To what extent is racism a magical transformation? An existential- phenomenological perspective on racism and anti-racism

Journal of Social Philosophy

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 292-310

  Van Leeuwen, Bart ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84859786868     PISSN: 00472786     EISSN: 14679833     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9833.2007.00380.x     Document Type: Article

References (76)

1. Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge: Perseus, 1954/1979), 515.
2. United Nations Report, Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2001; available at http://www.unhchr.ch/html/racism/02-documents-cnt.html);
3. United States Department of State Report, Report on Global Anti-Semitism (Washington, DC: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 2005; available at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/40258.htm);
4. Marcel Coenders, Marcel Lubbers, and Peer Scheepers, Majorities' Attitudes towards Minorities in European Union Member States (Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Nijmegen Institute for Social and Cultural Research, 2005; available at http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/fss/2006-1214-213220/UUindex. html).
5. Indicative of this general trend is the fact that some dictionaries of philosophy-such as The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)-do not even have an entry on racism.
6. And if they do, the space devoted to it is very limited. For example, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) has an entry on "racism" of just 17 column-wide lines, while, for instance, the entryon "conservatism" istwo full pages.
7. Others have made similar observations: "What is disconcerting, in addition to the thriving of racism, is that few philosophers today seem to care. Concerned with their abstruse fields, from structuralism to post-modernism, these thinkers are proud to be totally involved in speculations which have little relevance to our everyday existence. As anyone perusing through philosophical journals will soon learn, not only racism, but the spread of evil hardly concerns these thinkers." Rivca Gordon and Haim Gordon, "Fighting Racism," Journal of Value Inquiry 28, no. 3 (1994): 425-35.
8. Julie Ward and Tommy Lott, eds., Philosophers on Race (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002);
9. Andrew Valls, ed., Race and Racism in Modern Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
10. One of the editors of a recent volume on racism talks in this respect of a "general neglect of racist motivation in the philosophical literature." Tamas Pataki, "Introduction," in Racism in Mind, ed. Michael P. Levine and Tamas Pataki (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 1-23, 16.
11. Michael Levine comes to the same conclusion: "Moral, social and political philosophers have contributed remarkably little to understanding the causes of racism or the nature of various other prejudices [⋯] Despite their ability to draw fine distinctions and attend to moral principles, philosophers have been beating around the bush." See Michael Levine, "Philosophy and Racism," in Racism in Mind, ed. Michael P. Levine and Tamas Pataki (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 78-96, 79.
12. Veit-Michael Bader, Rassismus, Ethnizität, Bürgerschaft (Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1995), 14-31.
13. Albert Memmi, Le racisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 181ff.
14. Whether the notion "biological race" is a credible concept is much contested. Daniel Blackburn, "Why Race Is Not a Biological Concept," in Race and Racism in Theory and Practice, ed. Berel Lang (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 3-26. However, what is relevant here is that for the racist "race" is real enough, even in a thick sense.
15. Notice that this definition is still much more focused than Memmi's definition of "heterophobia," while its scope is wider than his alternative definition of "racism" in the strict biological sense. Memmi, Le racisme, 130-33.
16. See among others: Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pt. 1;
17. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), pt. 1.
18. I say "to a large degree" to avoid cultural determinism. Taylor's analysis of radical evaluation is important in this regard. With radical evaluation, aspects of the value horizon that we normally take for granted in the process of strong evaluation are themselves being questioned. Taylor, Human Agency and Language, 29-44.
19. Jean-Paul Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive (Paris: Gallimard, 1946/1954), 10.
20. Jean-Paul Sartre, Esquisse d'une théorie des émotions (Paris: Hermann, 1938/1995).
21. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1927/1993), pt. 1, sec. 1, chap. 3.
