
Whiteness, Racial Trauma, and the University
Experiencing Whiteness in the University
Harshad Keval(Author)
SAGE Publications Ltd (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 19. December 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-1-5296-2204-1 (ISBN)
Description
"This is an inconvenient book, to use Berlant's term, bursting with generous readings of cultural and sociological criticism. Just what we need." - Yasmin Gunaratnam, Professor of Social Justice, Kings College London
"An essential reading for all in Higher Education. The first in recent times to really present the state of UK HE from a truly liberatory perspective." - Melanie-Marie Haywood, Director of Education Development Service, Birmingham City University
Universities are regarded as safe havens for knowledge production and the educational transformation of lives. There is, however, a long history of universities as sites of contestation where structures of hierarchical legitimacy are played out.
In response to the upsurge in global protests against racial violence and the criticism of colonial, racialised and Eurocentric forms of thinking, universities have adopted new roles as 'anti-racist' and 'decolonial' beacons of hope. This book unravels how such liberal progressive 'acts' hide a much deeper racialised logic of whiteness-framed structural narcissism, producing insidiously powerful and difficult to trace forms of racialised harm.
The Social Science for Social Justice series challenges the Ivory Tower of academia, providing a platform for academics, journalists, and activists of color to respond to pressing social issues.
"An essential reading for all in Higher Education. The first in recent times to really present the state of UK HE from a truly liberatory perspective." - Melanie-Marie Haywood, Director of Education Development Service, Birmingham City University
Universities are regarded as safe havens for knowledge production and the educational transformation of lives. There is, however, a long history of universities as sites of contestation where structures of hierarchical legitimacy are played out.
In response to the upsurge in global protests against racial violence and the criticism of colonial, racialised and Eurocentric forms of thinking, universities have adopted new roles as 'anti-racist' and 'decolonial' beacons of hope. This book unravels how such liberal progressive 'acts' hide a much deeper racialised logic of whiteness-framed structural narcissism, producing insidiously powerful and difficult to trace forms of racialised harm.
The Social Science for Social Justice series challenges the Ivory Tower of academia, providing a platform for academics, journalists, and activists of color to respond to pressing social issues.
Reviews / Votes
Keval writes an essential reading for all in HE. This book is the first in recent times to really present the state of UK HE from a truly liberatory perspective. He explores the "damaging paradoxes" at play in HE, but is able to tease, instruct, and enlighten the readers all at once. This literary work that is essential in today's incredibly violent and unjust marginalisation of people from the global majority. -- Melanie-Marie Haywood Harshad Keval's "long goodbye" to Higher Education is a powerful, if painful analysis of the university's racial structures. Racial trauma, a self-regarding White Narcissus, the closing down of curiosity, the transformation of white allyship into abolitionist practices, are some of the overarching ideas Keval uses to track the systemic frictions and costs of the neoliberal hustling of race equality. This is an inconvenient book, to use Berlant's term, bursting with generous readings of cultural and sociological criticism. Just what we need. -- Yasmin Gunaratnam This book is an astute, evocative and powerful rendition of whiteness and how white narcissistic structures, as a novel analytic and as an embodiment through consistent self-aggrandizement and its machinery, are omnipresent. To not mull over, pause and reflect on what Harshad has written, does not do his experience, labour and expertise, and what those racialised within whiteness endure as a collective, justice.How and why those from the Global Majority assimilate into these white narcissistic structures matter;
Understanding ways in which we gatekeep matter; Understanding how white supremacist structures
continue to maintain the violence and power hierarchies via higher education and education systems
all around, matter.... so that actual disruption is possible outwith and within other performative
machineries that many don to 'decolonise within colonialism'...which is IMPOSSIBLE.
Thank you, Harshad, for your labour, and for actually visibilising the systemically invisibilised. -- Pavithra Sarma
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 9 mm
Weight
238 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5296-2204-1 (9781529622041)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
12/2024
1st Edition
SAGE Publications Ltd
€35.99
Available for download

E-Book
12/2024
1st Edition
SAGE Publications Ltd
€35.99
Available for download

Book
12/2024
1st Edition
SAGE Publications Ltd
€86.00
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
Harshad Keval is a writer and activist scholar, with special interests in race-critical and decolonial social theory, theories of coloniality and racism, antiracism, social justice and institutional power and resistance. His work journey has involved exploring medical anthropology, medical sociology, mental health, cultural epidemiology and international health, across European and global sites. He has worked as a shop assistant, textile factory worker, labourer, bar tender, data analyst, lecturer, and consultant to organisations aiming at racial justice in education. More recently he has written on race and genetics, race-based trauma and epistemologies of whiteness and institutional ignorance. He works across and beyond disciplinary boundaries and seeks to connect with spaces and voices of creativity and liberation that often lie beyond the epistemic and physical walls of traditional Euro-modern systems of knowledge and practice. He remains resolutely an outsider on the inside of academia.
Content
Chapter 1: What is 'race' in this moment?
Chapter 2: Universities as Racial Regimes
Chapter 3: 'White Narcissus'
Chapter 4: Winner and Losers: How White Narcissus frames failure and success
Chapter 5: Decolonising and anti-racism: Whiteness and the 'Cosplay' of racial justice
Chapter 6: Black Absence, White Noise
Chapter 7: White Narcissus and the death of curiosity...or Where Are You from...Really?
Chapter 2: Universities as Racial Regimes
Chapter 3: 'White Narcissus'
Chapter 4: Winner and Losers: How White Narcissus frames failure and success
Chapter 5: Decolonising and anti-racism: Whiteness and the 'Cosplay' of racial justice
Chapter 6: Black Absence, White Noise
Chapter 7: White Narcissus and the death of curiosity...or Where Are You from...Really?