Performativity, Materlality, and the Racial Body Jonathan Xavier Inda “This paper argues that the racial body does not exist as a simple biological fact. tt proposes, instead, that we think of “aco” an affect of discourse, as a pertormative of sorts. in speech act theory, the pertormative refers to those speech acts that bring nto being or enact thet which they ame, It Is that aspect of discourse that, in the act of uttering, also performs that to which it zelers, From this perspective, it means that while “race” may have a foundation in biology since "i" divides populations on the basis of physical characteristics, itis really just a namo, albeit a very powerful one, that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the groupings to which refers, ‘The argument, then, is that race" resolutely does not refer to a pre-consttuted body. Rather, it ‘works pertormatively to constitute the body itself. This does nol mean, however, that the racial ‘body has no material existence, Indeed, "race," tothe extent that"if"is a difference inscribed on ‘the body, is nothing f nat material I! does mean, though, that there can ba no access to a pure materiality outside or before signification. The racial body, in other words, only becomes ‘materialized, and thus maaningful, within historically specific discourses. Itis not simply always already there. The significance of al this fs that since “rave" does not refer to a pre-constituted Natural body, since the process of naming bodies actually amounts to the very act of their constitution, then “race” can not be an effect of biological truths, It has to be seen, instead, as ‘one of the social fictions through which “natural” facts about the world and its intiabitants are produced end maintained. if this isthe case, that is "race is a social fiction, then the meaning ‘of"race,” and hence the constitution of racial bocies, is fundamentally unstable and open to all sorts of resignifcations. Race Matters In Bodies That Matter (1993a), Judith Butler critiques the notion that the gendered body is a natural, pre-linguistic given. She suggests that gender differences are never simply a function of material differences. For material differences are always in some way both marked and formed through discourse—taken, for now, as a heterogensous network of texts (languages), disciplines, and institutions that function to constitute and regulate objects of knowledge. In other words, Butler's claim is that the gendered body is always already discursively constructed. This means that the category “woman” absolutely does not refer to a pre-constituted body. It is, instead, a name that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the bodies to which it refers. “Woman” thus works performatively to constitute the gendered body itself rather than merely mirroring a body that already exists out there in the world. Following Butler, this paper argues that, just as the gendered body does not exist as a simpie biological fact, neither does the racial body. It thus LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL, Vol. 11, No. 3, Fall 2000 74-99LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 Proposes that we think of “race” as an effect of discourse, that is, as being Performatively constituted. In speech act theory, the performative refers to those acts of speech that bring into being or enact that which they name (Austin, 1975). Itis that aspect of discourse that, in the act of uttering, also Performs the action to which it refers. From this perspective, it means that while “race” may have a foundation in biology since “it” divides populations on the basis of physical characteristics, itis really just a name, albeit a very Powerful one, that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the groupings to which it refers. The argument, then, is that “race” resolutely does not refer to @ pre-constituted body. Rather, it works performatively to constitute the body itself. This does not mean, however, that the racial body has no material existence. Indeed, “race,” to the extent that itis a difference inscribed on the body, is nothing if not material. It does mean, though, that there can be no access to a pure materiality outside or before signification. The racial body, in other words, only becomes materialized, and thus meaningful, within historically specific discourses. It is not simply already there. The significance Of all this is that since “race” does not refer to a pre-constituted natural body, since the process of naming bodies actually amounts to the very act of their constitution, then “race” can not be an effect of biological truths. It has to be Se6n, instead, as one of the social fictions through which “natural” facts about the world and its inhabitants are produced and maintained. If this is the case, thatis, if “race” is a social fiction, then the meaning of “race,” and hence the constitution of racial bodies, is fundamentally unstable and open to all sorts of resignifications. Simply put, no project of racial domination can be Predestined to hold racialized bodies in positions of subordination. ‘The goal of this paper, then, is to advance the argument that the racial body is not an effect of biological truths, but a socially constructed category of knowledge. To do this, it proceeds in three main steps. First, it looks at the way the “racial body,” in particular the Mexican body in the United States, has historically been constructed and disparaged as a naturally inferior body. Second, it explores Judith Butler's notion of performativity (via a theoretical itinerary that begins with J.L. Austin and weaves its way through Jacques Derrida). And third, it develops a performative account of “race,” one that focuses on how the materiality of the racial body is an effect of discourse and that draws attention to the ever-present possibility of resignitying the body. We begin with the practice of naturalizing racial difference. 75INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND ...... Race, Nature, and the Symbolic Economy of Dark Skin ‘The practice of naturalizing racial difference, of constructing “race” as a natural entity, has.a conspicuous history in Wesiem culture. It is a practice that developed in the wake of European exploration and colonization during the fiteenth- and sixteenth-centuries—when Europeans elaborated a worldview that distinguished them, as children of God or human beings, from the “others” they encountered in the New World. Eventually this led to the “scientific’ systems of classification advanced during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries, which created seemingly immutable hierarchies based on the phenomenal and biological differences of humankind—that Is, on the belief that certain physical traits, such as skin color, body type, etc., were tied to attributes of behavior, intellect, and morality (Omi and Winant, 1994). As ‘such, “face” has historically been constructed as an essence, a natural phenomenon whose meaning is prior to and beyond the reach of human intervention. This practice of naturalizing racial difference has been’ most conspicuous with respect to the construction of “black” populations, According to Stuart Hall (1997), it has been typical for racial ideologies to reduce the cultures of “black” people to Nature, or to naturalize their difference. He notes that during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-centuries Popular representations of everyday life under slavery in the U.S. tended to cluster around two principal themes: "First was the subordinate status and ‘innate laziness’ of blacks—naturally born to, and fitted only for, servitude but, at the same time, stubbornly unwilling to labour in ways appropriate to their nature and profitable for their masters. Second was their innate ‘primitivism’, ‘simplicity and lack of culture, which made them genetically incapable of ‘civilized’ refinements” (1997:244). Given this view of *biacks,”" it was seen as natural, at least from the perspective of the slave-holders, that “white” women should ride and slave men should seurry after them to shade them from the sun with an umbrella; that “white” men sat and slaves stood; that “white" overseers should examine slave women like prize animals, or punish runaway slaves with casual forms of torture like branding them or urinating in their mouths (Hall, 1997). The logic behind these naturalizing practices is rather simple: “if the differences between black and white people are ‘cultura’, then they are open to modification and change. But if thay are ‘natural'—as the slave-holders believed—then they are beyond history, 76LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 Permanent and fixed” (Hall, 1997:245), “Naturalization” is thus a representational scheme calculated to fix difference forever, to secure discursive closure. It is a practice designed to render the order of things natural, so natural that no one questions the hierarchical relationships between different racialized subjects. This pra of constructing “race” as a fact of nature has also been very significant with respect to the construction of the Mexican-origin population in the United States, Not unlike the case with “blacks,” ithas been typical for racialized regimes of representation to naturalize the racial difference of Mexicans. This was particularly so during the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. There is one major difference, however, between the way “blacks” and Mexicans have been constructed: whereas “blacks” have categorically been seen as “non-white,” Mexicans have been placed in @ more ambiguous position. The reason for this has to do with the fact that most Mexicans are mestizos, the descents of both ‘white" (Spanish) and “non-white” (Indian) populations. This distinctive “mixed-blood” ancestry has given rise te a population whose somatic characteristics vary greatly, ranging from those whose features make them indistinguishable from “white” Europeans to those whose appearance places them on the side of Indians, the latter being the majority. The result of this has been that Mexicans have historically been differentially racialized based on their perceptible somatic differences. Those with an ostensible European countenance have generally been constructed as “white” and accorded the privileges that go with that designation, while those with a dark complexion have, forthe most part, been viewed as “non-white” and bestowed the subordinate status of such racialized populations. In effect, the place that Mexicans have historically occupied within the United States’ racial hierarchy has depended strongly on the pigmentation of their skin. ‘A perfect example of this differential racialization is the ambiguous legal status accorded to Mexicans who chose to remain in the Southwest (principally in the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) after Mexico ceded this territory to the U.S. at the end of the Mexican-American ‘War (1848). The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which officially ended the war, stipulated that the political rights of the inhabitants of the ceded territory {including Indians) were to be the same as those enjoyed by “white” citizens of the United States (Menchaca, 1993). However, in U.S. government bureaucratic circles, it became unclear whether Mexicans, since most were 7INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND mestizos, should be treated as “white” and granted full citizenship rights or regarded as Indian and barred from full political participation. (At the time Indians could not become citizens). According to Martha Menchaca, “Most goverment officials argued that Mexicans of predominantly Indian descent [read dark-skinned) should be extended the same legal status as the detribalized American Indians” (1993:584). The result was that, in many cases, Anglo-American legislators violated the treaty and refused to extend full political rights to ali Mexicans, arguing that people who were primarily of Indian descent could not claim the political benefits of “white” citizens. This is precisely what happened in Califomia, where the state constitution explicitly stated that only “white” U.S. males and “white” Mexican males had the right of suffrage, thus making dark-skinned or Indian looking Mexicans implicitly ineligible to vote and stripping them of mast political rights: Every White male citizen of the United States, and every White male citizen of Mexico, who shall have elected to become a citizen of the United States, under the treaty of peace exchanged and ratified at Queretaro, on the 30th day of May, 1848, of the age of twenty-one years who shall have been a tesident of the state six months next preceding the election, and the county or district in which he claims his vote thirty days, shall be entitled to vote at all elections which are now or hereatter may be authorized by law. (Quoted in Menchaca, 1993:588) Thus, depending on their physical characteristics, Mexicans were either entitled or not entitled to political entranchisement in nineteenth-century Calitomia. To be classified as “white” meant occupying a privileged position in the racial hierarchy; to be classified as “non-white” or Indian meant being relegated to the margins of society (Almaguer, 1994). ‘Significantly, since Mexicans were differentially racialized, they were also differentially naturalized. Those who were accorded the status of “white” were naturalized as innately superior (albeit not quite on par with Anglos [see Almaguer, 1994]). They were thus associated with civilization and constructed as creatures of reason inherently capable of civilized refinement, jeaming and knowledge, and restraint in their emotional, sexual, and social life. Conversely, those who were accorded the status of “non-white” were naturalized as innately inferior. Mast Mexicans were thus constructed as 78LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 closerto savagery than to civilization and were intimately linked to the sphere of the instinctual—a lack of *clvilized refinernent” in sexual and civil life and the open expression of emotion and feeling rather than intellect. This construction held for both women and men: dark-skinned Mexican women were often contemptuously portrayed in Anglo travel literature as flagrantly sexually promiscuous and therefore unworthy of marrying “white” men; while Mexican men were generally depicted as sexually threatening, rapacious, and hot-blocded creatures who brazenly lusted after innocent “white” women (Almaguer, 1994). Overall, then, while both light-skinned and dark-skinned Mexicans ware racially naturalized, it was the latter who were the worse off for it. Their skin was not only read as a sign of their inferior social status, it also served as a justification for keeping them in that position. in other words, since their racial difference was constructed as natural, as part of nature, the placa thay occupied in the social hierarchy was also seen as natural, which meant that nothing could be done to change it. In short, much like the case with “blacks,” the practice of naturalizing Mexicans was designed to render the racial order so natural that no one questioned the unequal power relationships between different racialized groups. Summing up this practice of naturalizing racial difference, two important things become clear. Gne thingis that the construction of “race” as a natural entity is not simply a “white/black” affair. Rather, it is more generally a “white’*non-white” matter. Historian George Fredrickson has characterized this as “white” supremacy: As generally understood, white supremacy refars to the attitudes, ideologies, and policies associated with the rise of blatant forms of white or European dominance over “nonwhite” populations. In other words, it involves making invidious distinctions of a socially crucial kind that are based primarily, if not exclusively, on physical characteristics and ancestry. In its fully developed farm, white supremacy means “calorbars,” “racial segreoation,” and the restriction ‘of meaningful citizenship rights to a privileged group characterized by its light pigmentation (1981 :xi). The result is @ practice that works through the construction of a binary opposition that places “whites” on one side and people of