Review of The Center Must Not Hold: White Women Philosophers and the Whiteness of Philosophy,Edited by George Yancy

Troublemaking, decentering and alliance

George Yancy’s ‘Introduction: Troublemaking Allies’ supplies the theoretical glue to hold the essays together: ‘So, even as I speak from a raced and gendered here, I recognize my identity as part of a long, complex, and confluent prior discursive history in the making. I am also a transversal self, a self grounded within the sphere of sociality’ (xv). Each author who contributed to this volume seems to have a similar sense of her voice and her connection to the other philosophers represented. Yancy not only offers the depiction of a socialized self which provides connective tissue to the volume, but he also frames the problem of ‘philosophy’s conceptual whiteness’ (xx). Yancy makes recourse to Charles Mills in explaining that the whiteness of philosophy is not the skin color or racial identification of philosophers, but that the discipline itself produces white hegemony in its concepts and theory. He also provides the call for a possible solution to this problem: an alliance. This alliance is a ‘binding together’ based in the shared experience of ostracization and oppression that women and persons of color experience in taking up the practice of philosophy (ibid.). However, feminist philosophers must recognize that this alliance is not unproblematic: White women philosophers are still inscribed within the white hegemony, albeit differently than white male philosophers. This inscription within whiteness means that alliances are tenuous at best, and must be continually reproblematized, by what Yancy calls ‘troublemaking’ (ibid.).

Whiteness and epistemologies of ignorance

One of the recurring themes in the volume is the issue of complicity. How can white women avoid becoming complicit in white hegemony, especially when they are attempting to deny their complicity? The first chapter, a contribution by Barbara Applebaum entitled ‘White Ignorance and the Denials of Complicity: On the Possibility of Doing Philosophy in Good Faith’, confronts this issue head-on. She begins her essay with a discussion of ‘white ignorance’ (1). Using theories from Mills, Yancy, Sandra Bartky and Iris Marion Young, Applebaum diagnoses white feminist philosophers as culpable in white hegemony. Applebaum goes on to further describe white ignorance and how it functions as an ‘epistemology of ignorance’, a self-perpetuating system of ignorance, where the failure to acknowledge racial inequality creates a system of knowing where racial inequity is obfuscated because these racial issues are ignored (4). In order for white ignorance to maintain its internal epistemological logic, participants must deny their own complicity in the system – if a white feminist philosopher acknowledged her own guilt in racist acts and assumptions, then the reality of white hegemonic structures in the discipline would be uncovered. Applebaum argues that the alternatives to ignorance and denial are listening and openness to vulnerability. She ends with a call to moral responsibility. For her, moral responsibility is not grounded in intention and blame, since this model presupposes the actor’s knowledge (and not ignorance) of his or her immoral actions. Instead, Applebaum uses Young’s ‘Social Connection Model of Responsibility’, which highlights how everyone in the system bears individual responsibility, and must become aware of the normative ‘background conditions’ that allow for immoral actions, specifically white racism and hegemony (19).

White pedagogy

The second chapter, Audrey Thompson’s ‘Reading Black Philosophers in Chronological Order’, takes a pedagogical approach to the issue of whiteness in philosophy. For Thompson, as for Applebaum, it is not enough that a white feminist means well, but she must directly confront her own place in the system of whiteness. Thompson takes an autobiographical approach to this issue; she reports on her own difficulties in appropriately teaching the class ‘African American Epistemologies and Pedagogies’. She admits that she tried to teach only ‘authentic’ black thinkers – which meant that she chose to leave out persons of color she saw as too accommodating (33). But her students quickly identified this as a glaring error; in her attempts to be self-righteous about the inclusion of black theory, Thompson was excluding the important diversity of black voices. Similarly, Thompson recalls how her intention of creating space for black student contributions was undermined by her impulse for creating ‘democratic’ classroom space; she explains that she did not consider the institutional problems, already in place, with ‘listening, evaluating arguments, and claiming authority’ (41). Upon reflection, Thompson concludes that such courses must be taught with contextualism in mind. She must contextualize the course readings with her own whiteness and with the whiteness of academia. Additionally, the readings might be best served by coordinating them topically rather than chronologically to highlight the internal contexts of African American theories.

