Racism(s) by Other Means

Long before the pandemic became part of our everyday life, racism was often metaphorically compared to a virus. As with viruses, the ‘virus of racism’ - the metaphor implies – transforms, evolves, mutates, travels, generates outbreaks, and, more importantly, it never goes away, ‘is here to stay’. It is not news that the viral outbreak we are living through has brought about an increase in racist, xenophobic, attacks across the globe. Indeed the outbreak has only magnified the inherent tensions associated with the intersection of complex technological transformations, authoritarian politics, and increasingly polarised and fragmented publics, with racial and social inequalities, and racialised discrimination the world over.

This two-day workshop on "Racism(s) by Other Means" proposes to analyse how contemporary social, political and technological transformations have rendered ineffectual previous forms of thinking about racism and processes of racialisation associated with imperialism/colonialism. Given that the host institutions are in the USA, Hong Kong SAR, and India, we are interested in understanding how issues to do with racism(s) play out in these locations. Recently, a US-based scholar has proposed looking at race as a form of caste, while in the 1990s there was a great deal of interest in activist circles in India in defining casteism as a form of racism. Questions of race/racism have begun to surface more frequently in East Asia too.

What are the novel (sociotechnical) ways through which racism(s) replicate, spread, infect, mutate, and travel? As forms of domination have changed, so do forms of resistance and compliance. This research training workshop aims to generate a multi-vocal conversation to understand how algorithmic racism may define new kinds of bio-politics, and how experiences and analyses of race/racism in one place can inform similar experiences and analyses in another place.

Website: https://culturalresearch.center/Racism-s-by-Other-Means