This essay offers a critical introduction to the circulation of racial materialities, and especially whiteness, in North American and European academic contexts. It proposes that we can escape from the dominant epistemology of identity as a fixed attribute of individuals without losing the urgent and much-needed analytics of identity as social and material force. In the gap between “identity politics” and a richer critical politics of identity lies the difference between a discursive public sphere of agonistic conflict and one of potentially transformative relationality. Drawing on critical race theory and especially black radical thought, my analysis rejects the reduction of identity to discrete census categories and attempts to situate contemporary scholarly practices in the context of a planetary decolonial movement. If “identity” today is all too frequently dismissed by a methodological whiteness that strictly separates it from materiality, politics, and knowledge, then a dramaturgical or choreographic analytics of race might better address how racial materialities operate both above and below the level of individual bodies, subjects, and citizens. Synthesizing practical insights from artistic research and performing arts with critical theories of race and identity, this essay refers to some of the author’s recent personal experiences at academic events in order to describe and analyze whiteness as a form of social choreography.

中文翻译：

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白色氛围：学术空间中种族物质的编排

本文对北美和欧洲学术背景下的种族物质，尤其是白人的流通进行了批判性的介绍。它提出，我们可以摆脱将身份视为个人固定属性的主流认识论，同时又不失去对身份作为社会和物质力量的迫切和急需的分析。在“身份政治”和更丰富的身份批判政治之间的差距中，存在着竞争性冲突的话语公共领域和潜在的变革性关系之间的区别。我的分析借鉴了批判种族理论，尤其是黑人激进思想，拒绝将身份简化为离散的人口普查类别，并试图将当代学术实践置于全球非殖民运动的背景下。如果今天的“身份”经常被一种将其与物质性、政治和知识严格分开的方法论白人所忽视，那么对种族的戏剧或舞蹈分析可能会更好地解决种族物质性如何在个体身体水平之上和之下运作、臣民和公民。本文将艺术研究和表演艺术的实践见解与种族和身份的批判理论相结合，参考了作者最近在学术活动中的一些个人经历​​，以描述和分析白人作为一种社会编排的形式。