Empire is a contingent process that reproduces itself through shifting racism.

Evidence

Empire is not a cemented structure but a process; it relies on racism to reproduce itself. Moreover, empire does not automatically produce or secure exploitative and exclusionary racial regimes. This is what explains in large part why “race” is constantly shifting and evolving; why there are projects of race making, unmaking, and remaking. It is not enough therefore to simply state that empire is the crucible of anti-Muslim racism; it is necessary to explain why, how, and when. The imperial terrain on which races are made and unmade is unstable, and our task as scholars is to make sense of how various contingent factors come together at certain moments to produce races but to also to undo particular racial configurations. As scholar-activist A. Sivanandan put it, racism “does not stay still; it changes shape, size, contours, purpose, function—with changes in the economy, the social structure, the system and, above all, the challenges, the resistances to that system.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 93

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to Foucault’s conception of power as productive and processual rather than repressive. — connects to: The coming barbarism may be the empire of civilization itself. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 887; Empire produces anti-Muslim racism which in turn sustains empire; Empire is a mutable structure that keeps reconfiguring race. (+7 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that racism does not stay still but shifts with economy, structure, and resistance is a paradigm for analyzing race that resists static frameworks.

Broader Connections

• Empire is a mutable structure that keeps reconfiguring race. #corroborates (0.97)
• Empire produces anti-Muslim racism which in turn sustains empire #exemplifies (0.95)
• Racism operates as a changing process rather than a fixed project #expands (0.93)
• Racialization of Muslims is historically discontinuous and empire-contingent. #corroborates (0.92)
• Anti-Muslim racism arises from empire as a normal modality, not only crisis. #exemplifies (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 93
• Empire must keep reworking itself and can fail to secure racial regimes #expands (0.90) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 105
• Racism gets reorganized by each mode of production rather than being constant #corroborates (0.88) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 633
• Anti-Muslim racism is structural to empire rather than a fringe phenomenon. #corroborates (0.85)
• Anti-Muslim racism is structurally rooted in empire, not individual prejudice #corroborates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 78