Racism without races

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The term racism without races is part of a theoretical approach to research on racism coined by the social scientists Étienne Balibar (1992) and Stuart Hall (1989). He assumes the existence of a racism in which the term race is not used. Today it is a widespread topos in racism research. Instead of the term racism without races , the terms culturalism as well as cultural racism and neo-racism are sometimes used.

Racism without races according to Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall sees a “racism without races” in the everyday consciousness of many people, which manifests itself as social exclusion practices, but which is not based on a distinct race theory. According to this, there would be racism if an exclusive majority group had the power to define a minority as not “normal” or “different” and to discriminate against them in their living conditions.

"If this classification system serves to establish social, political and economic practices that exclude certain groups from access to material or symbolic resources, then it is a question of racist practices."

- Stuart Hall : Racism as an ideological discourse

According to Hall, racism without races makes it possible to “produce identity and secure identifications. It is part of achieving consensus and consolidating one social group in opposition to another, subordinate group. In general, this is described by Hall as a construction of 'the other'. "

Racism without races according to Étienne Balibar

According to Balibar, racism without races goes hand in hand with the "naturalization of the cultural, the social or the history, whereby this is, so to speak, immobilized and withdrawn from any attempt at change" ( Siegfried Jäger ).

“Ideologically, the current racism belongs in the context of a 'racism without races', [...] a racism which - at least at first glance - no longer postulates the superiority of certain groups or peoples over others, but restricts itself to the harmfulness of everyone To claim the blurring of boundaries and the incompatibility of the way of life and traditions. "

- Étienne Balibar : race, class, nation. Ambivalent identities

Balibar also refers to what he sees as a similar phenomenon of " anti-Semitism without Jews " . This term describes the theory that even in areas without a Jewish population, anti-Semitism can sometimes persist or even be more pronounced than in regions with a Jewish community.

Cultural racism

Structures of thought that do not regard culture as “historically conditioned” and not as changeable and in which ideas of culture “are reified and essentialized to such an extent that culture“ becomes the functional equivalent of the concept of race ”are referred to as cultural racism.

"John Solomos and Les Back argue that race is now 'coded as culture' and that the central feature of these processes is that the characteristics of social groups are fixed, naturalized and embedded in a pseudobiologically defined culturalism."

- George M. Fredrickson : Racism. A historical outline.

Hall sees a replacement of the genetic by a "cultural racism". Instead of race , ethnicity and culture are used as substitute terms in new right-wing ideologies , and instead of “genetic deficiency” they speak of a “cultural deficit”. In doing so, "certain habits, manners and customs of a certain group of people would be absolutized and naturalized [...], viewed as the only normal way of life, so to speak [...], and other, deviating forms of life [...] rated negatively (or positively)" ], without this being necessarily justified genetically or biologically [...] This also serves the mentioned exclusion of other people, the delimitation and the legitimation to fight the others ”( Siegfried Jäger ).

In Germany, after National Socialism, the word race was discredited in relation to people. According to Theodor Adorno, this often leads to the avoidance of the term race and the replacement of the term in order to conceal racist theories and content. It is still widely used as a classification scheme in biology for plants and animals.

"The noble word culture replaces the frowned upon expression race , but remains a mere cover image for the brutal claim to rule."

- Theodor W. Adorno :

According to the psychologist Sabine Grimm, the fact that the idea of ​​biological races is scientifically refuted does not prevent racists from attacking people for nationalistic and racist motives:

“The educational hint that science has disproved the notion of biological races has not prevented a racist from knowing exactly who he is attacking. Because for the individuals who are identified as 'race' and partially identify themselves, it doesn't really matter whether biology or discourse, nature or culture are used as explanations for the fact that they are ostracized, stigmatized or burned. "

- Sabine Grimm

Benjamin Bauer attributes the renaissance of racism under the concept of culture to the emergence of scientific anti-racism in cultural anthropology in the early twentieth century. With the research of the group around Franz Boas , the anthropologists succeeded in refuting scientific racism. The rejection of racism by the United Nations after the Second World War was based on the research results of the 'Boasians' . At the same time, with the idea of ​​self-contained, separate developmental laws of inferior cultures, they adopted essential basic assumptions of racial anthropology .

According to Verena Stolcke, debates about migration are an expression of “cultural fundamentalism”. In its exclusive rhetoric, according to Halleh Ghorashi , it is no longer about protecting the race, but about a "historically rooted, homogeneous national culture". With its definition of “nation” and “culture”, this “racism without races” emphasizes the incompatibility of different cultures and the necessity to “preserve traditional culture and identity from cultural invasion”, thus leading to a new “ exclusion in the name of Culture ”( Halleh Ghorashi ).

