Toward a Political Philosophy of Race

by Sheth, Falguni A.

• ISBN13: 9780791493977
• ISBN10: 0791493970
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-05
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Timely, controversial, and incisive, Toward a Political Philosophy of Race looks uncompromisingly at how a liberal society enables racism and other forms of discrimination. Drawing on the examples of the internment of U.S. citizens and residents of Japanese descent, of Muslim men and women in the contemporary United States, and of Asian Indians at the turn of the twentieth century, Falguni A. Sheth argues that racial discrimination and divisions are not accidents in the history of liberal societies. Race, she contends, is a process embedded in a range of legal technologies that produce racialized populations who are divided against other groups. Moving past discussions of racial and social justice as abstract concepts, she reveals the playing out of race, racialization of groups, and legal frameworks within concrete historical frameworks. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Falguni A. Sheth is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Theory at Hampshire College and the coeditor (with David Colander and Robert E. Prasch) of Race, Liberalism, and Economics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: If You Don't Do Theory, Theory Will Do You	p. 1
The Technology of Race and the Logics of Exclusion: The Unruly, Naturalization, and Violence	p. 21
First Dimension: Taming the Unruly	p. 26
Second Dimension: Naturalizing the Unruly	p. 28
Race as a Tool for Sovereign Power: Dividing Populations	p. 29
Enframing Race: Vulnerability and Violence	p. 35
The Violence of Law: Sovereign Power, Vulnerable Populations, and Race	p. 41
Law, Violence, and Undecidability	p. 42
Sovereign Power	p. 47
Unruly and Vulnerable Populations	p. 49
The Racialization of a Population	p. 51
The Unruly and the Vulnerable Manifested as Categories of Law: Immigrants, Aliens, Enemies	p. 56
The Unruly: Strangeness, Madness, and Race	p. 65
Strangeness	p. 67
Huntington and Rawls: Islam, Madness, and the Menace to Liberalism	p. 74
Difference, Madness, and Race	p. 78
Liberal Hegemony and Heterogeneous Populations	p. 81
The Newest Unruly Threat: Muslim Men and Women	p. 87
The Racializing and Outcasting of Muslims in the United States	p. 88
Culture, Heterogeneity, and the Foreigner: Unruly Women	p. 95
Producing Race: Naturalizing the Exception Through the Rule of Law	p. 111
Exceptions and the Rule of Law	p. 113
Constitutional Rights: Political? Human?	p. 117
Border-Populations: Boundary, Memory, and Moral Conscience	p. 129
The Third Term: Pariah Populations as a Border-Guard	p. 130
Pariahs, Border-Populations, and Moral Gauges: The Example of Black Americans	p. 136
Furthering State Interests: Dividing Populations Against Each Other	p. 141
Concealing and Unconcealing: Multiple Border-Guards and Outsiders	p. 143
Technologies of Race and the Racialization of Immigrants: The Case of Early Twentieth-Century Asian Indians in North America	p. 147
The Great "Hindu" Migration	p. 148
Political Resistance or Insurgency?	p. 150
Racialization	p. 154
Invisibility	p. 157
Conclusion: Toward a Political Philosophy of Race	p. 167
Notes	p. 179
Works Cited	p. 229
Index	p. 249
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