Race as Common Sense: Racial Classification in Twentieth-Century South Africa
Race as Common Sense: Racial Classification in Twentieth-Century South Africa
复制标题
作为常识的种族：二十世纪南非的种族分类
作者：
D. Posel
摘要：本文分析了二十世纪南非在种族分类方面的国家实践及其认识论基础。它展示了种族隔离的种族分类-大量借鉴了种族隔离国家制定的种族分类-是如何被一个被无所不知的幻想所激励的国家用作监视和控制的工具。种族隔离种族分类政策的设计者明确认识到，种族类别是建构的，而不是对真实的本质的描述--种族观念的一个版本，它使种族差异的“常识”概念官僚化，并直接促成了种族分类者所拥有的巨大权力。如果说是建构的话，这些范畴有力地植根于日常生活的物质性。国家的种族名称无处不在，以及它们与阶级和地位的生活等级的融合程度，意味着种族隔离的种族网格强烈地印在种族的主观体验中。
Abstract: This paper is an analysis of state practice in respect of racial classification and its epistemological underpinnings in twentieth-century South Africa. It shows how apartheid racial categories—drawing heavily on those enacted by the segregationist state—were wielded as instruments of surveillance and control by a state animated by fantasies of omniscience as much as omnipotence. The architects of apartheid racial classification policies recognized explicitly that racial categories were constructs, rather than descriptions of real essences—a version of the idea of race which enabled the bureaucratization of “common sense” notions of racial difference and which contributed direcdy to the enormous powers wielded by racial classifiers. If constructs, these categories were powerfully rooted in the materiality of everyday life. The ubiquity of the state's racial designations, and the extent to which they meshed with lived hierarchies of class and status, meant that apartheid's racial grid was strongly imprinted in the subjective experience of race.