Postface: Theorizing Polyracism

Abstract

The conceptualization of racism presented here involves two key breaks with contemporary accounts. Firstly, this book has examined the ‘colonial genealogy of racialised govermentalities’ (Hesse 2004, p.26), constructing racism not as exceptional ideologies, but as a social force at the core of polities and their forms of social administration implemented through specific technologies of racial rule. This challenges an earlier hegemonic Eurocentric account, which failed to problematize Western modernity and its universalist narratives of human rights and democracy. Fundamental recognition of the intrinsic racialization of liberal democracies is a key starting point here. ‘Deep seated social and institutional change’ by states are necessary, as Sandra Fredman (2001) has argued in recognition of the inability of human rights frameworks to defeat racism. In Europe and elsewhere, racism is being reduced to a problem of human rights and these frameworks and discourse are not only inadequate for the task at hand, they are also working to obscure and deny the contemporary power and significance of racism. This argument has been developed fully in our key output from a recent three-year EU FP7 research project: Racism, Governance and Public policy, beyond human rights (Sian, Law and Sayyid 2013). This theoretical break derives from the long sociological tradition placing race at the centre of the making of Western modernity, from Du Bois, Cesaire and Fanon to contemporary theorists including Hesse, Sayyid, Goldberg and Winant, and this book has examined many aspects and implications of this set of arguments in the Mediterranean context, not least in relation to EU governance of migration control and the governance of the Roma in Italy.