Thinking Problems

Abstract

I do hold out hope, therefore, that we can forego our routine efforts to prove ourselves worthy of this profession, and seek instead for ways in which we can make the profession of philosophy worthy of us.—Linda Martín Alcoff, “Why I Do Philosophy”It's all I have to bring today—This, and my heart beside—This, and my heart, and all the fields—And all the meadows wide—Be sure you count—should I forgetSome one the sum could tell—This, and my heart, and all the BeesWhich in the Clover dwell.—Emily Dickinson, “It's all I have to bring today” I will begin my remarks by examining what it means to be a woman of color doing interdisciplinary research in philosophy. In addition, I will address Dr. Charles Mills's statements regarding an epistemological field that encourages and sustains epistemologies of ignorance at the expense of intellectual honesty and conceptual rigor.1 I will then make some open-ended comments and ask some open-ended questions. I hope that these comments and questions will be useful for generating discussion.Bringing feminist, postcolonial, critical race, and queer theory into dialogue with philosophy is a difficult task. This difficulty emerges not simply because such bridge-building work between diverse conceptual systems is necessarily innovative rather than derivative of disciplinary and/or figure-based traditions and methodologies. As Charles Mills notes, the challenge involved in productively interrelating feminist, postcolonial, critical race, and queer theory is already immense because each of these bodies of theory is internally complicated and comprises fractious ele- ments and predispositions. The challenge is compounded, though, by the fact that such work must be conducted from within a discipline that is “historically indifferent at best and outright hostile at worst” to non-Eurocentric conceptual and historical frameworks. Dr. Mills continues: “Because of the comparatively greater presence of (white) women in philosophy, feminism is the one that has made the greatest progress towards philosophical respectability, with numerous monographs, anthologies, book series, revisionist and recuperative historiographies, and (a crucial sign of acceptance) encyclopedias and guidebooks having been published in the area. But because of the unbalanced demography of the profession—98 percent white—this has largely been a white feminist philosophy, with the distinctive experience of women of color generally being marginalized or completely ignored.”2Postcolonial theory has been successful in the radical academy since its putative beginning thirty-four years ago with the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978). Yet, as Mills notes, the credibility and legitimacy it has earned have been almost exclusively outside of philosophy in fields such as literary theory, cultural studies, ethnic studies, English, anthropology, and so on. Colonialism and neocolonialism being “(literally) world-shaping,” the ramifications of this history for the creation of modern polities with differential degrees of power and privilege are self-evident. Yet, remarkably, this reality has not been considered “an appropriate subject for philosophical investigation, even in political philosophy. (See, for an especially good, in the sense of bad, example, the work of John Rawls and his disciples).”3As I have said elsewhere, Eurocentrism has led to the paucity of critical race analyses in postcolonial frameworks, especially because white and South Asian scholars disproportionately represent postcolonial studies in the U.S. academy.4 Such neglect of critical race analysis as it intersects with postcolonialism is remarkable, Mills emphasizes, given the fact that most practitioners of postcolonial studies would concur that modern systems of colonialism brought “race into existence as a social reality in the first place.”5 As a result, despite their seemingly self-evident conceptual continuities, there is a tremendous dearth of collaborative, bridge-building dialogue between postcolonial and critical race theory. One would think that the complementary and mutually enhancing nature of these fields would be obvious. Instead, as Mills states, “postcolonial theorists marginalize race and tend to focus on the overseas European empires, not seeing the United States as itself a colonial power of an intra-continental (and, to a certain extent, extra-continental) kind; critical race theorists centralize race but focus almost exclusively on the United States rather than expanding their ambit of concern to the broader post-colonial world.”6In addition to its fraught relationship with critical race theory, postcolonial theory has often had an antagonistic relationship with philo-sophy. This antagonism is partly the result of postcolonial theory's deep and abiding suspicion of philosophy as at heart a colonial form of knowledge, which justifies and sustains an exclusive, hegemonic, and violent “Western” culture. Due to this suspicion, postcolonial theory's default position is antiphilosophical in spite of its trenchant uses of philosophy to examine questions of identity, modernity, and contemporary global reality. Yet, even as theorists recognize the value of philosophy for postcolonial scholarship, they oppose the colonial legacy and superiority of “Western” culture advanced by philosophy. In contrast to postcolonial theory's hostility to philosophy's insidious Eurocentrism, critical race theory has had greater willingness to engage with philosophy. Yet, as Mills emphasizes, the “whiteness” of philosophy has precluded this field from making the kind of difference that white feminism has made with gender issues. Although critical race theory is slowly being recognized as a distinct philosophical tradition, such progress, Mills states, has been predominantly and disproportionately male-dominated. Indeed, “women of color who are philosophers are a minority within a minority, less than half of one percent of the total professional philosophical population.”7As a result, although “intersectionality,” which refers to the difficult yet productive attempt to theorize race, class, gender, sexuality, and so on together, has been a conceptual framework for more than a decade in the U.S. academy, it is “almost entirely absent as a philosophical theme.”8 I would add that for many practitioners of the discipline of philosophy, intersectionality is in fact not recognized as a conceptual framework because this framework is not derived from the European tradition. The racist, classist, sexist, and ethnocentric ramifications of such dismissal ought to be obvious. Instead, as Mills reiterates, “it is not merely that disciplinary boundaries have