Abstract

In this article, I propose the concept of racial feralization to explain the links between planetary urbanization, risk societies and race. The threat of racial feralization – as an apocalyptic eschatology of regression and the unraveling of the species – has always animated and conditioned the emergence of the discourse of ‘Man’ as well as the concept of race. The history of racism, that is, is also a history of responses to possible catastrophic consequences of progress and modernization. A major shift has occurred in the last 25 years or so. Racial feralization is not simply treated as a consequence or product of human activity, but has now entered the realm of power as a way to problematize heterogeneous populations defined by their relation to global risks and urban agglomerations. Ferality thus emerges as a principle of legitimation for the deployment of racial power in new and more vicious forms.