color {or of nan- white skin) on the other. And, of course, as with any binary opposition, as 73INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND ... Jacques Derrida notes, “we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of fa vis-devis, but rather with a violent hierarchy, One of the two terms govems the other,..or has the upper hand” (1981:41). Indeed, the “white’Pnon-white” opposition is hardly neutral. There is a definite dimension of power between the end points of this opposition, such that the first term is valorized while the second is subordinated. This is clear from the way the “white"/ non-white” opposition has historically been linked to a series of other binary oppositions: There is the powerful opposition between “civilization"(white) and “savagery” (non-white). There is the opposition between the biological or bodily characteristics of the “non-white” and “white” “races,” polarized into their extreme opposites—each the signifiers of an absolute difference between human “types” or species, There are the ich distinctions which cluster around the supposed link, on the one hand, between the white ‘races" and _ intellectual development—refinement, leaming and knowledge, a belief in reason, the presence of developed institutions; formal government and law, and a “civilized restraint” in their emotional, sexual and civil fife, all of which are associated with “Culture”; and on the other hand, the link between the (non-white) “races” and whatever is instinctual—the open expression of emotion and feeling rather than intellect, a lack of “civilized refinement” in sexual and social life, a reliance on custom and ritual, and the lack of developed civil institutions, all of which are linked to “Nature.” (Quote modified from Hall, 1997:243) Through such binary constructions, people are classified according to a norm, setting up a symbolic boundary between the acceptable and the unacceptable, the normal and the deviant. In this particular case, the ‘opposition is constructed in such a way that physical features are linked to attributes of intellect and behavior, establishing @ hierarchy of quality between “white” and ‘non-white’. The essential character of these groups is fixed eternally in nature since physical appearance is linked causally to behaviors by biological inheritance. The other thing that becomes clear is that “race,” insofar as the utterance has any unique meaning, is an embodied spectacle, that is, a bodily construction. As Alan Hyde points out, “For any sentence containing the word race, in which the word cannot be completely replaced by ethnicity 80LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 or group without loss of meaning, a body is being constructed, and a claim is being made about physically identifiable bodies as the bearers or carriers of some other trait” (1997:222). This means that a philosophy of “race” is not simply a philosophy of differences among people, but one that inscribes those differences in the body (as opposed to in the mind, history, or experience). This is something that David Green has also noted, specifically with reference to the way anthropology and ethnology have historically constructed the culture/nature distinction: Though not immune to the ‘white man’s burden" [approach], anthropology was drawn through the course of the nineteenth-century, ‘even more towards causal connections between race and culture. As the position and status of the “inferior” races became increasingly to be regarded as fixed, so socio-cultural differences came to be regarded as dependent upon hereditary characteristics. Since these were inaccessible to direct observation they had to be inferred from physical and behavioural traits which, in tum, they were intended to explain. Socio-cultural differences among human populations became subsumed within the identity of the individual human body. In the attempt to trace the line of determination between the biological and the social, the body became the totemic object, and its very visibility the. evident articulation of nature and culture. (Quoted in Hall, 1997:244) ‘The point here is that the body itself, since its differences are “visible” for all to see, provides “incontrovertible” evidence for the naturalization of racial difference. Thus, there is an intimate connection between visual markers and ‘the production of racialized knowledge. in other words, the representation of difference through the body has historically been a site through which much racialized knowledge has been produced and circulated (Hall, 1997). In this respect, skin color has been particularly important, serving as @ material sign that expresses the fact of belonging to a distinctive social group (Guillaumin, 1988). As such, it has also served as a morphological mark that designates the place an individual occupies within a social hierarchy. Thus, to the extent that the relations between different racial groups have historically been organized hierarchically, skin color has not merely operated as a sign of an individual's belonging to a particular group, a1INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND .. but also as the bodily inscription of a system of domination on the individual. For example, “white” skin has customarily served as the physical embodiment and sign of social power (Linke, 1999). It has been associated ‘with @ host of positive qualities such as beauty, cleanliness, humanity, and civilization (Almaguer, 1994). Conversely, dark skin, whether “black” or “brown,” has traditionally been figured as the embodiment of inferiority and subordination. It has been linked to such traits as ugliness, primitiveness, animaiity, and dirtiness. Tomas Almaguer has cogently pointed this out in his discussion of the role that skin color played in the racialization of Native Americans in nineleenth-century California: Numerous characterizations of the Indian as “chocolate brown," “dark mahogany,” or simply as “very dark” or “black” was common throughout the period after [California] statehood....“Their color was such a salient feature that it bound together the other associations of primitiveness, dirtinass, and ugliness in the whites’ minds.” As with other groups, however, “the dark complexion of the California Indian” served as the most readily observable “bacge of inferiority.” clearly setting them off from the superior white population. (1994:112-113, quoting Rawis 1984) Different skins have thus historically been inscribed within different symbolic economies—that is, economies of meaning—with skin color, as a bodily mark, serving as a sign of, and justiication for, the place an individual ‘occupies in social relations. The significance of all this is that the racial body, marked through color, has traditionally been constructed as a natural phenomenon whose meariing is prior to and beyond the reach of human intervention. This practice of naturalizing racial difference has served to justify the subordination of numerous populations, including Mexicans. Moreover, and moreimportantly, this obsession with naturally marking populations continues to operate today with great effectiveness. Indeed, if we look at contemporary modes of racial representation, we find that the practice of naturalizing difference is still rather common. In 1994, for example, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray published a highly popular book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, which focused on, among other things, the intellectual inferiority of certain racialized subjects, primarily a2LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 “blacks,” but also Mexicans. Their main claim was that America was sutfering from a myriad of social problems (these problems included crime, homelessness, illiteracy, poverty, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, and the breakdown of the family), all of which could be vary strongly correlated with low intelligence. Moreover, no level of social engineering could remedy this situation, given that intelligence, which Hermstein and Murray believed could be accurately measured using IO tests, was genetically datermined. The implication