What about the former colonizer who is in the space of the former colonized. What Lefebvre (1991) proposes to overcome reductionist views of spatialization is the triple dialectic of space (although Lefebvre (1991) is still unclear as to the precise interaction between the three, his theory provides a good approach to the different aspects of spatialization ) ;. 3) Representation space - the abstract space of the social imaginary. It is thus to a discussion of the so-called 'new cultural geography' that I now turn.
We make sense of the world in the only 'rational' way: from our own experiences. Sewn over centuries into the seams of the social fabric, the idea of race (or really the ideas, for they are many) provides the terms around which a complex of social hopes, fears, anxieties, angers, aspirations, self-aggrandizements, and identities are articulated " (Goldberg, 1997:8). By the mid-19th century, 'race' had become a dominant scientific concept (as well as a highly political one).
The influence of the 'reasonable mind' (see Kincheloe, 1999) was to ensure that the epistemologies of racial inquiry, throughout the 20th century, engaged in ways of explaining the complexity of group structure and relations, in terms of simpler more 'fundamental' levels taken at their foundation (Goldberg, 1992). This technology marks a fundamental change of scale in the perception and understanding of the human body. In addition, it is important to return to the history of the concept to simultaneously focus on the changing social manifestations in the context of changing conceptions of 'race'.
The invisibility of the experience of whiteness is for many the most important element in its composition. For Dyer (1997), all concepts of 'race' are always concepts of the body and of heterosexuality.
Escaping Whiteness and Anti-racism
Escaping Whiteness
Primitivism is often treated as a rather odd and minor example of social fantasy, "however, if we accept that modernity was and is racialized, that it is Eurocentric, then primitivism - as a voice of pre- or non-modernity begins to emerge as an imminent and inevitable critical moment, as a site of resistance to modernity produced within modernity.. The fact that this site of resistance has often been a site of racist fantasy is a dilemma faced by all who wish to confront and to redefine the meaning of modern".
Anti-racism
They also lead to the positioning (or self-positioning) of white people as fundamentally outside and untouched by the contemporary controversies of racial identity politics. Many contemporary anti-racist debates address whiteness as an unproblematic category (albeit with negative characteristics), one not subject to the constant processes of challenge and change that have characterized the history of other ethnic and racial names. This process allows white people to take a privileged place in the anti-racist debate; they are allowed the luxury of being passive observers, of being altruistically motivated, of knowing that 'their' racial identity can be vilified and criticized, but never truly smoothed over, made public, or even abolished" (Bonnett.
But 'white' has been excluded from acceptable or contested nouns and adjectives, and for most anti-racist works the meaning of whiteness has escaped dispute, allowing the reification of whiteness to take place as erasure-whiteness is simply left out of the discussion. Whiteness is therefore; “uses as the conceptual center and “other” of anti-racism, the defining normative expression of anti-racist practice and theory. The myth of whiteness at the center of the anti-racist discourse views "whiteness" as an immutable condition with clear and distinct moral qualities, namely: being racist - not experiencing racism; to be an oppressor - not to experience oppression; to silence not to be silenced.
The problem is not simply a lack of sensitivity to the plurality of whiteness, but belief in whiteness as a common sense, obvious, and discrete entity at the heart of racial history.
Ethical Clarity for a New Approach
By creating an “essentializing dynamic at the core of a project that is necessarily critical not only of racial stereotypes, but of the “race” concept itself. The experience of “white” people is presented as manifest and unchanging; the markers of whiteness are removed from a social context and placed outside of history and geography. Moreover, even an exceptionally self-reflexive and thoughtful approach to (re)thinking whiteness can fall prey to what Terry (1975) calls “liberal tragedy.”
In this sense, the liberal is a supporter of healthy social growth and fights in his spirit for a free and just world. White liberals are accused here of blurring the real issues and sidestepping the fundamental problem of whiteness, despite “good intentions.” The “white” liberal has consistently advocated open structures and pluralism, but instead sets norms and creates closure that has promoted assimilation or alienation. “The white liberal is not a happy man.
In South Africa, this criticism can be particularly directed at the Democratic Alliance, whose persistent calls for a 'colour-blind society' implicitly deny the racially structured nature of post-apartheid South Africa, as will be discussed in chapter 5.
