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to transcend the affectability created byconditions ofwhite supremacy and colonialism.
Affectable others aspire for self-determination by becoming the judges of those deemed
capable of self-reflexivity. While this position can be attractive, ultimately, as Antonio
Viego (1998) notes, “it helps render the ethnic-racialized subject as a thoroughly calcul-
able and exhaustible—that is, dead-subject”(Kindle locations 1424-25). In other words,
this mode sets up the racial subject as one that is to be fully known and understood by
the self-reflexive subject, who remains indeterminate and hence self-determining. Es-
sentially, the presupposition is that, “If only others knew us better, we [whoever we is]
would be free.”
In fact, however, the quest for the knowable racialized subject is part of racial dis-
course itself. As Viego argues, our goal may not be to “understand” the Native but to
challengethegridofintelligibilityunderwhichtheNativeisknown.“GivenwhatIhave
been arguing thus far regarding how racism depends on a certain representational cap-
ture ofthe ethnic-racialized subject—rendered astransparent tothe signifier,potentially
whole and unified—in order to manage this subject more masterfully in discourse, then
this insistence on the incalculable and indeterminate should be very welcome in our an-
tiracist analyses” (Viego 1998,Kindle locations 698-700).
.
Similarly,as Alexander We-
heliye notes, the goal is not to secure the well-being of the oppressed class to which we
belong,buttocreatenewformsofhumanitybypracticing“apoliticsofbeingthat…in-
troduces invention into existence…. This is a battle to supplant the current instantiation
ofthehumanassynonymouswiththeobjectiveexistenceofwhite,westernManandhis
various damned counterparts … offering in its stead new styles of human subjectivity
and community” (Weheliye 2009, 174).
Thus, da Silva's analysis implies that “liberation” would require different selves that
understand themselves in radical relationality with all other peoples and things. The
goal then becomes not the mastery of antiracist/anticolonialist lingo but a different self-
understanding that sees one's being as fundamentally constituted through other beings.
An example of the political enactment of this critique of the Western subject could be
glimpsed at the 2008 World Social Forum that I attended. The indigenous peoples made
a collective statement calling into question the issue of the nation-state. In addition to
challenging capitalism, they called on participants to imagine new forms of governance
not based on a nation-state model. They contended that the nation-state has not worked
in the last 500 years, so they suspected that it was not going to start working now. In-
stead,theycalledfornewformsofcollectivitiesthatwerebasedonprinciplesofinterre-
latedness, mutuality, and global responsibility. These new collectivities (nations, if you
will, for lack of a better world) would not be based on insular or exclusivist claims to
a land base; indeed they would reject the contention that land is a commodity that any
one group of people should be able to buy, control, or own. Rather, these collectivities
