According to Shannon Sullivan, thinking about the body as being in transaction with its social, political, cultural, and physical surroundings is not a new idea.

"[A] lucid discussion of race that does not sell out the black experience." —Tommy Lott, author of The Invention of Race Revealing Whiteness explores how white privilege operates as an unseen, invisible, and unquestioned norm in society today. In this personal and selfsearching book, Shannon Sullivan interrogates her own whiteness and how being white has affected her. By looking closely at the subtleties of white domination, she issues a call for other white people to own up to their (...) unspoken privilege and confront environments that condone or perpetuate it. Sullivan’s theorizing about race and privilege draws on American pragmatism, psychology, race theory, and feminist thought. As it articulates a way to live beyond the barriers that white privilege has created, this book offers readers a clear and honest confrontation with a trenchant and vexing concern. (shrink)

Leading scholars explore how different forms of ignorance are produced and sustained, and the role they play in knowledge practices.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors' IntroductionAlan D. Schrift and Shannon SullivanThe articles in this special issue of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy were selected from revised versions of papers that were originally presented at the sixtieth annual meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (SPEP) at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas October 13–15, 2022.Michael Hardt of Duke University and Patricia Pisters of the University of Amsterdam gave the (...) SPEP 2022 Plenary Addresses, and we are grateful to be able to include their plenary papers in this special issue. Hardt's paper, "The Politics of Articulation and Strategic Multiplicities," treated SPEP members to an early peek at his newest book, The Subversive 70s (Oxford University Press, 2023). In this work, Hardt digs into the powerful resources for social movements that activists and theorists from the 1970s developed. As he argues, in many ways those activists and thinkers were ahead of their times—and also ahead of ours—in understanding how to analyze interwoven multiplicities of power and how to articulate and organize liberation struggles based on those multiplicities. Hardt brilliantly demonstrates how analyzing the progressive and revolutionary social [End Page 237] movements of the '70s can help us not only understand the roots of contemporary social and political struggles but also reclaim critical resources for those struggles.Patricia Pisters's paper, "Thinking with Fire: Elemental Philosophy and Media Technology," draws upon Gaston Bachelard's "fire complexes" to address a variety of pyrotechnical images appearing in contemporary cinema. Noting that elemental philosophy is on the rise in media studies and elsewhere, not least because of current environmental crises, fire is particularly engaging for its metaphorical, "matterphorical," and technological associations. While acknowledging fire as a material medium—cooking, heating, burning, etc.—Pisters's primary focus in her paper is on fire as an immaterial medium, and it is here that she turns to Bachelard's constellation of fire complexes—the Empedocles, Prometheus, and Novalis Complexes—to which she adds her own fourth complex, the Sita Complex. With these complexes, she provides readings of four cinematic productions that elucidate the annihilating, transgressive, sexual, and purifying qualities of fire, and she suggests that these entangled fire complexes present different kinds of combustive knowledge in which the element of fire manifests itself as material phenomenon of nature, the engine for modern life, and immaterial affective reverie of destruction, transgression, and sexuality.The other articles in this special issue have been organized according to five broad groupings. The first grouping, "On Latin American Philosophy," brings together three papers that engage Latin American philosophy, particularly as found in Mexican, Columbian, and Venezuelan history and political movements. In "Radicalizing Localization: Notes on Santiago Castro-Gómez's Genealogies of Coloniality," Julian Rios Acuña argues that Columbian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez develops a radical method of localization. This method allows Castro-Gómez to transform Foucauldian genealogy into genealogies of coloniality that grapple with the complexities of extreme violence produced by colonialism. In "Stefan Gandler's Renewal of Critical Theory from Latin America," Jake M. Bartholomew argues for a version of Critical Theory that is not bound by Europe but also remains true to its first-generation Marxist roots. Relocating to Mexico and advocating for Mexican philosophers, German-born philosopher Stefan Gandler shows how Latin American philosophy can enrich Critical Theory, providing more than can the second and third generations of Critical Theory because of its ability to analyze capitalism from outside the economic perspectives of the Global North. In "Two Versions of the Mestizo [End Page 238] Model: Toward a Theory of Anti-Blackness in Latin American Thought," Miguel Gualdron Ramirez criticizes the anti-Blackness that he sees at the heart of mestizo models of latinidad, or lo latinoamericano. Focusing on the concepts of liberation offered by Venezuelan theorist and politician Simón Bolívar and Mexican philosopher José de Vasconcelos, Ramirez reveals the exclusion and erasure of Black bodies, lives, and histories that ground their versions of Latinx identity and Latin American history. Together these three articles showcase how Latin American philosophy can enrich and expand the scope of Continental philosophy.The second grouping, "Liberatory Limits and Misalignments," features three articles... (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's claim in Phenomenology of Perception (1962) that the anonymous body guarantees an intersubjective world is problematic because it omits the particularities of bodies. This omission produces an account of "dialogue" with another in which I solipsistically hear only myself and dominate others with my intentionality. This essay develops an alternative to projective intentionality called "hypothetical construction," in which meaning is socially constructed through an appreciation of the differences of others.

