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archives@tulane.edu / 1 / Dan Castilow

This project brings together concerns over the property-status of animals found in animal studies and animal liberation politics with the movement to abolish prisons and the police that animates Black radical politics. These two strains of thought approach the question of the human in different ways but converge on the necessity of challenging our dominant conceptions of the human as a property-owning subject. Drawing on these two trenchant critiques of property, Animal, Abolition, Property develops an abolitionist politics committed to anti-anthropocentric critique by developing a theory of animal exploitation that sees such exploitation as central to the histories and presents of racial capitalism. The project thinks together a Marxist emphasis on capitalism with a focus on the policing of life found in biopolitical critique. It further enables a way to think beyond Blackness and animality as measures for the other’s abjection and instead stages a dialogue through a critique of the property-form. The project reads the intertwined histories of animal exploitation and racial capitalism from the formation of capitalism as periodized by Marxist historiography within a history of capital’s drive to accumulate animal life ranging from the colonial fur trade to contemporary modes of extracting value from animal life. I draw on the resources of both animal studies and Black Marxist thought to stage this account of capitalism and explore the limits of Marxist theory. The project further thinks about policing as an expansive concept that runs through capitalism’s history and ensures the ability of a given social formation to reproduce itself. The project reads the liberal politics of recognition and suffering and then of pandemic management as political thematics that stitch together questions over racialization, the human, animality, capital accumulation, and violence. It ultimately concludes with thinking about alternatives to the present that engage the promise of multispecies democracy. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation explores two concepts of abolition. The first, animal abolition, maintains that the proper way to do justice to animals is to critique and abolish their status as property. The second, Black radical abolition, shares a focus on property as a form of exploitation and oppression but is focused on the way the state and markets enforce relations of systemic inequality across the board. Instead of trying to identify representative texts from these political traditions and read them together I use the figure of policing as central to a theoretical account of animal life under capitalism, specifically in societies shaped by white supremacy and in societies shaped by the ownership of animals. By doing this, I hope to demonstrate the deep imbrication of race (specifically Blackness) and animal life as well as the centrality of policing to constructing and managing forms of life under capitalism.

Variations and differences in skin colour has been a complex phenomenon around the world. Issues of colour and identity in a postcolonial and post-Apartheid context, is also a significant field of interest. Popular stereotypes portray darker skin pigmentation as undesirable and inferior to lighter pigmentation. The process of ‘lactification’ (Fanon, 1968) remains a question today as much as during earlier colonial times. These stereotypes also bring to the fore, essential questions about hierarchies of power and oppression, culture and identity and how these are shaped to fit popular dominant culture. This study explored peoples’ perceptions around different shades of skin colour and attitudes towards various shades of pigmentation. The study adopted a qualitative approach and explored perceptions around skin colour through in-depth interviews. Fifteen adult participants in Soweto, Gauteng were recruited for the study via purposive sampling. The data collected was analysed using thematic content analysis. The study found that the western idea of attractiveness is still highly regarded. Black women and men take various measures to conform to the western ideal simply to be acknowledged as attractive and stigma is attached to the dark complexion. Self-esteem is affected by the perception of beauty, high perception of attractiveness equals to the high self-esteem.

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This short story collection deals with themes of race, kinship, desire, subjectivity, and appearance vs. reality.

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Too often the acknowledgment that race is a social construction ignores exactly how this construction occurs. By illuminating the way in which the category of blackness and black individuals are made, we can better see how race matters in America. Antidiscrimination policy, social science research, and the state's support of its citizens can all be improved by an accurate and concrete definition of blackness. Making Blackness, Making Policy argues that blackness and black people are literally made rather than discovered. The social construction of blackness involves the naming of individuals as black, and the subsequent interaction between this naming and racial projects. The process of naming involves an intersubjective dialogue in which racial self-identification and ascription by others lead to a consensus on an individual's race. These third parties include an individual's community, the media, and, crucially, the state. Following Ian Hacking, this process is most properly termed the dynamic nominalism of blackness. My dissertation uses analytic philosophy, qualitative and quantitative research, and historical analysis to defend this conception. The dynamic nominalist process is illustrated through the media's contribution to the making of Barack Obama's blackness, and the state's creation and maintenance of racial categories through law, policy, and enumeration. I then argue that the state's dominant role in creating blackness, and the vital role that a black identity plays in millions' sense of self, requires the United States Government to support a politics of recognition. The state's antidiscrimination efforts would also improve through the adoption of a dynamic nominalism of blackness. Replacing the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission's inconsistent and contradictory definitions of race with the dynamic nominalism of blackness would clarify when and how racial discrimination occurs. / African and African American Studies

This dissertation argues that a fantasy of white authority was articulated and disseminated through the representations of blackness and Aboriginality in nineteenth-century American and Australian theatre, and that this fantasy influenced the representation of Aboriginality in twentieth-century Australian culture. The fantasy of whiteness refers to the habitually enacted and environmentally entrenched assumption that white people can and should superintend the cultural representation of Otherness. This argument is presented in three parts. Part One examines the complex ways in which white anxieties and concerns were expressed through discourses of blackness in nineteenth-century American blackface entertainment. Part Two examines the various transnational discursive connections enabled by American and Australian blackface entertainments in Australia during the nineteenth century. Part Three examines the legacy of nineteenth-century blackface entertainment in twentieth-century Australian culture. Overall, this dissertation investigates some of the fragmentary histories and stories about Otherness that coalesce within Australian culture. This examination suggests that representations of Aboriginality in Australian culture are influenced and manipulated by whiteness in ways that seek to entrench and protect white cultural authority. Even today, a phantasmal whiteness is often present within cultural representations of Aboriginality.

This dissertation argues that a fantasy of white authority was articulated and disseminated through the representations of blackness and Aboriginality in nineteenth-century American and Australian theatre, and that this fantasy influenced the representation of Aboriginality in twentieth-century Australian culture. The fantasy of whiteness refers to the habitually enacted and environmentally entrenched assumption that white people can and should superintend the cultural representation of Otherness. This argument is presented in three parts. Part One examines the complex ways in which white anxieties and concerns were expressed through discourses of blackness in nineteenth-century American blackface entertainment. Part Two examines the various transnational discursive connections enabled by American and Australian blackface entertainments in Australia during the nineteenth century. Part Three examines the legacy of nineteenth-century blackface entertainment in twentieth-century Australian culture. Overall, this dissertation investigates some of the fragmentary histories and stories about Otherness that coalesce within Australian culture. This examination suggests that representations of Aboriginality in Australian culture are influenced and manipulated by whiteness in ways that seek to entrench and protect white cultural authority. Even today, a phantasmal whiteness is often present within cultural representations of Aboriginality.