Paper short abstract:

The text proposes the metaphor of race as a technology that operates by adhering implants to bodies. Its aim is to design analyses of race representation in media that consider the situatedness of the racialization regime displayed and the materiality of the media that enables the representation.

Paper long abstract:

Metaphors that regard race as a technology are used not only to study the investment of social, political and cultural practices to maintain a malleable notion of race that adapts to the evolving needs of Western societies (Benjamin, 2016; Chun, 2009; Jones & Jones 2017; Joyrich, 2009); but also to envision emancipatory practices that subvert current racialization regimes (Coleman, 2009).

Drawing on theories about the ambivalent role of media in the underpinning and questioning of power hierarchies (De Lauretis, 1987; Halberstam, 2008; Preciado, 2008; Torrents, 2016), the author proposes expanding the metaphor of race as a technology by adding that it operates by adhering implants to bodies, which signify them as racialized according to the colonial history of each society. The aim of the metaphor is to create a conceptual framework for the analysis of race representation that considers the materiality of the media that enables the representation, which will influence how racialized bodies are depicted, as well as the situatedness of the racialization regime displayed.

The author reflects on her research on audiences’ perception of race in the cartoon show Steven Universe (2019), and on personal experience as part of a feminist group that monitors how many racialized people appear as experts in Catalan mass media, to argue that considering the affordances and limitations of the materiality of media constitutes an integral dimension in the analysis of the role of print and (audio)visual products in the perpetuation and subversion of racialization regimes.