Race as technology: From posthuman cyborg to human industry

Abstract

Cyborg and prosthetic technologies frame prominent posthumanist approaches to understanding the nature of race. But these frameworks struggle to accommodate the phenomena of racial passing and racial stationarity, and their posthumanist orientation blurs useful distinctions between racialized humans and their social contexts. We advocate, instead, a humanist approach to race, understanding racial hierarchy as an industrial technology. Our approach accommodates racial passing and stationarity. It integrates a wide array of research across disciplines. It also helpfully distinguishes among the grounds of racialization and conditions facilitating the impacts of such racialization.