Studies in Practical Philosophy, Vol.3, No. 1, 2003

Thinking against Race1KALPANA SESHADRI-CROOKSDepartment of English, Boston College

Over the past decade or SO, most 110tably with the publication ofJu-dith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990), feminist theory has iIlterrogatedour 11eed to presuppose a universal and knowable ontology ofwoman in order to advance a political critique of exclusionary socialand cultural norlns. Butler's 110tion of "constitutive construction"virtually ended the debate amoIlg femiIlists straddling the fault linesof essentialism and cOIlstructionism by pointiIlg to the shared as-sumption of a so-called prediscursive sex that subtellded gellderidentities. The notion that the materiality of the body is theeffect of the citatioll of Ilorms has rejuvenated thinking about sexu-ality, gellder, the constitution of idelltity, and political strategy (But-ler 1993,1-91). Butler's radical aIltiontology ofsex can be viewed asa culmillation of a long tradition within feminist theory of suspiciontoward essentialist discourses as a mode of social control. It seemsonly inevitable that such radical aIltiesseIltialism be carried over iIltoother realms of thought, particularly into race thinking. However, ifone compares the trajectory of feminist antiontological thought tothe work that race theorists have been doing, we will begin to notesome curious differences.Critical race theorists have not been much preoccupied with ques-

tions of ontology alld esseIltialism.2 When such questions do arise,they are too hastily and uIlsatisfactorily resolved. If we consider theesselltialism versus constructiollism debate, the argumellt that race

1. This essay is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual eonfereneeof Soeiety for Phenonlenology and Existential Thought (SPEP) in Oetober 2000.The panel was entitIed "Raeial Visibility" and was organized by Linda Aleoff.2. See for instanee the essays eolleeted in Delgado (1995, 1997); Gregory and San-

jek (1994), Donald and Rattansi (1992), Cohen (1999), Myrsiades and Myrsiades(1998), Goldberg (1990, 1994 ), etc. Zaek's edited eolleetion (1997) is something ofan exeeption. See her essay in the volunle "Raee and Philosophie Meaning" 29-44.

138 Kalpana Seshadri-Crooksis a social COllstructioil has IleVer faced the serious challellge fromscientists and political pragmatists that it has iIl the realm of gender.The issue withiIl race discourse has always beeIl about the degree ofimportallce that one should place Oll the idea of race as a sociallyproduced cOllstructioll. Even more speciflcally, ifJudith Butler's the-ory of "COIlstitutive construction" were applied to race, Le., the ideathat racial idelltity is performative, and that the regime of racial dif-fereilce is largely the outcome of the citation of (legal and cultural)norms, IIOt Oilly could it be received with indifference, but it couldbe perceived as a fairly ordinary statement. For most critical racetheorists, questions about racial Olltology do IlOt seem very relevantto the matter at hand-namely iIlstitutiollal and systemic racism.One of the reaSOllS why the alltiesselltial critique of race has notgained much groulld ill critical race studies is perhaps due to theundue itlf1uellce of moderll scielltific discourse on race. This dis-course, which since the wars has devoted itself to disprovillg the ex-istellce of human races, has had the curious effect of bracketillg thequestioll of racial OIltology by seeluing to resolve it. LocatiIlg idell-tity in genetics, scientists have argued that there is no possibility ofidentifyiIlg genes on the basis of racial essellce. In other words,there is no Caucasian gene or Mricall American gene; there is asmuch if 110t more genetic diversity withirl a givel1 racial group thallamollg various groups.3The response, however, to such scientific constructiollism, is usu-

ally not "race trouble" but it1differeilce. Scientific theories of racedo not impact the way we live our lives as raced subjects. Race is sooverwhelmingly a discourse of power alld struggle over resourcesthat the presence, or lack thereof, of scieIltific evidellce for racemakes 110 difference to most of uso It certaiIlly makes very little dif-ference to the critical race theorist, or the man Oll the street thatrace is a social constructioll for which there is no scientific evidence.What matters, we are told, is his "racial profile." Of course, one cansay that such street wisdom is true for womell and gays as weIl, butthere is a differel1ce because there are political consequences as weIlto cOlltend with. For women to assert that gender is performative isto fly in the face of common sellse, but for blacks or other "people

3. Anthony Appiah's essay "The Illusions of Race" in his In lVly Father's House(1992) sunlnlarizes the biological theories.

