Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
It’s racist, and you know it is…
A young asylum seeker at Mosney Direct Provision Centre in County Meath, Ireland, waits for a decision that will define her life.
Following the Irish government’s plans to move asylum seekers from a detention centre at Mosney, a former Butlins style holiday camp, where they have, despite all the odds, made a home, Gavan Titley responds to a racist article by Ian O’Doherty of the Irish Independent. In the Irish Left Review, Titley argues that,
The genre of new realism translates the culturalist racism of the 1990s for a new era. Based on the false assumption that racism was always about biological difference, rather than a historically shifting form of thinking organised through the modern nation state that fuses biology and culture in systems of power and essential difference, new realism allows exclusion, inequality and hierarchy to be parsed through ideas of irreducible differences and exaggerated threats to our little land and its scarce resources. It frames racism as a moral criticism of ordinary people, rather than as a political critique of how power is distributed and inequality justified. It doesn’t matter if it is coded as ‘culture’, race-thinking remains constant.
Responding with Rage
An article I wrote at the time of the last World Cup in 2006 which resonates with racist nationalism as it is being played with respect to this year’s championship.
What is there left to say about Zinedine Zidane’s already infamous head-butt in the last minutes of the finals of the 2006 World Cup? Articles, blogs and bar room conversation have hashed and rehashed the French captain’s act. He has been damned a traitor and hailed a hero. He has been condemned, understood and forgiven. But the symbolic impact of his charge of rage, his head ramming into the chest of the Italian Matterazzi, “like a bull” (Liberation, July 11), is yet to be fully felt in France.
Many commentators have spoken about Zidane, the son of poor Algerian immigrants from La Castellane in the council houses of Marseille’s Quartier Nord. He is said to be understated, generally humbled by his stardom, unsure of what to do with the adulation that his football prowess has earned him. It is this that endeared him to everyone in France, except of course the supporters of the Front national’s Jean-Marie Le Pen who has repeatedly condemned the make-up of France’s ethnically mixed tricolor national team. The majority even forgive him for not singing the national anthem when it is played at the beginning of matches. He has been, until Sunday’s crucial trespassing, a symbol of all that liberal France hopes for the sons and daughters of the immigrants from the quartiers difficiles (literally the “difficult neighbourhoods of the ill-famed banlieues). He was held up as an example for the kids whose dream it is to become the Zizous of the future: keeping his head down and making a positive contribution to the Republic, rather than burning its schools and jeering at its police. Read the rest of this entry »
Listen to ‘Post-race, post-politics’
You can now listen and watch ‘Post-race, post-politics: the paradoxical rise of culture after multiculturalism’, a paper I recently gave at the University of Toronto in Berlin Conference on “Post-Secular Society as a Transatlantic Model? Migration, Religion and Class in Comparative Perspective” by visiting the Media page.
Judith Buter turns down civil courage award from Berlin Pride
Judith Butler turning down the Civil Courage Award at the Berlin Pride June 19 2010
I must distance myself from this racist complicity
Press Release by SUSPECT on the events of the 19th June, 2010
As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride. We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders, police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers’ closeness to homonationalist organisations. Her courageous speech is a testimony to her openness for new ideas, and her readiness to engage with our long activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation. Read the rest of this entry »
Racism and the Censorship of Gay Imperialism
by Aren Aizura
I am reprinting the excellent response to the censorship of Out of Place, a book edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake on the interconnections between queerness and raciality. As you will read, the book contains an article, ‘Gay Imperialism’, which critiques what Jasbir Puar for example has termed ‘homonationalism’ and the participation by some gay rights and feminist activists in the perpetuation of Islamophobia through the ‘war on terror’ logic.
The book will not be republished due to an attack by the gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell, who has claimed that he is defamed by the article. The article and the book are an excellent critique of the ways in which discourses of liberation have been subverted in the service of power.
Please read this critique and spread it widely. An interesting comment on his piece and on Peter Tatchell’s stance by Sara Ahmed, author of much interesting work on racism, Islamophobia and ‘diversity’ can be read here.
Read on for Aizura’s article… Read the rest of this entry »
Places left on the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies
Due to a number of deferrals, the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at Trinity College, Dublin is still accepting applications for 2009-10. Please consult their website