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A Taste for "the Other": Intellectual Complicity in Racializing Practices

Author(s): Virginia R. Dominguez


Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Aug. - Oct., 1994), pp. 333-348
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
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CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October I994
?) I994 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research OOII-3204/94/3504-OOOI$2.00

It is in to be "Other" in most U.S. educational institu-


tions, and it means something quite specific. Europeans
A Taste for "the need not apply, not because there is a sudden rash of
"reverse racism" but because there is a new form of the
old racism that has the appearance of privileging. Both
Other" the popularity of "the Other" and the practices that sus-
tain it are cut from the same cloth as the historical pat-
terns of exclusion and devaluation that they aim to sup-
plant. But it is not easy either to see these continuities
Intellectual Complicity in or to attack them without having the criticism backfire
Racializing Practices1 with worse consequences. Therefore we are left in a
quandary that I aim to address here. The silence of so
many native-born, immigrant, or foreign anthropologists
on what I am calling the hyperprivileging of "minority
by Virginia R. Dominguez intellectuals" and the illusions that surround it is under-
standable, but it is nonetheless, I am arguing, deeply
problematic.
A good part of the problem is perceptual. Racism is
always experientially and systematically consequential
Recent institutional efforts to counter historical patterns of exclu-
sion based on racial classification are examined and critiqued. Of but not always nakedly obvious. When institutional
special concern are the recruitment of university faculty, the practices define themselves in opposition to an ac-
knowledged racism, there is a tendency for people com-
highlighting (indeed, hyperprivileging) of certain marked forms of
difference in public forums, and the framing of curricular debatesmitted to undermining racism to drop their guard. It is
about "multiculturalism" in prepackaged suspect ways. It is ar-
always easier to see fault in positions one does not hold
gued that these efforts continue to be so based on racializing prac-
tices that they paradoxically perpetuate more than challenge in- than in those dear to one's heart. It is likewise easier
vidious patterns of race and racism. Unintentional complicity is to note how others "otherize" people, to critique the
called into question and anthropological silence decried. perpetrators, and to do so convincingly than to see how
we do the "otherizing" ourselves. More than saving face
VIRGINIA R. DOMINGUEZ is Professor of Anthropology at the is involved. We may just not see what we are doing be-
University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa 52242-I322, U.S.A.). Born in
cause we are employing lifelong habits of seeing, catego-
i952, she was educated at Yale University (B.A., I973; M.A.,
I975; Ph.D., I979). She has been a Junior Fellow of the Society rizing, and processing the world around us. Often, too,
of Fellows of Harvard University (I976-79) and has taught at we are blinded by our genuine belief in the worth-
Duke University (I979-9I), the Hebrew University (i984-85), whileness of a project or cause.
and the University of California at Santa Cruz (I99I-93). Her re- Anthropologists, for example, who have gone public
search interests are public discourse(s) and the histories and poli-
tics of collective classifications. She has conducted fieldwork in with defenses of anthropology in the past i 5 years have
New York City, Surinam, New Orleans, Jerusalem, and Hono- typically felt attacked by nonanthropologists, often lit-
lulu and has published People as Subject, People as Object: Self- erature-based Cultural Studies scholars for whom a cri-
hood and Peoplehood in Contemporary Israel (Madison: Univer- tique of anthropological practice was a critique of oth-
sity of Wisconsin Press, i989), White by Definition: Social
ers' "otherizing." The far more common practice of
Classification in Creole Louisiana (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, i986), and (with Jorge I. Dominguez) The Carib- critiquing intellectual paradigms inside or outside of
bean and Its Implications for the United States (New York: For- one's discipline from which one seeks to be distin-
eign Policy Association, i98i). The present paper was submitted guished is an equally good example. Wetherell and Pot-
in final form 2o x 93.
ter (i992) eloquently argue that in their commitment
to fighting racism many students of racism erroneously
perceive themselves to be outside the discourse of rac-
ism, and I seek to echo that call for greater awareness
of practical complicity and greater attention to self-
implicating practices.
Otherness is not natural; it is made-much like "ma-
jority" and "minority," "nation" and collective Selfhood
(see Dominguez i989). But Otherness is consequential
because of how deeply it is learned and then presupposed
and recreated through seemingly innocuous practices.
For every posited Otherness there is a reinforced sense
of shared Selfhood. Both are experienced as natural and
i. This paper was originally prepared for an invited session at the therefore, to use Bourdieu's term, as doxa. Red warning
9Ist annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association,
flags tend not to go up automatically about the conse-
San Francisco, Calif., December 2-6. The session, organized by
Katherine Verdery (Johns Hopkins University) and Ashraf Ghani quences of those practices that sustain the distinction
(World Bank), was entitled "Histories of Commodification: Papers between Other (in the collective sense) and Self (in the
in Honor of Sidney W. Mintz." rnl1prflup V~~~~~~~~~~~~.PnP

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334 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October 1994

Said's Orientalism (I978) obviously comes to mind, plified and transformed into Difference, overvaluing par-
but I am here more interested in examining particular ticular bodily differences by imbuing them with lasting
institutional practices that cut across many disciplinary meaning of social, political, cultural, economic, even
epistemologies and boundaries. Foregrounded are the of- psychological significance. Racialization is produced
ten unwitting practices by which the U.S. scholarly and reproduced through ideological, institutional, inter-
community imagines itself and institutionalizes itself active, and linguistic practices that support a particular
in consequentially constitutive ways often at odds with construction of Difference. Some racializing practices
its own widespread inclusive politics of equality and di- are more obvious to us than others, and, when coupled
versity. Although the United States is the main area with blatant and categorical systemic stratification,
within which I now operate and from which I proffer they are also unproblematically repulsive. I am thinking
evidence, examples of similar practices in Canada and here of definitional legislation of the sort I explored in
England in recent years suggest that the U.S. phenome- part i of White by Definition (i986) and of the specifi-
non that is in question probably has its parallels in se- cally sub-Saharan African slave trade and plantation sys-
lected countries as well. Societal reproduction and its tem in the Americas (e.g., Curtin I969, I975; Braith-
institutionalized discursive practices are this essay's waite I97I; Mintz I959, I985; Patterson I967, i982).
bottom line. Other racializing practices, however, are more embed-
ded though not necessarily submerged in other aspects
of public discourse and institutional life, and we often
Invoking "Diversity" end up participating in their unfolding (e.g., Gilroy I987,
Giroux I988). Anthropological participation in primitiv-
A major disjunction exists, at least in the United States, izing, Orientalizing, and peripheralizing practices comes
between intentionality and embodied practices in insti- to mind as one example with which we have been ner-
tutional sites in which "diversity talk" is currently at a vously grappling3 since the seventies.
premium. For the past few years, a veritable explosion Another one is very close to home. We (American aca-
of what I am calling "diversity talk" has spread through- demics) talk about Others in reference to particular pop-
out U.S. educational institutions, funding agencies, pub- ulations, typically applaud the current U.S. institutional
lishing houses, and foundations. The term "diversity" obsession with "diversity," and are often called on to
is widely invoked in hiring, curricular offerings, funding serve as cultural experts. We also hyperprivilege (or at
channels, and media access as coded language for "mi- least allow our institutions to hyperprivi'lege) those tar-
nority." U.S. national public rhetoric implies an interest geted as "minority intellectuals." I am referring here to
in all forms of diversity when, in fact, the referent is the hype about hiring "minority intellectuals"-the spe-
always specific excluded, marginalized, or underempow- cial interest, regulations, efforts, and even bidding wars
ered groups typically within the United States. Jews, for that create an air of awkwardness about a great many of
example, are not included, and in California, perhaps these efforts. These are, I am arguing, racializing prac-
most visibly at the University of California at Berkeley, tices that should concern us. When diversity is invoked
there is an awkwardness about dealing with those of in such a way that it neither questions nor challenges
Chinese or Japanese origin, who are "too numerous for the naturalized system of social classification on which
diversity." U.S. public rhetoric also suggests an open- the society's system of inequality is based-when in fact
ness to different values, goals, perceptions, and experi- it draws on and reproduces the constitutive terms of that
ences, though we in the United States do not seem to ideology of race-we ought to be more skeptical about
know yet how open we really are or can be (cf. Scott its liberatory possibilities and less complicit in the insti-
I992, Dominguez I993). African-Americans, yes, but tutional practices that promote it. Too much emphasis
how about Afrocentricity? Jewish Americans, yes, but is being placed, in my opinion, on the advantages of an
do we really intend to allow for assertive Jewishness? emphasis on "diversity" over an emphasis on Eurocen-
The problem is not always obvious. The fact is that tricity, assimilationism, and standardization.
a particular construction of Difference and a particular An example from curricular debates is the description
construction of Otherness have become objectified and of Berkeley's new American Cultures requirement.
internalized, indeed often commodified, in deeply ra- Starting in I992, every freshman entering Berkeley must
cialized2 ways. The key here is deep. Racialization takes take a course examining "how American history, soci-
place when differences between human beings are sim- ety, and identity have been shaped by the nation's di-
verse cultural make-up"' (Chronicle of Higher Educa-
tion, March II, I992, p. Ai). Berkeley claims that its
2. The term has begun to acquire currency, especially among those
requirement is unique-not, administrators say, an eth-
examining historically documentable processes of "race forma-
tion" or "racial category formation." Omi and Winant's (i986) Ra-
cial Formation in the United States is being widely read at least
in California's intellectual circles as an example of sociopolitical 3. Influential books with which anthropologists have engaged in-
constructions that extend to Americans of Asian origin. My own clude Torgovnick (i990), Said (I978), Fabian (i983), Clifford and
I986 book White by Definition provides historical and contempo- Marcus (i986), Wolf (i982), Clifford (i989), and Trinh (i989).
rary discussion of "black/white" constructions. And Lavie's new-George Stocking's series with the University of Wisconsin Press
est work on "Third World Israeli" writers (e.g., i992) employs iton the history of anthropology provides both documentation and
in the Israeli setting. complexity from within the field.

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DOMINGUEZ A Taste for "the Other" | 335

nic studies requirement or a mandatory course on rac- sion of universalism and the underhanded invocation of
ism or Third World cultures, a disclaimer meant to dis- "quality" (witness, for example, the televised and
pel precisely the kind of argument I am making. But printed exchanges between Dinesh D'Souza and Stanley
the two provisions that they believe make Berkeley's Fish over the past three years). But in the process of
requirement "stand out" (p. Ai6) are the following: wanting also to "take action," an intense search goes
"First, American Cultures courses must deal with at on for intellectuals whose quality cannot be called into
least three of the following five groups: African Ameri- question and whose bodies, or at least social identities,
cans, American Indians, Asian Americans, Chicano and are processed (and displayed) as non-European, presum-
Latino Americans, and European Americans. Second, ably non-Eurocentric, and ideally also nonandrocentric.
the courses can't look at ethnic groups in isolation from The result is a paradoxical reinforcement of racializing
each other. They must be comparative, placing groups practices that Otherize in very selective ways for the
in the context of American society." The requirement intended purpose of fighting historically inherited sys-
is to deal with certain people presented as groups within temic patterns of inequality. Consider the following vi-
U.S. society; it identifies the "groups" that faculty gnettes:
members must deal with, though it gives the semblance December i99i, Ottawa: Keya Ganguly, Tom Hill,
of choice by letting them pick which three or four Jane Ash Poitras, and I constitute the final panel at a
"groups" they will include; and the names given these conference entitled "Art as Theory: Theory and Art."
"groups" generally imply identification by region or con- The panel is entitled "Institutionalized Theory in a
tinent of origin but replicate the divisions implied by Post-Colonial World." The four of us are the only speak-
straight racial talk in the United States-"whites" and ers at this conference who are not Euro-North Ameri-
their racialized Others ("black," "red," "yellow," cans, and just as noticeably there are no Euro-North
"brown"). Americans on our panel. Keya Ganguly and I make
Reports on how this requirement is working confirm nearly identical observations about this fact simulta-
the inherent racialization in both its form and its con- neously. Perhaps naively, we are both unpleasantly sur-
sumption. Despite its framing in terms of "cultural di- prised that at a conference organized by Cultural Studies
versity," both faculty members and students typically colleagues from Ottawa and Montreal and featuring self-
use the language of race just as much as the language of labeled progressive artists and scholars the four of us
culture in talking about the courses and their contents. would be so singled out and so lumped together. Keya
For example, in the Chronicle's article, actually entitled is a South Asian-born U.S. resident, I am a Cuban-born
"Faculty Members at Berkeley Offer Courses to Satisfy U.S. citizen, Tom is a Canadian Indian scholar and direc-
'Diversity' Requirement," "race" and "culture" appear tor of the Woodlands Cultural Center, and Jane is an
almost interchangeably in quotations from faculty openly spiritual Canadian Indian artist. Much of the au-
members as well as students. And this is true of both dience, we are told both before and after, has particularly
supporters and critics of the American Cultures re- looked forward to our panel. We are paradoxically privi-
quirement. leged speakers-first stigmatized as coming from the
Despite the disclaimers, then, it is evident that Berke- underprivileged world, then hyperprivileged as voices of
ley's American Cultures courses are indeed courses the underprivileged championing their cause while the
about race in U.S. society, conceptualized racially liberal-left applaud-applaud while keeping us at arm's
though marketed as culture talk.4 There is no general- length.
ized otherness here; there is always a specific Otherness, June I992, Chicago: At a group dinner following a
and there is a packaging that makes it palatable, even two-day symposium, I find myself sitting across the ta-
part of a progressive agenda. ble from a colleague who has asked not to be named. I
learn that he has just accepted an offer at a prestigious
university to develop and head a new African/African-
Hyperprivileging American Studies department, which means leaving his
home university. He is, in fact, a recent Ph.D. but a
The intended inclusiveness increasingly takes the form highly recruited one in the past few years. He asks me
of a very suspect hyperprivileging in the hiring and pack-how I find UC-Santa Cruz and begins to talk about the
aging of professional scholars. Proponents of a 20th- experiences at yet a third university that drove him
century U.S. canon that is decidedly Eurocentric and an- away. I ask if his current university and the one whose
drocentric in orientation typically reject what I am offer he has just accepted are really any different. He
calling hyperprivileging by invoking universalist claims answers that at least now he can take advantage of the
and processing it as an issue of "quality." Opponents of window of opportunity he fears will soon close for black
the canonical status quo typically counter with reasoned intellectuals in the United States. I am surprised at his
theoretical and political statements that attack the illu- pessimism and bring up as evidence the data all over the
pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education-fellow-
ships and positions specifically targeting "minorities"
4. Elsewhere (igg2b) I develop the recent history of race talk, cul-
ture talk, and ethnic talk in the United States, articulating and
in higher education. He nods but adds that he means
documenting my claim here conceming the relegitimation of race the star system whereby scholars like himself are being
in American public thinking. catapulted into the spotlight and intensely recruited by

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336 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October 1994

universities trying to outbid each other. He says that he tion), I clearly remember his exchange with one particu-
is not comfortable with the current frenzy but that he lar student at the end of a lecture in which he had in
also worries that it will not last because in fact, in his effect deconstructed the concept of race. "But Mr.
view, universities do not really want very many visiblc Mintz," the student said, more troubled than sassy, "I
black scholars. can always tell a Jew when I see one." "I am sure,"
Spring i992, Scripps Humanities Institute: I am in. Mintz replied, making no overt reference to his own
vited to be a featured speaker at a conference "focusing Jewishness. "but can you tell a Jew when you don't see
on various dimensions of postcolonial culture." The let- one? "
ter mentions "the postcolonial world," the arts, New I have retold this story many times. I have found it
York, New Delhi, and postmodernism. I call the director wonderfully revealing, but I have also noted, with con-
to get a better sense of what they are looking for. Eight tinued surprise, that not everybody "gets it." For years
people, he says, have been invited to give greater focus I have assumed that the naturalization of race in U.S.
to the conference. Not only do I know five of the other society is so deep-rooted that many Americans entirely
seven invitees; I also notice that six of us are foreign- miss his point, but increasingly I have wondered if his
born and at least partly foreign-educated and six of us point is not lost on a generation of Americans born and
(not quite the same six) are in the spotlight these days raised after World War II who were taught to deracialize
as minority intellectuals-Valentin Mudimbe (Duke), Jews while insistently racializing others. And I grow
Anthony Appiah (Harvard), Lata Mani (UC-Davis), more and more insistent that the truly productive focus
Houston Baker (University of Pennsylvania), Rey Chow in conversations about race is (should be?) the historical
(UC-Irvine), and I. analysis of racializing (and where appropriate also dera-
In all of these vignettes, one thing is certain: Differ- cializing) practices.
ence/Otherness has become hyperprivileged, though the The object of pointing out shifting categorial lines or
rhetoric and the institutional motivation are based on alternative classification systems has never been to
an analysis of societal and specifically institutional un- show that categories always have fuzzy boundaries or
derrepresentation and underempowerment. Excellent that individuals often have to grapple with systemic
intentions reproduce more than counter the very system controls or bureaucratic decisions beyond their individ-
of differentiation and categorical inequality that the ual control. It has been to document and to highlight
rhetoric and their accompanying institutional acts seek the social, political, and economic constructions of com-
to supplant. The positive light in which this situated munity, alliance, hierarchy, and relative value that are
pattern of hyperprivileging is cast disguises its own ra- enabled and reflected in specific racializing practices.
cializing practice just enough to keep it from being seri- Who is a Jew is less socially consequential than what
ously challenged. Jews are, just as who is black is less socially consequen-
tial than what blacks are. But neither set of questions is
as consequential as which question is indeed being
Re-viewing "Race" asked, under what circumstances, by whom, and to wh
end.
As any history of racializing practices attests, the issue Should we not, then, ask ourselves whose self-interest
has never been simply difference or others but rather is really being served by the racializing practice that
particular exclusions and particularly self-interested makes it possible for educational institutions to cele-
constructions of sameness and difference. I am reminded brate, foreground, bracket, and recruit particular schol-
of Sidney Mintz's efforts to teach about "race" in his ars as "minority intellectuals"?
legendary year-long introductory anthropology course at Many of those who encountered an earlier version of
Yale, which for years drew hundreds of students and forthis essay claimed that they sympathized with its cri-
which he won a coveted teaching prize. Almost a quarter tique of racialism but were made uncomfortable by-
of a century later, I still remember both his message and even rejected-what they took to be its implicit critique
the difficulties many students had in consuming it. I of American institutions' "affirmative action" practices.
recall, on the one hand, his strongly internalized social The question they seemed to pose so vividly was logical
constructionist sense of race (long before the phrase be-but also quite revealing. To understand my observations
came fashionable), his emphasis on not dissociating the about categorical hyperprivileging is necessarily to ask
history of race from the history of plantation slavery,how far we ought to go with this analysis and what the
and his refusal to dismiss race as an annoying mystifi- adoption of its critical stance would imply for related
cation of class coupled with a parallel refusal to dismiss racializing practices.
class as an equally annoying mystification of race. On One analytic direction, focusing on two decades of
the other hand, while I remember only selected items policy talk constituting affirmative action as a definable
from that year-long course (his singing Haitian Creoleset of activities, could end up debating the relation of
songs in front of more than 6oo students, his lecture on contemporary racialized hyperprivileging to affirmative
Durkheim's irreverent notion of religion, his attempt tc action as it has developed over the years in the United
get us to think about Vietnam as a peasant society andStates. A debate over the merits of affirmative action as
not just a war we disapproved of, and his apparently a historically corrective strategy would no doubt appear
perfect command of the fossil evidence for human evolu- inevitable. A more interesting discussion, however,

