Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T13:46:47.258Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

Bruce S. Hall
Affiliation:
Duke University
Get access

Summary

[I]f race is socially and historically constructed, then racism must be reconstructed as social regimes change and histories unfold … [W]e [must] recognize that a new historical construct is never entirely new and the old is never entirely supplanted by the new. Rather the new is grafted onto the old. Thus racism, too, is never entirely new. Shards and fragments of its past incarnations are embedded in the new. Or, if we switch metaphors to an archaeological image, the new is sedimented onto the old, which occasionally seeps or bursts through. Our problem then, is to figure out how this happens and to take its measure.

Thomas C. Holt

RACE IN NORTHERN MALI

The language of racial difference has become a common feature of political discourse in many parts of postcolonial Africa, especially in the countries of the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and the Great Lakes. Yet understanding how Africans have come to deploy idioms of race to describe intra-African differences has often been handicapped by academic scholarship that insists on race being understood as an exclusively European-American ideology. Mahmood Mamdani's well-known book on the Rwandan genocide is illustrative of this larger problem. He frames African uses of racial language as a kind of false consciousness derived from the colonial experience: “At the core of the ideology of Hutu Power was the conviction that the Tutsi were a race alien to Rwanda, and not an indigenous ethnic group. The shift in political vocabulary was a return to the vision of the colonial period.”

