29

Cyberfeminism,
Racism, Embodiment
Maria Fernandez

The permanence of domination cannot succeed without the compli-

city of the whole group: the work of denial, which is the source of social
alchemy, is, like magic, a collective undertaking. —P I E R R E B O U R D I E U

I’m clear now…that there’s a whole range of important responses to

racism that are not at the level of argument and at the level of the
intellectual…and it seems to me that if I wanted to identify another
line of approach to racism, along with the intellectual one, it would
be one that said, ‘Look, in the end, people find it easiest to be com-
fortable with and nice to people with whom they have done things.’
And I would say I would put a lot of faith in children growing up
together, not because we’re lecturing them all the time about being
nice to each other but because they just grow up together and they
form friendships. — A N T H O N Y A P P I A H

A mong feminists it is often assumed that no feminist can be racist

because of her awareness of gender oppression. Yet, still today, racist

attitudes prevent women from establishing politically and personally enriching

connections. Among cyberfeminists, belief in the myth of “equality” in the

equally mythical realm of cyberspace is widespread. Electronic media theo-

rists and commercial entities alike maintain that “differences” of gender, race

and class are nonexistent in the Internet due to the disembodied nature of elec-

tronic communication.1

Because the hierarchies of RL (Real Life) are believed to be inapplicable to

cyberspace, discussions of race have only recently been initiated in electronic

media theory and criticism. In an influential 1999 publication, Beth Kolko, Lisa

Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman observe that in academic electronic mailing

list participants studiously avoid and actively silence discussions of race.2

30 DOMAIN ERRORS

Kolko et al. argue that “outing race” would render more accurately the diversi-

ty of cyberspace but they do not specify how making race visible might change

existing power relations. In their words: “Cyberspace has been construed as

something that exists in binary opposition to “the real world,” but when it

comes to questions of power, politics and structural relations, cyberspace is as

real as it gets.”3

Despite the increasing interest of academics in issues of race and cyberspace

(evident in conferences and presentations during the preceding year), the rela-

tion of racist attitudes and behavior to electronic communication remains

largely unexamined. One explanation for this might be that racist behavior “in

the flesh” is still little understood.

In what follows, I will discuss racism in relation to feminism/cyberfeminism

and theories of embodiment. Like many other scholars I believe that racism is

a multifaceted system of oppression involving ideological, psychological and

practical aspects. Here, I concentrate on embodied dimensions of racism be-

cause I believe that racism is, in large part, a complex of embodied practices

sometimes quite separate from ideological positions.

It may seem pointless to discuss racism at a time in which the biological con-

cept of race has been proven bankrupt by new genetic technologies. Recent

genetic research strongly supports the hypothesis of the African origin of

humankind, and challenges traditional concepts of humanity by rendering

bodies and organisms progressively malleable. While there is potential in these

new conditions, this does not mean that racism has ended. Practices based on

previous understandings and valorizations of race still dictate social, political

and economic agendas. This discussion of racism and embodiment is only the

beginning of a larger project. Increased understanding of racist attitudes in

the fleshed world is necessary to combat racism and may shed light on mani-

festations of racism in electronic communications.

D IFFERENCES

The history of feminism suggests that the interpretation of differences in

culture, class, race, sexual orientation, religion, and politics segregate women.
 Maria Fernandez 31

Some cyberfeminists believe that it is useless to talk about differences because

they can never be resolved.4 While I believe that the erasure of difference is nei-

ther desirable nor even possible, I like to imagine the possibility that differ-

ences could be read as something other than alienating or threatening quali-

ties. One of the most contentious differences among women has been race. I use

the term “race” not because I believe in its validity as a scientific category but

because regardless of how differences are explained i.e. “ethnicity,” “culture,”

perceptions of “difference” are still largely based on epidermal schemas.