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11tinking against Race 139of color" to assert that race is unscientific or merely performativecarl be construed as a verlaI rejection of group solidarity and iden-tity, alld for whites, a traitorous gesture towards one's race.4 For ac-tivists cOl1cerned about racial irlequalities, or lleoracists concernedwith preserving llational particularities, it does not matter that raceis an ullscientific fictioll. Linking race with culture and ethl1icity inone fluid stroke as "differellce," antiracists alld neoracists alike re-fuse the possibility that race as a discourse call be disengaged fromethnicity and culture. What we have in effect is the essentializationof culture. Raciologists of various persuasions will tell us that racethinkiIlg, or the presupposition of racial difference, is l10t a ques-tion of ontology, but of politics and vested interests. 111 other words,it does not matter politically whether race is biologically determinedor socially or historically manufactured; what matters is racism-thediscriminatioll of peoples Oll the basis of perceived differences.There is much to be adrrlired in this pragmatic political position.

It is attentive to the effects of history and relations of power as theyimpact us ill our bodies. However, what is lost iIl such pragmatism,even as it purports to stay focused orl the body, is that the willed ig-norance towards the "olltology" of race, or the studied refusal to erl-gage the questioll of essentialism seriously, actually produces thebody that is the target of discrimirlation and racism. I suggest thatmuch of the problem sterns from the donlirlation of science in ques-tions of racial Olltology. By definiIlg the terms within which questionsofracial idclltity can be posed, alld by resolving them too quickly, sci-ellce forecloses the possibility of a serious philosophical erlgagemelltwith race that will impact our strategies apropos racism. Sciellce's dis-missal of race as a fiction increases the gap betweel1 racial theory(discourses of biology, anthropology, linguistics) and racial practice(tlle historical effects of perceived difference). What is elided inmaintail1ing this gap is the fact that insofar as racism is about per-ceived differences, it fUllctiOllS as a form of kll0wledge, an episte-mology of human difference that presupposes an ontology that can-not be easily debullked by science alo11e. What we Ileed is IlOt somuch an engagement with science-its antiolltological stance is wel-come if inadequate-but a description of the experience of racial

4. On the implications of Caucasians refusing their race see Noel Ignatiev andJohn Garvey (1996).

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140 Kalpana Seshad'fi-Crooks

identity. It is necessary that we ellgage iIl all allalysis that will exploreour experieIlce of racial differellce as constitutive. It is clear that wecannot derive a politics from science's dismissal ofrace, or from the-ories of performativity, and it is equally clear that a cOllfined ell-gagement with racism or racial politics will 110t address the core ofthe problem, which is the presupposition of knowable racial identi-ties. I suggest that it is necessary that we examine the presuppositionof racial differences not in order to dismiss it, scielltifically speakiIlg,as a fiction, or offer the explanation that it is performative, or sociallyconstructed. We could ask, instead, how race, which is Ulldoubtedlya historical phellomenon, can produce esselltial effects. How do wecome to experience race as something that is marked on the body, assomething inherited, alld prediscursive? Even more poiIltedly, weshould ask why we hold on to the logic of race as a fundamental cat-egory of difference despite scielltific kIlowledge that race is a fictioll?I suggest that it is the tenacity of our illvestmeIlt iIl race that shouldbe allalyzed, alld such aIlalysis may force us to confront those habitsof evasion that we have evolved with regard to the hard questionsabout what racial identity meallS to each of usoThe title of my paper is meant to echo the title of Paul Gilroy's

book Against Race (2000). Therein, Gilroy calls for a restoratioll ofpolitical culture through "liberation not only from white supremacyalone, however urgelltly that is required, but from all racializingand raciological thought, from racialized seeing, racialized thiIlk-iIlg, and racialized thiIlkillg about thinkillg" (Gilroy 2000, 40). Hegoes on to suggest that "the deliberate wholesale renunciation of"race" proposed here evell views the appearance of an alternative,metaphysical humallism premised on face-to-face relations betweendifferent actors-beings of equal worth-as preferable to the prob-lems of iIlhumanity that raciology creates" (Gilroy 2000, 41). Icouldn't agree more with Gilroy; however, I propose that such lib-eration will be impossible witllOUt analysis: a philosophically rigor-ous analysis of race as a logic of difference, and a psychoanalysis ofrace as a factor of subject COIlstitution. It is necessary first to ac-knowledge that race "consciousIless" is fundamelltally a regime of100kiIlg. I am referring here to the commOll sense of racial logic,which entails a focus on certain marks of the body-hair texture,skin color, bone structure-to distinguish amoIlg groups. This com-mOll sense usually flies in the face of allthropological or more con-

