Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies

Abstract

The tone of this book is set on its first page. As the second plane collided with the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Yassir Morsi whispered to himself: what have we done? (3). The rest of the book responds to this whisper; it deconstructs the utterance as the scene of a colonial interpellation and tracks out the political permutations available within it. Ultimately Morsi’s effort is to de-naturalize (bring into view, render explicit) the powerful, racialized psychodynamics of that moment in which, as he writes, “I knew of a responsible Other.”