10.6092/issn.2038-3460/16994
What is biological race and how is it made relevant in specific practices? How to address the materiality of biological race without fixing it? And how to write about it without reifying race as a singular object? These are the central questions in this short essay. Instead of debunking or trivializing biological race, it wants to attend to race and investigate how it is made relevant in practices. I am interested in what it is made to be in them. By engaging with race in practices, I want to move away from two dominant and mutually exclusive notions: race as a fact, and race as a fiction. As a contrast to these approaches I present one short case to show how race is enacted but also that it is both factual and fictional.
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Amade M'charek
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Race, beyond Fact and Fiction
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2011-06-27
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Amade M'charek
2011/06/27
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Race, beyond Fact and Fiction
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                                                                                 Lecture
Race, beyond Fact and Fiction

Amade M’charek




       Abstract What is biological race and how is it made relevant in specific practices?
       How to address the materiality of biological race without fixing it? And how to
       write about it without reifying race as a singular object? These are the central
       questions in this short essay. Instead of debunking or trivializing biological race, it
       wants to attend to race and investigate how it is made relevant in practices. I am
       interested in what it is made to be in them. By engaging with race in practices, I
       want to move away from two dominant and mutually exclusive notions: race as a
       fact, and race as a fiction. As a contrast to these approaches I present one short
       case to show how race is enacted but also that it is both factual and fictional.

       Keywords materiality; practice; body; race; fact; fiction.




1. Beyond Fact or Fiction
     The astonishing developments in the life sciences and in genetics more specifi-
cally has put biological race back on the table as a growing ‘matter of concern’
(Latour 2008). A growing corpus of more or less STS literature on race is showing
that the new genetics is simultaneously reifying old categories of race and produc-
ing novel configurations of differences (e.g. Duster 2005; Reardon 2005; M’charek
2005; Nash 2005; Abu El-Haj 2007; Fullwiley 2007). This indicates that race is not
easy to categorize and might even suggest that it shifts and changes (see M’charek
2010). Thus, instead of treating it as a singular object ‘out-there’ in nature as it
were, I want to suggest that we should attend to how race is made ‘in-here’1. How
it is enacted in practices (e.g. Mol 2002).
     With this take on race, I want to move away from two dominant approaches to
biological race: race as a fact and race as fiction. Although I am very brief here, let

1
    On “out-there-ness”, “in-here-ness” and singularity, see Law (2002).

* This essay is based on my Keynote address at EASST010. An article based on this lecture, tit-
led Beyond fact or fiction: On the materiality of race in practices is now under review and will be-
come available shortly.


TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Volume 2(1) pp. 65-71 - ISSN 2038-3460
http://www.tecnoscienza.net                       © 2011 TECNOSCIENZA
66   M’CHAREK



     me just say a few more words about these approaches. In the approach of Race as
     fiction, there is no such thing as biological race. And, if we encounter it in science
     or society, it really is an ideology that we are talking about. Something in the head
     of people, or, of institutions.2 This approach contributes to the trivialization of the
     biological, the trivialization of biological differences.
         This approach obviously leaves us empty handed in a time where the life sci-
     ences are gaining pride of place in knowing ourselves, in which practices where bi-
     ological race is made relevant seem to proliferate on a daily basis. The problem is
     that by trivializing or debunking biological race, it is completely left to geneticists
     and other biologists to determine what it is. The issue is not that we should reject
     the biological. That would be a ridiculous thing to do. But rather, as David Skinner
     (2006) has suggested, to see that anti-racist politics has become a struggle over bi-
     ology rather than against it. What biology is made to be or how it comes to matter
     in people’s lives is my concern here. The second well established way of thinking
     race is: Race is a fact. In this line of thought race is a collection of biological mark-
     ers that help to sort people out and to cluster them in natural kinds. If we want to
     know what race is, we have to look in the body. It is there that you will ultimately
     find it, in the form of a blood-group, a gene, a protein, or, as externally visible
     characteristics such as skin colour.
         But something strange, or rather interesting, is going on with this fact-making.
     It suggests that all markers of difference contribute to the discovery of the same
     fact of race. Whereas in practice we e.g. see that the difference between one popu-
     lation and the other changes depending on the kinds of DNA markers that are
     used (M’charek 2000). And if two groups of people would be clustered based on
     externally visible characteristics these differences might get diluted when using
     DNA technology. The reason is that there are no genetic variations that are exclu-
     sively found in one population and not in the other (e.g. Serre and Pääbo 2004).
     Any genetic variation will be found in all populations but in different frequencies.
     So whereas the fact- making approach suggests that all technologies contribute to
     the discovery of the same fact, and to constructing or solidifying the same bounda-
     ry, in practice, technologies may point in different directions.


