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Universidad de VienaConferencia Internacional sobreModernidad.11-14 de diciembre de 2009

Bolvar EcheverraBlanquitud. Consideraciones sobre elracismo como un fenmenoespecficamente moderno

La tendencia general en toda lahistoria entendida como una historiade la escasez es ver a la otredadcomo hostilidad. A lo largo de toda lapre-historia como se deduce deMarx todas las comunidadeshumanas perciben la alteridad con unaabierta hostilidad hacia su propiamismidad. Las personas que coexistenen el mismo territorio con quienes sonresidentes, slo necesitan arraigarsefirmemente a su identidad para quedespierten en ellos una sensacin de

amenaza. El otro, el brbaro, seconvierte en un enemigo, alguien quees odioso. A travs de esta xenofobiau odio hacia el extranjero, el otroaparece como un ser humanopeligroso que debe ser mantenidoaparte, neutralizado, subyugado odestruido eventualmente. No sera unaexageracin decir que todo genocidiopre-moderno tiene su origen en estapercepcin.

La otredad aparece como hostilidadnicamente cuando y donde unacomunidad o sujeto colectivodecide/prefiere entender y practicar suauto-afirmacin como un acto de auto-conservacin o Selbsterhaltung (comola llam Horkheimer), en vez derealizarla como una auto-apertura o

Universitt WienInternational Conference ONMODERNITY, December 11-14, 2009

Bolvar EcheverraBlanquitud. Considerations onracism as a specifically modernphenomenonThe general tendency throughout history understood as a history of scarcity- isto perceive otherness as animosity.Throughout pre-history -as implied byMarxallhuman communities perceive alterity as anopen hostility towards theirselfness. People who coexist in the sameterritory with those who are residents,need only to ground themselves firmly intheir identity, in order to awaken in thema feeling of menace. The other, thebarbarian becomes an enemy, some onethat

is hateful. Through this xenophobia orhatred of the foreign, the other appears asadangerous human being, that must be keptapart, neutralized, subjugated oreventually destroyed. It would not be anexaggeration to say that all pre-moderngenocides have their origin in thisperception.

Otherness appears as hostility only when

and where a community or collectivesubject chooses to understand and practiceits self-assertion as an act ofselfpreservationor selbsterhaltung (as Horkheimer called it),instead of realizing it asa self-opening or selbstpreisgabe . To saveand protect identity as an object that


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Selbstpreisgabe. Para resguardar yproteger la identidad como un objetoque podra desaparecer en vez deinvitar a participar en un juego comoun evento que podra ser revitalizado y

fortalecido en la confrontacin conotras identidades

might disappear -instead of bringing it intoplay as an event that could berevitalized and strengthened it isconfrontation with other identities- is ofcourse a

suicidal strategy; the same steps leading toself-preservation can drive as well toerosion, if time is kept in mind; or todecomposition, if the self criticalconsistencyof identity is taken into account.Nevertheless it is a strategy that seems tobeinevitable under the conditions of scarcity.Every community understands thesingularity of its own selfness as the reason

why the gods select it as a preferred orchosen people, superior to the others.Throughout history, the selfness andotherness of a singular or a collectiveindividual have been detected orrecognized according to many criteria,some ofthem focus on animal or natural features,like bodily constitution or skin colour;some others concentate on socialcharacteristics, like language or thos,

while stillothers combine both perspectives, thenatural and the ethic. One of thesecombined criteria sets identity and alterityin terms of race.The specific determination of selfness andotherness as a race emerges whenhuman animal features begin to beperceived in a consolidated unity as thesignifier of an ethic substance that wouldbe its signified; as the visible side of an

indivisible conjunction of expression andcontent. Thus, for instance, black bodilyfeatures (black skin, etc.) would be thenecessary manifestation of a black soul,andconversely, a black soul would belongonly to a body with black features.Consequently, a human behaviour would be


