Continuing on Alia Al-Saji’s “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing” (2014), Maurice Merleau-Ponty's “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motility" from Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Linda Martín Alcoff’s “Identity as Visible and Embodied” and “Perception" sections from Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (2006), and ch. 1 of Continue Reading …
Ep. 248: Racism and Policing (Al-Saji, Merleau-Ponty, et al) (Part One)
On Alia Al-Saji’s “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing” (2014), Maurice Merleau-Ponty's “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motility" from Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Linda Martín Alcoff’s “Identity as Visible and Embodied” and “Perception" sections from Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (2006), and ch. 1 of Alex Continue Reading …
Ep. 248: Racism and Policing (Al-Saji, Merleau-Ponty, et al) (Citizen Edition)
On Alia Al-Saji’s “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing” (2014), Maurice Merleau-Ponty's “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motility" from Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Linda Martín Alcoff’s “Identity as Visible and Embodied” and “Perception" sections from Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (2006), and ch. 1 of Alex Continue Reading …
Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Part Two)
Continuing on Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and "Black Orpheus" (1948). We move into the latter half of the book, which deals with the Jews themselves. Though Sartre stresses that inauthenticity is more common among the majority protestant population of France, the persecuted Jews are not immune, and their persecuted Continue Reading …
Ep. 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Citizen Edition)
On Jean-Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and "Black Orpheus" (1948). These are the essays that Frantz Fanon (see ep. 210) was most responding to, and they address the same question: How can we best psychologically understand racism and reactions to it? Sartre's chief analytical tool is the accusation of inauthenticity: The Continue Reading …
Episode 139: bell hooks on Racism/Sexism
On Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) and Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992, Intro, Ch. 3, 11). How do these pernicious forces interact? bell hooks (aka Gloria Watkins) describes black women as having been excluded both from mainstream historical feminism (which was led by white women who didn't want to alienate Southern whites) and black civil rights Continue Reading …
Ep. 139: bell hooks on Racism/Sexism (Citizen Edition)
On Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) and Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992, Intro, Ch. 3, 11). How do these pernicious forces interact? bell hooks (aka Gloria Watkins) describes black women as having been excluded both from mainstream historical feminism (which was led by white women who didn't want to alienate southern whites) and black civil rights Continue Reading …
In Dreams
There’s safety in delusion. People sometimes say it takes special courage to face the world as it is, even more to face ourselves, and we know the truth doesn’t always feel good. It can be painful. Perhaps, then, a moderate amount of delusion can be, well, healthy. Ta-Nehisi Coates has something else in mind. “To awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts,” is the greatest Continue Reading …
On the Identity Politics of Belly Dancing
Subscribe to more of my writing at https://www.wesalwan.com Follow me on Twitter Novelist Randa Jarrar has been mocked – and accused of racism – for telling the world that she “can’t stand” white belly dancers. As Eugene Volokh notes, if we were to universalize Jarrar’s objections to “cultural appropriation,” then we might object to East Asian cellists or Japanese Continue Reading …
Philosophy of Race through Comedy
[Editor's Note: This post is a follow-up on some of the discussion near the end of ep. 52.] I have often found that great comedy can be deeply philosophical. Wittgenstein once said that one could write a substantial work of philosophy consisting only of jokes. This is certainly true when it comes to philosophy of race. The following are some of the things I show in class to Continue Reading …
America’s Epidemic of Enlightened Racism
John Derbyshire has been fired from the National Review for an openly racist column on how white people should advise their children with respect to “blacks”: for the most part, avoid them. Because on the whole, they are unintelligent, antisocial, hostile, and dangerous. Or as he puts it, avoid “concentrations of blacks” or places “swamped with blacks,” and leave a place when Continue Reading …