Geography Reference
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is not a material property of bodies with objective existence in the world but a means
by which bodies are represented and understood, and variously valued and devalued.
Whitenessisentwinedwithparticularpowerrelationsatavarietyofscales,anddepends
on political authority and spatial separation in order to maintain itself as hegemonic and
not reveal itself as relationally constituted through the abjection of blackness. In post-
apartheid South Africa, whiteness, shorn of its politically enforced authority, is seen to
be under threat and thus in need of defense and shoring up. Thus, scholars of whiteness
in post-apartheid South African society (Ballard 2004a, 2004b; Steyn 2005; Steyn and
Foster2007)haveprimarilyfocusedondiscursivetechniquessuchas“whitetalk”toar-
gue that “the dominant white representations of contemporary South Africa attempt to
'fix' groups relative to each other, reproducing and extending the power structures of
whiteness into post-apartheid South Africa society” (Steyn and Foster 2007, 27).
Iwouldliketosuggestthatthesewaysofthinkingaboutwhitenessareunsatisfactory.
If “whiteness” is used to refer to an epistemology of power, how does it make sense for
both Ballard and Steyn, among others, to refer to whites that are progressive, cosmopol-
itan,antiracist,andcomfortablewithdiversityanddemocracyinthepost-apartheidperi-
odas“whites”atall?Throughthepersistenceofthisunacknowledgedslippage,Iwould
like to add to arguments that whiteness can be understood as more than an epistemo-
logy. I would therefore like to shift the focus somewhat from thinking about whiteness
as only or primarily a mode of representation, a way of seeing, or an epistemology, in
order to open up space for thinking more specifically about whiteness as an embodied
and material accomplishment. Arun Saldanha (2006, 2007; see also Slocum 2008) has
attempted the ambitious project of moving away from a social scientific obsession with
thediscursive construction ofracetoaprojectofreontologizing raceasallowing forthe
potential of the body to create effects, for materiality to, in a sense, speak for itself. As
Saldanha puts it, he sees “race as a heterogeneous process of differentiation involving
the materiality of bodies and spaces” (2007, 9). He goes on: “race is a shifting amal-
gamation of human bodies and their appearance, genetic material, artefacts, landscapes,
music, language, money, and states of mind” (2007, 9).
I want to follow Saldanha in asserting that race exists and is closely related to pheno-
type, generated relationally through the body's interactions with other bodies, the envir-
onment,aswellasaproductofthosediscursiverelationshipstospaceandplacesomuch
more familiar to geographers. I contend that we cannot speak of “whiteness” without
reference to the actual bodies of white people and how, in particular, those bodies are
shaped through spatial practice.
In making this move I want to highlight transnational mobility as one means through
which whiteness-as-materiality can be understood. Through mobility, the virtual capa-
cities of bodies are mediated and directed toward, and away from, certain places. As