22. Together with qualities (qualités) and actions (actions), states (états) in Sartre's philosophy constitute the "ego" that itself is beyond consciousness. Hatred is an example of a state. The state of hatred is able to generate occasional feelings of hatred or aversion. The type of relation between the states and these conscious feelings (Erlebnisse) is a relation of emanation. The state of hatred is inert and relatively stable. Moreover, it can exist without being accompanied by constant feelings of hatred. In this article, I will not explore the complex relationship between these two dimensions of hatred any further. Sometimes, however, I will speak of an "emotional state." By this I refer to the notion "state" in a non-technical sense. See Jean-Paul Sartre, La transcendance de l'ego (Paris: J. Vrin, 1965/1996).
23. Cf. Frans Jacobs, "Over morele emoties en morele sentimenten," in Ethiek van DNA tot 9/11, ed. Johan Braeckman et al. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), 65-80.
24. Sartre, Esquisse, 101.
25. Robert Solomon, The Passions (Cambridge: Hackett, 1993), chap. 5.
26. Jean-Paul Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (New York: Routledge, 2004), 56.
27. Joseph Fell, Emotion in the Thought of Sartre (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 29.
28. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Das Sein und das Nichts," in Sartre, ed. Traugott König (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1988), 37-52.
29. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1807/1988), 129;
30. Robert Williams, Hegel's Ethics of Recognition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 10-14, 58-59, 366ff.;
31. Axel Honneth, "Kampf um Anerkennung," in Die zerrissene Welt des Sozialen, ed. Axel Honneth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), 165-76.
32. Although Simone De Beauvoir worked within the framework of existentialist philosophy, she too rejected Sartre's conflict-ridden model of intersubjectivity. See Karen Vintges, Philosophy as Passion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996).
33. Frantz Fanon, Peau noire, masques blancs (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 112.
34. Jean-Paul Sartre, L'être et le néant (Paris: Gallimard, 1943), pt. 3, chap. 1, sec. 4.
35. Incidentally, it is not the case that the magical world always completely replaces the instrumental world, although Sartre sometimes suggests this. In reality it is rather mixed with the usual pragmatic world. The instrumental and the magical attitude should be understood as limiting cases, as opposite extremes on a scale of degrees of emotion. This interpretation is supported by Sartre's conception of weak and delicate emotions. See Fell, Emotion in the Thought of Sartre;
36. William Irwin, "Sartre on the Emotions," Dialogue 38, no. 1 (1995): 1-7;
37. Sartre, L'être et le néant, pt. 1, chap. 1, sec. 5.
38. The reference is to Jorge Garcia's article in this journal. Although Garcia would probably reject the possibility of what I will later call "cognitive-racism," he rightly emphasizes the affective character of racism. However, his mainly conceptual analysis does not really offer an insight into the nature of the affects involved. It seems to me that this type of racism theory-namely on the "heart" of it-ultimately requires a theory of emotion. Jorge Garcia, "The Heart of Racism," Journal of Social Philosophy 27, no. 1 (1996): 5-45.
39. Sartre, Réflexions, 21;
40. Jean-Paul Sartre, Colonialisme et néo-colonialisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 55.
41. This description is supported by social-psychological results of research into racism. Both other-stereotypes and self-stereotypes are identified as central to racist attitudes, just as with ingroup favoritism. Henri Tajfel, Human Groups and Social Categories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
42. Henri Tajfel and John Turner, "An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict," in The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, ed. William Austin and Stephen Worchel (Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1979), 33-47;
43. S. Alexander Haslam et al., "Social Identity Salience and the Emergence of Stereotype Consensus," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 25, no. 7 (1999): 809-18.
44. The logic of modern Islamist terrorism is also based on this Manichaean dualism. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism (New York: Penguin Press, 2004).
45. As Sartre rightly points out, although the racist has chosen to be frightening to others, "he is not afraid of himself" (Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew [NewYork: Schocken Books, 1995], 21, italics mine;
46. As Lewis Gordon wrongly suggests. Lewis Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), 124, 125, 104-5, chap. 14. Lewis Gordon deserves a more thorough treatment than I can give him within the scope of this article. I reserve that for another occasion.
47. Jean-Paul Sartre, L'imaginaire (Paris: Gallimard, 1940/1986), 107, 22-30.
48. David Hamilton, "A Cognitive-Attributional Analysis of Stereotyping," in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 12, ed. Leonard Berkowitz (NewYork: Academic Press, 1979), 53-84, 68.
