The collective singularity of anti-racist actors: a case study of the Roma minority in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on building a theory of collective singularity using the case of anti-racist collectives targeting the marginalized Roma minority in the Czech Republic. The collective singularity concept is one in which the values, norms, and practices that constitute a collective render it impossible for the group to transcend its own axioms in any manner other than by rejecting precisely these constitutive elements. The concept of anti-racism contains the trope of ‘the other’, perceived not only as an object of protection, integration, assistance, and interest, but also as an object under pressure to find its own (anti-)concept. Anti-racism oscillates around four dispositives (hysteria, paternalism, individualism, bionumerics) and finds itself unable to follow a radical pluralism with the potential to undermine the roots of the hegemonic discourse. As a result, the dispositives of anti-racism essentially become a ‘hidden’ form of disciplination, reproducing oppression and the impossibility of self-deconstruction.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racism
• racism
• otherness
• dispositives
• Roma minority
• Czech Republic

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to editor of this special issue Yin Paradies and also to Rastislav Kiseľ, Ľubomír Lupták, Ondřej Slačálek, and Václav Walach for their constructive comments and critique on earlier version of this manuscript. The manuscript was translated by Mark Alexander.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Petr Hušek http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2000-1943

Kateřina Tvrdá http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8589-5103

Notes

1. Anti-racist actors are (non-)institutional collective actors entering public space with the intention of preventing or mitigating the consequences of racial discrimination or bringing about its total eradication. In the Czech Republic, their actions are particularly focused on the position of the Roma minority, since this is the most numerous minority and one that is (alleged to be) phenotypically identifiable, finding itself occupying a marginalized socioeconomic position (cf. Růžička and Lupták 2013). Collective anti-racist actions originating directly within the Roma community are only sporadic and do not deviate from the overall anti-racist discourse.

2. The transfer of the laws of physics as they apply to astronomical objects and their ties to the surrounding environment into metaphors illustrating the form taken by racism and the concept of race is used by Howard Winant (2015), among others, in The Dark Matter: Race and Racism in the 21^st Century. He terms racism the ‘dark matter' of the modern epoch, which may be observed only thanks to its gravitational influence upon surrounding objects (objects of racism or anti-racism). The black hole metaphor (in the physical meaning, not the astronomical, as ‘the white wall/black hole system') was also developed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987, 167–82) in their exploration of the roots of the psychoanalytical background of racism. The black hole metaphor and the concept of collective singularity based upon it correspond to some elements of the concepts indicated without them being its primary source.

3. The term is used in a broader sense as integration into a scheme constructed by anti-racist actors. Integration thus covers also assimilationist, multiculturalist, ethno-exclusivist, and pluralistic concepts (Barša and Baršová 2005).

4. Avoiding the use of similar practices in this paper means giving up any effort to identify the Roma group, Roma culture, Roma identity, or Roma interests and desires. To do so would be to act in a way that does not correspond to the theory of collective singularity, since we are not in the position of observers standing about the collective singularity, but rather function as participants within it and its co-creators (in actuality, not simply on the theoretical plane).

5. Paradoxical phenomena related to the existence of black holes are the subject of a number of theoretical debates and controversies, including the question of what happens to information that approaches the horizon of a black hole (cf. Figures 1.3 and 2). While the general theory of relativity claims that what a black hole ‘swallows it never returns', Hawking (1988) has contended that black holes absorb only some particles, the so-called antiparticles, with the remaining portion radiated back. By contrast, the theory of complementarity is based upon the premise that an external observer sees the accumulated information on the horizon while an observer who falls into the black hole localizes the identical information inside (no information ‘gets lost’) (for more details, see, for example, Introduction to Black Hole Astrophysics by Gustavo E. Romero and Gabriela S. Vila (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This contribution was written as part of the grant project GAČR GA408/11/0709, ‘Contemporary Challenges of Democracy in East-Central Europe,’ funded by the Czech Science Foundation.