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Thinking against Race 141

temporary genetic theories of race that may use criteria other thanappearance for categorizing hlunall beings. As I have already sug-gested, the discrepancy between the commonsense deployment ofracial categories a11d the historical vagaries of racial theories shouldbe treated as significant. Contenlporary science may have dispensedwith race as a meaningful category, political and legal opinion mayhave reduced race to a social construct, but the common sense ofrace, fixated on the phenotype, endures as biological inheritancethat is as plain as rain. To believe we have a racial identity is directlyrelated to what is considered to be a basic cognitive ability-beingable to tell who is white, black, Asiall, or Hispallic.MallY others before me, most notably Omi arId WiI1ant (1994),

Michael Ballto11 (1988), a11d David Goldberg (1993) have com-mented on the arbitrary nature of such visual demarcation. Omi andWinallt write: "Although the concept of race invokes biologicallybased human characteristics (so-called phenotypes), selection ofthese particular hllman features for purposes of racial significationis always and Ilecessarily a social and historical process" (1994, 55).This is an all-importallt ackllowledgmellt, alld even todaya counter-intuitive one for those who consider visual perceptioll to be objec-tive. So far, so good; however, the next step that such theorists takeis to overemphasize the historical flexibility of such categories, whichthereby leads them to conclude that race has 110 essellce; it has nofixed meallitlg. This leads them to separate race from racism and toreclaim race as a fundamen tal aspect of social orgallization. I t is notthat I disagree with these conclusions. Yes, race is very much "a con-cept which signifies alld synlbolizes social conflicts and itlterests byreferring to differellt hUlnall bodies" (Omi and Wina11t 1994,55).And yes, race is historically mutable, alld socially cOllstructed; how-ever, as a process of iIlquiry hltO race, these historicist methods fallshort. These critics cite the historical specificity of race as if histori-cism were inherently a11tiesse11tialist, and effectively corrosive ofpopular racial thinking. 111 fact, the historicity of race, I will be argu-iIlg, reinforces our investmellt itl racial seeing. The te11acious com-mon sense of visual discrimitlation works to defend against the his-toricity of race. It's a relatio11 of mutual depelldence. I will beelaborating tllis POitIt later itl this paper. Race, emphatically, is IIOtan empty category that history fills with meanirlg. Race, on the con-trary, is and has always been about the essentializing of culture

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142 Kalpana Seshadri-Crooksthrough a mutable regime of looking. The academic recogllition ofrace as devoid of essence does 110t alter the quotidian practice alldexperience of subjects of race, for whom race contiIlues to functionas an iIlscription on the body-something esselltial, biological thatone sees and reads iIl order to make meaning. The contellt and ourinterpretations of that bodily text may be historically mutable, butthe method of reading, or that we read, remains constallt. I suggestthat not enough attelltioll has been paid to the tel1acious continuityof the epistemology of race. It is, I think, very necessary to ask whyWestern culture places such a premium Oll appearallce, why it codescorporal differences as sigIIificant? If we arrest our allalysis at thepoint of observillg that such distinctiollS are superficial and sociallyconstructed we will succeed iII evacuatirlg race as a concept, but thatis a hollow victory. FUllctionally, such an evacuation serves at best tomitigate, or at worst to mask the inherently pernicious and illvidiousstructure of race as a concept. I will take the risk of assertirlg Ull-equivocally that race cannot alld must not be distillguished fromracism, and the exclusive focus Oll racism, i.e., the reproduction ofdomirlation on the basis ofbodily differellce, without uncovering theroots of racism in racial thirlking as such, is myopic. The signifiersrace and racism have no dOllbt differiIIg legal and linguistic fUIIC-tion.s, hut in terms of logical structure they are synonyms.The epistemology of race is the evidence of one's eyes. Olle more

