Throwing the Genes: A Renewed Biological Imaginary of 'Race', Place and Identification

Erasmus, Zimitri

doi:10.3167/th.2013.6013604

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…Anthropologist Kim TallBear (2013) discusses the way that such efforts to base group membership on genetic ancestry testing can backfire and ultimately undermine the ability of groups to govern themselves. And with specific reference to the science of Khoisan-ness , sociologist Zimitri Erasmus cautions against “doing history and politics through genetics” (2013, 40). While she is critical of the construction and continued use of apartheid categories, including the Coloured classification with which the San seek to dis-identify, she illustrates how relying on genomics may resuscitate the faulty assumption that such classifications are biological, rather than political.…”

Section: Diagnosing Indigeneity: Genomics and Reparationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In constructing “designer descendants,” and other well-meaning attempts to assert political rights based on genetic uniqueness, Erasmus cautions that the “concept ‘human life’ is hereby removed from its messy lived contexts mostly shaped by inequality and encased in artificial contexts: clinical laboratories, statistical databases and computer programmes. These places of ‘hard’ science are often understood to be outside of politics” (Erasmus 2013, 50). 11 Again, the boundary work involved in depicting genomics as more objective and value-free fuels its uptake across disparate policy arenas to support claims for state recognition, rights, and resources.…”

Section: Diagnosing Indigeneity: Genomics and Reparationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Emperor’s New Genes

Benjamin¹

2015

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

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This article addresses the politics of genomics through three diagnoses: The first, diagnosing objectivity, discusses how researchers involved in a large-scale population mapping initiative distinguish genomics as relatively objective, compared to other forms of knowledge production. The second case, diagnosing nationality, examines an attempt by the UK Border Agency to use genetic ancestry testing to vet asylum claims. The third case, diagnosing indigeneity, considers how indigenous councils in southern Africa engage genomic science in their struggle for state recognition and rights. I argue that genomics’ allure of objectivity lends itself to such diagnostic attempts among both powerful and subaltern social actors and suggest that developing “technologies of humility” may provide one safeguard against the increasing uptake of genomics as the authority on human difference.

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Section: Diagnosing Indigeneity: Genomics and Reparationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Diagnosing Indigeneity: Genomics and Reparationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emperor’s New Genes

Benjamin¹

2015

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

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“…A brief disclaimer is necessary. The focus on 'the ancestral' is not meant to reinforce conflations between biologically and historically formed racial identities, conflations that are increasingly underpinning what Erasmus (2013) calls "a renewed biological imaginary of race," in which genetically traced origins are gradually marking social identifications with an alleged authenticity that should rather, Erasmus argues, be located in history, language, music, ritual, and social practices (p. 40). The Fieldses (2012) also note this renewed scientific imaginary that reduces ancestry to race through their poignant discussion of the underlying discourse of genetic descent within the supposedly liberal notions of the multi-racial and multi-cultural which, in turn, imply racial purity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speculating Ancestor(ie)s: The Cavernous Memory of White Innocence and Fluid Embodiments of Afrofuturist Memory-Work

Perez

2020

Humanities

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Enduring legacies of racial violence signal the need to reconcile with the past. This paper comparatively explores various speculative works that either reinforce a paradigm of White innocence that serves to deny such legacies or center critical dialogue between the past and present. It draws on a range of theoretical works, including Seshadri-Crooks’s (2000) Lacanian analysis of race, Taylor’s (2003) notion of the body as repertoire for embodied knowledge, Wright’s (2015) concept of Black epiphenomenal time, and Hartman’s (2008b) method of ‘critical fabulation.’ Through an analysis of the narrative tropes of caves and mirrors in the Star Wars Skywalker saga (1977–1983; 2015–2019), this paper firstly unpacks the bounded individualism that permits protagonists Luke and Rey Skywalker to refute their evil Sith lord ancestry and prevail as heroes. It then turns to the works Black Panther (2018) and Watchmen (2019) to comparatively examine Afrofuturist narrative strategies of collectivity, embodiment, and non-linear temporality that destabilize bounded notions of self and time to reckon with the complexities of the past. It concludes that speculative approaches to ancestral (dis)connections are indicative of epistemological frameworks that can either circumvent or forefront ongoing demands to grapple with the past.

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“…This part of the discussion would be greatly strengthened by further engagement with science studies, which offers an understanding of genomics as a social enterprise-constituted through specific institutional structures, policies, and norms that vary according to the context in which the field is taking shape (Benjamin 2009;De Vries and Pepper 2012;Egorova 2010;Erasmus 2013;Fujimura et al 2008;Fullwiley 2008;Schwartz-Marin and Restrepo 2013;Slabbert and Pepper 2010;Reardon 2004;TallBear 2013;Wade et al 2014). Social scientists studying genomics reveal that some of the "best" scientists-published in top peer-reviewed journals and recipients of major grants-are energetically engaged in conceptualizing biological differences in racial terms, in part, to redress scientific and medical neglect of subordinate populations (Epstein 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Conjuring difference, concealing inequality: a brief tour of Racecraft

Benjamin

2014

Theor Soc

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The "social construction of race" is an oft-invoked academic truism. As a heuristic, the constructivist principle is at times assumed rather than demonstrated, exclaimed rather than put to work in the difficult task of showing how, by whom, under what conditions, and to what ends symbolic categories are made real in the lives of individuals and in the workings of institutions alike. The expression, nevertheless, offers a potent challenge to a visual economy that purports everyone "has" a race that can be read off of or in to the body. With their new book, Karen Fields and Barbara Fields (hereafter FF) take the reader back to first principles, revealing the many ways racial vision and division haunt social life in the United States. They insist that scholars, and survey researchers in particular, relinquish the idea of "race relations" that can be discerned by studying individuals' attitudes about others. The question of how others are continuously made and re-made via custom, law, and scholarly suppositions is the focus of Racecraft. In this way, the text contributes to a vigorous re-evaluation of the role of sociology in inadvertently deepening static conceptions of groupness through our foundational concepts and methods."Racecraft," the authors argue, is first and foremost an ongoing set of social practices that continuously misconstrue racism for race. The former is a function of power and inequality whereas the latter is purportedly grounded in biology and culture. By focusing on the inherent qualities of groups, whether residing in genes or values, the analyst loses sight of the larger context in which those differences are conjured in the first place. Conjured, because in the same way that witches need not exist for people to feel the effects of witchcraft, so too with race-genetic differences between racial groups need not actually exist for such claims to exercise political and social effects. Racecraft is the process by which scholarship and public discourse focuses on genes, IQ, or criminal propensity as explanations for patterns of hypertension, high school Theor Soc (2014) 43:683-688

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Throwing the Genes: A Renewed Biological Imaginary of 'Race', Place and Identification

Abstract: In the United States of America, use of DNA samples in criminal investigation and of genetic ancestry tests in 'personalised medicine', 'pharmacogenetics' and for personal consumption has grown exponentially. Moreover

Cited by 9 publications

References 10 publications

The Emperor’s New Genes

The Emperor’s New Genes

Speculating Ancestor(ie)s: The Cavernous Memory of White Innocence and Fluid Embodiments of Afrofuturist Memory-Work

Conjuring difference, concealing inequality: a brief tour of Racecraft

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