This article analyzes the changing relationship of race and class in the work of Charles Mills. Mills tells the story of his career by tracing an arc “from class to race,” which includes “an evolution of both focus and approach” that shifts the terms of his work “from red to black.” The article complicates this story by reading Mills's evolution through an intersectional lens. An intersectional approach to Mills's work allows a better appreciation of how he does not move from (...) class to race in the sense of abandoning the former for the latter, nor in the sense that race is utterly absent from his earlier work on class. Race and class are entangled with each other, and with gender and other axes of identity and power, in complex ways throughout his corpus. Mills's work remains red in certain respects—sometimes problematically from an intersectional perspective—even as it takes on black concerns and perspectives. On the flip side, as the end of the article asks, can Mills's work remain sufficiently red—that is, explicitly grapple with class concerns—as it tries to add some color to a whitewashed liberalism? (shrink)

In my response to the comments of Vincent Colapietro, Charlene Seigfried, and Gail Weiss on Living Across and Through Skins , I explain pragmatist feminism as an ecological ontology that understands bodies and environments as dynamically co-constitutive. I then discuss the relationship of pragmatist feminism to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Nietzschean genealogy, and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Some of the specific concepts I examine include the anonymous body, the bodying organism, truth as transactional flourishing, and the preservation of racial and ethnic categories.

: In my response to the comments of Vincent Colapietro, Charlene Seigfried, and Gail Weiss on Living Across and Through Skins (Sullivan 2001), I explain pragmatist feminism as an ecological ontology that understands bodies and environments as dynamically co-constitutive. I then discuss the relationship of pragmatist feminism to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Nietzschean genealogy, and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Some of the specific concepts I examine include the anonymous body, the bodying organism, truth as transactional flourishing, and the preservation of racial and (...) ethnic categories. (shrink)

