Individuality and the intellectuals: An imaginary conversation between W. E. B. Du Bois and Emile Durkheim

Theory and Society

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 435-462

  Fields, Karen E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITÉ BORDEAUX MONTAIGNE   (France)

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EID: 0036417090     PISSN: 03042421     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1020900208865     Document Type: Review

References (100)

1. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, translated and with an introduction by Karen E. Fields, (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 227.
2. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, in Three Negro Classics (New York: Avon, [1903] 1965), 221.
3. As the late Stephen Jay Gould showed with great elegance, they kept turning their theory inside out to prevent empirical data from appearing to contradict the self-evident inferiority of the inferior. See The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981).
4. This distinguishing trait of the Republic did not, however, preclude the institution of the color line in the colonies.
5. To keep in full view the objective facticity of the identifications that are the focus of Forms, I use the term "identification" throughout - not "identity." The confusions and ambiguities of the latter have been usefully combed apart by Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper," Beyond"'Identity,'" Theory & Society 29/1 (2000): 1-47.
6. See Monique Hirschorn and Jacques Coena, editors, Durkheim, Weber: vers la fin des malentendus (Paris: Harmattan, 1994).
7. I take this conception from Suicide: "Recently race has been understood to mean an aggregate of individuals with clearly common traits, but traits furthermore due to their derivation from a common stock." Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (New York: The Free Press, [1897] 1973), 83.
8. I borrow from the tidy, though misapplied, formulation of Raymond Boudon, who attaches it to a theory of magic that he claims can be gleaned from (unspecified) footnotes in Forms. In fact, his formulation suits religion - and specifically not magic - for reasons integral to strong positions of Durkheim's: in particular, that, unlike the ends of religion, those of magic are technical, utilitarian, and individualistic, and that, furthermore, the relationships on which magic depends are "accidental and transient" rather than enduring. See Raymond Boudon, "Durkheim et Weber: convergences de méthode," in Hirschorn and Coena, Durkheim, Weber, 104-112; and Durkheim, Forms, 39-42, 42 n. 16.
9. I borrow from the tidy, though misapplied, formulation of Raymond Boudon, who attaches it to a theory of magic that he claims can be gleaned from (unspecified) footnotes in Forms. In fact, his formulation suits religion - and specifically not magic - for reasons integral to strong positions of Durkheim's: in particular, that, unlike the ends of religion, those of magic are technical, utilitarian, and individualistic, and that, furthermore, the relationships on which magic depends are "accidental and transient" rather than enduring. See Raymond Boudon, "Durkheim et Weber: convergences de méthode," in Hirschorn and Coena, Durkheim, Weber, 104-112; and Durkheim, Forms, 39-42, 42 n. 16.
10. It was Durkheim's ambition to solve sociologically the problem of knowledge as set by Kant.
11. See Karen E. Fields, "Religion as an Eminently Social Thing," translator's introduction to Durkheim, Elementary Forms, xxxviii-xl, lix-lxi.
12. Durkheim, Forms, 191.
13. Ibid., 134.
14. Ibid., 239-241.
15. Notice that from one point of view, this diversity is merely a diversity of collective identifications (a system of the form A, B, C, etc.). From another, however, it boils down to designating who is a member and who is not (a system of the form A/not-A). For an incisive discussion of the mistakes that follow inattention to this distinction, see Barbara J. Fields, "Whiteness, Racism, and Identity: A Comment on Peter Arnesen, 'Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination," International Labor and Working Class History (2001).
16. The only incriminating evidence was proved to be a forgery. The real culprit, Commandant Walsin-Esterhazy, was unmasked in 1897 but acquitted the following year, to widespread celebration. Emile Zola exposed the outrage in his famous open letter, "J'Accuse," charging the army's general staff with the scandal of having condemned an innocent individual and was himself tried and convicted of defamation. Rioting and anti-Semitic demonstrations followed. A review by the Conseil de France again found Dreyfus guilty, but pardoned him. In 1906, a third trial finally exonerated Dreyfus, and thereafter he was reintegrated into the army.
