Racial Evaporations

Abstract

T he image evoked by the title of this chapter is borrowed from David Theo Goldberg, who emphasizes that race is not a biological feature, nor does it merely constitute “a set of ideas or understandings”; rather, it is a “social fiction” 1 that “represents, more broadly, a way (or a set of ways) of being in the world, of living, of meaning-making” (“Racial Europeanization” 334). Goldberg focuses on a phenomenon that he defines as European, which I employ here to analyze the Italian context: the evaporation of race as a critical category both in contemporary cultural debate and in the analysis of national identity construction processes in Europe, which are based on the Otherization and racialization previously enacted in the colonial context (Goldberg, “Racial,” The Threat of Race ). 2 As Goldberg states, “Race has been rendered invisible, untouchable, as unnoticeably polluting as the toxic air we breathe. Unseen yet we still suffer the racist effects” (“Racial” 339). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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