is that “blacks” and other racialized subjects, all of whom are associated with these social problems in general, are naturally notintelligent. This means that, no matter how much money one pours into education or welfare or any other social program, racialized subjects such as African Americans are just not capable of maving beyond their marginal social existence. All of this amounts to the familiar practice of naturalizing difference, of differentiating human subjects into a number of natural and distinct “races” based on their typical phenomenal characteristics, and the consignment of some groups as inferior, in this case on the basis of putative intelligence. Indeed, it amounts to the familiar practice of locating difference in the pré-social realm, of locating difference in nature, as part of nature, and hence rendering it immutable. Given the continued saliency of such naturalizing practices, of practices designed to fix difference until the end of time, it becomes imperative to once again put forth arguments that posit that the racial body is not an effect of biological truths, but a historically contingent, socially constructed category of knowledge. What | would like to do, then, is argue that the racial body simply does not exist as a biological fact, and propose, instead, that we think of the racial body as an effect of discourse, that is, as, being performatively constituted. | thus propose to put forth what might be called a performative notion of “race,” to discuss how the racial body is constituted performatively as an effect of discourse. To do so, | will elaborate ‘on and draw from the work of Judith Butter (1993a), who developed a theory of the performative constitution of the gendered body. Basically, | will advance a notion of racial performativity akin to Butler's idea of the gender performativity. Before elaborating on Butler, however, and then on the notion of racial performativity, we need to follow a theoretical itinerary that begins with J. L. Austin (1975) and weaves its way through Jacques Derrida (1988). The reason for this itinerary is that Judith Butler draws heavily on the work of 83INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND ...... these two philosophers in order to develop her theory of gender performativity. So it is only through this detour that we can come to terms with and achieve a better understanding of Butler's work, We begin our excursion with J. L. Austin. Tracking the Performative: From Austin (through Derrida) to Butler ‘The term “performative” has its origins in the speech act theory of the British philosopher of language J. L. Austin (Culler, 1997). In How to Do Things with Words (1975), Austin sets forth a distinction between two types of utterances: constative utterances, suchas “the catis on the mat,” describe or report on a given state of affairs, and are either true or false; performative utterances, or simply performatives, are neither true nor false but actually perform the action to which they refer. For instance, if one utters “! do” in the course of a wedding ceremony, one is not reporting on a marriage or describing what one is doing, one is actually indulging in it. Similarly, if! say, “I promise to pay you next week," | am not describing what ! am doing but accomplishing the act of promising. Neither of these actions, then, can be judged as true or false. They can only be successful or unsuccessful or, as ‘Austin prefers, felicitous or infelicitous. In other words, the performative can only be judged on the basis of the success or failure of the act to which it refers. One can only judge the utterance “I do” (said in the course of a martiage ceremony) on the basis of its success or fallure in performing the act of marrying, It may be unsuccesstul if, for example, the person performing the ceremony is not authorized to perform it, or if the person saying “I do” is already married, “The distinction between constative utterances, which describe truly or falsely a state of affairs, and performative utterances, which perform successfully or unsuccessfully the acts to which they refer, is significant because itshows that language performs actions rather than simply reporting on them. It turns out, however, that this distinction is not really all that stable. According to Austin, one of the properties of a performative utterance is that it can perform the action to which it refers even if it does not contain an ‘explicit performative verb. For example, | can perform the act of ordering someone to stop by yelling “Stop!” rather than “I order you to stop.” What we have here, then, is an implicit performative—a performative from which the explicit performative verb has been deleted. But once we admit to the 84LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 existence of these implicit performatives, ithecomes incredibly difficult to find a sentence that would not fit into this category. Thus, an utterance such as “the cat is on the mat,” which is the classic example of the constative utterance, can be viewed as ellipses of “I hereby affirm that the cat is on the mat,” a performative that accomplishes the act of affirming tha to which it refers. So the constative is really just a special case of the performative; for ‘constative statements, too, perform actions—actions of stating, describing ‘and So on, An important reworking of the performative, for our purposes, takes place when Jacques Derrida (1988) engages Austin’s concept. Austin had ‘suggested that the possibilty of the performative depends upon conventional procedures, on repeatable formulas: “There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure ‘to include the uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances..." (1975:14). In onder for someone to say “I do” ata wedding ceremony and count as a performative speech act, the utterance must be recognizable as the repetition of a conventional formula; that is, it must contorm to a model and be recognized as a repetition. (If the bride said “OK” instead of “I do,” she might not succeed in getting married). For Derrida, too, Tepeatability is the condition of possibility of the performative: “Could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a ‘coded’ or iterable utterance, or in other words, if the formula | pronounce in order to open a meeting, launch a ship or a marriage were not identifiable as conformingwith an iterable model, if it were not then identifiable in some way as a ‘itation’?” (1983:18). However, Derrida goes a step further than Austin. He suggests, first of all, that if a speech act, in order to be possible, must repeat a coded utterance, then it must be recognizable as a citation, a repetition in quotation marks as it were, And second, he maintains that this citationality is one without which no utterance, whether performative or otherwise, could take place. The idea here, as Jonathan Culler points out, is simply that the “possibility of being repeated in new circumstances is essential to the nature of language: anything that couldn't be repeated... wouldn't be language but some mark inextricably tied to a physical situation” (1997:99). The possibility of repetition, in order words, is basic to language. Something can only be a signifying sequence if itis iterable; something can only be a sign if it can be cited and repeated in all sorts of circumstances. In short, an utterance can 85INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND ... only take place if it is iterable, if it can be repeated, quoted, or cited. And a performative in particular only works if it is a recognized quotation of a regular formula; that is, language Is performative in the sense that it doesn't just convey knowiedge but performs acts by its citation or repetition of established ways of doing things with words. Now we are set to talk about Butler, who draws on the work of Austin and Derrida to develop the notion of gender performativity. What does she do? In Bodies That Matter (1993a), Butler's main concern is to critique the idea that the gendered body is a natural, pre-linguistic given. She suggests that sexual difference is never merely a function of material