Disciplinary Decadence Research Articles

What Does It Mean to Colonise and Decolonise Philosophy?

AbstractWhat does it mean for philosophy to be ‘colonised’ and what are some of the challenges involved in ‘decolonising’ it in philosophical and political terms? After distinguishing between philosophy and its practice as a professional enterprise, I explore six ways in which philosophy, at least as understood in its Euromodern form, could be interpreted as colonised: (1) Eurocentrism and its asserted racial and ethnic origins/misrepresentations of philosophy's history, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification of the discipline, (4) disciplinary decadence, (5) solipsism, and (6) appeals to redemptive narratives of colonial practice. The remainder of the article examines conditions for decolonising philosophy, which include unlocking its potential as a liberatory practice, identifying its humanistic dimensions, rethinking metaphysical assumptions, and embracing political responsibility wrought from the production of knowledge.

Towards a social psychology of precarity.

This article introduces the special issue 'Towards a Social Psychology of Precarity' that develops an orienting lens for social psychologists' engagement with the concept. As guest editors of the special issue, we provide a thematic overview of how 'precarity' is being conceptualized throughout the social sciences, before distilling the nine contributions to the special issue. In so doing, we trace the ways in which social psychologists are (dis)engaging with the concept of precarity, yet too, explore how precarity constitutes, and is embedded within, the discipline itself. Resisting disciplinary decadence, we collectively explore what a social psychology of precarity could be, and view working with/in precarity as fundamental to addressing broader calls for the social responsiveness of the discipline. The contributing papers, which are methodologically pluralistic and provide rich conceptualisations of precarity, challenge reductionist individualist understandings of suffering and coping and extend social science theorizations on precarity. They also highlight the ways in which social psychology remains complicit in perpetuating different forms of precarity, for both communities and academics. We propose future directions for the social psychological study of precarity through four reflexive questions that we encourage scholars to engage with so that we may both work with/in, and intervene against, 'the precarious'.

Love's Shadow, or Shadow-Boxing?

Love's Shadow, or Shadow-Boxing? Robert L. Caserio (bio) What in Paul Bové's Love's Shadow should one be most grateful for? For its attack on a practice of professionalism that he judges to be deadly for "English studies"; for its claim that allegorical thought and melancholy emotion in literary criticism have caused a disciplinary decadence; or for its defense of literature as the supreme exemplar of humanity's "grand capacity of imagination" (113)? Bové's arraignment of professional practice identifies it as an academic version of "official culture," whereby leading lights of literary study are accorded canonical status, with scarcely an intellectual debate; and whereby their followers, borrowing prestige from their leaders, exhaustively (and exhaustingly) repeat what their leaders say. The result is not only an elevation of the authorized critics, but also an elevation of criticism itself, and of criticism's "official" themes; and a relegation of literature to a subordinate status. My precis of Bové's formulations is inferior to his expressions; especially to those about rote repetition and about the intermediate agents of "official" exchange. "Variation on a concept, achieved by its application and repetition," he says bitingly, "adds nothing to thought, even as it adds to an index of illuminated familiarities" (171). Bite also informs "It is the nature of [academic] official culture that the mediating figure can get a false authority by screening the original from careful study. Most important, the heirs burdened by their reduced inheritance neither curate the significant effort of its creation nor match its originality and specificity" (4). Among the "indexed familiarities" Bové counts "the social contextualization of art as the defining method for its study" (52) and "the rhetoric of resistance" (335). Of the first he judges that "social contextualization" "can be inherently limiting and antagonistic to art's work" (52). Of the second he says that "official culture" rewards the rhetoric of resistance, but does "not come to works of art ready to be driven from approved positions" by those works (335). The rhetoric apparently operates only one way: the critics resist the art, the art does not resist the critics. That Bové addresses a common mode of "doing" scholarship is undeniable. His tackling of the matter is, at the very least, appreciable as a bold grappling with a custom whose entrenchment is worth a shake-up. The [End Page 573] shake-up targets no less a figure than Fredric Jameson, whom Bové arraigns as a model of what he opposes. In doing so, however, Bové crosses over from an attack on a professional structure ("Jameson's first struggle is for predominance in the academy" [9]; "the Jameson figure, once so popular in the MLA" [143]) to the structure's reliance on what Bové proposes is a totalizing critical ideology: an "official" theme inaugurated by Jameson's The Political Unconscious (1979). Jameson's theme—that critics should read texts as if they are unwittingly alienated emblems of historical conflicts—made the critic's job become, Bové complains, an obligatory allegoresis, a "machinery of explanation" (175), based on an assumption that real history matters more than fictive imaginations. But the history at issue is a shrunken version, Bové is at pains to point out: history characterized as a sequence of human failures that culminates in "a ruined and unjust present" (12), which the critic-allegorizer is made melancholy by, and feels a responsibility to redeem. The redemptive path is utopian speculation, of the kind Jameson has written about in Archeologies of the Future (2005) and elsewhere. The problem for Bové with this future-oriented aim, which he identifies as the allegorist's self-appointed messianic hope for human betterment, is that it ignores history for what history—and literature—rightly might claim to be "achievement rather than ruination" (23). As for the melancholy in the critic's ideological constitution, Bové judges it to be an intellectual and emotional debility bar none. But where, readers might wonder, does Bové derive a charge against melancholy in a challenge to Jameson confined mainly to six pages (7-13) of an introductory chapter, and centered on Jameson's utopianism? Bové extrapolates melancholy from Jameson's conviction of the oppressive, irreversible thrust...