i am honored to have the opportunity to think with Patricia Hill Collins about community as a political construct. Collins has argued that, like concepts of family and love, community often has been considered to be part of a nonpolitical sphere, something personal and private even as it is not individualistic. As feminists have shown, however, the personal is political, and as Collins urges, an intersectional understanding of the political can and also should apply to the concept of community. In (...) Collins's words, "instead of being a natural, apolitical space, or even an empty category that can be used for political purposes, the construct of community may lie at the heart of politics itself". The concept of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On the Need for a New Ethos of White AntiracismShannon SullivanWhite people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.—James Baldwin, The Fire Next TimeIn his classic manifesto (...) on race, The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin passionately urges black people not to retaliate against white people by attempting to debase or dominate them in return. The reason is that doing so would harm black people most of all. As Baldwin (1963, 113) assures his readers,I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. I think I know—we see it around us every day—the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads.... I would not like to see Negroes ever arrive at so wretched a condition.Likewise, when Martin Luther King Jr., urged his black church members to love their white enemies rather than return their racial hate, he did so because he believed that “hate distorts the personality of the hater. We usually think of what hate does for the individual hated or the individuals hated or the groups hated. But it is even more tragic, it is even more ruinous and injurious to the [End Page 21] individual who hates” (King 1957). While Baldwin was an avowed atheist and King a Christian minister, both warned of the devastating effects of white racism on “the souls of white folk,” and they pleaded and preached that black people should not stoop to white people’s debased level.1 Out of all the damage that white racism has done to African Americans and other people of color, the most damaging of all would be for it to turn them into the debilitated, deplorable people that white folk generally are.We might say that on Baldwin’s (and perhaps also King’s) view, white people are the truly “wretched of the earth” (Fanon 1965). It has been argued that white racism has cost white people their capability for intimacy, their affective lives, their authenticity, their sense of connection to other people, and their spiritual selves (Segrest 2001, 65). These claims are not an attempt to trump or erase the enormous physical, psychological, economic, spiritual, and other types of pain that white people have caused people of color around the world. They instead are a recognition that white people’s attempts to gain material riches and political power through the domination of people of color have impoverished and depleted their own souls. White people qua white are ill in that their racial habits largely have been built out of greed, hatred, jealousy, fear, and cruelty. Their psychosomatic health has suffered and continues to suffer because of their toxic racial identities.So much the worse for white people, we might think. But although understandable, this response would be misguided since white people’s psychosomatic depletion has implications for the well-being of others. Put succinctly, white people’s unhealthiness helps fuel their abuse and domination of people of color. It thus matters to struggles for racial justice whether white people are psychosomatically healthy and strong. It matters which affects, emotions, and passions fund white people’s actions in general, and their work for racial justice in particular. In this paper, I will draw from Friedrich Nietzsche, Teresa Brennan, and other scholars to explain the ontological and power-full aspects of affect, touching briefly on the toxicity of white guilt and shame and focusing especially on the healthiness of what Nietzsche calls a bestowing self-love. I will argue that in the context of white people’s contributions to racial justice movements, a positive effect of their bestowing self-love is that white people will be more likely and better able to clean up their own house... (shrink)

This anthology demonstrates that US Southern identities, borders, and practices play an important but unacknowledged role in ethical, political, emotional, and global issues connected to knowledge production.

i am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to Josina Vink’s rich paper on “Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity.” Vink suggests that design has its roots in pragmatism and that by returning to them, design can improve itself by becoming more pluralistic and less colonizing in its effects. Focusing on health care systems in particular, Vink emphasizes reflexivity as crucial for the decolonizing of design. As Vink argues, reflexivity can help cultivate epistemic humility on the part (...) of designers, acknowledge the important role of embodiment in design practices and outcomes, reject allegedly universal approaches to solving design problems, and recognize that the tools of design are not... (shrink)

While gender and race often are considered socially constructed, this book argues that they are physiologically constituted through the biopsychosocial effects of sexism and racism. This means that to be fully successful, critical philosophy of race and feminist philosophy need to examine not only the financial, legal, political and other forms of racist and sexism oppression, but also their physiological operations. Examining a complex tangle of affects, emotions, knowledge, and privilege, The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression develops an understanding (...) of the human body whose unconscious habits are biological. On this account, affect and emotion are thoroughly somatic, not something "mental" or extra-biological layered on top of the body. They also are interpersonal, social, and can be transactionally transmitted between people.Ranging from the stomach and the gut to the hips and the heart, from autoimmune diseases to epigenetic markers, Sullivan demonstrates the gastrointestinal effects of sexual abuse that disproportionately affect women, often manifesting as IBS, Crohn's disease, or similar functional disorders. She also explores the transgenerational effects of racism via epigenetic changes in African American women, who experience much higher pre-term birth rates than white women do, and she reveals the unjust benefits for heart health experienced by white people as a result of their racial privilege. Finally, developing the notion of a physiological therapy that doesn't prioritize bringing unconscious habits to conscious awareness, Sullivan closes with a double-barreled approach for both working for institutional change and transforming biologically unconscious habits. The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression skillfully combines feminist and critical philosophy of race with the biological and health sciences. The result is a critical physiology of race and gender that offers new strategies for fighting male and white privilege. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Dual Vision of Black People The Status of Race and the Contributions of Black People “The Negro Problem”.

