1st Edition

The Biopolitics of Mixing Thai Multiracialities and Haunted Ascendancies

By Jinthana Haritaworn Copyright 2012
    200 Pages
    by Routledge

    200 Pages
    by Routledge

    Debates over who belongs in Europe and who doesn't increasingly speak the language of mixing, but how are the figures commonly described as 'mixed' actually embodied? The Biopolitics of Mixing invites us to reckon with the spectres of pathologization past and present, placing the celebration of mixing beside moral panics over terrorism and trafficking and a post-race multiculturalism that elevates some as privileged members of the neoliberal community, whilst ghosting others from it. Drawing on a broad archive including rich qualitative interviews conducted in Britain and Germany, media and policy debates, popular culture, race-based research and queer-of-colour theories, this book imagines into being communities in which people and places normally kept separate can coexist in the same reality. As such, it will appeal to scholars across a range of sociological and cultural studies, including critical race, ethnic and migration studies, transnational gender and queer studies, German and European studies, Thai and Southeast Asian studies, and studies of affect, performativity, biopolitics and necropolitics. It should be read by all those interested in thinking critically on the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and disability.

    Contents: Introduction: haunted origins; Where are you from?; From monster to fashion model: regenerating racialized bodies; Is it better to be mixed race?; Hybrid nations, mixed feelings: from marginal man to Obama; Exceptional cities, exceptional citizens: metronormativity and mimeticism; Reckoning with prostitutes: performing Thai femininity; Conclusion: where do we want to go?; Bibliography; Index.

    Biography

    Jinthana Haritaworn is an Assistant Professor in Gender, Race and Environment at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Canada, and a Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies.

    ’A truly path-breaking study into contemporary discourses on multiraciality! Multiracialized people are at times celebrated as icons of multiculturalism, exceptional beauty or the perfect genetic mix. Yet such positive images (of the 'good mix') are haunted by others (of the 'bad mix') which conjure up pathology, degeneracy and sexual transgression. Brave, unique and intellectually rigorous, The Biopolitics of Mixing debunks the myth that we have entered a post-race era.’ Christian Klesse, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK ’This timely and important book offers us a critical lens with which to read the increasing vitality of the figure of the multiracial subject. Drawing on interviews as well as diverse theoretical texts on race, biopolitics, affect and disability, it offers both a persuasive diagnosis of the politics of racial inclusion, and an exploration of how we inhabit worlds in which mixing is at once celebrated and feared.’ Sara Ahmed, Goldsmiths College, UK