Whiteness Should Be Introduced to Postcolonial Critiques of FSTS

Abstract

Subramaniam et al. (2016) exhorts postcolonial critiques of feminist STS to include Indigenous and decolonial knowledges from Latin America. I suggest that these intersecting contributions should also theorize whiteness as an important and overarching power structure. Whiteness historically contributed to and contemporarily still contributes to the shaping of our understanding of gender, sexuality, disability, class inequality and race relations, but has also structured and informed colonial conquests and empires. This also applies to the hierarchies of knowledge established within the academy, where, for example, contributions from Indigenous communities remain irrelevant and ignored. My article, using broad strokes of the brush, hopes to briefly establish the importance of considering whiteness in postcolonial analysis as it; 1) has globally structured socioeconomic and political relations by race, 2) was established through colonial violence, 3) necessitated the social construction of whites as a racial category, and 4) procured societal protections by law, enabling its op-erations to become entrenched in the norms of contemporary (postcolonial) society.