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DOMINGUEZ A Taste for "the Other" | 337

might focus on what contemporary racializing patterns ing "blackness" leads Americans to process scholars
of hyperprivileging reveal about the relative successes from Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, and the non-
or failures of two decades of an at least objectified, if Spanish-speaking Caribbean as "black," scholars from
not always visibly institutionalized, affirmative action Latin America as "Hispanic," scholars from East Asian
strategy. countries as Asian (i.e., "Oriental"), and scholars from
For example, it is not at all clear to me that hyperprivi-South Asia increasingly as "people of color." Indeed, it is
leging in this racialized arena is a sign of the success of often a painful, complicated, and prolonged "discovery"
affirmative action, though the availability of more than that numerous immigrant scholars make; witness re-
a handful of individual scholars to fill particular slots cent public acknowledgments of this process by Indian-
might appear to be a sign of the growth of the pool of born Arjun Appadurai (I993) and Cuban-born Ruth Be-
"minority scholars." A compelling counterargument har (I993 a), whose Jewishness complicates the process
might well historicize this particular pattern of hyper- further.
privileging, showing this embodied form of cultural cap- Other classifiers-self-ascribed or operative else-
ital5 to be a recent phenomenon and suggesting that the where, such as caste, religion, class, nationhood, or na-
failure of affirmative action to produce sufficient change tionality-are subordinated to a relentless U.S. ideology
in institutions of higher learning and influence has cre- of race. The result is a discursive/institutional practice
ated the tighter market that enhances it. that homogenizes Others (within the racialized catego-
A different direction might background the issue of ries of relevance to the United States) in the interest
affirmative action strategies and foreground value- of "diversifying" U.S. society. The elision of class, for
creating and value-enhancing processes that arguably example, puts scholars who are usually socially privi-
shed light on the hyperprivileging of "minority intellec- leged in the untenable position of "speaking for" doubly
tuals." This argument would extend the observation and triply underprivileged populations, often from mul-
about hyperprivileging to an analysis of how Difference tiple countries and even regions of the world. It is not
and Otherness have been commodified in the process- their/our home countries' or regions' or self-defining
that a particular construction of Difference and a partic-peoples' needs (or interests) that are being served but,
ular construction of Otherness have acquired market rather, those of the United States in the late 20th cen-
value and been bought and sold in the academy, espe- tury. Whereas elsewhere (igg92a, b) I have called atten-
cially since the mid-ig8os, in deeply problematic ways. tion to the culturalization of difference, here it is the
As we learn from the history of drug foods-sugar, tea, racialization of Difference/Otherness that must be high-
coffee, and cocoa-or plantation slavery or commodified lighted.
sex, particular socioeconomic circumstances create the
buyers whose mass consumption typically ensures con-
tinued production of the goods thereby badly needed by The Paradoxes of Demand
the market (see Mintz I985, Aries and Bejin I985, Wil-
liams I989, Bell I987). If the process of commodification Limited supply increases the price of a good for which
is successful, mass markets produce and reproduce his- there is greater demand, and we have all heard about the
torically specific buyers as well as historically specific limited supply of African-American, Chicano, Native
products, and historically specific institutional systems American, and Puerto Rican Ph.D.'s in the country, es-
become invested in turning the commodity into a vehi- pecially in the sciences. Most of us explain it by invok-
cle for further gain. An analysis of the commodification ing the long history of institutionalized racism in the
of racialized Otherness might, therefore, focus on the United States and the economic, educational, social, and
socioeconomic circumstances enabling, indeed generat- legal consequences of that systematic exclusion-that
ing, this "taste for the Other." It would, however, impli-is, we offer a theory of the limited supply of "minority
cate both buyers and sellers as well as late capitalism in intellectuals." But what about the demand? Despite the
a post-civil rights movement, post-Vietnam War, and liberal/progressive agenda that has pushed for such hir-
postcolonial era characterized by an apparent Pax Amer- ing for years, it is my contention that the current de-
icana. mand for "minority intellectuals" is contingent on the
It would be simplistic to invoke postcoloniality as the racializing practices that continue to produce the sup-
all-powerful explanation for the ongoing phenomenon. ply-both the good itself (specifically the radical Other
It is indeed true that many of the most visible hyperpriv-created by racializing practices) and the small numbers
ileged scholars are themselves/ourselves non-European, of the good available. Just as with the "development" of
immigrant scholars. But it is the deep-rooted hold that the demand for sugar between I650 and I900 in the Brit-
"race" has as an organizing schema in U.S. society that ish Isles, the "development" of the demand for "minor-
provides the motor force. It is not their/our immigration ity intellectuals" in the United States and the United
into the United States from a (frequently) recently inde- Kingdom is neither natural nor emancipatory. "Minori-
pendent non-European country that is the determining ties" are not born; they are made. And they are always
criterion for their/our special visibility but, rather, made to support the notion, and the privileges, of "the
their/our being nrocessed as racia1 Others. Fssentiai7z-
majority."
The question is always why. "Negro" slaves made the
5. Bourdieu's (i984) phrase seems especially apt here. nblnt.qtinn svstem nnoss_ih1k and l1ucrahtiv fnr nlnnt prQ sin -n

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338 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October 1994

merchants. "Chinese coolie" workers built much of the academic-capital-accumulating canon and differentiat-
infrastructure of the western part of the United States. ing it from less valued work or whether we discern pat-
Otherizing, demonizing, and primitivizing the native, terns in what Robert Alvarez has termed the "sifting
non-European peoples of North America made it possi- and shifting" of minority academics through "target-of-
ble for our igth-century Euro-American ancestors to opportunity" recruitment and hiring, we can observe ra-
take their land by force or wile, even if it meant killing cializing practices that, for the most part, keep the ma-
them. To speak of presumably high-status social posi- jority of racial Others in their place, in some periphery
tions, such as that of intellectuals, in connection with outside the core of intellectual authority.
these low-status positions no doubt seems problematic The forms of racial hyperprivileging that Dominguez
at first sight. But my point is that the similarity in the discusses are indeed problematic and deserving of an-
production of human beings as types to be bought and thropological critique and analysis. However, in the
sold as types justifies the connection. In all of these shadow of all the diversity hype and the commodifica-
cases, we must ask if the consumption of these types is tion of polyphony ("Other voices") are the ongoing mar-
ever really justifiable and what it is that is being bought, ginalization and circurmscription of minority intel-
by whom, and for whose benefit.6 lectual authority. The commodification of minority
Let us not be misled by arguments that invoke the intellectuals occurs in the context of a segmented mar-
specialness of particular "minority intellectuals"- ket from which a very small number of "stars" are pro-
their/our scholarly quality-as a response to this essay's duced and packaged according to shifting consumer
observations and critiques. Exceptionalizing particular tastes. Black feminist cultural critic bell hooks refers
scholars and not the many other extremely capable to this process as "commodity faddism." These "stars"
scholars who are not processed as "minority intellectu- emerge from a wiser-yet still underrepresented and un-
als" reproduces the racializing system of Differentiation empowered-pool of more ordinary intellectual workers
on which Otherness is based. It is not the quality of who bear the brunt of less disguised forms of racializa-
scholarship that is at issue but the packaging of scholars tion. These more ordinary subalterns less frequently ex-
and their words as racialized minorities and the question perience the "privilege"-or even "the appearance of
of which societies' or populations' needs are really being privileging"-of Otherness apart from the benefits they
served. may enjoy from belonging to a community of kindred
We simply must address how we as anthropologists, spirits occupying a niche within historically white, an-
as academics, as university faculty are complicit. This drocentric universities or national professional organiza-
is not an issue just for those of us who are or have been tions. Often such communities of support and affirma-
minoritized; many of us who have been put in these tion are imagined and invented in clear opposition to
positions already worry about the compromises we the intense alienation and depreciation built into many
make and the awkwardnesses we feel. It is equally an academic environments, where "diversity" and "multi-
issue for those who do not feel implicated-but always culturalism" are little more than rhetorical word play
are. and window-dressing advertising the latest academic
fashion. The ritualistic display of multiracial and multi-
cultural difference in high-profile hiring, conferences,
and publications diverts attention from the more com-
mon everyday experiences of racial Others on the front
Comments lines of academic work and struggle. The widely felt
vulnerability of minority intellectuals (particularly
women) to invisibility, misrepresentation, and attack
FAYE HARRISON
(remember University of Pennsylvania Law School pro-
Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, fessor Lani Guinier?) was underscored at an important
Knoxville, Tenn. 37996-0720, U.S.A. 4 Iv 94 and extremely well attended conference that the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology hosted early this year
I strongly agree that anthropologists have a responsibil- entitled "Black Women in the Academy: Defending Our
ity to interrogate the paradoxical racial politics and Name, I894-I994." A number of anthropologists partic-
economy of anthropology and of academia in general. ipated in that historic meeting.
Dominguez is among a small number of anthropologists It is important for us to confront and find ways to
who have implicated our discipline and profession in the break out of the racializing double bind in which we
perhaps unwitting reproduction of invidious and insidi- find ourselves. The question, however, is how to accom-
ous racial (and gender) differences. Whether we scru- plish this without being complicit with the ultracon-
tinize the value-laden boundaries demarcating the servative backlash against the best principles and in-
tentions of affirmative action. I feel strongly that
anthropologists, of all intellectuals, should commit
6. The harsh questions I pose are I believe necessary ones forthemselves
all to inventing new models of deracializing
of us who are made uncomfortable by them. With Gilroy (i992), I
practice
believe we must be intellectually and politically self-critical or we that responsibly confront racism and its multi-
will lose the constructively critical edge that we have always plicity of consequences for both high- and low-profile
brought to "Westem society." intellectuals.

