The Power of Social Imaginaries: Fact, Fiction, and the Politics of Knowledge

Abstract

In this paper I read Nadine Gordimer’s novel July’s People to illustrate some of the myriad complexities of knowing people responsibly and well across racial and other differences. The phrase “they treated him well” is emblematic in showing the incapacity of white liberal discourse to capture the dehumanizing and patronizing effects of how the novel’s white protagonists have engaged, in their town life, with their black servant, July. Drawing on the work of Ofelia Schutte, Miranda Fricker, and Judith Butler, among others, the paper addresses questions about alterity, and the politics of unknowing, as these issues complicate the lives of the white folks, and of July himself and the people of his village, in their new-found interdependence. Questions about recognition and mis-recognition, about the power of narrative and the poverty of liberal thinking, are germane to the analysis, as are issues to do with “natural kinds” and assumptions about human sameness. The paper argues for a creative rethinking of incommensurability and relativism en route to developing a viable epistemology for engaging knowledgeably and critically with oppressive social-political practices.