The Surrogate Effect: Technoliberalism and Whiteness in a “Post” Labor Era

Abstract

This paper offers preliminary reflections on the relationship between the seemingly opposed logics of white supremacy and racial liberalism by sketching the contours and workings of what the authors call technoliberalism that is a part of the so-called fourth industrial revolution. The article first overviews the relationship between the discourse of “white loss,” immigration and automation in contemporary US national politics. It then turns to how technoliberal imaginaries that argue that it is robots, not racialized others, who are taking US jobs, pin their anti-racist logics on a post-racial technological future.