Race and the Senses: Toward Articulating the Sensory Apparatus of Race

Abstract This article provides a preliminary exploration into the relationship between the bodily senses and race. Seeking insight into what Merleau-Ponty called a body-subject—a lived, knowing body that is aware and reflective of its perceptual experience and actively participates in the construction of reality—it explores the role of the bodily senses in constituting the ideological universe of race. Approaching the body as an anchor of sensory apparatus that is cultivated to confirm and uphold the social and ideological existence of race, it explores how we cultivate, activate, and materialize the historically specific bodies that actively perceive race as difference and participate in the social reality organized by race. Examples of colorblind ideology and racialized pain are used to substantiate the claim that our sensory participation in reality is integral to maintaining what we call race.