Du Bois has this phrase, "the fascism of despair," from 1938 where you see him wrestling with the problem of what type of political activity emerges from the growing foreclosure of emancipatory possibilities. 1/7
Well now that the papers are signed and sent in I can announce that I will be joining University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor this Fall. I am enormously excited for this next step!
I think this is why I focus on utopia. Not because I think a naive optimism is what we need, but because I worry about what will emerge without any vision or real possibility of an alternate set of social relations. I worry about our profound disempowerment 5/7
Amílcar Cabral on whether he is a "socialist": "We are not preoccupied with labels you see. We are occupied in the content of the thing, what we are doing, how we are I doing it, what changes we are creating for realizing this aim." I love this
I may seem like an academic but unlike other academics I know what the working class thinks. And they think all of your work is annoying (me too). My work however-
No offense to Deleuzians but the single funniest thing I've ever read in the history of Western philosophy was one and the same man saying his philosophy is not a metaphor and then writing the line, "God is a lobster." Undefeated.
evidence for his position. I think about our current moment and our fraught social relations especially through the endless "culture warring" and wonder how much of it can be explained through a social despair at the dim prospects of a sustainable, flourishing world 4/7
When the 1619 Project said we couldn't know the "thing-in-itself" I immediately picked up the Science of Logic and marched to the nearest school board. Enough was enough
Du Bois thinks that under the weight of despair one should expect the emergence of reactionary politics, mass demobilization, and a lack of direction. And keep in mind he hadn't even seen World War II yet! But WWI, the Red Summer of 1919, and the Great Depression served as...3/7
It got me thinking about the difference between philosophical conceptions of despair (e.g., Adorno) and the honest appraisal of what real, social despair generates politically 2/7
My favorite tweet genre will always be the precocious young child who says something deep like, "Daddy I feel like capitalism alienates us from our species being" and we all react with "Yes king the children have such wisdom"
Anyway this isn't a response to anything in particular. Just some thoughts on the distinction between despair as a philosophical concept and social despair that I think are important. 7/7
Marx, before finishing Capital Vol. 1: You know, comrade, money is the necessary form of appearance of friendship.
Engels: ...
Marx: Can I get twenty bucks or...
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe a coherent and generative progressive politics can emerge from despair as Du Bois understands it. I wouldn't bet on it. And the historical evidence seems scant. 6/7
The Jordan Neely murder has really brought together the most miserable, unserious, and codescendingly pious people alive to say, "We're not saying extrajudicial murder is right...only that it's necessary for social life." Close to the worst this site has ever been honestly
Hegel claimed that wisdom about a historical period often comes only after it has ended. As wokeness loses sway, we can better see its effects on socialist politics.
I actually worry about MC Hammer getting pulled deeper into philosophy twitter. Imagine when he finds out we're all just subtweeting each other because of 2+2 or an esoteric disagreement over whether Hegel ended history. He'll never talk to us again
CRT, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Black Studies are not synonyms as research programs. A little annoying seeing people in profession of Philosophy call anything dealing with race and Philosophy "CRT." These are distinct fields with their own traditions and questions
It'd be a real bummer if there were signs that our society was at risk of a really dangerous racial revanchism impelled by the crises of capitalism and ecological devastation and we spent most of our time dunking on "wokeness." Real missed opportunity imho
If I were Marx I wouldn’t have left my ideas about ideology and philosophy scattered across disparate passages in different works. I would have written one essay with irrefutable definitions. But I’m different
Lol Hayek trying to own English socialists with racism - "oh so you think English workers deserve a share of the profit? Well if you think that then you should also support Indians in the Empire having both profits and proportional share"
Whoever wrote “woke” in the margins of the library copy of Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason next to “progressive rationalization tends…to obliterate that very substance of reason” is about to cook something special
Opened my first Critcal Race Theory article today and all it said was, "2+2=Black." Now I get why anti-woke have been warning of the fall of Western civilization
I am convinced that *historically* antiutopianism in the 20th century was really a form of anticommunism. The philosophical problem of utopianism lay not in alleged consequences, but in the premises it challenges. Utopias attack the presumed legitimacy of our social arrangements
"And while I am all for diversifying reading lists...if people want to talk about decolonising this and that why don't we start by decolonising Africa. Amidst all our cultural squabbles let's not forget who still owns what and why on the African continent."
Teaching my first class at UoT today starting with David Walker and eventually getting to Fanon, CLR James, Claudia Jones, Marcus Garvey, A. Philip Rabdolp, Amilcar Cabral, and Hubert Harrison. Really excited and nervous!
