Figuring identity: Media licensing and the racialization of LEGO bodies

Abstract

Bridging critical race studies with inquiries into media licensing and industrial cultures of production, this research examines the ubiquitous LEGO minifigure as a significant site of identity and power in the construction of both corporate brands and raced bodies. From analysis of the minifigures themselves, as well as press releases, interviews, and other managed corporate disclosures, media licensing can be understood as shaping racialized practices of representation while also acting discursively to imagine that racialization as the work of an industrial ‘other’. This affords LEGO a claim to a ‘pre-racial’ corporate identity that can disavow the politics of bodily representation.