Overview

In Racism and Cultural Studies E. San Juan Jr. offers an historical-materialist critique of practices in multiculturalism and cultural studies. Rejecting contemporary theories of inclusion as affirmations of the capitalist status quo, San Juan envisions a future of politically equal and economically empowered citizens through the democratisation of power and the socialisation of property. Calling American nationalism the new ""opium of the masses,"" he argues that American nationalism is where racist ideas and practices are formed, refined, and reproduced as common sense and consensus. Individual chapters engage the themes of ethnicity versus racism, gender inequality, sexuality, and the politics of identity configured with the discourse of post-coloniality and postmodernism. Questions of institutional racism, social justice, democratisation, and international power-relations between the centre and the periphery are surveyed and analysed.San Juan also fashions a critique of dominant disciplinary approached in the humanities and social sciences and contends that ""the racism question"" functions as a catalyst and point of departure for cultural critiques based on a radical democratic vision. He also asks urgent questions regarding globalisation and the future of socialist transformation of ""third world"" peoples and others who others who face oppression. As one of the most notable racial theorists in the United States today, San Juan presents a provocative challenge to the academy that will compel the attention of scholars in each of the disciplines in which race is a focus of concern.

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9780822328513

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Reviews

[D]eftly explores current trends in academic thought and political theory to show the complicity of postmodernism with global capitalism. . . . Racism and Cultural Studies eloquently and at times wittily traverses a wide range of recent trends that have moved away from collective struggles, and social analyses in favor of individualized 'modes of resistance' that undergird the culture of consumption that characterizes late capitalism. In the process a host of academics are debunked while a selection of activists/theorists are given new life, as part of the book's trajectory wherein our contemporary academic and global terrain is elucidated and the direction we ought to follow is mapped out. <br>--Rachel Peterson, Against the Current

Author Information

E. San Juan Jr. is a Fellow at the Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University. He was recently chair of the Department of Comparative American Cultures, Washington State University and visiting professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Trento (Italy) and Tamkang University (Taiwan). Among his recent books are Beyond Postcolonial Theory; From Exile to Diaspora: The Filipino Experience in the United States; Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression; and After Postcolonialism, winner of the 2001 Gustavus Myers Human Rights Center Outstanding Book Award.

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