Women,Gender,Sexuality Studies 693R - S- Race, Caste and Capital

The seminar will examine the co-constitutive historical formations of race and caste in relation to the expansion of capitalism and European high colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. Rather than seeing this as a period for the 'origins' of race or caste, the course will examine the ways in which race and caste were discursively mediated in the period of high colonialism to shape the kind of racialized hierarchies that we are familiar with today. The course puts the urgent concerns of African American Studies, South Asian Studies and heterodox economics, with an emphasis on questions of political economy, together in a semester-long inquiry into how racialized hierarchies have been essential to producing and maintaining class stratification and geopolitical power. We will primarily draw from the American Black Radical tradition and the South Asian Dalit Radical tradition for our readings in this course. These readings will focus on how European colonial and imperial regimes of power necessitated and furthered racialized hierarchies through regimes of chattel slavery, indentured servitude and bonded labour. We will also aim to understand how these regimes elicited some of the most radical and revolutionary struggles for liberation in the world. While our readings will be wide ranging in scope, our discussions will focus on the fairly specific question of what relation we can postulate, based on historical evidence and historiographical critiques, between contemporary instantiations of race and caste in different parts of the world? We will necessarily pay close attention to axes of gender and sexuality throughout the seminar, drawing on examples and critical work from authors working in the Caribbean, South Asia, North America, South Africa, East Africa, and the UK.