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DOMINGUEZ A Taste for "the Other" | 339

KIRIN NARAYAN borhoods, acting as a buffer against the majority of


Department of Anthropology, University of blacks confined to special homelands. Thus, although I
Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. 53706, U.S.A. 6 IV 94 generally welcome the theoretical space opened up by
Dominguez's article, I have several problems with the
The reframinng and muddling of various nonwhite cate- totalizing nature of her formulation. It disturbs me that
gories has plagued the United States from its origin. her argument tars all those who may be labeled "minor-
Dominguez's courageous and subtle essay brings to light ity intellectuals" with the same broad brush of "intel-
the long history of racializing practices which now in- lectual complicity." By ignoring the multivocality of
forms the construction of "minority intellectuals." minority representation and the contestatory nature and
Dominguez convincingly argues that racism may lie instability of representations, it reduces the practice of
coiled up in progressive agendas for affirmation action every minority intellectual to functional support for a
in academic institutions. Her analysis highlights the dis- monolithic complicity in racial domination.
juncture between articulated intention and implicit, How and why do certain minority scholars regularly
embodied practice. She brilliantly points to the ra- find themselves part of the process whereby persons nat-
cialized prepackaging of categories such as "diversity" uralized as "minorities" become hyperprivileged to
and "minority scholar" as commodities to be greedily speak on behalf of the minority masses? One becomes
acquired. a "specific Other" not only because of one's self-
In the current academic climate of suspicion and bit- presentation and visibility as a member of a stereotyped
terness over hiring, it seems particularly important for minority but because one chooses to benefit from such
those who would appear to be benefiting from what showcasing by appearing in different forums that seek a
Dominguez terms the "hyperprivileging" of minority politically correct representation of "ethnic" speakers,
scholars to speak out. Feminist minority scholars such by becoming part of the "star" system to be fought over
as Patricia Williams (i99I ) and Ruth Behar (I993a) have by universities (thus fattening one's paycheck), and by
used personal narrative to explore the ways in which criticizing the very process that has made one intellectu-
what may appear to be privilege actually carries en- ally prominent (a form of cultural capital that can be
grained typifications and humiliations. Elsewhere I have mined in different ways). Dominguez comes close to
argued that the typification of minority identity as uni- talking about a form of hyperppivileged victimization.
dimensiofial serves to repress the multiple, shifting vec- She suggests that no matter what we do we will always
tors around which identity is constructed (Narayan be complicit in the racialization process and that our
I993a): it is crucial that scholars-minority or other- power can only be derived from attacking ourselves-all
wise-acknowledge the particular and personal loca- in the name of solidarity with unnamed and underprivi-
tions which feed into their professional stances (Nara- leged minorities.
yan I993b). When a minority scholar takes issue with I suggest another recourse. Implicit in Dominguez's
a typification head-on, complicating racial or cultural criticism is the question of how to resist the co-optation
identity with reference to class, gender, sexual orienta- of oppositional discourses aimed at the destabilization
tion, and other factors, it is a start towards undoing the and subversion of hegemonic practices of racialization.
accompanying symbolic violence. She fails to consider how some so-called minority intel-
Yet, once this first step towards bringing a pattern lectuals, by allowing themselves to be hyperprivileged,
into analytic focus has been taken, one wonders what is may be engaging in the subversion of majority intellec-
concretely to be done so as to retain the values of affir- tuals' proprietary claims. One such tactic is claiming
mative action even as racialized typifications are pushed one's ''race'' not as a biological essentialism but as a
aside. Valuing Dominguez's ability to raise provocative way of registering protest and resistance to assimilation
and painful questions, I am eager to know what her and domestication. Another would be refusing to submit
thoughts are on how we might proceed towards practical to any identity based on genealogy, national origin, race,
solutions. culture, or social citizenship while continuing to seek
forums for opposition to various forms of inequality ev-
erywhere. It is in these and other ways-among them
AIHWA ONG reappropriations, transformations, hybridizations, and
Department of Anthropology, University of California, realignments-that subaltern discourses deal with hege-
Berkeley, Calif. 94720, U.S.A. 7 vII 94 monic forces of racialization (Tharu i989:I27).
Dominguez argues that we should not hyperprivilege
Dominguez raises the complex issue of the institutional any intellectual on the basis of the "minority" label.
"hyperprivileging" of minority intellectuals as a ra- Given the state of race and class relations in this coun-
cializing practice. She notes that in the name of "diver- try, the voices of nonmajority scholars whose communi-
sity," academic hyperprivileging of minority scholars ties have been historically excluded from the discourses
helps maintain the structure of legitimation without and practices of the American academy will scarcely be
calling into question its naturalization of social inequal- heard. I would rather hear too many times about the
ities. Such "racializing" practices remind me of the question of racial formation from someone like Cornel
South African situation whereby a few middle-class and West than from many nonminority scholars. After all,
privileged blacks were allowed to live in mixed neigh- many majority academics are hyperprivileged simply be-

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340 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October I994

cause of pedigree, participation in exclusive university civil-rights movement, are acutely aware of the complex
and old boys' networks, and long experience as stereo- and shifting relations between race, ethnicity, and cul-
typed male representatives of intellectual power. ture (see, e.g., Omi and Winant I986).
I admire Dominguez's work but regret her rhetorical A recent article in the New York Times on key speak-
strategy here. It is not true that there is silence about ers in the country listed only two who can be considered
attempts to hyperprivilege minority intellectuals. In an- "minority": Maya Angelou and Cornel West. Given the
thropology, for instance, Trouillot (I99i), Narayan social and political underrepresentation of all minorities
(I993a), and I (n.d.) have in different ways criticized in thethe
nation, we are very far from hyperprivileging mi-
notion that immigrant or native anthropologists enjoy a nority intellectuals in the sense of acknowledging the
special relationship with cultural others or have "privi- work of all the scholars and intellectuals who may be
leged" access to ethnographic truth. In our different so categorized. By exaggerating the scope of such hyper-
ways we suggest that the consciousness developed under privileging we risk a backlash against innumerable un-
the conditions of a diaspora and the absence of national derprivileged minority scholars and students in acade-
and cultural closure fosters skepticism with regard to mia. Minority and foreign students continue to be rather
the privileging of truths on the basis of particular formsunderprivileged in anthropology and in all fields.'
of identification.
Dominguez offers the interesting notion that raciali-
zation is always about specific Others and cites as an HELAN PAGE

example "an awkwardness" at the University of Califor- Department of Anthropology, University of