17. Du Bois wrote that in 1919, when he was seeking to argue at the peace conference for Africa's eventual transition out of colonial control, the League "appointed a special commission to hear not only of the African, but the facts as to the American Negro problem." See W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy from the Last Decade of His First Century (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 259.
18. Du Bois, Autobiography, 122, 177, 184.
19. Julius Lester, editor, The Seventh Son: The Thought and Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Random House, 1971), 29, quoting from Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (New York: Collier, 1965).
20. Julius Lester, editor, The Seventh Son: The Thought and Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Random House, 1971), 29, quoting from Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (New York: Collier, 1965).
21. Specifically, the case concerned segregated seating on intrastate carriers. It began when Homer Plessy, who appeared to be white, revealed his Negro-ness after having been seated in the designated "whites only" section of a train in Louisiana. Thereupon, he was ejected from the train. Plessy then sued the Pullman Company. The Plessy case coincided with a violent campaign of disfranchisement and repression across the South.
22. Emile Durkheim, "L'Individualism et les intellectuels," in the Paris publication Revue Politique et litteraire: revue bleue 10 (1899): 7, my translation.
23. Let me add that the historical and contextual issues about race that I have brought out here should open up Forms, not narrow it to suit well-worn academic slots. Some of Durkheim's passages, like the one about the human Kangaroo, invite new sorts of conversation among colleagues in the separate disciplines that study "mind," "brain," and the observable deployment of each in social life. If he is right, then we should abandon the proto-scientific notion that still has free reign in scientific milieux - racism as a response to the perception of physical difference.
24. Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906-1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 4. These restrictions applied in France's New World colonies. Thus, in 1777, through the provisions of Article I of the Code Noir (promulgated in 1685), a Jewish merchant in Bordeaux who received a plantation in St. Domingue, for payment of a debt, was able to secure possession of it only after obtaining a royal patent two years later. See Hélène Sarrazin, Bordeaux: La Traite des Noirs (Bordeaux: CMD, 1999), 45.
25. Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry, 1906-1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 4. These restrictions applied in France's New World colonies. Thus, in 1777, through the provisions of Article I of the Code Noir (promulgated in 1685), a Jewish merchant in Bordeaux who received a plantation in St. Domingue, for payment of a debt, was able to secure possession of it only after obtaining a royal patent two years later. See Hélène Sarrazin, Bordeaux: La Traite des Noirs (Bordeaux: CMD, 1999), 45.
26. H. Digby Baltzell, "Introduction," W. E. B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro (New York: Schocken, [1899] 1967), xi.
27. Du Bois upbraided American socialists for their shuttling between outrage when white workers were oppressed and silence when it came to black workers. It is commonly said, in relation to Durkheim's position, that the socialists' crude economic determinism and doctrines of class struggle, plus his own native conservatism, made him keep his distance from socialism (for example, Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study [New York: Harper, 1972], 323-330). But it is also the case that, within socialism, anti-Semitic currents rushed alongside universalistic ones. See again Lukes, just cited, as well as Robert F. Byrnes, Antisemitism in Modern France, I: Prelude to the Dreyfus Affair (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950), 156-178, and Kenneth Thompson, Emile Durkheim (New York: Tavistock, 1982), 44. Adolph Reed, W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford, 1997), has much of interest to say about Du Bois's own conservatism and equivocal relationship to socialist politics in the early twentieth century.
