Insurrectionist Ethics: Radical Perspectives on Social Justice 3031167406, 9783031167409

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AFRICAN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

Insurrectionist Ethics Radical Perspectives on Social Justice

Edited by Jacoby Adeshei Carter Darryl Scriven

African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora Series Editors

Jacoby Adeshei Carter Department of Philosophy Howard University Washington, DC, USA Leonard Harris Purdue University West Lafayette, IN, USA

The African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora Series ­publishes high quality work that considers philosophically the experiences of African descendant peoples in the United States and the Americas. Featuring sing-authored manuscripts and anthologies of original essays, this collection of books advance the philosophical understanding of the problems that black people have faced and continue to face in the Western Hemisphere. Building on the work of pioneering black intellectuals, the series explores the philosophical issues of race, ethnicity, identity, liberation, subjugation, political struggles, and socio-economic conditions as they pertain to black experiences throughout the Americas.

Jacoby Adeshei Carter  •  Darryl Scriven Editors

Insurrectionist Ethics Radical Perspectives on Social Justice

Editors Jacoby Adeshei Carter Department of Philosophy Howard University Washington, DC, USA

Darryl Scriven Clarkson University Potsdam, NY, USA

ISSN 2945-5995     ISSN 2945-6002 (electronic) African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora ISBN 978-3-031-16740-9    ISBN 978-3-031-16741-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: imagedepotpro/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Jacoby Carter’s Dedication: To Elijah Yussef Browning-Carter, may you inhabit a better world Darryl Scriven’s Dedication: To Leonard Harris, who taught me to fight my way out of a room full of philosophers and defend my conclusions against strenuous objections

Foreword

Insurrectionist Ethics makes it possible to appreciate a slave woman’s sense of self-respect even if any action she can take to free herself will result in failure and deleterious consequences for herself and others. Self-respect even under subjection is a good. Bernard Boxill in “Self-Respect and Protest” is right: A person cannot consistently feign subservience without eventually being a subservient person; that’s why the character Celie in Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple tells her friend Harpo to beat his wife to make her follow his orders—Celie had been abused and her self-­ deprecation inclined her to recommend that Harpo abuse his wife to make her obedient. Subservience and self-depreciation are not simple subjective traits; they influence what we do and warrant in the moral community of adults and children. Insurrectionist Ethics makes it possible to understand why a triage nurse to chronically ill Alzheimer’s patients does not use instrumental or utilitarian reasoning—death is not preventable by solace and the patient almost certainly never knows or understands the solace received. Yet, a triage nurse may unselfishly give care with little to no hope of the patient having consciousness or a future. Such a nurse need not be an egoist or an altruist; just a voice spitting in the wind keeping the patient’s self-respect current even if that respect is not a queer moral property floating within the non-moral universe. I read the word ‘agent’ in Insurrectionist Ethics as if the authors are not talking about a romanticized able-bodied, unalienated, self-conscious, self-reliant and self-owned European producer of useful goods but a complicated person walking with a cleft foot, blind in one eye, speaking with a vii

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stutter, birthplace unknown in the global South and sexuality unspecified. Simultaneously, as they walk, they are tenacious, empathetic, angry, full of guile, irreverent and loving. This person uses evidential reason, poetic license and hermeneutics in the same cauldron of creativity. This is one reason why the meaning of this form of insurrection is not defined as gruesome violent mayhem by uncompromising agents. The association of every form of insurrection with romanticized revolutionary violence is misguided. There are far fewer civil wars and wars between nation states than ever before. Contemporary insurrection is nearly always carried out by a multiplicity of formal and informal social activities, a multiplicity of agents, and evolving, anabsolute groups by persons engaging in transvaluations. Shifts in linguistics, altered grammars, novels, street painting and a vast range of communication methods are all streams creating change. Insurrectionist ethics is not a clarion call for constant protest, transvalued changed, or altruist self-sacrifice. It is an ethics that is in, starts from, and sojourns to a different place. An ethics that no longer valorizes benevolent altruism, subservience and self-deprecation helps makes possible self-confidence. I also read the word ‘agent’ in Insurrectionist Ethics as if the authors are persons not longing to return to a nostalgic past peopled by raceless pristine bodies praised by all and sundry racialized/ethic others; that is, Edmund Husserl’s “European Man,” Marx’s revolutionary worker, self-­ sacrificial Maoist revolutionary, Simone de Beauvoir’s privileged self-­ interested feminist or what Herbert Marcuse meant by a one-dimensional man. Agents featured in the works by authors of the Epistemology of the South nor the authors of Philosophies Born of Struggle fit a picture of one-dimensional knock-offs of enlightened egoists and reasoning machines with one-dimensional moral emotions. The inexplicable, irredeemable, chaotic and unrelieved trauma—in short—the non-life of the dead immigrant, the loathed migrant, slave, refugee camp entrapped and the untouchable are counted. Arguably, the ethical is carried by the description. There is no reasoning algorithm that assures the creation of a given moral emotion. That is one of the misguided expectations of a rationalist—reasons and explanations are expected to elicit moral emotions consistent with the reasons and explanations. Would there be a singular ‘conscience’ imbedded in human reasoning machines? White American women, slave owners, pedophiles, rapists, and greedy owners of plastic-manufacturing companies might find it odd that

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someone actually believed they fail to follow their consciences, and despite their excellent education, they were bad reasoners. “What can you do” “Start!” “Start what?” “The only thing in the world worth starting: the end of the world, for heaven’s sake.” (Aimé Césaire) Imagine, Eskimos, Gypsies (to use Husserl’s term), AmerIndians, Africans, Orientals, the ‘Latinx’ or South Americans, et al. forms of ‘others’ are the center, and all others are the peripheral. Imagine that the way dignity is maintained in communities of immigrants, refuges, slaves, differently abled, racial minorities and the least well-off is the norm, not an aberration, e.g., the worlds we see in The Book of Night Women or México a través de los siglos. El Virreinato is where we start. Imagine further that we see the sabotage, subterfuge, self-mutilations, and marooning of outcasts as agential, albeit, too often harmful. Imagine that we accept, whether or not we use the religious language of souls and spirits, that moral imperatives (like breathing) exist and methods of intelligence, dialectics or reasoning algorithms are not all-purpose tools telling us what to do. Lastly, imagine that we do not claim a particular social category, class, religion or ethnicity has a supreme spirit, destiny, and interest of which all of the rest of us are but inferior subjects. Possibly, there may be a way, given this expansive imagination, to at least try to make seeing necro-being conceptually possible. One author in the anthology uncovered uncommon ground between seemingly competing ethical voices (this from the eyes of an author that I met when he was twelve years old and I read him now when I progressively go blind from glaucoma). I read one author’s dissertation and was nearly floored when I read the chapter on my concept of ‘philosophy born of struggle’; now to find him addressing issues of policing. Another author revealed unanticipated conceptual places and discord where we expect peace (I have never met this author, but the voices of Mexico from which he draws have been dear to my heart and appear in my work far longer than I care to announce). From her student days I sojourned with another author for years at Philosophy Born of Struggle conference. This author did an exegesis of the concept ‘philosophy born of struggle’ and its links to feminist authors and ableist studies. My own differently abled reality

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was exposed—I have no muscles on the right side of my neck and hold my head aright only by dent of practice. Philosophy, after all, is also personal. Some authors in these pages were my former students at Purdue University. One, standing on the shoulders of Ludwig Wittgenstein, delved into the world of race and racism, diving into African American and Hispanic literature, to find a unique voice, including addressing anti-­ ethics. One editor of Insurrectionist Ethics received an undergraduate degree from Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio (founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church), the other was then his professor. Many years earlier, I completed my undergraduate education at Central State University, across the street from Wilberforce University. Both are historically Black universities. Who knew we would join forces in Indiana? I occasionally receive work assignments, editorial comments and deadlines from them all. They create. They make. I point to their clarifications, distinctions, assertions, addendums, alternative forays, evidential based re-theorizing, common grounds, alternative readings, conjunctions with novelist, theologians and poetic voices. We are all peers. The authors in this anthology have, or arguably are, leaving a conceptual asylum where the epistemology is trapped in reverberating norms of rational redundancy. The actuarial theory (focus on depicting death and undue misery in its raw aesthetic, effective, evidential form), necro-being (that which is death, killing and preventing from being born, unseen) and representative heuristics (modality of over-generalized identification as a class, type, or token) are well depicted by authors in Insurrectionist Ethics. So too the rationale for, and appreciation of, multiplicity of agencies, avoidance of exceptionalism, the polyhedron character of racism and facing the jaundice character of representative heuristics which we need and simultaneously burdens us with the possibility of fetishizing social categories. I need not adopt the self-effacing approach of the ancients like Socrates in his discourse with Euthyphro—Socrates portends that he knows nothing but shrewdly uses reductio ad absurdum to critique Euthyphro who fails to provide Socrates’ starting criteria that he knows a priori is the criteria for a right answer to the question of “what is piety”: a description of the unmitigated nature of the form of piety. A set-up. Rather, I am a fallibilist. Fallibilism arguably entails an expectation of genesis. The way a theory evolves is not by virtue of the insights of its author, but by the wisdom of

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new voices, mutations, forays and added alternatives. Making on a new epistemological stage is just that, making. If there were no disagreements within the community doing insurrectionist ethics’ then there would be something seriously wrong. Is classical pragmatism, or any epistemology, capable of doing all the work we expect a method to perform—a method for moral and epistemic right answers without remainder? One reason some textual traditions do not identify the author is that a text is never the consequence of a single author and its meaning never the meaning a single author imagines. Egoists wish it were not so. They also wish equiprimordiality was false, but translations of original texts are equally original. After the dead bodies of immigrants from North Africa who were trying to reach Europe on unreliable boats wash up on the beaches of Europe and decaying bodies of South American immigrants found in the parched land between Mexico and Texas, then the living proclaim something absurd. Namely, platitudes about how horrible the situation is. Waves of immigrants are nearly always fleeing war, destitution, natural disasters and various forms of ruin and nearly always loathed by the countries they find some form of sustenance. The dead will not be the beneficiaries of any future universal human liberation. Nor will they be at the table when social activists negotiate better living conditions for any surviving immigrants. Herein lies abolitionist and insurrectionist sentiments: They favor the abolition of what creates non-being, living death and necro-being. That means they speak from a place that is not always neatly instrumental, evidential, rational and fixed. Abolition means total negation of a voice in the conversation looking for a compromise between competing voices. Imagine the following unlikely conclusion of a deliberation: Abolish the source causing the motivation for immigrants to leave their homes; abolish the benefactors’ draconian expropriation of the immigrant’s homeland. When abolitionists walk in the room, benefactors walk out. Here is another complication making a preference for abolition a sort of leap of faith and not just the result of an algorithm from a melioristic reasoning method: Shouting “please look at the non-being” is always a shouting that looks like bad poetry by a renegade from the community trying for a solution by way of meliorism. The shouting cannot fit the same old grammatical forms that have been granted high praise. The shouting introduces structures, themes, descriptions and expressions that

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fail to reaffirm what we already believe. Our penchant to be cognitively driven by confirmation bias far outweighs cognitively inclined interest in the unique. Consequently, bad poetry is what the shouts look and sound like; simultaneously, it is the sound of birth. I read Insurrectionist Ethics as authored by each and simultaneously authored by all. It is an honor to be edified by them, named and unnamed. “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” (June Jordon) Purdue University West Lafayette, IN, USA

Leonard Harris

Notes David Bowles, Feathered Serpent Dark Heart of Sky, El Paso, Mexico: Cinco Puntos Press, 2018. Bernard Boxill, “Self-Respect and Protest,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 6.1 (1976): 58–69. James E.  Ford, III, Thinking Through Crisis, New  York: Fordham University Press, 2020. Saidiya V. Hartman, ed., Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-­Making in Nineteenth-Century America, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Ibrahim Marazka, “Translation beyond Empire: On the Equiprimordiality of Original and Translation,” Word and Text, 4, Issue 2, 2014, 84–97. Lee A. McBride, III, Ethics and Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed, London: Bloombury Academic, 2021. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South, Durham, NC & London: Duke University Press. 2018. Tremain, Shelley. 2017. Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Alice Walker, The Color Purple, New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

Preface

The philosophical contribution providing an intellectually compelling case for the morality of a given liberatory struggle is what we mean by an Insurrectionist Ethics. While the identities of these beleaguered groups are always intersectional, one salient criterion of group membership is often chosen to be the rallying point for solidarity. Whether the movement is “Black Lives Matter,” “Gay Pride,” or “Poor People’s Campaign,” at the nucleus of each is a cry for emancipation. As such, Insurrectionist Ethics has expression in many cultural and social contexts. In North America, it has been a long-standing part of the African American intellectual tradition. In that context, Insurrectionist Ethics acted as a radical response to slavery and other forms of racial injustice in the United States. Having been present in the Civil Rights Movement and influencing the struggle to formally include Cultural/Ethnic Studies as part of the Academy, insurrectionist ethics as a genre was reintroduced to classical American Philosophy, particularly Pragmatism, in 1983 with the publication of Leonard Harris’ “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology and Pragmatism.” Harris’ aim was to discover whether Pragmatism has the conceptual resources to require, as a necessary condition for being a pragmatist, that one actively support or participate in slave insurrections. Harris presents the pragmatist with vexing questions requiring her to reflect upon the nature of her philosophical commitments in reference to slave insurrectionism and, by extension, the liberation of oppressed people. Harris concluded that classical Pragmatism is deficient as an ethical framework because it does not require a commitment to insurrection. And this deficiency may be one xiii

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had in common with all other philosophies that purport to promote a just social order but fail to require struggle on behalf of the downtrodden. Recently, scholars have taken up Harris’ challenge to pragmatism along insurrectionist lines. Central features of the insurrectionist ethical paradigm include the use of representative heuristics, agitation on the part of oppressed peoples, liberating conceptions of personhood, and motivational schemes for radical social transformation in extremely precarious circumstances. Insurrectionist ethics cultivates conceptions of personhood and human dignity that incite resistance to oppression and demands action; even if outcomes are uncertain and the social transformation it advocates is indeterminate and may never be realized. Some contemporary scholars have sought to rearticulate the challenge and add conceptual clarity to the insurrectionist critique of pragmatism (See Carter; Harris; McBride; Dotson). Others have sought to demonstrate the ability of pragmatism to meet the insurrectionist challenge (See Koopman; McBride; and Medina). Another group of scholars have argued that the challenge is not one that pragmatism needs to answer. In other words, the latter argue that the insurrectionist challenge is not a challenge to pragmatism as such, even if it may be a challenge to some pragmatists. In this work, we seek to bring together philosophical voices to flesh out its framework as well as articulate the demand it places upon adherents to participate in universal human liberation via their own specified contexts. Not every social or political philosophy, and indeed not every theory of justice is an insurrectionist ethics. There are philosophies that promote specific forms of associated living such as socialism, democracy or communism, thought to free people so associated from oppression and injustice. Some philosophies offer conceptions of normative social phenomena—toleration, multiculturalism, recognition, integration, social justice, or pluralism, by way of example, as positive goods and efficacious for the amelioration of social harms from racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, poverty, stereotyping, de facto segregation, and religious subjugation, to restricted access to immigration and asylum, denial of citizenship and civil rights, human rights violations, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. Such philosophies though they aim at some form of social justice or the amelioration of demonstrable social harms may fail to constitute an insurrectionist ethics. Socrates, M.L. King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi all argued for a moral obligation to defy unjust laws. M.L. King, Jr. held that all persons were morally obligated to break unjust laws, and equally obligated to accept

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punishment by the state for so doing. King, a moral suasionist, and his insurrectionist counterpart agree that those egregiously oppressed by the state are duty bound to defy the laws that serve as instruments of their subjugation. There must be a conscience, virtuous character, ideal principle etc. for the moral suasionist to appeal to in seeking to end the oppressors’ onslaught against the immiserated. In much the same way that insurrectionist ethics is a radical contribution to social thought, the editors intend for the chapters that comprise this volume to be radical in their treatment of and contribution to insurrectionism. The essays collected here are as hard hitting as they are academically rigorous. The contributors have put forward bold, provocative claims forcefully argued; claims of the sort that challenge in a fundamental and radical way the presuppositions, values, and beliefs that underwrite the systems and structures that insurrectionist ethicists and abolitionist advocates call into question. Washington, DC, USA Potsdam, NY, USA 

Jacoby Adeshei Carter Darryl Scriven

Acknowledgements

Carter: My introduction to insurrectionist philosophy began when I was an undergraduate at Wilberforce University, and met a quick-witted, deep-­ thinking, and critically insightful professor, Darryl Scriven, who introduced me not only to academic philosophy and the Black intellectual tradition, but to the idea that philosophy by and about Black peoples was a worthy and possible pursuit. Then came Leonard Harris, the sometimes quirky, subtly (and not so subtly) intimidating, pioneering scholar of Africana philosophy, whose remarkable career certainly paved the way for myself, and many other philosophers of color. Where Darryl planted the seed of insurrectionist philosophy, Harris, fertilized and pruned it from a sapling to a viable tree. I am indebted beyond measure to both of you. I only hope that this, and all my future work, is as faithful a reflection of all that you have bestowed on me as it is intended it to be. Lastly, “Bro Man,” Lee McBride, our conversations about insurrectionist ethics over the years, even where we part ways, have been of tremendous value to me. The idea to publish this volume began in 2018, when I first joined Howard University, and had the opportunity to host a conference on Alain Locke and Insurrectionist Ethics. Special thanks to Mrs. Helen Stinney for helping to organize the conference. My sincerest gratitude to all of the contributors for their work on this project. Special thanks to Zora Robinson, Howard University, Class of 2022, and Kordell Dixon, Howard University and University of Virginia, for their help preparing the final manuscript for submission. I would be remiss if I did not take a xvii

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moment to acknowledge and thank Erin McKenna and Scott Pratt for their support in various ways over the years that no doubt contributed to this publication. To all, my deepest gratitude. Scriven: As a first-year graduate student at Purdue, Leonard Harris took me to the University of Oregon as one of four scholar/student duos at a philosophical showcase. The format was that the student presented arguments and the mentor was there to help field questions from the audience. I was the last to speak, gave an argument for the ethics of slave insurrection, and ended by claiming that the slave who does not kill their master is morally deficient and lacking in character virtue. When I asked if there were any questions, every hand in the hall shot up. I looked over at Leonard in shock but he pushed back from table and smiled these words, “You said it. Now defend it.” Beyond showing me that I could hold my own as a young intellectual, Leonard existentially allowed me to understand how anemic normative ethical theory is to combat fanatical, systematic oppression. In fact, normative ethics is a counter-intuitive mechanism to reinforce current hegemonic structures. When I became the professor, I met an undergraduate at Wilberforce University named Jacoby Carter who dreamed of law school but displayed great philosophical promise. We became friends and intellectual compatriots; debating just war theory, insurrectionist ethics, and the most formidable approaches to eudaimonia. As fate would have it, he went to study with Leonard as well and was trained, as I was, to kill a philosophical fly with a sledgehammer. So as part of three generations of black philosophers, I’d like to acknowledge Leonard Harris, Jacoby Carter, and all those dedicated to the life of the mind who are angry enough at oppression to do something about it.

