Rac(e)ing from Death

In response to recent events that demonstrate the persistence of racial trauma, this essay revisits James Baldwin's claim that racism is a symptom of fundamental human tendencies and constraints. For Baldwin, we cannot understand the legacy of racism if we do not take seriously all too human at...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Winters, Joseph Richard 1977- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Wiley-Blackwell [2017]
Dans: Journal of religious ethics
Année: 2017, Volume: 45, Numéro: 2, Pages: 380-405
Sujets non-standardisés:B anguish
B the human
B Pessimism
B Baldwin
B Race
B Bataille
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Verlag)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Résumé:In response to recent events that demonstrate the persistence of racial trauma, this essay revisits James Baldwin's claim that racism is a symptom of fundamental human tendencies and constraints. For Baldwin, we cannot understand the legacy of racism if we do not take seriously all too human attempts to evade, and deflect, death and its intimations. To flesh out this component of Baldwin's thought, I engage with the thought of Georges Bataille, an author who thinks generally about the fraught relationship between the preservation of life and our responsiveness to suffering. To test the insights that Baldwin provides on racial matters, this essay engages recent discussions in black studies and queer theory around futurity, racial difference, and the category of the human. I maintain that we must think “the human” and racial difference together, as a tension-filled relationship, in order to understand the limits and possibilities regarding our efforts to change the order of things.
ISSN:1467-9795
Contient:Enthalten in: Journal of religious ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/jore.12182