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?