Racial terror is the fundamental mediator of colonial power

Evidence

Colonial regimes have long been structured by what, borrowing from Michael Taussig, we might more appropriately call racial terror. Taussig reminds us that we would be unwise to ignore the role of terror in securing power. Terror is ‘the mediator par excellence of colonial hegemony,’ Taussig notes, and ‘the space of death is one of the crucial spaces where Indian, African, and white gave birth to the New World.’ Terror is how we come to know and make known colonial power – how it gets written on our bodies. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 186

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines what the author means by ‘racial terror’ as opposed to the euphemism ‘prisoner abuse’.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s biopower and to how power writes itself on bodies — echo of Discipline and Punish.
• QUESTION: The claim that ‘terror is how we come to know and make known colonial power’ — worth probing whether terror is constitutive of colonial knowing or merely instrumental.