nia at Berkeley about dealing with those of Chinese or Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. 01003, U.S.A. 5 Iv 94
Japanese origin, who are 'too numerous for diversity."'
I take it that the "awkwardness" she refers to has to do Dominguez should be applauded for daring to say,
with competing demands to admit more students from "Look, the emperor has no clothes on!" For her the em-
the African-American, Native American, and Hispanic peror is parodic of academic hegemony and its estab-
communities. I happen to think that these are legitimate lished agents, and the "new clothes" represent the vari-
concerns and that Berkeley has gone very far in trying ous ways in which many academic agents hyperprivilege
to diversify its student population. That some professors minority scholars in their effort to achieve strategic and
of color (who are often extraordinarily overworked at stylish diversity. In an era in which the extinction of
large public universities) can be called "hyperprivileged" our usefulness as anthropological experts is still a possi-
does not mean that populations that have historically bility, we simply cannot afford to pretend that transpar-
been discriminated against should remain underprivi- ently naked emperors are fully dressed. Instead of balk-
leged with regard to educational opportunities. Racism ing at the claim to cultural expertise of scholars of
exists at Berkeley as in the wider society, but students multiculturalism who are not anthropologists, Domin-
of Asian ancestry feel more accepted here than on any guez's description of academe's hyperprivileging
other campus in the country. prompts us to address our own inadvertent tendencies
It is to be regretted that Dominguez bases her sweep- to reproduce what Turner (I993) calls "difference mult
ing statements about the American Cultures program at culturalism" (as opposed to a more progressive "critic
Berkeley on a single report, without having reviewed multiculturalism"). It alerts international observers and
course materials, sat in on classes, or interviewed the warns us American anthropologists about our complic-
students and faculty involved. I spent two years on the ity and complacency as practitioners of "difference
university subcommittee reviewing hundreds of course multiculturalism" who too often succumb to the "ro-
proposals for the American Cultures program. Althoughmancing of otherness" (Gitlin i992, quoted in Turner
not all satisfied the requirements of the program, none I993:4I4).
took the view that "race" and "culture" were inter- In speaking of "hyperprivileging" Dominguez is refer-
changeable. In fact, the goal of the courses was to dem- ring to the commodification of difference-the hiring,
onstrate through extensive comparative reading and re- packaging, and promoting of non-European, non-
search the political, economic, and cultural processes Eurocentric, and nonandrocentric bodies "whose quality
whereby different populations in the United States havecannot be called into question." She explains that the
come to define themselves and each other. Although not academic demand being met by this commodification
all professors view culture the way anthropologists do, ensures the controlled scarcity of places in academe for
scholars in the different disciplines do consider "race" other minority scholars implicitly deemed less quali-
a social formation and recognize the complex relation- fied. Significantly, she reminds us that the demand is
ships between "race" and "culture" as historically con- not only for "quality" scholars themselves but for the
tingent and politically determined. Furthermore, the filling of the most visible "minority" slots in the acad-
view that the meanings of race are culturally produced emy. As she describes it, our tendency toward hyperpriv-
and contestatory does not necessarily conflict with the ileging seems to disregard the contributions of most mi-
notion that race, ethnicity, and culture are historically nority scholars while celebrating those of just a few,
linked. Berkeley has the leading ethnic-studies depart- making their incorporation into academe extremely vis-
ment in the country; many of our professors, having di-
rectly participated in the free-speech movement and the i. I thank Lawrence Cohen for his remarks on this comment.

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DOMINGUEZ A Taste for "the Other" I 34I

ible. Once selected, hyperprivileged minority intellectu- self-interest is really being served by the racializing prac-
als are suddenly treated like bonafide members of the tice that makes it possible for educational institutions
club. This practice hides the wide-ranging and destabi- to celebrate, foreground, bracket, and recruit particular
lizing critique of academic racism that most minority scholars as 'minority intellectuals'?"
scholars would otherwise make while publicizing the In addition to overseeing the production of knowl-
political correctness of universities with mandatory "di- edge, universities are also businesses with a decided
versity" courses-some of which merely additively in- preference for certain received "types." They keep cer-
corporate the historical and cultural experiences of spec- tain "qualified" scholars employed while denying ten-
ified racial or ethnic groups. Is hyperprivileging anything ure to others deemed "unqualified," who often develop
more than an educated, embodied, institutional version other very important qualifications that elite universi-
of ethnographers' conceptual filling of the "savage slot" ties refuse to recognize. Thus minority scholars are risk-
(Trouillot I993)? ing their own security by inviting the "unqualified" la-
Of course, says Dominguez, back-pedaling just a bit, bel when they publicly address such questions as
none of these academic agents are reproducing such ra- directly as I am trying to do. Pleading ignorance or sur-
cializing practices on purpose, but they do it all the time prise is much safer, and we see this alternative strategy
because of "unwitting practices" rooted in our habitual being adopted by Dominguez herself when, for example,
modes of thought. She may not agree with me, then, she reports her conversation with the anonymous black
that the high visibility of a few hyperprivileged minority scholar. That scholar's belief that American universities
scholars and the concomitant low visibility of most un- really don't want many visible blacks is one with which
derprivileged minority scholars render academe's es- most scholars of color have no difficulty relating. (For
tablishment guardians safely invisible. Universities example, scholars of color who participated in a presti-
often receive public and corporate approval for the gious university conference a while ago told me that one
tacti-
cal diversion of public attention that is accomplished white European discussant specifically addressed the
when establishment guardians (based in departments white scholars in a mixed audience, expressing shock
of anthropology, for example) participate in the selec- that American academe had slipped so far as to let the
tion of "minority intellectuals" whose scholarship is to minorities have a voice.) On the basis of our racialized
be consumed mainly by academics without bringing experiences, even if we are not personally hyperprivi-
much social justice into the real world. We need eth- leged we can anticipate the evidence that the anony-
nographers who will expose how and explain why such mous black scholar might point to in support of his ob-
agents seek to take all the credit for admitting scholar- servation. We would expect Dominguez, a Third World
minorities into the academy. How does it help preserve woman, and a similarly oppressed hyperprivileged mi-
their own scholarly white privilege? Is that privilege nority scholar, to have understood him, but she tells us
further safeguarded by controlling hyperprivileged that she was "surprised at his pessimism." Furthermore,
scholar-minorities for their ideological commitments she fails to ask why he drew that conclusion given his
to mainstream academic politics (see Page and Thomas own immense and rapid personal success.
1994)? In liberal-left fashion, Dominguez optimistically pre-
Dominguez identifies the liberal left as the primary sumes that the reproduction of racializing academic
agent of the hyperprivileging of minority scholars. She practices in contradiction to academe's publicly em-
also more correctly recognizes that the whole univer- braced rhetoric of equality and diversity is an "accident"
sity, in its effort to minimize racial unrest, is often ob-that happens only because "people drop their guard"
sessed with espousing diversity and multiculturalism when their academic practices have been publicly iden-
while failing to cultivate academic practices totally sup- tified as "in opposition to acknowledged racism." In
portive of and committed to social justice. As Turner contrast, many scholars of color expect dominant insti-
(I993:4I2) explains, "Anthropology and its various con- tutions to operate "at odds" with their "inclusive poli-
cepts of culture are not principally oriented towards pro-tics of equality and diversity" as a historic matter of
grams of social change, political mobilization, or cul- course. Optimism or pessimism has nothing whatsoever
tural transformation." Paradigmatic stabilization seems to do with our insistence on identifying majority exclu-
preferable, possibly because it feels safer. The unnamed sion and controlled access for a few for what it is. We
evaluators, selecters, and promoters of hyperprivileged know from experience that dominant institutions rarely
minorities in anthropology are thus empowered to reaf- do what they say when it comes to academic race mat-
firm this sense of safety by controlling the impact of ters or, if they really want to be seen as doing what they
minority scholarship on paradigmatic disciplinary dis- say, then simply don't say very much.
course. Dominguez's argument would be more incisive Dominguez believes that hyperprivileging reproduces
if she recognized that even the racialization of hyper- a racializing effect mainly because it is embodied in a
privileged non-U.S. minority intellectuals like herself is set of innocuous practices not easily abandoned because
implicitly intended, "unaware," to protect white public they are so deeply learned. But this very reasonable point
space in the American academy and "inadvertently" to overlooks the responsibility of established academic
sustain white privilege in the process. Where she could agents to change themselves and their organizations. It
ratify this point, however, she equivocates, asking rhe- presumes that the problem is their unintentional indi-
torically, "Should we not, then, ask ourselves whose vidual complicity. I suggest that, despite the growing

