Rogue Expectations: Evaluative Idealism, Race, and Coalitional Ideology Open Access

Abstract

This dissertation critiques two academic investigations into race on a shared presumption—a capacity to perceive phenomena without relying on the role of disparate value judgements. I propose a theory of perception that takes seriously the claim that individual judgements change one’s account of reality, where there exists no true reality beyond the unique accounts each perceiver creates. This theory rejects a realist account of human perception, with “realism” defined as a theory that presupposes or makes possible a shared or objectively definable reality. Such a position risks misidentifying the actions of white supremacist ideology and/or placing a destructive centrality upon a specific racial positionality (the latter potentially creating an unnecessary sense of incommensurability between nonwhite populations). In opposition to these realist theories, I use the term “evaluative idealism” to define an understanding of perception where value judgements on the same phenomenon can be so distinct as to render different perceptual accounts of the world disparate and incommensurable. These interpretations exist with no potential referent to a “real world.” From this theory, I consider a possible refiguration of antiracist prescriptive actions through coalitional dialogue.

I take up two general forms of realism within critical philosophy of race and black studies: (1) the explicit construction of racist perception and valuation as a “distortion” that obscures some true world beyond that position: and (2) black pessimisms that construct one racialized position as sufficiently explicative of reality through its oppression. I focus on the question of perception because it is at this register where arguments based on these forms of realism will falter in their prescriptive claims. The former will fail to reveal the nonexistent perceptual world beyond racist distortion: the latter will misrecognize one perceptual account as the space to center a politic/organizing space, rendering other bodies of knowledge and experience secondary. The dissertation concludes by proposing a mode of interaction based in a decentered approach to one’s own body of knowledge; this mode both expands on the political possibilities opened by evaluative idealism and acts as a regulative prescription to realist approaches to racist oppression and antiracist action.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Social Value, Societal Value  1

Introduction  1

Millsian Realism  6

Mills, Rousseau, and the Origins of Value  9

Scale and Scope  15

Chapter Summaries  21

Chapter 1: Racial Perception and Idealism  25

Introduction  25

Idealism and Ideology  32

Evaluative Idealism and Critical Idealism  36

Distortions and Imagos  38

General and Dominant Ideologies  42

The Correct Human Subject  46

Skill-Building and Asymptotic Presumptions  49

Standpoint Theory and Claims to Authority  56

Idealism and Revolutionary Realism  63

Conclusion: Crisis Realism and Idealism  67

Chapter 2: Idealism and the Individual’s Ideology  71

Introduction  71

Evaluative Perception into Idealism  74

Imagination and Ideology  80

The Necessity of Ideology in General  82

The Necessary Uniqueness of Particular Ideologies  91

Bad Subjects  94

Conclusion: Critical Idealism  99

Chapter 3: Born Drowning - Evaluative Idealism and Empirical Realism  101

Introduction  101

Positioning Kant’s Realism  102

An Exercise: Ideology and the Categories  109

What Flows from the A Priori: Inquiry, Ethics, and Anthropology  114

Inquiry  114

Ethics  118

Anthropology  120

Clear A Priori Proof  122

Common-Sense Claims to Reality  124

Conclusion  128

Chapter 4: Blackness Must Break  130

Introduction  130

Black Pessimisms and Phenomenology  133

“N’est Pas:” Blackness’ Empty Essence  137

Analogies, Ideologies, and Power  146

Compromised Measurements  151

Futural Pessimism  156

Conclusion  163

Chapter 5: Creation, Communication, and (Possible) Coalition  166

Introduction  166

The Structure and Content of Truth  169

The Shape of Truth: Black Pessimisms  170

Gratuitous Violence and Being the Unspeakable  175

The Shape of Truth: Evaluative Idealism  178

The Ability to Value  179

Citizenship and Humanity  188

Generosity and Shared Claims  196

Decentering and Coalition  201

What Coalition(al Trust) Provides  206

Conclusion: A Matter of Trust  212

Conclusion: Limits and Bridges  217

Introduction  217

Black and Indigenous Co-constitution  218

Against Uncritical Deference  225

Constructive Politics and Worldmaking  228

Coulthard and Friction  232

Conclusion  237

Bibliography  240

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Philosophy
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Philosophy Black Studies
Keyword	Idealism Ideology Race Judgement Perception
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	George Yancy, Emory University Axelle Karera, Emory University
Committee Members	Dilek Huseyinzadegan, Emory University J. Reid Miller, Haverford College

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