Blood, Comparing: Relative Velocity Inscription Device

This chapter addresses the intensified scientization of racial difference during the global eugenic period, roughly 1880–1940, and contrasts this with the return of human genetics research in the latter twentieth century. The Relative Velocity Inscription Device, 2002, (RVID) provides a point of personal and historical reflection and poetically demonstrates how the concept of (a) race can be assembled from a heterogeneous network of scientific studies, travel literature and illustration, product marketing, political rhetoric and from deep within languages themselves. RVID was initiated in response to the optimistic statement by UNESCO scientists, in 2000, that there are more genetic differences within the so-called racial groups than between them, making the categories meaningless. However, RVID proposed that “racism” could exist, even if “race” did not; that stigmatization of racial groups could simply be tied to individual genes rather than to external markers of difference like skin and hair.