This chapter argues that given affect and emotion’s importance both to the operation of unconscious habit and to a non-reductive, psychologically complex account of human physiology, feminist philosophy and critical philosophy of race need an account of affect and emotion as thoroughly somatic, not something “mental” or extra-biological, layered on top of the body. They also need an account of human physiology that appreciates how emotion and affect are interpersonal, social, and can be transactionally transmitted between people. Developing that account, (...) Chapter 1 takes the hips and pelvis as a case study, using an example of tight pelvic and hamstring muscles to argue for the transactional physiology of affect and emotion. Setting the stage for subsequent chapters, “The Hips” draws on William James to develop an account of the affective body as the psychosomatic substrate from which biologically unconscious habits develop. (shrink)

The concluding chapter explores how the unjust physiological effects of racism and sexism might be countered as part of feminist and critical race movements for social justice. Social-political change can result in physiological transformation, and this change can take place in a number of ways. Most important are institutional changes. In addition, however, physiological changes can take place on a personal, individual level, and those transformations can range from greater to lesser involvement of conscious awareness of physiological states. In particular, (...) this chapter focuses on transformative methods on the individual level that work directly with biologically unconscious habits, rather than detouring through conscious thought. Developing the notion of a physiological therapy that does not prioritize bringing unconscious habits to conscious awareness, the book’s conclusion proposes a double-barreled approach of working for institutional change and transforming biologically unconscious habits as a response to the physiological effects of racism and sexism. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the book by arguing that feminist and critical philosophy of race need to engage more robustly with the medical and biological sciences. It explains physiological habits as transactional, that is, as co-constituted in a dynamic relationship with the social-political world. It also argues that both race and sex/gender are biological, but not in the pre-critical sense of static, essential categories. Rather, they are biological in the critical, dynamic way in which they become biological through the embodiment of (...) racial inequalities. As the book demonstrates, sexism and racism have put down some of their toughest roots in the physiological habits of human bodies, and thus it is there that feminist philosophy and critical philosophy of race also must work. (shrink)

This chapter examines non-genetic, psychophysiological inheritance across generational lines in the context of white domination. Focusing on the effects of racism in black bodies, this chapter draws on the field of epigenetics to show how people of color can biologically inherit the deleterious effects of racism. Examining disparities in preterm birth rates between African American and white women, Chapter 3 details how transgenerational racial health disparities are in fact racist health disparities that can be manifest physiologically, helping constitute the chemicals, (...) hormones, cells, and fibers of the human body. Epigenetics helps demonstrate how racism can have durable effects on the biological constitution of human beings that are not limited to the specific person who is the target of racism, but instead extend to that person’s children and grandchildren. In this way, the field of epigenetics can help philosophers and others understand the transgenerational biological impact of social forces such as racism. (shrink)

This chapter examines the human enteric nervous system to discern some of the physiological effects of sexism, sexual abuse, and male privilege. It argues that to understand the gut, we must appreciate the affective relationship of the entire digestive tract with both itself and the pelvic floor. Examining the body’s digestive tube from the throat to the cloaca—the phylogenetic common origin of the pelvic floor’s separate urinary, genital, and anal tracts—Chapter 2 develops cloacal thinking, which treats the gut and pelvic (...) floor as psychosomatically integrated. Cloacal thinking blurs without erasing boundaries between the function and substance of the digestive tract’s “parts,” refusing to consider them as isolated from either each other or from the “outside” world. It also can help us appreciate gut functioning as transgenerational. The gut’s particular relationship with the world can result in a person’s physiologically passing the harmful effects of sexism and sexual abuse to her offspring. (shrink)

