Histories of Empire

How does attending to histories of empire change our understanding of race and racism in the
present?
2. Discuss the role of ‘the Orient’ in European/Western imagination.
3. Discuss the role of ‘the veil’ from the perspective of the Western gaze.
4. How is empire justified as a civilizing mission? You can use a historical
or contemporary example to address this.
5. ‘Commodity racism became distinct from scientific racism in its
capacity to expand beyond the literate, propertied elite through the marketing of the commodity
spectacle’ (Anne McClintock, 1995). Discuss this with reference to specific examples.
6. How is the ‘third world woman’ produced as a singular monolithic subject? Discuss this with
reference to Chandra Mohanty’s work and relevant examples.

7. Critically assess Paul Gilroy’s (1987) argument that conceptions of national belonging ‘blur the
distinction’ between race and nation.
8. How are race, gender, and sexuality mobilized to produce ‘strangers’? You can refer to the
work of Sara Ahmed here.
9. How can we think of contemporary nationalisms through histories of eugenics and (settler)
colonialism?
10.How are bodies racialised? In answering this question, you can make use of your own
experiences as well examples drawn from the media.
11. How useful is Achille Membe’s concept of necropolitics for understanding recent antiimmigration politics?
12. How do security regimes operate as racial regimes?
13.Discuss the role of the figure of the ‘suffering child’ in humanitarian
discourses.
14.How does the distinction between grievable and ungrievable lives (Judith Butler, 2004)
become a racial distinction?
15. According to bell hooks ‘ethnicity becomes spice’. Discuss this statement with reference to
consumer culture.
16.Using particular examples, discuss the politics of food/tourism and travel/sex and race,
colonialism, and imperialism
17.How is ‘cultural authenticity’ produced? You could refer to tourism and/or heritage literatures
in your answer.
18.Discuss the importance of ‘home’ to the experience of diasporic communities.

19.How and why have scholars used theories of melancholia to explore the psychic effects of
racism?
20. What does it mean to say ‘decolonization is not a metaphor’ (Tuck and Young, 2012)? You
can use historical or contemporary examples to address this.
21.Is it possible to ‘dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools’ (Lorde, 1979)? You can
explore this question with reference to particular anti-racist struggles.
22. How is the struggle for prison abolition an anti-racist struggle?
23. What is the role of imaginations and futures in antiracist/decolonial/abolitionist struggles?
24.In consultation with your tutor, you are invited to submit your own
question t hat draws on your own research interests and the contributions of at least one
theoretical perspective introduced in this course.