The Technology of Race: Enframing, Violence, and Taming the Unruly

Drawing on Heidegger and Foucault, I argue that we need to understand race as a technology. Race has three technological dimensions: instrumental, naturalizing, and concealment. Through this understanding, I hope to bridge two discourses that appear disconnected: Race as Color, Blood, and Genealogy, which sees race as phenotypical or biological, and eclipses a discussion of political power, and Political Othering, which eclipses race in its accounts of political ostracization. Finally, the implications of thetechnology of race can be understood by turning to Heidegger’s notion of Enframing, Foucault’s notion of the racist state, and Benjamin’s articulation of the inherent violence of law.