Saberes expertos en la encrucijada: Razas, anti/racismo y ciencias en la UNESCO 1949-1950

Abstract

This papers focuses – resuming several concepts of Materialistic Discourse Analysis- on a series of discussions displayed immediately after the WWII around the issue of race and racism within the field of (natural and social) sciences and around different International organizations. Rather than reproducing an image of consistency or homogeneity of these debates, we propose a critical analysis capable of showing the contingent articulation of elements of diverse origin, contradictions, tensions and, above all, the struggles involved in them.

In the first section we present some general aspects of the discussions around the issue of race in the Postwar period and the role played in them by UNESCO and social sciences. Then we will synthetically refer to the fascist debates around the racial question in order to, in the next section, develop the first of our thesis: the existence of a relationship of dialogue / antagonism between UNESCO’s declaration on race in 1949 and fascist debates around racial laws between 1935 and 1938. In the following section, we will display our second hypothesis, derived from the first one: UNESCO' S discussions were not only targeted to the general public but also resulted from a dispute within different scientific fields. In this section, we will discuss the ways in which science and politics appear intertwined throughout the documents we have analyzed. Finally, we propose some concluding remarks.