restricted dialogue, dialectical exchange, and transgressive synthesizing work across these areas through scholars' comfort with the familiarity of their own backyard and reluctance to do the labor necessary to educate themselves in another field but that these boundaries have been actively and hostilely policed, with patrolling border guards to turn trespassers back.”9Given this disciplinary terrain, I would like to pose a number of questions and make a few comments about what it means to be a woman of color doing interdisciplinary research in philosophy: Any discussion of women in philosophy ought to recognize women of color as women of color. When women of color are included under the rubric of women per se, they are not only deracinated but also degendered. “Intersectionality” as a conceptual framework makes precisely this contribution to philosophy. This framework reminds us that “white” is a color. While the gains of white feminism must be applauded, it is equally vital that we examine the insidious race loyalty that can readily align white women with white male power. It is not in the interest of philosophy as a discipline when white women are at pains to accumulate this power at the expense of real alliances with people of color and other marginalized groups. Perhaps such women believe that they are somehow “naturally” next in line. Or worse, perhaps they see themselves as exceptionally meritorious, unlike their “radical” sisters who, in this zero-sum vision of the discipline, can only clamor to enter philosophy's inner sanctum by preaching about their victimhood. It is thus a tragic spectacle when white women become the gatekeepers of the very tradition that once excluded them on the basis of gender (not race). This sad phenomenon belittles the many white women philosophers who, across the generations, have been and continue to be our mentors, teachers, students, essential allies, and fellow travelers.One cannot separate philosophy from postcolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theory. Indeed, one cannot claim to be philosophical in any meaningful way by excluding most of the planet. The predominantly Eurocentric philosophical culture within which Continental philosophy is canonized and taught betrays the often shocking lack of socialization of its practitioners. Indeed, such socialization is too often actively inhibited by the practitioners of philosophy in the ostensible defense of the discipline from what is (really) the world. Inclusion, moreover, does not mean applying the rich tradition of European thought to (all) others. Such a move reinforces the epistemological priority of the European tradition, as if other traditions innately lack the capacity to produce conceptual frameworks of their own. Rather, because these parallel traditions are already in dialogue with the Continental canon, they are well positioned to advance the project of creating a heterogeneous philosophical terrain that is predicated on justice as opposed to the reinforcement of philosophy's traditional disciplinary boundaries. Such a mutually implicated understanding of the promise of philosophy allows these fundamentally imaginative disciplines to accompany one another for the sake of the very heterogeneity that makes them subjects that matter. Otherwise, philosophy is just the proper name for sanctioned ignorance that is protected in its practitioners at the expense of inculcating the most basic human instincts.10We must focus on the culture of philosophy and academic depart- ments rather than just on the European tradition's sacred texts. What is (really) going on in the academy at ground level? Philosophy does not need sycophantic and scapegoating academic cultures in order to be valued, validated, and vindicated as a discipline and calling. The European tradition's sacred texts can withstand harsh questioning and still provide ample opportunity for rational, innovative, and humane exegesis. These sacred texts will not be overthrown due to what is laughably stereotyped in the twenty-first century as a “radical” agenda. If we are capable of seeing ourselves in the rich tradition of European thought, which often speaks about us in the basest of ways, why can't the exemplars of the European tradition afford the same dignity to postcolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theory texts—especially when proper philosophy is not necessarily derived from the European tradition? In other words, postcolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theory deserve the dignity of being regarded as self-standing philosophical traditions.Institutionally, philosophy departments get credit for diversity hires, who are often used to staff general education courses. Yet members of such departments, due to the aforementioned lack of socialization and inability and/or unwillingness to keep abreast of critical innovations in the field, do not necessarily have a true appreciation for the philosophical projects of these incoming scholars. In fact, higher administrations have been known to allow departments to use standards that are not objective, consistent, and neutral but involve an insidious shifting of goalposts. The employment of such ad hoc “standards” to harass and discriminate against junior scholars does philosophy itself a great disservice because it renders the rich tradition of European thought monolithic, static, and homogeneous.I am trying to give up saying “philosophy and interdisciplinary perspectives” when describing my philosophical project. This moniker consolidates a colonial geography for our disciplines in the U.S. academy.11 In other words, “philosophy and interdisciplinary perspectives” really means (white) Europe and Everyone Else. As Marie Draz argues, what constitutes the philosophical can only be rendered a serious philosophical question if philosophy is held accountable to the insights of interdisciplinary perspectives.12 Instead, the term philosophical has become an inverted strategic essentialism deployed by precisely those patrolling border guards whose job it is to turn trespassers back.13 The persistent bleating of this nebulous shorthand is now a ready substitute for substantive, rational, and humane engagement with scholarly traditions that do not equate philosophy with the identity politics of Eurocentrism. What is it that allows a senior white male colleague, for example, when peer reviewing a junior woman of color teaching a 200-level Issues in Sex and Gender course (one of those general education liberal arts courses staffed by diversity hires), to nonchalantly write that she should teach “our tradition” because the course is nominally in philosophy? (Only white European figures are proffered