differences that are not somehow inscribed and shaped by discursive practices. She puts this in the following terms: ‘The body posited as prior to the sign, is always positedor signifiedas prior. This signification produces as an effect of its own procedure the very body that it nevertheless and simultaneously claims to discover as that which precedes its own action. if the body signified as prior to signification is an effect of signification, then the mimetic or representational status of language, which claims that signs follow bodies as their necessary mirrors, is no mimetic at all. On the contrary, it is productive, constitutive, one might even argue performative, inasmuch as this signifying act delimits and contours the body that it then claims to find prior to any and alll signification, (1993a:30) ‘The argument heres that the gendered body is always already linguistically or discursively constructed, So the category “woman” resolutely does not refer to a pre-constituted body. It is, instead, a name that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the bodies to which it refers. “Woman,” in other words, works performatively to constitute the gendered body itself rather than simply mirroring a body that is already out there in the world. What Butler does, then, is essentially ‘echo Austin in proposing that the performative enacts or produces that which it names. Butler does not stop here, however. Through the Derridean rewriting of Austin, she takes a step further and suggests that the performative production of gender actually always takes place through 86LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 acertain kind of repetition or recitation. In othar words, she suggests that without citationality, without iterability, the performative constitution of gender could not take place. For Butler, then, the performative constitution of the gendered body can not be seen as a one-time atfair, something accomplished by a single performative act. Instead, the gendered body must be viewed as constituted thraugh a never-ending string of performatives. The idea here is that discourse gains “authority to bring about what it names through citing the conventions of authority,” so that a norm “takes hold to the extent that itis ‘cited’ as such a norm, but it also derives its power thraugh the citations that it compels" (1983a:13). Thus, the act of gender constitution does net so much bring into being what it names, as it continually produces, through the reiterative power of discourse, the thing that it regulates. It is only through the continuous citation of norms that the gendered body Is produced and reproduced: it is only through such reiterations that the body is materialized and acquires a naturalized effect. As such, there is no reference to a pure body which does not itself contribute to the further formation of that body. From this point of view, the utterance, “It’s a girl!," which traditionally welcomes @ baby into the world, is not so much a constative utterance, a statement of fact that refers to a pre-constituted body, as. one in a long series of performatives that constitutes the body whose arrival they announce and through which the girl is continuously gendered throughout her lifetime. Indeed, the “girling af the gir!" does not end, and can not end, with the founding act of constitution, but must be reiterated by various authorities and in various times and places to reinforce the naturalized effect of gender. In short, what Butler calls performativity is a “matter of reiterating or repeating the norms by which one is constituted: it is not the radical fabrication of a gendered self. Itis a compulsory repetition of prior and subjectivating norms, ones which cannot be thrown off at will, but which work, animate, and constrain the gendered subject...” (1993b:22). Performativity, Materiality, and the Racial Body Following Butier, | argue that “race” simply does not exist as a biological fact, proposing instead, that we think of "race" as an etfect a7INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND ...... of discourse. To think of “race” in these terms draws our attention to how discourse organizes our encounter with the world. More specifically, it suggests that although “race” may have a foundation in biology since it carves out populations on the basis of phenomenal characteristics, it is really just a name, albeit a very powerful one, that retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the groupings to which it refers and that it identities in its own name. “Race.” in other words, resolutely does not refer to a pre-given body. Rather, it works performatively to constitute the racial body itself, a bady that only procures a naturalized effect through repeated reference to that body. ‘This suggests that, what might be called racial performativity, is not a singular act of racial body constitution, but a reiterative practice thraugh which discourse brings about the effect that it names. It is only through the force of reiteration that the racial body acquires a naturalized effect. And it is only through such reiterations that this naturalized effect is maintained. As such, there is no reference to a ure racial bady which does not itself add to the further constitution of that body. From this perspective, much like the declaration ‘I's a girl," the utterance “Look, a Negro,” which for Franz Fanon (1987) brings the racial body into a system of racialized meanings, is not so much a statement of fact, as one in a long string of performatives through which the bedy is continuously raced throughout its lifetime. The racing of a body is a never-ending process, one that must be reiterated by various authorities and in various times and places in order to sustain the naturalized effect of “race.” In short, racial performativity is a matter of reiterating the norms through which a racial body is constituted. It is the power of discourse to bring about what itnames through the citation or repetition of norms. For an example of racial pertormativity, of this never-ending constitution of the racial body, we can go back to our discussion of the symbolic economy of dark skin. | have noted that dark skin has traditionally been linked to such traits as ugliness, primitiveness, and dirtiness, and has thus been constructed as signifying inferiority. As such, dark skin has conventionally bean associated with pathology, shame, andinsult. In the case of Mexicans, the signifier “Chicano” has historically been used as a derogatory slurthat denotes the Mexican's dark skin, and hence Indian origins, and that naturalizes the inferior 838LATING STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 place he/she occupied in the racial hierarchy (Limon, 1981; Gutiérrez, 1995). This term, however, cannot be taken as referring te a pre- constituted, always already inferior body. It must be seen, instead, as a name that retroactively produces and naturalizes the bodies to which it refers. As such, the signifier “Chicano,” asa slur orderogatory remark, is not so much a constative utterance, a statement of fact, as 4 performative through which the Mexican body is produced and shamed. itis a performative, moreover, that shames and produces a naturalized effect only through repeated reference to the Mexican body. The idea here is that a performative act of racial shaming and constitution is not a one-time proposition. It succeeds only insofar as “that action echoes prior actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repatition or citation of a prior, authoritative set of practices" (Butler, 19934:227). The term “Chicanc” has thus historically derived its force to constitute racial bodies through the repeated invocations by which it has become linked to degradation, pathologization, and scorn. The tenm functions performatively only to the extent that it invokes convention, that is, ta the extent that it draws on its historicity. !t also only functions performatively to shame bodies insofar as this invocation is a continuously repeated invocation. So for @ performative term such as “Chicano” to have binding power, itis not enough for it to draw on its