Racial differences were divisive in second wave feminism. During the late

seventies and eighties multiple women theorists of color challenged the univer-

salist assumptions of previous feminisms. Simultaneously, the postmodern/

posthumanist stress on difference, anti-essentialism and the politics of multi-

culturalism redefined equality from “the right to be the same to the right to be

different” de-emphasizing inter group affiliations and coalitions.5

In the nineties, communications between feminists of color and other

streams of feminism improved little. Various theorists including bell hooks

and Chela Sandoval ultimately proposed “an ethics of love” as the solution

for women’s fragmentation.6 Indisputably, this is the ideal solution. Yet, to

love through difference, to forget misunderstandings and resentments accu-

mulated for centuries is easier wished for than achieved. “Love” is the message

that multiple religions have disseminated for millennia with very limited

results. Part of the problem is that “love” is not only an ethical decision but

also a set of incorporated practices, habitual ways of doing things with one’s

body—doing things with other people, “growing up together” as in Appiah’s

statement quoted above. During the last decade, fissures along the lines of

“difference” continued to be evident in various strains of “bad girl-ism” and

in cyberfeminism.7

Donna Haraway’s foundational text, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” was created

in the aftermath of painful fractures in the feminist movement. Haraway at-

tempted to mediate antagonisms by invoking a politics of “coalition—affinity

not identity” and by basing the cyborg on a model of mestizaje, the racial mix-

ing which took place after the Spanish Conquest of the New World. In her view,
32 DOMAIN ERRORS

the cyborg could not be subject to identity politics because it was a hybrid of

animal, machine and human.

In Haraway’s ironic fiction, the cyborg is the illegitimate offspring of mili-

tary technologies, socialism, and patriarchal capitalism. The cyborg’s origins

are inspired by Mexican American versions of the life of Malinche, Hernán

Cortéz’s Aztec mistress popularly identified as mother of the mestizo “bastard

race” of the New World. Haraway’s designation of Malinche as “mother” to

women of color remains unexplained.

More troublesome than any semblance of historical accuracy is Haraway’s

theorization of women of color as quintessential cyborgs. In her view, “women

of color” might be understood as “a cyborg identity, a potent subjectivity syn-

thesized from fusions of outsider identities…” As in the work of Chela

Sandoval, Haraway’s cyborgs include impoverished women of color working in

sweatshops and electronic assembly lines. She posits that “Ironically, it might

be the unnatural cyborg women making chips in Asia and spiral dancing in

Santa Rita whose constructed unities will guide effective oppositional strate-

gies.”8 The promise of the cyborg as a sign of emancipation obscures the fact

that the union of human and machine that such women exemplify results from

sheer necessity. These women work long hours under exploitative conditions at

tedious repetitive tasks, which are often physically damaging.

Inspired by Haraway’s text, cyberfeminism developed in various parts of the

world. Cyberfeminists championed the union of women and machines discard-

ing Haraway’s socialist-feminist and anti-racist politics. The work of the

Australian cyberfeminist pioneers VNS Matrix was practically unknown in the

United States until after the group disbanded in 1997. These artists created

sensual, feminized and humorous representations of the data world that

opposed the sanitized, masculinist imagery prevalent at the time. VNS Matrix’s

Cyberfeminist Manifesto (1991) was universalist in character implying that all

differences among women were subsumed in the Matrix.

In Sadie Plant’s polemical book, Zeros + Ones, women of color form part of a

universal conspiracy between women and machines that will ultimately under-

mine patriarchy. In her view, this quiet revolution has already dramatically
 Maria Fernandez 33

advanced the economic status of women throughout the world, especially in

Asia.9 Although Plant tells us that the vast majority of electronic assembly jobs

are held by women, and that these jobs have “always been low status, poorly

VNS Matrix, Cyberfeminist Manifesto, 1991.

paid, sometimes dangerous,” the fact that the work of these “virtual aliens”

forms part of a long history of women’s involvement with technology is suffi-

cient to close the argument for Plant. In Plant’s own words, “If she hasn’t had a

hand in anything, her fingerprints are everywhere.”10 Plant seems oblivious of

the applicability of this observation to other kinds of invisible female labor

including that of domestic servants, sweatshop and agricultural workers. By

repeatedly referring to “the cultures of the old white world” Plant also alludes

to the undoing of white supremacy, but does not elaborate this idea.

The recent anthology Cyberfeminism edited by Susan Hawthorne and Renate

Klein includes articles by women of color but does not discuss directly the

subject of race. In sum, race and racism have been more or less ignored in
34 DOMAIN ERRORS

cyberfeminism. To discuss these issues might help cyberfeminists to develop

and sustain diverse strategic and pleasurable alliances. To date, the most

prominent cyberfeminist groups in Europe and the United States, are predomi-

nantly white despite various attempts to make the groups inclusive.11

I AM NOT RACIST, BUT …

Racism is a painful and often taboo topic in most social contexts. In the West,

most people accept the existence of racism as an abstract entity but frequently

fail to identify its manifestations in specific individuals.

