BOOK REVIEW: Marius Turda, “Maria Sophia Quine, Istorie şi rasism: ideea de rasă de la Iluminism la Donald Trump”, Iaşi: Polirom, 2019

Abstract

Upon hearing the word “race”, one might think of biological traits that distinguish between different types of people. However, Historicizing Race, by Marius Turda and Maria Sophia Quine, provides an in-depth analysis of how the concept of race passed through history, how it got transformed over the centuries, and what meaning it holds today. Fulfilling such aim was surely not an effortless task. To this day, the meaning of race is still being debated upon, and a large section of the population still believes that the classification of humans by race holds scientific proof. However, the authors have accepted the challenge to critically approach the concept, and they do this in relation to history, culture, nation, genealogy, and science, underlining that race is in fact much more complicated, that it goes beyond biology, and that it has had a central role in the process of European modernisation.