Summary & Implications: What is the author’s project and why is it important now? What’s the narrative about the field that’s emerging from the reading? What narratives are silent? Whose voices are silent?

Richard Dyer’s purpose in White is to examine what had previously gone relatively unexamined in the realm of cultural criticism and identity-based investigations into the meanings and constructions of race, specifically whiteness. He conceives of whiteness as a cultural void, a non-identity which allows other aspects of identity (sexuality, gender, religion, (dis)ability, etc.) to come to the fore. Whiteness is seen as the norm, but a norm which has no real form such that anybody who falls outside of it is automatically and unrecoverably marked by their inability to meet its basic criteria. Whites are the basic humans, at least in the realm of visual representation that Dyer focuses on (and which he argues forms much of the basis for how we think about the world). That is, to be white is to be afforded a basic humanity while every other skin color must argue, fight, and try to retain their humanity via strategies that often depend upon them changing themselves to seem more white (either in skin tone or action).

Dyer doesn’t leave it at that, though, as he works in theories of embodiment, which allow him to show how whiteness is connected to religion (via Christianity’s concept of a body/spirit connection that transfers to whiteness), science (via biological and genealogical conceptions of race that have been used to create hierarchies of bodies), and enterprise/imperialism (via ideas about what kinds of bodies can perform the actions of empire because they are perceived as being more able to work and persevere). Dyer also notably describes whiteness as instable, because it must contain paradoxes of “a need to always be everything and nothing, literally overwhelmingly present and yet apparently absent, both alive and dead,” an instability which allows it to have great strength as an enticement (you too can be white if you conform to these ideals) and a promise of flexibility (if you’re on the lower levels of whiteness you can move up just by making these changes) (39).

Dyer next turns to three senses of the word “white” to examine how white as a hue, skin color, and symbol form three distinct meanings and ways of thinking about whiteness but between which slippages occur such that white, which is conceived of as the lack of color (the hue meaning) melds with the symbolic meaning of purity and transcendence to imbue white skin, and particularly the unblemished white woman’s skin, as the ultimate symbol of purity and goodness (and which must be used to reproduce, which brings heterosexuality into the picture as well). In the next section he looks at technologies of visual representation, from print (white blankness marked with black spots that create meaning) to painting, to photochemical technologies like film. Here whiteness is linked to translucency, especially from the magic lantern on, and that translucency is linked with the un/realness of the visual image. Whiteness is then both very real but also nothing much at all, as Dyer previously posited. This section contains the part of this book that I’ve read before, which looks at the way that film and lighting techniques for the cinema were developed to represent the white face first and foremost, with any deviance from that posing a “problem.”

In the next two chapters (which I admittedly skimmed), Dyer puts the ideas he developed in the first three chapters of his book to work in analyzing first the set of films which feature heavily muscled white men (usually in foreign locations as agents (stated or implied) of empire), then a tv show which looks at the concepts of whiteness and empire through a more woman-oriented lens. In both cases, Dyer goes deep into analysis to show the multifaceted, sometimes surprising ways that whiteness operates in these kinds of visual representations.

Finally, Dyer concludes with a look at whiteness and death, two concepts which are linked in the figures of androids (Blade Runner and Alien), vampires, and zombies. He notes that horror and sci-fi are the places where white filmmakers can reckon with the problems and fears associated with whiteness, primarily the connection between paleness and death. He wraps up the book by positing the concepts of “ordinary” and “extreme” whiteness, the latter of which only exists in these horror spaces and a few real-world instances (he points to the midcentury fascists who operated on explicit white supremacy) and to which “ordinary” whiteness can point and say, see, I’m not that, that’s extreme, I’m just regular me. Extreme whiteness, then, becomes the enabling symbol for the insidious normalcy implied by whiteness as a whole.

Ridley Scott’s Alien

Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?

Dyer doesn’t seem to be calling out any particular scholars but rather a way of thinking that inform(s)(ed) much of the writings on race and whiteness before this. He notes in his introduction that whiteness is not often discussed precisely because it is perceived as the norm, and so his attention to it is in part a call for others to pay attention to what might have been ignored in their own writing. Dyer pulls from a large pool of scholarly discussions, including sociology, history,  and film, art, and literary theory to make intriguing and wide-ranging points throughout his book. Dyer’s conclusions ask us to be more aware of the role that culture has to play in our conceptions of ourselves and the world around us, including things like the way that our culture influences our ideas about technology (as in the example of what became normal and what was therefore conceived of as a deviation from that norm in lighting for photography). As (sections of) this book is/are taught in college courses, it must remain highly influential, and therefore central to how we continue to think about whiteness and race 20+ years after its initial publication.

Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?

Dyer explicitly draws attention to the representative strategies developed by humans to picture (literally) themselves for much of their history. Dyer pays special attention to film as the dominant media of the 20th century, but he doesn’t hesitate to look elsewhere as well. To drive his analysis, Dyer largely operates by making a large claim before breaking it down into several subclaims, each of which he backs up by analyzing at least one textual example or common daily life example (looking at, for example, clichés and idioms that use white to mean good and clean). As I said above, the first three chapters explain how whiteness works, while the next two look at specific instances of that work happening, before a coda that investigates the concept of death as linked to whiteness.

Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?

In his introduction, Dyer explains his personal history with the concept of whiteness to explain why he feels he has a somewhat special attunement towards observing and understanding how it works. He links it to his homosexuality, a category which sets him off as an outsider (albeit not as much of an outsider as a person with a different skin color) to whiteness’ ideal. Throughout the text, Dyer takes great pains to explain his terminology and walk readers through his thought process as he decided upon which words to use in which situation. This deliberativeness endows Dyer’s work with an extra sense of completeness, a belief develops that Dyer has put in the work to really consider every aspect of his work here.

Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?

Dyer’s concept of whiteness as the default will be crucial to my work, as many of the movies I want to study are continuations of franchises that fall into this idea of whiteness. I didn’t really see any big problems with Dyer’s work here. It’s a well-developed and intriguing book.

Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight

Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?

whiteness, white, non-white, representation, visual culture, cultural studies, normal, norms, paradox, transparent, translucent, instability, power, symbol, technology

Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?