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racist behaviour when it addressesother people through the filter of a previousdetermination that qualifies itsappearance as ethically meaningful. Racisttreatment of, or engagement with other

people is seldom friendly; its mostlyhostile. The threatening presence ofotherness impresses a negative mark onthe natural features of other peoplesbodies.Universalism and racism emerge together.The racial understanding of humanselfness and otherness should beconsidered as a specific phenomenon ofprotomodernand modern times. Actually, it begins as a

complement to the abstractuniversalism required of human behaviourby the mercantile circulation ofproducts or goods, a universalism thatChristian religion promoted implacably formore than thousand years in westernsociety. The great variety of definitions ofselfness and the consequently innumerablepossibilities of otherness that existspontaneously in the western worldundergo the homogenizing action of a

pragmatic definition of identity or selfnessthat comes from the everyday praxis ofexchange of equivalents. According to thisdefinition, to be a human being iscontingent on association to a particularabstract community, the community ofprivate proprietors or men engaged in themarket-concurrence, each trying toovercome the others and increase hismoney-wealth on the basis of a highervalueproductivity

of the work incorporated in his products.It is important here to remember thathigher value-productivity of value of coursemeans the capacity of work to producemore or better goods or values in use, butonly if these values in use are bearer orcarrier of economic value. Valueproductivityas the ultimate goal of human labour


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working process and human lifebelongs to communities where socialactivity is already organised around amercantile economy, a form of productionand consumption that is already subject

to the circulation of goods as an exchangeof merchandises or equi-valent things.Mercantile identity refunctionalizestraditional, archaic identities to such adegreethat they become unrecognizable toprevious generations. It is an abstractidentity,apparently inclusive and open to allhumans, that goes beyond all otheridentities

and according to which no one has to be another, unless he refuses theinvitation to belong to the abstractcommunity of private proprietors. Then it isevident that a new sort of otherness hasemerged, a specifically racial otherness,the otherness of people that are no non-functional to the subordination oftraditional selfness to the new mercantileidentity. It is an ethic otherness thatbecomes distinguishable in the appearence

or aspect that comes with the refusal ofthe effects of mercantile refunctionalizationon the corporeal (animal) features ofhuman beings. Thus mercantile behaviournecessarily requires an appearance ofits own, a specific mercantile appearancethat is not only a manifestation ofvalue-productivity, but already one of itscomponents.A radical change has taken place: a re-definition of selfness and otherness. People

belonging to an other race are nowconsidered not only as barbarians(dissimilarto the people of the own community andunfamiliar with their language andcustoms), but as probably non-humanbeings, as aliens, people blind or insensitiveto the specifically human goal: that of


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value-productivity.However, this it is a change that publicopinion systematically denies. The newdefinition of identity as opposed to alterityis misconceived and interpreted simply

as a more civilized and therefore almostharmless version of the archaic definitionof the proper as opposed to the strange orthe civilized to the barbarian. Mostlyhidden in the Third world, thedevastating actual realization of modernracistdefinition of the other is not acknowledgedand treated as a genocidal practice.Modern racism is eclipsed by remainings ofthe old hatred to foreigners. The KKK

lynching of blacks in the US as well as thesystematic mass elimination of jews andgypsies in nazi Europe are some of therecycled modern relapses of the old type ofgenocides or archaic practices ofaggressive xenophobia. Yesterday andtoday antiblackand anti-Jewish actions, enacted by theculture industry of capitalistmodernity as spectacular negative feats orprowesses, contribute in our time to

hide, conceal and forget the silent but veryeffective genocidal activity of specificmodern racism, to minimize the naturalor structural racist practices of everydaysocial behaviour and of established politicsin the capitalistic modernity.The first historical appearing of specificallymodern racism can be found in SpainsXVIth Century. An open and conceptuallyvery rich anthropologic-theologicaldiscussion about the question of whether

Indians had a soul, whether they werecomplete or only partially humans,accompanied the enterprise of theConquista. Itis not difficult to notice that a self-justifyingintention is at work beneath thediscursive level of this discussion. The newman, the modern man, is trying to


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found or ground his devastating presence inAmerica on a demonstration of thedisfunctionality of indigenous peopleregarding a re-construction of the worldthat

is manifestly supported by God. Contrary towhat the Franciscan evangelizers orpater Las Casas may think, an Indiancannot become fully Christian, cannot betransformed into a new, modernChristian, into a man of action, a man whobelongs to his own enterprise, like Corts orPizarro. And he cannot, although hemay behave as an exemplary Christian,because ultimately a new Christian canonly be a modification or a new version of

an old Christian, a cristiano castizo,de casta or de sangre, that is to say aSpanish Christian. For the first time inhistory, in the Spain of the Conquistadores,Christian entrepreneurial ethics andEuropean blood purity are linkedtogether. This may be considered the firstappearance of a new modern perception ofselfness and otherness, which is thebasis of modern racism.However, specifically modern racism

reaches its maturity only two centurieslater,when, after the Industrial Revolution,mercantile social life had become a specificcapitalistic-mercantile social life or, likeFernand Braudel says, when capitalismhad overflowed the sphere of circulation ofthe economy and had invaded itssphere of production. Karl Marx interpretsthis fact of economic history using histheory of formal and real subsumption

of the natural reproductions-process ofsocial wealth and of society itself under theabstract economic reproductionsprocessof capital. Subsumption meanssubordination, dependence, and Marxexplains how different it is for social life,when the subordination to capitalsselfreproduction


