Antiracism and Regimes of Truth in Eighteenth-Century Studies

Abstract

Abstract: This article argues that carving pathways of antiracist praxis in eighteenth-century studies necessitates centering not only the subjects that we study but also our own subjectivity as scholars. Though subject positions and presentist situatedness are often viewed as corrupting hermeneutic lenses, purported academic objectivity—the chimera of the disembodied, inscrutably objective, geopolitically, culturally, and historically "unmarked scholar"—obfuscates both the political investments and "regimes of truth" that inevitably underwrite our scholarship and professional activity. Engaging with Audre Lorde, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Michel Foucault, and Ann Laura Stoler on issues of knowledge and power, I contend that scholars of eighteenth-century studies must radically challenge "regimes of truth" that animate our professional practices as well as notions of canonicity, temporality, periodization, and racialized identities that traditionally (mis)shape our field.