Geography and Whiteness
For Kobayashi and Peake (2000), perhaps the strongest of imperial geography's metaphors was the "moral-climatic-idiom" (Livingstone in Kobayashi and Peake, who, through the naturalization of racial difference according to climatic classifications, placed 'others' at the bottom of geography's moral terrain 34;The contemporary discipline remains insufficiently critical of its past and therefore reinscribes many of the racialized metaphors on which it was established. The preoccupation with space, for example, often reflects the modern concept of territoriality and the positioning of dominant groups, instead of recognizing that such outcomes are deeply implicated in the rationale for a spatial organization of society based on Enlightenment notions of imperial civilization.
Part of the agenda for the new millennium must therefore be the urgent need to make considerations of racialization a fundamental aspect of geographical understanding, in the same way that more and more geographers have recognized that no human geography is complete without a consideration . of gender" (Kobayashi and Peake, 2000:399). This agenda is urgent not only" because of the theoretical need to recognize racialization as fundamental to social formation, but also because the consequences of racism are a serious threat to the well-being contain and safety of racialized people" (Kobayashi and Peake,2000:399). Moreover, this process involves geographers not only questioning the ways in which whiteness works, but also how we have imposed whiteness on the spaces and subjects in the field, "Here the displacement of both the questioning researcher and the questioned research subject is of crucial importance: the exploration of the intersections between subjects involves the questioning of all subjects involved in research and the displacement of the privileged fixed position of the 'same' from which the author/researcher speaking, writing and interviewing" (Robinson, 1994:221 in Kobayashi and Peake, 2000:400).
There is a vast and growing body of critical literature that largely fails to acknowledge the role of geography (in all senses of the term) in structuring the conditions of racism and the possibilities for change.
Conclusion
More specifically, how to come to terms with the spaces in and of the social construction of whiteness. How can we perceive the intersecting trajectories of whiteness in the context of socialization, material culture, economic location, or political orientation. Thus, in the psychological map of the 'white' center, the 'other' can be translated 'far', despite being a component of that centre.
But compared to whites in the rest of the world, South African whites are no better off. Much of this odious debt has created some of the best infrastructure in the Third World. In a post-apartheid era, the divided landscape of old South Africa is gradually collapsing, forcing 'white' people to reassess our place in the social order.
Representational space is the space where the body intersects (which interacts/lives directly in space) and the space of the unconscious.
How could a critical geographic approach to whiteness look?
The 'White' Public Imagination
Conclusion
Furthermore, a changing sense of identity and place in the social landscape changes our relationship to place. If spaces/places are as much imaginary as they are real, then the task is to be consistently aware of the underlying hegemony in our understanding of the places we inhabit. What trajectories can be mapped for our purposes into the schedules, routines, and individual daily practices of the apartheid city?
How is whiteness involved in the social production of racialized landscapes, or in terms of the central issue in this chapter: how does whiteness take place in urban space. While issues of public space and social justice in modern, racialized cities cannot be reduced to racial identity alone, “race” is an important force in the social construction of the spaces and places in our cities. First, it allows us to consider the role of racial experiences, perceptions and imaginations in the production of public space, and second, it allows us to consider the representational space of the 'white' imagination.
They are part of the social/physical spaces that we experience, perceive and imagine every day.
Conclusion
Frankenburg, R., 1993: The Social Construction of Whiteness - hvide kvinder, race matters, Routledge, University of Minnesota Press. Gilroy, P., 1997: The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, London og New York. Pile (red.) 1993: Place and the PoliticsofIdentity, Routledge, London og New York. red.) 1993; Place and the Politics of Identity, Routledge, London og New York.
Kincheloe, J.L., 1999: The Struggle to Define and Reinvent Whiteness: A Pedagogical Analysis, http://xroads.virginia.edu/-DRBR/kincheloe.html. Moon, D., 1999: White Enculturation and Bourgeois Ideology: The Diskursive Production of ·Good (White) Girls·, In: T.K Nakayama and J.N. Nakayama, T.K og Martin, J.N., 1999: Introduktion: Hvidhed som kommunikation af social identitet, I: TK Nakayama og J.N.
Martin (ed.) 1999: Whiteness – the communication of social identity, Sage Publications, London. Ed.) 1992: The Apartheid City and Beyond - Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa, Routledge, London and New York.
