Conference
Welcome! opens Coleman, Welcome! to this building of great stone classically formed, its dignified and disdainful façade opening to silent cathedral halls of the white man's painted canvases, its doors reluctantly open to all rich or lucky enough to be able to pay pilgrimage since those doors first opened in October eighteen eighty-eight, an opening in honour of the Golden Jubilee of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India, Victoria, an opening paid for by the public subscription of those self-made men most indebted to Victoria's enlightened rule. Welcome! Coleman concludes, to empire!
Thus our attention was, at the outset, forcefully brought to the uncomfortable fact that the next two days of critical race theory, on the far left of the political spectrum, were taking place in a tribute to imperial hubris, and that the grand marble pillars through which we entered at the beginning of each day, and the delicate interior plasterwork to which our attention would occasionally lapse in a talk, were not innocently pleasant, but the fruit of empire, which is to say, the fruit of the very dehumanising racism we were there to criticise.
PerhapsColeman's brief remarks were a bit pessimistic, though; for that conference last week did more to undermine the still-racist still-empire bequeathed Britain than any other conference I've ever attended, and I returned from it amazed, invigorated, inspired, illuminated, fevered; though also depressed, humbled, humiliated, paralysed.
Of course the conference was not the site of a new radical political party or revolutionary cell. But it demonstrated that philosophy is not an ivory-tower academics' idle conversation, but something which can dig into our concepts, arguments, Weltanschauungen, institutions, and reveal their shameful roots; not only did it demonstrate that philosophy is something that can do this, though, but at least suggested that, if philosophy does not do this, it does not merely neglect to do something it could or should do because that something is in itself important, but cannot succeed even as far as it goes. That is, a philosophy that neglects how it is ideologically structured cannot 'bracket' this and focus on questions unaffected by it: every answer it gives to every question, even the framing of every question, is poisoned by its self-ignorance.
This much is not new; but the conference also demonstrated how philosophy now can meet this challenge. Every talk did this, in its own way.Coleman's by highlighting how such intimate issues as sexual and romantic choices were morally and politically loaded but also how the arguments against this - arguments such as 'it's just personal preference whether I want to sleep with black men' - are not just poor, but racist, and hide their racism in a manner characteristic of much racism. Irvin's by making an argument so immediately relevant (the conclusion, briefly, that repeatedly watching videos of black men at whom U.S. police officers are asking you to look as demonstrating the black men's violence teaches us to consider black men as violent, entrenching racist (and, for the black community, dangerous) stereotypes) that you wanted to send it as a matter of urgency to television news channels so that they can stop broadcasting these videos. And so on. But more deeply, I saw how philosophy can be (has to be) both political and rigorous by the being-there of every single speaker and audience member. Dotson perhaps best exemplified it in her talk about the deep trauma suffered by her and so many other black women who are excluded from both implicitly male black activism and theory, and implicitly white feminism, and who by being excluded from both, as well as from the white patriarchy, are so alien to any established discourse that they are not only systematically discriminated against and suffer exceptionally high rates of suicide and murder, but cannot even - and cannot even, to stress again, for systemic reasons - get people to hear them, even when they're given a platform to speak. Dotson expressed the anguish, frustration and anger of this position in her talk, and gave it voice so well that I was moved close to tears. But everyone had this same fury; so there was no jargon, no academic bickering, no splitting hairs, no grandstanding, no bullshit. Shit is too fucked up: it focuses one's attention on what matters. There is no time for measuring intellectual stature to the centimeter, or for getting caught up in arcane theoretical niceties, or for turning one's eye from a mistake it takes bravery to face, or for confusing what's interesting for what's important.
I exaggerate, of course. Some talks were stronger than others; some questions were more pertinent than others; people were learning how to do this, and some were starting from a low baseline, and of course they faltered. But the atmosphere, which suffers (even needs) this, was alive: and the atmosphere is what most deeply struck me. Here is what a philosophy conference can be, must be.
