Eric Klinenberg

Birgit Brander Rasmussen

Matt Wray

Irene J. Nexica

Bringing together new articles and essays from the controversial Berkeley conference of the same name, The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness presents a fascinating range of inquiry into the nature of whiteness. Representing academics, independent scholars, community organizers, and antiracist activists, the contributors are all leaders in the “second wave” of whiteness studies who collectively aim to combat the historical legacies of white supremacy and to inform those who seek to understand the changing nature of white identity, both in the United States and abroad. With essays devoted to theories of racial domination, comparative global racisms, and transnational white identity, the geographical reach of the volume is significant and broad. Dalton Conley writes on “How I Learned to Be White.” Allan Bérubé discusses the intersection of gay identity and whiteness, and Mab Segrest describes the spiritual price white people pay for living in a system of white supremacy. Other pieces examine the utility of whiteness as a critical term for social analysis and contextualize different attempts at antiracist activism. In a razor-sharp introduction, the editors not only raise provocative questions about the intellectual, social, and political goals of those interested in the study of whiteness but assess several of the topic’s major recurrent themes: the visibility of whiteness (or the lack thereof); the “emptiness” of whiteness as a category of identification; and conceptions of whiteness as a structural privilege, a harbinger of violence, or an institutionalization of European imperialism. Contributors. William Aal, Allan Bérubé, Birgit Brander Rasmussen, Dalton Conley, Troy Duster, Ruth Frankenberg, John Hartigan Jr., Eric Klinenberg, Eric Lott, Irene J. Nexica, Michael Omi, Jasbir Kaur Puar, Mab Segrest, Vron Ware, Howard Winant, Matt Wray

The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness

The confrontation between European and native peoples in the Americas is often portrayed as a conflict between literate civilization and illiterate savages. That perception ignores the many indigenous forms of writing that were not alphabet-based, like Mayan pictoglyphs, Iroquois wampum, Ojibwe birchbark scrolls, and Incan quipus. Queequeg's Coffin offers a new definition of writing that comprehends the dazzling diversity of literature in the Americas before and after European arrivals. From a 1645 French-Haudenosaunee Peace Council to Herman Melville's youthful encounters with Polynesian "hieroglyphics," this groundbreaking study recovers previously overlooked moments of textual reciprocity in the colonial sphere. By recovering the literatures and textual practices that were indigenous to the Americas, Brigit Brander Rasmussen re-imagines the colonial conflict as one organized by alternative but equally rich forms of literacy. From Central Mexico to the Northeastern shores, in the Andes and across the American continents, indigenous people and European newcomers engaged each other in dialogues about ways of writing and recording knowledge. In Queequeg's Coffin, such exchanges become the foundation for a new kind of early American literary studies.

Indigenous Literacies and Early American Literature

Queequeg’s Coffin

A collection of new essays in race theory, drawn from the 4/97 Berkeley conference.

Birgit Brander Rasmussen

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