DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Identity politics: reviving racial thinking.

Imagine reading a book or article that you find thought-provoking, insightful and inspiring. It makes you think more deeply about a social, political or philosophical issue, and of ways in which you could use such intellectual insights in your own life and work. If you’re a writer or an academic, you may think of sharing it, or writing about the ideas raised. Imagine, then, not going ahead with any of that once you realise the gender and/or colour of the writer.

In her new book, Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed, formerly a professor of race and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, takes the ‘political’ decision not to cite any white male authors. Ahmed decided it was time to take a stand against what she sees as the reproduction of racism and sexism due to citational politics that reproduce both whiteness and patriarchy: ‘White men cite other white men: it is what they have always done; it is what they will do; what they teach each other to do when they teach each other.’ When she reads academic texts, even ones on such subjects as critical-race theory, she sees ‘whiteness spilled all over the pages’, something that she says is invisible ‘to those who inhabit it’.

Somebody’s going to land a sweet gig with the New York Times.