While the term “culture wars” often designates the heated arguments in

the English-speaking world spiraling around race, the canon, and affirmative

action, in fact these discussions have raged in diverse sites and languages. Race

in Translation charts the

transatlantic traffic of the debates within and between three zones—the U.S.,

France, and Brazil. Stam and Shohat trace the literal and figurative translation of these

multidirectional intellectual debates, seen most recently in the emergence of

postcolonial studies in France, and whiteness studies in Brazil. The authors

also interrogate an ironic convergence whereby rightist politicians like

Sarkozy and Cameron join hands with some leftist intellectuals like Benn

Michaels, Žižek, and Bourdieu in condemning “multiculturalism” and “identity

politics.” At once a report from various “fronts” in the culture wars, a

mapping of the germane literatures, and an argument about methods of reading

the cross-border movement of ideas, the book constitutes a major contribution to

our understanding of the Diasporic and the Transnational.