In Western academic theory, racism, both overt and covert, is discussed pre-

dominantly as an ideology. Some scholars also investigate psychological

aspects of racism, primarily its relation to desire and the imaginary.12

Regardless of orientation, most theorists recognize that racism is a multifac-

eted system of oppression that legitimates the privileges of a specific group.13

As a tool of validation for an established social order, racism forms part of our

historical, social and cultural legacy. For centuries, diverse media from story

telling to scientific literature, from photography to the World Wide Web, have

reinforced stereotypes of specific groups. As various studies demonstrate, the

stereotypes of people of color (and of groups construed as such) are often neg-

ative and at best, contradictory.14

Because racism is founded on the construction of racial hierarchies some

theorists propose to eradicate it by undermining the concept of race. Multiple

postcolonial theorists uphold hybridity as the ultimate form of resistance as

hybrids presumably elude classification. Noel Ignatiev and his collaborators in

the periodical Race Traitor encourage white people to become “race traitors”

by refusing identification based on traditional racial categories.

The abolition of the concept of race is essential for the development of a non-

racist world. Yet, neither hybridity nor the renunciation of existing racial cate-

gories is in itself sufficient to end racism. History demonstrates that cultures

may exhibit transnational and multicultural elements and simultaneously

maintain racial hierarchies.15 The examples of colonial Mexico, Brazil and

various Caribbean countries demonstrate that hybridity can accommodate

 Maria Fernandez 35

intricate classifications based on skin color. In eighteenth-century Mexico, for

instance, there were more than twenty terms to designate racial mixtures.16

Ignatiev himself admits that the propositions of Race Traitor are extremely dif-

ficult ones. In order to become “race traitors” people must be willing to give up

the privileges of belonging to a dominant group and this rarely occurs.

Multiple theorists recognize that racism entails ideas as well as actions, yet

the relation of the psychological and ideological aspects of racism to practices of

the body has received little attention.17 If racism is manifested in actions, then

I propose that at least part of our investigations should focus on performance.

To illustrate one example among many, in the United States women of color

often report being made “invisible” by their white counterparts.18 I suggest that

the enforcement of invisibility is achieved by means of specific bodily cues and

behavior. Consider the following examples:

1. Lila has moved from Guatemala to a small U.S. city in the

Northeast. She tells a Chinese-American college friend living in
Texas that people in her new circle seem to feel uncomfortable
around her: “They do not seem to know what to speak to me about,
most of the time they simply pretend I’m not there, they do not talk
to me, they do not look at me, they interrupt me when I speak and
sometimes they do not respond to me at all. Even people whom I like,
nervously cross and uncross their arms and legs and fidget with
their fingers whenever they find themselves alone with me. “It’s
funny,” the friend says, “I’ve had similar experiences here.”

2. Lupe, a Mexican-American homemaker, begins a small catering

business from her home. Her neighbor, Jane, asks to join and Lupe
accepts. Within two weeks, Jane has contracted with new clients and
invited several of her friends to become partners without consulting
Lupe. Within a month, Lupe’s original business plans are trans-
formed beyond her recognition. Lupe quits the partnership and Jane
and her friends run her original business. Lupe confronts Jane
about not having been consulted in her schemes. Jane admits no
wrongdoing and accuses Lupe of “having a chip on her shoulder.”

3. Tina, an artist of Afro-Cuban origin is invited to participate in a

prestigious international art festival. On arrival, she is introduced
to Ann, an American artist of European descent. At the end of the
week, a dinner is organized for the festival’s guests. Tina and Ann are
assigned seats facing each other. Tina says “Hi” to Ann. Ann nods
slightly but says nothing. At dinner she converses with other people
at the table consistently ignoring Tina. Thinking that perhaps Ann
36 DOMAIN ERRORS

does not recognize her, Tina volunteers “ We were introduced at…”

“I know,” Ann interrupts and continues to ignore Tina for the rest of
the evening.

4. Some years ago, bell hooks visited the University of Florida at

Gainesville. At the beginning of her lecture, she reported that sev-
eral of the local graduate students had enthusiastically suggested
that she meet one of their professors, a European-American woman
interested in issues of feminism and difference. hooks told the
audience that the professor in question had declined to attend her
lecture because “she was going to a football game.” 19 Whatever the
intention of the professor, hooks seemed to recognize a familiar pat-
tern in her behavior or she would not have brought it to the attention
of the audience.

