New Books in Critical Theory

Wan-Chuan Kao, "White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages" (Manchester UP, 2024)

Feb 28, 2025

Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao, a medievalist focused on late Middle Ages literature, delves into the nuanced concept of premodern whiteness in their upcoming book. They explore how whiteness reflects fragility and precarity, challenging the notion that it solely pertains to skin tone. The conversation unpacks the socio-economic symbolism of pearls and their commentary on class distinctions, alongside a critical view of identity and mourning in medieval texts. Kao also examines how historical contexts shape modern perceptions of race and the significance of embodiment beyond mere humanity.

01:11:14

Episode guests

Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

The podcast challenges the notion that race is a modern concept by revealing pre-modern complexities surrounding whiteness and identity.

It connects historical representations of whiteness in literature to contemporary identity politics, emphasizing the continuity of racialization processes across time.

Deep dives

The Limitations of Traditional Views on Whiteness

The misconception that race is a modern invention is challenged, particularly in the context of the late Middle Ages. Scholars have historically assumed that identities based solely on skin color emerged only in contemporary times. This podcast episode argues for the existence of pre-modern concepts of whiteness, suggesting they were more complex and nuanced than previously thought. By examining literary references and social constructs, it highlights how the discussion of race and identity was relevant much earlier than commonly believed.

Intro

2min

Exploring Whiteness in Medieval Contexts

18min

Socio-Economic Shifts and Cultural Symbolism in Late Medieval Pearls

6min

Navigating Whiteness and Precarity

8min

Skin and Identity in the Middle Ages

10min

Medieval Whiteness and Racialization

7min

Rethinking Race and Embodiment Beyond the Body

2min

Exploring Dorsality: Medieval Whiteness Reexamined

13min

White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao analyses premodern whiteness as operations of fragility, precarity and racialicity across bodily and nonsomatic figurations.

The book argues that while whiteness participates in the history of racialisation in the late medieval West, it does not denote skin tone alone. The 'before' of whiteness, presupposing essence and teleology, is less a retro-futuristic temporisation - one that simultaneously looks backward and faces forward - than a discursive figuration of how white becomes whiteness. Fragility delineates the limits of ruling ideologies in performances of mourning as self-defence against perceived threats to subjectivity and desire; precarity registers the ruptures within normative values by foregrounding the unmarked vulnerability of the body politic and the violence of cultural aestheticisation; and racialicity attends to the politics of recognition and the technologies of enfleshment at the systemic edge of life and nonlife.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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