There was a paralysing side, though, too, at least for me: I gave a talk at the conference, and without speculating as to whether it was any good (I wouldn't dare say that of any talk, let alone my own), I can certainly say I made some serious mistakes, and naturally mistakes that were not innocent, not the consequence of simply being an imperfect scholar, but mistakes which came from my blindnesses as basically the person for whose ease the status quo exists. I missed not subtleties but the black point of view, and fed into the very racism I wrote my paper to expose. I spent much of my reflecting on the conference wondering how I could do better, and I have yet to come up with an answer. What is certainly off the cards is ignoring urgent philosophy; that would just entrench the status quo. Also impossible is withdrawing; for whither might I withdraw? I could withdraw from the academy, but that's only one site for these issues. I cannot withdraw from life. So should I then engage full-bloodedly with critical race theory (and feminism, transgender philosophy, disability theory, and those standpoints of which I am still so culpably ignorant I cannot even think what they might be)? Only to fuck up again and again? And is every conference to which I am accepted a conference to which a member of a marginalised group (who can speak for themselves better than I can speak for them and over whom I will be accepted only because I benefit from the status quo) is not accepted? I see ways around this dilemma now that I didn't a few days ago, so I'm not entirely pessimistic; but the gate is strait, the way narrow, and I doubt I can keep to it.
Thus our attention was, at the outset, forcefully brought to the uncomfortable fact that the next two days of critical race theory, on the far left of the political spectrum, were taking place in a tribute to imperial hubris, and that the grand marble pillars through which we entered at the beginning of each day, and the delicate interior plasterwork to which our attention would occasionally lapse in a talk, were not innocently pleasant, but the fruit of empire, which is to say, the fruit of the very dehumanising racism we were there to criticise.
Perhaps
Of course the conference was not the site of a new radical political party or revolutionary cell. But it demonstrated that philosophy is not an ivory-tower academics' idle conversation, but something which can dig into our concepts, arguments, Weltanschauungen, institutions, and reveal their shameful roots; not only did it demonstrate that philosophy is something that can do this, though, but at least suggested that, if philosophy does not do this, it does not merely neglect to do something it could or should do because that something is in itself important, but cannot succeed even as far as it goes. That is, a philosophy that neglects how it is ideologically structured cannot 'bracket' this and focus on questions unaffected by it: every answer it gives to every question, even the framing of every question, is poisoned by its self-ignorance.
This much is not new; but the conference also demonstrated how philosophy now can meet this challenge. Every talk did this, in its own way.
I exaggerate, of course. Some talks were stronger than others; some questions were more pertinent than others; people were learning how to do this, and some were starting from a low baseline, and of course they faltered. But the atmosphere, which suffers (even needs) this, was alive: and the atmosphere is what most deeply struck me. Here is what a philosophy conference can be, must be.
There was a paralysing side, though, too, at least for me: I gave a talk at the conference, and without speculating as to whether it was any good (I wouldn't dare say that of any talk, let alone my own), I can certainly say I made some serious mistakes, and naturally mistakes that were not innocent, not the consequence of simply being an imperfect scholar, but mistakes which came from my blindnesses as basically the person for whose ease the status quo exists. I missed not subtleties but the black point of view, and fed into the very racism I wrote my paper to expose. I spent much of my reflecting on the conference wondering how I could do better, and I have yet to come up with an answer. What is certainly off the cards is ignoring urgent philosophy; that would just entrench the status quo. Also impossible is withdrawing; for whither might I withdraw? I could withdraw from the academy, but that's only one site for these issues. I cannot withdraw from life. So should I then engage full-bloodedly with critical race theory (and feminism, transgender philosophy, disability theory, and those standpoints of which I am still so culpably ignorant I cannot even think what they might be)? Only to fuck up again and again? And is every conference to which I am accepted a conference to which a member of a marginalised group (who can speak for themselves better than I can speak for them and over whom I will be accepted only because I benefit from the status quo) is not accepted? I see ways around this dilemma now that I didn't a few days ago, so I'm not entirely pessimistic; but the gate is strait, the way narrow, and I doubt I can keep to it.