ofteil thall not sees the other's race as plairlly as olle sees oIle's ownhand. Race, as a system of differellce, relies elltirely UPOIl a regimeof looking for its social and political viability, its resiliellcy. But let meoffer a clarification. It would be amistake to reduce such a reginleof looking to the deployment of stereotypes. The habit ofvisual dis-criminatioll of race is not simply the idelltificatioll of the blond,blue-eyed person as Caucasiall or the dark-skinned person as black;such a simple logic will rely on an effortless correspondence of sig-nifier (black) to referel1t (skin). As we all kllOW, visual discrimina-tion of race is Inuch subtIer thall that. If the other's body is at timesrecalcitrant to such cOIlfident readillg of idelltity, one usually hastwo choices: one call adjust one's visioll iIl retrospect by recallingthe small giveaways (the essell tialist gesture); or Olle call rationalizethat the persoll is "really" 98% white, but society makes her black(the cOl1structionist gesture). What both options share, despite theirpolitical distance, is their ability to leave the logic of racial seeir1g un-

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Thinking against Race 143touclled. 111 other words, we may ellcounter a very "white" black per-son and still know that person to be "black," or alterllately we mightregard the person as being "really" white, yet politically black, etc.The assignation of identity will largely depelld upon one's disposi-tion toward the "one drop rule." Such knowledge is possible be-cause, in the first instance there exists a code of discrimiIlatioll thatrelies on the narcissism of small differences. In the secolld, despiteour sellse of racial categories as constructs, we can cOlltinue to re-gard phenotype to be a fairly stable indicator of who is really what.If the latter is symptomatic of liberal racial thougllt, the former is amethod evolved and perfected by anti-Semitism, a method exhaus-tively documellted by Sander Gilman (1985) among others. In bothcases, however, it is necessary to perceive the liIlk betweell anti-Semitic looking and commonsense racial looking in order to graspthe structure of race as a system of human categorization. Once thesevered link, between anti-Semitic looking and racial seeiIlg in gen-eral, has been repaired then we call see that the focus of much anti-racist work-be it American sociology, whiteness studies, various eth-nic and feminist studies-is limited by its incarceration within theparadigm of "humall diversity," or race as a nelltral social construct.There is all unacknowledged contiIluity between the bigot whopicks out the Jew, alld the liberal antiracist persoll WilO has a ready,welcoming smile for the person of color. The cOlnplicity here is uni-versal. The bigot and the smiling neighbors are all subject to thesame logic of racial seeing. Whether one is black, white, browll, yel-low, or red, having a raced identity and acting accordingly (infrielldship or iIl hostility) meaIlS that we are sllbjected to a logic ofdifference that encrypts us at all unconscious level. We believe weare one or the other race, because we all, despite our varying racialaffiliatiolls al1d political ideologies share the same logic, al1d thislogic, which 1 argue is governed by a certain desire for desire, ismanaged by the regime of racial seeiIlg.

111 order to grasp the desire at the fount of the logic of race, IbegiIl by iIlterrogating the most resilieilt aspect of race, Le., itsfocus on phenotype. My opelling questioll is simple: Why do we doit? Why do we insist upon the evidence of our eyes despite scientifictestimollY that race does not exist, and sociolegal, historical argll-ments that it is socially constructed? Why are we compelled to re-mark Oll someone's race, why mllst we say "the black man over

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144 Kalpana Seshadri-Crooksthere" 01' the mallover there, which usually means the white mallover there? Why do we attach sigl1ificance to visllal differellce? Ifrace is really as empty a category as theorists from vastly differiIlgperspectives have beeIl claiming, thell why do we cOlltinue to dis-crimiIlate visually, and use it as a mode of categorization alld dis-tinctiol1? The tenacity of race as a mode of human categorizatioll, Isuggest, is symptolllatic. There is somethiIlg about having a racialidentity that is difficult to give up. And it is this attachmellt to racialdistiIlctions based on appearance beyond llistorical and scielltifictheories that we must aIlalyze as a psychical structure, as a functionof subject COllstitution.In my book Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis ofRace (2000),

I develop a theory of race as a factor of subject COllstitution ratherthan political 01' legal COllstruction. As I llave already indicated, Isuggest that we need more allalyses of the resiliency and commonsense of race and IlOt more assertiollS of race as an empty social con-strucL I focus 011 the fundamelltal fact that there seems to be some-thing about haviIlg a racial idelltity that is difficult to give up-notso much oIle's own identity, bllt that tlle abstract quantity of race asa mode of categorizing human beillgs is not easily surrelldered. 111the following, I offer a gist of my theory of race and racial visibility,which I have elaborated in my book. 111 the iI1terests of space, I willnot be working through the steps of that argumellt; rather I shalloutline the trajectory of my inquiry to address the anlbivalence thatstructures race to iIldicate briefly some of the conclusions 01' gener-alizatiolls that I arrived at. I should say at the outset that the theorythat I elaborate in my book is a sYllchrollic one. This is inevitablewhen one works with Lacall's semiIlars, as his theory of the subjectdoes not offer a developmeIltal schema. It is useful to think of hiswork as preselltillg a dynamic web of structural propositions. I there-fore do not offer a set of causal relations, Ilor do I pose chicken andegg questions. What I anl tryiIlg to da is to discerll the constitutionof the raced subject as determined by the logical structure of racialthought. And I have fOUlld the language of psychoanalysis iIl0rdi-nately useful for tllis purpose.Whell one first approaches the questioll of race through the

psychoanalytic lens, particularly through Lacan's theories, there ismuch space clearillg to do. There are the rather reduced versiollsof Lacan in 1970s alld 1980s feminist theory alld film theory that

1ninking against Race 145have succeeded in presentiIlg Lacan's teachiIlg as if it could be ell-capsulated by his early work on the ego alld mirror stage, andsome later concepts such as "the gaze," and "suture." The combi-nation of femiIlism, film theory, alld a certaiIl Lacan has beengreatly influential, arId it was Oilly a matter of time before critics iIlcultural studies, who were already deeply iIlfluenced by Althusser,began deploying terms like the mirror stage alld the gaze, aggres-sivity, etc., iIl their analyses of the reproductioll of dominant ide-ology and power relatiol1s. More particularly, with regard to race,1 found that 1 had 11ecessarily to contelld with the influential per-spective offered by Frantz Fanon, and certain other critics iIlf1u-enced by Fall0n and Althusser who emphasize Lacall's mirrorstage to explain idelltity formation. 5 111 justice to them, 1 shouldacknowledge that their projects are very differel1t from mine. Theyare interested in analyzing the ideology of raCiSlTI, of the repro-duction of dominance through the categorizatioll of bodies, aIldnot in exploriIlg the structure of race thiIlking as such. Therefore,these critics begin with the premise that ideology is a specular re-lation. It is one of perception and hailiIlg. For Althusser, the hege-mony of the ruliIlg classes (here of White supremacy) is securedthrough misrecognition. For Fanon, too, racism and self-llate callbe mapped through a dual mirror relation. His position can besummarized approximately as folIows: The child perceives a re-flection of unity and coherellce in the mirror alld misrecognizesthat image fr itself thus forming all ego-its ego ideal; this is themoment of racializatioll as weIl. The child may observe that it isblack or white aIld that society prefers white to black. The blackchild thereupol1 experiellces trallma; the white may experienceparaIloia. It may abject blackness to secure its whiteness, etc. Thelogic Olle proceeds by is that of a dual relation in front of the mir-ror-either abjectioll of the other, or the assumption of an imagethat is Il0t oneself as the self. Either way, racial identity is con-ceived ofas imagiIlary, ego bound and false (Falloll 1967, 155-65).1 am no doubt caricatllriIlg the positioIl of those who argue thatracial identity is imagiIlary, but the gist of my criticism is that thereare serious problems here in the reading of LacaIl's theory of the

5. See Althusser (1999), Fanon (1967), McC:1intock (1995), Mercer (1994),Campbell (2000).

146 Kalpana Seshadri-Crooksmirror stage, alld even more serious consequellces for a theory ofrace and antirace politics. Setting aside the technical Lacalliall dis-cussion on the mirror stage,6 it would be amistake to locate theformatioll of racial identity at the moment of the constitlltioll ofthe ego. This for the sitnple reaSOll that such a move will effectivelyrender racial idelltity a necessary fUIlction of the subject's as-sumption of the ego. It would be to arglle, ill the vein of culturalstudies, that the ego is, always already alld everywhere, a racializedego, as if that were a useful alld bright political remark. The ethi-cal burden of my thesis, Oll the contrary, is to provillcialize racialthiIlkillg, alld to argue tllat the assumptioll of racial ideIltity, or theconstitution of the raced subject, is historically and culturally con-tillgent. In other words, race may be constitutive of a certain typeof subject, but it is neither llecessary nor universal.If we want to think about subject constitution ill psychoallalytic

terms, then we must turll to the symbolic. The subject is always asubject in lallguage, whose ullconscious is structured by a Iletworkof sigIlifiers that itlscribe his/her uncoIlscious. The subject itl Lacanis not merely the imaginary ego, but is preeminently the subject ofthe unconscious who fillds her place through an identification witha signifier that stallds in for her in a chain of sigIlifiers. The egoideal or the bodily ego is formed through the interventioll of the sig-nifier that supports the child's introjection of the image. At whatpoint does race come into the picture? ObviollSly, it has to do with asigIlifier, or a chaifl of signifiers that inscribes the unconscious thusproducing the subject. If the subject is to be a raced subject, thenthe network of sigllifiers no doubt COIlstitutes the categories of racialdifference. This may iIl and of itself seem a relatively bellign struc-ture. Each of us is marked by a sigllifier that stands in for us in achaill and thereby bestows upon us a racial idelltity alld representa-tiOl1. However, this canllot be the total picture. The system of racialsigllifiers call1l0t aIld does flOt make sense without an iIlaugural sig-nifier, the signifier that subtends and guarantees the system of race,and that sigllifier is Whiteness. As we all know, the categories of racecannot make sense, call1lot hold together logically without the con-cept of Whiteness. Not Oilly am I referriIlg to the asymmetry of thebinary opposition between white and colored, but also to those

6. I take up the nlirror stage in Desiting Whiteness (2000) 30-46.

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Thinking against Race 147other aspects of Whiteness such as immiscibility, homogeneity, alldits nOlldifferentiatioll in relation to other more differentiated cate-gories. Other theorists such as Omi and Wirlant (1986) aIld PaulGilroy (2000) have remarked upon these functions of Whiteness asweIl. In short, it is inevitable that we discern Whitelless as the origi-nal or master signifier that subtellds the system of racial signifiersand subjects us all equally to its logic. In other words, all of us, black,white, Asian, Hispallic, or Other, insofar as we believe we have aracial identity are equally implicated iIl its logic. To be raced is to besubjected to Whitelless. To discern the structure and logic of race,however, it is llecessary that we disellgage the concept ofWhitenessfrom so-called white people. As Gilroy (2000) and Ian (1998)have shown, Whiteness canll0t be said to describe the physical orideological property of arlY particular group. 111 fact, let us be evenmore structural alld discern Whiteness for wllat it iso It is not evell aconcept. I take the liberty to quote myself:The inaugural signifier ofrace, which I term 'Whiteness," implicates usall equally in a logic of difference. By 'Whiteness" I do not mean aphysical or ideological property as it is invoked in "Whiteness Studies,"nor a concept, a set ofmeanings that functions as a transcendental sig-nified. By Whiteness, I refer to a master signifier (without a signified)that establishes a structure of relations, a signifying chain that througha process of inclusions and exclusions constitutes a pattern for orga-nizing human difference. This chain provides subjects with certainsymbolic positions such as "black," ''white,'' "Asian," etc., in relation tothe master signifier. "Race," in other words, is a system of categoriza-tion that once it has been organized shapes human difference in cer-tain seemingly predetermined ways. (Seshadri-Crooks 2000, 3-4)This propositioll about the symbolic llature of racial idelltity, is

not, of course, a psyclloanalytical Olle. It does not explain our at-tachmerlt to racial idelltity, nor does it explaill the resilience ofvisualdiscrimination. In order to discern the relatioll between the symbolicstructure ofrace and racial visibility, it is necessary to harlless Lacan'smore nuarlced theory of the subject that he offered ill his later sem-inars. In the earlier "Rome Report" phase,7 Lacan stressed the sym-bolic location of the subjecL Here, the subject is a split subject who

7. Lacan's so-called "Rome Report" is published as "Fllnction and Field ofSpeech and Language" in Ecrits: A Selection (1977).

148 Kalpana Seshadri-Crooksis marked by and represeIIted as a sigllifier. The subject is precipi-tated into the symbolic when its need is alienated into a li11guisticallydetermiI1ed demand thereby producirlg a residue-llamely desire.The subject's desire is necessarily attached to what he/she posits as aprimary object, the objet petit, that it once had prior to symbolic alien-atiorl, the pllrsuit of which will now mark its life's trajectory. In thelater seminars, Lacan stressed the subject's desire (which can besymptomatic and/or salient) rather than Inerely his/her alienatedC011ditiolI in lailguage. The idiosyncrasy of the humaII subject, hesuggested, is eiltirely the outcome of his or her desire, aIId it is thusto his objet petit a (the object that one posits as having once had aIIdlost), that we must turn in order to grasp the singularity, the eccen-tricity of the subject's relatio11 to, or negotiation of the symbolicorder and the big Other of laIIguage. The subject theil is to be un-derstood as more than his reduction to a signifier in lallguage;he/she is properly a subject who emerges in the failure of the signi-fier (Lacan 1998). This relatioII of the subject to lack in the symbolicorder, the fact that there is always something missiIIg in language,(where the signifiers of olle's desire ca11 OIIly multiply theillselves, orthat language itself is missing the ultimate One that cail guaralltee it)means that such lack is also the precarious, paradoxical sustenaIIceof the subject's positioll in tlle speaking world. To put it starkly, thesubject's lack or his desire keeps the flow of language-metaphorand metonymy-movillg. If the subject were not to lack he would bepsychotic. How is all this related to the structure of race alld our at-tachment to pheIIotype? The answer lies in the fact that the symbolicuniverse of race is llot lackitlg a signifier. Whiteness is its ultimate sig-llifier arId it determines the subject of race. What is the psychicalfunction of this iIIaugural sigllifier alld why are we subject to it? I sug-gest that this defillitive signifier of race promises above all totality. Tobe subject to Whitelless is to be operating within a system that prom-ises the ultimate elljoymellt, jouissallce, of mastery, of a gellocidalsameness that triumphs over diflerellce. It promises absolute totalityto the subject through a transcelIde11ce of differellce. To believe thatone possesses Whitelless or ca11 embody Whitelless is a form of psy-chosis, best exemplified by fascism, but for most ofus, who are largelysubject to Whiteness as a logical structure, our status as desiritlg sub-jects is determined by it. The consequeIlce of such a structure canonly be alIxiety if IIOt psychosis.

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Thinking against Race 149

Lacan, we may recaIl, suggests that anxiety is caused 110t through afear of castratioll 01' of somethillg missing, but rather the opposite(Lacan, 1998). Anxiety is an affect that Olle experiences whel1 there isa lack of a lack, 01' rather whell the place that ShOlI1d have beeIl emptyis now filled by an object. I suggest that the sllbject ofrace is primarilyand quintessel1tially a subject of allxiety. There are shelves of literaryand biographical testimony that attest to such affect, alld they are toonumerous for me to cite. Howeve1', speaking iIl strictly structuralterms, I argue that the emergel1ce of an tl1timate signifiel' iIl the placethat should have been empty has two cOl1sequel1ces: (a) if it works asit intends, as the master signifiel' promisitlgjouissallce, it will producean al1xiety marked by ambivalence; (b) If it does not work as it in-tends, and is instead historicized, then the ellcoullter with the his-toricity of Wlliteness will produce all allxiety that is marked by dis-avowal, a defense secured by visual discrimination. Let me elaborate:The jouissance that is at the core of race, that which the master sig-

nifier stands for-the triumph over difference-is both seductive andhorrific. Seductive because it offers mastery alld totality, alld horrificbecause it speIls its own anllihilatioll. The racial symbolic is foulldedon the fantasy of triumphitlg over differellce. To realize that farltasywould be to llIldermine the very structure on which race is fOUllded.It is to leave 110 space for desire, for lack. How do we mallage to keepdesire and the fantasy alive withollt realizing it? By producing all ob-ject-the llltimate grouild of racial differel1ce-the phenotype withits fixatioll on part objects: hair, skin, bOl'1e. So, we separate race fromracism. Race, we say is the lleutral description of human diversity andit's a good thitlg, racism is its bad ideological excrescellce. We go fur-ther; we say race is a social construction, but we also say there are con-crete visible differel1ces that are cognizable al1d make sense. Evenluore, race, we may say does not exist, but medically alld legaIly, wemay still agree that it is a useful iIldicator for the study of diseases anddistributioll of resources, al1d so on a11d so on.On the other hand, when Whiteness as the iIlaugural signifiel' of

race is historicized, when it is exposed as Ilothing, as fraudulent,then its promise ofjouissallce-the access to absolute humanness-is undermined as weIl. Ellcountering the historicity of race, reallyencountering it, can be traumatic Ollce again leavitlg no space fordesire, for lack. To encoul1ter oneself as a construct, as a het-erOllomous, linguistically determined subject it1 a symbolic universe

