Racism, Sexism, Power and Ideology argues that there is nothing obvious' or natural' about our ideas of sex and race. The book looks at the evolution of these ideas. Guillaumin contends that the slow crystallization of ideas on human races' over the last few centuries can be grasped through the study of signs and their systems. However, race and sex are in no way purely abstract or symbolic phenomena. They are the hard facts of society. To be a man or woman, black or white are matters of social reality. To be a member of a particular race or sex does not bring with it the same opportunities, the same rights or the same constraints. The author examines how these constraints operate and shape our life experience. From a more theoretical standpoint the text tackles the particular links between the daily materiality of social relationships and mental conventions. Materiality and ideology (in the sense of the perception of things') are two sides of the same coin. Relationships of sex and race follow an ancient history of physical right of the one over the other. Slavery and patriarchy are defined by direct physical rights which is not without its consequences: those who are factually objects in social relationships (the mental elements of reality) are so equally in thought and reality.
Author(s): Guillaumin
Year: 1995
Language: English
Pages: 304
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Preface......Page 8
Introduction (Re)constructing the categories of 'race' and 'sex': the work of a precursor......Page 12
The specific characteristics of racist ideology (1972)......Page 40
The idea of race and its elevation to autonomous scientific and legal status (1980)......Page 72
'I know it's not nice, but': the changing face of 'race' (1981)......Page 110
'Wildcat' immigration (1984)......Page 119
The rapacious hands of destiny (1984)......Page 127
Race and Nature: the system of marks (1977)......Page 144
Women and theories about society: the effects on theory of the anger of the oppressed (1981)......Page 164
Sexism, a right-wing constant of any discourse: a theoretical note (1988)......Page 182
The practice of power and belief in Nature Part I The appropriation of women (1978)......Page 187
The practice of power and belief in Nature Part II The naturalist discourse (1978)......Page 222
The question of difference (1979)......Page 250
Herrings and tigers: animal behaviour and human society (1978)......Page 270
Nature, history and 'materialism' (1981)......Page 285
Index......Page 295