Observing whiteness

The System of Whiteness and Its Religious Fantasy of Absolute Immunity

Bibliographic Data

ID2999207
AuthorsDavid Kline (0000-0001-6183-3303, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume27
Issue1
Pages129-142
Publication date2021-01-02
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial Identities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-4630 • E-ISSN: 1363-0296
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13504630.2020.1816455
OpenAlexW3083712323
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited20

This essay engages cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter’s theory of ‘genres of being human’ and sociologist Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social system observation in order to argue that the system of whiteness is a religiously produced, self-referential, and self-reproducing social (sub-) system of what Wynter calls the broader genre of ‘Man,’ the Christian west’s overrepresented and overdetermined model of a singularly proper human subject. Whiteness is observed as a social sub-system held together around self-referential processes of social and political immunization, or self-protective action aimed towards the survival and reproduction of the system. However, because its constituted identity is premised on necessary points of epistemological limits (i.e. the impossibility of an all-seeing range of vision or omnipotence and the impossibility of total self-referential observation), whiteness, like any other social sub-system, can never fully secure itself from the contingency and resistance of its outside environment. As a conclusion, I suggest that whiteness’ inherent vulnerability to its outside environment should be the starting point for white reflection on the possibility of resisting the violent fantasy of white immunity and the making of a democratic form of life

Art · Epistemology · Fantasy · Literature · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Critical Race Theory in Education · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society

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