The rights of whites (in search of a majority)

Bibliographic Data

ID2174288
AuthorsG Anidjar (0000-0002-2214-9469, Columbia University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume26
Issue8
Pages1101-1113
Publication date2024-11-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInterventions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-801X • E-ISSN: 1469-929X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369801x.2023.2288082
OpenAlexW4389561165
LanguageEN
References cited22

Like every concept, perhaps, the concept of minority can only function differentially. It is differential with regard to majority, of course, and with regard to other categories of groups, communities, or collectives, identified as minorities. The polysemy, and even vagueness, of the concept of minority, along with its distribution across a range of discursive fields, adds to its differential dimension as the word “minority” must relate to or carry a modifier. And modifiers of minority do run the full spectrum of minorities, beginning with number, of course, but also race, class, sex and gender, nationality, ethnicity, or religion, legal, social and political. And let us not forget age. Its ambiguities notwithstanding, minority always involved yet another differential, namely, measurement, though it was one that had to do with a certain quality (size, maturity), rather than with quantity per se. Is there such a thing as a minority, then? Is it not always already vanishing? What this essay describes as the destruction of minority seems crucial to recognize. It alerts us to a barely discernible condition in the age of minorities, to the possibility of there being no such thing as a majority, or else only under the figure of that minority which is not one, a minority that would appear as majority, effacing the minority that it itself is, while destroying “minorities.”

Ethnic group · Immigration · Linguistics · Minority group · Minority language · Minority rights · Nationality · Neutrality · Political science · Politics · Polysemy · Sociology · Vagueness · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration

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