“Racializing Terrorism”

This talk explores the racialization of terrorism in the eighteenth century through the discourse of race science. I illuminate its function as a tool of social exclusion in the service of white supremacy and examine the continued relevance of Black activists’ efforts to wrest the power to give meaning to terrorism from whites.

Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson works in political theory and contemporary European philosophy, with a special interest in critical theory and genealogy. She is the author of Genealogies of Terrorism: Revolution, State Violence, Empire (Columbia, 2018) She is currently working on a book on white supremacist terrorism in the United States.