The impulse I find most confusing in philosophy is the assumption that reading "charitably" often means excluding analyses of race/racism unless absolutely avoidable. What justifies this assumption if not a moralism that has not been argued for?
Fanon's optimistic humanism at the end of Blk Skin is primarily epistemic rather than political. The whole book operates under the premise that the limits on human reason imposed by colonialism are contingent rather than definitive. Race does not modulate the principles of reason
About to step into the classroom with my baseball cap backwards, turn the chair around and with my framed picture of Steven Pinker say, "You need to spend less time 'chilling with the homies' and more time kickin it with rationality. For real, for real." Western culture healed.
How would a reading of Black Skin, White Masks change if we took Fanon to be primarily concerned with the fetishism of race? Following Marx, Fanon could be read as describing race as a necessary and distortive form of appearance within the economic relations of colonialism 1/4
Actually, I like seeing people express joy in the streets together. Our critical tools can do much better than dunking on people experiencing a brief moment of catharsis.
"I just hope that people come to see that corporate diversity trainings, which seem largely to turn white people into insufferably anxious sycophants that I wouldn't want anything to do with, are not going to do much for black people."
Putting the finishing touches on my writing sample to apply to the University of Austin: "Phrenology Revisited: Social Policy and 'I'm Just Asking Questions'"
Sometimes I remember that infographic which identified a core tenet of whiteness as "cause and effect relationships" and think about Brother Hume and all he did for Black struggle
Race, Time and Utopia: Critical Theory and the Process of Emancipation is finally with the press in its finished form. Looking forward to the next stages and the book coming closer to existing in the world
"'Without Losing Sight of the Concrete: Critical and Metacritical Theories of Race" has been published. I defend an account of the necessary relationship between explanation and emancipation in marxist analyses of race. Message me for a copy! Look forward to discussion!
Just sent in the course description and I'm really excited to be teaching my first grad seminar in the Spring titled "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Prospects of Black Critical Theory"!
Losing my mind here. The elevation of plagiarism as the political fault line in all of this…what are we even doing? Days debating the definition of plagiarism. Academics truly trapped in gazing at their own reflection
"Rufo won this round of the academic culture war because he exposed so many progressive scholars and journalists to be hypocrites and political actors who were willing to throw their ideals overboard,"
@Tyler_A_Harper
writes:
It must have been wild being Spinoza. Just being right about everything while refusing to go all Nietzsche with a chapter called "Why I Write Such Good Books."
The bill is literally just all three volumes of Capital, with the Grundrisse thrown in, stacked on top of one another. Hard to believe this would pass constitutional muster.
Lmao anti-woke coming out as anti-Western philosophical tradition must be a big L for everyone who thought they were lining up to defend western civilization. Sorry to you!
Once had a philosopher try to explain to me that colonialism in Africa was not bad in itself but it was just *how* some of it happened that wasn't ideal. Because after all there were no billionaires in Africa before colonialism. Really let me know where some of phil is at.
Legit had a student in my intro class ask me if there was a philosopher who was all about not having to do philosophy anymore and I thought, "Bold Wittgensteinian flex my dude"
For those of you interested in my Africana Political Philosophy, 1800s-1970 syllabus here is a link:
But if you would prefer not going to a website just message me and I can send it along to you!
I am going to teach a mid-level contemporary continental philosophy course next semester on the theme of "Time and Justice." What are some readings you think would be great for students to dig into?
WATCH: Among those arrested today were Noelle McAfee, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Emory University.
I’ve asked for a comment from Emory on this arrest, no word yet.
This video provided to us by an
#Emory
PHD student. You can hear him in this video.
@ATLNewsFirst
Last thing:
@lastpositivist
's gave what I think is the most even-handed and non-polemical approach to the so-called "woke wars." Can't capture it all in a tweet but see below for two excellent quotes.
Watching Charles Murray fight the Sisphyean battle of proving he's not racist by screaming, "But black really are statistically deficient!!" I remind myself, "We must imagine Murray happy" and I find peace.
Doesn't it make a difference to
@davidafrench
's argument that two of the core problems typically ascribed to centuries of American racism--elevated black violent crime and depressed mean cognitive ability--are found wherever sub-Saharan African populations live?
I rag on the whole woke/antiwoke thing bc its just a classic example of identifying a real problem but getting the causality all wrong. It's dunking with no social theory. And hanging out on Kendi's twitter page ain't what I'd call rigorous research 1/6