Tina Grillo and Stephanie M. Wildman have argued that white supremacy

instills in many whites the expectation of always being the center of attention.

In their view, “When people who are not regarded as entitled to the center move

into it, however briefly, they are viewed as usurpers. One reaction of the domi-

nant group to temporarily losing the center is to make sure that nothing

remains for the perceived usurpers to be in the center of. Another tactic is to

steal back the center, using guerrilla tactics if necessary.”20 In the examples

above, Jane took “the center” from Lupe, by failing to consult about decisions

with her as is customary among business partners. Ann denied the presence,

thus the status of Tina by ignoring her. Similarly, by choosing to miss hooks’

lecture, the other professor temporarily dismissed hooks’ knowledge and

authority as well as her position at center stage.

These examples suggest that embodied practices communicating messages of

invisibility involve the suspension of rules of behavior that are customarily

observed with other members of the same group: Failing to acknowledge a

person’s presence or speech, interacting with others in a group and con-

sistently excluding a specific person, failing to recognize someone’s achieve-

ments and expertise—i.e., absenting oneself from events one would normally

attend when a person of color is the speaker or performer, etc. Such behaviors

have ambiguous meanings but they do effectively negate or diminish another

person’s presence. It is precisely the multiplicity of meanings that makes these

behaviors powerful. If they are ambiguous, they cannot be named. Patricia

 Maria Fernandez 37

Williams has compared racism to a ghost invisibly exerting its influence: “It is

deep, angry, eradicated from view, but strong enough to make everyone who

enters the room walk around the bed that isn’t there, avoiding the phantom as

they did the substance, for fear of bodily harm. They do not even know what

they are avoiding; they defer to the unseen shapes of things with subtle respon-

siveness, guided by an impulsive awareness of nothingness, and the deep

knowledge and denial of witchcraft at work.”21

E MBODIED RACISM

Theories of embodiment stress the interdependence of mind and body in

contrast to the traditional opposition of these entities foundational to most of

western philosophy. The integration of mind and body also has been a tenet
of various currents of feminism for at least three decades. Feminist theorists

including Jane Gallop, Gayatri Spivak, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, Helene

Cixoux and Elizabeth Grosz view the body as a social and discursive object

essential to the production of knowledge, desire and power. Grosz developed a

model of embodiment as a Möbius strip where outside and inside are one con-

tinuous surface. In her opinion, an ideal feminist philosophy of the body should

reveal articulations and dis-articulations between the biological and the psy-

chological and include “a psychical representation of the subject’s lived body as

well as of the relations between body gestures, posture and movements in the

constitution of the processes of psychical representation.”22

Various theorists including Pierre Bourdieu, Michael Oakeshott, Paul

Connerton, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have argued for the dependence

of beliefs and social values on bodily practices. For Connerton, social memory

is lodged in the body and activated through commemorative ceremonies,

performances, habits, and body automatisms.23 For Bourdieu, bodily habits are

manifestations of political mythologies that in turn reinforce specific ways of

feeling and thinking.24 Habits function beyond conscious awareness because

they are learned through imitation and not by the deliberate application of

specific principles. Thus, people’s behaviors often differ from their conscious

intentions.25 Because they are unconscious, embodied practices become

38 DOMAIN ERRORS

naturalized, immune to questioning, and extremely resistant to change.26

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have proposed that humans reason with

metaphors that develop as a conflation of sensorimotor and subjective, non-

sensorimotor experiences. In their view, “the mind is inherently embodied,

reason is shaped by the body;” our most valued abstract concepts are concep-

tualized via multiple complex metaphors, molecular structures made up of

atomic parts named ‘primary metaphors.’27 Like Bourdieu, Oakeshott and

Connerton, Lakoff and Johnson believe that most of human thought is uncon-

scious. They call the inaccessible aspects of cognition, including our system of

primary and complex metaphors, “the cognitive unconscious.” Lakoff and

Johnson also believe in the persistence of habit: “Once we have learned a

conceptual system, it is neurally instantiated in our brains and we are not free

to think just anything. Hence we have no absolute freedom in Kant’s sense,

no full autonomy.”28 Although most of the scholars mentioned above stress

the inflexibility and resilience of social habits, they also maintain that

habits are open to transformation as their performativity implies continuous

improvisation.29

It is almost thirty years since the publication in French of Bourdieu’s book

Outline of a Theory of Practice, and more than sixty since Marcel Mauss wrote

his influential essay: “Techniques of the Body.”30 Given the long trajectory of

theories of embodiment, it is striking how little impact this knowledge has had

on studies of racism. Traditional understandings of “whiteness” and “reason”

as disembodied may have contributed to these omissions. In the opinion

of Radhika Mohanram “blackness and whiteness assume the status of the

Cartesian body and the mind respectively. Black bodies are represented trapped

in the web of nature while white bodies have freedom of movement. Such a

freedom disembodies whiteness.”31 Thus discussions of racism in terms of

embodiment problematize the oppositions black/white, embodied/disembod-

ied, static/mobile and their attributed associations.