     2. Getting Practical
        The case I discuss below shows that in practices race is simultaneously factual
     and fictional/ideological. Also, if different technologies produce different versions
     of race, we cannot but follow these around in practices as to unravel what they
     make of race. Are the different versions compatible or do they conflict? Are some
     versions dominant over others, and to what effect: silencing them, translating
     them, or something else? And in the end, what do different technologies make of
     us and of the not-us? I contend that the two dominant takes on race, “race as fic-

     2
       In the extended version (see the first footnote) I use statements on race that have been
     commissioned by the UNESCO as to unravel these positions about race.
                                                                    TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)          67



tion” and “race as fact”, are not helpful to understand the omnipresence of biolog-
ical and racialized differences. Not only do these approaches contribute to the idea
that race is one unified thing (to comprehend or to combat), but also, as I briefly
indicated, we cannot know beforehand whether race is made into a fact or a fic-
tion.

How To Do Identity with Bones and DNA
    On March 13, 2002, Nico Arts, the city archaeologist of Eindhoven, discovered
a grave dating back to the 13th century. It appeared to be the grave of a ten-year-
old child. Based on the DNA retrieved from the teeth, the Eindhoven skeleton was
identified as that of a boy who came to be called Marcus. The skull was sent to the
Netherlands Forensic Institute for a facial reconstruction. The excavation of Mar-
cus’ remains indexed a much greater discover, namely a collection of 700 graves of
burials spanning from the 12th till the 18th century. The project soon became a col-
laborative project between archaeologists, genealogists and geneticists. The added
value of the collaboration with geneticists was to learn more about genetic geneal-
ogy and therewith about the identity and history of Eindhoven and eventually of
the Netherlands.3 The reconstructed skeleton of this young boy became a key fig-
ure in the Eindhoven project. For Marcus had become a genuine star. A biography
has been written about him (Arts 2003), he was exhibited at various locations, his
reconstruction was viewed by thousands of visitors, and he figures in many publi-
cations about the Eindhoven project. For Marcus had become a genuine star. A
biography has been written about him (Arts 2003), he was exhibited at various lo-
cations, his reconstruction was viewed by thousands of visitors, and he figures in
many publications about the Eindhoven project. One of these publications was
caste as a quasi-interview conducted by Marcus himself with his ‘father’, the city
archaeologist Nico Arts. This interview as a whole is highly interesting but in what
follows I will refer to just two short instances.
    Marcus opens the interview as follows:

    My father Nico…
    Ever since the emergence of human beings, great importance has been attached to the
    relation between a father and a son. The ecclesiastical history even begins with a Father,
    who long after that origination sacrificed his Son for the benefit of humanity. Also for
    me, a ten-year-old whippersnapper from the 13th century, this relation is pivotal. I am
    therefore happy that I can turn to Nico Arts, city archaeologist and my spiritual father
    to ask him some pressing questions. After all, he has given the history of Eindhoven a
    face. My face.




