This work takes race and nationalism as its starting point, examining how ideological systems produce and sustain forms of racism. Rather than emerging from innate hostility, racism is understood here as a constructed condition, shaped through political narratives, media frameworks, and systems of representation. Drawing on Imagined Communities, the work considers how collective identities are continuously formed and reinforced. At the same time, following Judith Butler, it reflects on how interpretive frameworks define and stigmatise the “Other,” rendering certain bodies more visible, more suspect, and more vulnerable.

 

The project is particularly concerned with the production of binary opposition. Simplified distinctions—self/other, ally/enemy, right/wrong—operate as tools of control, shaping perception and limiting the possibility of nuance. These structures encourage emotional alignment over critical thought, transforming complex social realities into rigid, polarised positions.

 

Through this lens, the work questions how individuals become implicated within such systems. It asks: to what extent are our perceptions, judgments, and moral positions shaped by external structures? And how might one begin to recognise the value of other lives beyond these imposed divisions?

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