In research on “ neo-racism ”, the term “culturalism” is incorrectly used synonymously with the term “ cultural racism ”. (see Magiros). Culturalism as "cultural racism" describes concepts which, through their concept of culture , pursue folk teachings. Accordingly, neo-racists do not represent culturalism in the philosophical sense , but rather a biologism in the opposite direction, which they also transfer to culture. The neo-racist concept of culture is not a cultural one, but a natural one . The rhetoric changes, but the biological thinking remains. The word race is replaced here by culture , ethnicity , people , nation or other terms. The term race is given up in this form of racism, "without the devaluation and exclusion of the 'other' being lost in it of severity”.

The following characteristics are described as characteristics of culturalistic concepts:

  • Ethnic formulation: culture would be linked solely to the (ethnic, national) origin.
  • Homogeneity : All members of an ethnic group should have the same culture .
  • Reducibility: The essential characteristics of individual people would be limited to the cultural characteristics of a group.
  • Rigidity: Cultures cannot be changed or can only be changed over long periods of time (within the framework of generations).

According to such concepts, “culture” is viewed as an insurmountable barrier that cannot be overcome politically. Corresponding naturalizing and biologizing arguments would occur both in right-wing extremism and in the abbreviated ethno-pluralistic approaches of the New Right in the form of “culturalizations of difference” (Müller). The emancipatory “culture” concept of multiculturalism is reversed here in its political meaning ( called “ retorsion ” by Taguieff ). This “culturalistic” (actually naturalistic) “culture” concept is not compatible with emancipatory ideas of the fundamental changeability of societies, which assume that people constantly deal with their surroundings, so that they are not passive bearers of culture , but actively culture and also change the cultures of their environment.

Gazi Çağlar goes so far as to bundle objectively very different cycle models as "culture-cyclical" ones and to include them in the culturalism debate. He includes in particular Samuel P. Huntington's clash of civilizations . According to him, cyclical cycle theories interpret the history of societies as the “sum of the history of individual cultures or civilizations”. Culturalist racism uses fragments from the cycle theories, especially those of Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee . Also - build on these cycles theories - Gazi Çağlar civilization paradigm as described by Samuel P. Huntington in on the clash of civilizations : running

"It is based on the assumptions of cyclical historical theories , the fundamental images of Eurocentrism and culturalist racism about the own and the foreign, and the political ambition with the geopolitical , geomilitary, geo-economic interests of current centers of world politics and economy with the preferential position of the European and US American. "

- Gazi Çağlar

Gazi Çağlar sees Huntington's clash of civilizations as a “race theory without races” from our time. In this book, Huntington speaks of 7 or 8 cultures, the boundaries of which, however, do not follow the lines that 19th century racial theorists used for their constructions.

Huntington expressly rejects a connection between culture and race:

“There is a significant correspondence between the culturally-oriented division of people into cultural groups and their division into races based on physical features. Of course, culture and race are not identical. Members of a race can be deeply divided due to their belonging to different cultures; Members of different races can be united by a culture. […] The main differences between groups of people concern their values, beliefs, institutions and social structures, not their height, head shape and skin color. "

- Samuel P. Huntington : Clash of Cultures. The reshaping of world politics in the 21st century

Hakan Gürses writes about the concept of race that if a concept is rejected, neither its linguistic function nor the rational / linguistic order that produced it could be erased. In many of its uses, the term culture replaces the term race. In contrast, Gürses emphasizes that the political use of the concept of culture in colonial or (neo) racist contexts does not have to make it obsolete from the outset, because the same concept is also used for emancipatory or anti-racist purposes. In the context of cultural-scientific and philosophical debates, culture is a term that is used simultaneously and on the same level as both a determinant and a determinant.

Gürses complains all the more about the instrumentalization of the concept of culture through (neo) racist or (neo) colonialist theories. In addition to the inglorious role of the concept of culture in colonialism, there is its glorifying use in current political debates. Racism treats culture as a "quasi-race". Cultural difference serves as a paradigm in the formulation of any difference, and each difference is gradually reduced to culture or ultimately deciphered as a cultural one. The articulation of every (cultural) difference produces a (cultural) identity. The neo-racist slogan “Right to Difference”, accompanied by the compulsion to develop an ethnic-cultural identity, find good breeding ground in this concept of culture. Anyone who talks about cultural identity today, pleads for the preservation of culture without referring to the problematic functions of the concept of culture, makes himself suspicious.

Gürses declares anti-racism to have failed in view of the new manifestations of racism. Traditional racism is being replaced by differentialistic neo-racism , and cultural differences are made absolute. According to the racist discourse, mixing causes an ethnocide or ethnosuicide, which is committed by anti-racists on their own culture. Taguieff, who coined the term differentialist racism , speaks of the racist anti-Semitism of National Socialism as already culturalist racism.

Neoracism

Under the keyword “New Racism”, Martin Barker largely detaches racism from its connection to biological race constructions and applies it as a complex context of discrimination to similar classifications and evaluations based on class , gender , nation , culture and religion .

Critique of concept and theory

Critics describe Balibar's concept of racism without races as the "inflation of racism" ( Christoph Türcke ). The danger of covering up racism is then counteracted by the danger of misusing the negative concept of racism to make taboos and intellectual devaluation of unrelated issues. This, in turn, distorts the intellectual discourse.

Ulrich Bielefeld advocates a more careful and precise handling of the term racism, which always appears in a specific historical context. If the term is expanded too much, it will no longer be available for those cases in which it is actually needed as an analytical term at the same time.

Arata Takeda observes a “ metaphorization of racism” in the more recent expansion of the concept of racism, whereby the denouncing effect is primarily achieved rhetorically. Expressions such as racism without races or cultural racism are, strictly speaking, oxymora , just as, conversely, the expression biological racism is a pleonasm . For analytical purposes, Takeda suggests a terminological distinction between racism and culturalism, especially since culturalism in the strictest sense can also include well-intentioned practices to which racism is neither appropriate nor useful.

The sociologist Wulf D. Hund sees the cultural dimension of racism as a central component of racist exclusion mechanisms:

“The connection between racial discrimination and the category of race encompasses a very powerful but comparatively short phase in the history of racism. For the majority of its implementation, it was established and conveyed with the help of cultural concepts. That is the case again today. After the concept of race has been discredited, racist rhetoric increasingly makes use of cultural arguments. Although this is analyzed and theorized by racism research, many contributions regard this as a new phenomenon and do not extend their research to culturalist forms of racism that existed before the development of the concept of race or beyond its reach. "

- Wulf D. Hund : Negative Vergesellschaftung, page 119

However, it can also be concluded from this that cultural (e.g. religious) mechanisms of exclusion exist longer and are more permanent than biological-racist ones, which are particularly characteristic of early colonialism and the age of imperialism . According to Hund, the idea of ​​a special ability of the white race determined by climate and soil (as well as the concept of race itself) developed in Germany in the second half of the 18th century. The works of the anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the philosopher Immanuel Kant were particularly formative . In his Königsberg lecture on physical geography, Kant postulates that the temperate zones have produced a “well-educated” human being from a biological point of view, in contrast to the “degenerate” people of the polar regions and the equatorial zone: “ Humanity is at its greatest perfection in the race of whites. The yellow Indians [the Indians] have less talent. The negroes are far lower, and the lowest is that of the American people ”.

For the USA, the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot showed that the cultural concept of Anglo-Saxon cultural anthropology , which was once explicitly launched against the assumption of determination by biological “race”, could, however, assume the same function in the context of racist US society cultural anthropological concept of culture as “negation of class and history”. This implicitly depoliticized the social.

Racism without races in the concepts of the New Right

According to Ines Aftenberger, a “neo-racism” presented as “racism without races” is a “central ideologue” of the New Right . The racist concept behind it is called ethnopluralism , which assumes “that there are cultural and genetically different communities that exist side by side”. In this concept, “culture” is spoken of, but “race” is meant and understood.

According to “ethnopluralism”, peoples and national communities are only able to resolve conflicts if they concentrate on their own cultural and geographical peculiarities. The ideology is based on the assumption that “the individual ethnic communities each form uniform cultures that must be defended against foreign influences”.

Concept debate in racism research

The term race is also controversial in research on racism for etymological reasons. Researchers like Philip Cohnen explain that there need be no connection between race and racism:

“Race is the object of racist discourse outside of which it has no meaning; it is an ideological construct and not an empirical social category. "

- Philip Cohen : Dangerous Legacies: Studies on the Formation of a Multiracial Culture in Britain

On the basis of the assumption that the term can indeed disappear, but that its meaning will continue to exist, researchers such as Robert Miles , on the other hand, came up with approaches to investigate racism in its ideological form. Miles uses a conceptually stricter definition than Hall, in which only an "ideology of racial inequality" is referred to as racism . Matters does not automatically count as racism processes in which the consequences of a previous discriminatory policy are perpetuated if all persons are formally treated equally .

See also

literature

  • Benjamin Bauer: Culture and Race. Determinism and collectivism as elements of racist and culturalist thought. In: Berliner Debatte Initial , Vol. 30, Issue 1 (2019), pp. 15–26, ISBN 978-3-947802-23-4 .
  • Etienne Balibar, Immanuel Wallerstein: Race class nation. Ambivalent Identities , 3rd edition, Argument, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-88619-386-8 .
  • Jost Müller: Ideological forms. Texts on ideology theory, racism, culture , Mandelbaum Verlag, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-85476-661-2 .
  • Jost Müller: Myths of the Right. Nation, ethnicity, culture , Edition ID-Archiv, Berlin 1995, ISBN 978-3-85476-661-2 .
  • Philip Cohen: Dangerous Legacies: Studies into the Formation of a Multiracial Culture in Britain . In: Annita Kalpaka / Nora Räthzel: The difficulty of not being racist. Cologne 1994.
  • Stuart Hall 1989: Racism as an ideological discourse . In: The Argument No. 178.
  • Christian Koller : Racism (UTB Profile). Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn a. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-8252-3246-7 .
  • Gazi Çağlar: The Myth of the War of Civilizations. The west against the rest of the world. A reply to Samuel P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" . Münster: Unrast, 2002. ISBN 3-89771-414-0 .
  • Siegfried Jäger: Racism and Right-Wing Extremism - Danger to Democracy [2] (there on Stuart Hall)
  • A. Kalpaka, N. Räthzel [Hrsg]: The difficulty of not being racist , 2nd edition, Leer: Mundo, 1990.
  • Angelika Magiros (2004): Critique of Identity. 'Bio-Power' and 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' - tools against alien defense and (neo-) racism. (there p. 6 f. in detail on the debate about the theoretical approach)
  • Shulamit Volkov : Anti-Semitism as a cultural code. Ten essays. 2nd edition, Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-42149-0 .
  • Ulrich Bielefeld: The own and the foreign. New Racism in the Old World? 2nd edition Hamburg: Junius, 1992. ISBN 3-88506-190-2 .
  • Giaco Schiesser (1991): Racism without races. About the history and theory of a term . In: WoZ, No. 44. (Review by: Robert Miles: Introduction to the history and theory of a concept. Hamburg 1991)

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Angelika Magiros (2004): Critique of Identity. 'Bio-Power' and 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' - tools against alien defense and (neo-) racism (there p. 6 f. In detail on the debate about the theoretical approach)
  2. ^ Institute for Science and Art : Racism and Culturalism with a foreword by Franz Martin Wimmer
  3. ↑ Hartmut M. Griese: Critique of "intercultural pedagogy": essays against culturalism, ethnicization, depoliticization and a latent racism. Lit-Verlag 2004, ISBN 3-8258-5638-0 .
  4. ↑ Stuart Hall: Racism as an ideological discourse. in: Das Argument (Edition 178), 1989, p. 913
  5. ↑ Stuart Hall: Racism as an ideological discourse. in: Das Argument 178, 1989
  6. ^ Siegfried Jäger: Incendiaries - Synoptic Analysis cf. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein: race, class, nation. Hamburg 1990, 1st edition.
  7. ↑ Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein: Race, Class, Nation. Hamburg 1990, 1st edition, p. 28
  8. ^ A b George M. Fredrickson: Racism. A historical outline . Hamburger Edition , Hamburg 2004 ( Introduction online ( Memento from 23 August 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  9. ↑ Gita Steiner-Khamsi: Multicultural Educational Policy in the Modern Age. Opladen: Leske & Budrich
  10. ↑ Racism and Right-Wing Extremism - Danger to Democracy ( online ); see. Stuart Hall : Racism as an ideological discourse. In: The argument. Vol. 31 (1989), No. 178, pp. 913-921.
  11. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Guilt and Defense. Collected Writings Volume 9/2. Frankfurt a. M. 1975.
  12. ↑ Sexism without sex  - While the complex racism / nationalism is discussed extensively, it looks rather poor with regard to sexism.
  13. ^ Benjamin Bauer: Culture and Race. Determinism and collectivism as elements of racist and culturalist thought . In: Berliner Debatte Initial . No. 1 , 2019, ISBN 978-3-947802-23-4 , pp. 15-27 .
  14. ↑ Stolcke, Verena 1995. “Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe”. Current Anthropology , 36 (1): pp. 1-24.
  15. ↑ Halleh Ghorashi: Why is Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrong? In: Perlentaucher, March 14, 2007.
  16. ↑ Angelika Magiros (2004): Critique of Identity. “Bio-Power” and “Dialectics of Enlightenment” - tools against alien defense and (neo-) racism . Muenster. Esp. P. 166 ff.
  17. ↑ cf. Pierre-André Taguieff 1988; Mark Terkessidis: Kulturkampf. People, Nation, the West and the New Right , Cologne 1995; Jost Müller 1990: Racism and the pitfalls of ordinary anti-racism , in: Die freundliche Zivilgesellschaft (Ed .: Redaktion diskus), Edition ID Archive, Berlin 1990; Kanak attak: multiculturalism? The Capri fishermen strike back! [1]
  18. ↑ Gazi Çağlar : The Myth of the War of Civilizations: The West against the Rest of the World. A reply to Samuel P. Huntington . 2002
  19. ↑ Gazi Çağlar: The Myth of the War of Civilizations: The West against the Rest of the World. A reply to Samuel P. Huntington . 2002, p. 48
  20. ↑ Detlef Felken : Oswald Spengler. Conservative thinker between empire and dictatorship . Munich 1988.
  21. ↑ Gazi Çağlar: The Myth of the War of Civilizations: The West against the Rest of the World. A reply to Samuel P. Huntington . 2002, p. 10
  22. ^ Samuel P. Huntington: Clash of Cultures. The redesign of world politics in the 21st century , Siedler-Taschenbücher im Goldmann-Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-442-75506-9 , pages 30 and 31 (graphics), pages 57-62, pages 246-288, page 398 (graphics )
  23. ^ Samuel P. Huntington: Clash of Cultures. The reshaping of world politics in the 21st century. Siedler Taschenbücher, Goldmann Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-442-75506-9 , pp. 52-53.
  24. ↑ Hakan Gürses: Functions of Culture. On the critique of the concept of culture ; published in: Stefan Nowotny / Michael Staudigl (eds.): Borders of the cultural concept. Meta-genealogies. Verlag Turia + Kant: Vienna 2003: 13–34 ( PDF ( Memento from 23 August 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  25. ↑ Hakan Gürses: From National Socialism of the Elite to Racism in the Middle. In: Mitteilungen des Institut für Wissenschaft und Kunst , 1997, pp. 2–6 ( PDF ; 1.02 MB)
  26. ↑ cf. Taguieff 1991: p. 246ff
  27. ↑ Christoph Türcke: Inflation of Racism ; in concrete 08/1993
  28. ↑ "Ulrich Bielefeld, head of the nation and society department at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research, currently visiting professor at the University of Haifa, advocates careful and precise handling of the concept of racism, which always invokes a specific historical context. If this is expanded too much, it will no longer be available for those cases in which 'we actually need it as an analytical and scandalous term at the same time' "; to trade union education and science: We and them: What makes people “strangers” - On everyday exclusion and its consequences ( Memento from September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  29. ↑ Arata Takeda: Consequences of Culturalism. Of confrontational to participatory approaches in the switching of language, culture and values , in: operations , No. 217, 56. Jg, et seq Issue 1 (2017), page 128...
  30. ↑ Wulf D. Hund: Negative Vergesellschaftung , Dimensions of the Racism Analysis Verlag Westfällisches Dampfboot, ISBN 3-89691-634-3 .
  31. ↑ immanuel Kant: Works. Akademie-Textausgabe, Vol. 9: Logic, Physical Geography, Pedagogy , De Gruyter 1987, pp. 314–316.
  32. ↑ Michel-Rolph Trouillot: Adieu, culture: a new duty arises. In: R. Fox, B. King (Eds.): Anthropology beyond culture. Oxford 2002, pp. 37-60.
  33. ↑ Ines Aftenberger: The New Right and Neorassism , Leykam, 2007, p. 7 ISBN 3-7011-0088-8
  34. ↑ a b Magdalena Marsovszky, We defend Magyarism! , In: Gesine Drews-Sylla, Renata Makarska, Neue alte Rassismen ?: Difference and Exclusion in Europe after 1989 , Transcript 2015, p. 112
  35. ↑ Philip Cohen: Dangerous Legacies: Studies on the Emergence of a Multiracial Culture in Great Britain. in: Annita Kalpaka / Nora Räthzel: The difficulty of not being racist. Cologne 1994.
  36. ↑ Robert Miles: Racism. Introduction to the history and theory of a term . Argument Verlag, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-88619-389-6 .
  37. ↑ Robert Miles: Racism. Introduction to the history and theory of a term , Argument Verlag, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-88619-389-6 , page 37 and page 51 ff.