Contents

Part I Insurrectionist Ethics: Conceptions and Contexts   1 1 The  Very Idea of Insurrectionist Ethics  3 Darryl Scriven 2 Revisioning  Unalignment and Freedom: Insurrectionist Ethics in Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women 15 Sheena Michele Mason 3 Self-respect  and the Obligation to Resist Oppression 39 Kordell Dixon Part II Insurrectionist Ethics across the Americas  59 4 Theologizing  Insurrection: On the Religious Dimension of Insurrectionist Ethics 61 Aaron Pratt Shepherd 5 Vicente  Riva Palacio’s Mexican Insurrectionist Ethics 89 Sergio Armando Gallegos Ordorica

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6 Resistance  and Multiplicity: Insurrectionist Ethics and Afro-Indigenous Acts of Solidarity107 Andrea J. Pitts Part III Insurrectionist Ethics: Applications and Correctives 131 7 Insurrectionist  Ethics, Moral Suasion, and Violent Protests for Poor Policing133 Corey L. Barnes 8 Anti-ethics  as Insurrectionist Ethics: An Analysis of the Normative Foundations of Philosophies Born of Struggle157 Alberto G. Urquidez Part IV Insurrectionist Ethics: Pragmatism and Naturalism 195 9 Leonard  Harris’s Insurrectionist “Challenge” to Pragmatism197 Gregory Fernando Pappas 10 Responding  to Racial Injustice: Insurrection and Social Justice Pragmatism in Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Richard Rorty213 Chris Voparil 11 Discernment  behind Asylum Walls; Or, The Limits of Efficacious Reasoning237 Lee A. McBride III

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Part V Insurrectionist Ethics: Past, Present, and Future 253 12 Death  by a Thousand Cuts: Insurrectionist Ethics in a Present less Oppressive than the Past255 Jacoby Adeshei Carter Bibliography279 Index293

Notes on Contributors

Corey  L.  Barnes  is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Memphis. His research interests are in Africana philosophy, the philosophy of race, and social and political philosophy, especially cosmopolitanism and democratic theory. He is the author of Alain Locke on the Theoretical Foundations for a Just and Successful Peace (Palgrave Macmillan). Jacoby  Adeshei  Carter is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Howard University. His research interests include Africana philosophy, social and political philosophy, value theory, philosophy of race and pragmatism, especially, the philosophy of Alain Locke. He is the Director of the Alain Leroy Locke Society, author of African American Contributions to the Americas’ Cultures: Lectures by Alain Locke and co-editor of Philosophic Values and World Citizenship: Locke to Obama and Beyond and Philosophizing the Americas: An InterAmerican Discourse (forthcoming Fordham University Press, 2023). His most recent contributions to pragmatism, African American philosophy and philosophy of race include “Harlem Renaissance: An Interpretation of Racialized Art and Ethics,” co-­authored with Sheena M.  Mason, in the Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Art (forthcoming 2023) and “Pragmatist and Race,” in the Routledge Companion to Pragmatism. Kordell Dixon  earned his M.A. in Philosophy from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA. He is interested in working on whether there is an acceptable moral response to beliefs that wrong xxiii

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disadvantaged groups. His research and teaching interests are in Africana philosophy, the philosophy of race, social and political philosophy, metaethics, and ethics. Sergio  Armando  Gallegos  Ordorica is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He obtained his B.A. at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and his Ph.D. at the Graduate Center of the City University of New  York. His primary research and teaching interests include Latin American Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, American Philosophy, Early Modern Philosophy and Philosophy of Science. His work has been published in Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society, Philosophy Compass, Critical Philosophy of Race, Synthese, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A and Hypatia. He has recently completed a book manuscript on the villancicos (carols) of the seventeenth century Novohispanic philosopher Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz for the Cambridge Elements series. He is also currently at work on several other short manuscripts on Sor Juana. Sheena  Michele  Mason  earned her Ph.D. in English Literature from Howard University in Washington, DC, USA. She then joined the faculty at SUNY Oneonta as an Assistant Professor in English. Her first book Theory of Racelessness: A Case For Antirace(ism) (Palgrave) presents an alternative philosophy of race and the theory of racelessness, a pedagogical and methodological framework for understanding “race” and stopping racism and its effects. It also presents a philosophy of race, culture, and ethnicity. Lee A. McBride III  is Professor of Philosophy at The College of Wooster (Ohio). McBride specializes in American philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of race. He is the author of Ethics and Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed (Bloomsbury, 2021) and has published articles on insurrectionist ethics, racism, pragmatist feminism, food ethics, anger, leftist politics, and decolonial philosophy. McBride is the editor of A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader (Bloomsbury, 2020) and co-editor of Pragmatist Feminism and the Work of Charlene Haddock Seigfried (Bloomsbury, 2022). Gregory Fernando Pappas  is a Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is currently a National Humanities Center Fellow (for

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2021–2022). Pappas works within the Latinx, American Pragmatist, and Latin American traditions in ethics and social-political philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles on the philosophy of John Dewey, and Luis Villoro. Andrea J. Pitts  is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and they are the author of Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance (2021), and co-­editor with Mark Westmoreland of Beyond Bergson: Examining Race and Colonialism through the Writings of Henri Bergson (2019) and Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance with Mariana Ortega and José M. Medina (2020). Darryl Scriven  is a graduate of both Florida A&M University and Purdue University with degrees in Mathematics and Philosophy. He was a Fulbright-Hays Scholar to Morocco and Tunisia, and has taught at Wilberforce University, Southern University-Baton Rouge, and was Associate Director of Education at the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care. Dr. Scriven chaired the Department of Visual Arts, Humanities and Theatre at Florida A&M University. He was also Dean of Arts, Sciences, Business and Education as well as the John and Anna Hanes Distinguished Professor in the Humanities at Winston-Salem State University. Currently, Dr. Scriven is the Dean of Arts & Sciences and Fellow in the Shipley Center for Innovation at Clarkson University. He is also Academic Chair of the Journal of Science, Healthcare, and the Humanities. Aaron Pratt Shepherd  is Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and an ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). He is the author of Challenging the New Atheism: Pragmatic Confrontations in the Philosophy of Religion (Routledge Studies in American Philosophy, 2021), and has research interests in philosophy of religion, the history of philosophy (with particular emphasis upon philosophy in the Americas), as well as liberation theologies of the Americas. Alberto  G.  Urquidez will be Assistant Professor of Philosophy  and Religion at James Madison University in Fall 2023. His work on the nature of racism draws on interdisciplinary methods and analyzes racism in connection with various topics, such as the problem of white identity poli-

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tics, moral responsibility for racial oppression, and gender-specific manifestations of racism. His aim is to develop an empirically informed, comprehensive, structuralist analysis of racism as a system of racial oppression. He is the author of (Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan 2020). Chris Voparil  is on the Graduate Faculty of Union Institute & University, where he teaches philosophy and political theory. He is author of Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists (2022) and Richard Rorty: Politics and Vision (2006), and co-editor of Pragmatism and Justice (2017) and several collections of Rorty’s work, including What Can We Hope For? Essays on Politics (2022), On Philosophers and Philosophy: Unpublished Papers, 1960–2000 (2020), and The Rorty Reader (2010), in addition to numerous articles on pragmatism.

PART I

Insurrectionist Ethics: Conceptions and Contexts

CHAPTER 1

The Very Idea of Insurrectionist Ethics Darryl Scriven

I began my book on David Walker by saying that, “The charm of conservatism is that, as an ideology, it rose to power by demonizing all other forms of subversion” (Scriven 2007, xi). I’ve thought about that line for the last fifteen years. It haunts me; like a wisdom that passed through me leaving only residue. I grasped the beauty of it when I wrote it, not the profundity. Upon reflection, the statement is itself demonizing, seductive, and clarifying. It emerged after I had wrestled with the insupportable insult of anti-black racism and the enduring legacy of chattel slavery. I took it as an epiphany on the philosophical enterprise; that is, how philosophy often portends purity and conceals pernition. Contestation, battle, subterfuge, and overthrow had been ever-present elements of my intellectual training and the first graduate seminar I experienced was Leonard Harris expounding the history of American Philosophy; beginning with David Walker and the insurrectionist resistance tradition to slavery. Within Walker’s Appeal to the Citizens of the United States (1830), I locate a robust morality of insurrection in contrast to the normative moral frameworks that serve to reinforce and preserve oppressive social orders by

D. Scriven (*) Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_1

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limiting the language, concepts, and virtues that liberation struggles can access. Walker seems to anticipate Audre Lorde’s mind-altering commentary recorded in her book, Sister Outsider, that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (Lorde 2007, 110).1 Writing in 1829, Walker is unique among his contemporaries; not merely because he is an insurrectionist amidst a sea of moral suasionists and instramentalists. Walker is also unique because he takes the ethical position that, in the case of American chattel slavery, insurrection was not only morally permissible but morally obligatory. In other words, if persons did not engage in violent overthrow to end American chattel slavery, Walker held them to be lacking in character virtue and morally wrong. This intellectual shift changed the conversation from justifying insurrection to conversely requiring justification of moral suasionism and/or instrumentalism in the face of countless deaths and barbarous cruelty inflicted on enslaved Africans. Leonard Harris’ “Honor and Insurrection” (1999), in the spirit of John Brown and David Walker, argues for a set of character traits that obtain in an insurrectionist ethical framework, depart from normative conceptions, and serve the liberatory interests of the oppressed. These traits contest, undermine and seek to usurp existing social orders that incubate and protect imprisoning structures. Like Nietzsche, Walker and Harris assert the necessity for a transvaluation of values that esteems certain demonized actions and methods as laudable and praiseworthy. Using Lorde’s language, Insurrectionist Ethics places dismantling tools into the hands of the dispossessed. This is important to acknowledge because many referring to their framework as insurrectionist are using the term with promiscuity, yet the arguments rarely amount to more than an indictment of hegemonic structures for not living up to normative moral creeds. For example, the white supremacist who is held to be morally wrong for being racist because racism improperly treats some people as means vs. ends in themselves— already knows they are doing this. Or the misogynist/homophobic who is critiqued for appropriating gender norms to marginalize and exclude women/LGBT members from power, prestige, and belonging knows they are doing this…and are doing it on purpose. Colonialism, chattel slavery, human trafficking, discriminatory voting laws, and predatory economic policies that indebt developing countries are not accidents, blind spots, or 1  Originally this essay was delivered as a Commentary at “The Personal and the Political Panel,” Second Sex Conference, New York, September 29, 1979.

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moments of progressively realized ignorance. Rather, these are intentional and calculated acts meant to undermine the personhood and potency of the groups targeted. Appeals to decency, conscience, or intellectual consistency are, for the insurrectionist, wasted words on a foregone conclusion that is protected and fortified by the existing moral order. It is not that offenders are irredeemable. It is that redemption of offenders is not the objective. But how could ethical normativity fortify oppression? Diabolical and barbarous cruelty is protected through institutionalization, laws, and moral systems that undergird these social inventions by vilifying all other forms of redress not sanctioned by the civitas. Just like the Government must consent to being sued, the dominant moral system, to be just, should provide a clear way to hold powerful offenders accountable. While the former scenario is rare, the latter is even more rare; especially when the interests of the powerful are aligned with the interests of Government. Gains procured by pillage, murder, and plunder are laundered through corporate structures, tax rolls, and sheltered by unbridled police power while the crime scene is concealed beneath conservative moral frameworks. Alas, all of these heuristics are designed to keep societies in tact by entreating perpetrators to orchestrate self-governed campaigns of retributive and restorative justice. Unsurprisingly, these campaigns are almost always nullified by sophistry regarding who is truly culpable and how beneficiaries are to be defined. This kind of disingenuine discourse, masquerading as a search for the good, culminates in a legal process that, rather than rendering justice, somehow consistently and disproportianately convicts, incarcerates, and executes black, brown, and marginalized people. Instead of conservative moral frameworks (utilitarianism, deontology, normative pragmatism, etc…) being useful for liberation, they often and actually reinforce Empire by ensuring that unjust societies remain and are never threatened with dissolution. I argue that many activists and scholars writing about insurrection, like Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X (and even some in this volume) are actually advocating along a spectrum of instrumentalism. These “by any means necessary” approaches are open to radicality, but lean heavily toward moral suasionism. This suasionism, at best, will shame oppressive structures in the court of public opinion, fine corporate offenders, or occasionally jail a few bad actors. But a society’s ability to abuse marginalized groups is calcified by moral frameworks that are too anemic to overthrow the society’s most oppressive features. When the state sponsors or protects perpetual

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violence against the vulnerable, that is when the morality of insurrection comes into relief. The American Colonists understood it when fighting England. The Viet Cong understood it when fighting the United States. And David Walker understood it when destabilizing America’s slave trade with his little “seditious pamphlet” (Scriven 2007, 119). I will quickly point to resources in Walker’s Appeal to contextualize and explicate the idea of Insurrectionist Ethics, then end with the implications and applicability of insurrection beyond slave revolts.

David Walker’s Appeal While still in the preamble, Walker expressed his intended procedure of presentation. He identified the sources of black misery as connected in functional ways to four causes: (1) Slavery, (2) Ignorance, (3) The Preachers of Jesus Christ, and (4) The Colonizing Plan. While touching on all four, I’d like to focus on Walker’s claim that ignorance was a chief cause of black misery because it encompasses both knowledge and rationality; the foundational ingredients of choice and, ultimately, morality. Walker protests that blacks were treated as “brutes…[and]…slaves to the American people and their children forever!! to dig their mines and work their farms; and thus go on enriching them, from one generation to another” (Walker 1830, 9). His contention is that American slaveholders, who professed to be both Christian and ethically enlightened, heaped upon black Americans more barbarous cruelty than any so called ‘heathen’ nation that ever existed. These cruelties not only included perpetual servitude, but also ‘the insupportable insult’ that blacks were not members of the human family. This insult was also the foundational justification for race-based slavery. Walker affirmed that this insult, which he held to have been unsuccessfully argued by its adherents, created a kind of slavery that degraded the character of most of those enslaved to an almost irreparable degree. Families were prevented, men, women, and children were raped and murdered, development was stunted, assets were usurped, posterity was displaced, labors were pirated, uniquenesses were acculturated, and wages as well as humanity, honor, respect, and the ability to be perceived as bearers of dignity were innumerably denied. Leonard Harris says that “[s]elf-ownership of one’s labor, family bonds, and the ability to transfer assets across generations, for example, are definitive of full personhood for Walker whether a person is a Muslim or a Christian” (Harris 1999, 238). Therefore, the conclusion that Walker proffers at the end of his research is

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that American slaveholders were actuated, not by religion or revenge, but by ‘sordid avarice’. This sullied notion of greed motivated slavers to take, according to Walker, “not only my own, but my wife and children’s lives by the inches” (Walker 1830, 17). Worse for Walker was that submission by the enslaved to this treatment was so servile that it appeared voluntary. At ‘the murderous hands of tyrants’, Walker argued that many persons who once enjoyed the attributes of self-respect, self-worth, and autonomy had been reduced by slavery to lead wretched, abject, mean, and low existences. Such existences precluded attempts at amelioration of their condition, escape attempts, and sometimes even the reflex of lashing out in opposition when witnessing the cruelest brutalities. Instead, coping strategies of self-deprecation, misogyny, spying for the slavemaster, turning in one’s confederates while planning subversive acts, and foiling escape attempts proliferated. All these degenerative acts Walker denounced as manifestations of ignorance. Still, for Walker, ignorance of this kind is not benign; rather it is morally blameworthy because its presence invokes dangerous consequences for the enslaved. As a case in point, Walker recounts an episode that took place in Kentucky during the summer of 1829. Recounting the narrative, there were three slave transporters who purchased sixty slaves in Maryland with the intent to deliver them to Mississippi. The male slaves were chained together while the women and children were allowed to walk freely. As they walked, the male slaves managed to sever their chains with a file they had secured at some previous interval of time. On the state road from Greenup to Vanceburg in Kentucky, two of the slaves staged a fight to lure the slavers into their midst. When the Wagoneer came, he was immediately killed and a second slaver was shot to death with a commandeered pistol. The head slave-driver was beaten and left for dead. While some of the blacks made their escape, the head slave-driver, Gordon, was helped to his horse by one of the black women in the group of enslaved; which eventually led to the capture, trial, and execution of at least eight of the escaped slaves (Walker 1830, 26–28).

The Framework for Insurrectionist Ethics Walker asks, “Was it the natural fine feelings of this woman, to save such a wretch alive?” He answers, “Most certainly not!” (Ibid, 28). What we witness here in Walker, Nat Turner, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Denmark Vessey, et al. is an acknowledgement of the place of normative morality as

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present within many of their Christian confessions, but inappropriate in relation to murderous adversaries. One might love or forgive one’s enemies but see it as morally unacceptable to help one’s enemies in ways that enable continued oppression. After all, they are your enemies. So don’t help your enemies to enslave you. Got it. But what if I’m trying to overthrow my enemies? I need a very different set of ethical armaments to be successful there. Whether existentialist or critical pragmatist, I need the ability to say to my similarly afflicted compatriot who insists on cleaving to a self-defeating and self-negating ethical framework that “you’re wrong for that!”…and that wrongness be mappable to rational goals and aspirations. Further, if someone says they don’t want themselves or their children to be free badly enough to undermine the conditions producing their plight, then I want to be able to say that we do not have a shared project and point out hard differences between our positions. Thus, an Insurrectionist Ethical Framework is necessary weaponry to accomplish both these tasks. Walker offers ingredients to outline an Insurrectionist Ethical Framework within his critique of the woman who helped the slaver. He writes, “[f]or I declare, the actions of this black woman are really insupportable. For my own part, I cannot think it was anything but servile deceit, combined with the most gross ignorance: for we must remember that humanity, kindness, and fear of the Lord, does not consist in protecting devils” (Ibid). I understand Walker’s point here to be much like Marx’s critique of capitalism. That is, it is not that capitalism is wrong per se; rather it is that capitalism is against the interests of the people. In referring to the woman as afflicted by servile deceit and ‘the most gross ignorance’, Walker depicts her as betraying herself as well as her comrades. The competing ethical framework was a Christian, Golden Rule conception that defined right action as indiscriminate charity, even in the face of danger to oneself. Gross ignorance of what counts as a defensible, moral act under these circumstances led to the murder of wrongly imprisoned victims who may have otherwise evaded their captors. The trait of servility is presented as a learned behavior that functions to amplify conservative moral schemas and proscribe actions through fear and self-loathing. Servility either diminishes or totally overrides thoughts and instincts for liberation and human flourishing. It deteriorates an already mean and low state of existence; causing its host to see themselves and their kind as less than others and undeserving of freedom. When coupled with a normative,

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society-­preserving ethical framework like the Golden Rule, servility further exacerbates self-deprecation and precipitates self-destruction as a moral act. Recall, Walker’s statement above that ‘humanity, kindness, and fear of the Lord, does not consist in protecting devils’. I interpret Walker as positing that the afore-mentioned virtues are inappropriate to display toward those actively engaged in one’s oppression. As a Christian, Walker is challenging a monolithic notion of impartial love. In fact, he proffers that positive virtues should be withheld from devils; i.e. those who systemically abuse, kidnap, murder, and violate the humanity of others. More than a call for self-defense, I understand Walker as signaling the need for a different set of virtues and character traits needed to display toward those individuals or groups who persist in dehumanizing oppression. Turning the other cheek, seventy times seven forgiveness, and Golden Rule morality act against the interests of subjugated populations and even facilitate their emiseration. Frantz Fanon’s admonition in Wretched of the Earth is most poignant in the section entitled “On Violence” where he writes, “decolonization is always a violent phenomena” (Fanon 1961, 27). As such, the virtues and values of decolonization/insurrection will inherently have a violence of character. Fanon, Walker, Douglass, and Tubman understood completely that liberation was not a peaceful act and that all depictions of it as such bordered on a jaundiced sentimentality. Even King and Gandhi knew that someone or group must bear the brunt of the violence required for liberation. They just held that it was better borne through love by the oppressed rather than the oppressor. As an insurrectionist, Walker held this position to be both objectionable and immoral. Walker believed there to not only be a positive duty to defend oneself, but a more specific duty for slaves to engage in insurrection. The differences between many insurrectionists and instrumentalists involved in abolition were largely slight pragmatic and perspectival ones rather than deep ideological inconsistencies. And there were certainly gradations for Walker between non-resistance, suasionism, instrumentalism, and insurrection. He viewed those on the non-resistance end of the spectrum as more so self-deprecators who had, to a great degree, assumed the spirit of brutes. Meanwhile, those closer to the insurrection end were seen as more fully participating in personhood. Walker undertook the task of re-­appropriating an oppressive system of Christianity in favor of the oppressed and also argues for the value of characteristics that were systemically discredited when displayed by the oppressed. Traits such as stealth, manipulation,

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subversion, and ferocity were deemed barbaric expressions of savagery when possessed and exhibited by slaves. Native Americans were accused of deviltry and inhumanity when utilizing these features in liberation struggles. Yet their oppressors expressed these same traits to maximize the degradation of Native groups. Walker does not demonize these traits. Instead, he finds fault with their use by American Christians to sustain oppression. By exploring and, in a sense, sanctifying the value of these tactics with liberation language constructed from many ideological sources, Walker offers a drastically different set of criteria for personhood and what attributes count as honorable. Leonard Harris has proffered the following observation about such honor and the potential inheritance of David Walker’s spirit by contemporary persons vying for rights and privileges on behalf of the oppressed: Possibly modern insurrectionists and maroons will not hold the misguided belief that the virtues of benevolence, piety, temperance, restraint, serenity, and compassion are inimical to sustaining oppression or that tenacity, irreverence, passion, and enmity are inimical to the cause of authoritarianism and oppression. Possibly they will pursue assets and take control of their lives, using the same means as every individual or group in human history, including subterfuge, guile, disdain, and belligerence toward maniacal and malicious authorities. Maybe, with a few conjuring tricks, the insurrectionist spirit will more frequently find its way into the lives of those viciously abused by modern Christians, rapacious entrepreneurs, sex exploiters, and racists amassing ill-gotten wealth. (Harris 1999, 241)

In Walker’s context, such circumstances called for strategies that were unaccessed by most members of the black population for abolitionist purposes. Traits like shrewdness and craftiness that were condemned as dishonorable in all sectors, should be actuated by the downtrodden to serve a deathblow to mass oppression. These traits are not only permissible and honorable for Walker within the context of liberation struggle, but their display was religiously and anthropologically necessary; especially in the face of chattel slavery. Accentuating his perception of such traits to annihilate life-endangering structures is Walker’s stance on self-defense. He writes: …it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty; in fact, the man who will

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stand still and let another murder him, is worse than an infidel, and, if he has common sense, ought not to be pitied. (Walker 1830, 30)

When King’s and Gandhi’s pacifist positions are considered in this light, they would be condemned in an Insurrectionist Ethical Framework on two fronts: (1) non-violence consents to one’s own murder, rape, subjugation, etc… in a life-negating act of surrender, and (2) by allowing such a heinous act to occur, you facilitate the immorality of the other. In other words, in the insurrectionist schema, passive martyrdom is not a noble or superlative act. On the contrary, it is an act that betrays the life instinct, fails to resist possibly preventable harms, and enables oppression to continue unchecked into perpetuity. Unlike Jesus, Osiris, Dionysus, and the like, martyrs do not have the power to self-resurrect or forgive sins. But even if they did, forgiveness of oppressors is not a laudable or strategic act for the insurrectionist. God can do the forgiving. Even though psychologically and spiritually uplifting, the insurrectionist neither requires a God nor for that God to exercise a preferential option for the poor and downtrodden. Certainly Walker leaned in this direction but, as William Jones deftly argued, the God of the modern global civitas is almost certainly a white, male racist (Jones 1973). Concept though ‘He’ may be, the God of organized religion is fraught with normative booby-traps that overtly militate and subconsciously undermine insurrectionist values and resolve. Mary Daly was in alignment with the insurrectionist mindset when she declared that women must go beyond the ‘Father God’ concept that deifies men and either: (1) discard deity altogether or, (2) embrace a concept of deity that is affirming to the evolving humanity of women (Daly 1973). Thus, within the Insurrectionist Ethical Framework, the most laudable acts enslaved and runaway Africans could perform was to defend themselves from violent attacks/murders and decisively dismantle the infrastructure of oppression through guile, deceit, subterfuge, sabotage, stealth, cunning, infiltration, and violence—because these acts self-­ center the worth and dignity of the oppressed. Still Liberation Theologians and those who embrace a religious framework can be our allies; as long as their God concept, like David Walker’s, supports insurrection.

