Building Theory, Building Community

Abstract

Critical race theory in the United States is at a crossroads. As a jurisprudence it seems to be a success story: the number of legal scholars affiliating themselves with the movement seems to be steadily expanding; works of critical race theory are widely cited; and the literature is slowly but steadily moving out from the legal academy to reach a wider public. On the other hand, critical race theory as a community seems in danger of fragmentation, implosion, or simple abandonment. This article argues that the ill health of critical race theory as a community stems from a lack of critical attention to the politics of community building itself. This lack of critical attention created a vacuum filled by a patriarchal conception of race as ‘family’, a conception that ignores the lessons of queer activism and theory as well as feminism. The article argues that treating community building and community maintenance with the same critical energies that critical race theorists give to their intellectual constructions is important not just to the project of saving critical race theory as a community, but to the world-wide project of how to situate ‘identity politics’ within a strong commitment to justice and human flourishing.