Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis Of Race (opening Out: Feminism For Today)

Desiring Whiteness provides a compelling new interpretation of how we understand race. Race is often seen to be a social construction. Nevertheless, we continue to deploy race thinking in our everyday life as a way of telling people apart visually. How do subjects become raced? Is it common sense to read bodies as racially marked? Employing Lacan's theories of the subject and sexual difference, Seshadri-Crooks explores how the discourse of race parallels that of sexual difference in making racial identity a fundamental component of our thinking. Through close readings of literary and film texts, Seshardi-Crooks also investigates whether race is a system of difference equally determined by Whiteness. She argues that it is in relation to Whiteness that systems of racial classification are organized, endowing it with a power to shape human difference. Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Contents......Page 5 Acknowledgments......Page 9 Key to Lacan's works......Page 11 Introduction: on looking......Page 12 Deciphering Whiteness......Page 22 The object of Whiteness......Page 68 Whiteness and the elephant joke......Page 90 Looking alike: or the ethics of Suture......Page 114 What's in a name? Love and knowledge beyond identity in ~Recitatif~......Page 143 Discolorations......Page 169 Notes......Page 172 Bibliography......Page 179 Index......Page 187 Book Cover 1 Title 4 Contents 5 Acknowledgments 9 Key to Lacan's works 11 Introduction: on looking 12 Deciphering Whiteness 22 The object of Whiteness 68 Whiteness and the elephant joke 90 Looking alike: or the ethics of Suture 114 What's in a name? Love and knowledge beyond identity in ~Recitatif~ 143 Discolorations 169 Notes 172 Bibliography 179 Index 187 Philosophy Employing Lacan's theories of the subject and sexual difference, this work explores how the discourse of race parallels that of sexual difference in making racial identity a fundamental component of our thinking A compelling new interpretation of how we understand race, using Lacanian analysis to explore the visual discrimation we make between races, and including close readings of literary and film texts In June of 1995, the New York Times reported the "anguish" of a Dutch couple who had to confront the fact that one of their twin boys, conceived through in vitro fertilization, was "black."