Theorizing Race in the Americas
Theorizing Race in the Americas
Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos
In 1845 two thinkers from the American hemisphere – the Argentinean statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and the fugitive ex-slave, abolitionist leader, and orator from the United States, Frederick Douglass – both published their first works. Each would become the most famous and enduring texts in what were both prolific careers, and they ensured Sarmiento and Douglass’ position as leading figures in the canon of Latin American and U.S. African-American political thought, respectively. But despite the fact that both deal directly with key political and philosophical questions in the Americas, Douglass and Sarmiento, like African-American and Latin American thought more generally, are never read alongside each other. This may be because their ideas about race differed dramatically. Sarmiento advocated the Europeanization of Latin America and espoused a virulent form of anti-indigenous racism, while Douglass opposed slavery and defended the full humanity of black persons. Still,
as Juliet Hooker contends, looking at the two together allows one to chart a hemispheric intellectual geography of race that challenges political theory’s preoccupation with and assumptions about East / West comparisons, and questions the use of comparison as a tool in the production of theory and philosophy.
By juxtaposing four prominent nineteenth and twentieth-century thinkers – Frederick Douglass, Domingo F. Sarmiento, W. E. B. Du Bois, and José Vasconcelos – her book will be the first to bring African-American and Latin American political thought into conversation. Hooker stresses that Latin American and U.S. ideas about race were not developed in isolation, but grew out of transnational intellectual exchanges across the Americas. In so doing, she shows that nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. and Latin American thinkers each looked to political models in the ‘other’ America to advance racial projects in their own countries. Reading these four intellectuals as hemispheric thinkers, Hooker foregrounds elements of their work that have been dismissed by dominant readings, and provides a crucial platform to bridge the canons of Latin American and African-American political thought.
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Praise
“Hooker’s emphasis on noncanonical works and hemispheric dimensions enriches the already extensive scholarship on these four men, providing a creative contribution to critical race studies and decolonial political philosophy.” — Nancy P. Appelbaum, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Latin American Research Review
“Juliet Hooker’s Theorizing Race in the Americas is a refreshing intervention in Black, American, and Latin American political thought that transforms these fields through an original hemispheric juxtaposition. We are indebted to Hooker’s powerful intervention.” — Ines Valdez, Contemporary Political Theory
“Theorizing Race in the Americas is more than a groundbreaking guide about how to recognize the intersection of race, gender, and geography when we see it – be in Latin American and African American thought or across national boundaries throughout the Americas. Hooker’s work is equally significant because it shows how and why we need to examine the complex, progressive, and not so-progressive politics that often arises at these intersections.” — Keisha Lindsay, Contemporary Political Theory
“Theorizing Race in the Americas is a bold innovation in thinking across lines of discourse, method, region, and nation in order to engage in what could be called ‘hemispheric’ thinking.” — James Martel, Contemporary Political Theory
“The scholarship of Juliet Hooker compellingly challenges narrow conventions and beckons us to think beyond existing boundaries of knowledge. Hooker belongs to a short list of pioneering contemporary intellectuals exploring the meanings of race and their implications for the private sphere, civil and political society, identity and difference, citizens and foreigners, slavery, fugitivity, freedom, rights, sociality, solidarity, and democracy. The age of Trump in the United States and Bolsonaro in Brazil, coupled with retrenchments, realignments, and transformations in polities, their leadership, and their inhabitants’ ways of life across the Americas, highlight the continuing rather than declining significance of race. We would be wise to take heed of the content in Hooker’s valuable text.” — Neil Roberts, Contemporary Political Theory
“Hooker has made a remarkable contribution to our understanding of the discourse on race in the Americas by bringing the works of four of the most important theorists of race and difference into conversation with each other for the first time. Hooker has given us a seminal analysis of key similarities and differences in the development of scientific racism and racial thought in the Western Hemisphere, from debates about slavery before the Civil War and the legalization of de jure segregation in the latter half of the nineteenth century, to the rise of eugenics in the twentieth century. This is an original contribution to scholarship, required reading for every student of the history of race and racism, redefining what should properly be understood as ‘American Studies.'” — Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University
“In this groundbreaking book, Juliet Hooker traces the simultaneous development of racial thought across the United States and Latin America. With theoretical precision, Hooker innovatively juxtaposes the ideas of Frederick Douglass and Domingo F. Sarmiento, and W.E.B. Du Bois and José Vasconcelos. Her ‘hemispheric’ perspective allows us to read ‘familiar’ theorists in ways that yield new and important insights. This book is of utmost importance to not only the scholarship on African-American political thought, but the political thought of the Americas. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the theory and practice of race and politics in the Americas. Theorizing Race in the Americas should not be missed.” — Michael Dawson, The University of Chicago