Resumen

HERING TORRES, Max S. “RACE”: HISTORICAL VARIABLES. rev.estud.soc. [online]. 2007, n.26, pp.16-27. ISSN 0123-885X.

This article addresses “race” as a social practice, a construction, and as an idea that has been developed through the power of discourse. This category, rather than a biological reality, is an intellectual and social construction which has had a variety of meanings attributed to it through history. The concept of “race,” however, has preserved its functionality: to differentiate, segregate, and distort otherness. In this way, it has racialized social relations through biological determinism. To substantiate this hypothesis, the article undertakes a historical analysis to demonstrate the dynamics and variability of the racial imaginary. It sketches the outline of a history of race that includes the Spanish idea of the “Purity of Blood” (16-17th centuries), the legitimizing discourses of the French nobility (17-18th centuries), the ambivalence of the Enlightenment, as well as 19th century scientifi c racism as a prelude of the Holocaust or Shoah. The article concludes with some refl ections derived from genetics as additional proof of the fi ctional nature of the concept of “race.”

Palabras clave : Race; racism; otherness; theology; science; Europe, 15th to 20th centuries.

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