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affects only formally the labour-processor when it has alreadybecome a real subordination. In fact,formal subsumption means that thebehaviour of the economy is compelled only

from outside of the productionsprocess,by market dynamics, to follow the rulesthat derive from the pursuit of thegoal of capital accumulation. In contrast,real subsumption means that the actionof these compelling force, objectivated inthe technical consistency of theproduction-process, comes from withinitself; that the capitalist goal, thevalorization (verwertung) of economicvalue, has substituted the concrete goals of

the natural reproduction process of socialwealth.When the capitalist behaviour is real andnot merely formal, when it iseffectually a mode of production, it rebuildsnot only the means of production andtheir technical consistency, but also thesubject of production. It does thisaccording to its own capitalist project,that is, a project that pursues the totalsubordination of social life under the never

satisfied demand of economic value, toincrease its magnitude. The capitalist modeof production fashions or piecestogether a peculiar type of human being,according to its needs of suitablecaretakers of capitalist wealth; this is ahuman being characterized mainly by away of life founded on a productivistic self-repression (entsagung, opfer), who hascompletely interiorized the mercantile trendto surplus-value productivity. For

him living in capitalism and living forcapitalism are the same. The homocapitalisticus is the human being that hasfollowed the imperative demanding orcalling coming from capital; that hassubordinated himself to the gravitation ofcapital on the human subject of thereproduction-process, precisely that


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gravitation identified by Max Weber as thespirit of capitalism (der geist vomkapitalismus).If there is no alternative to the capitalistform of modern life, if civilization and

capitalist civilization are the same, andliving in capitalism means living forcapitalism, then Max Weber is right:modern man is the human being that obeysthe calling of the spirit of capitalism andwho, therefore, in order to do so,develops a peculiar thos, a down to earthor realistic thos that establishes somesort of harmony Nietzsche would say anihilistic harmony- between himselfand the worlds capitalist structure. For him

the protestant ethics is the Christianpractical manifestation of this thos.But Max Weber can be wrong. In fact, formany modern human beings, to live incapitalism something that is inevitable incapitalistic modernity- has not beennecessarily the same as to live forcapitalism; for this modern peoplecapitalismdoes not represent the best of all possiblemodernities. There are other the,

other strategies of behaviour, other ways tolive in the capitalist modern worldthat develop themselves in the praxis underthe presumption that some othermode of production, different from thecapitalist mode of production, may sustaina better form of modern life. Romantic,baroque, even enlightet (aufklrerisch)or neoclassical the to use elegantterminology- emerge in the most differentsituations throughout the history of

modernity. From the margins of normal life,subtly dysfunctional in relation to it, all ofthem, in one way or another, contest themonopolistic position of the realistic orprotestant thos in the capitalistmodernity; all of them assert themselves asself-critical alternative proposals of away of life within the boundaries of


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capitalist modernity.Max Webers description of the moderntype of man becomes plausible only in asituation where the subsumtion orsubordination of natural or concrete

humanlife under the capitalist self-increasingprocess of economic value has beencompleted; when, like in our days, evennature can be replaced by a near perfectsubstitute, created by capital itself.The capitalist mode of production achievesthis total subordination only with theamericanisation the nord-americanisation- of modernity. The projectof a

capitalist modernity that was born inEurope came to fruition only in (north-)America. It could not be completed inEurope because of the strong and multipleresistances to it coming mainly from otherpre-existing civilising projects.The concrete historical experience that theprotestant or realistic thos had towithstand during its growth and expansionin northern Europe consolidated in astrong affinity and preference for the ethnic

and ethic features of people living inthat geographical region. Thus, in ourtimes, after that historical experience, thedisposition of a person to be realistic or tolive for capitalism, can only beeffective if, in addition, she partakes tosome extent of those ethnic and ethicalfeatures in one way or another. Only if she,or he, belongs or is bound in somemeasure to a peculiar race, the whiteyrace: if she partakes of the blanquitud,

the whiteyness.The blanquitud, not the blancura, of aperson (singular as well as collective), thatis, not her whiteness, but her whiteyness(to borrow the title of Fassbindersfilm), consists on his or her surplusvalue-productivitistic capacity, but only when itis intertwined with or tightly linked to a