3
 As in many comparable projects nowadays, the stakes are high. In the well-funded high profile
Eindhoven project the goals are no less than unraveling the secrets of a number of common
diseases, such as diabetes, hypertension, but also the secrets of HIV.
68   M’CHAREK




         Marcus is highly interesting; in him time is crumpled (Serres and Latour 1990).
     Practices that are as distant as eight centuries apart are folded together in a surpris-
     ing and engaging story. How is that done? Given the young age of Marcus, it was
     not possible to sex his body based on archaeological techniques, that is, by study-
     ing the bones. His sex was determined based on DNA analysis. This DNA howev-
     er, was also used to determine his genealogical descent, in terms of a belonging to a
     specific population. The city archaeologist reports that, ‘[t]he results indicate a re-
     lationship with population groups found across the central Mediterranean and
     North-West Europe region’ (Arts 2003: 63). To be sure, such DNA analyses are
     probabilistic and do not guarantee that an individual stems from one population or
     the other (Serre and Pääbo 2004; M’charek 2000, 2005). Yet, given that Mediter-
     ranean as well as North-West European populations are mentioned, it is striking
     that Marcus’ facial reconstruction had led to a fair looking boy with red-gold col-
     oured hair. Or, in the words of his makers, ‘[n]eutral colours were chosen because
     we have no information about the actual hair, eye and skin tones’ (Arts 2003: 100).
     One could say that to make Marcus into the face of Eindhoven, that is, a passage
     point into the history of this city, Marcus himself had to become somebody that a
     mainstream Dutch audience can identify with – a beautiful, ‘neutral’ white boy.

     Marcus: What kind of a boy was I in former times?
     Nico Arts: You were buried at an important spot in Eindhoven: near the altar of the old
     Catharina church. On your body we have found a silver coin, probably a souvenir of a cru-
     sader. […] You are a child who stems from an important and wealthy family. You did not
     have a nice life though. You were often ill, since your teeth are not full grown. You suf-
     fered from anaemia and during your first life there was no cure for that. You died much
     too young: only 10 years old. Maybe you never had a chance to play outside and spent most
     of your days in bed.

       Again Marcus’ complexion makes us wonder. For to imagine a medieval child
     who was chronically ill, and probably never had a chance to play outside, does not
                                                              TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)        69



quite match the facial reconstruction that Marcus has obtained. We see a young
boy in the pink of health, a boy with a chubby face and blooms on the cheeks. This
all suggests that Marcus brings about more than his own life story.
    In his biography, Marcus is connected to a whole range of historical figures, in-
volved in crusades during the 12th century (Arts 2003: 74). On Marcus’ body a coin
was found which evoked that history. It was identified as a coin from Venice, one
that was stamped with a portrait of St. Mark. Hence Marcus’ name. The link be-
tween St. Mark and Venice had not always been there. St. Mark was in fact im-
ported to Venice around the year 828. At that time the Venetians felt that they de-
served a more prestigious patron for their prosperous city. So they had cast their
eyes on St. Mark. His skeleton was, however, in Alexandria. So the Venetians had
it stolen. ‘Their excuse for this was that the Muslims wanted to put the church
which contained the relics of St. Mark to new use, non-Christian use’ (Arts 2003:
66). The relics were smuggled out of Egypt. The story goes, that the smugglers had
covered it with pork, forbidden food for Muslims. This history is not left behind.
By contrast, the opening of the interview sets the stage for the link between Mar-
cus van Eindhoven and his relevance in the ‘here and now’ on the one hand, and
the history of the crusaders, the presence of St. Mark’s skeletal remains in Venice,
and the historical conflicts between Christian and Muslim societies, on the other.
They are drawn together in Marcus in a topological fold (Serres and Latour 1990)
reflecting the proximity of alleged distant histories and places.
    Now, anthropologists, such as Marilyn Strathern (1992) have a longstanding
tradition of thinking genealogy, kinship and nation together. And recently, given
the prevalence of genetic in doing genealogy and kinship, race has moved centre
stage in these analyses. Marcus, I want to suggest, draws together the history, pre-
sent and future of Eindhoven and beyond. His racial identity contributes to what
Dutch-ness is made to be. It contributes to a racialization of Dutch-ness. The ex-
ample of Marcus however, makes clear that race is not a matter of DNA. But it also
adds something to the previous examples. Namely, that the different entities that
are linked to one another carry with them a history, a culture. The invested-ness of
such entities can be and were mobilized in Marcus and they helped to enact race.


3. Concluding Remarks
    We cannot a priori know fact from fiction! But how were they present in our
example?
    The example of Marcus has taught us that facts about genetic differences were
mingled with stories about descent, historical ties and national belonging. It was
made clear that the archaeologists in our case were not particularly interested in
genetic diversity or kinship as such but in local and national histories and identi-
ties. This fiction (narrative) has racialized Marcus, and turned him into a personifi-
cation of Dutch-ness. We have thus moved a long way from our starting point,
namely the idea of race as a simple fact. This is not to say that race is fictional or
that it does not materialize. By following the strategy of locating and by attending
70   M’CHAREK



     to the various technologies of doing similarities and differences, I have shown that
     race does not simply inhere in bodies. Rather it materializes in the very relations
     that are established in practices. It is in this sense that race is relational.
         In his classic paper “Drawing Things Together” Bruno Latour (1990) elabo-
     rates on his notion of immutable mobiles. Latour (1990, 56) raises the question
     “how can distant and foreign places and times be gathered in one place in a form
     that allows all the places and times to be presented at once […]?” Thus how can
     knowledge about a world out there move between sites without losing shape and
     content? His answer is: make immutable mobiles, flat, two dimensional inscription
     devices. Although Latour might have a point, I want to suggest that in order for
     facts to travel and to arrive, they need fiction too (see e.g. Strathern 1987). To be
     sure, facts and fiction are not in and of themselves either the one or the other. A
     fact in one practice can be enacted as a fiction in another.
         So facts need fiction. Fiction is obviously a broad category. Work conducted in
     STS has brought about similar concepts, such as the work of John Law (2002) on
     how narrative helps to enact technological objects, or Steven Shapin (1984) on lit-
     erary styles and their role in the production of matters of fact. Yet I want to insist
     on the notion of fiction for a number of reasons. Here I want to highlight two.
         Firstly, we need to attend to fiction for it contributes to the making of wholes
     out of parts4. As we have argued race can be many different things. And different
     markers produce different configurations that do not add up. Yet, e.g. the ‘fiction’
     of human evolution or the Out-of Africa theory contributes immensely to an illu-
     sion of wholes, by providing a narrative that supports the existence of integer
     groups that are separated in territorial and temporal ways. Secondly, there is a ten-
     dency to attribute fictions to some knowledge practices and not other. Archaeolo-
     gy is a case in point. I suggest that knowledge practices such as archaeology func-
     tion like a prism indicating the crucial role of fiction in other allegedly ‘fiction-free’
     practices. There might be different styles or genres but “there cannot be a choice
     to eschew fiction altogether” (Strathern 1987, 257). Insisting on the persistence of
     fiction is attending to the fact that race is not an entity in the body but a relational
     object. If not only, it is a relation between bodies and the kinds of fiction that mat-
     ter to us.

           Thank you.



     References
     Abu El-Haj, N. (2007) The Genetic Reinscription of Race, in “Annual Review of
        Anthropology”, 36, pp. 283-300.
     Arts, N. (2003) Marcus van Eindhoven: An Archaeological Biography of a Medieval
        Child, Utrecht, Uitgeverij Matrijs.

     4
         “[T]o be One is to be an illusion”, thus Haraway (1991, 177).
                                                              TECNOSCIENZA – 2(1)      71



Duster, T. (2005) Race and Reification in Science, in “Science” 307, pp. 1050-1051.
Fullwiley, D. (2007) The Molecularization of Race: Institutionalizing Racial Differ-
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Nash, C. (2005) Geographies of Relatedness, in “Transactions of the Institute of
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Shapin, S. (1984) Pump and Circumstance: Robert Boyle's Literary Technology, in
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Strathern, M. (1987) Out of Context? The Persuasive Fictions of Anthropology, in
   “Current Anthropology”, 28, pp. 251-281.




 Amade M'charek University of Amsterdam
 Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
 Department of Sociology and Anthropology
 OZ Achterburgwal 185 - 1012 DK Amsterdam - The Netherlands
 Email: a.a.mcharek@uva.nl
72   M’CHAREK
