ABSTRACT

A modern-day interpretation of the etchings might depict one of our society’s biggest challenges: the forces of reason in a struggle to overcome the monsters of prejudice, racism, fundamentalist ideologies, and terrorism. Yet, this picture of the power of rationality to overcome the forces of unreason has been problematic, giving the impression that reason is an innocent bystander—like Goya’s innocent slumberer pounced upon by the monsters of the imagination. One could surmise that feelings of his own frustration towards the Black footballer became racialised along a well-established pathway that is all too familiar in the history of White racism towards Blacks. The powers of rationality espoused in the vision of the European Enlightenment was itself rooted in “race thinking”, equating science and rationality with maturity and civilisation. The sadism of the “sinners” accused of racism then becomes evident in the “saints” who morally condemn them, leading to what V. S. Sinason has aptly described as a “dictatorship of the oppressed”.