Methodological whiteness

Alison Bailey’s chapter, ‘On Intersectionality and the Whiteness of Feminist Philosophy’, treats a familiar topic in feminist explorations of race theory: intersectionality. Traditionally, intersectionality is a methodological approach of doing socio-political philosophy that takes into account the relationships between race, class and gender in identity politics. Although Bailey contends that Kimberlé Crenshaw provides the foundations for intersectionality, I would contend that in the study of intersectionality Patricia Hill Collins’ earlier work Black Feminist Thought (1990) is the most oft-cited primer. According to Bailey, part of what legitimizes feminist philosophy is its engagement with ‘the intellectual traditions of the white forefathers’ (51). The crux of Bailey’s argument is that non-western feminist philosophers and feminist philosophers of color are often ignored due to their perceived radicalism; because they are not grounded in the white forefathers’ tradition, their ideas are not seen as recognizable philosophy. Bailey suggests that encouraging philosophy as a discipline to engage legitimizing and contextualizing strategies that emphasize plurality would circumvent this problem of unrecognition. Namely, she suggests adopting intersectionality as a philosophical method par excellence, contending that although social scientific disciplines use intersectionalist approaches, mainstream philosophy has been reticent to learn its lessons. She convincingly argues that an intersectionalist approach would work towards a more pluralistic and inclusive philosophy on two levels. First, intersectionalist tactics could help to uncover the plural ways in which white supremacy is reinforced. Bailey writes: ‘Thinking pluralistically about white supremacy requires paying strong attention to the roles gender, heterosexuality, ability, and colonialism play in maintaining white domination’ (65). The second use for intersectionalist method is to expand the foundation for what counts as philosophy; at the same time conventional philosophical method can elaborate what it means to use intersectionality.

White aesthetics

‘The Man of Culture: The Civilized and the Barbarian in Western Philosophy’ provides Lisa Heldke’s close reading of Hume and other modern philosophers as establishing a history of cultural elitism in philosophy. Heldke suggests that emergent alongside the Man of Reason there is a Man of Culture, and that as Genevieve Lloyd uncovered the maleness of the Man of Reason, Heldke has uncovered the western whiteness of the Man of Culture (81). Heldke identifies an implicit aesthetic privileging of white tastes in the history of philosophy, and indicts Hume as the most egregious perpetrator of this raced elitism. Hume claims that cultivating elite aesthetic sensibilities contributes to a cultivation of capacity for better judgments, including better moral judgments (83). Heldke convincingly draws a connection between this claim and Hume’s own pronouncement that ‘A Laplander or Negro has no notion of the relish of wine’ (77). For Heldke, it is not simply the obvious racial and ethnic privileging of European white culture that is at stake, but also the very capacity for moral judgments. If non-whites are empirically unable to cultivate high aesthetic sensibilities, either due to lack of exposure to what Hume culturally values, or through cultivation of other tastes, then they are also empirically unable to develop as complete moral personages. The familiar western philosophical trope of pairing aesthetics and morality is ultimately problematized as foundationally ‘whitely’ (83).

Whiteness as institution

In Crista Lebens’ contribution, chapter 5, ‘Whiteness and Rationality: Feminist Dialogue on Race in Academic Institutional Spaces’, she subverts the traditional feminist critique of academic conferences as masculine spaces, and convincingly argues that they are problematically white spaces. She argues that it is not simply the white male hegemony at fault, but that even feminist philosophers with the best of intentions can be guilty of ‘betrayal’ as much as ‘solidarity’. She describes the ways in which an absence of awareness about race, and the unintended racist responses of white women philosophers, can have real effects on the perpetuation of racism in academic discourse. As a fellow white woman philosopher, her essay is both enlightening and challenging.

White disciplinarity

Similar to Bailey’s ruminations on the benefits of intersectionality to philosophical method, Alexis Shotwell argues in chapter 6, ‘Appropriate Subjects: Whiteness and the Discipline of Philosophy’, that ambiguity and diversity could benefit the discipline. Purposefully utilizing equivocation on ‘subjects’ both as those who practise philosophy and as the various topics of philosophical consideration, Shotwell argues that the narrow definition of valid philosophical considerations enforces correspondingly homogenous identities of philosophers. Drawing from her autobiographical experience as an intersubjective scholar, Shotwell describes the necessity for active resistance against inscription within the confining bounds of philosophical disciplinarity. Using this Foucauldian framework, Shotwell draws on diverse non-white philosophers to develop a notion of intersectional interdisciplinarity that ultimately challenges the restrictive normative bounds.

Perception theory and whiteness

Chapter 7, ‘Color in the Theory of Colors? Or: Are Philosophers' Colors All White?’, challenges the book’s own internal homogeneity. Breaking from the largely socio-political and Continental philosophical studies represented in the volume, Berit Brogaard provides a challenging philosophy-of-science approach to the issue of whiteness. This contribution is not without linkage to the other chapters, however. Brogaard uses Yancy and critical theorist David Owen to give an existential framework for whiteness. For Brogaard, this whiteness is reinforced not only through intersubjective practices, but also through ostensibly scientific perceptual theory. Using linguistic theory and evidence for diverse perceptual sensitivities across and within gender and race categories, Brogaard shows that divergence in color perception may be considered ‘abnormal’, but need not be. On one level, this is a scientific argument for ambiguity in the literal perception of color diversity. On another level, this is an indictment of the ‘white supremicism, androcentrism or Eurocentrism’ of scientific theory at large (143).

Secularism and race

Shannon Sullivan argues in her contribution ‘The Secularity of Philosophy: Race, Religion and the Silence of Exclusion’ that whiteness in philosophy functions ‘invisibly’ (153). For her, despite the more overt ways in which philosophy’s whiteness is maintained, one of the most insidious and difficult methods to thematize is philosophy’s almost extreme secularism. Identifying the importance of religion to marginalized people of color’s lives, Sullivan demonstrates that recognizing religion’s importance is central to any attempt at philosophically conceptualizing this lived experience. In the almost universal disavowal of religion in continental and analytical contemporary philosophy, religious experience is marginalized, and, with it, those for whom this experience is important. Sullivan recognizes that reintroducing religion to the study of philosophy will not destabilize philosophy’s whiteness in its entirety, but it will help the discipline in becoming less exclusive.

Whiteness and wisdom

Appealing to the philosophical tradition, Susan E. Babbitt claims that philosophy’s reinvention requires humility on the part of its practitioners. In her essay, ‘Philosophy’s Whiteness and the Loss of Wisdom’, Babbitt argues that philosophy would be enriched by non-western and non-white theories. She uses an extended example of Igbo African ethics from Nkiru Nzegwu (Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture, 2006) to illustrate how philosophy self-perpetuates white liberalism by bracketing off other theories as non-philosophical. Since Igbo gender dynamics does not fit with western theories of sexual differentiation, Igbo society has been considered anthropologically, but not philosophically, relevant (173). Using several other similar examples, Babbitt makes the point that neo-liberal philosophical theories of freedom are actually quite constrictive by virtue of marginalizing a whole variety of other theories. Correspondingly, western philosophy is quashing its own capacity for wisdom by marginalizing non-western and non-white theories. By reintroducing curiosity, ambiguity and question-raising to philosophical practice, Babbitt argues, we can restore the love of wisdom to philosophy.

White ethics

Rejecting ideal moral and ethical theory, Lisa Tessman argues for a dilemmatizing approach to ethics. In chapter 10 ‘Against the Whiteness of Ethics: Dilemmatizing as a Critical Approach’, Tessman uses Charles Mills’ distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory to articulate an ethical sensitivity to injustice, particularly racial injustice. For Tessman, dilemmaticity highlights the experience of moral problems that have no apparent completely correct and unproblematic solution. Tessman takes for granted the reality of these dilemmatic problems in order to highlight the non-ideal; if there is no completely correct solution, then universal non-contextualized ethical theories are insufficient. Instead, they must be supplanted by theories that take into account the particularities of actual problems and circumstances, which is particularly helpful for situations of injustice and inequality: ‘Accounts that characterize the moral subject as being regularly in the position of choosing between terrible options – a position often created by the constraining structures of domination and oppression – might reveal moral life as both tragic and comic, but certainly not as clean or easy’ (205).

The paradox of white anti-racism

For Cris Mayo, the relationship between philosophical style and anti-racist white philosophy indicates a still problematic fact of whiteness in philosophy. Even as anti-racist white theorists attempt to decenter philosophy, they still use the philosophical arguments and styles that reinforce the primacy of white forms of philosophy. Like Bailey’s argument that white feminists use the ‘tools’ of the patriarchs, Mayo contends that anti-racist white thinkers use the philosophical address of ‘mastery’ (212). This is only one of the paradoxes Mayo uncovers. Running alongside the stylistic paradox, Mayo also uncovers the tendency for anti-racist white thinkers to identify as ‘exceptional’ as theorizing outside the white center (ibid.). But of course, once a thinker identifies as exceptional, she expunges herself from the problem of whiteness, and inadvertently perpetuates the white center. To overcome these paradoxes, Mayo identifies both a stylistic change and a change of orientation helpful to anti-racist philosophical endeavors. Pointing out the importance of humor, sarcasm and irony in anti-racist black philosophy, Mayo suggests that over-earnestness is actually detrimental to the anti-racist agenda. However, Mayo is also wary of slippages into racist humor, and suggests that white anti-racists need to be aware of the limitations of earnestness, and to embrace those limitations: white people are necessarily limited when it comes to issues of race. This corresponds to Mayo’s other suggestion for theorizing out of the paradox of anti-racist white philosophical address. As Applebaum suggested openness to vulnerability as an alternative to white hegemonic stability, Mayo suggests a conception of a ‘vertiginous relationship to whiteness’ (217). Like actual vertigo, this attitude would mean accepting a certain level of panic and disorientation as inevitable experiences. However, vertigo also carries with it a conception of new spaces – the spaces between the solid familiar ground, and the actual experience of falling (ibid.). This concept also seems to mirror the ongoing process necessary for true anti-racist white philosophers that Yancy argues for in his portrayal of troublemaking.