28. Du Bois upbraided American socialists for their shuttling between outrage when white workers were oppressed and silence when it came to black workers. It is commonly said, in relation to Durkheim's position, that the socialists' crude economic determinism and doctrines of class struggle, plus his own native conservatism, made him keep his distance from socialism (for example, Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study [New York: Harper, 1972], 323-330). But it is also the case that, within socialism, anti-Semitic currents rushed alongside universalistic ones. See again Lukes, just cited, as well as Robert F. Byrnes, Antisemitism in Modern France, I: Prelude to the Dreyfus Affair (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950), 156-178, and Kenneth Thompson, Emile Durkheim (New York: Tavistock, 1982), 44. Adolph Reed, W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford, 1997), has much of interest to say about Du Bois's own conservatism and equivocal relationship to socialist politics in the early twentieth century.
29. Du Bois upbraided American socialists for their shuttling between outrage when white workers were oppressed and silence when it came to black workers. It is commonly said, in relation to Durkheim's position, that the socialists' crude economic determinism and doctrines of class struggle, plus his own native conservatism, made him keep his distance from socialism (for example, Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study [New York: Harper, 1972], 323-330). But it is also the case that, within socialism, anti-Semitic currents rushed alongside universalistic ones. See again Lukes, just cited, as well as Robert F. Byrnes, Antisemitism in Modern France, I: Prelude to the Dreyfus Affair (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950), 156-178, and Kenneth Thompson, Emile Durkheim (New York: Tavistock, 1982), 44. Adolph Reed, W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford, 1997), has much of interest to say about Du Bois's own conservatism and equivocal relationship to socialist politics in the early twentieth century.
30. Du Bois upbraided American socialists for their shuttling between outrage when white workers were oppressed and silence when it came to black workers. It is commonly said, in relation to Durkheim's position, that the socialists' crude economic determinism and doctrines of class struggle, plus his own native conservatism, made him keep his distance from socialism (for example, Steven Lukes, Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study [New York: Harper, 1972], 323-330). But it is also the case that, within socialism, anti-Semitic currents rushed alongside universalistic ones. See again Lukes, just cited, as well as Robert F. Byrnes, Antisemitism in Modern France, I: Prelude to the Dreyfus Affair (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950), 156-178, and Kenneth Thompson, Emile Durkheim (New York: Tavistock, 1982), 44. Adolph Reed, W. E. B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford, 1997), has much of interest to say about Du Bois's own conservatism and equivocal relationship to socialist politics in the early twentieth century.
31. Emile Durkheim, Suicide, 85-93.
32. However, six decades later and in his nineties, Du Bois decided to expatriate to Ghana. For good measure, perhaps, and certainly with high humor, he took out a membership in the Communist Party of the United States of America, just as he was leaving.
33. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 86-95, and David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (New York: Holt, 1993), 117-176.
34. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 86-95, and David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (New York: Holt, 1993), 117-176.
35. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 215.
36. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 372-373.
37. For a gripping biographical account of the portentous issues, described from the standpoint of a major participant, see Gabriel Merle, Emile Combes (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 237ff.
38. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 372.
39. Ibid., 13. As late as the 1940s at least, the "Durkheimian sociology" with which teachers were equipped had an aroma of subversiveness. Interview with H. Sarrazin, 22 May 2002.
40. Robert A. Nisbet, The Sociology of Emile Durkheim (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 10.
41. Byrnes, Antisemitism, 1950, 137-155, 320-340.
42. Pierre Birnbaum, "Drumont contre 'la France juive,'" Le Monde: dossiers et documents 310 [19 Jan. 1987] June 2002: 3.
43. God, as earlier deployed by France's kings, as deployed by militant Catholics in finde-siècle France, and God, period - Durkheim had decided against revealed religion as a matter of personal belief.
44. The matter of racial designation is a story whose complexities are indicated, if not fully explicated, by Michael R. Marrus, The Politics of Assimilation: A Study of the French Jewish Community at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair (New York: Oxford, 1971), 1-27.
45. In this way, it was not contradictory for Nazis to hold that the physical distinctiveness of Jews was obvious to anyone's naked eye, though not so slavishly as to do without badges and armbands.
