Introduction: Race and/as Technology; or, How to Do Things to Race

This special issue poses the questions: to what degree are race and technology intertwined? Can race be considered a technology or a form of media — that is, not only a mechanism, but also a practical or industrial art? Could race be not simply an object of representation and portrayal, of knowledge or truth, but also a technique that one uses, even as one is used by it — a carefully crafted, historically inflected system of tools, mediation, or enframing that builds history and identity?