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Racecraft and Speculative Culture
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Racecraft and Speculative Culture

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787). This special issue belongs to the section "Cultural Studies & Critical Theory in the Humanities".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2020) | Viewed by 29236

Special Issue Editors

Dr. J. Jesse Ramírez

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
English Department, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Interests: Speculative cultures; science fiction; futures of technology and work
Dr. Bryan Banker

E-Mail
Guest Editor
Department of English Language and Literature, at TOBB University of Economics and Technology, 06560 Ankara, Turkey
Interests: dialectical philosophy in African American aesthetics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In their seminal work Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, Karen and Barbara Fields argued that “race” is a pseudo-scientific system for explaining invisible forces. For the Fieldses, race is inexorably speculative; it is a way of using imaginary science to construct or craft the extra-empirical reality of racial difference. This Special Issue of Humanities seeks to explore the intersections between the Fieldses’ concept of racecraft—the ensemble of beliefs and practices that make and remake the social reality of race—and the various forms of crafting, pretending, playing, fabulating, extrapolating, cognitively estranging, and world-building in speculative culture. As a super-genre or trans-generic category, the speculative stretches across science fiction, fantasy, and horror, while also including practices such as role playing and fan cultures. If race is already speculatively crafted, what happens when racecraft meets the implausible, magical, fantastic, or weird in speculative culture? 

One important limitation of Racecraft is its neglect of the intersections among race and other forms of difference. Thus, Racecraft and Speculative Culture also seeks to go beyond the Fieldses work and explore how gender, sexuality, class, religion, coloniality, and (dis)ability are crafted with and against race.

This call invites contributions that map the portals between race in the realm we call the real world and the fantasies of race we encounter in the kingdoms of speculation. Possible thematic clusters include, but are not limited to:

  • Biology, genetics, skin color, “blood”, descent, mixture, etc., in the crafting of speculative peoples, bodies, and places
  • “Race before race” in medieval studies and the medieval impulse in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, George R.R. Martin, etc.
  • Colonial and post-colonial racecraft, imperialism, racial capitalism 
  • Racial technologies, race and/as technology 
  • The dystopian, utopian, and apocalyptic dimensions of racecraft and speculative culture; racial speculation as inspiration for projecting and reimagining future societies 
  • Sexual reproduction, reproductive futurism, and racial difference 
  • Alternative and counter-racecrafts, Afrofuturism, Black utopias and dystopias, Chicanafuturism, indigenous and non-European speculative traditions 
  • Young adult fiction, superhero comics, board games, videogames, other historically low-prestige cultural forms
  • Cosplay, comic conventions, fan communities, live action role playing, other non-textual speculative practices. 

Dr. J. Jesse Ramírez
Dr. Bryan Banker
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • racecraft
  • race
  • Fieldses’ concept
  • speculative culture
  • science fiction
  • role playing
  • fan cultures
  • coloniality
  • speculative practices

