2006/03/01 by Zainab Bahrani · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Ancient Near East History #Linguistics and language evolution
paper · doi:10.1080/00438240500509843
openalex publication_date 2006/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In this paper I will maintain that race and ethnicity are discursive concepts that are historically and culturally variable. While in the modern West the discourses of race, and later ethnicity, are biological discourses of the body that present ‘race’ in scientific terms, the ancient Mesopotamian conception of otherness was not articulated in terms of biology or of linguistic groups. The conclusions are drawn from a study of the ancient Mesopotamian textual and visual representations, following the theoretical premise that alterity is formulated in and through representation.