El Departamento de Ciencia Política y Estudios Internacionales tiene el agrado de invitar al seminario de los jueves "Techno-Racism, Manual Labor, and Du Bois’s Ecological Critique", a cargo de Inés Valdez.

Abstract del paper a presentar: This paper theorizes the destruction of nature as a consequence of alienation from it, a process that mediated by technology and racial hierarchy. I do this through an ecological reading of W. E. B. Du Bois, who makes two diagnostic and two critical normative points in his essays on development. Diagnostically, Du Bois first connects the intensification of racism to western technological needs, turning upside down techno-racist claims that equated whiteness and ability to  technological superiority. Instead, he argues that racism and colonialism are necessary to procure raw materials at a cheap enough price to secure industrial profits. Ideologies of racial hierarchy operate within this context to confine nonwhite bodies to manual labor in contact with nature. Relatedly, Du Bois contests the inferior value assigned to manual labor because of this ordering, showing both their centrality to high technology societies and clarifying the political origins of this ordering. On the critical side, Du Bois first contests the desirability of speedy “development” and forced integration into the global economy, which prevents racialized peoples from orienting development toward their own wellbeing. Second, Du Bois claims the technological mindset is a poor standard of achievement because their focus on the maximization of profit and power are dehumanizing, obscure the cooperative character of production, and prevent the political imagination from envisioning new worlds. 

Expositora:

• Inés Valdez, Profesora asociada del Departamento de Ciencia Política de la Universidad estatal de Ohio.

El evento será en inglés sin traducción. Se desarrollará de forma presencial en el Campus Di Tella y de forma virtual a través de la plataforma Zoom.