Page 32 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

Troubling ‘race’ 25
82). The implications of being seen or unseen depend on the context. They
also depend on what one is being seen as – an individual with subjecthood or
as a mere exemplar of the ‘race’.
The idea of whiteness as racially unmarked is of course only held by those
positioned as white. bell hooks, in the context of teaching, found that her
white students: ‘have a deep emotional investment in the myth of “sameness”,
even as their actions reflect the primacy of whiteness as a sign informing who
they are and how they think’ (hooks 1992: 167). Those positioned outside
the dominant norm may not regard whiteness as invisible. Whiteness, in
terms of the power exercised by whites, has long been visible and an object
of analysis for those who are positioned as black. As hooks writes: ‘black
folks have, from slavery on, shared with one another in conversations “spe-
cial” knowledge of whiteness gleaned from close scrutiny of white people’
(hooks 1997: 165; see also Roediger 1998). It might be more appropriate to
say that whiteness functions as an, albeit large, ‘blind spot’ for white people
in a ‘racially saturated field of visibility’ (Butler 1993b: 15).
Thus, in examining racialised perceptual practices, questions of visibility
and invisibility are central, but they cannot be analysed without reference to
the play of power. We have to ask who is seeing, who has the ability to assert
certain practices of seeing as much as who is being seen. Who is endowed
with subjecthood and to whom is it denied?

Conclusion

This chapter has explored processes of identity and subject construction.
While the work of Judith Butler is largely focused on gender identity, I have
argued that her elaboration of discursive construction, performativity and
the interplay of the normative and the abject are equally pertinent to under-
standing ‘race’. Despite the resurgence of biological examinations of ‘race’
(for example Herrnstein and Murray 1994; Entine 1999), it is, I would ar-
gue, largely accepted that essentialised notions of ‘race’ have been scientifi-
cally, politically and philosophically repudiated within the intellectual arena.
Nonetheless, as Paul Gilroy points out, it remains a concept to which academ-
ics and anti-racists are deeply attached. Gilroy himself, speaking to academ-
ics working on ‘race’ and ethnicity, calls for a ‘frank confrontation with our
own professional interests in the reification of “race”’ (Gilroy 1998: 841).
The liberal paradox that David Theo Goldberg describes as ‘race is irrelevant
but all is race’ (Goldberg 1993: 6) potentially holds sway for intellectuals as
much as wider modern society. This chapter has argued for the concept of
‘race’ to be fundamentally questioned or ‘troubled’. At one level, it could
be argued that this is what work that might loosely fit into ‘race studies’ has
9
been doing for the last half-century. However, I would argue that what is
needed is a deconstruction of racialised discourses, practices and identities
at a more profound level than the majority of previous approaches. Rather
than question or disrupt the characteristics attributed to visible differences,