Race in Translation: Culture Wars around the Postcolonial Atlantic

By: null Ella Shohat and null Robert Stam

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Synopsis: While the term “culture wars” often designates the heated arguments inthe English-speaking world spiraling around race, the canon, and affirmativeaction, in fact these discussions have raged in diverse sites and languages. Racein Translation charts thetransatlantic traffic of the debates within and between three zones—the U.S.,France, and Brazil. Stam and Shohat trace the literal and figurative translation of thesemultidirectional intellectual debates, seen most recently in the emergence ofpostcolonial studies in France, and whiteness studies in Brazil. The authorsalso interrogate an ironic convergence whereby rightist politicians likeSarkozy and Cameron join hands with some leftist intellectuals like BennMichaels, Žižek, and Bourdieu in condemning “multiculturalism” and “identitypolitics.” At once a report from various “fronts” in the culture wars, amapping of the germane literatures, and an argument about methods of readingthe cross-border movement of ideas, the book constitutes a major contribution toour understanding of the Diasporic and the Transnational.