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Robert Young. Signs of Race in Poststructuralism: Toward a Transformative Theory of Race Lanham, MD: UP of America, 2009. 163 pp. $49.95.
While poststtucturalist theory is hardly ubiquitous, its kfluence is felt k almost all quarters of the academic humanities, begknkg (but hardly endkg) with the proliferation of academic monographs that avoid "big picture" or "superthematic" arguments k favor of smaller contexts and greater details. Despite its subject, Robert Young's Signs of Race in Poststructuralism: Toward a Transformative Theory of Race is hardly such a book: its breadth, depth and ktended reach are brackg and kvigorating. Whether you agree or disagree, Young will have you arguing with him, with yourself, and with any unf ortonate colleague who makes the mistake of saykg hello mid-read.
In brief, Young maktaks that poststtucturalist theorists of every stripe, from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., to Hortense Spillers to Robert J. C. Young, have it wrong. "Essentially" (pun intended), Young (not to be confused with Robert J. C. Young) contends k his ktroduction that "poststructuralist thinkers frame the question of race around the issue of textuality, and this lkguistic model shapes dieorizkg of race in a wide range of contemporary kquiries." Surveykg literary theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and black feminist theory, Young argues that " these theorist [sic] fail to link the question of use value to the question of exchange value, and consequently, it is difficult to see race beyond its textuality; in other words, race becomes a cultural fetish." In still other words, by faffing to kterpellate mkority subjects, constructions and figurations through the system of capitalism, works such as Rod Ferguson's Aberrations in Bhck, Mason Stokes's The Color of...