Neo-colonialism in the institution of philosophy

As the sole contribution in the volume dealing explicitly with native and colonial non-white theories, Sarah Lucia Hoagland’s ‘Colonial Practices/Colonial Identities: All the Women are Still White’ has a lot of theoretical work to do. Hoagland begins by framing her considerations in terms of the question: ‘[W]hat happens when two not framed at the center meet, in particular, what happens when white academic feminists approach other women?’ (227). As several other contributors also noted, Hoagland identifies traditional western and white feminist philosophers as unknowingly reinforcing white universalism by acting as though white feminism is feminism for all; but for Hoagland, this universalist, objectivist approach manifests itself as a colonial practice. Hoagland identifies two major colonial practices that feminists participate in: ‘construction of the Other’ and conceptualizing the colonized as the ‘Same-but-backward-in-time’ (229). Both are familiar ideas in colonization, and although feminists did not come up with these theories, they have been complacent in working within their established frameworks. Both constructions of colonized peoples reinforced an identity for colonized women as feral, hypersexual and also repressed by their own cultures. By neglecting to acknowledge the true voices of these women or incorporating their ideas into the feminist framework, white women philosophers have contributed to colonial imperialism and oppression. Hoagland suggests that the corrective would be accepting a grounding philosophy of ‘donner-avec, “gives on and with”’ (237). For Hoagland, this means that white feminist philosophers should engage non-white thinkers to form mutually beneficial relationships for both theory and practice; she calls this a relationship of generosity, which I take to mean the generosity of openness and possibility.

The white center of philosophy

Cynthia Kaufman ends the volume with a chapter entitled “‘Is Philosophy Anything if it Isn’t White?’. Kaufman challenges the reader to consider whether or not it is even possible to practise a non-white philosophy, by contesting that the discipline repeatedly asserts ‘cultural particular[s] as a universal’ (258). Using three examples of the ways white western philosophy has defined reason, Kaufman exposes the cultural context inherent in these three definitions. ‘Rationality as Logic’, ‘Rationality as Dispassionate’ and ‘Rationality as Habermas’ Universal Reason’ all belie their own universal claims by emerging from a culturally specific tradition ignorant or dismissive of other theories and disciplines (247–54). So should we give up on the project of philosophy? Is the project of The Center Must Not Hold necessarily doomed because the discipline is not capable of decentering whiteness, even contingently or temporarily? Kaufman suggests that despite the discipline’s shortcomings, the real heart of philosophical study is analysis, reflection and revision (259). These tools should actually enable the procedures of decentering and troublemaking, reinvigorating a situated, contextualized and historicized philosophy.

Concluding reflections

The sociality of the troublemaking allies in this volume maintains an interesting tension. On the one hand, this volume gives the space for some much-needed critical self-reflection from within the majority-white philosophical community. ¹ On the other hand, since women are also disciplinary outsiders, it is a book composed by those who are sympathetic to criticizing the hegemonic history of philosophy and philosophers. ² With a wary eye towards reductionism or equivocation, the contributors make use of both their ‘insider’ and their ‘outsider’ status.

The blurb on the back cover of the hardback edition suggests that anyone in critical race theory or critical whiteness studies would be interested in the essays collected in The Center Must Not Hold. However, I would suggest that the book has as much to offer feminist scholars and teachers of feminist philosophy. The methods and scholarship represented by this volume do offer a substantial critique of white hegemony in the discipline, but they simultaneously indicate a refreshing future for the most cutting-edge and contemporary feminist philosophy. Besides, how else can we destabilize the white center of feminist philosophy than by entering directly into the heart of this center?