Main menu
Staff & students

Brett St Louis BA MSc PhD

Staff details

Brett St Louis BA MSc PhD

Position

Senior Lecturer

Department

Sociology

Email

b.stlouis (@gold.ac.uk)

Brett is a race critical theorist with research interests in the relationship between racialization and racism.

Brett St Louis rejoined the department in 2005 having previously been at Goldsmiths in 1999-2000. In the intervening years, Brett was Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bristol and Assistant Professor in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Brett works in the area of race critical theory with a focus on racial eliminativism. His work traces the genealogy of racial scepticism and develops a critique of racial realism.
Brett co-convenes the MA Race, Media and Social Justice and welcomes applications from prospective postgraduate students interested in the applied critical study of race, racialization and racism.
Brett is also sociology undergraduate Admissions Tutor and is committed to widening participation and supporting the entrance of ‘non-traditional’ students with academic potential into higher education.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD Sociology 1999
  • MSc Race and Ethnic Relations 1994
  • BA Politics and International Relations 1990

Research interests

Brett's work on racial eliminativism traces the genealogy of racial scepticism and develops an epistemological, ontological, methodological, ethical and political critique of racial realism. He is also working on a book project that combines this historical survey and critical analysis with a processural racial eliminativist theory that sets out an imaginative response to the postracial question.
Brett's recent research applies this racial eliminativist approach to various contemporary issues including renewed debates on racialism and the denial of racism and molecular racialization as a pernicious disciplining form of race as technology.

Featured publications

Publications and research outputs

Book

St Louis, Brett. 2007. Rethinking Race, Politics and Poetics: C. L. R. James's Critique of Modernity. Routledge. ISBN 0415957729

Edited Journal

Campbell, Kirsten and St Louis, Brett, eds. 2008. After ‘68: The Left and Twenty-First Century Politics, New Formations, 65.

Ang, Ien and St Louis, Brett, eds. 2005. The predicament of difference, Ethnicities, 5(3). 1468-7968

Book Section

St Louis, Brett. 2022. On “The Necessity and the ‘Impossibility’ of Identities”: The Politics and Ethics of “New Ethnicities”. In: Les Back and John Solomos, eds. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader (Third Edition). Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 236-253. ISBN 9780367623678

St Louis, Brett. 2015. Can race be eradicated? The postracial problematic. In: Karim Murji and John Solomos, eds. Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 114-137. ISBN 9780521154260

St Louis, Brett. 2009. Post-Marxism, black Marxism and the politics of sport. In: Ben Carrington, ed. Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 109-129. ISBN 978-0-415-37541-2

Article

St Louis, Brett. 2023. Race as injustice and the im/possibility of racial justice. Ethnicities, 23(6), pp. 974-979. ISSN 1468-7968

St Louis, Brett. 2022. Race as technology and the carceral methodologies of molecular racialization. The British Journal of Sociology, 73(1), pp. 206-219. ISSN 0007-1315

McLennan, Gregor; Robbins, Bruce; McRobbie, Angela; St Louis, Brett and Hall, Catherine. 2021. Stuart Hall, a peerless mediator. Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture(79), pp. 51-77. ISSN 1362-6620

Media engagements

2010: Black Emancipation, BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed

2010: Race, Sport and Politics, BBC Radio 4 Thinking Allowed