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diffuse or sublimated set of ethnic-ethicfeatures, originally belonging to northEuropean peoples. Puritan Christianbehaviour, that is, productivistic self-repression alone, or ethnic-white identity

marks alone are not enough to characterizewhiteyness, because it is a subtlecombination of both. The whithey identityis an abstract-universal identity,characterized by its functionality to thecapitalistic mode of reproduction, butwhose recognition marks in the concreteworld are nevertheless borrowed from aparticular ethnic-ethic identity. Theabstract, only light particularizeduniversalism

of whiteyness has been an unimprovablerecourse of the expansionistic trend ofcapital accumulation. The totalitariansociety that post-liberal capitalism builds inour days in substitution of the traditionalliberal society has done already aconsiderable step with the instalment ofwhithey race in the role of human race.The practice of modern racism is usuallyhybrid; it is modern and at the same timearchaic. The open and brutal hate to the

other as a barbarian works as a disguise ofthe hidden and discreet hate to the other asa non-whitey person. That is whathappened in nazi Germany and itsparadigmatic practice of modern racism.Thegenuine private proprietor in Europeanwestern society modern explains thisway his modern hate of the other: TheJews cheat, he means. They hide ordisguise communal property (in the form of

mutual help) as private property; theyprotect or preserve the nerve of their ownheimat, the life in community,precisely there where heimatlosigkeit, theabsence of community, must be therule. They are hateful because they profitfrom these deception and explain thisprofit as a gods gift or mercy to them for


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being his chosen people. Against allevidence, all the success of jewish people inmodern, mercantile life, nazi politicsdoesnt acknowledge any whiteyness to theJews. Springing to another, premodern

sort of argumentation, the Nazis pretend toshow and prove why the jewsare hatefull, by arguing that they are avolk, the jewish people, and as such theyhave done great damage to the germanvolk. The extermination (ausrottung) of thejews would be so only a justified retaliation(rache) of the offended german peopleagainst a barbarian enemy. The old hate ofthe foreign as instrument of the new,the hate of the non-whitey or non-human.

Modern racism attends to the differencebetween, on the one hand, those who areevidently realists, those who accept andinteriorize the destiny of the homocapitalisticus, and on the other, theundeniable dysfunctionals that can not,orrefuse to accept that destiny: betweenevidently born winners and undeniablylosers by birth. Whereas, in criticalsituations, the non-whiteys may become

adispensable population (ballastgewicht,as the Nazis used tu say), subjects of afinal solution (endlsung) or a mercifultriage(to use a word of R. Rorty).The racism defined in relation towhiteyness, the modern racism, becomesreal innormal life of modern society through adiscriminating practice whose hate to theother, the non-whitey, remains generally in

the stage of scorn or contempt, ofdistrust and suspicious fear. Apparentlyharmless, this radical discriminationcondemn as no-human (as un-menschen)everyone who has not found the way tosuccess and to the correct appearance ofsuccess. And non-human meansdispensable, ready to be eliminated if the


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circumstances require. It is thereforeunderstandable that in the affluent societyof neo-liberal and globalized capitalism,when success seemed to be a reachablegoal, many non-whiteys, many born

losers, both in the first and in the thirdworld, from America to China, tried withconsiderable results to adopt the whitheyrace, as we kann see it now especially inthe USA.In a world determined by the planetarianfunctioning of productive forces, andglobalized by the accumulations-processof capital, it is necessary to develop atransnational perspective of social andhistorical problems, and in this perspective,

the data available allow to speak of apeculiar ordinary genocide that is impliedin this modern discriminating practice. AsCarl Amery wrote about Hitler as aprecursor he had in mind not only thespectacular killing of hundreds ofthousands (like in Rwanda in1994), but alsothis new, discreet every day masskillingthat take place in our times, mostly in theThird world, like, for instance, thekilling of migrant Mexican and latin workers

on the borderline between the USAand Mexico.Amery, Carl, Hitler als Vorlufer.Auschwitz der Beginn des 20.

Jahrhunderts? Luchterhand 1998.Rorty, Richard, Quines somos?Universalismo moral y triageeconmico.Revista de Occidente, Unesco, Paris 1996.

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