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Implications and Applicability beyond Slave Revolts Admittedly, it is difficult to see how nations could survive if any citizen or group who felt slighted chooses to alleviate their grievance with violent overthrow or societal undermine. We do not need a categorical imperative to see that such a practice would quickly be self-defeating if wantonly applied. Legal systems are designed to address disjointed incidents of social violence as the natural expectation of inevitable human behavior. But systemic acts of violence, disenfranchisement, enslavement, servitude, denial of personhood, and subjugation to a diminished existence warrant the type of robust response that an Insurrectionist Ethical Framework provides. Circumstances may vary and an exact breaking point may be hard to identify in the abstract for nuanced issues, but there still exist conditions in the world (state sponsored slavery, sex trafficking, legalized subjugation of women and murder of LGBT persons, etc…) that warrant insurrectionist responses. It is my sincere hope that most justifications for insurrection are dying a colonial death. Still, as History tends to be a narrative of power relations, oppressed groups will always need an ethical tradition that provides escape from the tyranny of rampant, state-abetted injustice. I realize that the reason many scholars stop short of calls for true insurrectionist ethical sabotage, even in response to disproportionate penal enslavement of BIPOC populations or disproportionate police murders of unarmed black men, is because there is a fear of loss. Loss of stature, loss of standing, and loss of comfort are large considerations for would be insurrectionists. Safety for family and loved ones is not a trivial concern and one that we all understand. Nevertheless, the mindset comprising the insurrectionist posture is one that sees unjust societies as beyond tinkering or patchwork. Instead, the insurrectionist sees societies built upon oppression as inherently flawed and requiring dissolution and/or reformulation. This may not be burning down government buildings or cyber-attacks on financial institutions. It could be as simple as refusing to send children back to schools until Congress passes gun law reforms designed to keep students, teachers, and the most vulnerable citizens safe; which would radically change life as we know it.2 Before throwing Molotov cocktails at 2  As I write, 19 elementary children and two teachers were recently murdered in Uvalde, Texas by an 18-year-old gunman who was reported as ‘mentally ill and heavily armed.’ While we debate which characteristic was more responsible for his actions (his health or his assault rifle), we live in a society that shows callous indifference to innocent suffering.

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police cruisers or becoming the spook who sat by the door, we could try converting our police force into a police service (like Ireland) with different values and many different personnel to interrogate the very idea of the police in the modern era. We could. However, there are centuries of amassed wealth and coveted privilege that motivates canonizing the existing social order as sacred. To that end, normative moral consternation and civil procedure are emaciated foes against a muscular disregard for marginalized humanity; a disregard shielded by domination-trained police, ultra-­ conservative militias, ubiquitous domestic armies, and capital-serving jurisprudence. Yet, as Leonard Harris often ends his public lectures, I believe the words of Frederick Douglass are instructive in articulating the enduring context that the very idea of Insurrectionist Ethics is proffered to address: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world, but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others. (Douglass 1857)

Like resistance to the Matrix, the very idea of Negroes who would dare to assert their humanity as valuable coupled with the very idea of an

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Insurrectionist Ethics justifying them to do so is awe-inspiring in 1822 and 2022, alike. This chapter and volume are a continuation of that sacred work as well as an invitation for scholars, activists, and humanitarians to build upon it. It will take courage and careful consideration to distinguish the Insurrectionist Ethical Framework from a vulgar anarchism. But more than anything, it will take love for people and a bias toward action that ameliorates structural suffering while promoting universal human liberation and flourishing. In particular, it means honoring the methods and values of those for whom life, liberty, and self-respect have been progressively attained only by following a path born of relentless struggle.

References 2022. Timeline of How Texas School Shooting Unfolded. The Guardian, May 30. https://www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2022/may/30/texas-­uvalde-­mass-­ shooting-­timeline. Accessed 1 June 2022. Daly, Mary. 1973. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press. Douglass, Frederick. 1857. West Indian Emancipation Speech. https://www. blackpast.org/african-­american-­history/1857-­frederick-­douglass-­if-­there-­no-­ struggle-­t here-­n o-­p rogress/#:~:text=Power%20concedes%20nothing%20 without%20a,or%20blows%2C%20or%20with%20both. Accessed 1 June 2022. Fanon, Frantz. 1961. On Violence. In Wretched of the Earth, 1–51. New  York: Grove Press. Harris, Leonard. 1999. Honor and Insurrection or a Short Story About Why John Brown (with David Walker’s Spirit) was Right and Frederick Douglass (with Benjamin Banneker’s Spirit) was Wrong. In Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, ed. Bill Lawson and Frank Kirkland, 227–242. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Jones, William. 1973. Is God a White Racist?: A Preamble to Black Theology. Garden City: Anchor Books. Lorde, Audre. 2007. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. In Sister Outsider, 2nd ed., 110–113. Berkeley: Crossing Press. Scriven, Darryl. 2007. A Dealer of Old Clothes: Philosophical Conversations with David Walker. Lanham: Lexington Books. Walker, David. 1830. Walker’s Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829. Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina-­ Chapel Hill. https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html. Accessed 17 July 2022.

CHAPTER 2

Revisioning Unalignment and Freedom: Insurrectionist Ethics in Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women Sheena Michele Mason

Introduction to Insurrectionist Ethics For a long time, people have toiled over the ethics of insurrection. Philosophers and laypersons alike have assigned a level of morality or immorality to any level of violence incited by enslaved people and abolitionists in attempts to overcome the corrupt and immoral systems of enslavement or racism more broadly. In “The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W.  Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics” (2013), Jacoby Adeshei Carter writes, “Insurrectionist ethics is a philosophy aimed at radical social transformation and human liberation” (Carter 2013, 54). As I interpret it, insurrectionist ethics are those moral conditions and character traits required to ameliorate conditions and systems that strip a group of their humanity and assets. People operating within

S. M. Mason (*) Department of English, SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_2

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such societies would be morally compelled to work toward the group’s liberation to achieve universal freedom and conditions. In some parts of the Americas, Europeans enacted chattel slavery and then manifested racism to “justify” the enslavement and genocide of countless African and indigenous people. The concept of there being more than one human “race” came from a racist ideology that required the degradation and dehumanization of people  who were racialized as black and the elevation and humanization of people who were racialized as white to hoard political, social, and economic capital. Racialization, in this context, then became the process of ascribing people to “racial” groups depending primarily on their social and economic class positions. While many people went along with what was then considered social norms of a peculiar institution, many other people defied these norms, saw the vileness of the system of racism, and took a “by any means necessary” stance against enslavement. And such ethics seeking the eradication of racism by any means necessary have remained throughout the generations of citizens born and living within nations of the Americas, even after emancipation. In 2002, Leonard Harris challenged pragmatists. He says that a “philosophy that offers moral intuitions, reasoning strategies, motivations, and examples of just moral actions but falls short of requiring that we have a moral duty to support or engage in slave insurrections is defective” (Harris 2002, 192). Harris invites pragmatists to engage with insurrectionist ethics, a challenge that went unanswered for at least ten years and one that remains largely unaddressed even twenty years later. In “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism” (2002), Harris relays accounts of insurrectionist ethics and racism, especially that pertaining to American chattel slavery and racism in the United States. He describes the ill-effects of racism, writing that it “is a polymorphous agent of death” (Harris 2018, 273). According to Harris’ account, as an agent of death, a creator, and prerequisite of necro-being, the systems of enslavement and related forms of racism demand an embracement and deeper understanding of insurrectionist ethics. In 2018, Kanye West—a rapper, producer, and fashion designer—tells TMZ interviewers and a viewing audience, “When you hear about slavery for 400  years—for 400  years? That sounds like a choice” (West 2018). While Ye, as he now goes, was lambasted for his assertion that physical enslavement and subsequent psychological enslavement were or could ever be viewed as a choice, as optional, an insurrectionist ethicist might

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agree with the sentiment, at least as it pertains to physical enslavement. In his analysis of David Walker’s APPEAL (1829), Harris concludes that, according to Walker, “slaves have a moral duty to insurrect even if there is no empirical evidence that a natural inclination [to want freedom] exists. And they have this duty even if they are likely to fail” (Harris 2002, 93). When Ye says, “You [enslaved people and the ensuing generations] was [sic] there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all. You—like—it’s like we’re mentally in prison” (West 2018). He reverberates Walker’s insurrectionist ethics, highlighting a continuity between those who lived during chattel slavery and the countless others since then who have adopted a militant stance against racism. He speaks against the practice of racialization and the intentional and unintentional upholding of racist ideology that leads to the various forms of enslavement. In this chapter, I use the core tenets of insurrectionist ethics outlined in “Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism” (2017) by Lee McBride III and the foundational guidelines provided in Harris and Carter’s work, respectively, to illuminate and explore the ethical implications of Marlon James’ The Book of Night Women (2009). The core tenets named by McBride are as follows: 1. A “willingness to defy norms and authority when those norms and authorities perpetuate racism” (McBride 2017, 229), 2. A “conception of personhood and humanity that militates acts of resistance and radical action on behalf of racialized populations” (230), 3. An effort “to achieve a broader, more universal liberation through the advocacy of particular oppressed groups” (230), and 4. A privileging of “insurrectionist character traits, especially when faced with racist practices and institutions (like slavery)” (231).

Unaligned Insurrectionist Ethics in The Book of Night Women James imbues and interrogates his pivotal characters with insurrectionist ethics through his characterization of Lilith, Lovey, and the other “night women.” He reflects his expression of an insurrectionist ethos by the book in its entirety. Ultimately, James’ novel is a text unaligned with feminism and matriarchy and patriarchy and racism that discards “‘the logos of the Father for the silent song of the mother’” (Davies and Fido 1990, 3), redefines and reclaims the vulgar, and remembers and conflates the female “[b]ody, text, history, and memory” (Philip 1990, 298) reinscribing each

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to their “supreme importance in both the larger History and the little histories of the Caribbean” (298) and Jamaica more specifically. The novel resurfaces a rich history of activism for human rights that often gets coopted by feminists that is for the equality of the sexes and elimination of racism.1 As such a text, his insurrectionist ethics are reflected through his rejection of ideologies close to the extreme ends of any pole (i.e., feminism, matriarchy, patriarchy, and racism) and the unmanageability of the women in the novel that simultaneously reinforce the power of women and language and the power of linguistic, intellectual, and physical violence. His critique of the type of tenets McBride identifies of insurrectionist ethics comes largely with who triumphs in the end: Lilith. Lilith remains the lone character who defies everyone’s expectations of her on all—gender and racial/st—fronts. She is not the most likeable character but her defiance of a “more universal liberation” (McBride 2017, 230) results in her own liberation and the limited freedom of the other night women whose stories and ethics, at minimum, live through the telling and retelling of what is ostensibly supposed to be Lilith’s story. James begins to fill in the blank pages of history and memory created by male-­ dominated master narratives, a direct counter to the racism and patriarchy with which the book contends. No society can overcome present oppressive systems of racism or patriarchy without first fully exploring and, yes, reimagining the events, subjectivities, and voices of the past, especially, perhaps, those of insurrectionist ethicists. Interestingly, James’ exploration and illustration of feminist and matriarchal insurrectionist ethics and the tragedy that ensues raise questions about the usurpation of one skewed ideology—patriarchy—with another— matriarchy. In the end, the novel muddies the tension between the need for insurrection and how one insurrects favoring an unaligned insurrectionist ethics. James shows the shortcomings of ideological inversions even as he simultaneously illustrates the power within particular ideologies. That is, in part, reflective of author’s insurrectionist ethics—his refusal to cast any assertion of power when taken to the extremes as neat and unparadoxical. As a result, the novel highlights the unaligned—in-­between—space that often gets misconstrued or unrecognized in discourse about racism and sexism. 1  See Valethia Watkins. “Contested Memories: A Critical Analysis of the Black Feminist Revisionist History Project.” Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 9, no. 4 (2016): 271–288.

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The Book of Night Women Published in 2009, The Book of Night Women by Marlon James, a Jamaican writer, is the story of Lilith, a woman born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Written by her daughter, Lovey Quinn, as orated to her by a “blind niggerwoman in the bush” (James 2009, 426) and her mother, the novel is Lilith’s coming-of-­ age story, a neo-slave narrative, and a national epic that imagines and explores slavery from a woman’s perspective and experience and, subsequently, illuminates the remnants of slavery in contemporary society: patriarchy and racism. Fathered by a racialized white “overseer Jack Wilkins” (426) and an unnamed enslaved woman who dies after giving birth, Lilith’s spirit is fiery, resistant, often naïve, and unmanageable, though plenty of people on the plantation attempt to manage her and even as a baby many “womens regard her with fear and trembling because of them green eyes that light up the room, but not like sunlight” (426). Lilith exhibits “audacity, tenacity, enmity, indignation, and guile” (McBride 2017, 227). In short order, Lilith kills Paris, a Johnny-jumper, an enslaved boy put “in charge of other slaves” (James 2009, 10) by the enslavers, when he tries to rape her. Consequently, Homer and the other enslaved women who work in the house—also insurrectionists—hide Paris’ body and then hide Lilith in the cellar of the main Montpelier plantation house until Jack Wilkins realizes where Lilith is hiding, at which point, she becomes a “house slave.” The night women, a group of seven of Lilith’s half-sisters, and Homer, the leader and oldest of the women, plot a massive and violent insurrection. They frequently try to enlist Lilith’s participation. Lilith, however, thinks herself better than Homer and the other slave women, lusts after Master Humphrey, gets sent to a neighboring plantation to be “broken in” (i.e., to learn her place), murders that family, and burns down the house of said plantation to cover how they died. Her murder of the family reflects her subversive stance against racism and enslavement and a brazen display of insurrectionist character traits but are not necessarily done with the liberation of anyone except herself in mind, which counters tenets two through three. McBride writes that insurrectionist ethics include a “conception of personhood and humanity that militates acts of resistance” (McBride 2017, 230), which Lilith certainly displays. But Lilith’s “radical action [is not] on behalf of racialized populations” (230). Throughout the novel, she remains mostly unconcerned

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with raci(al/st) ideology or unity.2 While her actions often go against the wellbeing of the other enslaved characters, her rejection of raci(al/st) ideology altogether resonates with the overall tenor and message of the story. It appears that she is spared and her story lives after her death, not because she is unflawed but because she insurrects against each side’s expectations of her. She never gets subsumed into the planned insurrection of the night women, nor does she act with complacency toward the vileness of her enslavers. Questions arise: Is one an insurrectionist if any of the principles are enacted? Are there forms or levels of insurrection that are more righteous than others? Does the reader feel bad for the murdered family? For Paris? Where does one draw the moral line? Is Lilith justified in her actions? James takes the reader on a long and tenuous insurrectionist journey. Lilith’s actions directly respond to her enslavement and the treatment of herself and the other enslaved people on that plantation. While those who survive the fire and her wrath are left behind to an unknown fate, she returns to Montpelier, falls in love with Robert Quinn (an Irishman and overseer), and pretends to support the night women’s revolt while intending to save Quinn and herself. However self-serving and unlikeable Lilith can be, as far as characters go, her desire for her master and then her overseer explodes all social norms within a completely unsocial abnormal context. Unlike other real and fictional insurrectionists, Lilith spends her years being largely unconcerned with pleasing any group—oppressor/enslaved, women/men, elders/young people, and so on—that she would be presumed to be part of or support. Insurrectionist ethics are centered around the greater good, the uplifting and betterment of one’s social, political, economic, or cultural group. Instead, Lilith’s insurrection manifests against anyone and everyone she finds to be in opposition to her desires and will to live freely. She wants to live freed from all raci(al/st) expectations, as the box racism creates for her confines her in unspeakable ways. Whereas the night women and some readers might expect Lilith to feel unified and emotionally connected with other enslaved people like her, particularly enslaved women, Lilith lacks sustainable and palpable connections with most characters when based on her enslaved status and gender. Lilith’s insurrectionist ethics are in direct contrast with the night women. By comparison, Lilith often appears to be in the wrong. Yet, given the 2  Raci(al/st) reflects the interconnectedness of that which is perceived to be racial and that which is racist. Racism includes the belief in the separation of humans into more than one “race” and the practice of racialization.

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context in which she and the night women live, they all seem to be correct if one believes that “we have a moral duty to support or engage in slave insurrections” (Harris 2002, 192). James critiques the inversion and replacement of ideologies with what could be considered twin ideologies, which is bold given the extremely unjust and inhumane circumstances he depicts. Ultimately, she betrays the night women. When the rebellion happens, she tries to save Quinn, saves her father, and shoots one of her sisters and other enslaved people to do so, and ends up being saved by Master Humphrey from the bloody massacre of hundreds of enslaved people, including the night women, that happens when the British suppress the revolt. She lives the remainder of her life in the main house caring for Isobel, the daughter of the family she murdered and a Creole woman, and Master Humphrey and then lives with her father until he dies, at which point, she lives in his house with Lovey as, almost, a free woman.

Insurrection in Jamaica A brief history of colonization, slavery, and insurrection in Jamaica leading up to and through the period the novel covers will further enlighten my examination of insurrectionist ethics in The Book of Night Women. The Tainos lived in Jamaica when Christopher Columbus arrived in 1503. The Spanish enslaved and killed the Tainos causing near extinction by 1600. Enslaved Africans were brought to Jamaica by the Spanish and then the English that took the country over in 1655. The English and Spanish alternated control over Jamaica again in 1670 and 1707, with the English ruling from 1707 to 1962. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were approximately 45,000 enslaved people, but by 1800 the number had increased to over 300,000. By 1832, the median-size plantation had 150 enslaved people. Thus, there was a higher ratio of Africans and Afro-descended people per Englishmen on the island (20 to 1 in 1800). During the early eighteenth century, Maroons, people who escaped enslavement, started to take a heavy toll on the British troops, but both parties in 1739 signed a peace treaty after the first Maroon War. Maroons controlled large areas of Jamaica and had five distinct Maroon colonies—Accompong, Trelawny Town, Moore Town, Scott’s Pass, and Nanny Town—and even joined forces with Spanish guerrillas. The Maroons remained under their own

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rule but had a British supervisor and agreed to help catch and return runaway enslaved people in exchange for their continued freedom. In May 1760, Tacky, an enslaved overseer, led a revolt, killing enslavers on two large plantations and marched into town to recruit more enslaved insurrectionists and collect more ammunition. Another enslaved person betrayed him and the other enslaved people by leaving the group and telling the British and the Maroons about the revolt. 80 mounted militia and the Maroons from Scott’s Pass came and suppressed the uprising. A Maroon shot Tacky and cut off his head for a reward. The English displayed Tacky’s head in Spanish Town as a deterrent for other enslaved people and a symbol of European power. The rest of the enslaved people with Tacky committed suicide rather than return to enslavement. In 1795, a second Maroon War began after an enslaved man flogged two Maroons for allegedly stealing two pigs. The Maroons went to the British to express their grievances but were taken as prisoners instead. After eight months of the war, the Maroons surrendered in December 1795, and the Trelawny Town Maroons were deported to Canada and then to Sierra Leone. The slave trade ended in 1808 for England, but enslavement lasted until 1834. The Baptist War of 1831 occurred after the period of the novel and is the next major recorded event of insurrection and war, which also helped lead to the abolition of enslavement in 1834.

