Mixed Race Studies

Media and Performance in Racial Passing: 2007 Heterodox Identities – LCST 2007 A

Eugene Lang College
The New School for Liberal Arts
Spring 2009

Orville Lee, Assistant Professor of Sociology

Racial passing is a ubiquitous and contentious feature of social and cultural life in the United States. Taking “passing” as an object of analysis, this course is organized around the question of whether social identity should be understood as a set of essential characteristics or as a type of “performance.” Readings and discussions center on the conceptualization of race; the dynamics and meaning of racial passing; the movement for the recognition of biracial identities; and the question of racial “authenticity” and the politics of the self. The case of racial passing is also compared to other cases of heterodox identity involving gender, sexuality, and social class.

Desire for Race

Cambridge University Press
November 2008
256 pages
Hardback ISBN-13: 9780521862103
Paperback ISBN-13: 9780521680479
Adobe eBook Reader ISBN-13: 9780511434174

Sarah Daynes, Professor of Sociology
New School for Social Research, New York

Orville Lee, Assistant Professor of Sociology
New School for Social Research, New York

What do people mean when they talk about race? Are they acknowledging a biological fact, a social reality, or a cultural identity? Is race real, or is it merely an illusion? This book brings analytical clarity to one of the most vexed topics in the social sciences today, arguing that race is no more than a social construction, unsupported in biological terms and upheld for the simple reason that we continue to believe in its reality. Deploying concepts from the sociology of knowledge, religion, social memory, and psychoanalysis, the authors consider the conditions that contribute to this persistence of belief and suggest ways in which the idea of race can free itself from outdated nineteenth-century notions of biological essentialism. By conceiving of race as something that is simultaneously real and unreal, this study generates a new conceptualization that will be required reading for scholars in this field.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. American sociology
2. Marxism
3. British social anthropology
4. British cultural studies
5. Intermediate reflections on essentialism
6. Belief and social action
7. Theorizing the racial ensemble
8. The politics of memory and race
9. Desire
Conclusion