McWhorter, Ladelle. "Sex, Race, and Biopower: A Foucauldian Genealogy."

McWhorter, Ladelle. "Sex, Race, and Biopower: A Foucauldian Genealogy." Hypatia 19.3 (2004): 38-62.

In this essay, Ladelle McWhorter offers a genealogy of the concept of race in conjunction with Foucault's genealogical account of sexuality, and argues that the "intersection" between sex and race as many feminists assert is justified, because "the modern concept of race and the institutions and practices that developed and deployed that concept arose within the same networks of disciplinary normalization and biopower that gave us the modern concept of sex." To support her argument, the author starts with an analysis of Foucault's genealogy of sexuality, especially focusing on the role the inception of modern biology has played in the rise of the concept of sex in from the 19th century Europe, and of his account of power and disciplinary normalization in the formation of sexual categories. Then McWhorter offers an analysis of the genealogy of the concept of race, drawing parallels to that of sexuality and sexual categories. She argues that the emergence of modern biology in the 18th and the19th century also played an important role in the formation of the concept of race, for the biological perspective compelled people to perceive bodies in terms of developing stages, which led to the categorization of the deviant as the underdeveloped both in terms of sex and race. Race, the author argues, is thus formed in the same power/knowledge networks as sex, and is a "sliding signifier," which does not "mean" but "operates" to manage and control the population.

This is indeed a very interesting essay. As a "preliminary attempt" as the author notes, it offers a genealogical link between sex and race that nonetheless has been asserted, assumed and imagined by feminist thinkers. As feminist theory has been increasingly conscious of the issue of women of color, this essay provides an interesting Foucauldian lens to understand the construction of race.