The Body as Evidence and the Endurance of Race

This paper will explores the ‘endurance of “race”’ and of racialised regimes of looking, drawing on 2 very distinct but telling examples. First, the genetic mapping of Britain and new forms of genetic indigeneity that are legitimated in science. Second, the debates in France about the burkha and ‘non French’, using the example of the case of a woman who in 2008 was refused citizenship because she wore the burkha, and also drawing on recent debates about the burkha and its relationship to French identity. What links these two examples, albeit drawn from very different political contexts, is that ‘race’ and difference are made into ‘matter’ – that matter being genes in one case, and ‘culture/religion’ in the other.