historicity; it must also draw on it Tepeatedly and continuously. Simply put, then, the success of a performative act af racial shaming and constitution depends on the force of reiteration—on citing previous acts of shaming and compelling future citations. It is thus that the Mexican body is constituted performatively as an effect of discourse. This should not be taken to mean that the construction of the Mexican body, and the racial body more generally, is simply a matter of language. That is, when | speak of the Mexican body as an effect of discourse, | do not mean to reduce it to a linguistic category. To be sure, “discourse” is often used as a linguistic concept. But | utilize “discourse” in an entirely different manner, one in line with Stuart Hall's (1996) definition of the concept. For Hall, A discourse is a group af statements which provide a language for talking about—ie, a way of representing—a particular kind of 89INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND .. knowledge about a topic. When stataments about a topic are made within a particular discourse, the discourse makes it possible to construct the topic in a certain way. It also limits the other ways in which the topic can be constructed. A discourse does not consist of one statement, but of several statements working together to form...a ‘discursive formation.’ The statements fit together because any one staternent implies a relation to all others... One important point about this notion of discourse is that it is not based on the conventional distinction between thought and action, language and practice. Discourse is about the production of knowledge through language. But itis itself produced by a practice: ‘discursive practice’'—the practice of producing meaning. Since all social practices entail meaning, all practices have a discursive aspect. So discourse enters into and influences all social practices (1996:201-202).. The concept of discourse is thus not purely a linguistic notion in two senses. First, “discourse” aims to surmountthe conventional distinction between what one says (language) and what one does (practice). Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Moutfe clarify the interconnection of language and practice in the following terms: Let us suppose that | am building a wall with another bricklayer. Ata certain moment | ask my workmate to pass me a brick and than | add it to the wall. The first act—asking for the brick—is linguistic; the secorid—adding the brick to the walls extralinguistic. Do | exhaust the reality of both acts by drawing the distinction between them in terms of the linguistic'extralinguistic opposition? Evidently not, because, despite their differentiation in those terms, the two actions share something that allows them to be compared, namely the fact that they are both part of a total operation which is the building of the wall. So, then, how could we characterize this totality of which asking for a brick and positioning it are, both, partial moments? Obviously, if this totality includes both linguistic and non-jinguistic elements, it cannot itself be either linguistic or extralinguistic; it has to be prior to this distinction. This totality which includes within itself the linguistic and the non-linguistic, is what we call discourse (1990:100).LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 Discourse, then, is about language and practice. It is about language and practice to the extent that language becomes meaningful in the context of practice. The idea here is that meaning is learned from, and shaped in, instances of use; so both Its learning and its configuration depends on practice. Thus every discursive object is. constituted in the context of action. As such, the distinction between linguistic and behavioral aspects of a social practice is inappropriate and “ought to find its place as a differentiation within the social production of meaning, which Is structured under the form of discursive totalities" (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985:107). Second, “discourse” is ‘not a purely linguistic phenomenon inasmuch as it is not a simple system of ideas but is embodied in institutions, rituals, and so forth (Laclau and Moutfe, 1985). In other words, discourse operates to constitute subjects through its embodiment in institutions; it is in institutional settings that discourse is put to work to regulate the constitution of bodies. The idea of discourse | employ there (borrowing from Hall, Laclau, and Moutte) thus includes written ‘documents, speech, ideas, concrete practices, rituals, institutions, and ‘empirical objects—insofar, of course, as they are meaningful for us ina given context. As a whole | refuse the distinction between discursive and non- discursive practices, such that to speak of the Mexican body as a discursive construct is to see it as embedded across a range of texts and at a number of different institutional sites within society. So the shaming of the Mexican ody takes places not just through language but through a heterogeneous ‘ensemble consisting of language, institutions (e.g., education), regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, and philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions (see, for exampla, the earlier discussion of the ambiguous legal status of Mexicans). Simply put, it is through an indissoluble unity between language, actions, and material objects that the production of the Mexican body, and the racial body more generally, takes place. This suggestion that the Mexican body is an effect of discourse should also not be taken to mean the denial of its materiality, thatis, of its material (flesh and blood) existence. Indeed, if the Mexican body, and the racial body in general, is anything, it is material. That is to say, racial difference is an issue of material difference to the extent that “race” is a difference inscribed ‘on the body. However, racial difference Is never simply a function of material differences that are not in some way both marked and formed by discursive a1INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND practices. The argument here is that there can be no access to a pure materiality of the body outside or before signification and, by extension, no access {0 a pure materiality of bodily lite that is separate trom discourse. The signifying act could thus be said to be performative to the extent that it Gelimits and contours the racial body. This by no means implies putting the existence or reality of the racial body into question. As Laclau and Moutfe point out: ‘The fact that every object is constituted as an object of discourse has nothing to do with whether there is a world external to’ thought, or with the realism/idealism opposition, An earthquake or the falling ot a brick is an event that certainly exists, in the sense that it occurs here and Now, independently of my will. But whether their specificity as objects is constructed in terms of ‘natural phenomena’ or “expressions of the wrath of God,’ depends upon the structuring ofa discursive field. What is denied is not that such objects exist externally to thought, but the rather different assertion that they could constitute themselves as objects outside any discursive condition of emergence (1985:108), In other words, although the existence of the racial body is independent of its discursive articulation, it only becomes meaningful within an historically specific discourse. That is, a racial body can anly become materially a racial body within @ specific discursive configuration. This means that the materiality of the Mexican body, for example, is not prior to discourse, but is its effect. The Mexican body is not simply always already there but has to be Performatively materialized through discourse, Indeed, the Mexican body comes to matter only as an effect of discourse. Alltold, then, the notion of racial performativity refers to the power of discourse to bring about what it names through the citing of norms. It is a matter of reiterating the norms through which a racial body is constituted. So “race” does not refer to a pre-given body. Instead, it works performatively