Reading Race Relationally: Embodied Dispositions and Social Structures in Colson Whitehead's Novels

The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-Prize-winning 2016 novel, was widely praised for articulating the violence of chattel slavery and its aftermath. In contrast, his earlier novels were repeatedly criticized for not taking »race« seriously enough. Marlon Lieber argues that critics have often relied on a substantialist understanding of »race« and treated it as a cause rather than an effect of social relations of domination. Drawing on the relational sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, he provides readings of Whitehead's first six novels and their sophisticated understanding of the relation between late capitalist social structures and processes of racial classification which durably affect the disposition of individuals to act and think.