ABSTRACT
Race, as Fraser argues, is paradigmatically a “bivalent” mode of collectivity: economic exploitation as well as cultural domination are implicated in racial injustices, with neither entirely reducible to the other. Anti-racist struggles therefore demand both redistribution and recognition, but when redistribution claims are made in the context of a tight-fisted state, or when recognition claims are made on the grounds of an essentialized Blackness that erases the specificities of the lived experience of race, southern collectivities may fragment along nationalist/ethnic differences in ways that echo the racial organization and hierarchies of colonial regimes. This chapter adapts Fraser’s approach to justice to examine the kinds of transnational, southern collectivities that emerged in two sites of international South-South higher education in South Africa and Brazil. We ask the following: given the broader struggles for justice and transformation from within the South, what kinds of collectivities emerged in each context; what kinds of claims for justice drew these collectivities together or apart; and what implications did they have for racial justice?
