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Class, Race, and Marxism
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Founder of whiteness studies surveys the race–class relationship
Seen as a key figure in the critical study of whiteness, US historian David Roediger has sometimes received criticism, and praise, alleging that he left Marxism behind in order to work on questions of identity. This volume collects his recent and new work implicitly and explicitly challenging such a view. In his historical studies of the intersections of race, settler colonialism, and slavery, in his major essay (with Elizabeth Esch) on race and the management of labour, in his detailing of the origins of critical studies of whiteness within Marxism, and in his reflections on the history of solidarity, Roediger argues that racial division is part of not only of the history of capitalism but also of the logic of capital.
Reviews
David Roediger’s work is always as learned as it is profoundly engaged with the pursuit of social justice. From his signature study of The Wages of Whiteness, to the analysis of links between settler colonial dispossession, gendered social reproduction, plantation management, and immigrant labor in the making of modern racial capitalism – Roediger’s bold commitments to demonstrating the historical and ongoing imbrications of race and class in the United States are timely, and more necessary than ever.
On Wages of Whiteness:
The Celestine Prophecy of whiteness studies.
On Wages of Whiteness:
An extremely important and insightful book.
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On Seizing Freedom:
Seizing Freedom persuasively documents theself-emancipation of the enslaved Black folk of the American South. A meticulously researched book, it offers close readings of verbal and visualtexts, unfailingly attentive to issues of race, gender, and labor coming together and falling apart. It brilliantly brings together disability studies, race in the Civil War, and the disappearance of the gold standard. A worthy supplement to Du Bois's Black Reconstruction. -
On Seizing Freedom:
This sparkling book does more than merely restore and underscore the agency of bold worker-slaves in attempts to make the US democratic and free. It aims artfully at the underlying mechanisms of revolutionary transformation: imagination and solidarity, time, labor and the human body, gender, class and race. In Roediger’s hands, these are neither dry nor overly abstract categories. The insurgent history of abolition gets resuscitated and used vividly to address a host of stalled contemporary debates and ossified styles of thought. -
On How Race Survived US History:
A pithy little book ... Remind[s] us that whiteness was built over centuries on a foundation of deceit and confusion and disguised political imperatives., The New Yorker -
On How Race Survived US History:
Starred Review. This rousing, thought-provoking history illuminates the enveloping 400-year-old history of race in America, and the issues [Roediger] raises are as relevant as ever.Publishers Weekly -
Excellent
Counterpunch -
A wealth of interesting historical insights and a breath of fresh air for anyone who feels there is a space to be found between the caricatures that "Tumblr social justice warriors" and "old white men of the left" paint of each other.
, Morning Star -
David Roediger wades into the fray with refreshing nuance and generosity.
In These Times -
Roediger’s book couldn’t have appeared at a more timely moment.
Brooklyn Rail -
A scintillating compilation...Roediger's book explains exactly why even the most sickening atavisms of racism are fully compatible with the capitalist order, with ramifications into the 21st century.
, Against the Current -
Roediger addresses the challenges that class and race continue to present for U.S. radicals ... should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the era of Trumpian politics. This is an important book, with lessons that some way wish to ignore, but at their peril.
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“Studying, understanding, struggling against, and ultimately replacing this centuries-old, foundational, and deep societal reality remains essential, as Roediger, a consistently pathbreaking historian, makes clear in these insightful essays.”
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“Amid the cacophony of competing perspectives, David Roediger's Class, Race and Marxismnot only expertly evaluates the historical, theoretical, and political stakes of contemporary debates on race and class, but also significantly contributes to scholarship that "refus[es] to place race outside of the logic of capital".”