced analysis that promises to solidify Mike Hill's reputation as one of the finest thinkers of his generation." --Robyn Wiegman, Duke University"Mike Hill'sAfter Whitenessis an important, provocative and timely book." --Against the Current"A lucid, fiercely argued, brilliantly conceived, richly provocative work in an emergent and growing area of cultural studies.After Whitenesssets new directions in American literary and cultural studies, and will become a landmark in the field." --Sacvan Bercovitch, Harvard University"Americanists across the disciplines will find Hill's analysis insightful and brilliant. A must for any scholar who wishes to, in Ralph Ellison's words, 'go to the territory.'" --Sharon Holland, University of Illinois at ChicagoAs each new census bears out, the rise of multiracialism in the United States will inevitably result in a white minority. In spite of the recent proliferation of academic studies and popular discourse on whiteness, however, there has been little discussion of the future: what comes after whiteness? On the brink of what many are now imagining as a post-white American future, it remains a matter of both popular and academic uncertainty as to what will emerge in its place.After Whitenessaims to address just that, exploring the remnants of white identity to ask how an emergent post-white national imaginary figure into public policy issues, into the habits of sexual intimacy, and into changes within public higher education. Through discussions of the 2000 census and debates over multiracial identity, the volatile psychic investments that white heterosexual men have in men of color--as illustrated by the Christian men's group the Promise Keepers and the neo-fascist organization the National Alliance--and the rise of identity studies and diversity within the contemporary public research university, Mike Hill surveys race among the ruins of white America. At this crucial moment, when white racial change has made its ambivalent cultural debut, Hill demonstrates that the prospect of an end to whiteness haunts progressive scholarship on race as much as it haunts the paranoid visions of racists.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: After Whiteness Eve	1	(20)
Incalculable Community: Multiracialism, U.S. Census 2000, and the Crisis of the Liberal State
Labor Formalism	21	(6)
Dissensus 2000	27	(16)
The Will to Category	43	(12)
Rebirth of a Nation?	55	(12)
America, Not Counting Class	67	(8)
A Fascism of Benevolence: God and Family in the Father-Shaped Void
Of Communism and Castration	75	(8)
Muscular Multiculturalism	83	(11)
When Color is the Father	94	(13)
A Certain Gesture of Virility	107	(14)
The Eros of Warfare	121	(16)
Race Among Ruins: Whiteness, Work, and Writing in the New University
Between Jobs and Work	137	(11)
The Multiversity's Diversity	148	(25)
After Whiteness Studies	173	(12)
Multitude or Culturalism?	185	(20)
How Color Saved the Canon	205	(12)
Notes	217	(46)
Index	263	(6)
About the Author	269