49. An ingenious experiment by Gregory Razran shows how a proper name, acting like an ethnic symbol, can transform the perception of a face photograph in terms of general liking, beauty, intelligence, ambition, and entertainingness. Gregory Razran, "Ethnic Dislikes and Stereotypes," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 45, no. 1 (1950): 7-27.
50. Leith Baird and Julie Duck found in a series of empirical studies that discrimination serves as a way to regulate affect, specifically to repair a negative transient mood. They conclude that especially "for high-status group members in a negative mood, discrimination is a motivated affect-control strategy used in the service of mood relief, and mood repair is a direct effect of such discrimination." This is the case to such a degree that subjects even "enjoy discriminating, and experience concomitant improvement in mood." See Leith Baird and Julie Duck, "Affect, Prejudice, and Discrimination," in Understanding Prejudice, Racism, and Social Conflict, ed. Martha Augoustinos and Katherine Reynolds (London: Sage, 2002), 126-39, 138.
51. Robert Solomon, "Sartre on Emotions," in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. Paul Arthur Schilpp (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1981), 211-28, 223.
52. Solomon, The Passions.
53. Heleen Pott, De liefde van Alcibiades (Amsterdam: Boom, 1992), 112.
54. For an overview, see Robert Miles and Malcolm Brown, Racism, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2003), 39-44.
55. Ibid., 44-50. A widely contested attempt to revive the genetic inferiority interpretation of race is Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996).
56. Bernard Boxill rightly rejects the simplistic idea that "race" was invented by Europeans exclusively in order to rationalize slavery and colonialism. Instead, the idea of race was introduced for scientific reasons, that is, in order to explain human physical diversity. These arguments were "certainly flawed," but initially they were not insincere. However, the race concept subsequently paved the way for the rationalization and justification of slavery. At that point, bad faith comes in. Bernard Boxill, "Introduction," in Race and Racism, ed. Bernard Boxill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 1-42, 24, 4-5, 16.
57. Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (Boston: Beacon, 1957/1991), 53, 55;
58. Sartre, Colonialisme et néo-colonialisme, 55.
59. Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 80-84.
60. This distinction resembles Appiah's distinction between "extrinsic racism" and "intrinsic racism," although there seems to be a difference in nuance. Extrinsic racism is the same as trait-racism. Attitude-racism, however, involves a reference merely to one's own feelings of rejection, while the intrinsic racist refers to the moral status of the other's race in order to justify moral differentiation. Even if this reference is not based on an appeal to morally relevant characteristics, the orientation of these two non-trait-racisms is not completely the same. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "Racisms," in Anatomy of Racism, ed. David Theo Goldberg (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 3-17.
61. Sartre, Anti-Semite, 39;
62. Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Reflections on the Jewish Question: A Lecture," October 87, no. 1 (1999)
63. (Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew: A Special Issue, ed. Dennis Hollier): 33-46, 36-39.
64. See for such an attempt the four UNESCO statements on race: Four Statements on the Race Question (Paris: UNESCO, 1969).
65. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 485;
66. cf. John Duckitt The Social Psychology of Prejudice (New York: Praeger, 1994), 182-85.
67. Peter Goldie, The Emotions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 76-77.
68. Albert Memmi, Racism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) 27;
69. Adrian Furnham and Stephen Bochner, Culture Shock (London: Routledge, 1986).
70. And that one's own feelings are identified properly is not self-evident. Barry Smith, "Keeping Emotions in Mind," in Understanding Emotions, ed. Peter Goldie (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 111-21, 114.
71. Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkenung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992);
72. Bart van Leeuwen, Erkenning, identiteit en verschil (Leuven: Acco, 2003);
73. Bart van Leeuwen, "Social Attachments as Conditions for the Condition of the Good Life?" Philosophy & Social Criticism 32, no. 3 (2006): 401-28;
74. Bart van Leeuwen, "A Formal Recognition of Social Attachments," Inquiry 50, no. 2 (2007): 180-205.
75. John Duckitt, "Reducing Prejudice," in Understanding Prejudice, Racism, and Social Conflict, ed. Martha Augoustinos and Katherine Reynolds (London: Sage, 2002), 253-72.
76. Gordon and Gordon, "Fighting Racism," 426.