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342 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October 1994

number of genuiinely antiracist academics, institutional ALCIDA RITA RAMOS

and individual complicity are not so unintentional. In- Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade de
stitutions and most individuals alike try to live up to Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil. 29 III 94
their ideals in the space left over after doing whatever
it seems to take to pay their bills. If we really think Luchino Visconti's film I1 Gattopardo (The Leopard) de-
about the business side of academe, then we can see livered in stereo the adage of the modern West when it
that the problem is learning to incorporate embodied projected onto the silver screen the dictum that some-
nonwhite diversity without alienating the mostly white thing has to change so that everything can stay the same.
paying customers and managing to educate those same This dictum was being pronounced at the moment when
(often recalcitrant) customers about racial issues in po- hegemony in the European political order was changing
litically astute ways. hands from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, and it be-
In the attempt to maintain order in a student body trays an attempt by the former to lure the latter into its
diversified by the civil-rights marches and Black Power own expiring mold by yielding to it just so much and no
demonstrations of the I96os and I970s, encouraging the more. In her unmasking of the ideology of the politically
development of "a curriculum for every group" became correct that has swept through the United States, Do-
the smorgasbord strategy that Dominguez describes. It minguez delivers a similar message. What was once de-
makes it appear that different people of color have no nounced as tokenism has gained new impetus and a new
common experience of oppression by the dominant cloak called diversity, and this is tokenism with a ven-
group. It may also scatter and circumscribe oppositional geance. To what extent anthropology, with its insistence
attention, thus enabling the academy quietly to recenter on the virtues of diversity, is responsible for this new
and stabilize the dominant discourse from the podium wave of cultural "democratism" is hard to tell in a coun-
and in the classroom. Parading hyperprivileged minority try that is continuously being bombarded by multiple
intellectuals diverts attention from deeper problems and influences.
makes it possible to report that there are simply not Affirmative action, the subtext that accompanies the
enough resources to support each group's curriculum or rhetoric of minority rights, seems to be not only good
to promote the expert efforts of the most insistent anti- to co-opt but also good to export. After decades of sup-
racist minority faculty members to open up more non- porting graduate programs in Brazil, the Ford Foundation
white public space in the academy. has surprised us with a questionnaire requesting infor-
My reading of Dominguez leads me to conclude that mation about the percentage of blacks among our fac-
the institutional preference for "difference multicultur- ulty, student body, and staff and intimating that its
alism" relies both on the hyperprivileging of minority affirmative-action orientation might be equally valid in
scholars and on the simple proliferation of "diversity" our social latitude. This effort to export yet another First
courses. I add that these stop-gap measures are fostered World commodity to the underdeveloped world makes
by academic agents seeking to maintain order on cam- no attempt to translate the idiom, let alone the sociocul-
pus by regulating the rate of institutional change and by tural context, of North American tokenism ideology to
discrediting the change advocated by "critical multi- the realities of Brazil. The assumption behind this dry
culturalism" in favor of an additive but paradigm- and haughty questionnaire is that blacks are blacks
stabilizing politics of hyperprivileged minority inclu- wherever they are and whites do the same white things
sion. Academe may thus mask its core racism and everywhere, regardless of the nistorical, economic, polit-
appear racially progressive when its stylishly hyperprivi- ical, ethical, moral, or other specific conditions that may
leged minority scholars are paraded, and we must thank prevail. There is nothing here by way of innovation on
Dominguez for this particular image of the naked em- the by now aging theme of imperialism dressed up as
peror. What it means is that most universities make lit- democracy: What is good for the United States is good
tle or no real effort to eliminate the social injustice that for the world. If the homogenizing fever of U.S racial
is the fundamental motivation for racial unrest. democracy can spread all the way to us who are some-
Fostering antiracist courses (instead of courses that what protected by geographic, historic, and national ex-
merely incorporate information about racialized others) panses, we can imagine what it is like to be in its vortex.
and supporting the more politically active antiracist mi- This is precisely what scholars such as Dominguez are
nority faculty members (rarely among the hyperprivi- intent on disclosing to us.
leged) would go a long way toward empowering us to Dominguez's political verve competently exposes the
offer our students the anthropological tools they would perverse effect of this majority stratagem on minority
need to identify white privilege, to explore its constitu- personae. Relying on ego boosting, it exploits the public-
tion and see how it is reproduced in the white public ity potential of the selected few scholars/intellectuals
space of American institutions, and to work hard at who are elevated to the category of "ethnic chic" in aca-
sys-
tematically dismantling it. Hyperprivileging does en- demia and its environs. It is, in fact, a process that dis-
trench racial hegemony in academe, as Dominguez sug- plays disarming similarities to one in the field of macro-
gests, but it also exists so that a curriculum designed to politics: crossing the dividing line from the opposition
teach students to eradicate racism by dismantling white to the establishment is expected to cripple critical
privilege will never be implemented. awareness. The establishment counts on the inevitable

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DOMINGUEZ A Taste for "the Other" | 343

tendency, once one is in, to lose sight of previous battles becoming burnt-out by all this and deflected from their
In party politics as in academic circles, the lure of powei proper professional pursuits. Non-minority academics
is the most efficient instrument for defusing discontent were left to get on with their own career-building, status
Considerations of quality notwithstanding, what hap- enhancement, even the disinterested pursuit of
pens is the appropriation of a convenient other for use knowledge.
as a signal that a democratic endeavor is under way. By I have to say, however, that I know a number of
allowing minority talents to express themselves-whai Maaori (members of the minority group with which I
Spivak (I990:60, surprisingly absent in Dominguez'c am in daily contact and for-which I work) who would
text) calls benevolent imperialism-the established ma- recognise everything that Dominguez says but find it
jority kills more than two birds with one stone. It (i not of great personal concern. They have good degrees;
offers a show of racial/ethnic democracy as it (2) reaps they were appointed in fair competition; they would re-
the benefits of great minds while (3) deflecting the rislk ject the very notion of hyperprivilege. My old-fashioned
of radical change. In addressing the issue of its internal training makes me want some numbers here. I realise
cultural diversity, the guardians of North American in- that Dominguez is drawing our attention to context
tellectuality choose to folklorize that issue in an at- rather than cases and therefore numbers are irrelevant.
tempt to neutralize it. Anthropology, as Behar (I993b. But the minority academics who survive all of this are
3I4) points out, "has yet to carry out the radical kind o. not all victims; some are victors (though reluctant to be
self-examination that would bring its multicultural heroes).
quest home." Diversity is thus kept on a leash. The situation is made worse by the expectation of
Fine and alert minds, however, have a way of breaking some members of minority groups that their intellectu-
loose from harnesses and often reject the script prepared als will carry political banners and service "their own,"
for them. True to the unfailing workings of dialectics, as well as doing what any other "ordinary" member of
these minds reveal that inherent in the system which the profession does, or risk being labelled an Uncle Tom
set up the success trap for them is the potential for its (or the gender equivalent).
own negation. So long as there are Dominguezes, This is obviously, as Dominguez points out, more
Spivaks, and Behars on the horizon, this trap will not gc than just a set of personal problems. She asks us all to
unnoticed. consider yet again our failure to transcend the individual
Retuming to Visconti, one should remember that, foi level of personal change and root out the basic cultural
better or worse, it was the bourgeoisie that ended ui assumptions that constitute our "lifelong habits of
with hegemony in its hands. seeing, categorizing, and processing the world around
us." We have tinkered with the institutional apparatus
but not changed the underlying eidos of the academy,
JAMES RITCHIE which, fundamentally, by its universalism, defeats dif-
Centre for Maaori Studies and Research, University
ference of it.
while defending
Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. 25 II 94 As anthropologists we should ask why it is that so
deep-seated a contradiction persists in what we still be-
The process which Dominguez calls the hyperprivileg- lieve is a rational world (another deeply problematic
ing of minority intellectuals is certainly problematic. proposition). Culture as paradox is not foreign to our
How naive we all were back when we thought that the intellectual tradition; Bateson, for one, saw it as funda-
UNESCO Statement on Race would bring about an in- mental. I for one would suggest that the value of such
temational accord to outlaw the very concept of race paradoxes and the function of their persistence is that
and everyone would live happily ever after! Later, as they provide for and power change by throwing up alter-
civil rights issues became the hot number, we supported natives to otherwise universalistic tendencies in every
the elimination of institutional racism (and sexism tool culture. We can be aware, accept the responsibility to
by persuading our masters to declare our institutions invent and explore (what else is intellectual "freedom"
culture-safe zones and equal-opportunity employers and and human creativity for?), continue to press the moral
to adopt charters, codes, and policies of affirmative arguments, and (if we can, and if we think we should)
action. alleviate the strain of the yoke that minority members
In none of these did we lose ground, but in the new bear. Few of us are experts in personal therapy, and help-
reality which emerged there was not only backlash and ing people adapt to intolerable situations is hardly ther-
retrenchment but distancing from the problem ("Who, apy anyway. We are responsible for the situation, not
me?") and denial ("What, here?"). Rightly Dominguez solely or wholly but inescapably.
points to unwanted (if not exactly unexpected) effects. Finally, anthropology still has to learn to live with the
We legitimized some truly incompetent people. We al- increasingly literate, aware, and articulate populations
lowed ethnic and gender studies to become ghettos and it studies. Simply importing increasing numbers of
(dare I say it?) denigrated. Minority intellectuals were in "them" into the profession of "us" will not save either
danger of becoming representatives of protected endan- our souls or our profession from its hubris. We have a
gered species, treated with attention, acclaim, conde- tradition of assisting others to present their perspec-
scension, and similar liberal entrapments and perhaps tives. Detachment from that denies one of our reasons