Unaligned Insurrectionist Ethics in The Book of Night Women The novel begins in 1785—after the Tacky revolt and first Maroon War— and ends sometime after 1819—after the second Maroon war and just 15  years before emancipation. In the book, Lovey, the narrator, relays historical events: There be thirty-three negro for every white in Jamaica …. 1702: Rebellion in the east county, not far from Montpelier. 1717: Twelve rebellion in the east and west, so much so that the king send more militia to the colony and they didn’t leave. 1722: Slave rebellion in Montego Bay so bad that the governor have to send for the Mosquito Indians to fight the negroes. By now, the negroes take to fleeing to the hills and joining the Maroons. Maroon take residence and beat the British so much they turn fool. 1734: Rebellion. 1740: Rebellion. 1745: The plot to kill all the whites. 1746: Rebellion. 1758: Rebellion. 1760: The worsest rebellion

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under Tacky—sixty whites and four hundred blacks get killed. 1765: Rebellion. 1766: Rebellion. 1771: Militia discover a new slave plot and find there be five hundred negroes plotting. 1777: Rebellion. 1782: Rebellion (James 2009, 261). The primarily fictional insurrection in the novel takes place in 1801, involves hundreds of slaves, several plantations, years of planning, and is led by eight women. In full, James’ unaligned insurrectionist revisioning results in the recentering of racialized black female bodies, texts, memories, and histories in an otherwise male-dominated narrative and imagining. That is profound considering the narrative that would have readers believe that feminism is the only or primary vehicle for doing such liberatory work against sexism and racism. While there is no single definition of feminism, African American women that comprise the Combahee River Collective define it as those “actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our [black women’s] lives” (Combahee 1977, 1). But feminists have not been and are not the only people working with similar modes of resistance. With this understanding of interlocking oppressions, the core tenets of insurrectionist ethics reverberate as a necessary response to achieve universal liberation. Yet, the feminist characters meet a tragic and grotesque demise whereas Lilith, the unaligned insurrectionist, lives and on her own terms. Texts that embody an unaligned perspective also actively oppose systems of racism and then expose and illuminate the tensions between differently racialized men and women and cut across imagined and actual color and class lines. In “Managing the Unmanageable” (1990), Marlene NourbeSe Philip explains, European thought has traditionally designated certain groups not only as inferior but also, paradoxically, as threats to their order, systems, and traditions of knowledge. Women, Africans, Asians, and aboriginals can be said to comprise these groups and together they constitute the threat of the Other—that embodiment of everything which the white male perceived himself not to be. (Philip 1990, 295)

Threats to any order, according to Philip, must be managed by attempts to control language, culture, social and economic status, and physical and

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psychological mobility. Unaligned texts seek to uncover and discover “a place and language of empowerment … a power directed at controlling our [racialized black women’s] words, our reality, and our experience” (Philip 1990, 296) and to help women remain resistant, impossible to be owned, a threat. The threat they pose, of course, is insurrectionist at its core, a subversion and potential inversion of power dynamics. Women’s bodies are often the sights of threats, conflicts, violence, and desires. Simultaneously, their voices have been silenced and unheard. Unaligned texts “place the woman’s body center stage again as [an] actor and not [just] as the acted upon” (299), and women’s language becomes a source of power and catalyst for unaligned and feminist ideologies. Philip points out that “language is nothing but a dialect with an army” (299). Feminists, like Amber Rose, who embraces and inverts the word slut, use words and concepts traditionally used to degrade, diminish, and control them and their bodies in provocative and resistant ways indicating their unmanageability, insurrectionist ethics, and agency. Similarly, unaligned figures lean into the same type of language transvaluation. In Noises in the Blood (1995), Carolyn Cooper examines and analyzes Caribbean women writers’ reclamation and reinsertion of the vulgar into both high/low discourses, which simultaneously elevates its previous position as commonplace, unrefined, and devalued and reasserts the power of the female body and feminized language in insurrectionist efforts. While Cooper focuses on women writers, James’ incorporation of the vulgar and bodies in his descriptions of men and women supports an unaligned reading of The Book of Night Women. It also echoes the strategies Philip and Cooper identify in African Caribbean women’s writing. While I argue that The Book of Night Women can be read as an unaligned insurrectionist text, it is also my assertion that James shows how all types of feminism fall short of universal liberation. And I interpret his interrogation of feminism and insurrectionist ethics as indicative of his own insurrectionist ethics and complicated views about any society simply inverting its ideologies. That calls McBride’s tenets into question, as insurrectionist ethics cannot and do not fall so neatly into those four tenets. Sycorax speaks in The Book of Night Women. The “damn’d witch Sycorax, / For mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible / To enter human hearing, from Argier [Algiers], / Thou know’st, was banish’d” (Shakespeare 1968, Act I, Scene II), says Prospero, the colonizer and enslaver of Ariel and Caliban, Sycorax’s son. Sycorax is the unseen and unheard woman of Shakespeare’s island in The Tempest. While ­Caliban/Prospero have come

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to reflect a slave/master dialectic in Caribbean literature and theory with the likes of George Lamming in his Pleasures of Exiles conceptualizing Caliban’s actions and employment of the language given to him by Prospero as resistant and an example of a slave talking back both literally and metaphorically, postcolonial writers and theorists have also come to view the subversion of “masculinist linguistic processes” (Davies and Fido 1990, 3) and the unsilencing of women, particularly Caribbean women, in literature as a “refinement, or extension, of the Caliban/Prospero, master/slave dialectic” (3). Thus, such a refinement or extension not only brings Sycorax, previously unheard and marginalized for her womanness and figurative and literal darkness, to the center of the discourse but also necessarily transforms and insurrects “the boundaries of this accepted voicelessness and invisibility” (3). In Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature (1995), Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido define voicelessness as the following: 1. “[S]ilence: the inability to express a position in the language of the ‘master’ as well as the textual construction of woman as silent” (1), 2. [A]rticulation that goes unheard, and 3. “[T]he historical absence of the woman writer’s text: the absence of a specifically female position on major issues such as slavery, colonialism, decolonization, women’s rights and more direct social and cultural issues” (1). According to Davies and Fido, Caribbean women’s texts are now, through “feminist re-visioning” (2), being seen and heard. And feminism is, in these forms, reflective of a will and right to insurrect. It is also clear through James’ exploration of insurrection when tied to feminism and raci(al/st) ideology that the radical inversion of systems of oppression is doomed to fail, according to James. That suggests a need for a more balanced and truly just and universal application of power, freedom, and mobility, for example, something that unalignment might achieve. The idea of unalignment merits further analysis by pragmatists and others. Importantly, though entirely female-centered and told by a fictional female writer, James’ novel breaks even the boundaries of how Davies, Fido, and most women conceptualize “feminist” texts bringing unalignment into the fore. On the one hand, feminists might problematize a man speaking through a woman’s mouth, like Shakespeare writing from an enslaved person’s voice as a free and well-to-do man. On the other hand, James’ participation in filling what Davies and Fido identify as a “void” (2) challenges any attempt to exclude The Book of Night Women from the unaligned and feminist project, and it is not an accident that the novel is a

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damning account of fictional feminism. Further, in its entirety, the book exemplifies James’ insurrectionist ethos as he simultaneously and paradoxically presents feminism and varying insurrectionist ethics. The novel also illustrates the applicability of McBride’s four core tenets and James’ unwillingness to conform to conventional and generic standards of history telling and storytelling. Historically speaking, many men have been dubbed feminists or, at least, unaligned allies. James answers Clarisse Zimra’s call for Afro-­ Caribbeans—male and female—to “write right their own origins … by discarding the logos of the Father for the silent song of the Mother” (3) Sycorax, who gives voice to people but especially women within societies plagued by racism who remain unmanageable even through colonization, enslavement, and forced voicelessness. Lovey, paradoxically through James, sings Lilith and Homer’s songs and the songs of the other night women. Lovey’s storytelling strategies and characterizations of other women warrant further examination. Through her writing of Lilith’s song and the songs of the other night women, Lovey Quinn is the first night woman the reader meets even though we do not officially know who the narrator is until the very end of the novel, which is where this chapter begins. Lovey is born into slavery like her mother and has a Euro-descended father, Robert Quinn (Irish). She learns to read and write from her mother who, after the revolt, there is “no man, black or white, that can stop her” (James 2009, 426). Lilith is a slave and unwilling to be controlled or content. Similarly, Lovey writes Lilith’s story “in the year of our Lord 1819” (427) when she, too, is presumably still enslaved since slavery was not yet abolished. Lovey articulates her desire to write the book because “somebody must give account of the night women of Montpelier. Of slavery, the black woman misery and black man too” (427). She recognizes the attempted voicelessness imposed upon her and other enslaved women and men. She chooses to “sing the song” (427) of the many Sycoraxes in the novel, the ultimate insurrectionist action done be countless real enslaved and free people. Through Lovey, her “mother goin’ sing it and even the blind niggerwoman [Homer] who live in the bush … going sing it too. We goin’ sing once, then no more” (427). Freedom, according to Lovey, extends beyond one’s legal status. Freedom means shedding one’s skin and writing in the figurative and literal darkness:

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This is why we dark, cause in the night we disappear and become spirit. Skin gone and we become whatever we wish. We become who we be. In the dark with no skin I can write. And what write in darkness is free as free can be, even if it never come to light and go free for real. (James 2009, 427)

Lovey’s dark skin (and that of the other enslaved women) symbolizes her ability to embrace and be embraced by night. In the darkness of the night, Lovey’s skin disappears as does the fact of her blackness (Fanon 1952, 1), her darkness. In the light, her body is visible. She is invisible at night, spirit-like, and yet the most seen, the most heard, and the freest from the strictures of enslavement, racism, and patriarchy. Her writing and ability to write, to share her mother’s song, is a metaphor for her insurrectionist ethos and freedom; if her writing “never come[s] to light” (James 2009, 427) and is never read or heard, if it never sees “real” (427) freedom, it is still free; if she never sees real legal freedom, she remains free because she writes and sings her mother’s song. While some people might argue that metaphorical freedom is not actual liberation and, therefore, is not enough, Lovey’s perspective coincides with Caribbean theorists, like Édouard Glissant, who theorized psychological liberation as a prerequisite for physical freedom. In some ways, if Lovey believes she is “free,” just as Lilith did, and that belief goes against what most people would identify as freedom, maybe that tells us something about the complexity of insurrectionist ethics that we might otherwise miss. Lovey shares her darkness regarding her racialization and the experiences of female slaves and the darkness, the immorality, of enslavement, matriarchy, and patriarchy. She carefully balances the meaning of darkness, switching between connotations and denotations associated with negativity and fear and spirituality and freedom. Lovey (re)imagines her dark skin as allowing her to have no skin at night and, therefore, no color, a proxy for “race,” and no body. She expands her definition of freedom to include an individual’s acceptance of herself regardless of her legal status and who her parents are, like a “white” man and a “black” slave. She says she used to lament over her name. She hated it, but she “come to peace with it now. Any niggerwoman can become a black woman in secret” (427). A “black” woman recognizes and accepts her power to “become whatever we wish” (427). Within the confines of slavery, James depicts a group of women that simultaneously pretend to “know [their] place” (Philip 1990, 296) to survive and become whatever they want to resist and insurrect when the time presents itself.

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Like Atlas, a slave named after “the man or man-god who get punish to carry the burden of the earth on him back” (James 2009, 426) that was wrongfully credited and accused with planning the revolt, Lovey learns “everything as if me was a stranger and not blood” (427) from Lilith and Homer, the “blind niggerwoman” (427), and carries the burden of the earth on her own back. Lovey’s insurrection lies within her ability to psychologically transcend her physical enslavement and her willingness to write and share Lilith’s story and that of the night women into the book the reader gets. The night women’s stories live forever largely because of Lovey. Just as many Afro-descended Americans carry history through a rich history of orality and oral literacy, despite efforts to erase and obscure that same history and cultural practices, Lovey sees the power of rejecting attempts to silence. She records and shares every vulgar detail. Perhaps, she empowers others to learn from the mistakes of the night women—going to the exact opposite extreme—and from the transgressions and successes of Lilith. Maybe it is through her those readers gain insight into what insurrection is and its many faces. Lovey includes the stories passed onto her by Lilith and Homer and fills in the gaps using her imagination. Lovey continues the unaligned insurrectionist tradition of maintaining unmanageability. She knows her place and dares resist and to tell a dark and harrowing story of her mother and Others’ mothers. The result of her unmanageability manifests itself in the language and content of those stories making the novel, in the traditional sense, “unreadable” (297) due to the graphic and gory details Lovey (i.e., James) includes. Based on Lovey’s narration, the woman’s body is “center stage again as [an] actor and not [just] as the acted upon” (Philip 1990, 299). Lovey describes how her own body acts by camouflaging itself in darkness and writing in the dark, which implies that she writes blindly since most people need light to write. Darkness expands beyond its literal meaning and represents the void Lovey’s writing fills and the voicelessness, as described by Davies and Fido, many writers have faced, many enslaved people have faced, and many people living (or dying) in a state of necro-being due to racism have faced or face. How she describes Lilith and her whipping, lynching, and being raped in grave detail is central to James’ unaligned insurrectionist project. Life begins, persists, and ends in blood. Lilith and Lovey’s story starts in birth, death, and blood and ends with the repetition of a line that takes

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the reader back to the beginning and birth, death, and blood. “Every Negro walk in a circle” (James 2009, 33, 120, 222, 313, 420), and Lovey is no exception. The last line of the 427-page book is “[y]ou can call her what they call her. I goin’ call her Lilith” (427). The story begins with Lilith’s birth and Lovey saying, “I goin’ call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her” (3). The reader’s imagination must extrapolate who “they” is and what they call her. That depends, primarily, on how the reader interprets Lilith’s actions and involvement leading up to, during, and after the revolt. In other words, how the reader interprets insurrection of any type. According to Lovey, “[b]lood don’t got no colour …. [E]very day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing” (3). Paradoxically, Lilith’s birth “kill[s]” her mother and brings a “black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done see” (3). Immediately, “womens regard her with fear and trembling” (3), and “[n]obody did want the young un” (3–4). Lilith’s dark skin and green eyes come to reflect her internal struggle between the worlds of enslavement and freedom, insurrection and stillness, biological family and kin, “white” and “black,” love and exploitation, and womanness and childhood. Her entrance into the world creating her life and her mother’s death also forebodes such struggles. “[T]he mens and womens did content to just leave her in the bust and make the land take her back” (4), says Lovey. That she is the only enslaved person out of hundreds not named after a Greek and “the only girl to grow up in a hut calling a woman mother and a man father but she didn’t look like neither” (4) suggest that written into and onto Lilith’s body is difference. She becomes and makes herself an Other among Others, an even greater target of management, and immense potential for insurrection. Her unalignment is written into and onto her body, her way of being. And it is her unaligned allyship and insurrectionist inclinations as it pertains to any attempt to control or coopt her power that signify her danger to systems of power and attempted usurpations and replacements of power. Circe, her adoptive mother, orders Lilith’s rape to manage her. Philip says, “The ultimate weapon of management and control for the female is rape; this knowledge and the consequential fear is … latent in all female bodies” (Philip 1990, 299). At fourteen, Lilith begins to fear men and sex and is attacked by a Johnny-jumper named Paris. She throws a pot of hot

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cerasee tea “on him face” (James 2009, 16). Paris screams and jerks and still tries to grab her as his face bubbles and pops, and his skin comes off. “That was the first time she feel the darkness. True darkness and true womanness that make man scream” (17), writes Lovey. The darkness and womanness Lilith feels echoes what Lovey feels and expresses at the end of the book. Here, the darkness refers to the violence and murder but more than that, James suggests that the darkness exposes “the potential for unmanageability even when faced, as a woman, with that ultimate weapon of control—rape” (Philip 1990, 299), which is ironic since darkness does not expose but hides. Lilith is, in fact, raped later in her life as a means of control by six men. Her violent subversion of a rape when she was a teenager, a womanchild, indicates her inherent agency and power despite her status as an enslaved person and orphan. Lovey includes every graphic detail describing the scene Circe returns to witness: [T]he floor ’wash in red. She follow the blood quick and stop at the naked Johnny-jumper foot. From foot up to thigh the black skin all chopped up with pink flesh peeking. From neck up be nothing but red. The blood didn’t stop there. The trail leave him body then turn left as if goin’ to the window. Under the window be the girl, crouching and hiding from the light. Her dress and her arms cover up in red. The cutlass at her foot[.] (James 2009, 17)

Lovey draws a “link between linguistic rape and physical rape” (Philip 1990, 299) by including gruesome details. Darkness and womanness are uncontrollable even under constant threat in a racist and sexist society. Lovey’s language is her army and mirrors the acts of violence and revolution she shares, making, at times, an unreadable experience also unreadable. As Philip writes, “The African’s encounter with the New World was catastrophic and chaotic: how does one and how ought one to manage such an experience in poetry or in writing? How does one make readable what has been an unreadable experience” (298)? Ultimately, Lovey declares metaphorical insurrection on her readers’ sensibilities and de-romanticizes every aspect of enslavement and racism as she tells stories about the wars her mother(s) faced and started. That is critical since slave narratives, like Douglass’, operated within the generic conventions: Namely, romance and sentimental traditions. As the novel progresses, violence begets insurrection but not manageability or order. After finding Lilith with Paris’ mutilated body, Circe gets

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Homer to help hide the body and remove Lilith from her home. She says, “‘Too spirited. She too spirited, that damn girl …. He was just goin’ cut her down a notch. Get rid of that damn pride. She just a nigger girl’” (James 2009, 18). Later, Isobel and even Homer work to “cut her down a notch,” but darkness, as Lovey points out in the end, is written into and onto Lilith’s body, into and onto her being. Thus, she is not “just a nigger girl,” a slave, like Master Humphrey, Isobel, or Circe would have her believe to manage her better. The cellar Lilith hides in is so dark that “[t]he girl couldn’t see much more than the step in front of her” (19). The next day, she wakes up “in a darkness that grip her throat” (20). Again, the darkness, paradoxically, reflects (rather than absorbs) and exposes Lilith’s internal struggle and the cancerous institutions of enslavement and racism. Following an opening paragraph about Jack Wilkins’ far-reaching presence and influence, Chap. 2 takes place in the cellar of the main Montpelier plantation house. Lilith’s fall, reminiscent of the Biblical Lilith’s Fall, results in her submersion into the literal and figurative darkness of the cellar. She is scared and tries “to scream but the dark steal her voice” (20). Until she learns to embrace the darkness and her insurrectionist inclinations, Lilith’s time in the cellar symbolizes the same voicelessness Davies and Fido point out. From the start of the novel to the end, the night women who experience unspeakable violence that is spoken through Lovey’s narration do not just “lie down and take it.” They speak in ways that demonstrate their psychological willingness and need even to assault and return violence via insurrection. They kill and hide their deeds. They cooperate with each other toward their shared goal of throwing off their respective shackles by any means necessary. They pretend to be subservient and managed. However, the reader learns that they are anything but manageable. As a result of the night women’s ultimate and final insurrection, chaos bubbles to the surface of the text when all of the enslaved people are massacred except Lilith. Circe and Paris try to silence Lilith by attacking her body because of the darkness and insurrection they see in her and briefly succeed since she appears to regress into a dark womblike space.3 The space is dark because 3  See Wilson Harris. The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural Imagination. Westport: Praeger, 1983. In The Womb of Space: The Cross-Cultural Imagination, Harris calls the “womb of space” a generative region where inclusive and universally liberated communities can develop. I view the cellar as James’ womb of space where Lilith witnesses and embodies a seemingly paradoxical subjectivity. She emerges from the cellar a young woman toeing the boundaries society attempts to place on her.

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she cannot see and because she is haunted by the Johnny-jumper: “In the dark she smell him … the frowsy arm and raw crotch that bring back sweat and wood and blood. She hear him scream. She hear him skin crack and pop” (21). In addition, her actions, her womanness, and darkness haunt her until she “think she goin’ vomit” (21). She feels the “dark moving close” (23) even with the bit of light that enters the space from the kitchen upstairs and eventually comes to peace with the darkness, with herself. She hears laughter and conversation from the enslaved people upstairs and thinks, “Maybe house-slave life was everything” (23) until she sees Homer’s exposed body that has violence and darkness written into and onto it in many ways. In addition to being the leader of the night women, Homer is the blind oracle who tells Lovey more of Lilith’s story and smells “of mint and lemongrass” (25, 427). From the Greek hostage and named after the allegedly blind male author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epics that continue to impact Western culture significantly, Homer is otherworldly and worldly. Like Lilith, she carries herself “tall and proud” (25). Unlike Lilith, though, she knows when to pretend to be managed in the presence of Jack Wilkins, Isobel, Robert Quinn, and Master Humphrey. Homer’s strategic guile provides a foil for Lilith’s displayed disdain for racism and enslavement. In that way, James esteems the insurrectionist character traits of those militantly opposed and “‘consciously rebellious’” (McBride 2017, 231) to slavery and racism. In the absence of her enslavers, Homer has “a tongue that roll like a white woman” (James 2009, 25) sometimes. Lovey describes her as “whiter than plenty white man …. But nothing make a nigger more black than whip scars” (26). Importantly, Lilith perceives Homer’s insurrectionist strength in character and posture as masculine, not feminine. Homer’s body reflects her unmanageability and the many attempts to manage her. Lilith has a visceral reaction to witnessing Homer’s body: Lilith nearly stagger back and lose her balance …. The scars continue from her back to her front, so much that she don’t have titty no more, just two stump that mark off in scar marks. Her belly have marks too but they be smaller. Mayhaps she was pregnant when they whip her. (James 2009, 26)

Lilith hopes she is never like Homer, scarred and both manly—no breasts— and womanly—she had been pregnant. She imagines that the beatings must make Homer “the most obedient nigger ever since” (26) but later

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discovers that Homer is the least obedient enslaved person, as her body illustrates. In the end, Homer gets riddled with bullets during the revolt, but her body is somehow never found. The rightful leader of the night women, Homer waits and plots insurrection with no guarantee of success throughout the novel as she also nurtures the darkness and womanness of the women around her, which comes to include Lovey even though Lovey does not seem to realize that the blind woman telling her stories and helping her write Lilith’s story is Homer. Lovey says that “Homer find the right group of woman … who have a right to be free ’cause of birth but get robbed of it [mulattas]. Woman who carry Jack Wilkins’ malice in they very being …. Homer kill Homer and reborn herself as the struggle” (425). Homer’s memory, history, and body are inscribed into Lilith and Lovey’s. Since her body has history written onto it (i.e., scars and mutilation) and into it—“Pickney that nasty nigger rape out of her” (425)—her body becomes a sign for the history of slavery, insurrection, unmanageability, and female experience in Jamaica. Her body is unrecovered because Homer might be the blind woman telling Lovey the story of the night women. She may have survived the unsurvivable. At least, that is the implication. Like Lilith, Homer might have been one of the only other survivors of the massacre. Although Lilith does not recognize it, Homer’s strength and duality— masculine and feminine, obedient and subversive, mother and insurrectionist, creator and killer—is written into and onto her, too. Lovey says, “That woman. That girl” (4). Even as a child, Lilith has the characteristics of an insurrectionist unaligned with “race” or gender ideology. Regardless of her racialization and gender, she plays with boys and wins at sports. “[T]he wet nurse slap her and say that a good girl was supposed to make manchild win. Lilith cuss and ask if manchild can’t win if a girl don’t lose and she get another slap” (4), writes Lovey. Most often, racialized black women are the ones working diligently to manage and, ultimately, oppress Lilith. She gets “a swift kick from a passing niggerwoman who tell her that there be a grave already dug for the uppity” (4) when, at seven years old, Lilith tells some boys that “is ’cause they have worm between them legs why they can’t run fast like she” (4). Circe arranges her rape to put her in her place. Isobel, the Creole mistress of Montpelier, has her flogged and sent to her parents’ plantation to be broken because she notices that Lilith, like Homer, carries herself with pride but does not accept what being enslaved means and the fear, danger, and violence slavery creates. Robert

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Quinn, the “one that drag her out to get whip … and who count each lash till it be enough” (272), suppresses Lilith’s darkness for a while upon her return to Montpelier. She wonders if “a cock just be the second version of a man that he keep in him breeches, Robert Quinn cock be like Robert Quinn” (272) and has to remind “herself that she hate him” (272) because she does not hate him. She loves him. Lilith’s love for Quinn dampers her darkness, her insurrectionist ethics, because he represents both the racism and patriarchy that feminists resist and fight. In the novel, the only harmless men are dead or impotent, like Tantalus, the man Lilith grew up calling father, who is also supposedly mad. Homer frequently advises Lilith to pretend to know her place, to plot her insurrection in the dark, and to “take power over the cocky. Then you have power” (273), as opposed to letting any man gain control over her physically or emotionally. According to Homer, Tantalus is the only man who genuinely loves Lilith. He could be the only man to love her or any woman because he could not threaten them with rape since, as Philip points out, “the penis continues … to be the symbol of control and management” (Philip 1990, 299) of women, the unmanageable. Lilith and Lovey connect womanness with a woman’s ability to maintain control over her own body: “How wicked man must be to enter a woman like a thief and rob her womanness away from her” (James 2009, 271). Lilith’s darkness and womanness come into question by the suppression of her rage toward Quinn and the ignoring or masking of her oppression. Homer says, “You did have darkness but not womanness. You still have that darkness, though” (272). The darkness is still there but is suppressed, and, according to Homer, Lilith never had womanness. Homer equates womanness and darkness with “power” (275) and self-­ recognition. Lilith and Lovey connect manliness to patriarchy and oppression. The language the women use and how Lovey describes their bodies and events are masculine and vulgar and show an inversion and insurrection of racist and patriarchal ideology. Through Lovey and the other night women, James normalizes what Cooper calls the vulgar body, which “results in the dethronement of the phallic master text” (Davies and Fido 1990, 4) and “the eruption of the body into the text—tongue, lips, brain, penis” (Philip 1990, 298). The women’s unmanageability and insurrectionist ethics gets expressed through their use of language and physical actions. When Homer is helping to hide Lilith and Paris’ body, Circe says to Lilith, “‘Save you bawling, pussyhole. Time soon come when you goin’ bawl till you bleed’” (James

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2009, 18). Homer tells Circe to “‘[s]hut up’” (18). Circe replies, “‘You shut up, dry-up cow. Me look like you pickney’” (18). At times, a tension between the women manifests itself into a mean-spirited and feminized language (pussyhole and cow). They try to manage each other and, subsequently, assert their power and insurrectionist unmanageability by using language that erupts the body into the text in another type of linguistic rape. Homer slaps Circe and says, “‘No nigger dead on this estate unless me say so, you hear me? And no nigger live either’” (18). Homer’s power becomes increasingly evident as the story continues. An enslaved person who works in the field enters the kitchen when Lilith is still hiding in the cellar and threatens Homer when she replies sarcastically to his inquiry about Paris. He says, “Don’t smart you mouth wid me, dry-up pussyhole” (24). He uses feminized language as a weapon to diminish Homer’s authority (and body) and manage her mouth. However, Homer replies, “‘Then make me stupid up me mouth, then. Johnny-jumper gone missing four day and you come to the great house for him whereabouts? You reckon he tired of the Johnny-jumpering and turn chambermaid’” (24). The man continues to respond insolently and threateningly. He calls her a cow and says, “‘[W]hen we get her. First we goin’ beat her face off. Then we goin’ fuck out her cunt. Then we goin’ kill her. Then we goin’ fuck her again. Or we just goin’ deal wid her the way massa and Maroon did deal with you’” (24–25). The extremely violent language he uses to assault and threaten to assault women gets used by the women toward each other in malignant, like Circe’s words to Lilith and Homer, and even kind ways. Pallas, one of the night women, says, “‘Woman you too old to be playing with you titty’” (26). Homer replies, “‘Older than even that, Pallas, older than even that’” (26). Whether they call each other “pussyhole” or comment about their sexuality, between the violence and linguistic insurrectionist times are moments of tenderness and love between the women. Part of the women’s resiliency and power comes through their use of language in addition to their recognition of their womanness and darkness and their insurrection of what both mean. Insurrectionist ethics requires the radical transvaluation of terms often meant to demean, degrade, and maintain hierarchies. Throughout the novel, the women use traditionally vulgar and violent language to express tenderness, affection, and mutual love for one another. They just as easily read one another and use the same language to insult each other, showing their firm understanding of the terms and their intentional usage of such

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words to empower and liberate given the right contexts and relationships. While insurrectionist ethics include and necessitate physical uprisings, the language used by the women in the novel reflect the physical (i.e., women’s bodies and assaults of women’s bodies) in profoundly insurrectionist ways. In conclusion, James complicates readers’ understandings of insurrectionist ethics, feminism, unalignment, the vulgar body, darkness, womanness, memory, genre, and history. The length and language of the novel mirror the violent and unspeakable nature of enslavement and insurrection, resulting in the insurrection and massacre of an entire plantation of enslaved people. The language and murders analyzed above embody and reflect the feminist insurrectionist ethics of the night women which culminates in their planned revolt and uprising. In the end, Lilith’s unaligned insurrectionist ethics when compared with that of the other night women results in her life being spared and her freedom to live how she wants for the remainder of her life. Both sets—the night women and Lilith’s—of insurrectionist ethics look similar and result in metaphorical and literal physical insurrections. According to James, Lilith’s type of unaligned insurrection saves her. The rest of the night women’s feminist and matriarchical insurrectionist ethics doom them and the rest of the enslaved people to gory deaths. In the novel, hierarchies (i.e., racism, enslavement, matriarchy, and patriarchy) that heavily favor flipping one end of the hierarchy over the other, no matter how unjust, necessarily result in various forms of violence, including annihilation. Lilith, who works against oppression in similarly radical ways but without aims to simply invert any hierarchy, embodies an unaligned insurrectionist ethics that, at minimum, helps her gain the freedom other characters seek. The result is a Jamaican epic of the sort Édouard Glissant calls for from Caribbean writers in Poetics of Relation.4 Like the historic Greek Homer, Homer helps create The Book of Night Women by telling the story to Lovey who also learns parts of the story from Lilith.5 The novel is a conglomeration of the women’s stories, Jamaica’s (hi)story, and James’ story by extension. He disregards the logos of the Father in favor of the song of the Mother Sycorax, as does Lovey with her mother. His imaginative exploration of insurrection, enslavement, and the hegemonic systems that  See Édouard Glissant. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P.  The woman that lives in the bush smells like mint and lemongrass. The only other person in the novel that uses mint and lemongrass to scent herself is Homer. 4 5

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maintained it through the voices and subjectivities of women creates an unaligned insurrectionist text that revisions unalignment and feminism, redefines, and reclaims the vulgar, and remembers and elevates the devalued female body, text, history, and memory of racism into their “supreme importance in both the larger History and the little histories of the Caribbean” (Philip 1990, 298) and Jamaica more specifically. As Junot Díaz says in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the only way out is in because “[e]very negro walk in a circle” (James 2009, 120).6

Conclusion Harris, Carter, and McBride, in their respective chapters, discuss insurrectionist ethics as a philosophy that represents, defends, and promotes “the well-being of a community because that community’s human rights have been violated” (Harris 2002, 208), which is “preferable to one that makes such commitments suspect” (208). For centuries, people have debated the morality of an enslaved person killing their enslaver or another enslaved person to escape. People have queried whether an enslaved person is just in killing themself, like the Maroons who had rather die and so they did rather than return to enslavement in Jamaica upon being caught. But what complexity underpins such moral questions for a situation most contemporary people cannot fathom and need not imagine chattel slavery. James’ The Book of Night Women is just one example of a novel written since Harris’ challenge of someone grappling with the complexity of insurrectionist ethics and unalignment. It remains true, though, that most philosophers have yet to engage. Carter writes, it “is likely to be telling concerning both the seriousness and usefulness of pragmatism as a progressive philosophy aimed at social transformation in the interest of justice, if it continues to ignore alternative American philosophical traditions that aim at the realization of a more just order” (Carter 2013, 71). As a pragmatist and literary scholar, I answered the call to engage with the unaligned and feminist insurrectionist ethics of The Book of Night Women, a novel that shows the many modes of insurrection—linguistic, physical, psychological, and spiritual—as necessary, complicated, and inevitable responses to racism, enslavement, matriarchy, and patriarchy.

6

 See Junot Díaz. 2007. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Riverhead Books.

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References Carter, Jacoby Adeshei. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 54–73. Combahee River Collective. 1977. The Combahee River Collective Statement. Yale. americanstudies.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Keyword%20Coalition_ Readings.pdf. Cooper, Carolyn. 1995. Introduction: Oral/Sexual Discourse in Jamaican Popular Culture. In Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the ‘Vulgar’ Body of Jamaican Popular Culture, 1–18. Durham: Duke UP. Davies, Carole Boyce, and Elaine Savory Fido. 1990. Introduction. In Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Literature. Trenton: Africa World Press. Díaz, Junot. 2007. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New  York: Riverhead Books. Fanon, Frantz. 1952. The Fact of Blackness. ChickenBones: A Journal. www. nathanielturner.com/factofblackness.htm. Glissant, Édouard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. Harris, Leonard. 2002. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism. In Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. John Howie, 192–211. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. ———. 2018. Necro-Being: An Actuarial Account of Racism. Res Philosophica 95 (2): 273–302. James, Marlon. 2009. The Book of Night Women. New York: Riverhead Books. McBride, Lee. 2017. Chapter 19: Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, ed. Naomi Zack, 225–234. Oxford: Oxford UP. Philip, Marlene NourbeSe. 1990. Managing the Unmanageable. In Caribbean Women Writers, ed. Selwyn Cudjoe, 295–300. Wellesley: Calaloux. Shakespeare, William. 1968. The Tempest. In The Wadsworth Shakespeare Second Edition, ed. G.  Blakemore Evans and J.J.M.  Tobin, 1661–1686. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Walker, David. 1829. Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America. New  York: Hill and Wang. West, Kanye. 2018. Kanye West Stirs Up TMZ Newsroom Over Trump, Slavery, Free Thought. TMZ. YouTube. youtu.be/s_M4LkYra5k.

CHAPTER 3

Self-respect and the Obligation to Resist Oppression Kordell Dixon

Introduction In the Antebellum South, brimming with racism and prejudice, we find John. John is an enslaved person, and as an enslaved person, John faces constant degradation and negative stereotypes. John neither believes these stereotypes nor that he is inferior to his oppressors. Furthermore, John wants to resist this oppression that forces him to remain enslaved. However, overtly resisting the systems of oppression could result in harm or injury. So instead, John decides to resist by deceiving his oppressors. So John plays into the stereotypes of his oppressors. The oppressors believe that, as a Black person, he is foolish, silly, lazy, and docile; they think that John never really poses a threat because of his inadequacy. So, John assumes the role of a Sambo. In other words, he acts like the fool that they believe him to be so that he can resist without suffering any physical ramifications that may come with more overt resistance.

K. Dixon (*) Department of Philosophy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, VA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_3

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The oppressors consider John’s actions as validation of the stereotypes they project onto Black people. John has succeeded in making his oppressors believe that he is what they generalize him to be, thereby affirming the negative beliefs they had about him. He believes that he has resisted his oppression because he made his oppressors look foolish. After all, they buy into his act, even to the point that sometimes John may materially benefit from the façade that he puts on. But, even if John considers what he is doing to be resistance, can we say that what John is doing is selfrespecting? Carol Hay would argue that John is respecting himself because he is resisting his oppression. Hay would argue that by acknowledging that what he is experiencing is oppression, John has fulfilled his obligation of self-respect; however, I argue that this goes against insurrectionist ethics, an ethical tradition grounded in resistance against oppressive structures. I believe that if Hay’s work is to be taken seriously, it must address some of the duty to resist as insurrectionists have characterized it. In her work, “The Obligation to Resist Oppression,” Hay argues that the oppressed should resist the hegemonic systems that persecute them. This obligation is derived from a greater duty of self-respect. According to Hay...., one can fulfill the bare minimum of the obligation to resist oppression by acknowledging that one is oppressed (see p. 46 in [1]).1 However, I argue that one can respect oneself not by merely acknowledging one’s oppression. To respect oneself, one has to commit to doing more than acknowledging that they are wronged in every instance of oppression. I derive this belief from the work of insurrectionist ethicists, who argue that it is within the nature of human beings to resist oppression externally (see p. 93 in [2]).2 I will illustrate that what Hay considers the bare minimum of the obligation to resist oppression falls short of what insurrectionists like David Walker, Maria Stewart, and Martin Delany define as our duty to resist as the oppressed. Scholars like Leonard Harris, Lee McBride, and Jacoby Carter have analyzed the unique position of insurrectionists and developed a new school of thought regarding their ethics of opposing oppressive systems. Using this school of thought as a reference, I will demonstrate the Sambo’s behavior and more contemporary examples of

1  Hay, Carol. (2011, Spring). The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 2  Harris, Leonard. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and liberation. Transactions of The Charles S. Peirce Society 49.

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behavior similar to the Sambo, which Hay allows, is unacceptable in the insurrectionist framework. It is valuable for Hay’s work to be in dialogue with insurrectionist ethicists because they both are a part of a long tradition of resistance-based ethics. A salient feature of developing an ethical theory of resistance is to engage with the discourse. Here I do presume that insurrectionist ethics is indeed an ethic of resistance. Philosophers such as Tommy Curry would categorize the methodology of insurrectionist ethics as an “anti-ethical theory” (see p. 125 in [3]).3 Curry believes that mainstream ethical norms are divorced from reality. These norms allow institutions and histories to sit neatly under the banner of morality while, in truth, they are steeped in racism. Claiming that an institution is at the same time moral and racist is a contradiction. The only way that we can make sense of morality is by abstracting it from reality. Abstracting morality in this way is what gives Curry reason to believe that theories of resistance cannot rest within the dominant moral framework. Curry claims that “the only ethical deliberation concerning racism must be anti-ethical, or a judgment refusing to write morality onto immoral entities” (see p.  143  in [4])4 However, I would not go as far as Curry does to say that theories of resistance are “anti-ethical.” Insurrectionist ethics, for instance, is not an ethics of the dominant class. The ethics that Curry is concerned with would condemn and advise against violent methods of resistance. Rather insurrectionist ethics is an ethic that values acts against oppression. I believe that insurrectionist ethics demonstrates that we do not have to depart from ethics altogether. Rather, we can redefine moral principles by appealing to more radical metaethical thinking. So as an ethic, deliberation is imperative to achieving an appropriate moral theory. The goal of interacting with other anti-­ oppression ethicists is to develop a comprehensive account of resistance. An account that takes all the parts that each theory in the discourse got right in order to develop the most efficient method of resistance. In this chapter, I argue that Hay is wrong to think that the bare minimum of the oppressed person’s duty to resist oppression is merely to recognize that they are oppressed. Because merely recognizing one’s 3  Curry, Tommy. 2011. The political economy of reparations: An anti-ethical consideration of atonement and racial reconciliation under colonial moralism. Race, Gender & Class 18. 4  Curry, Tommy. 2011. The political economy of reparations: An anti-ethical consideration of atonement and racial reconciliation under colonial moralism. Race, Gender & Class 18.

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oppression is not sufficient for having self-respect. I will defend this position by demonstrating that oppressed people can disrespect themselves by internally resisting. I show that when the Sambo affirms the false belief of their oppressor by “acting the clown,” they are disrespecting themselves (see p. 83 in [5]).5 First, I will reconstruct Hay’s argument for the obligation to resist oppression and explain how, according to Hay, we can fulfill this obligation. Next, I will object to Hay’s claim that acknowledging that one is oppressed entails that the agent is self-respecting. I will accomplish this by juxtaposing Hay’s account to that of insurrectionist ethics. Specifically, I will show how insurrectionists not only advocate for resistance, but they implore the oppressed to specifically external resistance. The internal resistance that Hay proposes would be condemned by certain insurrectionists as lacking self-respect. It is a mistake to believe that one can protect oneself from the plight of oppression but, in the process, affirm the oppressor’s false belief that one is inferior. Insurrectionists would not only argue that this behavior is not resistance but that it directly conflicts with one’s duty to resist. I conclude by explaining what my objection to Hay’s argument entails. In demonstrating that Hay’s proposal does not fulfill the obligation of self-respect, I prove that the bare minimum of resistance must include some action from the oppressed. Instead, the bare minimum of one’s obligation to resist must require the oppressed to act to some extent.