Chapter 4 demonstrates how white domination helps constitute the bodies of white people, focusing on white people’s stomachs and hearts in particular. Returning to the example of undergraduate student Brittney from the book’s Introduction, this chapter locates unconscious habits of white privilege in the clenching muscles of white people’s stomachs. It also argues that white people’s relatively good cardio health should be viewed a physiological effect of white privilege, rather than as a neutral or normal health condition. In the case (...) of both white stomachs and white hearts, a racialized knowledge grounded in white ignorance helps structure contemporary white physiology. (shrink)

This article examines how people of color can biologically inherit the deleterious effects of white racism. Drawing primarily on the field of epigenetics, I demonstrate how transgenerational racial disparities are in fact racist disparities that can be manifest physiologically, helping constitute the chemicals, hormones, cells, and fibers of the human body. Epigenetics can be used to demonstrate how white racism can have durable effects on the biological constitution of human beings that are not limited to the specific person who is (...) the target of white racism, but instead extend to that person's offspring. In this way, the field of epigenetics can help philosophers and others understand the transgenerational biological impact of social forces such as white racism. It reveals that the damage done by white racism is more extensive than critical philosophers of race might have realized, and also that interventions against white racism must address not just the economic, geographical, social, and psychological, but also the biological aspects of human existence. In particular, the article examines racist disparities in preterm birth rates and argues that the scope and significance of prenatal care for African American women must be expanded intergenerationally and include wide-scale forms of racial justice. (shrink)

Farmers have been characterized as people whose ties to the land have given them a deep awareness of natural cycles, appreciation for natural beauty and sense of responsibility as stewards. At the same time, their relationship to the land has been characterized as more utilitarian than that of others who are less directly dependent on its bounty. This paper explores this tension by comparing the attitudes and beliefs of a group of conventional farmers to those of a group of organic (...) farmers. It was found that while both groups reject the idea that a farmer’s role is to conquer nature, organic farmers were significantly more supportive of the notion that humans should live in harmony with nature. Organic farmers also reported a greater awareness of and appreciation for nature in their relationship with the land. Both groups view independence as a main benefit of farming and a lack of financial reward as its main drawback. Overall, conventional farmers report more stress in their lives although they also view themselves in a caretaker role for the land more than do the organic farmers. In contrast, organic farmers report more satisfaction with their lives, a greater concern for living ethically, and a stronger perception of community. Finally, both groups are willing to have their rights limited (organic farmers somewhat more so) but they do not trust the government to do so. (shrink)

: Responding to Silvia Stoller's comments on "Domination and Dialogue in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception" (Sullivan 1997), I argue that while phenomenology has much to offer feminism, feminists should be wary of Merleau-Ponty's notion of projective intentionality because of the ethical solipsism that it tends to involve. I also take the opportunity to clarify the concept of hypothetical construction introduced in the earlier paper, in particular the transformative relationship that it has to pre-reflective experience.

This essay aims to clarify the value of developing systematic studies of ignorance as a component of any robust theory of knowledge. The author employs feminist efforts to recover and create knowledge of women's bodies in the contemporary women's health movement as a case study for cataloging different types of ignorance and shedding light on the nature of their production. She also helps us understand the ways resistance movements can be a helpful site for understanding how to identify, critique, and (...) transform ignorance. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's claim in Phenomenology of Perception that the anonymous body guarantees an intersubjective world is problematic because it omits the particularities of bodies. This omission produces an account of “dialogue” with another in which I solipsistically hear only myself and dominate others with my intentionality. This essay develops an alternative to projective intentionality called “hypothetical construction,” in which meaning is socially constructed through an appreciation of the differences of others.

A collection of essays examining the writings of William James. Provides a reinterpretation of pragmatism to devise philosophical resources for pragmatist feminism that challenge sexism and male privilege"--Provided by publisher.

