The collective singularity of anti-racist actors: a case study of the Roma minority in the Czech Republic

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Authors

HUŠEK Petr TVRDÁ Kateřina

Year of publication 2016
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source Ethnic and Racial Studies
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Social Studies

Citation
Web http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2016.1096406
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2016.1096406
Field Political sciences
Keywords Anti-racism; racism; otherness; dispositives; Roma minority; Czech Republic
Description This paper focuses on building a theory of collective singularity using the case of anti-racist collectives targeting the marginalized Roma minority in the Czech Republic. The collective singularity concept is one in which the values, norms, and practices that constitute a collective render it impossible for the group to transcend its own axioms in any manner other than by rejecting precisely these constitutive elements. The concept of anti-racism contains the trope of ‘the other’, perceived not only as an object of protection, integration, assistance, and interest, but also as an object under pressure to find its own (anti-)concept. Anti-racism oscillates around four dispositives (hysteria, paternalism, individualism, bionumerics) and finds itself unable to follow a radical pluralism with the potential to undermine the roots of the hegemonic discourse. As a result, the dispositives of anti-racism essentially become a ‘hidden’ form of disciplination, reproducing oppression and the impossibility of self-deconstruction.
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