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150 Kalpana Seshadri-Crooksthat is paradoxically complete without allY place for lack, can beallxiety produciIlg as weIl. fuld the way such aIlxiety is managed is byproducing an object that will serve as a prophylactic agaillst his-toricity, 11amely the marks Oll the body, hair, skin, bone. Visible dif-ference once agaiIl secures the subject of race as a desiriIlg subject.In both scenarios, the stigmata of race, Ilamely those part objects bywhich we distiIlgllish humans functioll as the various objets petit a-the object cause of desire.The reason that I place much theoretical sigllificaIlce Oll visible dif-

ferellce is not because I think we should reduce racial thinking to theregime of the phellotype. Rather, what I am sllggesting is that we takeracial visibility more seriously, alld discern its resiliellce as a logicalfUllction. The regime of raciallooking sustains the core of raciallogicby balancing the scales of fantasy and historicity. When Olle side or theother, either the fantasy of gell0cidal sameness or the absurdity of his-tory, is tipped one way or another, visibility acts as the measure to evenout anxiety. Permitting visibility to thrive permits us to say yes to bothsides. It lets us have our cake and eat it too. We can be theoreticallyconstructivist yet iIl practice essentialist, or we call be ideologicallyalld tlleoretically essentialist alld supremacist, alld yet acknowledgethe practicality of cOllstructed differences. This latter strategy is whatEtienrle Balibar (1991) has ternled Ileoracism. 011 the whole, withoutvisible difference this system would lose its integrity.Gur task then is to evolve a politics, all ethics, and an aesthetics that

are based on confounding race as a bodily reference. What we muststrive toward is 110t just all imaginary passirlg where we make it diffi-cult to categorize human bodies through clothing or speech.8 Wemust work toward a symbolic passing where the subject's relation tothe signifier is itself altered, so that the fUllction of racial visibility col-lapses. I think preliminary work such as this has already been done bya writer such as TOlli MorrisOll who will at tirrles strategically withholdiIlforlnation about racial idelltity in a racially marked textY Not muchwork of this sort exists at the moment, because 110t many of us havetried to think or work outside the paradigm of racial categories.Fillally, let me elld with a clarification. Whatever I am advocating,

one thillg I am 110t is a so-called "color-blind society." The politics of

8. This is the strategy advocated by Ignatiev and Garvey (1996).9. See chapters four and five of Desiring Whiteness (2000).

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Thinking against Race 151color blindness, psychoanalytically speakhlg, is that of denial. Thevery phrase "color-blilld society" is one that is dear to conservativefactions of our political spectrum who are (or at least feign to be) indenial over the state of race relatiolls in the United States Advocatesof a color-blineJ society appropriate the social COllstruction of racerhetoric as an lgenious way to evade all encoullter with their true in-vestInent in Whiteness. They attempt to belittle racial differellce byreducing it to the phenotype, and thell deIlying the real sigIlificanceof racial 100kiIlg. It is primarily a political strategy that serves tradi-tional power hlterests by calling iIltO question the need for socialleg-islation aimed at redressing racial inequalities alld injustice. To pro-pose color blindness as a solution is, in my opinion, a form ofevasion; it is to deny the functionality of the logic of race as a Sigllifi-cant mode of cognizhlg difference. It is thus the farthest from thesort of al1alysis that 1am advocating that we all engage in with regardto racial visibility. It is necessary that we analyze the unackl10wledgedsigllificance we give to phenotypal differellces, al1d it is even morenecessary that we fully analyze al1d overcome our irrational cate-gories of difference based Oll the narcissism of small differences.However, 1 dOll't think we should stop lookillg at each other, norshould we stop notiIlg differences as 10Ilg as it is on a fluid COIlti11-uum of humanity, but we can stop attributing social value and mean-illg to these differences, and we can stop assiglling idelltity badges onthat basis. A true appreciation alld love of difference, a differellcewithout aIlxiety or fanaticism, can Oilly come about through its h011-est and progressive trivialization.

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