The still-invisible dimensions of "Western philosophy"

Of all the reactions to this NYT Stone column saying that if philosophy won't "diversify," then we should rename philosophy departments as "Dept of European and American Philosophy," I thought John Drabinski's post distinguishing the decolonializing project from "diversity" approaches was the best.

 

John pointed out the still-invisibly-white dimension of "Western philosophy" with an anecdote about the incredulous laughter from his students when he points out that while he labels his course "Black Existentialism," the phil dept's offering isn't named "White Existentialism," but just "Existentialism." John continues: "That laugh at the absurdity of visibility cuts to the heart ... whiteness doesn’t just hide from visibility, it is in fact defined by its insistence on being invisible – what Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks calls the colonial measure."

 

Among other reactions, there was Eric Schliesser's post, in which he showed that putting Jewish and Islamic philosophy under the "other" or even "non-Western" category revealed a still-invisibly-Christian dimension. This moved me to the following remarks which I left at his place but reproduce here:

1) Very good way to show Christianity as another dimension of invisibility, along with "white" per Drabinski, hidden behind "Western." I think we should take that as a clue to uncover other interlocking dimensions of invisibility along with those two. "Western" also stands for "still-invisibly-ableist," "still-invisibly-hetero," "still-invisibly-anthropocentric," and so on. I don't include "still-invisibly-male" as that dimension of unthought default setting mode for philosophy is now becoming visible (to many people at least) thanks to the centuries of work by feminists.

 

[After the fact comment: so, in my view, behind our usage of "Western philosophy" -- and even more so, behind "philosophy" -- there's a multiplicity at work: a heterogeneous set of interlocking processes of (de-)racialization, (de-)gendering, (de-)ablizing ... , with concrete bodies politic being crystallizations of those dimensions. I think there are connections here with "intersectionality" that I'm going to try to work out this summer.]

2) When Schliesser notes the racism and genocidal calls of "the others" that you can find when you read outside the "Western" canon, that is to my mind a devastating counter to calls to "diversity." The call has to be to de-colonializing, de-racializing, de-ableizing ... philosophy, not just to broadening our sources. It's to change the way we do philosophy, to bring out the invisible dimensions which serve the social-structure-forming (or at least reinforcing and justifying) as well as epistemic, moral, and aesthetic functions of philosophy.

3) The still-invisibly-Christian aspect allowing "Western" to be used as it is didn't become awkward after slavery and colonialism the way it did after Auschwitz, perhaps because of the long term nature and intricate workings of slavery and colonialism meant the entire society, religious organizations and doctrines included, were so permeated by and so involved in the reinforcement and justification of those power relations that can't we see that involvement in the past, let alone see it now in our current society, still structured as it is by the succeeding permutations of the racism and exploitation that were slavery and colonialism. The documentary evidence presented in the case of the Jesuits at Georgetown show just how direct that involvement could be; the real challenges lie in showing the more indirect cases -- as well as continuing to unearth other direct ones.

 

Eric then replied on Facebook to the effect that we tend to homogenize "the West" and thereby render invisible the fighters against slavery and misogyny within "the West" and thereby risk reinforcing injustice, accepting a crude historicism and incompletely complex narratives. 

 

In response I of course acknowledged his points, and then wrote,

 

"When, upon Chike Jeffers's suggestion I made my Spring 2015 HMP course centered on the Atlantic, and included Montaigne's "Of Cannibals," the De Las Casas vs Sepulveda debate, and Jim Maffie's work on Aztec philosophy, I also included Cugoano's Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, I made sure to stress the internal conflict within "Western philosophy." One point I made went something like this: "we talk about the polemical mode of philosophy, but it's mostly just folks scoring points in a seminar room, but Cugoano against the slavers, that really was war, in the form of philosophy. They weren't his "opponents," or his "interlocutors" -- they were his enemies."

 

4) Elsewhere on Facebook I made this comment to forestall the "lack of specialists" objection to changing our approaches:

 

"The de-colonialism challenge -- or better, rooting out all the "still-invisibly-X" dimensions of the "philosophy" multiplicity -- is a generational and collective project. People today are going to have to retool a little, but the hope is that the kids we turn on to de-colonialized (....) phil in our UG courses will go on to be the specialists we're not. This is not some impossible project. Think of 30 years ago in French Studies. Plenty of ppl trained in Hexagonal literature added a little bit of Francophone lit here and there, and over time it's become a research speciality, mostly with kids turned on by those early profs. And there was an importation of African and Caribbean profs into French departments. I think a similar story would be told in English departments both w/r/t post-colonial / de-colonialized / world lit, and w/r/t cultural studies and so on." 

 

That I should have to make such a point shows the ridiculous self-ghettoization of far too many philosophers, who are -- and I'm using the genderizing term advisedly -- scared of the cooties they'd pick up by actually knowing the first thing about the history of almost all the other humanities disciplines. (Which is not to say they have all successfully confronted the de-colonial project instead of settling for "diversity" qua boutique exoticism -- a "world lit," or "world music" course here and there.)

 

5) So, w/r/t current practice, the dividing lines should not be between Eastern and Western, or between continental and analytic, but between work furthering de-colonializing, de-racializing, de-abilizing, de-gendering, .... and work that is "still-invisibly-white," "still-invisibly-abilized" and so on.

 

[UPDATE, Th 12 May, 10:51 am CDT: is that a forced choice? Is there a tertium non datur? Is there philosophy that is neither de-invisiblizing nor still-invisibly-X but just plain philosophy? I would of course be open to discussion on that question.]

 

Comments

[Graywyvern]

a very good book, which i found out about very late, is

https://www.amazon.com/Sociology-Philosophies-Global-Theory-Intellectual/dp/0674001877

& it has changed the way i look at philosophy. so, all accounts that are simply lineage-based (& but sketchily contextual) seem to me suspect. but i'm not sure this is worth making a dichotomy out of. let's just say, the more you know about a writer & her period, the deeper our current understanding can be.