ABSTRACT

Race revealed (as it enacted) a semiotic economy that made word and I flesh, race and revolution, revolutionary France and revolutionary Africa interchangeable. The fire of Prometheus could stand for the fire next time, the revolutionary past for the revolution yet to come. Race permitted such exchanges of space for space, time for time, through the mediating exchange of word for flesh, and flesh for word. The problematics of race were written on the bodies of untimely revolutionaries.