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344 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October 1994

for being and leaves undischarged the prime moral obli- ludes also to a shift in the North American language of
gation of the field researcher-to become the servant of social classification toward a culturalization of differ-
those who have given one the privilege of studying their ence. In recent years, the spread of a culturalist rhetoric
lifeways. Too many of us lose, ignore, or never acquire has been noted elsewhere; for instance, in Europe, at a
that perspective and live with the resulting mess. time of economic recession in which national frontiers
If one can't clean house from basement to attic, are being revitalized, so-called extra-communitarian im-
maybe the best thing is just to burn it down. Unfortu- migrants' cultural difference is being construed as the
nately, we all live in the house, and it isn't a detached rationale for their exclusion. The meaning of this new
villa on Cloud 9. Pointing the finger at some aspect of culturalist rhetoric of exclusion is controversial in part
an institution, some failure to actualise a professional because of a tendency to uncover old vices in new
code, or any other of the components of the dilemma of guises. I am not familiar with the North American situa-
which Dominguez writes is a step, but a small one. Our tion, but it seems to me equally problematic to see the
real responsibility is to that which we profess to under-new "culture talk" and the discriminating practices in-
stand and study. What is needed is not just tinkering formed by it in the United States as just one more ex-
with administrative practice but culture change. If we pression of the old racialism as Dominguez suggests.
are not the experts in changing culture, then who is? There is first of all the question of the reason for this
rhetorical shift. The civil-rights movement in the
United States, no less than the horrors of World War II
VERENA STOLCKE in Europe, has discredited any form of "race talk." This
Facultad de Letras, Universidad Autonoma de may be one reason for modification of the language of
Barcelona, Bellaterra, Barcelona 08-193, Spain. 6 iv 94 categorical disqualification in a socioeconomic context
which, moreover, has become more inequitable. It is
The civil-rights movement of the sixties, at a time of not, however, sufficient reason for cultural difference
economic expansion, was followed by increased profes- to have become an ideological alternative, nor is it an
sionalization of minority intellectuals. This was cut explanation for the way in which cultural diversity as a
short, however, in the seventies with the onset of the criterion for inclusion as well as exclusion is conceptu-
economic crisis and the restrictive neoliberal social and alized and the ideological assumptions on which it
economic policies of the Reagan government. The socio- draws for its argumentative force.
economic blockage makes the intrinsic shortcomings of Dominguez rejects the invocation of postcoloniality
affirmative-action policies, which have consistently ad- as the explanation for the persistent categorization of
dressed the symptoms rather than the root causes of the minority intellectuals and adduces several instances of
exclusion of so-called minorities, all the more apparent. "racial" marking of groups of recent immigrant origin.
Dominguez's critique of an inclusive politics of equality Afro-American blacks' insistence that their historical
predicated on the exaltation of diversity-based on her experience of exclusion is distinct from that of immi-
personal experience as a distinguished "minority intel- grant intellectuals raises, however, the question
lectual"-needs to be set in this context. The privileged whether the privileged but nonetheless categorical treat-
treatment accorded selected minority intellectuals by ment of representatives of the latter does not have its
the academy and the way in which minority issues have own ideological logic and whether phenotype, where
been incorporated into reformed university curricula in and when it is used, rather than subsuming other classi-
the United States have reinforced rather than dissolved fiers, does not stand for a specific categorization con-
categorical difference. As a consequence, it is virtually strued in political, that is, nationalist-cultural, rather
impossible for minority intellectuals to avoid being than socio-structural terms. It may be necessary to ex-
treated as symbolic "others" and establish ordinary indi- amine more closely possible differences in the ways in
vidual identities. This paper is bound to provoke contro- which domestic underclasses and recent immigrant
versy, for it exposes an experience which is usually hid- groups are classified. The naturalization of systems of
den behind the veil of privilege, challenges the socioeconomic inequality and exclusion to neutralize
progressive hopes invested in affirmative-action prac- social tensions is an old strategy inherent in modern
tices, and calls academics to task for their complicity. Western class society. The ideological assumptions put
Controversy, however, is very much needed if we are to to use for this purpose have, however, been diverse, ra-
rethink the implications of the ubiquitous contempo- cialism being only one variation on this theme. "Culture
rary celebration of diversity. talk" may sound less offensive than "race talk," but the
The phenomenon this paper addresses is important recent resurgence of reified, bounded notions of culture
and needs to be voiced, but I have some reservations and cultural diversity, not least within anthropology it-
about part of Dominguez's interpretation. She concludes self, should make us wary of old analytical categories.
that the "marked' experience of privileged minority in- To conclude, a more general problem: Dominguez re-
tellectuals is ultimately one more manifestation of the sents the academy's commodification of minority intel-
"deep-rooted hold that 'race' has as an organizing lectuals and the uncomfortable experience of thereby be-
schema in U.S. society." There is no doubt about the ing made into a largely symbolic representative of the
power of racialism as a legitimation of social disqualifi- underprivileged majority. Yet, the commodification of
cation in U.S. history and society. Still, Dominguez al- difference is preceded by the production of differences.

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DOMINGUEZ A Taste for "the Other" | 345

What, then, is really at issue? Is it merely that categori- biological teleology in the explanation of behavior. As
cal social classifications impede the development of in- race moved away from biology, culture moved closer to
dividual merit and personal identity? Or is it the very race. Thus by the time race reached the "free" market
logic of a society in which, on the one hand, individual it had already been prepackaged as culture.
achievement is celebrated as the basis for socioeco- But the new breaks in the market for nonwhites were
nomic success but, on the other, the intrinsic limits to not due to academic discourses or even to market pres-
collective improvement of so-called minorities are ra- sures as such. They came primarily from the political
tionalized by essentializing socioeconomic inequality wave launched by the civil-rights movement. What we
and exclusions, thereby disguising their economic- are witnessing today are the contradictions of these mul-
political roots? Dominguez highlights one instance of tiple trajectories where nationwide racism and the econ-
the limitations of liberal diversity politics. Anthropol- omy matter as much as the beliefs held by a few academ-
ogy, whose classical object of analysis has been the di- ics. Multicultural programs and the hyperprivileging of
versity of "others," not only needs to be aware of the minority faculty are bearers of these contradictions.
institutional complicities Dominguez denounces but, Multicultural programs are often indeed racializing prac-
more important, must address the many subtle ways in tices, but they are also practices that embody recent and
which new diversities are construed in an increasingly current fights against the racism prevalent in U.S. soci-
globalized, individualistic, and fragmented world. ety and genuine intellectual challenges to the domina-
tion of a supposedly Western canon.
Similarly, the hyperprivileging of faculty minorities
may be a racializing practice often initiated to defuse
MICHEL-ROLPH TROUILLOT student insurgency or to assuage liberal guilt, but it is
Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins also part of a more general process of commodification,
University, Baltimore, Md. 21I21I8, U.S.A. I5 IV 94 and its academic outcome need not be the simple repro-
duction of the practices that made it possible. First, the
Dominguez exposes a wound that most progressive aca- star system does not operate only within academe, and
demics would prefer to cover with a Band-Aid, and some here as elsewhere it commodifies not only race-
will likely criticize her just for having done that. I share including whiteness-but also gender, fades, public im-
her concerns and welcome her argument, but I would age, and other components of a marketable icon. The
question the conclusion that leaves us with no alterna- segmented markets for which these commodities are
tive other than the academic questioning of the catego- produced replicate those of the society at large. As far
ries deployed. as race is concerned, such markets are not as "free" as
The practices condemned by Dominguez do reproduce liberal thinking first suggested, but they are somewhat
the racialized organization that they claim to challenge, freer than segregation.
but is that all they do? As historical moments in the Anthropologists may try to debunk the race-culture
long and contradictory interplay of class, race, and cul- complex-a difficult prospect now that the public at
ture in the United States, are they not both limiting large knows as much as we do whatever culture is (Perry
and enabling? Dominguez rightly calls for a historical i992). But even if we succeed, "race" under any name
analysis. Such analysis would reveal the long process will still reach academe as a virtual commodity op-
through which cultural diversity came to be assimilated erating in a formally desegregated market. It is the very
with liberal sympathy for otherwise essentialized racial combination of profound racism and formal desegrega-
minorities. It would uncover the reasons why and the tion in the society at large that makes this commodity
ways in which "culture" became a convenient cover for possible. The practices deplored by Dominguez will ap-
race in a legally desegregated but still fundamentally pear in new guises unless we do something more outside
racist society. academe.
The peculiarly North American culture concept de- Within academe itself, we can and should make intel-
veloped in part as an advance over evolutionary theory, ligent use of the contradictions inherent in these very
in part as a tool of white liberals against racism, but we practices to influence their reproduction. We should
should not forget that this conceptualization was also contribute to making multicultural programs deliver
conveniently congruent with economic liberalism. As something more than what many students and adminis-
part of that liberal package, the culture concept pro- trators may have first intended. We should push the few
foundly undermined the biological underpinnings of rac- minority superstars to use their positions to modify the
ism and contributed to the advance toward desegrega- segmented market that produced them. When will the
tion. The package as such could not, however, fully number and quality of minority Ph.D.'s they mentor de-
address the complex relations of race and class in the crease the market value of race in their respective fields?
United States, nor could its "take" on culture move an- In sum, besides the verbal deconstruction of the catego-
thropology out of "the savage slot" (Trouillot i 99i). ries involved, we should consider the numerous micro-
Quite the contrary. Academic refinements aside, coffee- practices of resistance, including the relative dera-
table anthropology sold nonwhite (and therefore ra- cialization of our own specialty. In recent years, the
cialized) "cultures" to the general public as essentialist proportion of blacks with higher degrees has declined in
representations in which a naturalized ethos replaced anthropology as in most research fields. Academics are