as examples of “our tradition.”) Why must we see (white) European philosophy as “our tradition” when he does not have to see postcolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theory as “our tradition,” that is, as his tradition? I would like us to think about what evaluative criteria or standards mean when senior colleagues question the use of postcolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theory by junior colleagues teaching the areas in which these theories have made some of their most indispensible, innovative, and exemplary contributions. In other words, what vision of the world is he presenting to students in courses on “our tradition”?Of course, asking such questions, as Dr. Nancy Fraser emphasized in her keynote address, demonstrates one's preternatural lack of “collegiality” or one's unwillingness and/or incapacity to sustain “positive” relationships with senior colleagues. Such methods of demeaning, stereotyping, and dehumanizing women of color and dismissing their scholarship are tragically ironic. Continental philosophy has consistently complained about its treatment by analytic philosophy. And yet, Continental philosophy too often deploys the same intellectual dishonesty, ad hominem attacks, and stereotypes against postcolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theory for the purpose of a priori exclusion and marginalization. (The Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Diversity organized a panel on this topic for the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy meeting in 2010.) In an academy that is slightly over 90 percent white, we often find self-congratulatory philosophical cultures where racism cannot be addressed or understood.14 On one hand, we have ostensibly liberal and enlightened white people telling other white people how they are not and could never be racist. In such situations, postcolonial, critical race, feminist, and queer theory fields no longer remain areas of expertise requiring the same level of training necessary for a specialization, say, in Immanuel Kant. Yet, when it comes to feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and queer theory, we are supposed to assume that everyone “gets it.”Such presumption of liberal enlightenment, that is, the presumption that our colleagues are committed to equal treatment, scholarliness, and inclusiveness, is another way, I would suggest, that these fields are minimized as philosophical endeavors. Instead, they become what Ann DuCille terms an anybody-can-play pickup game:15 individuals with no expertise or only rudimentary knowledge in these fields can dismiss the legitimacy and objectivity of entire scholarly communities that evaluate and publish work in feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and queer theory. Such instantiations of white supremacy and white privilege reinforce and maintain the aforementioned whiteness of philosophy precisely because these scholarly communities are composed predominantly of scholars of color. On the other hand, there is a “real world” that still assumes that people of color have it “easy” and are terrorizing hapless whites all the way to the top. Take, for example, the response to Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry, an African American scholar, after she recently wrote a piece for The Nation magazine titled “Black President, Double Standard: Why White Liberals Are Abandoning Obama.”16 She got the following response from Gene Lyons at Salon magazine: Recently, one Melissa Harris-Perry, a Tulane professor who moonlights on MSNBC political talk shows, wrote an article [in which she says that] … “[t]he 2012 election is a test of whether Obama will be held to standards never before imposed on an incumbent. If he is, it may be possible to read that result as the triumph of a more subtle form of racism.”The professor actually wrote that. See, certain academics are prone to an odd fundamentalism of the subject of race. Because President Obama is black … nothing else about him matters. Not killing Osama bin Laden, not 9 percent unemployment, only blackness.Furthermore, unless you're black, you can't possibly understand. Yada, yada, yada. This unfortunate obsession increasingly resembles a photo negative of KKK racial thought. It's useful for intimidating tenure committees staffed by Ph.D.s trained to find racist symbols in the passing clouds. Otherwise, Harris-Perry's becoming a left-wing Michele Bachmann, an attractive woman seeking fame and fortune by saying silly things on cable TV.17 Apart from such comments being genuinely stupid, they are unfortunately not so far off from some of the beliefs articulated in the enlightened (yet benighted) academy. The ignorance that creates such false equivalences and inverts or reverses actual power relations is far more common than we would like to acknowledge.Women of color are often assumed to be in an antagonistic relationship with the sacred European tradition based on category alone. Yet, as I have often joked with friends, I personally feel (sometimes) like a German male trapped in an Indian woman's body. In other words, one never knows when a kindred spirit will be found. And so, I can say unabashedly that I love Theodor Adorno. Perhaps what is needed in the hallways of privilege and power is a genuine, naive, noncynical love for the discipline.18 Such love demonstrates that what one reads, teaches, and/or translates has been internalized. Love for philosophy, like all love, leads to openness toward rather than an abdication of the world. Yet fetishistic Europhilia (which looks somewhat sad from my immigrant perspective) too readily constitutes philosophical cultures through the creation of cults of collegiality. Such philosophical cultures either cynically live off the fumes of their status or betray a level of emotionalism that most properly belongs in high school. What does philosophy want? To be the other name for the banality of a country club defined by its exclusions and privileges or to be a subject that matters?As we are faced with the devastating realities of climate change, I would like to conclude by suggesting that in this twenty-first-century world, which has always been heterogeneous, our marginalization can be understood as our historical privilege. Our struggle to find what is worthy about philosophy, amid those who would take this sense of belonging for granted, demonstrates a fundamental quality of negativity. This negativity asks philosophy to live up to its creed precisely because philosophical understanding is worth fighting for. We may intervene in identity politics not by stopping short at where a perspective comes from but by privileging where we are going.