In feminist theory, disembodiment is often associated with white males, but

historically, disciplining, restricting and concealing the body played a part in

what Kate Davy called the “politics of respectability,” a complex of values and
 Maria Fernandez 39

codified behaviors by means of which white women claimed moral superiority

to women of color. In the United States and various European countries, white

women also have employed discourses of modernity and mobility to differ-

entiate themselves from women of color.32 In cyberfeminist narratives, the

cyborg ultimately validates the privileges of specific groups as people of

color and the poor are either left out of technological futures or coerced into

cyborgian conditions.

Racist practices are legitimating performances. In most of the West, white-

ness has been construed as a mark of authority and privilege. Some would

argue that class is a more significant variable as all groups at the bottom of the

social ladder share histories of injustice, abjection and abuse. The brutality of

class marginalization can hardly be contested. Often, however, it is difficult to

disassociate race from class as the lower classes consistently have been racial-

ized, that is to say, they have been construed as racially different from the

dominant groups and often “blackened” (i.e., the Irish in nineteenth-century

England; in the twentieth century, Jews, Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Eastern

Europeans, Roma etc.) In many contexts, whiteness still assumes a superior

status: Poor whites may be just as economically disadvantaged and socially

marginalized as poor blacks; yet, many believe themselves to be superior

because they are white.33 Imprisonment statistics in the United States, England,

Australia and France suggest that this dynamic may be operative in various

justice systems.34

Examining racism as a complex of embodied practices and social habits sup-

ported by discursive practices provides a better understanding of the perva-

siveness and resilience of racist behavior than theories which privilege racism

as discourse. I’m proposing that like other social habits, many racist behaviors

occur below the level of conscious awareness. Racism can be performed with-

out deliberation; thus, an individual may vehemently oppose racist beliefs and

consistently behave in racist ways.35 In fact, several studies demonstrate that

by three years of age, children express specific attitudes about race but it is

doubtful that their actions reflect reasoned ideological positions.36

Recently, I had the opportunity to observe a group of four-to-six year olds at a

40 DOMAIN ERRORS

pre-school playground in a predominantly white, working-class area of south-

ern England. A group of the older children spent the one-hour recess period

taunting the only West Asian child (a four-year old) in the playground area. The

school has a policy of no hitting, and no name-calling. So the children resorted

to surrounding the “black” child in a tight circle, gently but incessantly push-

ing him, pulling on his clothes, and following him as he attempted to walk or

run away. Finally, the accosted child ran to a “forbidden” area of the play-

ground where he was spotted by the teacher and reprimanded. Several of the

younger children identified the West Asian child as being inherently “bad” or

“naughty.” The teachers reinforced this opinion by admonishing the child

while consistently ignoring the behavior of the older children. Several local

academics affirm that racism is nonexistent in the school’s geographical area

yet in various social contexts (shops, restaurants, buses) in the same area,

adults routinely make negative and derisive comments about Asians. The

behavior of the older children is likely to be a manifestation of a complex of

attitudes that the children emulate but do not necessarily understand. The

antagonized child likewise learns a complementary set of behaviors involving

self control, defiance, submissiveness, and denial necessary to survival in that

social context.

