Re-thinking white privilege work as critical anti-racism practice

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis is a critical re-evaluation of white privilege work as a transformational anti-racism practice. In approaching this task, I address certain key questions: what are the meanings of 'whiteness' within critical anti-racism discourses; how are racialised meaning practices constructed historically in relation to colonialism and imperialism; and how might I carry my 'whiteness' with me in my anti-racism practice while challenging the way that it is constructed? Tracing the process of 'becoming white' through white privilege discourses, I draw on Michel Foucault's writings on disciplinary power, knowledge and the subject to investigate how particular racialised subject positions are constructed in relation to class, gender and sexuality, and how individuals might take up (or refuse) such positions. The scholarship of Antonio Gramsci provides insight into how, through mechanisms such as 'common sense' ideology and relations of force, certain racialised narratives become hegemonic in the social landscape, and how the relations of racism might be constructed at particular historical junctures. While both Gramsci and Foucault are concerned to show that subject formation is a historically particular rather than a universally defined construct, Foucault's method of genealogical analysis varies drastically from Gramsci's ideological and historically materialist approach. Attending to the tension between discourse and ideology, I ask what Foucault's and Gramsci's particular perspectives foreclose towards thinking about the making of racialised meaning practices in white privilege work. Bridging a discursive and materialist understanding of 'whiteness' within critical anti-racism practices, I consider the pedagogical approaches available for white anti-racist feminists to ethically engage anti-racism theory, practice and education.M.A