: This paper demonstrates how John Dewey's notion of habit can help us understand gender as a constitutive structure of bodily existence. Bringing Dewey's pragmatism in conjunction with Judith Butler's concept of performativity, I provide an account of how rigid binary configurations of gender might be transformed at the level of both individual habit and cultural construct.

Beginning with the experience of a white woman's stomach seizing up in fear of a black man, this essay examines some of the ethical and epistemological issues connected to white ignorance. In conversation with Charles Mills on the epistemology of ignorance, I argue that white ignorance primarily operates physiologically, not cognitively. Drawing critically from psychology, neurocardiology, and other medical sciences, I examine some of the biological effects of racism on white people's stomachs and hearts. I argue for a nonideal medical (...) theory focused on improving wellness in a society that systematically has damaged the health of people of color. The essay concludes that to be fully successful, critical philosophy of race must examine not just the financial, legal, political, and other forms of racism, but also its biological and physiological operations. (shrink)

Against the backdrop of eliminitivist versus critical conservationist approaches to the racial category of whiteness, this article asks whether a rehabilitated version of whiteness can be worked out concretely. What might a non-oppressive, anti-racist whiteness look like? Turning to Josiah Royce’s “Provincialism” for help answering this question, I show that even though the essay never explicitly discusses race, it can help explain the ongoing need for the category of whiteness and implicitly offers a wealth of useful suggestions for how to (...) transform it. “Provincialism” is an exercise in critical conservation of the concept of provincialism, and while not identical, provincialism and whiteness share enough in common that “wise” provincialism can serve as a model for “wise” whiteness. Royce’s concept of provincialism thus can be a great help to critical philosophers of race wrestling with questions of whether and how to transformatively conserve whiteness. Exploring similarities and differences between wise provincialism and wise whiteness, I use Royce’s analyses of provincialism to shed light on why whiteness should be rehabilitated rather than discarded and how white people today might begin living whiteness as an anti-racist category. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates how John Dewey's notion of habit can help us understand gender as a constitutive structure of bodily existence. Bringing Dewey's pragmatism in conjunction with Judith Butler's concept of performativity, 1 provide an account of how rigid binary configurations of gender might be transformed at the level of both individual habit and cultural construct.

This article introduces the concept of white priority and challenges the false universalism built into the concept of white privilege. Proceeding from the perspective of “trash crit,” the article analyzes white domination from the perspective of poor and working class white people. While racial advantages exist for poor and working class white people, the concept of white privilege does not capture them well. The concept of white priority—the sense of coming before another, of not being at “the bottom of the (...) well” —is needed to help America grapple with race and class in a post-Obama era. (shrink)

While Sigmund Freud and Maurice Merleau‐Ponty both acknowledge the role that spatiality plays in human life, neither pays any explicit attention to the intersections of race and space. It is Franz Fanon who uses psychoanalysis and phenomenology to provide an account of how the psychical and lived bodily existence of black people is racially constituted by a racist world. More precisely, as I argue in this paper, Fanon's work demonstrates how psychical and bodily spatiality cannot be adequately understood apart from (...) the environing space of the social world. For Fanon, body, psyche, and world mutually influence and constitute each other. In a raced and racist world, therefore, the lived bodily experience and the unconscious of human beings will be racially and racist‐ly constituted as well. This will show you how in psychoanalysis we take spatial ways of looking at things seriously. Sigmund Freud1 Sigmund Freud, “The Question of Lay Analysis,” in volume 20 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1959), 195. Everything throws us back on to the organic relations between subject and space, to that gearing of the subject onto his world which is the origin of space. Maurice Merleau‐Ponty2 Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Routledge, 1962), 251. Hence we are driven from the individual back to the social structure. If there is a [neurotic] taint, it lies not in the “soul” of the individual but rather in that of the environment. Franz Fanon3 Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 213. (shrink)