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Holt, Thomas C., The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 20–1Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 190Google Scholar
Dayak, Mano, Touareg, la tragédie (Paris: Editions Jean-Claude Lattès, 1992), 63Google Scholar
Casajus, Dominique, “Les amis français de la cause touarègue,” CEA 137, XXXV–1, (1995): 243–4Google Scholar
Salifou, André, La question touarègue au Niger (Paris: Karthala, 1993), 11Google Scholar
,The American Friends Service Committee, Tin Aicha, Nomad Village (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 1982), 62Google Scholar
Nirenberg, David, “Race and the Middle Ages: The Case of Spain and Its Jews,” in Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, ed. Greer, Margaret R., Mignolo, Walter D., and Quilligan, Maureen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 73–4Google Scholar
Banton, Michael, Racial Theories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar
Hannaford, Ivan, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)Google Scholar
Goldberg, David Theo, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 41Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart, “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance,” in Race Critical Theories: Text and Context, ed. Essed, Philomena and Goldberg, David Theo (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 38–68Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne, “Racism and Nationalism,” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed. Balibar, Etienne and Wallerstein, Immanuel (New York: Verso, 1991), 40Google Scholar
Powell, Eve Troutt, A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 16Google Scholar
Isaac, Benjamin, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar
Robb, Peter, “Introduction: South Asia and the Concept of Race,” in The Concept of Race in South Asia, ed. Robb (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Lewis, Bernard, Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dikötter, Frank, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 1–30Google Scholar
Crossley, Pamela Kyle, Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 5Google Scholar
Crossley, Kyle, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 14Google Scholar
Elukin, Jonathan, “From Jew to Christian? Conversion and Immutability in Medieval Europe,” in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, ed. James Muldoon (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 1997), 171–89Google Scholar
Goldberg, David Theo, “The Semantics of Race,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15, no. 4 (1992): 545CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobsbawm, E.J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 65Google Scholar
Boulle, Pierre H., “François Bernier and the Origins of the Modern Concept of Race,” in The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, ed. Sue Peabody and Tyler Stovall (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 12Google Scholar
Miramon, Charles, “Noble Dogs, Noble Blood: The Invention of the Concept of Race in the Late Middle Ages,” in The Origins of Racism in the West, ed. Miriam Eliav-Feldon, Benjamin Isaac, and Joseph Ziegler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 215–16Google Scholar
Goldenburg, David, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar
Friedman, John Block, The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000)Google Scholar
Brockington, John, “Concepts of Race in the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana,” in The Concept of Race in South Asia, ed. Peter Robb (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 97–108Google Scholar
Thapar, Romila, “The Image of the Barbarian in Early India,” CSSH 13, no. 4 (1971): 408–36Google Scholar
Beauvais, Mariella Villasante-de, Parenté et politique en Mauritanie: Essai d'Anthropologie historique. Le devenir contemporain des Ahl Sîdi Mahmûd, confédération bidân de l'Assâba (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998), 240Google Scholar
Omi, Michael and Winant, Howard, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, second edition (New York: Routledge, 1994), 56Google Scholar
Bayly, Susan, “Caste and Race in the Colonial Ethnography of India,” in The Concept of Race in South Asia, ed. Peter Robb (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 165–218Google Scholar
Bates, Crispin, “Race, Caste and Tribe in Central India: The Early Origins of Indian Anthropometry,” in The Concept of Race in South Asia, ed. Peter Robb (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995), 219–59Google Scholar
Inden, Ronald, Imagining India (London: Basil Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 16–56Google Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 5Google Scholar
Crossley, Pamela Kyle, “Thinking about Ethnicity in Early Modern China,” Late Imperial China 11, no. 1 (June 1990): 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamel, Chouki El, “‘Race’, Slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean Thought: The Question of the Haratin in Morocco,” Journal of North African Studies 7, no. 3 (2002): 29–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballantyne, Tony, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (New York: Palgrave, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballantyne, Tony, “Rereading the Archive and Opening up the Nation-State: Colonial Knowledge in South Asia (and Beyond)” in After the Imperial Turn. Thinking with and through the Nation, ed. Antoinette Burton (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 103–4Google Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” AHR 99, no. 5 (1994): 1516–45Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 211–62Google Scholar
Amselle, Jean-Loup, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere, trans. Claudia Royal (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 11–12Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 41, 184–5Google Scholar
Ludden, David, “Orientalist Empiricism: Transformations of Colonial Knowledge,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 250–78Google Scholar
Trautmann, Thomas, Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 21–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, Andrew, “Aryanizing Projects, African ‘Collaborators,’ and Colonial Transcripts,” in Antinomies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation, ed. Vasant Kaiwar and Sucheta Mazumdar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 63–6Google Scholar
Loiseau, Philippe, “L'administration et les rapports nomades/sedentaires,” in Nomades et commandantes. Administration et sociétés nomades dans l'ancienne A.O.F., ed. Bernus, Edmund, Boilley, Pierre, Clauzel, Jean, and Triaud, Jean-Louis (Paris: Karthala, 1993), 164Google Scholar
Glassman, Jonathon, “Sorting out the Tribes: the Creation of Racial Identities in Colonial Zanzibar's Newspaper Wars,” JAH 41 (2000): 397–8ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iliffe, John, A Modern History of Tanganyika (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 324CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vail, Leroy, “Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern African History,” in The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, ed. Vail (London: J. Currey, 1989), 14–15Google Scholar
Spear, Thomas, “Introduction,” in Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa, ed. Spear and Richard Waller (London: J. Currey, 1993), 13–14Google Scholar
Lonsdale, John, “The Moral Economy of Mau Mau,” in Unhappy Valley, Book 2: Violence and Ethnicity, ed. Bruce Berman and Lonsdale (London: J. Currey, 1992)Google Scholar
Chanock, Martin, Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar
Feierman, Steven, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990)Google Scholar
Waller, Richard, “Acceptees and Aliens: Kikuyu Settlement in Maasailand,” in Being Maasai: Ethnicity and Identity in East Africa, ed. Thomas Spear and Waller (London: J. Currey, 1993), 226–57Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek, Creative Writing: Translation, Bookkeeping, and the Work of Imagination in Colonial Kenya (Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann, 2004)Google Scholar
Spear, Thomas, “Neotraditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British Colonial Africa,” JAH 44 (2003): 3–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilton, Carolyn, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 3–4Google Scholar
Nugent, Paul, “Putting the History Back into Ethnicity: Enslavement, Religion, and Cultural Brokerage in the Construction of Mandinka/Jola and Ewe/Agotime Identities in West Africa, c. 1650–1930,” CSSH 50, no. 4 (2008): 920–48Google Scholar
Bayly, C.A., Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 9Google Scholar
Mann, Gregory makes a similar point in Naive Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 59–90Google Scholar
Nirenberg, David, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 6Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Bruce S. Hall
  • Book: A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960
  • Online publication: 05 August 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511976766.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Bruce S. Hall
  • Book: A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960
  • Online publication: 05 August 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511976766.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Bruce S. Hall
  • Book: A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960
  • Online publication: 05 August 2011
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511976766.003
Available formats
×