Racial Capitalism

Das sagt der/die Veranstalter:in:

The term “racial capitalism” is increasingly used to insist that, as a matter of historical fact, industrial capitalism was built on the basis of colonialism and slavery, and that, as a matter of sociological fact, capitalist accumulation continues to operate through racial differentiation and hierarchization. In recent years, “racial capitalism” has attracted not only sustained theoretical attention, but it has also become an important reference point for radical social movements such as the Movement for Black Lives. It is not difficult to see why: race (just like gender) structures who can access jobs, wages, housing, credit, mobility across borders and other social goods; and being subjected to austerity, police violence, imprisonment, environmental hazards and health risks is in fundamental ways inflected by racism. Even if one recognizes the reality and indeed centrality of these phenomena to an adequate understanding of capitalism, however, it remains disputed whether, and if so how, the notion of racial capitalism can be systematically spelled out in ways that go beyond its often vague and undertheorized invocation.
In this summer school we will explore some of the central philosophical and socio-theoretical issues the turn to “racial capitalism” raises: Is the link between capitalism and racism historically contingent or necessary? If capitalism is necessarily racist, what makes it so? If race and gender are not accidental to, but constitutive of capitalism, how can the relation between class, race and gender be conceptualized in ways that also track their realignment in the current constellation? If, in the framework of racial capitalism, race is not primarily an identity but a structure of power, how does this impact our analysis both of capitalism and the movements that struggle against oppression and exploitation? And if the universal proletariat can no longer serve as the subject of revolutionary emancipation, what is the horizon for anti-capitalist struggles and transversal forms of solidarity today that can prevent emancipatory politics from splintering into a diversity of struggles that often remain at cross-purposes?
The public roundtable of this year’s International Critical Theory Summer School will provide an opportunity to discuss approaches to the economy in contemporary social theory.