To Undiscipline Knowledge

The social sciences were founded at the height of the Euromodern era when the belief in infinite expansion coexisted with the willingness to enclose, categorize, and lock up a large part of humanity. The invention of the social sciences was closely linked to this enterprise of disciplinarization of spaces and of populations which accompanied the expansion of capitalism and colonial conquest. Stigmatized, dominated, and colonized groups were constituted as objects by social scientists who considered themselves as pure subjects, and concealed the conditions under which they undertook their research and prohibited the colonized from expressing their own subjectivity. Colonization also imposed a binary cartography of the world and a geography of reason with obligatory references and strict disciplinary divisions. There are many ways to decolonize knowledge, but they remain marginal in a world where white male supremacy is also epistemological. The rejection of disciplinary decadence implies not only a critical but a metacritical gesture, and the refusal of the imperative of objectivation and non-engagement.

F. W. Albrecht, Assimilation Policy and the Education of Aboriginal Girls in Central Australia: Overcoming Disciplinary Decadence in Australian History

ABSTRACTThis article explores the work of Lutheran missionary F. W. Albrecht, who in the decades following the Second World War instituted a privately funded school scheme to provide formal education to Aboriginal children in central Australia. The scheme that Albrecht devised targeted “half-caste” girls living at cattle stations located within the orbit of the Finke River Mission—historically significant because, unlike the child removal commonly associated with the Stolen Generations, it relied on the consent of Aboriginal parents and encouraged the girls to maintain links to and pride in their Aboriginal cultural heritage. As part of a larger study of F. W. Albrecht and the Aboriginal women who were subject to his education scheme, this article discusses the in loco parentis–style relationship that existed between Albrecht and one of his Aboriginal students. By outlining the emotional content of this history, as researchers (one who claims an Indigenous identity position and one who does not) we argue that an ethical engagement with emotions in history is necessary to avoid what Lewis Gordon has termed “disciplinary decadence”.

Decolonizing Philosophy

AbstractThis article explores five ways in which philosophy could be colonized: (1) racial and ethnic origins, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification, (4) disciplinary decadence, (5) solipsism—and what the author calls a teleological suspension of philosophy as consideration among other practices of thought.

PAZ, RAÇA E DECADÊNCIA DISCIPLINAR

This article briefly analyzes the implications of Lewis Gordon’s work on race, racism and disciplinarity in our field of inquiry, peace studies. The centrality of human beings and freedom in Gordon's philosophy, and his metadisciplinary reflections help us to rethink our experience as doctoral students in the discipline where questions of race, racism and colonialism are undertheorized. We contend that an interdisciplinary approach that leaves disciplines unquestioned is insufficient to address problems of racism. Keywords: Lewis Gordon; race; racism; peace studies; disciplinary decadence.