Hay’s Framework According to the Kantian framework that Hay employs, the capacity to be rational is intrinsically valuable (see p. 23 in [6]).6 Human beings should be valued because we are, by nature, rational.7 We value human beings by respecting this rational nature. The respect for this rational capacity is not voluntary but obligatory. This duty of respect for one’s rational capacity not only extends to others but encompasses respect for ourselves as well. Therefore, a duty of self-respect is present among the oppressed. However, Hay argues that oppression interferes with the oppressed person’s ability

 Elkins, Stanley M. 1959. Slavery (third ed.). The University of Chicago Press.  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 7  Kant, Immanuel. 1785. Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals (ed. Mary Gregor). 5 6

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to be self-respecting (see p. 23 in [8]).8 To fulfill the duty of self-respect, the oppressed must first combat their oppression. Hay contends that oppression harms, and thereby disrespects, the practical rationality of those subjected to it (see p.  23  in [9]).9 Oppression disrespects the rational capacity of the oppressed because it can harm their rational capabilities. Hay asserts that oppression can harm one’s rational capacity in two ways (see p. 24 in [10]).10 First, oppression can damage our rational capacities. One’s rational capacity is damaged when it is threatened in a way that endangers its future functions. The second way oppression can harm our rational capacities is restriction; one’s rational capacity is restricted when there is a temporary interference with one’s ability to exercise it fully. Oppression threatens to damage or restrict one’s rational capacities, which disrespects one’s rational nature. To fulfill one’s duty of respecting their rational nature, one must prevent harm of the kind that oppression causes. According to Hay, resisting oppression prevents the potential impairment that it causes to one’s rational capacities. However, the insurrectionists would argue that you are required to insurrect even when you are unlikely to succeed. By doing so, you may be killed or maimed, which would imply potential harm to one’s rational capacity. So it is not always the case that resisting oppression prevents potential impairment of one’s rational capacity. Rather, there is some goal beyond protecting one’s rational capacity for the insurrectionist. What that goal is will be discussed in the next section. Nevertheless, for Hay, the oppressed have an obligation to resist oppression as an extension of their obligation to respect their rational capacities. The provided argument for the obligation to resist oppression has demonstrated that the oppressed can prevent their rational capacities from being damaged or restricted by resisting. Hay addresses a potential counter-­ argument regarding how demanding the obligation to resist oppression can be in providing how one is to fulfill this obligation (see p.  28  in [11]).11 Given the moral seriousness of resisting oppression, it might seem that one would have a perfect duty to resist, that is, to resist at every occurrence of oppression. However, the systems that perpetuate  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 10  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 11  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 8 9

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and reproduce oppression are too irrepressible. The oppressed can neither shed their oppression nor lighten it; rather, it is ever-present and suffocating. Oppression is as consistent and overwhelming as heavy rain. It would be impractical to request someone catch as much rain as possible to prevent them from being saturated; the task would be too taxing. Asking the oppressed to resist every occurrence of oppression would be too demanding. As a rebuttal to the objection of demandingness, Hay asserts that our obligation to resist oppression is an imperfect duty, which gives our actions of resistance and our inactivity toward oppression latitude (see p.  30  in [12]).12 An imperfect duty in the Kantian sense is a duty that does not have to be fulfilled every time its conditions are met, which is when a subject is oppressed. An imperfect duty allows for latitude in what responses one has to oppression. Hay identifies two ways in which the duty to resist oppression affords latitude to the oppressed (see p. 30 in [13]).13 The first is latitude in action, and this provides the subject with flexibility regarding what actions they take. The second is latitude in refraining from action, and this regards the ability to perform or refrain from an action on occasion. These latitudes are distinct in that latitude of action may provide flexibility in what action to take but does not excuse one from acting at all; that is something only latitude in refraining from action can provide. Hay argues that one could demonstrate the latitude of action in multiple ways (see p. 31 in [14]).14 For example, one could engage in activism, actively speak out against oppression, or opt-out of oppressive social norms. Hay00 asserts that activism, speaking out, and opting out are external forms of resisting; however, there are also internal forms (see p.  31  in [15]).15 External forms of resistance are forms of resistance that demonstrate the oppressed dissent of the current system to the oppressors. These actions take place in the physical world, and they can be observed. Internal forms of resistance allow the oppressed to fulfill their obligation to resist oppression by establishing that they are the sort of person whose rational nature is “simply not damaged by oppression” (see p. 31 in [16])16 Hay claims that one could do this by erecting “mental walls” so that one’s  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 14  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 15  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 16  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 12 13

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rational capacity is not damaged (see p. 31 in [17]).17 These walls are any mental mechanism that can assure that the oppressed predilections are against oppression. Creating these mental walls could be educating oneself on the harms of oppression or refusing to accept the social messages that oppression enforces. Hay argues that an internal form of resistance can be the last mode of resistance for the oppressed to invoke safely (see p. 31 in [18]).18 External resistance places the oppressed at potential risk of physical harm, which can sometimes result in maiming or fatality. Because dying or injury is not conducive to one’s obligation of self-respect, the oppressed may choose to resist internally. Hay argues that to avoid the physical risk of external resistance, there may be nothing an oppressed person can do to resist besides simply “recognizing that something is wrong” with one’s situation (see p.  32  in [19]).19 Recognizing something is wrong with one’s situation consists of remaining steadfast in the face of all the forces trying to convince you that there is nothing better for you other than oppression. Hay suggests that there is “something importantly self-respecting about engaging in internal resistance” and that the possibility of this form of resistance captures the intuition that there are methods to satisfy the duty to resist oppression even when external forms are unwise (see p. 35 in [20]).20 The intuition that internal resistance is a sufficient method to satisfy the obligation to resist oppression is promoted by Hay regarding the latitude of refraining from action. The latitude in refraining from action allows one to refrain from acting when the conditions of oppression are met. Latitude in refraining from action while fulfilling an obligation to resist oppression still requires one to protect themselves from the harms of oppression. A maxim to protect one’s rational capacity is still present, so refraining from acting to the point that one’s rational capacity is compromised is impermissible. Hay analogizes oppression to droplets of water eroding a rock (see p. 35 in [21]).21 One would not be obligated to stop every droplet but protect the stone from detectable erosion. Responding to oppression in this way may be necessary for the oppressed because resisting every oppressive situation will be too taxing.  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 19  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 20  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 21  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42. 17 18

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The convenience of internal resistance allows one to fulfill this obligation while refraining from any action. Internal resistance does not require the oppressed to behave or act in a certain manner. According to Hay’s duty to resist oppression, the oppressed should resist to the point that their rational capacities are protected. If an oppressed person refrains from resisting oppression to the point that their rational capacity is injured, then they have failed to fulfill the obligation to resist oppression. Externally resisting, as mentioned earlier, may entail some risk to the well-being of the oppressed. Refraining from resisting externally may be an act of prudence, but this still leaves one’s rational capacity vulnerable to damage. If one refrains from external resistance, they must protect their rational capacity from damage by other means. Internally resisting allows the oppressed to resist without any harm that may be included with external resistance. By internally resisting, one prevents their rational capacity from being harmed while refraining from action. While the oppressed may still be subject to physical harm of oppression, they can at least protect the future functions of their rationality. Preventing themselves from accepting the unjust circumstance they are enduring as acceptable. Internally resisting allows one to evade the demandingness of the duty to resist oppression while still fulfilling it. Internal resistance makes it possible for the obligation to resist oppression to be fulfilled without acting on every occasion. Hay argues that the duty to resist oppression always requires at least internal resistance (see p. 46 in [22]).22 Any argument that states that even internal resistance is not required is not going to be sufficient. If we cannot resist externally (because it is too demanding), then we should at the very least resist internally. Hay states that “any argument attempting to claim that not even internal resistance is required in a given circumstance is, in effect, going to be an argument for why someone does not have to be self-respecting in this circumstance” (see p. 38 in [23]).23 However, I am not convinced that every instance of internal resistance is a portrayal of self-respect.

 Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.

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Hay vs. Insurrectionist Ethics In this section, I will object to Hay’s claim that internal resistance is the bare minimum of our obligation to resist oppression.24 This objection will show that resisting oppression requires more than merely internally resisting. Instead, an oppressed agent has to externally resist in some way to be considered to be resisting at all. I will demonstrate that Hay’s account of internal resistance does not comply with the insurrectionist duty of resistance. According to the insurrectionist account, Hay’s proposal of internal resistance is interpreted as a form of self-disrespect. Disrespecting oneself is problematic because every theory of resistance relies on the oppressed agents being self-respecting. Thomas Hill claims, “If one respects the moral law, then one must respect one’s own moral rights; and this amounts to having a kind of self-respect incompatible with servility” (see p. 98 in [25]).25 Hay thinks that internal resistance is how the oppressed respect themselves; however, I argue in this section that one can resist internally yet fail to be self-respecting. Therefore, the failure of internal resistance to incite self-respect will discount it as the bare minimum to resist oppression. Before delving into the distinction between Hay and the insurrectionist ethicist’s account of self-respect, we should get a better understanding of insurrectionist ethics. Jacoby Carter, a scholar of African-American philosophy, describes insurrectionist ethics as “a philosophy aimed at radical social transformation and human liberation” (see p.  54  in [26]).26 Decolonial philosopher Lee McBride says that “Insurrectionist ethics is an attempt to work out the moral intuitions, character traits, reasoning strategies that culminate in action and methods required to garner impetus for the liberation of oppressed people” (see p. 227 in [27]).27 This philosophy draws upon scholars who question the ethics of insurgency, such as David Walker, Maria Stewart, Martin Delany, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Henry David Thoreau, and more contemporary scholars like Angela Davis.28 These scholars exemplify a dedication to liberation and justice  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.  Hill, Thomas. 1973. Servility and self-respect. The Monist 57. 26  Carter, Jacoby. 2013. The insurrectionist challenge to pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s feminist insurrectionist ethics. Transactions of The Charles S. Peirce Society 49. 27  McBride, Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist ethics and racism. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. 28  McBride, Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist ethics and racism. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. 24 25

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that help define the core tenets of insurrectionist ethics. McBride captures the tenets of insurrectionist ethics and states them as such: 1. Practitioners of insurrectionist ethics exhibit a willingness to defy norms and conventions when the norms sanction or perpetuate injustice or oppression. 2. Insurrectionist ethicists maintain conceptions of personhood and humanity that motivate moral action against obvious injustice and brutality, justifying militancy and radical action on behalf of persecuted people. 3. The practitioners of insurrectionist ethics work to achieve a broader, more universal liberation through the advocacy of particular oppressed groups (indigenous peoples of North America, Black Americans, Dalits of India, etc.) 4. Insurrectionist ethicists give esteem to insurrectionist character traits (see pp. 227–228 in [29]).29 The four tenets of insurrectionist ethics spell out what is acceptable behavior for those who resist oppression. The duty to revolt requires a particular disposition toward external forms of disapproval of oppressive structures. Lenard Harris, in his work “Walker: Naturalism and Liberation,” discusses how David Walker expected sacrifice from all those suffering under oppression. Harris states, “Escapes and insurrection required tremendous courage and social sacrifice—a form of courage and sacrifice that was unreasonable for Walker to expect of everyone” (see p.  96  in [30]).30 Behavior such as settling for one’s oppression or acting solely on one’s superficial self-interest was looked down upon by Walker. For Walker, self-­ interest is not distinguished between one’s immediate self-interest and long-term self-interest; however, a temporal element is present. The enslaved person who rebelled had to address the potential realities that they may suffer severe physical repercussions, dismemberment, and perhaps death if their plans failed. The lives of slaves who insurrected were not the only ones at risk. Family members and loved ones were also vulnerable to the atrocities that befell those who sought liberation. Even if a 29  McBride, Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist ethics and racism. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. 30  Harris, Leonard. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and liberation. Transactions of The Charles S. Peirce Society 49.

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slave did manage to escape, the knowledge that their family would suffer in their place was a devastating actuality. So, in one sense, insurrection is not in the immediate self-interest of the potential insurrectionists. Its most probable practical consequences are contrary to their interest in avoiding punishment, severe bodily injury, or death. However, Harris develops the notion of contra self-interest to account for the fact that though the immediate practical consequences seem/do not align with the person’s self-­ interest, Walker’s naturalism, as articulated by Harris, requires that one insurrect nonetheless. The reason is that promotion of self-interest is, for Walker (and Harris), a secondary good in relation to comporting oneself as a full human being person. On Walker’s naturalism, the promotion of one’s humanity and personhood trumps certain immediate practical considerations. Walker discusses how the behavior of an insurrectionist calls for one to prioritize the goal of liberation over material benefits. Those that acted in ways that affirmed their oppressors’ false beliefs were what Walker called the “wretched” (see p. 96 in [31]).31 The concepts Walker used to describe slavery convey what he saw as racial slavery’s form of oppression, and it is that form that gives warrant to a duty to insurrect. Slaves were so cruelly debased as to become wretched (possessing contra-self-interested behavior), slovenly (occasioned by the drudgery of forced labor), voluntarily subordinate (lacking self-respect, displaying deferential behavior, consciously acting against self-interest, aiding in the harm of others), servile (cravenly submissive), abject (hopeless, low expectations, content in a lowly status), and willfully ignorant (avoiding knowledge for fear of punishment). Slaves were generally disparaged by all non-slaves.32 (see p. 96 in [32])

This voluntary subordination that Walker antagonizes is an improper prioritization of one’s conflicting self-interest. The promotion of self-interest is, for Walker (and Harris), a secondary good in relation to comporting oneself as a full person. Placing one’s immediate practical considerations above one’s natural inclination to promote their own humanity is a mistake.

31  Harris, Leonard. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and liberation. Transactions of The Charles S. Peirce Society 49. 32  Harris, Leonard. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and liberation. Transactions of The Charles S. Peirce Society 49.

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The major distinction between Hay and the insurrectionist is their position on what is acceptable internal resistance. The insurrectionist would not allow the oppressed to internally resist without plans to externally resist in the future. While Hay would see no problem with the oppressed internally resisting to preserve themselves. Hay states, So, again, while the obligation to respect one’s rational nature in the face of oppressive harms could theoretically be satisfied solely by resisting oppression internally rather than externally, there are epistemic, moral, and ­practical reasons to think that in all but the most extreme cases some degree of external resistance to oppression will remain necessary.33 (see p. 34 in [33])

The insurrectionist would consider the extreme cases pivotal opportunities for insurrection. Even if those opportunities are used to better position oneself for more optimal moments of insurrection, they will be used with the intention of externally resisting. However, the agent working under Hay’s theory does not need to plan to externally resist in the future. This agent can accept the unfavorable circumstances that befall them and make a decision to internally resist that isolated from the greater goal of liberation. For the insurrectionist, all accounts of internal resistance that are not plans of externally resisting are self-disrespecting. The insurrectionist understands that not every circumstance that an oppressed person finds themself in is an optimal opportunity for external resistance. However, in moments where internal resistance is advantageous for the greater goal of liberation, the internal resistance should consist of plans for future external resistance. For example, it may be disadvantageous for a slave to show their disapproval of their oppressors’ actions while they are outnumbered and the focus of their oppressors’ rage. However, if this slave is to be silent and resist internally, then their thoughts and disapproval of their oppressors’ actions should be directed toward some later form of external resistance like escaping. The insurrectionist will not tolerate internal resistance with no intention of external resistance; this employment of internal resistance partially characterizes the behavior of the wretched. Walker’s concern with the wretched is that they fail to demonstrate the second tenet of insurrectionist ethics. The wretched fails to “maintain conceptions of personhood and humanity that motivate moral action  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.

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against obvious injustice and brutality, justifying militancy and radical action on the behalf of persecuted people” (see p. 227 in [34]).34 According to the fourth tenet of insurrectionist ethics, failure to perpetuate insurrectionist character traits would disqualify the wretched from receiving esteem from insurrectionist ethicists. Neither Walker nor any insurrectionist would extend respect to the behaviors of the wretched because their behavior is not self-respecting. While insurrectionist ethicists would disapprove of the wretched behavior, Hay would condone the action of the wretched and argue that they are self-respecting insofar as they are internally resisting. Internal resistance is acknowledging that one is oppressed or erecting mental walls to prevent one’s rational capacity from being damaged. Resisting in this way leaves room for the oppressed to assume the position of the wretched. There is nothing under Hay’s account that prevents the oppressed from behaving slovenly, voluntarily subordinate, servile, abject, and willfully ignorant. John is a prime example of displaying such qualities while internally resisting. It should not be difficult to imagine an oppressed person that recognizes that what they face is oppression, and they choose to adopt a ‘non-adversarial’ posture. This oppressed person would choose to behave as I have described John to behave. John is an enslaved man who fulfills the Sambo archetype. As someone who fulfills this archetype, John frequently “acts a clown” to protect himself from his master’s violence. In acting the clown, John performs many of the behaviors outlined by Stanley Elkins in his discussion of the Sambo archetype: Sambo, the typical plantation slave, was docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronically given to lying and stealing; his behavior was full of infantile silliness, and his talk inflated with childish exaggeration.35 (see p. 82 in [35])

John is aware that he is oppressed and chooses to protect himself from the physical violence of oppression by merely telling himself what is happening to him is despicable, and nobody should be in his position. According to Hay’s interpretation, John is fulfilling his duty to resist oppression. Hay would claim that one is still fulfilling the duty of 34  McBride, Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist ethics and racism. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. 35  Elkins, Stanley M. 1959. Slavery (third ed.). The University of Chicago Press.

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self-­respect if the only thing one does to protect themself is “acting a clown”; because in “acting a clown,” one is still internally resisting. Not only does this contrast the tradition of insurrectionist ethics, but it also allows the oppressed to disrespect themselves. According to Walker, voluntary subordination is an act that demonstrates a lack of self-respect. To value comporting oneself as a full person, in contrast to a more superficial form of self-interest, is to respect oneself. Failing to value oneself in the manner Walker describes is a failure to be self-respecting. Hay’s account allows the oppressed to value the status of their immediate practical conditions over their duty to promote their humanity. The impulse to secure survival every day in oppressive environments should not come before proclaiming yourself as a full person. According to Walker, The latter is a more integral part of human nature. Even while living under oppression, existing as a person who has done whatever was necessary to acquire material resources, including shirking one’s duty to promote their personhood, appears to divert from some fundamental social necessity of being acknowledged as a person. To illustrate my point, let us, for a moment, distance ourselves from the extreme conditions of slavery and look to more contemporary instances of oppression. Take Amon, a Black person working in corporate America. Amon realized that he works in a racist work environment. However, through chance, Amon discovers that his supervisors and coworkers respond well when he sides with them on matters of racism and injustice. They respond so well that Amon’s status in the company elevates in response. Amon does not truly believe the racist stance that he takes in front of his coworkers. Rather Amon believes the opposite! Amon holds pro-Black views and detests the racist jargon thrown around the office. However, Amon believes that he has to make a living and if, in order to live well, he has to pretend to have some unfavorable views, so be it. In this case, it seems more apparent that there are some improperly prioritized values. Amon values his living conditions more than the promotion of his personhood. Within my example, we could presume that Amon’s coworkers view him as a sub-person or non-person.36 Compared to our John case, where the living conditions at risk are much more dire, Amon’s decision to affirm the oppressors’ racist belief does not appear to be as coerced. 36  Warren, Calvin. 2019. Ontological terror: Blackness, nihilism, and emancipation. Duke University Press.

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Amon’s decision does not affect whether he lives or dies. Rather, Amon’s life prospects and the quality of his life increases with his choice to affirm his oppressors’ false belief. In cases where one’s livelihood is not threatened, it becomes more obvious that proclaiming one’s personhood should be prioritized by the oppressed. If the choice is either to affirm the belief that one is an inferior being and live more extravagantly or to externally resist oppression and lead a less extravagant life, then prioritizing one’s personhood does not seem as heavy a sacrifice. When compared to sacrificing one’s life or potential mutilation to profess one’s personhood, the sacrifice Amon would make to retain his self-respect seems trivial. However, even when the case involves less extreme risk, it may be unclear to some why there has to be a sacrifice at all. One may believe, like Hay, that what matters is whether they respect themselves internally and that their external actions do not determine if they are self-respecting. Affirming racist beliefs is not inherently bad for Hay because the status of the oppressed rational capacity is more important for her account. If the rational capacity of the oppressed is protected and kept safe from damage and restriction, then the oppressed have upheld their duty to resist oppression. Even though there may be “epistemic, moral, and practical reasons” to externally resist, Hay’s theory allows the obligation of resistance to be satisfied with this behavior (see p. 34 in [37]).37 However, Hay’s account of resistance does not properly appreciate the value of promoting one’s personhood. A critical feature of Hay’s argument is that the oppressed uphold the duty of self-respect. Hay states, “the obligation of self-respect, then, is an obligation to recognize the value of the rational nature within us and to respond accordingly. This obligation is an instance of the more general obligation to respect rational nature, wherever one finds it” (see p. 22 in [38]).38 Within insurrectionist ethics, recognizing the value of one’s rational nature and responding accordingly involves prioritizing the proclamation of one’s personhood. To recognize the value of one’s rational nature is to value the personhood that the rational nature necessitates. To respond accordingly to this value is to promote one’s personhood. When one’s personhood is called into question because of oppressive systems, resistance against oppression would include the promotion of that personhood.

 Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.  Hay, Carol. 2011. The obligation to resist oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42.

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For the insurrectionist ethicist, appreciating one’s personhood is necessary for resistance. McBride discusses how more contemporary figures of resistance, like Angela Davis, embody insurrectionist ethics by assuming a radical disposition. McBride presents Davis’s radical disposition in a way that parallels insurrectionists’ “militant posture.” This “revolutionary stance” is a result of Davis viewing personhood as something that should never be contested and the act of challenging one’s personhood is cause for an immediate response. McBride states that “Davis maintains a conception of personhood and humanity that militates acts of resistance and radical action on behalf of racialized populations” (see p. 230 in [39]).39 Therefore, what it means to be an insurrectionist ethicist is also to recognize the value of one’s rational capacity and respond accordingly; however, how one does this is through external forms of resistance. Here, one could question why the insurrectionist ethicist account should hold any merit in developing a theory of resistance. Someone who rejects the insurrectionist ethicist approach to resistance could even concede that the approach is admirable but still reject it because of how onerous it is. First, let us not misattribute the difficulty of being self-respecting while oppressed to theories of resistance. Oppression is insidious and incessant. Oppression demoralizes the oppressed and attempts to strip them of identity and respect. Institutions of oppression are constructed to plunder the value of the oppressed and reassign value according to the will of their oppressors. To remain self-respecting in a system designed to steal away your self-respect is demanding. So what makes being self-respecting in the wake of oppression difficult is not the methods to retain one’s self-­ respect but the oppression that one is opposing! Second, engaging with insurrectionist ethics is a critical feature of developing a theory of resistance. If someone were to object to insurrectionist ethicists’ position about the prioritization of personhood because of how demanding it is, then they would also have to provide a reason why the insurrectionist ethicist could not just concede that respecting oneself while oppressed is demanding. A theory of resistance being demanding is no reason to believe it is not a viable theory. If an opponent of insurrectionist ethics were to argue that the position proposed was impossible or perhaps even improbable, then they would have grounds to reject the theory. However, prioritizing personhood while being threatened with 39  McBride, Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist ethics and racism. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race.

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violence and destruction is common in the tradition of resistance. Insurrectionists like Martin Delany, Harriet Tubman, and John Brown all sought to profess their humanity and personhood even under the threat of violence and execution. So while the insurrectionist ethicist’s account of resistance may be demanding, it is entirely feasible.

