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Tinjauan Buku Denise Ferreira da Silva.
Toward a Global Idea of Race.
Minneapolis.
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, 380 hlm.
Theorists of race and racialization in the past decades have been overly relying on the history of racism in North America (United States.
Canada, and Mexic.
and Europe.
While the historical speciycities of North America and Europe are immensely useful to theorize race and racialization, most of these works fail to understand the complexities and nuances of race relations outside these dominant regions, and worse, make dangerous universal assumptions based on their Euro-American subjectivitiesAirepeating yet another epistemic violence that Gayatri Spivak once reminded us.
Nonetheless, today the world is becoming more connected than ever, and critical theoretical framework that bridges the multiplicity of ideas of race is direly needed.
However, is a global idea of race possible? In 2007.
Brazilian American philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva published Toward a Global Idea of Race, a dense yet insightful and innovative exegesis that can be immensely important for scholars and researchers of race in the Global South.
Silva begins by asking why, despite the centuries-long history of colonialism and racism, there is no global outrage yet, and why existing theories on race and culture, which govern racial difference, fail to make sense of different contexts of race in other national narratives.
For her, the deployment of existing theories on race and racial difference may have done damage despite its valuable productivity in social justice projects.
Bringing philosophy, history, and anthropology together, the nucleus of her argument is that the post-Enlightenment logic of modernity goes unchallenged, even when it is deployed by the strongest critics of racial injustices.
She believes that existing theories overlook the roles of post-Enlightenment philosophy of man and science that govern both ontological and epistemological .
nto-epistemologica.
conditions in which race is understood: AuFailing to grasp how the racial produces modern subjects DISKURSUS.
Volume 19.
Nomor 2.
Oktober 2023: 292-298 .
ven though we have no doubt that it does s.
I think, results from how we know itAy .
And even when postmodern theorists argue for the end/death of the subject, the subject does not automatically disappear .
In other words.
Silva insists that the modern subject and racial subject are always interrelated.
SilvaAos Toward a Global Idea of Race addresses the blind spot in contemporary theories of race .
acial formation, subaltern/ postcolonial, and postmodern theoriesAito name a fe.
that makes the post-Enlightenment logic of modernity assumed universal and transparent.
This onto-epistemological blind spot can create what she argues is Auproductive violenceAyAia double-edged weapon that punishes the global subaltern while demanding global justice .
Aiwhich she wants to unveil by taking into account globality and historicity as paramount ontological moments.
Silva returns to the arsenal of the transparency thesis .
nto-epistemological assumptions on which post-Enlightenment modern thoughts are base.
to provide a framework that makes visible what she calls analytics of raciality .
he Auapparatus of knowledgeAy based on the science of manAiexample: existing anthropological and sociological analyses of race/cultur.
that prevail under the context of globality and historicity.
To argue that the transparency thesis that produces the transparent AuIAy (AuManAyAiontological ygur.
is a problem, she begins by discussing the context that manufactured the transparency thesis in Part I (Homo Historicu.
In the Introduction.
Silva insists that we need to displace the transparency thesis rather than replacing the history of the science of man because the science of man is never outside the transparency thesis: Authe strategies of the modern Will to Truth, the tools of science and history, remain productive weapons of global subjectionAy .
SilvaAos strategy is to look at how science and history create the modern subject, which is the root of all exclusions, instead of focusing on racial difference that has been done in different social science yelds.
To do this.
Silva traces the onto-epistemological trajectory back to post-Enlightenment philosophy .
x-x.
In Chapter I, in which she foregrounds her argument prior to Part I, she maintains that scientiyc universality haunts historicity Tinjauan Buku .
as a result, the analytics of racial subjection abandons the transparency thesis and its role in creating dominating powerAia contradiction that Silva takes very seriously in the book.
AuTo unravel the contradiction haunting critical analysis of racial subjection,Ay Silva argues, we must question Authe scientiyc minds that let AoprejudicesAo and AoideologiesAo colonize the domain of AotruthAoAy .
, and to ask the question Aurequires that the racial be placed at the center of the critique of modern representationAy .
