Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity

This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic and political potential, needs to pay closer attention to historical specificity, power-relations and transnational processes of material and discursive exchange if it is to move forward. Through a wide-ranging historiographical survey, this introduction 'takes stock' of the field and offers a number of strategies through the analytic and political pitfalls that have characterised studies of whiteness in the past fifteen years. Perhaps most significantly, this paper draws on a burgeoning literature from Australia to address the largely American criticisms of whiteness studies.