Race and the historiography of its 'scientific' inquiry: early problematic assumptions and contemporary dilemmas

Abstract

This commentary paper offers a critical appraisal on the essentialist use of the concept of race which, it is argued, underpins the discourse of human relations in most multicultural and pluralistic societies. The paper traces talk about race within the social sciences and humanities and comments on how racial politics born of colonial and neocolonial relations of production influence contemporary debates. Following a consideration of the complications that ensue the way in which race has been understood and theorised as a particular fiction of scientific inquiry, the paper turns to a consideration of alternative ways of thinking about race, which have emerged from more recent critical, indigenous, and postcolonial standpoints. The paper therefore addresses the question of how to imagine difference in a way that does not entail its reification and cementation in research. The paper concludes by making some tentative suggestions for the possibility of a critical approach of researching human difference in the so-called post-racial contexts.