U NLEARNING RACISM

In the sixties and seventies, scholars from various fields identified body lan-

guage as a system of communication. In their view, body language including

posture, gestures, and facial expressions, expressed emotions and thus was a

good tool for evaluating and improving personal relations.37 Second wave femi-
nists also recognized the importance of incorporation. The pioneering book,

Our Bodies Ourselves stressed the interconnection of body, identity and empow-

erment.38 Consciousness-raising as well as the slogan “the personal is the

political” implied the re-evaluation of habitual behavior that contributed to

women’s oppression. Feminists challenged traditions of comportment, dress,

and speech by virtue of which women were trained to conform to specific social

roles. The effects of questioning and changing those habits were profound.
 Maria Fernandez 41

Bourdieu explains that all societies and revolutionary movements that seek to

produce “a new man” through processes of de-culturation and re-culturation,

place high stakes on “the seemingly most insignificant details of dress, bearing,

physical and verbal manners.” In his view, each technique of the body evokes

the whole system of which it is part. Thus, “the whole trick of pedagogic

reason lies in the way it extorts the essential while seeming to demand the

insignificant.”39

At present, awareness of body language is regarded as a good business tool:

It figures prominently in the art of negotiation for businessmen and in

women’s magazines’ advice on how to succeed in the job interview. The Center

for Nonverbal Studies, with branches in Spokane, Washington and La Jolla,

California, routinely conducts lectures and seminars for businesses and corpo-

rations. The importance of nonverbal communication is recognized by law, the

police, and the military in assessing the credibility of individuals as witnesses

and informants.40

Most cyberfeminists concentrate their efforts on the technical and political

aspects of digital media and ignore racism. Despite the rhetoric of equality and

disembodiment that prevails in discussions of cyberspace, racism is alive in

digital spaces in overt and invisible forms. If mind and body are inextricably

connected, digital representation, textual and visual, must be affected by em-

bodied practices. Thus it is crucial to identify racism in the lived world if we

hope to learn to recognize it in cyberspace.

To identify embodied aspects of racism we must begin by raising our own

consciousness, by observing the ways our bodies behave in the presence of

“difference.” We must appropriate and refine techniques successfully tested by

revolutionary movements, the behavioral sciences, commerce and the military.

By acknowledging the power of embodied, nonverbal practices, cyberfeminists

can subvert and deploy established forms of discipline to form and strengthen

positive, powerful alliances. #

1 For an example, see Margaret Wertheim, “The Medieval Return of Cyberspace,”
The Virtual Dimension, ed. John Beckmann (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1998), p. 55.
42 DOMAIN ERRORS

2 Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman, eds., Race in Cyberspace
(New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 3.
3 Ibid., p. 4.
4 Personal communications by several cyberfeminist colleagues at the Next Cyber-
feminist International, Rotterdam March 1999 (where Faith Wilding and I introduced
a discussion of cyberfeminism and difference).
5 Kenan Malik, The Meaning of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996),
p. 261.
6 bell hooks “Beloved Community: A World without Racism,” in Killing Rage. Ending
Racism (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1995), p. 263–272; and All About Love: New
Visions (New York: Perennial 2001), p. 87–101; Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the
Oppressed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
7 See Kate Davy “Outing Whiteness: A Feminist/Lesbian Project” in Whiteness:
A Critical Reader, ed. Mike Hill (New York: New York University Press, 1997),
p. 215–220.
8 Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in the 1980’s.” Socialist Review (1985): 80, 7; Chela Sandoval, “New
Sciences: Cyborg Feminism and the Methodology of the Oppressed,” in The Cyborg
Handbook, ed. Chris Hables Gray with Heidi Figueroa-Sarriera and Steven Mentor
(New York: Routledge, 1995).
9 Sadie Plant, Zeros + Ones Digital Women + the New Technoculture (New York:
Doubleday, 1997), p. 39–40.
10 Ibid., p. 75.
11 A group exceptionally committed to international feminist issues are Les Penelopes
in France <http://www.mire.net/penelopes>
12 See for instance, J.L. A. Garcia, “Racism as a Model for Sexism” in Race and Sex,
ed. Naomi Zack (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 45–59; Homi Bhabha, “The Other
Question: Stereotype, Discrimination and the Discourse of Colonialism,” in The
Location of Culture, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 66–84.
13 Albert Memmi, Le Racisme: Déscription, définition, traitment (Paris: Gallimard, 1982),
p. 98–99, recently translated to English as Albert Memmi, Racism, Steve Martinot,
trans. (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Theodore W. Allen, The
Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Social Control (London: Verso:
1994) p. 1–17, 52–3.
14 Bhabha, “The Other Question.” For an example of the racialization of class differ-
ences in 19th century England, see Anne Mc Clintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender
and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 104-111.
15 John Solomos and Les Back, Racism and Society (New York: Saint Martin’s Press,
1996), p. 146.
16 Vicente Riva Palacio, Mexico a travez de los siglos (Mexico, editorial Cumbre, 1970)
2: 472 ;and Ilona Katzew, New World Orders, Catalogue of an exhibition held at the
Americas Society Art Gallery (New York Sept. 26–Dec. 22, 1996).
17 Memmi, Racisme, p. 58, 128.
18 Conversely males in select groups, especially Latinos and African-Americans
are made “hypervisible” in media representations and this condition translates
to everyday situations.
19 All of these examples are from real life. With the exception of bell hooks, the
identities of the individuals involved have been changed.
 Maria Fernandez 43

