The ‘savage’ child and the nature of race: Posthuman interventions from New York City

Abstract

This article intervenes in the scholarship of race by way of the child, demonstrating how childhood is a doubly strategic site in disrupting the ontology of race as natural type or kind. One path involves disentangling children’s association with nature, a tragic knot conjoined through a particular conception of the human. This strategy reveals the savage child that apprehends and sorts bodily differences, working to sustain the nature of race. Rejecting the savage child opens up a space to view actual children through a distinct posthuman lens that emphasizes laughter, play and surrealism in everyday life. Drawing on ethnographic material where children in New York City struggled with the visibility of the body, I demonstrate that alternative ontologies of race are possible and do exist. These tasks allow both race and childhood to emerge in a new light, with important implications for anthropology’s cherished idea of the human.