The German Invention of Race, ed. with Sara Eigen Figal (2006) (original) (raw)

Within four decades straddling the close of the eighteenth century, the word "race" was adopted in remarkably similar forms across Europe as a scientific term denoting a historically evolved, quite possibly permanent, and essentially real subcategory of the more inclusive grouping of living beings constituting a single species. The emergence of a scientific theory of race was the product of often fierce debate among scientists and philosophers, many of whom were clustered at universities in German-speaking lands. The figures most often cited include The complex and high-stakes philosophical and scientific debates, however, were not conducted in isolation. They were influenced, irritated, and accompanied by lively discussions and discoveries in theoretical and practical medicine, geology, geography, aesthetic theory, theology, and philology, to name just a few fields. As might be expected from such a multiplicity of discourses, theories regarding the "nature" and the usefulness of the race category varied widely. Subsequent histories of the idea of race have focused upon the details of late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century racial science, and have tended to oversimplify eighteenth-century positions. In the process, they have significantly underestimated the conflicted legacy of the Enlightenment. The variety of race concepts has not received the thoughtful attention that scholars have devoted to the theories and practices of later periods. Nor has the variety of alternatives to these concepts been considered.