Theorizing Structures of Domination, Challenging Modalities of Racial Exclusion

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel theorizes the structures of domination that punctuate racial relations in America. By analyzing, from multiple vantage points, the formal and informal mechanisms that perpetuate these structures, the papers on this panel engage with both the historical development and contemporary manifestations of racism, violence, and injustice. This panel draws together papers on these structural manifestations of domination in four interlocking modalities: the production and reproduction of political discourse, through an analysis of the #AllLivesMatter rejoinder to #BlackLivesMatter; the institutional context of the interaction of labor and race, through an examination of the New Deal’s National Labor Relations Act from the perspective of race; the proliferation of popular culture, through a close reading of the politics of the film Black Panther and its reception; and the emotional register, through an engagement with the anti-solidaristic practice of white women’s tears as an obstacle to a broader, feminist solidarity. Taken together, these papers produce a sustained engagement with the structures of domination that undergird political life in contemporary America. This panel challenges these formal and informal mechanisms of structural exclusion, pushes towards alternatives to these structures, and brings political theoretical frameworks to bear on racial injustice in our time. In doing so, this panel interrogates the privilege that accompanies structural exclusions.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 3: Normative Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Institutionalizing Racial Inequalities: Worker Exclusions in the New Deal - Katherine Rader, University of Pennsylvania

• Black Liberalism and White Ignorance: Thinking Black Panther With Charles Mills - Emily Crandall, Graduate Center, CUNY; Erika L Iverson, Drake University

• Whiteness’ Politics of Looking:Bad Faith&the Present Absence of All Lives Matter - John McMahon, SUNY Plattsburgh

• White Women’s Tears and Racist Obstacles to Solidarity - Danielle Hanley, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Chair

• Simon A. Stow College of William & Mary

Discussant

• Heather N. Pool Denison University