Abstract
In Judith Butler, Race & Education, Chadderton (2018) undertakes the task of explaining how Butler's work is applicable to understanding race and racism in society and how it may be applied to education in general. Butler's work has been celebrated for its contributions to the fields of philosophy, gender studies, politics, sociology, religion, literary theory, ethics, cultural studies, education, and other fields. Butler is best known for her work on gender and social theory. Chadderton (2018) seeks to make Butler's readers aware of the aspects of Butler's work that directly address race and its significance.
Recent research on race embraces the idea that race is a social construct. As such, race is not a scientific reality that is inherently present; instead, it is an arbitrary marker of identity that serves as a demarcation for social categorical assignment. Chadderton (2018) argues that Butler's approach to understanding the reality of race in society is an alternative framework for understanding race. This is because Butler's work focuses on “the operation of power, the formation of the subject, and the workings of marginalization” (p. 4). Butler's approach views race as a hegemonic norm that forms subjects, and a performative, which is made to appear real through the repeated citations, acts, practices, and institutions which make it appear real.
In Butler's earlier work, she posited that gender was performative. Butler has noted that performance and performativity are not the same thing. She explains that we act in ways representative of being a man or that of being a woman as if being a man or woman is an internal reality. Butler argues that gender is a phenomenon that we produce and reproduce all the time through our actions. This notion of performativity rest on the assertion that nobody really has gender from the start. Through “performativity” we create gender. Butler's view of gender is that it is constructed through acts that are in conformance with dominant social norms regarding gender. This same approach can be applied to race.
The application of Butler's approach to race would require that we reject the notion that race is an innate and natural part of an individual's identity. The notion of performativity means that the different meanings of race are made to appear real because of the repeated citations of racial meanings. The book takes Butler's ideas on subject formation, the production of identities, performativity, cultural intelligibility, and the creation of viable and unviable identities and posits that the work on each of these topics has implications for an anti-foundationalist understanding of race in education. The central argument is that racial identity is not fixed or homogenous in nature nor is it tied to bodies. Racial identity is produced and performed. Butler views race as a subjectifying force, a hegemonic norm, and a performative. Race is performatively constituted and acquires its sense of “reality” from the continued citations of the discourse. Chadderton (2018) argues that Butler's work is distinguished from other approaches to race analysis such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) in that its focus is on the role of power and subject formation as opposed to race analysis tools that provide frameworks for analyzing race and racism in education.
Chadderton (2018) concluded that Butler's work does not accept the notion of an essential, stable, or unified subject. Butler's theory of subjectivation isn’t a conscious process. All individuals are subjectivated in their formation as subjects. There is no aspect of a person's identity that preexisted the individual according to Butler. Categories such as race that society assigns to individuals are not fixed to bodies; they are “perceived as being so because we are not able to see beyond our subjectivation” (p. 49).
Discourses are one of many tools used by society to form identities according to Butler. These discourses are social and political, according to Butler, and serve as tools in the formation of identity. Again, no “identity” is a natural given. All identities are created through subjectivation, performativity, and discourse.
Chadderton (2018) applies Butler's work to race and demonstrates how race is produced/reproduced in counterterrorism and surveillance in education, in educating “good citizens,” and even in qualitative research in education.
Chadderton's (2018) assertion that Butler's work offers a different approach to analyzing and understanding the operation of race in our society isn’t convincing. Although it may offer a different ontological perspective for understanding how race is perpetuated as reality, it seems to attach the “blame” for the continued relevance of race on the “subject.” As such, the reader is left wondering about the “operational” usefulness of Butler's framework?
The assertion that Butler's approach targets the role of power and subject formation unlike tools like CRT which is used as a race analysis tool and that serves as a framework for analyzing race, ignores the importance of the role of power and the “subject” in CRT. Indeed, CRT recognizes the existence of power structures that are based on white supremacy and white privilege.
Nevertheless, Chadderton's (2018) book would be a useful tool for students, researchers, and adult educators who seek to understand the operation of race in society. Particularly, it would be useful to those with an interest in understanding how race is perpetuated as a social category even though most agree that the category has no scientific significance.