20 Tina Grillo and Stephanie M. Wildman, “Obscuring the Importance of Race: The
Implication of Making Comparisons between Racism and Sexism (or Other Isms)”
in Critical Race Feminism, ed. Adrien Katherine Wing (New York: New York
University Press, 1997), p. 47. For more extensive scholarly studies on whiteness
as a socially constructed location of dominance, white supremacy etc. refer to
David Roedinger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American
Working Class (London: Verso, 1991); and Toward the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays
on Race, Politics and Working Class History (London: Verso, 1994); Ruth Frankenberg,
White Women Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Routledge, 1993).
For white representations of whiteness, see Richard Dyer, White (New York:
Routledge, 1997).
21 Cited in Adrienne D. Davis and Stephanie M. Wildman, “The Legacy of Doubt:
Treatment of Sex and Race in the Hill-Thomas Hearings,” in Critical Race Feminism,
p. 175.
22 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (St. Leonards,
Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1994), p. 15–19, 23.
23 Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), p. 1, 4–5.
24 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977), p. 93–94.
25 Connerton, Societies, p. 3; Bourdieu, Outline, p. 78–81.
26 Connerton, Societies, p. 102.
27 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and
its Challenge to Western Thought (NY: Basic Books, 1999), p. 5.
28 Ibid., p .13, 5. For a more extensive discussion of racism and theories of embodi-
ment, see my “Racism and Embodiment” <http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/magazin/
racism_embodiment> originally presented at Performative Sites Symposium 2000:
Intersecting Art, Technology, and the Body, Penn State University, October 24–28.
29 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature and Infomatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 200;
Maurice Merleau Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London,
Routledge, 1994), p. 144–146; Bourdieu, Outline, p. 91; Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy,
p. 44–46, 73, 107.
30 Marcel Mauss, “Techniques of the Body,” lecture presented at the meeting of the
Societé de Psychologie, May 17th, 1934 and published in the Journal de Psychologie
normal et pathologique, Paris, Anné XXXII, 1935, p. 271–93.
31 Radhika Mohanram, Black Body: Women, Colonialism and Space (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p, 22.
32 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses,” Boundary 2, no. 12(3), 13(1) (Spring/Fall, 1984); Trinh Minh Ha, Native,
Woman; Kate Davy, “Outing Whiteness,” p. 212–215; Julia Kristeva, About Chinese
Women, trans. Anita Barrows (London: Marion Boyars, 1977).
33 See Roedinger, Wages of Whiteness.
34 World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems
<http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/wfcj.htm>
Penal Affairs Consortium, “Race And Criminal Justice,”
<http://www.penlex.org.uk/pages/pacrace.html>
Statistics on race in the UK, The Guardian, Monday February 21, 2000,
<http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/macpherson/article/0,2763,191672,00.html>
World prison statistics available on-line from: [email protected]
44 DOMAIN ERRORS

35 Oakeshott distinguishes between two types of morality: one that is reflexive and
discursive and another, which is habitual. Oakeshott cited in Connerton, Societies, p.
29.
36 Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin, The First R: How Children Learn Race and
Racism (Lanham Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). Debbie Reese, “Young Children
and Racism,” Parent News, March 1998.
37 Classics in this field include Edward T. Hall’s The Silent Language (1959), Albert
Mehrabian, Silent Messages (1971); Julius Fast, Body Language (1971); Desmond
Morris, The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal (1967).
38 Boston Women’s Health Collective, Our Bodies Ourselves (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1971).
39 Bourdieu, Outline, p. 94-95.
40 Center for Nonverbal Studies <http://members.aol.com/nonverbal2/index.htm>
The Institute for Non-verbal Communication <http://www.angelfire.com/co/body-
language/>
“Maintaining Credibility Within Military Public Affairs While Preserving and
Participating in Military Deception”
<http://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/98B1/paper.htm>
Bibliography, nonverbal communication and witness credibility
<http://www.lawfinance.com/ARTICLES/NONVERB.HTM>