46. Here is an example of Durkheim's humor in deriding, en passant, one of the more preposterous ethnographic claims made about the Australians. The text starts this way: "Strehlow, like Spencer and Gillen, declares that, for the Arunta, sexual intercourse is by no means the sufficient condition of procreation...."A dry footnote continues: "Strehlow goes so far as to say that sexual relations are not even considered a necessary condition, a sort of preparation for conception. True, a few lines further on, he adds that the old men knew perfectly well the relationship between physical intercourse and procreation and that, so far as animals are concerned, children know." He concludes: "This is bound to dilute somewhat the import of the first statement." Forms, 253 and 253, n. 55.
47. Patricia McCormack brings this statement front and center in her instructive article about The Rules of Sociological Method. See "The Paradox of Durkheim's Manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method," Theory & Society 25/1 (1996): 85.
48. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 4.
49. Thompson, Emile Durkheim, 39, 92-93, 107. Thompson approvingly quotes the statement by Ginsberg that "in general, la société had an intoxicating effect on his mind," in Morris Ginsberg, On the Diversity of Morals (London: Henneman, 1956), 51.
50. Thompson, Emile Durkheim, 39, 92-93, 107. Thompson approvingly quotes the statement by Ginsberg that "in general, la société had an intoxicating effect on his mind," in Morris Ginsberg, On the Diversity of Morals (London: Henneman, 1956), 51.
51. McCormick, "Paradox of Durkheim's Manifesto," 88.
52. McCormack insists (ibid., 86-87) - correctly, I think - that no such separation can (or, indeed, should) be made.
53. Reed, W. E. B. DuBois and American Political Thought, 105, in the context of a nice examination (91-125) of the various uses and abuses to which "double-consciousness" has been subject.
54. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 215.
55. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 345. The phrase "the Jewish race" is Lukes's. It appears, however, that in the France of Durkheim's day, Jews and non-Jews used the language of race. See Marrus, Politics of Assimilation, 10.
56. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 345. The phrase "the Jewish race" is Lukes's. It appears, however, that in the France of Durkheim's day, Jews and non-Jews used the language of race. See Marrus, Politics of Assimilation, 10.
57. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 346.
58. Du Bois reflects at length on his genealogy in his 1940 autobiography Dusk of Dawn, a subjective, individualistic genre that nonetheless bears the subtitle The Autobiography of a Race Concept.
59. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 354.
60. The complexity of the question, even for Germany, is brought out in voting research that found that the Nazis never won the electoral support of Catholics in rural Germany. See the analysis and summary of voting patterns by Richard Wolin, "Between Fact and Interpretation: On the Social Misconstruction of Reality," Theory & Society, 27/5 (1998): 717, in particular.
61. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 345. Lukes drew this from comments Durkheim made in 1899 to a journalistic inquiry into anti-Semitism.
62. It is unimaginable that a work as complex as Forms would have only one such source. See Fields, "Religion as an Eminently Social Thing," xxvi-xxxi, which explores his religious upbringing.
63. In addition, that chapter examines in detail William Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1894), to which Durkheim acknowledged a large intellectual debt in regard to the priority of rites over beliefs. It is also worth considering that the prevalence of anti-Semitism at the time would have set discussion of Smith's book afloat on complicated and sometimes troubling cross-currents of opinion. See the flawed, yet instructive, analysis of Ivan Strenski, Durkheim and the Jews of France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), and a review of it by Karen E. Fields, in Journal of Religion 79/1 (1999).
64. In addition, that chapter examines in detail William Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1894), to which Durkheim acknowledged a large intellectual debt in regard to the priority of rites over beliefs. It is also worth considering that the prevalence of anti-Semitism at the time would have set discussion of Smith's book afloat on complicated and sometimes troubling cross-currents of opinion. See the flawed, yet instructive, analysis of Ivan Strenski, Durkheim and the Jews of France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), and a review of it by Karen E. Fields, in Journal of Religion 79/1 (1999).