RÉFLEXION SUR LA LITTÉRATURE FRANCOPHONE ET L’EXISTENCE NOIRE EN FRANCE À TRAVERS LA PENSÉE DE LEWIS GORDON

As a French-speaking black woman, the cultural and political circumstances in which I grew up shaped how I view the world. Prior to my arrival in the United States of America, I had never heard of Africana philosophy. My academic training in Francophone literary studies restricted my research to one discipline. In this article, I will discuss how Lewis Gordon’s intellectual contribution positively affected my scholarship. He gave me the critical-thinking tools that changed the way I look at the world, while inspiring me to work on black existentialism, decolonizing knowledge and challenging disciplinary decadence.

EDUCANDO SERES HUMANOS: ABRAÇAR A VULNERABILIDADE E RESISTIR À DECADÊNCIA

Césaire called a civilization incapable of solving the problems it creates a decadent civilization and Gordon, in his Disciplinary Decadence, demonstrates the decadence of modern disciplines of knowledge production. In their insistence on completeness, anything outside of those totalizing systems are, by definition, problems. This creates problem phenomena: aspects of reality that are therefore not properly understood as reality. Gordon demonstrates that, in order to dismantle the systems of justification that produce intractable problems by denying reality, it is not enough to simply change the content of our education – we must also change the methodology that produces a warped view of reality that cuts us off from all social reality, including the social aspects of ourselves. Gordon’s diagnosis of disciplinary decadence has implications for not just what we teach, not just who teaches but, more fundamentally, how we must teach and how we must learn, in order to facilitate liberation. Keywords: decadence; pedagogy; maturity; embodiment; vulnerability.

Thinking through Rejections and Defenses of Transracialism

This article explores several philosophical questions raised by Rebecca Tuvel’s controversial article, “In Defense of Transracialism.” Drawing upon work on the concept of bad faith, including its form as “disciplinary decadence,” this discussion raises concerns of constructivity and its implications and differences in intersections of race and gender.

On the Historiography of Africana Philosophy: Overcoming Disciplinary Decadence through the Teleological Suspension of Philosophy

Abstract This article is a critical philosophical discussion of Lewis Gordon's An Introduction to Africana Philosophy. Gordon in his text does not portray Africana philosophy as an abstract universalism, philosophy as the “view from nowhere” or philosophy as the “god's eye view” on reality. He also refrains from depicting Africana philosophy as a documentary description of Africana identity, thereby indicating a refusal on his part to reduce Africana philosophy to identity politics, to mere psycho-existential babble. Gordon critically engages with race in his text, but his involvement with this concept does not excessively dominate the text. This article critically explores Africana philosophy's involvement with postmodernism, as well as work through Gordon's notions of disciplinary decadence and the teleological suspension of philosophy. The basic analytical thrust endorses Gordon's efforts to represent Africana philosophy as, among other things, an existential phenomenological account of the being-in-the-world of Africana people. This approach represents Africana philosophy as an anti-Cartesian philosophy, precisely because it does not emanate from a theoretically disembodied consciousness nor from an epistemic knowing subject in search of the transcendental foundations of knowledge.

Three Recent Texts in Africana Philosophy: Overcoming Disciplinary Decadence

The following essay is a review of three recent texts in Africana philosophy. These three texts are united by the overarching theme of the teleological suspension of mainstream philosophy. Lewis Gordon takes a global approach to Africana philosophy and his text engages the issue of the historiography of Africana philosophy; George Yancy’s approach is situated within the subtradition of African American philosophy and his text pursues a critical Africana study of the existential reality of whiteness; and Neil Roberts situates his work within the subtradition of Afro-Caribbean philosophy, with the declared goal of tackling the concept of freedom.

A Jurisprudence of Indignation

This paper argues that the images evoked in the literature of the Spanish indignados, and other contemporary global justice movements, specifically those of disciplinary and social decadence, a space–time beyond the limits of the possible, obligations across generations, and, ultimately, of universal history as horizon and anticipation, reactivate the legal critique of absolute property that featured so prominently in nineteenth-century accounts of law, civil society, and revolutionary right, and then again in the context of twentieth-century decolonization and revolutionary movements. Insofar as such images can be distinguished from concepts, following a certain reading of the critical tradition (Milton, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Fanon) against the grain, they pave the way towards the formulation of a systemic critique or a ‘jurisprudence of indignation’, in the wake of the emergence, rise and current crisis of the global market.

“Just Act, Don't Think!” Religion, Education, and Disciplinary Decadence

Although Lewis Gordon's Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times focuses on the frail health of the academic disciplines, its ultimate concern is for the human being as the subject in the pursuit of knowledge. This article analyzes the implications of this important text as well as the larger corpus of Gordon's work for people of African descent. It does so by examining the intersection of religious and communication studies and the instances of disciplinary decadence that arise therefrom. It then examines the paradox of religion in the academy in relation to people of color, observing that issues affecting Africans are not subjected to rigorous thought which is necessary to counter disciplinary decadence. It concludes that the interdisciplinary character of research is ultimately determined by commitment to humanity and the complex realities that humanity confronts.

Lewis Gordon's Contribution to the Study of Communication: Beyond Disciplinary Decadence

My interest in the present work is to consider how the study of communication necessarily entails an irreducible human presence that not only must be accounted for but which is the only adequate means through which we can assert knowledge and understanding concerning human beings and their inextricable interrelatedness with the social, cultural, and historical world. In developing this point, I feature the work of Lewis Gordon, particularly his notion of “disciplinary decadence,” as a way of suggesting how in the study of communication we can pursue a direct, demanding, and thoroughgoing account of the human presence in our work and therefore also develop a greater capacity to examine the human values conveyed and thusly produced in the immediacy of embodied experience. Through Gordon's work, we can see ways of studying communication that return us to the very vibrancy of life that sustains healthy human communities, both inside and outside of the academy.

«Quand je suis lá, elle n'y est pas»: Sobre el razonamiento en negro y la inquietud del colapso en la filosofía y las ciencias humanas

Después de ofrecer una crítica sobre lo que el autor denomina ¿la teodicea del texto¿, donde se utilizan técnicas para leer a los filosóficos canónicos como se haría con una deidad o un texto sagrado, en este artículo se exploran problemas de justificación en la filosofía con relación al amplio alcance de la racionalidad instrumental en virtud de la hegemonía científica en el pensamiento moderno. No obstante, la crítica de este amplio y colonizador alcance se ve amenazada por un desafío a la teoría misma y, en virtud de eso, en la filosofía, según el adagio de la crítica y poeta Audre Lorde, ¿las herramientas de los maestros carecen de la capacidad de desmantelar sus casas¿. ¿Deben la teoría y la razón ser antitéticas a los objetivos de los proyectos mancipadores? El ensayo responde negativamente a esta cuestión a través de la diferenciación entre la razón y la racionalidad, explorando las prácticas metacríticas sobre la razón y las limitaciones disciplinarias de la racionalidad manifestadas en lo que el autor llama ¿decadencia disciplinaria ¿y ¿suspensión teleológica¿ de la filosofía.

Shifting the Geography of Reason in an Age of Disciplinary Decadence

Author(s): Gordon, Lewis R. | Abstract: Shifting the Geography of Reason in an Age of Disciplinary Decadence

Disciplinary decadence: living thought in trying times

Disciplinary decadence: living thought in trying times

Africana Thought and African Diasporic Studies

much intellectual work with regard to black people. They are: 1) the appeal to reductionistic experience and 2) the retreat to disciplinary decadence. 1) Reductionistic experience undergirds the study of black people with the credo that black people offer experience whereas white people offer theory. The impetus for the turn to experience is not in itself insidious. After all, for a long time there was the denial of black inner life, of black subjectivity; the notion of a black person's point of view suggested consciousness of the world, which would call for dynamics of reciprocal recognition. Thus, it made sense to point out blacks' experience of the world, and ethnography in the study of black folk prevailed. When the question of philosophy emerged in the study of black experience, the result was the well-known appeal to ethnophilosophy, the unanimistic notion of black collective philosophical worldviews. There are, however, obvious problems with such an approach to the study of black folk as the primary approach. The obvious problem is the nature of experience itself. We have all had the experience, for instance, of trying to figure out our experience. In such cases, we seek the interpretive support of others: Something just happened and I can't quite figure out what it was... It is not enough to have an experience; it is also important to interpret it. If black experience relies on white thought, then the relationship would be one of dependency. Beyond the obvious