Considerations on the body, race and mixed-race in the light of Heidegger's Black Notebooks

Abstract

This paper originates from the following question: are «race» (Rasse) and «sex» (Geschlecht) concepts, under which it is possible to find a latent philosophy of the body in Heidegger? As far as it pertains the concept of «race», the ambiguous character of this question is patent, if one takes into consideration the reception that the Black Notebooks have received, namely, as the material from which it would be possible to determine to what extent anti-Semitism would «contaminate» Heidegger’s philosophy. On the contrary, the Heideggerian approach towards the concept of the «racial» (rassisch) will consist precisely in the rejection of all naturalistic or biological comprehension to transpose it in an «ontological» way in the concept of «good breed» (rassig), which is based on the «beingthrown» (Geworfenheit) as constituent of the «people» (Volk) in its historical character.

On the other hand, there’s a common agreement about the problematic character of both corporality and spatiality in the Heideggerian ontology, in that they seem to be granted a merely «ontic» place that must be ontologically redirected to the co-determining «bodying» (leiben) of the «being-in-the-world».

Heidegger’s approach to corporality, for instance, in the Zollikon Seminars, which consists in describing it as a «necessary but not sufficient condition», is the same as that which characterizes his critical position with regard to «race», which would consist in the improper gesture of elevating «a condition to the status of the unconditional». This gesture will show its aporia insofar as it must at the same time expel from itself a «rest»: in the case of race, a people that rejects its «folk» character. Finally, an attempt to think the «race» in its materiality through the concept of «mixed-race» (mestizaje) will be addressed.