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Roderick A. Ferguson , The Reorder of Things: The University and Its Pedagogies of Minority Difference (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press , 2012, $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper). Pp. x + 286. isbn 978 0 8166 7278 3 , 978 0 8166 7279 0 .
Reviews
Roderick Ferguson is a crucial figure in comparative race studies, which I think he would prefer to call "comparative racialization" to stress how race has been socially and materially constructed. In The Parvenu Baldwin and the Other Side of Redemption: Modernity, Race, Sexuality and the Cold War (1999), Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (2004), and Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization (2011), which he co-edited with Grace Hong, Ferguson has developed a powerful version of cultural sociology, distinguished by its emphasis on the semiotics of a wide range of social media. The Reorder of Things is particularly impressive in this regard, given its use of such different works as Adrian Piper's collage Self-Portrait 2000; student proposals for Lumumba-Zapata College (College Three) at the University of California-San Diego; Paul Alexander Juutilainen's documentary Herbert's Hippopotamus...