Toxic Whiteness: Michael Chekhov and the Atmospheric Analysis of Institutional Racism

This article proposes that institutional racism may be productively understood as an atmospheric phenomenon. It develops, from a dialogue between the work of actor-director Michael Chekhov and that of Frantz Fanon, a theoretical account of atmosphere as the material and affective medium of relation, which is directly responsive to structurally racialized conditions. It argues that recent public and critical discourse on institutional racism has been dominated by attitudinal accounts that have worked to foreclose structural change and proposes, instead, an atmospheric approach to analysing racialized conditions of institutional encounter. These it terms ‘toxic whiteness’, not in contradistinction to a putatively non-toxic whiteness, but to emphasise that. while being conducive to the collective thriving of white people, whiteness is toxic to those who are racially minoritised. Finally, the essay argues that atmospheric analysis provides a basis for effective opposition to the racialized interests that underpin the toxic atmospheres of institutional racism.