Conclusion I have presented an argument against Hay’s position that, while under the plight of oppression, internally resisting can fall short of fulfilling the obligation of self-respect. I have demonstrated this by showing that one can disrespect themself while internally resisting. Having shown that Hay’s analysis of the bare minimum to resist oppression is insufficient, I will conclude this work by addressing further considerations regarding replacing internal resistance as the bare minimum of fulfilling the obligation to resist oppression. My objection to Hay’s bare minimum allows us as philosophers to analyze the ethics of resisting oppression and rethink the limitations of resistance. A bare minimum is necessary for establishing moral imperatives because it delimits the least amount of action or involvement required to fulfill a duty. An imperfect duty needs a bare minimum to demarcate to the agent what is fulfilling the duty and what is not. Establishing a new bare minimum would provide an agent with knowledge of how little they can do before it can no longer be considered satisfying the duty. A new bare minimum would have to satisfy the exact requirements that internal resistance fails to meet. Internal resistance is not enough to be considered the bare minimum of resisting oppression because it allows agents to disrespect themselves occasionally. Simply acknowledging that one is oppressed would not suffice as fulfilling the duty to resist oppression. This new limitation must also be more sensitive to the obligation of self-respect. The importance of self-respect has been noted by many resistance-oriented authors. Bernard Boxill argues the centrality of self-respect in external forms of resistance like protesting. Boxill states, “the powerless but self-­ respecting person will declare his self-respect. He will protest. His protest affirms that he has rights. More importantly, it tells everyone that he believes he has rights and that he therefore claims self-respect” (see p.  69  in [40]).40 Laurence Thomas denotes the moral significance of  Boxill, Bernard. 1976. Self-Respect and protest. Philosophy & Public Affairs 6.

40

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self-­respect and how it should lead to self-determining behavior. Thomas states, “A person has self-respect, I shall say, if and only if he has the conviction that he is deserving of full moral status, and so the basic rights of that status, simply in virtue of the fact that he is a person” (see pp. 175–176 in [41]).41 Self-respect should not be an after-thought of the resistance theorist; rather, it should be a border to determine what actions should and should not be counted as acts of resistance. Based on what I have demonstrated in this work, it would seem that this new bare minimum would have to include some form of external resistance to be sufficient. Regardless of what this new bare minimum may look like, it will require the oppressed to act in some fashion, even with the risk of potential harm or death. This bare minimum can take the form of vocal resistance. The oppressed may need to vocalize their disapproval of the hegemonic systems to provide themselves with evidence of what their oppressors ought to believe. Perhaps the bare minimum is some act of rebellion, regardless of how small, against the convention of structural oppression. For example, if it is conventional for a person of color not to pursue a particular career because it is understood to be occupied exclusively by white people, then simply applying for this position is an act of resistance. These may only be proposals; however, I have established that self-respect in the face of oppression is a much more complex phenomenon than Hay allots in her work. When establishing limitations for the duty to resist oppression, we should consider this.

References Boxill, Bernard. 1976. Self-respect and Protest. Philosophy & Public Affairs 6: 58–69. Carter, Jacoby. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49: 54–73. Curry, Tommy. 2011. The Political Economy of Reparations: An Anti-ethical Consideration of Atonement and Racial Reconciliation under Colonial Moralism. Race, Gender & Class 18: 125–146. Elkins, Stanley M. 1959. Slavery. 3rd ed. The University of Chicago Press. Harris, Leonard. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and Liberation. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49: 93–111. 41  Thomas, Laurence. 1983. Self-Respect: Theory and practice in philosophy born of struggle.

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Hay, Carol. 2011. The Obligation to Resist Oppression. Journal of Social Philosophy 42 (1, Spring): 21–45. Hill, Thomas. 1973. Servility and Self-respect. The Monist 57: 87–104. Kant, Immanuel. 1785. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Mary Gregor. Cambridge University Press, 1998. McBride, Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race. Oxford University Press. Thomas, Laurence. 1983. Self-respect: Theory and Practice. In Philosophy Born of Struggle, ed. Leonard Harris. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt. Warren, Calvin. 2019. Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation. Duke University Press.

PART II

Insurrectionist Ethics across the Americas

CHAPTER 4

Theologizing Insurrection: On the Religious Dimension of Insurrectionist Ethics Aaron Pratt Shepherd

The relation between insurrectionist ethics and theologies of liberation has been largely unexplored. In Harris et al.’s articulation of insurrectionist ethics, this moral philosophy has been repeatedly and insistently presented as a thoroughly naturalistic ethics. In turn, contemporary scholars and theologians of liberation have essentially overlooked these ideas. The lack of engagement is unfortunate, however, as there is much to be gleaned by both moral philosophers, philosophers of religion, and liberation theologians through critical reflection upon the nexus of insurrectionist ethics and liberation theology. In what follows, I argue that “theologizing” insurrectionist ethics is in fact vital to this moral philosophy’s bearing fruit in liberatory praxis. My argument has two distinct (but I would argue related) audiences in mind: philosophers and activists interested in insurrectionist ethics, and theologians, pastors, and congregations interested in the Christian tradition of

A. P. Shepherd (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_4

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liberation theology. While acknowledging that Christianity is by no means the sole vehicle of an insurrectionist ethos, I contend (for the philosophers and activists) that such an ethos wants a religious aspect, if it is to achieve its intended aims. At the same time, interpreting the inter-American tradition of liberation theology through the lens of insurrectionist ethics clarifies (for the theologians, pastors, and congregations) that tradition’s central claims and their implications for action. Reclaiming the prophetic, insurrectionist roots of liberation theology also gives weight to twenty-­ first century critiques of this discourse, which insist upon moving liberation theology away from a Eurocentric intellectual engagement towards inspiring and motivating liberatory praxis as the fundamental ethical duty of Christians and the catholic (universal) Church. In turn, the continuity of ends and means between insurrectionist ethics and liberation theologians provides common ground upon which to foster activist coalitions.

Divergent Foundations for Insurrectionist Ethics The project of insurrectionist ethics—to describe a set of intuitions, dispositions, reasoning strategies, and practices that articulate and embody an unqualified imperative for human liberation—wades in the same water with liberation theologians: critiquing oppression; elaborating liberatory praxis, rather than mere principles; and demanding acknowledgement of the dignity of the poor, the enslaved, the “wretched.” Leonard Harris, progenitor of the modern intellectual program of insurrectionist ethics, includes a significant number of figures in the “canon” of insurrectionist ethics who also are counted as canon among liberation theologians (or, at least as forerunners of liberation theology). David Walker is the most obvious example of this: Walker explicitly invokes Christian commitments to the dignity and personhood of all in his Appeal as an impetus for insurrection. For this reason, Walker is a central figure in the canon of black liberation theology, directly influencing Maria Stewart (whom Harris also names) and Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, who inaugurated what I would call a “black insurrectionist theology” as early as the 1820s and 30s. Walker also holds pride of place in foundational works in twentieth century black liberation theology, including James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power (1969) and The God of the Oppressed (1975 [1997]). Harris, a self-described “Walkerite”, frequently acknowledges that David Walker was acting upon a “Christian, and especially protestant, morally compelling responsibility” in his support for slave insurrections

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(Harris 2020, 161). Walker’s “Christian inspired insurrectionist method…is foundational and offers timeless truth claims about the nature of persons.” Harris goes on to say that “Actual revolutionaries and insurrectionists, rather than status-seeking pundits, academicians, popular intellectuals, or ministers without callings to radically liberate the poor, are driven by a deep-seated responsibility to take unfathomable and unrewarded risks” (Harris 2020, 170). For Walker, this deep-seated sense of responsibility has a Christian inspiration. However, according to Harris, he is a “Walkerite” in spite of, and not because of, this Christian inspiration. Harris argues that Walker’s absolutist claims about personhood are apodictic: “His descriptions are so compelling that I do not need a separate ‘theory’ or neat algorithms of duty justification. We have a natural desire for filial and social bonds, a natural desire to be self-regarding and other-regarding. These are given in what it is to be person” (Harris 2013, 97). Harris concludes that Walker’s conception of personhood is compelling on purely aesthetic and natural grounds, not requiring any further supernatural or theological underwriting. So while Harris willingly acknowledges the Christian inspiration of Walker’s ethical project, his articulation of insurrectionist ethics is expressly committed to denying the need for a religious dimension in insurrectionist ethics. Lee McBride, in Ethics and Insurrection, follows Harris in insisting that insurrectionist ethics neither needs nor wants any religious dimension or other-than-natural foundation. “I have deep concerns that an overaccentuated, overriding deference to extrinsic supernatural agencies serves as an impediment to defiant, counter-hegemonic efforts.” Paraphrasing moral naturalist John Dewey, McBride asserts that faith in supernatural agency “depreciates human intelligence and effort and dissipates human moral responsibility…indeed, to seek natural means and the power to ameliorate material realities while abdicating ultimate responsibility to a supernatural agency is like ‘riding two horses that are going in opposite directions’” (McBride 2021, 23). The commitment to relieving human suffering and resisting systems of oppression already demands much of those willing to undertake such a countercultural stance. Attaching a supernatural metaphysics to the project of insurrectionist ethics adds an additional intellectual burden that can only run counter to the primary telos (goal) such an ethics seeks: namely, the improvement of the material conditions of oppressed and marginalized people. It is hard to break one’s shackles if one’s hands are always folded in prayer.

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Jacoby Carter captures a more ambivalent sense of the significance of the religious for insurrectionist ethics when he writes that, One might think it an open question whether any substantive philosophical position is sufficient to motivate insurrection, given that all of the paradigmatic examples of insurrectionists that Harris provides are inspired primarily, if not exclusively, by their religious beliefs. In fact, with the sole exception of communists, none of the specific or more general insurrectionist ethics he mentions are nonreligious. This may just be an interesting coincidence, but it may be that, the religious motivations of most insurrectionists notwithstanding, it is not theoretically necessary that insurrectionist ethics be grounded in ostensibly religious conceptions, nor that the stimulus to insurrection be decidedly religious. (Carter 2013, 57)

There is, of course, a third option here: that it is theoretically necessary that insurrectionist ethics be grounded in ostensibly religious conceptions. That is to say, the “interesting coincidence” of liberation theology and insurrectionist ethics may not be mere coincidence. I would like to grab hold of this third rail and offer an argument for grounding insurrectionist ethics in a theology of liberation, or in liberationist religious conceptions more broadly construed. I do not intend to argue this point based simply upon historical precedent, that “interesting coincidence” of insurrectionist ethics with Christianity. Instead, I contend that insurrectionist ethics needs to have a religious dimension if it is to fulfill the demands Harris himself makes in his critiques of pragmatists and meliorists who provide insufficient grounds for a duty to insurrect. In elaborating the epistemic and ethical commitments of liberation theologians, I intend to show that the difference between the purely naturalistic basis for insurrectionist ethics Harris and McBride argue for and the religious grounding for insurrectionist ethics present in liberation theology is an analytically significant one. Whether or not this argument is compelling to a non-Christian or religious skeptic, it at the very least affords an opportunity to wonder: what do we see differently when we take seriously the religious aspect of so many of the founding figures of insurrectionist ethics? What can be learned from thinking insurrectionist ethics through religion? Skepticism about theologizing insurrection derives from historical considerations (i.e. the role religious institutions, including and especially Christian institutions, have played in maintaining the status quo of

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oppression), as well as methodological and/or metaphysical considerations (namely, the reliance of theological paradigms upon fixed, essential categories, as, for example, in the ontologizing of “blackness” in black liberation theology). As Harris makes clear, the history of complicity of ministers and churches in slavery and other forms of oppression are ample grounds for wariness when it comes to trusting Christians to foster insurrection. The fresh memory of the January 6th assault on the U.S.  Capitol building, which was described quite accurately as a “Christian insurrection” (see Green 2021) likewise raises red flags about the potential misappropriation of an “insurrectionist theology.” If insurrectionist ethics can be elaborated without reference or appeal to Christian or other religious ideas, practices, or institutions, it might make sense to do so, given these historical considerations. On the other hand, Harris’s own critiques of pragmatist instrumentalism also raise a concern that insurrectionist ethics may require some basis for the necessity of insurrection in situations of oppression beyond merely aesthetic appeals. If the cause of insurrectionist ethics is better served by emanating from a religious orientation (as I will argue), then the specifics of that religious orientation call for further scrutiny (from an insurrectionist perspective). I argue that an “insurrectionist theology of liberation” can provide one example of what it would mean to construe insurrectionist ethics as a religious, and not merely naturalistic, moral philosophy. Rethinking liberation theology through an insurrectionist lens highlights the significance of liberation theologians’ critiques of more orthodox, mainstream Christian theologies, as well as illuminates some aspects of liberation theology that are overlooked. What follows is both an historical analysis of the inter-­ American tradition of liberation theology and a description of the philosophy of religion that flows from it that, in turn, supports acknowledging a religious aspect for the insurrectionist ethos.

The Prophetic Roots of Insurrectionist Ethics Harris’s moral philosophy is the product of interpreting the works of a very specific set of historical individuals. He names David Walker, Maria Stewart, Lydia Maria Child, John Brown, Henry David Thoreau, and

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Martin Luther King, Jr. as exemplars of the insurrectionist ethos.1 Harris draws these figures together with the common thread of the dogged, countercultural commitment to the liberation of the enslaved and immiserated, those who have been consigned to “necro-being…that which makes living a kind of death” (Harris 2020, 69). The dominant culture of each of these figures’ time was characterized by thoroughgoing racism that utterly deprived Afrikan people of the possibilities of full personhood. Each, in turn, engaged in specific acts of resistance from the periphery of society, employing novel, nefarious, and often scandalous means to do so. David Walker famously disseminated his Appeal by sewing it into clothing that he would then sell to merchant sailors departing from Boston to ports of call in slave states.2 In that pamphlet, Walker urged slaves to engage in rebellion against their masters in the sure and certain knowledge that divine providence was on their side: But has not the Lord an oppressed and suffering people among them? Does the Lord condescend to hear their cries and see their tears in consequence of oppression? Will he let the oppressors rest comfortably and happy always? Will he not cause the very children of the oppressors to rise up against them, and oftimes put them to death? “God works in many ways his wonders to perform.” (Walker and Garnet 1848, 14)

In his interpretation of the Appeal, Harris emphasizes Walker’s location of the sources of suffering caused by racial slavery in the particular viciousness of “violence workers”—those who maintained the brutalizing status quo of slavery. But he also points out that Walker is specifically not appealing to the “better angels” of the slave-catcher, or even the white moderate. Rather, Walker’s message is to the enslaved to recognize in themselves an inherent dignity as children of God. “Any self-regarding disposition or act by a slave is arguably rebellious” (Harris 2013, 105). Harris argues that this self-regard need not be bolstered by any supernatural 1  McBride (2017) adds Harriett Tubman, Nat Turner, Peggy Garner, and Angela Davis to this list of exemplars. Interestingly, in McBride (2021), rather than elaborating his conception of insurrectionist philosophy with specific reference to historical personages, McBride chooses to discuss insurrectionist ethics almost exclusively in relation to other contemporary moral philosophies/philosophers, thereby leaving the question of his philosophy’s application to history or the present intentionally open and ambiguous. 2  See Darrell Scriven, A Dealer of Old Clothes: Philosophical Conversations with David Walker (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2003).

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endorsement; indeed, neither does Walker’s condemnation of Europeans and white supremacists rest upon any divine design—it is all evident in the actions Walker testifies to having observed. And yet, it cannot be denied that Walker’s appeal turns to a great degree upon the eschatological vision of divine justice levelled against the oppressors. Walker singles out for condemnation how Christianity itself is used to justify and perpetuate slavery, pointing out that this abuse of religion is the surest sign of the harshest divine judgment. Can any thing be a greater mockery of religion than the way in which it is conducted by the Americans? It appears as though they are bent only on daring God Almighty to do his best—they chain and handcuff us and our children and drive us around the country like brutes, and go into the house of the God of justice to return Him thanks for having aided him in their infernal cruelties inflicted upon us. Will the Lord suffer this people to go on much longer, taking his holy name in vain? Will he not stop them, preachers and all? O Americans! Americans!! I call God—I call angels—I call men, to witness, that your destruction is at hand, and will be speedily consummated unless you REPENT. (Walker and Garnet 1848, 55–56)

This prophetic pronouncement is the final word of Walker’s appeal. For circulating these words, he was martyred in 1830 at the age of 33, killed outside his shop on Beacon Hill’s North Slope. Walker’s Appeal is a complex piece of rhetoric that certainly does not engage exclusively in “God-talk” (i.e. theology). At the same time, the question before us is whether Walker’s theological claims are essential to his overall argument, incidental to it, or can be accounted for without any reference to religion. Even as Harris claims that portions of Walker’s Appeal reveal “apodictic” truths about the wretchedness of slavery and the essential personhood of African peoples, it seems evident from a straightforward reading of the text that the eschatological view of history—and the role of a divine agent within it—are critical to Walker’s understanding of liberation. Walker’s would not be the last such prophecy pronounced; far from it. Maria Stewart (1803–1879), a free black woman who was a contemporary of Walker’s, defied the conventions of her day by addressing anti-slavery societies and publishing speeches heavy-laden with Biblical allusions and

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theological language.3 Like Walker, Stewart affirmed the essential personhood of the enslaved, and called out the life-denying systems of oppression at work in keeping them enslaved. Many think, because your skins are tinged with a sable hue, that you are an inferior race of beings; but God does not consider you as such. He hath formed and fashioned you in his own glorious image, and hath bestowed upon you reason and strong powers of intellect… He hath crowned you with glory and honor…and according to the Constitution of these United States, he hath made all men free and equal. Then why should one worm say to another, ‘Keep you down there, while I sit up yonder; for I am better than thou?’ It is not the color of the skin that makes the man, but it is the principles formed within the soul. (Cooper 2011, 45–46)

Stewart further extended her critique to the ways in which the “slavocracy” was perpetuated by the complicity of Northern whites, and the second-­class status of free black people in the North. Like Walker, Stewart wove together the symbolic language of America’s founding documents with that of divine justice against the degradation of enslaved and free African people. Unlike Walker, Stewart emphasized the degradation of women in particular, addressing and admonishing them to resist the life-­ denying forces of white supremacy. Stewart embodied this resistance in her public addresses, which were a scandalous to her audiences, even as they rang with liberatory intent. She was “very aware of the dangers of continued activism.” (Cooper 2011, 45 note 22). “Many will suffer for pleading the cause of oppressed Africa, and I shall glory in being one of her martyrs,” Stewart declared (Cooper 2011, 46). Henry Highland Garnet (1815–1882), who was a contemporary of Stewart’s, is another key figure for understanding the prophetic roots of insurrectionist ethics. Born into slavery in Maryland, Garnet escaped with his family when he was seven after his owner died and his parents feared they’d be separated and sold. Seven years after settling in New York, in 1829 Garnet’s family had a close call with a slavecatcher, who very nearly captured and returned Garnet’s mother to slavery. The sense of the precarity of his freedom fueled Garnet’s anti-slavery fervor in the years to come. In 1835, Garnet moved to upstate New York to attend Noyes Academy. Along with his classmates Thomas Sydney and Alexander Crummell, 3  See Valerie Cooper, Word Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011).

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Garnet resisted an armed assault on the school shortly after their arrival. The white supremacists who attacked the school succeeded in burning down the building, but not in lynching the three future leaders of the anti-­ slavery movement. Garnet would go on to become an ordained Presbyterian Minister and played a critical role in pitched debates of the 1840s over whether moral suasion or armed insurrection was the appropriate means of ending slavery. This controversy came to a head in 1843, when Garnet delivered a fiery speech to the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York. In the speech, he echoed Walker by directly addressing enslaved people and describing their situation via a theological anthropology. Slavery! How much misery is comprehended in that single word. What mind is there that does not shrink from its direful effects? Unless the image of God is obliterated from the soul, all men cherish the love of Liberty.… In every man’s mind the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man. Brethren, your oppressors aim to do this. They endeavor to make you as much like brutes as possible. When they have blinded the eyes of your mind—when they have embittered the sweet waters of life—when they have shut out the light which shines from the word of God—then, and not till then has American slavery done its perfect work.4 (Walker and Garnet 1848, 92)

From this bitter diagnosis, however, Garnet pivots to admonish the enslaved that “To such degradation it is sinful in the extreme for you to make voluntary submission.” Even as he acknowledged the horrific conditions of slavery, and clearly assigned responsibility for their degradation to the white slaveholders (and all who were complicit in the slave economy), Garnet nonetheless affirms that enslaved people are still moral agents, capable of good and evil. In a move that surely led to his speech’s being condemned by the audience as too radical and audacious, Garnet followed his argument to its logical conclusion.

4  Garnet’s address is printed as an epilogue to Walker’s Appeal in the 1848 edition. This editorial choice indicates how closely associated Garnet was perceived to be to the views of insurrectionists like Walker.

