Towards a discursive theory of racial identity: The souls of black folk as a response to nineteenth‐century biological determinism

This essay interprets W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk as a response to nineteenth‐century racial science and the ideology of biological determinism. It argues that Souls inverts the racist claims of nineteenth‐century science through direct analysis, a style that combines art and reason and makes a methodological shift from studying what Black is to studying what being Black means. Du Bois's critical practice in The Souls of Black Folk moved scholarship along with two conceptual innovations‐the veil of race and double consciousness toward a discursive theory of race that foreshadowed cultural/minority studies and critical race theory.