|
Whiteness studies is an interdisciplinary arena of inquiry that has developed beginning in the United States, particularly since the late 20th century, and is focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of whiteness as an ideology tied to social status. Pioneers in the field include W. E. B. Du Bois ("Jefferson Davis as a Representative of Civilization"; 1890; ''Darkwater'', 1920), James Baldwin (''The Fire Next Time'', 1963), Theodore W. Allen (''The Invention of the White Race,'' 1976, expanded in 1995), Ruth Frankenberg (''White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness'', 1993), author and literary critic Toni Morrison (''Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination'', 1992) and historian David Roediger (''The Wages of Whiteness'', 1991). By the mid-1990s, numerous works across many disciplines analyzed whiteness, and it has since become a topic for academic courses, research and anthologies. A central tenet of whiteness studies is a reading of history and its effects on the present, inspired by postmodernism and historicism, in which the very concept of racial superiority is said to have been socially constructed in order to justify discrimination against non-whites. Since the 19th century, some writers have argued that the phenotypical characteristics associated with specific races are without biological significance, and that race is therefore not a valid biological concept.〔http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm〕 Many scientists have demonstrated that racial theories are based upon an arbitrary clustering of phenotypical categories and customs, and can overlook the problem of gradations between categories. Thomas K. Nakayama and Robert L. Krizek write about whiteness as a "strategic rhetoric," asserting that whiteness is a product of "discursive formation" and a "rhetorical construction" in the essay "Whiteness: A Strategic Rhetoric." Nakayama and Krizek write, "there is no 'true essence' to 'whiteness': there are only historically contingent constructions of that social location.". Nakayama and Krizek also suggest that by naming whiteness, one calls out its centrality and reveals its invisible, central position. Whiteness is considered normal and neutral, therefore, to name whiteness means that one identifies whiteness as a rhetorical construction which can be dissected to unearth its values and beliefs. Major areas of research in whiteness studies include the nature of white privilege and white identity, the historical process by which a white racial identity was created, the relation of culture to white identity, and possible processes of social change as they affect white identity. ==Development of the field== Studies of whiteness as a unique identity could be said to begin among black people, who needed to understand whiteness in order to survive, particularly in slave societies such as the American colonies and United States.〔bell hooks, "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination", ''Black Looks'' (1992); republished in Roediger, ''Black on White'' (1998).〕〔Toby Ganley, "(What's all this talk about whiteness? )", ''Dialogue'' 1(2), 2003.〕〔David Roediger, "(Critical studies of whiteness, USA: origins and arguments. )" ''Theoria'', 1 December 2001.〕 An important theme in this literature is, beyond the general "invisibility" of blacks to whites, the unwillingness of white people to consider that black people study them anthropologically.〔 American author James Weldon Johnson wrote in his 1912 autobiography that "colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them".〔James Weldon Johnson, ''(The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man )'', Boston: Sherman, French, and Co., 2012; Chapter 2.〕〔Roediger, ''Black on White'' (1998), p. 5.〕 Author James Baldwin wrote and spoke extensively about whiteness, defining it as a central social problem and insisting that it was choice, not a biological identity.〔Roediger, ''Black on White'' (1998), pp. 20–21. "No thinker so fully brought together the many dimensions of African-American studies of whiteness as James Baldwin. () Adopting and treasuring a white identity is, he wrote, 'absolutely a moral choice' since 'there are no white people.'"〕〔James Baldwin, "On being 'white' and other lies", ''Essence'', 1984; republished in Roediger, ''Black on White'' (1998).〕 In the ''The Fire Next Time'' (1963), a non-fiction book on race relations in the United States, Baldwin suggests that "White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed."〔James Baldwin, ''The Fire Next Time'', New York: Dial Press, 1963; republished in New York by Vintage International, 1993; p. 22.〕A major black theory of whiteness connects this identity group with acts of terrorism—i.e., slavery, rape, torture, and lynching—against black people, who were treated as sub-human.〔Roediger, ''Black on White'' (1998), pp. 15–16. "Equally compelling African–American studies treat whiteness as a species of terror. () Paul Gilroy's recent ''The Black Atlantic'' uncompromisingly calls upon the tradition of connecting the terrors of the trade in black bodies, the bloodiness of slave control, and the soul-killing violence of racial exploitation with the total experience of whiteness by people of colors. bell hooks makes much the same points regarding the circumstances under which African Americans encounter and represent whiteness. Other black thinkers have carried this insight still further. They contend that whiteness is also experienced through terror by whites, who find and reproduce unity by committing and more often by witnessing acts of violence. Slave tales and autobiographies, for example, at times insisted upon the centrality of stealing humans, breaking up families, 'patrolling' plantations, and committing rape to the growth of a white identity."〕 White academics in the United States and the United Kingdom (UK) began to study whiteness as early as 1983, creating the idea of a discipline called "whiteness studies". The "canon wars" of the late 1980s and 1990s, a political controversy over the centrality of white authors and perspectives in United States culture, led scholars to ask "how the imaginative construction of 'whiteness' had shaped American literature and American history."〔Shelley Fisher Fishkin, "Interrogating "Whiteness," Complicating "Blackness": Remapping American Culture," ''American Quarterly'', Vol. 47, No. 3. (September 1995), p. 430.〕 The field developed a large body of work during the early 1990s, extending across the disciplines of "literary criticism, history, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, popular culture, communication studies, music history, art history, dance history, humor studies, philosophy, linguistics, and folklore."〔"In this essay I will provide a brief overview of over a hundred books and articles from fields including literary criticism, history, cultural studies, anthropology, popular culture, communication studies, music history, art history, dance history, humor studies, philosophy, linguistics, and folklore, all published between 1990 and 1995 or forthcoming shortly. Taken together, I believe, they mark the early 1990s as a defining moment in the study of American culture." Fishkin (1995), "Interrogating "Whiteness," pp. 428-66.〕 As of 2004, according to ''The Washington Post'', at least 30 institutions in the United States including Princeton University, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of New Mexico and University of Massachusetts Amherst offer, or have offered, courses in whiteness studies. Teaching and research around whiteness often overlap with research on post-colonial theory and orientalism taking place in the Arts and Humanities, Sociology, Literature, Communications, and Cultural and Media Studies faculties and departments, among others (e.g. Kent, Leeds). Also heavily engaged in whiteness studies are practitioners of anti-racist education, such as Betita Martinez and the Challenging White Supremacy workshop. One contribution to White Studies is Rich Benjamin’s ''Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America''. The book examines white social beliefs and white anxiety in the contemporary United States—in the context of enormous demographic, cultural, and social change. The book is often taught as a primer in White Studies on white racial identity in a reportedly “post-racial” America.〔Benjamin, Rich Searching for Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America (New York: Hachette Books, 2009).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Whiteness studies」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|