Signs of Race in Poststructuralism: Toward a Transformative Theory of Race [Hardcover]

In this tightly argued book, Professor Young takes on the liberal race establishment. He insistently critiques the multiple waysthrough the deployment of anti-realism, fetishism, and pluralismin which race as discourse or experience becomes decoupled from class. Young understands class not as a category of identity we should respect and maintain; rather, he understands it primarily as social relations of production, political economy: he thus emphasizes the connection between racial discourse as ideology and structures and processes of class rule, structures that make the fight against racism central.Young is to be commended and imitated for this rarity among books on theory: one which ably demonstrates its mastery of a broad range of complex theories by thoroughly laying out the fundamental principles of a concept and then cogently describing and analyzing their intersections and the resulting paradoxes and aporia. Equally laudable to my mind is Young's truly rigorous, egalitarian and balanced approach: he does not, like so many other theorists who work on race, simply pay lip service to black feminism and queer theory, but gives them equal weight and consideration rather than directing them to the margins of consideration as nontheoretical interest groups.This book presents a class-based analysis of poststructuralism and race. The author positions this fundamental question at the heart of his project: why does race still work if it is commonly misunderstood to be a social construct?This book presents a class-based analysis of poststructuralism and race. The author positions this fundamental question at the heart of his project: why does race still work if it is commonly misunderstood to be a social construct? The answer is that race works because it operates like a commodity, and like any commodity, as long as it generates value (understood in the widest possible sense: economic, political, and cultural-ideological value), it will remain in circulation. Thisl³’