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 429 KiB  
Article
Keeping It Unreal: Rap, Racecraft, and MF Doom
by J. Jesse Ramírez
Humanities 2021, 10(1), 5; https://doi.org/10.3390/h10010005 - 28 Dec 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 8687
Abstract
Focusing on the masked rapper MF Doom, this article uses Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields’s concept of “racecraft” to theorize how the insidious fiction called “race” shapes and reshapes popular “Black” music. Rap is a mode of racecraft that speculatively binds [...] Read more.
Focusing on the masked rapper MF Doom, this article uses Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields’s concept of “racecraft” to theorize how the insidious fiction called “race” shapes and reshapes popular “Black” music. Rap is a mode of racecraft that speculatively binds or “crafts” historical musical forms to “natural,” bio-geographical and -cultural traits. The result is a music that counts as authentic and “real” to the degree that it sounds “Black,” on the one hand, and a “Blackness” that naturally expresses itself in rap, on the other. The case of MF Doom illustrates how racialized peoples can appropriate ascriptive practices to craft their own identities against dominant forms of racecraft. The ideological and political work of “race” is not only oppressive but also gives members of subordinated “races” a means of critique, rebellion, and self-affirmation—an ensemble of counter-science fictions. Doom is a remarkable case study in rap and racecraft because when he puts an anonymous metal mask over the social mask that is his ascribed “race,” he unbinds the latter’s ties while simultaneously revealing racecraft’s durability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Racecraft and Speculative Culture)
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12 pages, 237 KiB  
Article
Black Egyptians and White Greeks?: Historical Speculation and Racecraft in the Video Game Assassin’s Creed: Origins
by Bryan Banker
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 145; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040145 - 15 Dec 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 8162
Abstract
Recent portrayals of ancient Egypt in popular culture have renewed attention concerning the historical accuracy of how race and racism appear in representations of antiquity. Historians of the antiquity have robustly dismissed racist claims of whitewashing or blackwashing historical and cultural material in [...] Read more.
Recent portrayals of ancient Egypt in popular culture have renewed attention concerning the historical accuracy of how race and racism appear in representations of antiquity. Historians of the antiquity have robustly dismissed racist claims of whitewashing or blackwashing historical and cultural material in both scholarship and in popular culture. The 2017 video game Assassin’s Creed: Origins is a noteworthy site to examine this debate, as the game was designed with the assistance of historians and cultural experts, presenting players with an “historically accurate” ancient Egypt. Yet, if race is a fantasy, as Karen Fields and Barbara Fields’ “racecraft” articulates, then what historians have speculated in their study of race and racism are presentations of a proto-racecraft, borrowing from historian Benjamin Isaac. This essay argues that Assassin’s Creed: Origins racecrafts through the paradigm of historical speculation. As historians have speculated on meanings and operations of “race” and racism in ancient Egypt, Origins has made those speculations visible through its depiction of a racially diverse Ptolemaic Egypt. Yet, this racecraft is paradoxically good, as the game does so to push back against the hegemony of whiteness and whitewashing in contemporary popular culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Racecraft and Speculative Culture)
17 pages, 263 KiB  
Article
Playing at the Margins: Colonizing Fictions in New England Larp
by Zoë Antoinette Eddy
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 143; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040143 - 14 Dec 2020
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5281
Abstract
North American larping (live-action roleplaying) is a collaborative performance that encourages critical and creative engagement with cooperative, improvisational narratives. Nevertheless, larping often relies on problematic engagements with race and racial stereotypes. Like many gaming hobbies, larp uses the idea of a “playable race”. [...] Read more.
North American larping (live-action roleplaying) is a collaborative performance that encourages critical and creative engagement with cooperative, improvisational narratives. Nevertheless, larping often relies on problematic engagements with race and racial stereotypes. Like many gaming hobbies, larp uses the idea of a “playable race”. Unlike other gaming arenas, however, larping necessitates that players physically embody a character in order to participate in the collaborative narrative: larpers embody fictional races and engage in a complex form of “race play”. Within this context, non-Indigenous players frequently appropriate Indigenous cultural practices and mobilize racist stereotypes. This paper explores this phenomenon and its ramifications. Based on seven years of ethnographic fieldwork and community participation in New England larping communities, I examine how concepts of Indigenous identity manifest in New England larp. I explore both Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives in order to demonstrate (a) how fantastical play facilitates cultural appropriation and damaging “race play” and (b) how these spaces affect Indigenous players. I close with Indigenous perspectives on new possibilities for Indigenous larp projects and cultural reclamation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Racecraft and Speculative Culture)
17 pages, 318 KiB  
Article
Speculating Ancestor(ie)s: The Cavernous Memory of White Innocence and Fluid Embodiments of Afrofuturist Memory-Work
by Javier Ernesto Perez
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 138; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040138 - 23 Nov 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2407
Abstract
Enduring legacies of racial violence signal the need to reconcile with the past. This paper comparatively explores various speculative works that either reinforce a paradigm of White innocence that serves to deny such legacies or center critical dialogue between the past and present. [...] Read more.
Enduring legacies of racial violence signal the need to reconcile with the past. This paper comparatively explores various speculative works that either reinforce a paradigm of White innocence that serves to deny such legacies or center critical dialogue between the past and present. It draws on a range of theoretical works, including Seshadri-Crooks’s (2000) Lacanian analysis of race, Taylor’s (2003) notion of the body as repertoire for embodied knowledge, Wright’s (2015) concept of Black epiphenomenal time, and Hartman’s (2008b) method of ‘critical fabulation.’ Through an analysis of the narrative tropes of caves and mirrors in the Star Wars Skywalker saga (1977–1983; 2015–2019), this paper firstly unpacks the bounded individualism that permits protagonists Luke and Rey Skywalker to refute their evil Sith lord ancestry and prevail as heroes. It then turns to the works Black Panther (2018) and Watchmen (2019) to comparatively examine Afrofuturist narrative strategies of collectivity, embodiment, and non-linear temporality that destabilize bounded notions of self and time to reckon with the complexities of the past. It concludes that speculative approaches to ancestral (dis)connections are indicative of epistemological frameworks that can either circumvent or forefront ongoing demands to grapple with the past. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Racecraft and Speculative Culture)
17 pages, 246 KiB  
Article
More than a Game: Racecraft and the Adaptation of “Race” in Live Action Role Play
by Samantha Eddy
Humanities 2020, 9(4), 124; https://doi.org/10.3390/h9040124 - 21 Oct 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3568
Abstract
Live action role players make the imaginative worlds of tabletop games manifest through collaborative storytelling and embodied play. Escaping the everyday, these communities could radically reimagine culture and challenge oppressive ideologies. Instead, they are deeply invested in essentializing “race”. I conducted a three-year [...] Read more.
Live action role players make the imaginative worlds of tabletop games manifest through collaborative storytelling and embodied play. Escaping the everyday, these communities could radically reimagine culture and challenge oppressive ideologies. Instead, they are deeply invested in essentializing “race”. I conducted a three-year ethnographic study alongside 20 semi-structured interviews to explore racecraft in live action role play. Supporting the groundbreaking work of Karen and Barbara Fields, I find that racecraft is a social process—continually negotiated and maintained through intimate interactions and community exchanges. Through this process, the definition of “race” is continually adapted while belief in this category remains entrenched. When participants confront racist stereotypes, practitioners coerce marginalized members into a false exchange. These members are encouraged to share experiences detailing the damage of problematic representations. Practitioners then reduce these experiences to monolithic understandings of “race”. In this insidious manner, anti-racist confrontations become fodder for racecraft. Complicating this further, patterned racism is characterized as an inborn quality of whiteness, minimizing practitioners’ accountability. Responsibility is then shifted onto marginalized participants and their willingness to engage in “racial” education. This trap is ingrained in the double standard of racism, adapting “race” such that whiteness is unrestricted by the monolithic definitions applied to those outside this category. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Racecraft and Speculative Culture)
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