Essay Against Race: Avery F. Gordon's Ghostly Matters

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Narratives of (Black) Life and Loss: The Methodological Work of Haunting Extending on the theoretical work and critique of positivist science, Du Bois grants readers throughout “Sociology Hesitant,” Avery F. Gordon’s Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination provides scholars with a methodological intervention capable of subverting and unsettling the logics and project(s) of sociology. While “Sociology Hesitant” looks towards chance as a(n) alternative/secondary rhythm, Ghostly Matters is (perhaps) an attempt at subverting colonial-sociological rhythms altogether. For Gordon, this methodological intervention—the subversion of sociological rhythm(s)—occurs in the geographic space of the between. Sociology (re)produces and reifies (social) …show more content…

Paul Gilroy and the Sociological Concern Around Categorization Throughout his monograph, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line, Paul Gilroy articulates a devastating critique of race, particularly the enactment of race in sociology and global politics historically, and at the turn of the millennium. Against Race is an attempt to threaten the sociological study of race, the reproduction and reification of race, as well as the perceived objectivity of race. Furthermore, Gilroy argues that race-based identity politics are an apparatus of state property and control, ultimately operating as a violence against humanity built on the falsity of racial difference. Through a critique of (and engagement with) the nation-state, fascist cultures, and identity politics, Against Race complicates the theoretical need for the categorization of race and opts for a new utopian humanism which rejects the historical and stereotypical notions of race while maintaining an understanding of the realities and effects of

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