Race and the Foundations of Knowledge: Cultural Amnesia in the Academy

How are literary genres racialized? How are definitions of history and historicity predicated on notions of racial difference? How have the arts been constructed on racialized aesthetic foundations, and how have they benefited from institutions of slavery and colonialism? This anthology demonstrates the longstanding, multifarious, and major role that race has played in the formation of knowledge. The authors demonstrate how race theory intersects with other bodies of knowledge by examining discursive records such as travelogues, literature, and historiography; theoretical structures such as common sense, pseudoscientific racism, and Eurocentrism; social structures of class, advancement, and identity; and politico-economic structures of capitalism, colonialism, and law. Editors Joseph Young and Jana Evans Braziel aim to demonstrate the richness that emerges when race is taken into consideration and the misrepresentation of thought that results when it is not.