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It is in your power so to torment the God-cursed slaveholders, that they will be glad to let you go free. If the scale was turned, and black men were the masters, and white men the slaves, every destructive agent and element would be employed to lay the oppressor low. Danger and death would hang over their heads day and night. Yes, the tyrants would meet with plagues more terrible than those of Pharaoh. But you are a patient people. You act as though you were made for the special use of these devils. You act as though your daughters were born to pamper the lusts of your masters and overseers. And worse than all, you tamely submit, while your lords tear your wives from your embraces, and defile them before your eyes. In the name of God we ask, are you men? Where is the blood of your fathers? Has it all run out of your veins? Awake, awake; millions of voices are calling you! Your dead fathers speak to you from their graves. Heaven, as with a voice of thunder, calls on you to arise from the dust. Let your motto be resistance! resistance! resistance!—No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. (Walker and Garnet 1848, 96)

In his speech, Garnet invoked the biblical narrative of the Exodus, pairing it with mentions of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Joseph Cinque (who led the Amistad revolt), and Madison Washington (the inspiration for Frederick Douglass’s novella The Heroic Slave [1853]). This pairing establishes a clear linkage between these insurrections and salvation history (i.e. the narrative of God’s intervention in human events). It is consistent with the Reformed theology Garnet would have learned in seminary, which emphasizes God’s majesty and sovereignty over human history. But his applications of that theology would have been radically at odds with the more mainstream expressions of Reformed theology at that time, which employed these same principles precisely to justify the perpetual enslavement of African peoples. Garnet’s speech is noteworthy not just for its content, but for the reaction of the audience—particularly the rising star Frederick Douglass, who spoke up against Garnet, arguing “partly from fledgling Garrisonian principle, but also from an emerging pragmatic and situational view of violence,” according to biographer David Blight. “To advocate ‘insurrection,’ Douglass held, would be irresponsible and result in disaster” (Blight 2018, 133). Douglass’s assessment at the time was probably prudent; it was unclear how telling the whole southern population of slaves to confront their masters with a demand of “liberty or death” could result in anything other than a bloodbath. But, as infamous as the Douglass-Garnet confrontation in 1843 would become, “within half a decade they would largely

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agree on the uses of violence,” as Douglass saw the fight to abolish slavery in increasingly Biblical terms.5 There is no more noteworthy an example of this than Douglass’s oration in 1852, “What, to the slave, is the Fourth of July?” Blight characterizes the speech as a “political sermon, steeped in the Jeremiad tradition” (Blight 2018, 231). In it, Douglass not only relied upon his typical methods of autobiographical narration, of vivifying the suffering of slaves, and even of drawing upon his unique reinterpretation of the Declaration of Independence; he also employed “scorching irony” and bitter condemnations. At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced. (Douglass 1852, 20)

Throughout the 1850s, Douglass continued to build upon his millenarian vision of a grand eschatological conflagration, increasingly vocal in his support of insurrections and his advocacy of bringing slavery to an end through a violent civil war. Douglass was even forced to flee the country for associating with John Brown—himself another firm believer in a theological imperative to liberate slaves. The question to the modern interpreter of these nineteenth century appeals for abolition is whether the use of biblical language and Christian theology was merely a rhetorical ploy, meant to be persuasive by appealing to broadly shared cultural touchstones, or if it is an expression of a full-­ fledged theology of liberation. To this question, I think the only 5  One of Douglass’s most oft-quoted lines—“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will”—in fact parallel’s Garnet’s conclusion that “No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance.” In spite of the many respects in which these two figures were “singing from the same hymnal,” there existed a bitter personal enmity between the two of them, one which was exacerbated by Garnet’s support of colonization in Latin America, the West Indies, and Africa for freed slaves, a position Douglass vehemently disagreed with. See Garnet and Schor (1977).

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intellectually honest answer is “more the latter than the former.” In particular, it is worth noting that there were a number of prominent theological paradigms during the nineteenth century (the first half of which was referred to as the “Second Great Awakening,” after all), none of which took the particular perspective that Walker, Stewart, Child, Garnet, and Douglass would all adopt. Indeed, it was not even the case that black theologians of the time had a monolithically liberationist theology. Alexander Crummell, for instance, insisted that slavery itself was an assertion of “God’s will,” a position that Garnet roundly criticized him for. To locate God firmly on the side of the oppressed, and against the moral and spiritual failures of white supremacist forms of Christianity, was not a popular or widespread position in the mid-nineteenth century. Hence, the prophetic appeals of these figures evince a unique theological perspective, one that would be explicitly schematized and articulated nearly a century later.

Insurrectionist Ethics and Inter-American Liberation Theology Lee McBride (2017) nicely summarizes the four basic features of insurrectionist ethics: (1) a willingness to disrupt stable social arrangements when they involve racist or otherwise oppressive practices that degrade the dignity of persons in that society; (2) a conception of personhood that is sufficient to “motivate action against obvious injustices or brutality, justifying militancy and radical action on the behalf of the persecuted;” (3) a strategic focus upon realizing universal liberation through liberationist activities on behalf of particular oppressed peoples, identified and organized through representative heuristics; and (4) esteem for character traits such as “audacity, tenacity, enmity, indignation and guile” among persecuted peoples, who are typically encouraged to evince self-deprecation, submissiveness, and humility (227–229). Liberation theologians, broadly speaking, have articulated these same basic features in their epistemic and ethical commitments. This was true of the “proto-liberationists” of the eighteenth century described above, but also of the progenitors of modern liberation theology in its (re)emergence in the 1960s. In Guerillas of Peace, Blase Bonpane characterizes liberation theology as a reaction against the tendency of the institutional Christian church (going back to Constantine) “to coexist with imperial power.” The

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characteristics of “imperial theology” Bonpane describes as (1) Formalism (which leads to passivity); (2) Legalism (“where guilt is wholesaled, types and severity of sin are defined, and forgiveness is individually retailed” [emphasis mine]) and (3) Triumphalism (“absolute confidence” in the imperial position of the church, which completes “the formula for nonaction which suits precisely the needs of a repressive regime”). “Just as the institutional Church has been able to coexist with repressive regimes, so too since the early days of the Roman Empire, has a primitive, clandestine, illegal Christianity challenged the very fabric of repressive regimes and appeared as a healthy and prophetic force” (Bonpane 1985, 1–2). Liberation theology inverts the  institutional Church’s values, rereading the history of God’s activity in the world from the anti-imperialist, radically socialist (rather than individualist) perspective of los pobres [the poor]. In the words of Peruvian liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez: “History must be read from a point of departure in their struggles, their resistance, their hopes” (Gutierrez 1973, 201). Liberation theology is thus marked by (1) the emphasis on the “church of the poor,” which eschews and/or reconstructs traditional theological doctrines in relation to the context of the oppressed; (2) “integral liberation” (a phrase borrowed from Latin American theologian Gustavo Gutierrez), which defines salvation as “a radical liberation from all misery, despoliation, and alienation. Christ’s salvation embraces all of human reality, the personal and social dimensions as well as the religious dimension. Hence, liberating historical events are part of the growth of the Kingdom” (Bell 2006, 60); and (3) a contextual eschatology, which emphasizes the historical character of salvation, and sees the realization of the “kingdom of God” primarily (if not exclusively) in discreet revolutionary struggles of peoples against oppression. What sets theologies of liberation apart, methodologically speaking, from other modes of Christian theology is the eschatological vision for liberation of the oppressed in, rather than beyond, history. As James Cone puts it in Black Theology and Black Power, “the task of theology is to show what the changeless gospel means in each new situation” (2019, 31). Theology is thus a form of contextual inquiry, particular in its meaning, but, by virtue of its capacity to “contain more than it is capable of containing” (in the words of Emmanuel Levinas), it is also valuable beyond that immediate context (Levinas 1996, 156; cf. 157–158). Cone articulates the meaning of the Gospel by asserting that “the Kingdom which the poor may enter is not merely an eschatological longing for escape to a

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transcendent reality, nor is it an inward serenity which eases unbearable suffering. Rather, it is God encountering man in the very depths of his being-in-the-­world and releasing him from all human evils, like racism, which hold him captive… When black people begin to hear Jesus’ message as contemporaneous with their life situation, they will quickly recognize…[that] Christianity becomes for them a religion of protest against suffering and affliction of man” (37). Ultimately, what black liberation theology articulates is a religious commitment to freedom, and not freedom that is “doing what I will but becoming what I should. A man is free when he sees clearly the fulfillment of his being and is thus capable of making the envisioned self a reality” (39). Black liberation theology significantly (and importantly) was a part of an inter-American theological movement in the 1960s and 70s. Academic commentator Harvey Cox, in The Church Amid Revolution, favorably connects the uprisings and demands for liberation in Central and South America (the “third worlders” militating against a global economic system that breeds inequality) to contemporaneous movements for black liberation in America: “In their rejection of ‘development’ talk and their demands for more radical policies they [Latin American liberation theologians] sound very much like American Negroes spurning all gradualism and demanding ‘Freedom Now’ or even the international equivalent of ‘Black Power.’” (Cox 1967, 23). Cone also acknowledges this connection in Black Theology and Black Power, first in terms of the shared vision of liberation from systems of oppression and the “social sins” of global capitalism, but then later in terms of a shared endorsement of the permissibility of revolutionary violence. In the final chapter of Black Theology and Black Power, “Revolution, Violence, and Reconciliation in Black Theology,” Cone asserts that revolutionary violence can be “both justified and necessary” from the perspective of black theology. Calling attention to the fact that violence is already present in a society that systematically dehumanizes black people and continues to be organized around the principles of white power and white supremacy, he argues, “the Christian does not decide between violence and nonviolence, evil and good. He decides between the less and the greater evil.” Cone explains that the question of whether violent resistance to white supremacy is justified is ultimately a relative one, to be worked out in terms of the relative utility of violent vs. non-violent means for furthering the project of black liberation. “Whether the American system is beyond redemption we will have to wait and see,” Cone concludes. “But

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we can be certain that black patience has run out, and unless white America responds positively to the theory and activity of Black Power, then a bloody, protracted civil war is inevitable” (2019, 143).6 All of this, then, is consistent with insurrectionist ethics. Liberation theologians advocate and justify disrupting stable social arrangements for the sake of liberating the oppressed on the basis of an interpretation of the Christian gospel emphasizing God’s “preferential option for the poor.” The preferential option is not just a descriptive principle, but a normative one manifested through divine involvement and agency in human history. Adopting the perspective of the insurrectionist ethos only throws more emphasis upon the importance of liberatory praxis that adopts a wide range of stratagems to achieving their goal. The primary distinction between this view and that of Harris or McBride is that, in the liberation theologians’ case, liberatory praxis is oriented towards joining and encouraging the unfolding of a divine involvement in human history by spiritual, as well as ethical, means. In other words, it is to understand piety as protest (see Warnock 2020), and to understand revolutionary struggle, protest, and, in some extreme cases, violence against oppressors as expressions of faith. The epigraph to Cone’s chapter on revolutionary violence in Black Theology and Black Power is taken from the Colombian priest, guerilla fighter, and (according to many) martyr Camilo Torres. Father Torres lived a life that reflected what he wrote in his “Message to Christians”: “revolution is not only permissible but obligatory for those Christians who see it as the only effective and far-reaching way to make the love of all people a reality.” Torres did not hold back from critiquing the institutional church for its complacency in this regard, eventually choosing to forgo his duties as a priest in order to join revolutionary fighters in the mountains of Colombia. “I have given up the duties and privileges of the clergy,” Torres wrote, “but I have not ceased to be a priest. I believe that I have given myself to the revolution out of love for my fellow man. I have ceased to say Mass to practice love for my fellow man in the temporal, economic, 6  A few years after writing this, in a 1973 essay entitled “Black Theology on Revolution, Violence, and Reconciliation,” Cone backs away from his prediction and from his endorsement of revolutionary violence, while retaining his critique of the pervasive, systematic violence of white supremacy. One of the interesting things that comes out of putting liberation theology in dialogue with insurrectionist ethics is to raise the question anew of what means are justified (including violence) in liberationist struggle, and whether Cone was right to retract his endorsement of insurrection.

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and social spheres. When my fellow man has nothing against me, when he has carried out the revolution, then I will return to offering Mass, God permitting” (Torres and Gerassi 1971, 368). Significant for my argument here, Torres provides an example of one who articulates a vision for liberation in the temporal, economic, and social sphere of revolutionary Colombia: “Revolution is…the way to obtain a government that will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and teach the unschooled. Revolution will produce a government that carries out works of charity, of love for one’s fellows—not for only a few but for the majority of our fellow men. That is why revolution is not only permissible but obligatory for those Christians who see it as the only effective and far-reaching way to make the love of all people a reality” (Ibid). Torres was not alone; there are numerous other examples of priests and other clergy supporting and even taking up arms in the revolutionary fighting in Central America in the 1970s and 80s. Gaspar Lavinia, a Nicaraguan priest who expressed solidarity for and eventually joined the Sandinista rebellion in 1978, wrote of his support for their insurrection: “I do this because it is a just war, a war which the Holy Gospels call good and in my conscience as a Christian it is good. I do this because it represents a struggle against conditions that are hateful to the Lord, Our God. I do this because the documents of Medellin, written by the Bishops of Latin America, taught [that] Revolutionary insurrection can be legitimate in the case of prolonged tyranny which gravely affects the fundamental rights of persons and endangers the common good of the country.”7 Even the ostensibly secular, communist Sandinista Rebellion counted priests amongst its numbers! Insofar as liberation theology commits Christians to revolutionary praxis—even to the point of violent resistance—there is an obvious harmony between insurrectionist ethics and this theological vision. Short of revolutionary struggle, however, liberatory religious praxis takes a variety of forms, including the decolonization of liturgical practices, nonviolent resistance, even, in the words of Daniel Bell, the “refusal to cease suffering” (Bell 2006). The character traits associated with the insurrectionist ethos inform not only the reinterpretation of salvation history, but every aspect of Christian religious praxis for the liberationist.

7  Lavinia’s comments were published in Blase Bonpane, Guerillas of Peace: Liberation Theology and the Central American Revolution (Boston: South End Press, 1985), pp. 48–54.

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I would also argue that insurrectionist ethics is an important and useful conceptual apparatus for framing, encouraging, and justifying revolutionary praxis within Christian churches today. The insurrectionist ethos also need not be confined to churches filled with black and brown bodies; it is, in fact, much more needed in white churches in America, where White Supremacy and White Nationalism are reinforced through the uniquely American form of modern day “imperial theology.”8

On the Religious Aspect of Insurrectionist Ethics Harris insists that insurrection must be grounded upon a robust but ultimately naturalistic conception of personhood, one that is prima facie actionable. In his essay “Dignity and Subjection,” Harris lays out the basis of personhood in terms of dignity, which he seeks to wrestle back from the Kantian idealists and understand as the condition for the possibility not merely of rational moral agency, but of well-being in the fullest sense. “Dignity,” Harris writes, “exists when there are conditions that make possible feelings of self-worth, high aspirations and viable expectations” (Harris 2020, 157). Harris describes dignity as an “inalienable sortal good,” an affordance for persons that can take a variety of forms, any of which can be judged on the basis of the degree to which they eschew subjection and enable full and complete agency (i.e. liberation). If, as Harris argues, securing the dignity of the oppressed constitutes the raison d’etre of insurrectionist ethics (even to the point of violent revolt), and we must consider dignity in terms of its manifestation as affordances for effective agency (rather than as an inherent or intrinsic quality given to persons), insurrectionist ethics begins to sound a good deal like pragmatist ethics. In its concrete manifestations as material, socio-cultural, and other naturalized sorts of affordances, dignity becomes a concrete “end in view” guiding the particular struggle of an oppressed group, one useful for marshalling an adversarial community in solidarity with one another and against their oppressors. But there is one crucial distinction Harris wishes to draw between his view and that of pragmatist ethics. In his essay “Insurrectionist Ethics,” Harris points out that for the pragmatists, ethical deliberation is understood in purely instrumentalist terms as a “method of intelligence” 8  See Kristin Kobes du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (NY: Norton and Norton, 2020).

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brought to bear on social problems. In and of itself, however, such a method lacks a firm basis for identifying the wretchedness of slavery or the injustice of racism as a problem. The kind of “social engineering” pragmatists argue for can be and, indeed, historically has been used precisely to strengthen racist social institutions. Moreover, pragmatists’ skepticism of absolutizing categories makes it difficult to imagine an absolute moral demand for insurrection. Without some drive to act on behalf of “the wretched” of society, pragmatism’s “method of intelligence” is ethically fruitless: “Is there any reason to suppose that the method of intelligence would incline anyone to be motivated to seek the abolition of slavery through insurrection or seek the end of servitude, if it required a commitment to an ontological or an heuristic category (i.e., a moral commitment to a group of strangers)?” (Harris 2020, 186) Pragmatism’s “penchant for prudence and dialogue” (ibid) leaves one wanting an absolute duty to insurrect. Instead, Harris argues for the necessity of “representative heuristics,” categories like “the wretched” that may have a quasi-ontological foundation that, in turn, come with certain demands of other persons. These representative categories are constituted aesthetically in the expression of the lived experience of indignity; one wonders, however, how such representative heuristics constitute the basis for a moral demand any more than any other kind of pragmatic “end-in-­ view” might. Harris upholds the virtues of tenacity, irreverence, passion, and enmity as the underappreciated source of insurrectionist energies. But why these virtues? Because they are pragmatic means to the insurrectionist’s anti-­ majoritarian ends. Similarly, to say that dignity and honor are of value as means of socio-cultural adaptation, estimated in terms of their contribution to persons’ material and social well-being, seems to put them on the same level as other similarly invaluable affordances for adaptation (like a well-built house, or a supercomputer). So what makes dignity so special, then? To answer this question would require providing some compelling foundation for the duty to insurrect. Harris does not think it necessary to go beyond the aesthetic, emotional, embodied appeal of experiencing the suffering of necro-being. The prima facie nature of personhood, he holds, indicates the value of dignity as the condition for the possibility of viable agency and human well-being. Unlike the pragmatist, who would conceive of dignity as a conceptual means to solving a social problem, dignity motivates action, Harris claims, that will likely lead to unfavorable

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consequences and will not resolve any indeterminacy (at least in the near term). But where does the weight of this version of personhood come from, such that it may carry the insurrectionist into and through the revolutionary moment? Harris asserts that it is through a certain moral sensibility to the wretched conditions of necro-being—but how does that rise to the level of insurrectionist action? Is an aesthetic appreciation for wretchedness enough to actually motivate, even mandate, an overturning of stable (albeit oppressive) social arrangements? If it is, then it would seem that such a compelling experience could only accurately be described as “religious.” Harris’s descriptions of the effect of recognizing dignity on the insurrectionist bear a striking resemblance to the way Rudolf Otto describes the “numinous” as the object of religious experience in The Idea of the Holy (1926). Awe-inspiring, fear-inducing, and yet urgently compelling all at once, experiences of the numinous are, in Otto’s words, of something “wholly other,” which, in turn, compels one to “live otherwise.” If we take the apprehension of “dignity” to be something akin to a religious experience, the logic of insurrectionist ethics follows straightforwardly the logic of religious commitment. As Paul Tillich asserted in Dynamics of Faith (2001), religion provides that domain of existential significance wherein lays our ultimate concern. Put another way, religious foundations emerge as meaning-making structures necessary for the complete integration of the self and its attendant relations.9 When we are talking about religion, we are talking about a dimension of experience that is vital to the fullest realization of life—what must be, so that we may be. This, I believe, is what Harris is getting at with his articulation of dignity; if the cause of the insurrectionist is to rise to the level of “ultimate concern,” it seems evident that the ethos that pursues these ends be most accurately described as “religious.” Why, then, insist upon calling this dimension “religious”? McBride insists that insurrectionist ethics operate in a “radically contingent, amoral universe, a feral world still in the making, without the three grey goddesses (the Fates), without one immanent cosmic telos, without Atman or Being revealing Itself to itself, without guaranteed redemption” (McBride 2021, 24). The danger here seems to be either ethical quietism (leaving the uplift of the oppressed to some divine “Other” and/or explaining 9

 See Shepherd, Challenging the New Atheism (Routledge, 2020), pp. 162ff.

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away persistent suffering with a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ supernatural reward in the afterlife), or nihilism. The historical record of insurrections is mostly a record of failure: tragic, often brutal failure. To claim the inevitability of victory “in the end” seems, at best, disingenuous, and at worst, hopelessly naïve. Yet the religious aspect of life is precisely about that which compels us without ever admitting of our fully grasping it. The function of theology (and similar religious epistemic programs) is precisely to elaborate the basis for personhood in a way that provides a reasonable framework within which actions become intelligible, and disputes can be adjudicated. For insurrectionist philosophy, a philosophy born of struggle, the role of philosophy is to operate with a different interpretation of what is “reasonable”—an interpretation that, from the perspective of the status quo is viewed as radical and subversive. To persist in this ethos demands persistence and effort that can most accurately be described as “zealous.” Insofar as the insurrectionist is a “zealot for liberation,” one’s character is wrapped up in a praxis that, again, can most accurately be called “religious.”

“Theologizing” Insurrection Theology, as one form of intellectual expression of the religious dimension, establishes a baseline upon which the contingency of experience can be weighed against fixed interpretations of what was, is, and will be. But it is also worth noting that theological activity, even as it operates in the language of absolutes, is itself a finite and revisable practice. The historical emergence of theology of liberation in a particular historical milieu is evidence enough of this; that liberation theology continues to develop as an account of God’s preferential option for the poor in history further reveals a fuller picture of a moral universe that is, indeed, still unfinished. In Prophetic Rage: A Postcolonial Theology of Liberation, Johnny Bernard Hill articulates the project of liberation theology in the twenty-first century as “Forging a new theological vision that is inclusive, multidimensional, yet grounded in the particularity of people’s contextual experience.” (2013, 3). Hill argues that critics of the injustice and oppressiveness of modern globalized capitalism run the risk of themselves being consumed by the very nihilism they decry in the techno-saturated twenty-first century. “There is a dangerously deceptive quality of the struggle for justice in today’s post-Katrina, post-9/11 world where human suffering is hidden behind the veil of capitalistic desire, consumption, infotainment

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culture, and technological advances” (10). “The only appropriate, and possibly reasonable, response is prophetic rage,” Hill concludes: “…the kind of indignation that insists on a process of prophetic action, transformation, truth-telling, and courageous risk-taking for the present moment.” At the same time, Hill acknowledges that “If black theology, in its current state, is not dead, it is certainly on life support.” