Race/Religion/War

Bibliographic Data

ID2932641
AuthorsKeith P Feldman, Keith Feldman (0000-0001-6935-5844), Leerom Medovoi
Year2016
Volume34
Issue4
Pages1-17
Publication date2016-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Text (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0164-2472 • E-ISSN: 1527-1951
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/01642472-3680834
OpenAlexW2573552540
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited34

This introductory essay points to the long patterns as well as the telling diversity of relationships revealed in genealogies of the race/religion/war triad. Our key observation is that race, religion, and war come together as a meaningful constellation precisely because they together underpin one dominant strategy of the power that we call the political, while at the same time we recognize that the relationships among race, religion, and war are simultaneously too compressed, historically transient, and reversible to take the form of a simple functionalism; indeed, at any particular moment their articulation is historically specific and subject to rearticulation. From the religious crucibles for the formation of race in the conquest of the Americas to the pastoral Christian origins of modern racial governmentality; from the colonial wars of high imperialism and the third-world proxy wars for the purportedly secular rivalry of the Cold War to the contemporary conditions of Muslim migrant and refugee communities-these multiple overlapping genealogies, we argue, are necessary reference points for an adequate analysis of our political present. As one way to think across these genealogies, we highlight the intersection of two ostensibly parallel scholarly trajectories: race as political theology and race as political ontology. Both of these trajectories point toward the condensed relationships among our three terms, illuminating in the process the deep structure of our present

Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development

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