to Constitute the racial body itselt. Moreover, this discursive procuring of the racial body is not simply a matter of language nor does it amount to the denial of the materiality of the racial body. The racial body is actually Constructed through a heterogeneous ensemble of texts (languages), disciplines, and institutions; and it is only through such discursive ‘construction that the racial body becomes meaningful and thus materialized, 92LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 Resignifying the Racial Body So whatis the significance of all this? The upshot is that since “race” does not refer to a pre-constituted natural entity, since the process of naming bodies actually amounts to the very act of their constitution, to their materialization one might say, then “race’ is not an effect of biological truths, but is one of the ways that hegemonic social fictions are produced and maintained as ‘natural’ facts about the world and its inhabitants” (Pellegrini, 1997:98). If this is the case, that is, if‘race" is a social fiction, if the process of naming the racial body actually amounts to its constitution, then no scheme of racial domination can be a systemic totality predestined to hold racialized bodies in subordinate positions. Put differently, since the racing of abody is anever-ending act, since reiterationis necessary in order to sustain the naturalized effect of “race,” this signifies that the constitution of the racial body is never complete. It also means, moreover, that the racial body is always open to the possibility of resignification—to the prospect of being materialized otherwise. The idea here is that while the racial body acquires anaturalized effect through the reiterative practices through which discourse produces the effects that it names, this very same process, this very samme necessity of reiteration, of citing previous norms in the constitution of the racial body, also makes it possible for this process of normalization to be subverted. Indeed, the necessity of reiteration offers the possibility of reiterating the identity of the body otherwise, with a difference. In other words, the iterability, the capacity of being cited, which makes it possible for a racial body to acquire a naturalized effect, also makes it impossible to ever truly succeed in doing so. What happens is that, by virtue of reiteration, “gaps and fissures are opened up as the constitutive instabilities in such constructions, as that which escapes or exceeds the norm, as that which cannot be wholly defined or fixed by the repetitive labor of that norm" (Butler, 1993a:10). This instability could be called the deconstituting potentiality in the process of reiteration, making the racial body the site for the perpetual possibility of a certain resignifying process, the site for the proliferation of certain effects that undermine the power of normalization. In other words, while the necessity of reiteration does succeed in producing normative bodies, it also produces the site where the norm is called into question and where it can potentially be 93INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND ...... rearticulated: In this sense, disciplinary discourse does not unilaterally constitute a subject or rather, ifit does, it simultaneously constitutes the condition for the subject's de-constitution. What is brought into being through the performative effect of the interpellating demand is much more than a “subject,” for the “subject” created is not for that reason fixed in place: it becomes the occasion for a further making. Indeed, | would add, @ subject only remains a subject through a reiteration or rearticulation of itself as a subject, and this dependency of the subject ‘on repetition for coherence may constitute that subject's incaherence, its incomplete character. This repetition or, better, iterability thus becomes the non-place of subversion, the possibility of a re- embodying of the subjectivating norm that can redirect its normativity (Butler, 1997:99). In effect, the reiterative process, the process af infinite repeatability through which a racial body is produced, opens up that body to redeployment, to being constituted otherwise. Thus, to think of the racial body through performativity calls our attention to those constitutive instabilities that contest the naturalizing effects of discourse. For an example of this rearticulatory process, we can go back, again, to our discussion of the symbolic economy of dark skin. | noted earlier that the term “Chicano” has operated performatively to shame Mexican bodies only to the extent that it invoked convention, that is, to the extent that it drew n its historicity. It also only functioned performatively to naturalize bodies insofaras this invocation was a continuously reiterated invocation. One could argue, that the fact that this reiteration was necessary is a sign that the shaming of a bady is never complete—that the shaming of the racial body is a never-ending process. One could argue, too, that since this shaming is never complete, that since the term *Chicano” must continually be repeated in order to effectively shame racial subjects, it means that the racial body is open to the possibility of resignification, that the term "Chicano" is open tothe prospect of being rearticulated otherwise. The subversion of the processes through which the racial body is shamed thus becomes a matter of inhabiting the practices of rearticulation. This is precisely what has happened in reference to the name 94LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 “Chicano.” During the 1960s, in the context the Chicano Movement and the various civil rights and power movernents more generally. this term, one that had historically signaled degradlation and shame, was refunctioned to signify anew and alfirmative assemblage of meanings. So rather than being a mark of shame or a paralyzing slur, “Chicano” was taken up as a sign of pride—a sign of pride in being “brown,” in being the dark skinned descendants of Indian peoples. (Overall, the term emphasized the Indian as opposed to the European origins of Mexicans, giving posttive value to that which had historically been degraded and devalued, This revaluation of the Indian was most clearly visible in the numercus indiganous, primarily Aztec, myths and images that came to stand for Chicano identity—Aztlan, flor y canto, eagles, ‘serpents, cactus fruits, quinto sol [Pérez-Torres, 1995]). The resignification ‘of the racial body thus takes place through the appropriation of the power to name oneself and set the conditions under which the nameis employed. This strategy Is meant to consign the term “Chicano” to past degradation and Present or future affirmation. As such, the shaming interpellation “Chicano” is not simply taken as an order to be obeyed but as the imperative to be cited and refigured. Thus the body that is raced through the shaming interpellation “Chicano” takes up the very term as the discursive basis for an opposition. This resignifying process is not without prablems, however. In her discussion of the term “queer,” Judith Butler notes that the expectation of self-determination that self-naming arouses is paradoxically contested by the historicity of the name itself: by the history of the usages that one never controlled, but that constrain the very usage that now emblematizes autonomy; by the future efforts to deploy the term against the grain of the currant ones, and that will exceed the contra of those who seek to set the course of the terms in the present (1993a:228). For us, this means that although the term “Chicano” can and has been used as a site of collective contestation, as a sign of brawn" pride, itis a term that can never be fully controlled. Not only is it constrained by its past articulations, but it must also be open to future and unforeseeable enunciations. It is simply impossible to sustain any kind of mastery over the trajectory of any discursive category. In this sense, although it is possible to lay claim to the tem “Chicano” in its affirmative sense, it will always remain 95INDA/PERFORMATIVITY, MATERIALITY, AND in tension with its deployment as