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NYU professor\xa0Sonali Thakkar\u2019s brilliant first book,\xa0The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought\xa0(Stanford UP, 2023), begins as a mystery of sorts. When and why did the word \u201cequality\u201d get swapped out of the 1950 UNESCO\xa0Statement on Race,\xa0to be replaced by \u201ceducability, plasticity\u201d? She and John sit down to discuss how that switcheroo allowed for a putative anti-racism that nonetheless preserved a\xa0sotto voce\xa0concept of race.\nThey discuss the founding years of\xa0UNESCO\xa0and how it came to be that Jews were defined as the most plastic of races, and \u201cBlackness\u201d came to be seen as a stubbornly un-plastic category. The discussion ranges to include entwinement and interconnectedness, and Edward Said's notion of the "contrapuntal" analysis of the mutual implication of seemingly unrelated historical developments. Sonali's "Recallable Book" shines a spotlight on Aime Cesaire's\xa0Discourse on Colonialism--revised in 1955 to reflect ongoing debates about race and plasticity.\nMentioned in the episode:\n\nAma Ata Aidoo,\xa0Our Sister Killjoy\xa0(1977)\n\nHannah Arendt, "The Crisis in Education" (1954) in\xa0Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought\xa0( "the chances that tomorrow will be like yesterday are always overwhelming" )\n\nFranz Boas, "Commencement Address at Atlanta University," May 31, 1906 (this is where he says the bit about "the line of cleavage"\n\nFranz Boas,\xa0Changes in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants,\xa0Final Report, immigration COmmission (1911)\n\nW.E.B. Du Bois, "Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace," (1945)\n\nFrantz Fanon,\xa0Black Skin, White Masks\xa0(1952)\n\nMichel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History"\n\nAdom Getachew,\xa0Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination\n\n\n\nIHRA definition of Antisemitism.\n\n\nJerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.\n\nClaude L\xe9vi-Strauss,\xa0Race and History\xa0(1952)\n\nNatasha Levinson, "The Paradox of Natality: Teaching in the Midst of Belatedness," in\xa0Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing our Common World, ed. by Mordechai Gordon (2001)\n\nEdward W. Said,\xa0Culture and Imperialism\xa0(on the contrapuntal)\n\nJoseph Slaughter,\xa0Human Rights Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law\n\n\nUNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization),\xa01950 Statement on Race\n\n\nUNESCO,\xa01951 Statement on the Nature of Race and Race Differences\n\n\nGary Wilder,\xa0Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World\xa0(on the methodological nationalism of postcolonial studies and new approaches that challenge it)\n\n\nRecallable books:\n\nAim\xe9 C\xe9saire,\xa0Discourse on Colonialism\xa0(1950, 1955 rev. ed.)\n\nGeorge Eliot,\xa0Daniel Deronda\xa0(1876)\n\n\nRead\xa0and Listen to the episode here.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies