Challenging white supremacy needs both angle-shifting and steady orientation

Evidence

Early on I used Homi Bhabha’s elegant description of Anish Kapoor’s installation to suggest the importance of looking at the structures and tentacles of white supremacy from different angles. The analogy ends here, however, for though it may be intriguing to wander to and fro in front of “When I am Pregnant,” enjoying the sensation produced by the white bump disappearing before one’s eyes, the student of whiteness requires a map of possibilities and a steady compass to make sense of the field. In societies structured so deeply by racial hierarchies that operate through and simultaneously with systems of gender, sexuality, and class, a politics for social justice must entail wilfully stepping beyond safe limits, without losing a sense of direction in exposing and destroying the technologies of white power. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 786

Categorization

• XREF: The map-and-compass distinction echoes the tension between esoteric aesthetic play and committed political navigation found throughout critical race studies and in Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist.