Re-Thinking Race and Racism

Introduction: Omphalos and Science

Omphalos Delphi, Greece

This is an introduction to a six-part series proposing to re-think race and racism in the passage from private to pub(l)ic. Parallel to this, there is a suspicion that sex and sexism are dealing with something similar. My strategy is to use two rocks to crack one nut, called here, an omphalos.

The parenthesis around the letter ‘(l)’ is needed since the origin of the word public — pubic — is first defined as the place for two sexed individuals to enter the pubic: female or male, etymologically, the original marker of race. The ancient Greek monument of this identity of difference in the pub(l)ic is the omphalos.

The well known English ‘pub’ is a survival of this older use of the word ‘public,’ while in French, it is frequent to speak of the ‘pubes’ when referring to advertising. Far from being a mere verbal coincidence, I will show why a refocus of attention on the correspondence between race/racism and sex/sexism is crucial.

From the beginning and in spite of appearances, something real of both race and sex is not being addressed today under the weight of a pub(l)ic style.