[Commlist] CFP: The Somatechnics of Race

*Call for Papers*

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*The Somatechnics of Race*

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*Abstract deadline: June 30th, 2022*

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This special issue of /Somatechnics 
<https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/soma>/ calls for contributions that 
critically examine and challenge the somatechnics of race. Somatechnics 
focuses on the role of bodies, technologies, and power. Where and how 
does race figure in this nexus? Important contributions to the 
somatechnics of race include the landmark essay, ‘The somatechnics of 
race and whiteness’ (2009) from Joseph Pugliese and Susan Stryker. Here 
the authors outline a conceptual approach to race and whiteness as 
‘somatechnical practices’ (p. 4) vis-à-vis the work of Michel Foucault. 
Pugliese and Stryker argue somatechnics connects Foucault’s 
identification of the ‘anatamo-political’ exercise of power on 
individual bodies and biopower’s exercise on the ‘mechanisms of life’ at 
the level of the population (2009, p. 3). That is, the racialisation of 
bodies as a somatechnics links the individual disciplinary role of 
racism and racial identification to the broader population and state 
functioning of racial demographics and state violence. In another 
theoretical vein, Suvendrini Perera and Puglise (2011) have utilised 
Frantz Fanon’s experiential accounts of racism necessitating combat 
breathing (1970), which can be understood as a phenomenonological 
account of the somatechnologies of race. Elaine Laforteza has extended 
the conceptualisation of the somatechnics of race and colonialism to 
include religious and secular dimensions (2015). Pugliese’s recent work 
situates the genealogies of racio-speciesism within the ontological 
distinctions between the human and non-human (2020) with somatechnical 
applications. Studies on the somatechnologies of medicine (Hvidtfeldt et 
al., 2021), cinema (Keegan, Horak & Steinbock, 2018), and sport 
(Hokowhitu, 2021) have also contributed to investigations of the 
different formations of the somatechnics of race.

Further applications of the somatechnics of race could consider ‘land 
technologies of terra nullius’ (Curley, 2021, p. 388) and their 
spatialisation and racialisation of First Nations. Aileen 
Moreton-Robinson’s instrumental conceptualisation of white possession as 
foundational to racial supremacy and the negation of Indigenous 
sovereignties (2015) has continuing relevance to the somatechnologies of 
race and coloniality as well as Foucauldian understandings of biopower. 
How the somatechnologies of race are embedded in infrastructural 
violence and the social categorisations (van der Tuin and Randell-Moon, 
2019) of data and human services are also productive sites of inquiry.

What are the new and old forms of racialisation made possible by 
somatechnologies? Possible topics for this special issue can include but 
are not limited to:

-coloniality, raciality, and settler colonisation

-Indigenous existentialism (see Hokowhitu, 2009)

-algorithmic technologies of race

-infrastructural racism

-organisational and institutional racism

-sovereignties and racialisation

-multimodalities and media of race

-platform racism

-spatial technologies and geographies of race

Abstracts will be considered on a rolling basis until *June 30*^*th* . 
Full papers of 6,000-7,000w are due September 30^th . Please send 
abstracts and all inquiries to Dr. Holly Randell-Moon at: 
(hrandell-moon /at/ csu.edu.au) <mailto:(hrandell-moon /at/ csu.edu.au)>

_References:_

Curley, A. (2021). Infrastructures as colonial beachheads: The Central 
Arizona Project and the taking of Navajo resources. /Environment and 
Planning D: Society and Space/, /39/(3), 387-404.

Fanon, F. (1970). /A Dying Colonialism/, trans. H. Chevalier. Ringwood: 
Pelican.

Hokowhitu, B. (2009). Indigenous existentialism and the body. /Cultural 
Studies Review/, /15/(2).

Hokowhitu, B. (2021). Indigenous Materialisms and /Disciplinary 
Colonialism/. /Somatechnics/, /11/(2), 157-173.

Hvidtfeldt, K., Nebeling Petersen, M., Møller, K. & Bruun Eriksen, C. 
(2021). Medicalised Masculinities–Somatechnical Interventions. 
/Somatechnics/, /11/(1), 1-9.

Keegan, C. M., Horak, L. & Steinbock, E. (2018). Cinematic/Trans*/Bodies 
(and Then, and to Come)./Somatechnics/, /8/(1), 1-13.

Laforteza, E. (2015). /The Somatechnics of Whiteness and Race: 
Colonialism and Mestiza Privilege/. Farnham: Ashgate.

Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). /The white possessive: property, power, and 
Indigenous sovereignty/. London: University of Minnesota Press.

Perera, S. & Pugliese, J. (2011). Introduction: Combat Breathing: State 
Violence and the Body in Question. /Somatechnics/, /1/(1), 1-14.

Pugliese, J. (2020). /Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human: Forensic 
Ecologies of Violence/. Durham: Duke University Press.

Pugliese, J. & Stryker, S. (2009). The somatechnics of race and 
whiteness. /Social Semiotics/, /19/(1), 1-8.__

van der Tuin, I. & Randell-Moon, H. (2019). The Somatechnics of 
Social__Categorizations. /Somatechnics/, /9/(2-3), v-xi.__

**


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