Racial Apparatus. Disposable Lives Management in the United States of America
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.espo.n69a10Keywords:
Subjectivities, Racism, Racial Apparatus, Biopolitics, Power Technologies, United States of AmericaAbstract
Race is a social, political, legal and cultural construction that has functioned as a criterion for the selection, classification and segregation of population groups. The aim of this article is to identify race as one of the most important elements (based on its conceptualization as an apparatus from a biopolitical perspective) in the administration of life in the United States. This way of conceiving race and its function as an apparatus can help understand population management in any other country or State marked by the characteristic imperialist dynamics of capital. It is particularly interesting to show the dynamics of this classification and hierarchization of the population based on colonial relations. Race as an apparatus helps explain how laws, scientific disciplines, customs, and social practices contribute to producing discourses of truth that structure social reality and reproduce it, creating limited spaces of action for racialized subjects. The strategies used to racialize are not always the same, they depend on the population group, the time and the interests of hegemonic powers.
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