Emotions, exclusion and witchcraft imagery

Abstract

One crucial factor behind the emergence of the modern notion of race, according to science philosopher Justin E. H. Smith, was the erosion of a universalistic view of human nature, which had been propped up by a belief that the human soul was a transcendent essence. Racism essentially seeks to rationalize and systematize the irrational, trying to justify prejudice, fear, hatred and discrimination by analysing what are presented as empirical facts in a purportedly rational fashion. Race is a socially constructed concept, and as such is imbued with emotional meaning. In Western thought, the dualism of ‘white’ and ‘black’ had long implied a number of other dualisms, religious and cosmological o..