While Silva is clear on how focusing on exclusion in racial formation analysis overlooks the universality of the science of man, her reading of SpivakAos postcoloniality is surprising but convincing.
For Silva, while criticizing the domination of subaltern subjects.
Spivak actually still beneyts from the transparency thesis because reliance on the representation of the modern subject is still crucial to rewrite Auindigenous placeAy .
Instead, what Silva aims to do is to avoid repeating the same analytics of raciality by turning to the onto-epistemological formation that presumes the representation of modern subjects.
Silva does this mainly in Part I, where she analyzes two main ideas fundamental in her argument.
First, she excavates DescartesAo self-consciousness in two scenes of reasons .
egulation and representatio.
that are continuously reproduced in modern Second, she returns to HegelAos dialectic of AuspiritAy and KantAos notion of transcendental to highlight the privilege of the universal reason that frames the transparency thesis.
Silva calls this transcendental poesisAi HegelAos use of KantAos transcendence to render reason a transcendental In part II.
Silva discusses the regimen of production of analytics of She introduces what she calls the strategy of engulfmentAiAythe scientiyc concepts that explain other human conditions as variations of those found in post-Enlightenment EuropeAy .
and productive nomosAiAythe conception of reason that describes it as the producer or regulator of the universeAy .
introduced by scienceAiwhich is central in producing analytics of raciality.
She traces how modern science that establishes the ground for race relations .
nthropology, sociolog.
projects Authe others of EuropeAy into obliteration.
What she mainly argues here is that the notion DISKURSUS.
Volume 19.
Nomor 2.
Oktober 2023: 292-298 of raciality is an effective tool of productive nomos because it renders the irreducible and unchangeable signiyers .
acial/cultura.
as primary signiyers of human differenceAiparticularities that cannot be immersed in HegelAos notion of AuSpirit.
Ay However, by encompassing globality as a crucial ontological moment.
Silva shows that the productive nomos of post-Enlightenment Europe relies on references to the others of Europe .
other words, post-Enlightenment Europe creates a global context that is politically Auuneven,Ay yet the others of Europe are still needed to maintain the pursuit of post-Enlightenment reason .
As a result, even when postmodern theorists attempt to blur modern subjectivities, productive nomos still produces Aunew subjectivitiesAy that govern the writings of the global subaltern.
In her words.
AuLike other products of scientiyc signiycation, they have become AonatureAo itself, objects and subjects of critical projects that, holding onto the desire to AodiscoverAo and AocontrolAo a yet-tobe-uncovered AotruthAo or Aoessence,Ao refuse to engage their own effectsAy .
Finally, part i (Homo Modernu.
breaks down how analytics of raciality work by contrasting the making of two national subjects: Brazil and the United States of America (U.
) early postcolonial politics.
This part clariyes how the global ontological context produces modern subjects, such as the anthropological desire that privileges scientiyc signiycation of homo By showing Auhow the racial subaltern subject is placed before .
n front o.
the ethical space inhabited by the proper national subjectAy .
Silva highlights the production of self-determination and universality in the U.
social conyguration as a manifestation of European liberal She contrasts the U.
social conyguration to the production of national and democratic subjects in Brazil via the political discourse of miscegenation .
acial mixing through sexual relation and procreatio.
miscegenation might be celebrated in the U.
context as a progressive move toward the end of racism, but in Brazil, miscegenation is haunted by the desire to create a European national subject.
In other words, racial mixing in the U.
is a move toward a multicultural society, which is celebrated in the U.
under different labels .
or example.
Aumelting potAy Tinjauan Buku and Ausalad bowlA.
, but in Brazil, racial mixing is an attempt to AueraseAy non-white bloodlines of indigenous and black people by making it AubetterAy with European bloodline.
Miscegenation in Brazil, therefore, is not outside the formation of national identity.
The logic of obliterating the others of Europe and collapsing them under whiteness is immanent.
Silva the silencing of the racial underclass in BrazilAiwhich is the opposite parallel to the silencing of the class under the racial in the United StatesAirelies not on the placing of the racial AootherAo outside the place of the national subject, but on how the eschatological meanings of miscegenation produced a mode of racial subjection premised on the obliteration of the always-already affectable bodies and minds of the others of Europe .
