The skin functions as the organizing referent of a political theology of race

Evidence

A sociality of the skin serves as the signifying referent for a political theology of race, not unlike relation to the body and blood of the Savior in a more traditional theological politics. The skin situates its bearers in racially predicated societies. It sites and restricts, it announces and delimits, it allows and disables, it fixes relation and relates fixations, orders belief and anchors belief in order. The skin thus is more than epidermal. It bears significance and suggestibility, coding information and informing social codes. It is the turnkey to social relation, in short, the principal reference point for a sociality the state of which is reductively racial, which immediately references place and places reference. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1501

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the book’s central coinage ‘sociality of the skin’ and specifies what it means.
• XREF: Echoes Goldberg’s own genealogical work on race as a modern concept, and resonates with Fanon’s emphasis on epidermalization of the body. — connects to: Racialized societies compel even resistance into skin-based codes — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1502; Race gives bodily power a secular license that still draws humanism’s boundaries at kin — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1347