65. In addition, that chapter examines in detail William Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1894), to which Durkheim acknowledged a large intellectual debt in regard to the priority of rites over beliefs. It is also worth considering that the prevalence of anti-Semitism at the time would have set discussion of Smith's book afloat on complicated and sometimes troubling cross-currents of opinion. See the flawed, yet instructive, analysis of Ivan Strenski, Durkheim and the Jews of France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), and a review of it by Karen E. Fields, in Journal of Religion 79/1 (1999).
66. Durkheim, Forms, 404. What comes next is also interesting, in that his own "social construction" could have been applied to women's status, but had to await other minds. "Probably for the same reason, a woman serves more often than a man as the passive object of the most cruel mourning rites. Because she has lower social significance, she is more readily singled out to fill the function of a scapegoat."
67. Larousse, La Grande Encyclopédie (Paris: Editions Larousse, 1973), 3979.
68. Lewis (W.E.B. Du Bois, 202) reports his belief that "Sociology Hesitant" is no longer extant, but dates its completion as some time after 1900 and characterizes it as a robust critique of regnant forms of grand theory that, at best, minuetted with observable facts.
69. Nicolas Bancel and Pascal Blanchard, "Le Colonialism: 'un anneau dans le nez de la république,"' in a special issue titled L'Héritage colonial: 'un trou de mémoire, in Hommes et Migrations no. 1228 (nov./déc. 2000): 80.
70. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 247.
71. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 350.
72. Ibid., 397.
73. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 372. Lewis reports, in addition, that a brief commendation of Du Bois's Atlanta Studies appeared there in 1903. By the way, I do not assume that Du Bois was unaware of Durkheim's work. But since his papers have long been difficult to access, knowing about that must await future study.
74. W. E. B. Du Bois, "World War and the Color Line," The Crisis, 9/1 (1914), reprinted in Lester, The Seventh Son, I. In 1916, Du Bois campaigned for the training of Negro officers, even under the conditions of a separate, segregated training camp, and he detailed the exploits of Maj. Charles Young in Mexico in Haiti, hoping (along with many Afro-Americans) that Young would be projected into leadership when America entered the war (Lewis, ibid., 517). Although its spirit is present earlier, Du Bois's famous (to some, notorious) piece titled "Close Ranks" did not appear until 1918.
75. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 553 and 554.
76. W.E.B. Du Bois, "World War and the Color Line," 67.
77. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 501-534.
78. I note, however, that the African colonial non-citizens who defended France in World War I as Tirailleurs sénégalais gained a memorial near the main training camp at Cazeau only in 1967, and that their inclusion in Armistice Day ceremonies began only in November, 1998 - under the impetus of the Union des Travailleurs Sénégalais. Interview with UTS members, Bordeaux, November 2000.
79. Lukes, Emile Durkheim, 557.
80. The results were published under the title Les Israélites dans I'armée française, in 1920 and 1921 by Albert Manuel, treasurer of the committee and secretary-general of the Paris consistory. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 57.
81. The results were published under the title Les Israélites dans I'armée française, in 1920 and 1921 by Albert Manuel, treasurer of the committee and secretary-general of the Paris consistory. Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy, 57.
82. Ibid., 12.
83. Durkheim, "L'Individualism," 7.
84. Ibid., 10.
85. Ibid., 11.
86. Du Bois, Autobiography, 174-175.
87. Durkheim, "L'Individualisme," 11.
88. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folks, 271.
89. I b i d.
90. Durkheim, Forms, 265.
91. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 271.
92. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 294. Italics added.
93. Ibid., 293.
94. Michael A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1794-1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1974), 15.
95. Ibid., 18.
96. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, 215.
97. For a searching examination of what, if any, influences can be found of James's notions of double or multiple consciousness on Du Bois's, see Reed, W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought, 100-105.
98. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 294.
99. Durkheim, "L'Individualisme," 11-12.
100. See, for example, recent work by an economist who stretches his discipline's methodological individualism toward its limits: Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).