This parallel difference exempliyes how analytics of raciality preserves the transparency thesis, refashioning the modern subject .
omo modernu.
signiyed by globality and historicity ontological context to shape post-Enlightenment modern representation .
In the U.
, racial difference governs the American subjects of modernity, while in Brazil, what connects Aubody, global region, and the mindAy governs the Brazilian subjects.
These may be different AotoolsAo, but the mechanismAithe arsenalAiis the same and becomes less opaque when globality governs our understanding of ontology.
How does SilvaAos mapping of the analytics of raciality imagine future onto-epistemological possibilities? Silva concludes by reminding us that postmodern critique challenges universal reason but remains unable to escape the intrinsic universal reason on modern representation, and that Auhistoricity cannot dissipate its effectsAy .
, and these effects are violent.
The approach she offers is to read modern representation in modern texts as scientiyc strategies that can Ausupplement, constitute, and interruptAy historicity and the transparency thesis .
She points out that Auan effect of the signiycation of the socio-historical logic of exclusion is to keep the political-symbolic determinants of such events behind the veil of transparencyAy.
tracing every Auarticulation of racialityAy and Auhow it re- DISKURSUS.
Volume 19.
Nomor 2.
Oktober 2023: 292-298 writes the racial subaltern subject in affectabilityAy is to address the violent effects from such rewriting and Auredeploy the transparency thesisAy .
SilvaAos mapping of the analytics of race is bold not only because she is able to exhume and challenge the universal assumptions of power that haunt Eurocentric knowledge production but also to maintain healthy .
nd heavily neede.
skepticism toward claims of liberation heavily adopted by the scientiyc pursuit of race and culture.
I would read it alongside other work that attempts to decenter Eurocentric epistemologies and/or unravel the transparent effects of modern thoughts, such as Dipesh ChakrabartyAos Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton.
NJ: Princeton University Press, .
I would imagine that SilvaAos emphasis on globality may be mistakenly taken as an erasure of spatial particularities .
s many critics of globalization have expresse.
Still.
SilvaAos view of globality is different from the rose-tinted early works of globality and globalization .
uch as Arjun AppaduraiAos Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization.
Minneapolis.
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1.
Instead, her mapping of the analytics of raciality.
I would argue, still relies on spatial particularities, yet her approach is able to articulate the effects of the transparency thesis by taking globality as an ontological moment.
In other words.
Silva does not forget about spatial particularitiesAias we can see in her analysis of miscegenation in the U.
and Brazil.
The word AutowardAy in the book title is aptly situated in her framework.
Readers unfamiliar with North American history and anthropology will ynd her work dense, and readers without any training in philosophy may ynd her writing impenetrable, especially because Silva introduces many philosophical neologisms that even the bookAos generous inclusion of a glossary does not help much.
Thus, it is best to keep in mind that SilvaAos goals require extreme theoretical heavy lifting.
In my research.
Toward a Global Idea of Race is fundamental in mapping the colonial desire to render postcolonial Indonesia as a modern subject, yet preserve a place like Bali as a pre-modern subject under the tourist gaze.
My prelim- Tinjauan Buku inary research shows that the imagination of Bali as Authe last paradiseAy in 1920s travel writing .
ee Powell.
Hickman.
The Last Paradise, an AmericanAos AoDiscoveryAo of Bali in the 1920s.
Singapore: Oxford University Press, .
not only gloriyes the Dutch as a so-called best European colonizer but also preserves Bali as pre-modern subjects.
I wonder how the desire to create an imagination of paradise in .
colonial and global contexts plays out in the desire to preserve the transparency thesis.
Writing Bali as pre-modern subjects and the anthropological desire to preserve it may have erased nuances that can identify the violence that exists in contemporary Bali, along with the intimacy of IndonesiaAos national subjectivity and the hauntings of European colonial historicity.
Only by pursuing SilvaAos insistence on the globality of racial ideas can this endeavor be possible.
(Teraya Paramehta.
Universitas Indonesia & University of Southern California.
E-mail: parameht@usc.