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Major: CSRE
Thesis Title: Whiteness: The Body and Pathology of American Loss
Thesis Abstract
This thesis looks at the process of historical erasure of immigrant histories from white-skinned bodies in the creation of American white people. In doing so, it challenges the notion that the end of a formal colonial period also concluded the dominant consciousness that allowed imperial seizures of land and enslavement for the purposes of creating the United States and establishing a national identity (white). It contends that untold spiritual and psychological loss are the products and ongoing legacy of an American white identity that persists in maintaining a fictitious system of control and power in order to avoid confronting the subjugation of its own humanity throughout the history of the American empire. In illuminating the spiritual devastation of being and becoming white, it challenges the established American capitalist value system that compels us to consume, accumulate, and sustain ambition. In its conclusion, the potential for decolonizing the white mind and excavating its humanity from the ruble of empire is suggested.
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Copyright ©2009, Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity
Copyright ©2009, Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity