The Whiteness Issue

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The Whiteness Issue

September 2017

INTRODUCTION

The first issue of The Racial Imaginary’s website centers around constructions, deconstructions, and visualizations of/around whiteness, white identity, white rage/fragility/violence, and white dominant structures. We have envisioned this as a mobile space to be periodically updated with new work.

We have gathered here work by scholars, MFA students and cohorts, theater artists, photographers, sound artists, painters and multimedia artists, poets, and essayists in order to create a matrix of interconnected work, both new and previously shown, that interrogates one of the most toxic ideological strongholds threatening our collective survival.

The Institute begins with a focus on whiteness because we believe that in our current moment whiteness is freshly articulated: the volume on whiteness has been turned up. Whiteness as a source of unquestioned power, and as a “bloc,” feels itself to be endangered even as it retains its hold on power. Given that the concept of racial hierarchy is a strategy employed to support white dominance, whiteness is an important aspect of any conversation about race. We begin here in order to make visible that which has been intentionally presented as inevitable so that we can move forward into more revelatory conversations about race. Our first project questions what can be made when we investigate, evade, beset and call out bloc-whiteness.

We hope that these materials provide a platform for conversation, organization, and new work.

The first issue of The Racial Imaginary’s website centers around constructions, deconstructions, and visualizations of/around whiteness, white identity, white rage/fragility/violence, and white dominant structures. We have envisioned this as a mobile space to be periodically updated with new work.

We have gathered here work by scholars, MFA students and cohorts, theater artists, photographers, sound artists, painters and multimedia artists, poets, and essayists in order to create a matrix of interconnected work, both new and previously shown, that interrogates one of the most toxic ideological strongholds threatening our collective survival.

The Institute begins with a focus on whiteness because we believe that in our current moment whiteness is freshly articulated: the volume on whiteness has been turned up. Whiteness as a source of unquestioned power, and as a “bloc,” feels itself to be endangered even as it retains its hold on power. Given that the concept of racial hierarchy is a strategy employed to support white dominance, whiteness is an important aspect of any conversation about race. We begin here in order to make visible that which has been intentionally presented as inevitable so that we can move forward into more revelatory conversations about race. Our first project questions what can be made when we investigate, evade, beset and call out bloc-whiteness.

We hope that these materials provide a platform for conversation, organization, and new work.

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Anne Carson

Richard Kraft

Martha S. Jones

Alix Lambert

Mores McWreath

Simone White

Pratt Institute MFA

Mark Peterson

Nate Lewis

Cortney Lamar Charleston

Hank Willis Thomas

Nicole Sealey

Alexandra Bell

Carla Liesching

Steven Glavey

Sarah Duncan

Krystal Languell

Letters to Our Children

Hew Locke

Jason Lipeles

Evie Shockley

Nari Ward

Tracie Morris

John Lucas

Casey Llewellyn

Susan Briante

Kate Greenstreet

Toyin Ojih Odutola

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa

Suzanne Broughel

Joy Katz

Nona Faustine

Young Jean Lee

Anne Carson

Richard Kraft

Martha S. Jones

Alix Lambert

Mores McWreath

Simone White

Pratt Institute MFA

Mark Peterson

Nate Lewis

Cortney Lamar Charleston

Hank Willis Thomas

Nicole Sealey

Alexandra Bell

Carla Liesching

Steven Glavey

Sarah Duncan

Krystal Languell

Letters to Our Children

Hew Locke

Jason Lipeles

Evie Shockley

Nari Ward

Tracie Morris

John Lucas

Casey Llewellyn

Susan Briante

Kate Greenstreet

Toyin Ojih Odutola

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa

Suzanne Broughel

Joy Katz

Nona Faustine

Young Jean Lee

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