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346 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 35, Number 4, August-October 1994

not responsible for this decline, but we certainly have plea and their sense of urgency-not because somehow
not done much about it. intellectuals and their institutions of pedagogical repro-
duction started it all but because we should not easily
participate in the continued reproduction of the imag-
ined social constructs through which economic and po-
Reply litical inequalities operate.
Ong's defense of a curricular program at Berkeley that
she and others have worked hard to design is under-
VIRGINIA R. DOMINGUEZ standable and valid within its constraints. It is true that
Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A. 22 v 94 I myself did not do a survey of participants in Berkeley's
American Cultures program to determine the actual
A response need not be a defense. I am gratified that a content of the courses included or the goals of participat-
number of these commentaries are supportive of the ef- ing students and faculty members. I offered the Berkeley
fort to show that "the emperor's clothes," as Page puts case not as an ethnography of an institutional site but,
it, are not what they appear to be. My goal has been rather, as a highly reported example of a very visible
to open a space within which we can talk about the program whose structure unwittingly reproduces the
limitations, indeed the failures, of some of our well- imagined social constructs it seeks to address.
intentioned strategies for fighting institutional racism. Minoritizing practices do not, of course, somehow or
"A Taste for 'the Other"' is deliberately concise. It seeks other autonomously originate in the academy. Trouillot
to name a phenomenon and to problematize it. It does and Stolcke make that point forcefully even while sup-
not seek to compare institutions, to analyze good inten- porting my efforts to focus on academic institutions in
tions at length, or to be exhaustive. It was not something this essay. But does this mean that the academy can
I wrote comfortably, nor is it, I am sure, something to be never originate genuinely alternative imagined social
consumed comfortably. It urges critical self-reflection, constructs? Perhaps not. Pierre Bourdieu's mounting
especially on the part of anthropologists, many of whose scholarship on the practical but systemic reproduction
intellectual battles with explicit racism span at least a of categorial distinctions and their hierarchical em-
century. placement (I977, 1984, i988) certainly encompasses aca-
Ritchie hints at the possibility that in New Zealand demic practices and leaves little room for optimism. My
those "benefiting" from similar forms of hyperprivileg- essay seeks, with Bourdieu, to make reproductive prac-
ing do not seem to fret much about it. If he is correct, Itices visible so that they can enter "the universe of the
would love to know why. It could be that significantly disputed." My goal, and at times I have often thought
different conditions exist in a largely two-population so-his, has been to further the chance that visibility might
ciety in which the colonialized population seeks control evoke enough of a response to affect the smooth mecha-
more than inclusion, although there are uncanny simi- nisms of reproduction and that under those conditions
larities with the U.S. culturalist liberalism evident in a vibrant public debate might generate far less complici-
Wetherell and Potter's Mapping the Language of Racism tous alternatives than the not very transformative strat-
(i992). It could also be that other strategies work betteregies currently at play.
in New Zealand than the ones I identify as problematic Alternatives I imagine contemplating do not even
in the United States, though we should be careful not necessarily directly restructure institutions of higher ed-
to assume that silence signals approval, improvement, ucation, at least not in the short run. They could, and
or acquiescence. If, following de Certeau's (I984) lead, perhaps always should, entail active and massive redis-
we distinguish between strategies and tactics, we call tribution of resources towards other, and possibly more
into question the automatic assumption that reformist key, institutions and arenas. Is it not a sham to create
strategies implemented by formal institutions of power and hyperprivilege a number of individuals as represen-
and influence, such as universities, government agen- tatives of minoritized, excluded, and/or underempow-
cies, and foundations, really seek to change the distri- ered "groups" and do little else to change the minoritiz-
bution of power in the social field within which they ing, excluding, and/or underempowering practices of the
operate. social, political, and economic conditions that produce
Page is right; I do bend over backwards to ensure that and reproduce them? A number of the commentaries
no one misreads results as intentions. Too many people, bring out a point that needs highlighting: the "star" sys-
including Ong, work too hard with excellent intentions. tem is hyperprivileging at the extreme, restricting the
But the fact that particular individuals within such number of "minority intellectuals" to benefit materially
structures may want to change deep-rooted processes of from the practice to a small percentage of "available mi-
power allocation and distribution does not mean that nority intellectuals" but creating the impression of ma-
the arena within which they are allowed to institute jor institutional change by making a splash.
change is large enough or transformative enough to pro-Let me reiterate what I stated in the essay itself about
duce systemic change. Harrison and Narayan want to complicity. I am in no way singling out minoritized in-
urge us (even more, I believe, than they want to urge me) tellectuals in the United States or elsewhere. Ong un-
to imagine and offer alternatives, to experiment with fortunately misses that point. What I am not doing is
currently un-thought forms of affiliation. I echo their exemnting minoritized intellectuals, and Pare anproDri-

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DOMINGUEZ A Taste for "the Other" | 347

ately "catches" me as well in what she perceives to be BRAITHWAITE, EDWARD. I971. The development of creole soci-
a form of complicity. I do name a number of specific ety in Jamaica, I770-I820. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
CERTEAU, MICHEL DE. I984. The practice of everyday life.
scholars who have been, and are being, put in these posi-
Berkeley: University of California Press.
tions. I named only those whose participation in public CLIFFORD, JAMES. I989. The predicament of culture: Twenti-
forums was public enough to be in the public domain. eth-century ethnography, literature, and art. Cambridge: Har-
To address Ritchie and Page simultaneously, there are vard University Press.
many more minoritized intellectuals who could be CLIFFORD, JAMES, AND GEORGE MARCUS. I986. Writing cul-
ture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
named, and there are, of course, thousands of nonmi- CURTIN, PHILIP. I969. The Atlantic slave trade: A census.
noritized intellectuals, in the anthropological arena Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
alone, who could be named as participants. This is not . I975. Economic change in precolonial Africa: Senegam-
a minor phenomenon. And my insistence that participa- bia in the era of the slave trade. Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press.
tion, complicity, goes on in many more ways than "pro-
DOMINGUEZ, VIRGINIA R. I986. White by definition: Social
gressive" intellectuals might wish can be uncomfortable classification in creole Louisiana. New Brunswick: Rutgers
enough to produce the charge that I am totalizing and University Press.
exaggerating both the phenomenon and its presumed . I989. People as subject, people as object: Selfhood and
successes. peoplehood in contemporary Israel. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Ramos, Narayan, Trouillot, Harrison, Page, and Ong
. i992a. Invoking culture: The messy side of "cultural poli-
have all made important interventions of their own that tics." South Atlantic Quarterly 9I(I):I9-42.
parallel the thrust of my argument. Trouillot, Narayan, . i992b. Is multiculturalism postracism? Chronicles of and
and Ong have courageously called into question assump- for the U.S. in i992. Paper delivered at the conference "Writ-
ing the Post-Colonial," Claremont, Calif., November.
tions that "native" anthropologists have "privileged" ac-
. I993. Questioning Jews. American Ethnologist
cess to some kind of ethnographic truth. Ramos reminds 20:6I8-24.
us that Spivak called a related phenomenon "benevolent FABIAN, JOHANNES. I983. Time and the other: How anthropol-
imperialism." Harrison adds hooks's reference to the ogy makes its object. New York: Columbia University Press.
packaging of a small number of "stars" as "commodity GILROY, PAUL. I987. There ain't no black in the Union Jack:
The cultural politics of race and nation. London: Hutchinson.
faddism." And Page quotes Gitlin's phrase "the ro-
GIROUX, HENRY. I988. Schooling and the struggle for public
mancing of otherness" but could just as easily have re- life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
ferred to her own developing notion of "white public GITLIN, TODD. i992. "On the virtues of a loose canon," in Be-
space" as the severely constraining context in which a yond PC: Toward a politics of understanding. Edited by Patri-
cia Aufderheide, pp. I85-90. St. Paul: Graywolf Press. [HP]
very suspect "hyperprivileging" occurs. I mentioned and
LAVIE, SMADAR. i992. Blow-ups in the borderzones: Third
drew on other scholars as well. Together these represent World Israeli authors' gropings for home. New Formations I8
a set of critical interventions, but I do not believe that (Winter):84-io6.
they signal a general understanding of the phenomena MINTZ, SIDNEY W. I959. "The plantation as a sociocultural
I/we address. Why would those of us-a small number type," in Plantation systems of the New World, pp. 42-50.
Pan American Union Social Science Monographs 7.
at that-who have recently published similarly critical
. I985. Sweetness and power: The place of sugar in mod-
pieces feel compelled to write them, and why would ern history. New York: Penguin.
they be considered delicate, hot, or controversial, if NARAYAN, KIRIN. I993a. How native is a "native" anthropolo-
there weren't, in fact, a preference for silence about gist? American Anthropologist 95:67I-86. [KN,AO]
. I993b. Refractions of the field at home: Hindu holy men
these colluding practices within the anthropological
in America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Cul-
community? tural Anthropology 8:476-5 o9. [KN]
OMI, MICHAEL, AND DAVID WINANT. I986. Racial formation
in the United States: From the I960s to the I980s. New York:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.
ONG, AIHWA. n.d. "Women out of China: Traveling tales and

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