The Personal Is Theoretical and the Past Is Present: Blurring the Lines in Contemporary Anti-Racist Writing

Alexandra Hartmann

doi:10.1515/culture-2018-0021

Abstract

Abstract This article studies the anti-racist writings by contemporary scholars Cornel West, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., George Yancy, and Claudia Rankine. It uncovers how they include personal narratives in their works in order to theorise the workings of white hegemony in the twenty-first century. In doing so, I argue, they productively blur the lines between the personal and the theoretical as well as between the past and the present. Consequently, they problematise the notion of abstract theorising, the myth of continuous racial progress as well as conceptions of postracialism.

Highlights

This article studies the anti-racist writings by contemporary scholars Cornel West, Eddie S
I argue, they productively blur the lines between the personal and the theoretical as well as between the past and the present. They problematise the notion of abstract theorising, the myth of continuous racial progress as well as conceptions of postracialism
African American culture is rich in autobiographical accounts which range from early Abolitionist slave narratives and Civil Rights activism to contemporary discussions of black life in the U.S Black Studies scholars have long analysed the ties between life writing, black politics, and black culture

Summary

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons

The Personal Is Theoretical and the Past Is Present 225 initiation into white racism as a child in The Souls of Black Folk, recalling in detail the moment when he first discovered that he was “a problem” [8]. In sharing personal racialised experiences in anti-racist inquiries, these scholars and writers productively blur the lines between the past and present, recognising the past as a perpetual influence In both narrating and theorising their individual and collective pasts, they simultaneously seek to shape the future, always knowing that progress is neither straightforward nor guaranteed, and seldom triumphal. The second-order observations, that is, the observations made in this essay, will be made on a meta-level observing these scholars’ observations This second-order observation enables me to show the ways in which black scholars challenge the common understanding of apersonal or abstract theories as allegedly more ‘objective’ and instead regard the personal as relevant to theorising and to a collective given anti-racism’s social thrust. I will discuss the consequences the turn to the personal has for understanding progress and time

The Embodied Subject of Contemporary Black Autobiographical Theory

Conclusion

Works Cited