Statecraft,capital and the politics of difference

Hanchard’s Spectre of Race is an important and far-reaching piece of scholarship that makes important contributions to the field of poltiical science and to our understandings of democracy, statecraft and the construction and management of difference. This article analyzes the strengths of Hanchard’s comparative methodology while also raising a number of questions about the nature and functioning of racial regimes. First, it asks where capitalist development generally, and material relations and struggles more specifically, are in hanchard’s theory of race, democracy and statecraft. More specifically, it calls for engagement with the historic, but recently revived school of studies in racial capitalism to think critically about the logic of racial states and their different manifestations. Second, the article raises a number of questions about the coherence of racial regimes, across arms of the state, across time, and across different groups.