Abstract
The work of W. E. B. Du Bois is a powerful but unjustly neglected resource for sociological enquiry. Powerful insofar that it cuts against the grain of sociology as it exists today, offering a distinctive set of tools that allow the social world to be approached, conceptualised and studied in new ways. Unjustly neglected insofar that the explicit and implicit racism of sociology has positioned Du Bois as a peripheral figure. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the task of recuperating Du Bois’s hidden potency by considering his theory of social time. I argue that Du Bois’s essay ‘Of the Meaning of Progress’ presents an incisive critique of the triumphalist conception of progress that was dominant in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the diffuse desire for a better future common in sociology today. Du Bois rejects the idea that history moves in a necessary and ameliorative fashion towards an ever better world. Instead, drawing on the black experience of slavery and racial violence, Du Bois proposes a notion of ugly progress: a looping conception of time that involves shuffling between the disappointments of the past and utopian hopes for the future. To conclude, I suggest the ugly conception of progress offers a fresh perspective on how marginalised figures from the past, such as Du Bois himself, should be positioned within the discipline of sociology.
Highlights
Reading Du Bois todayThe aim of this article is, at first glance, simple: to explore the critical potentialities of the theory of social time advanced by the African-American thinker, social researcher and activist W
I turn to a detailed reading of the essay ‘Of the Meaning of Progress’, included in The Souls of Black Folk, in which Du Bois elaborates a distinctive understanding of social time via a narrative of his experience as a teacher in a small rural village in Tennessee
Du Bois, in his observations on a ruined schoolhouse in the village, develops a notion of what he calls ugly progress: a looping conception of time that involves shuffling between the disappointments of the past and hopes for the future, with each formed in confrontation with the other
Summary
Reading Du Bois todayThe aim of this article is, at first glance, simple: to explore the critical potentialities of the theory of social time advanced by the African-American thinker, social researcher and activist W. I turn to a detailed reading of the essay ‘Of the Meaning of Progress’, included in The Souls of Black Folk, in which Du Bois elaborates a distinctive understanding of social time via a narrative of his experience as a teacher in a small rural village in Tennessee.
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