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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the dynamics between science and emerging political subjectivities in post-Apartheid South Africa. In order to discuss the political and analytical dimensions of race, it looks at the relationship between disciplinary histories and contemporary categorizations as well as the notion of descendant community vs. population.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the dynamics between science and emerging political subjectivities in post-Apartheid South Africa, a society with a long and highly contested history of race-based scientific sampling and typology.

In the wake of recent demands for the return of human remains that had been collected from the early twentieth century onwards as part of the scientific projects of physical anthropology, anatomy and archaeology, descendant communities have frequently (though not always) embraced population genomics as a means of proving their claims to ancestral remains and collective identity. While physical anthropology in these debates is being criticized as race science, genetics is often viewed as a more neutral and, above all, beneficial discipline. However, the sampling strategies of contemporary population geneticists largely overlap with those of earlier disciplinary conventions.

In order to understand the different interpretations of the meaning of race and population in these debates as well as their impact on perceptions of citizenship and political subjectivity, I will look at two interrelated themes: firstly, at the relationship between disciplinary histories and contemporary categorizations and secondly, at the notion of descendant community vs. population. I will discuss how race is not a fixed variable in these debates but situationally produced and undone - often in surprising constellations.