a racist term in everyday life. in the end, “performativity describes this relation of being implicated in that which one opposes, this tuming of power against itself to produce alternative modalities of power, to establish a kind of political contestation that is not a ‘pure’ @pposition, a ‘transcendence’ of contemporary relations of power, but a difficult labor of forging a future from resources inevitably impure” (Butler, 1993a:241). Race Does Not Exist, Sort of In. sum, the argument here has been that the racial body as such does. fot exist. There is simply no biolagical basis for dividing the human ‘species: into groups based on the idea that certain physical traits, such as skin color, are tied to attributes of behavior, intellect, and morality. “Race” is not a fact of nature. But it does exist to the extent that it is an integral part of the classificatory systems through which social order is produced and maintained. Society gives meaning to things by allotting them different places within a classificatory system; or rather, that social groups impose meaning on their world by ordering and organizing matter, often through the construction of binary oppositions such as us/them, selfiother, and “white"*non-white” (Hall, 1997). “Race’s" power, as David Goldberg has pointed out, has consistedinits adaptive capacity to define population groups, and by extension social agents, as seif and other at various historical Moments. It has thus facilitated the fixing of characterizations of inclusion and exclusion, giving an apparent specificity otherwise lacking to social relations. To be capable of this, race itself must be almost but not quite empty in its own connotative capacity, able to signify not so much in itself as by adopting and giving naturalized form to prevailing conceptions of social group formation at different times (1992:558). Thus, while “race” may not be a natural category, it nevertheless plays a central role in the construction and rationalization of orders of difference, making group relations appear as if they were natural and unchangeable. ‘The fundamental importance that “race” bears in itself “is not of biological but 96LATINO STUDIES JOURNAL/FALL 2000 of naturalized group relations” (Goldberg, 1992;559); it gives social relations the facade of long duration, hence reducing, essentializi and fixing difference. If “race” has the. countenance of being a steadfast interior depth, it is only to the extent that it is a reiterated enactment of norms that retroactively constructs the appearance of “race” as a static essence. The upshot of this paper is that since “race” as such does not exist, then in order for a group or collective subject to become a “race,” to be called a “race,” it really has to be made or categorized into one. In other words, since “face” does not refer to an already constituted entity, a group cannot be a “race” outside of the active forces that construct it. Thus 2 racial body, in order to be itself, has to undergo some kind of process that would turn it into itself. | call this process racial performativity, which basically refers to the Power of discourse to procure what it names. It refers to how “race” is constituted performatively as a kind of speech act that, in the very act of uttering, retroactively constitutes and naturalizes the bodies to which itrefers. ‘The racial body only acquires a naturalized effect through repeated referance ‘to that body, through the force of reiteration. It is also through this reiterative Process, the process of infinite repeatability through which a body is materialized, that the racial body is opened to redeployment, to being ‘constituted otherwise. Racial performativity thus brings to our attention those constitutive instabilities that challenge the naturalizing effects of discourse. There is no guarantee, of course, that subversion will ensue from the feiteration of constitutive norms, but at least there is hope. What racial Pertormativity does is steer us to thinking about “race” in terms of processes rather than as a natural category. It calls attention to the ways in which “race” is always actively constructed, to how its referents are inherently unstable, ‘thus making it open to multiple rearticulations. REFERENCES Almaguer, Tomas. 1994, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White ‘Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press). Austin, J. L. 1975. How to Do Things With Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Butler, Judith. 1993a. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” 97INDA/PERFORMATIVITY. MATERIALITY, AND (New York: Routledge). — 1993b. “Critically Queer.” GLO: A Joumal of Lesbian & Gay Studies, 1 (1): 17-32. — 1997. The Psychic Lite of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Culler, Jonathan. 1997. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxtord: Oxford University Press). Derrida, Jacques. 1981. Positions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). — 1988. Limited Inc. (Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press). Fanon, Franz. 1967. Black Skins, White Masks (New York: Evergreen-Grove Press). Fredrickson, George M. 1981. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and South African History (Oxtord: Oxford University Press). Goldberg, David Theo. 1992. "The Semantics of Race.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15 (4): 543-69, Gullaumin, Colette. 1888. "Race and Nature: The System of Marks.” Feminist issues, 8 (2): 25-43. Gutiérrez, David G. 1995. Walls and Miors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Poitics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press). Hall, Stuart. 1996, "The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power,” in Stuart Hall, David Held, Don Hubert and Kenneth Thompson, eds., Modemity: An Introduction to Modem Societies (Oxtord: Blackwel Publishers); 184-227. — 1997. "The Spectacle of the ‘Other’.” in Stuart Hall, ed., Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage Publications); 223-290, Hermstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray. 1994. The Bel! Curve: intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (New York: Fiee Press). Hyde, Alan, 1997. Bodies of Law (Princeton, Nu: Princeton University Press). Laciau, Emesto and Chantal Moutfe. 1985. Hegemony & Socialist Strategy: 98AR nRorO eLU TOURER EYE Towards a Fiadical Democratic Politics (London: Versa). Laclau, Emesto and Chantal Mouffe. 1990. “Post-Manism without Apologies," in Emesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Aevolution of Our Time (London: Verso); 97-132. Limon, José E. 1981. “The Folk Performance of ‘Chicano’ and the Cultural Limits of Political Ideology,” in Richard Bauman and Roger D. Abrahams, eds., “And Other Neighborly Names”: Social Process and Cultural mage in Texas Foiklore (Austin: University of Texas Press); 197-225, Linke, Uli. 1899. German Bodies: Race and Representation After Hitler (New ‘York: Routledge). Menchaca, Martha. 1993. “Chicano Indianism: A Historical Account of Racial Repression in the United States.” American Ethnologist, 20 (3): 883-603. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant, 1994. Raciai Formation in the United ‘States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge). Pellegrini, Ann, 1997. Perfarmance Anxleties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race (New York: Routledge). Pérez-Torres, Rafael. 1995. Movements.in Chicano Poetry: Against Myths, Against Margins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Rawls, James J. 1984, Indians of Caltornia: The Changing image (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press). Jonathan Xavier Inda teaches anthropology and global cultural studies in the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is coeditor of Aace, identity and Citizenship: A Reader (Blackwell, 1999) and has published articles on globalization, migration, and race in Educational Policy, Discourse, Cultural Studias: A fiesearch Volume, and Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropolagy. Heis currently co-editing a book with Renato Rosaldo on the anthropology of globalization.