Toward a Global Idea of Race

by Da Silva, Denise Ferreira

• ISBN13: 9780816649204
• ISBN10: 0816649200
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-02-22
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

In this far-ranging and penetrating work, Denise Ferreira da Silva asks why, after more than five hundred years of violence perpetrated by Europeans against people of color, is there no ethical outrage? Rejecting the prevailing view that social categories of difference such as race and culture operate solely as principles of exclusion, Silva presents a critique of modern thought that shows how racial knowledge and power produce global space. Looking at the United States and Brazil, she argues that modern subjects are formed in philosophical accounts that presume two ontological moments-historicityandglobality-which are refigured in the concepts of the nation and the racial, respectively. By displacing historicityrs"s ontological prerogative, Silva proposes that the notion of racial difference governs the present global power configuration because it institutes moral regions not covered by the leading post-Enlightenment ethical ideals-namely, universality and self-determination. By introducing a view of the racial as the signifier ofglobality,Toward a Global Idea of Raceprovides a new basis for the investigation of past and present modern social processes and contexts of subjection. Denise Ferreira da Silva is associate professor of sociology and American studies at the University of Southern California.

Author Biography

Denise Ferreira da Silva is associate professor of sociology and American studies at the University of Southern California

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Preface: Before the Event	p. xi
Glossary	p. xv
Introduction: A Death Foretold	p. xvii
The Transparency Thesis	p. 1
Homo Historicus	p. 17
The Critique of Productive Reason	p. 21
The Play of Reason	p. 37
Transcendental Poesis	p. 69
Homo Scientificus	p. 91
Productive Nomos	p. 97
The Science of the Mind	p. 115
The Sociologics of Racial Subjection	p. 153
Homo Modernus	p. 171
Outlining the Global/Historical Subject	p. 177
The Spirit of Liberalism	p. 197
Tropical Democracy	p. 221
Conclusion: Future Anterior	p. 253
Notes	p. 269
Bibliography	p. 301
Index	p. 319
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