Killing sympathy. About Jodi Melamed book Represent and destroy: Rationalizing violence in a new racial capitalism
Killing sympathy. About Jodi Melamed book Represent and destroy: Rationalizing violence in a new racial capitalism

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the book Represent and destroy: Rationalizing violence in a new racial capitalism by Jodi Melamed. The author of the book identifies and describes three different theories of race, all officially antiracist, which over the last seventy years successively enjoyed dominant status in the United States, meaning that they have been produced and reproduced by state institutions and initiatives. The three theories are racial liberalism, liberal multiculturalism and neoliberal multiculturalism. Jodi Melamed argues that their purpose was, frst and foremost, to legitimize the capitalist exploitation of colored people, both locally and globally. As Melamed examines the critical attitudes to the dominant approach to race in the USA, and how their polemical potential has been contained, she demonstrates how post-war antiracist ideologies have limited the understanding of racism and provided the foundations for and normalized new forms of racialized violence.

• Details
• Contents