On Racism: An Interrogation of the Canonical Theory of Knowledge of Anti-Racism Politics

There are multiple ways of framing the analysis of racism and racial discrimination as public problems. Crucial differences in scope, ideological positions and theoretical standpoints inform these frames. Despite the tensions and disagreements among these stances, they all embrace four epistemological features: they treat racism and racial discrimination as given realities, which have an independent existence from awareness or recognition; they assume anti-racism and anti-discrimination practices and theories as contestations to those given realities; they all conceive power in terms of differentials in resources, access/opportunities, and capacities to impose a rule, interest or ensure privileges; and they understand subjectivity as relational identities deriving from the givenness of racism. While acknowledging these assumptions’ political and intellectual value and being fully aligned with the legitimacy of their purposes, this dissertation problematizes the theory of knowledge that makes them possible. It also proposes an alternative theory of knowledge and discusses the epistemic consequences of embracing a shift in how we understand and mobilize against racism. With the support of the theory of objective validity of the Marburg Neo-Kantian School, and Michel Foucault’s work on discourse, power, and subjectivity, I present three main arguments. First, I contend that racism and racial discrimination are not given but become epistemologically established through the discursive practices anti-racism mobilizations embrace. Second, I claim that anti-racist problematizations are not reactive but have constitutive power. This position implies complementing the idea of power as disparity with the idea of power as the possibility of objectifying reality. Finally, this dissertation argues that the subjectivities anti-racism talks about emerge in discourse and only become self-evident through discursive practices. The thesis is structured into four chapters. Chapter 1 critically interrogates the mainstream theory of knowledge of anti-racism politics and introduces the alternative approach I am suggesting. In the following chapters, the dissertation presents three cases that serve to illustrate my theory of knowledge: the First Universal Races Congress of 1911; the conceptual and theoretical transitions in international politics against racial discrimination between the late 1980s and the 1990s; and the emergence and consolidation of the Afrodescendants as subjectivity in the early 2000s.