Dr. Saud Al-Zaid
The Limits of Whiteness: Cultural Appropriation, Institutional Racism, and Gentrification
Hybrid Seminar, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
14 sessions on Mondays 10-12 h and Fridays 14-16 h (and online), Hardenbergstr. 33, room 150 on the following dates:
Friday, 25.4. & Monday, 28.4.,
Friday, 9.5. & Monday, 12.5.,
Friday, 23.5. & Monday, 26.5.,
Friday, 30.5. & Friday, 6.6.,
Friday, 13.6. & Monday, 16.6.,
Friday, 20.6. & Monday, 23.6.,
Monday, 30.6. & Friday, 4.7.2025.

Students must register online to secure a spot atwww.saudalzaid.com/LimWhit

The colour of the current world order is white. Whether it is outright military domination, or contingent economic control, or pervasive cultural influence. White people, and frames developed by white people, are omnipresent at this historical moment.

After the end of slavery in the United States, the defeat of National Socialism in Europe, and after the official but unrealizable end of colonialism, a new definition of whiteness pervades. The hard versions of white supremacy gave way to subtle versions which attempt to lead at times by example and in other times by default. Some may call it cosmopolitanism, hoping it exists in places like Cairo or Delhi. Yet even there those cosmopolitan elites are designed to be easily moveable to New York or Paris. Be they the type that creates art or makes falafel sandwiches.

Within this context, this seminar is based on the students own fieldwork. These investigations are into the violations of racism against common human understanding. They will interrogate the following questions that delimit whiteness. Why is it that cultural appropriation becomes internal resistence to the white status quo? Why do certain institutions profess openness and inclusion and yet they defy their immediate demographic realities? And why do white people keep gentrifying poor “ethnic” neighborhoods that they once abandoned, only to complain about the differences to the places they came from?

As a class we will focus on the inter-relations between these questions through not just the lens of race, but also class and particularly gender. Part of my claim is psychosocial, and is intimately related to various connected but distinct patriarchies. The class question can only be approached after sufficient work has been made in uncovering underlying issues. We will look for examples of cultural appropriation throughout history, explore the shape and tenor of gentrification in Berlin, and see how institutions large and small present immediate challenges to non-whites. Our theoretical framing will come from readings of Fanon, Lorde, Said, hooks, Mbembe, and Moten. Through fieldwork and discussion, we will see if we can imagine futures beyond the limits of whiteness, worlds without hegemony and a classless society built on solidarity, justice, and real equality.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Regular and active participation and Engagement with Assignments.

Saud Al-Zaid teaches classes about religion, politics, technology, and aesthetics at Studium Generale since 2018. Previous classes include the Clash of Digitalizations, Writing Intersectionally, Malcolm X & the Five Percenters: Reading Course in Black American Islam, and Islamic Aesthetics. Al-Zaid holds degrees in Economics and Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago, a Masters degree in Arab Studies from the Center of Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and another Masters in the Anthropology & Sociology of Religion from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. He completed his doctorate in Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin entitled “Modernity’s Other: An Intellectual Anthropology of Radical Islamic Thought”. He is a member of the curatorial team for the Chaos Communication Congress, and teaches workshops on combating Anti-Muslim Racism for the Berlin Club Commission.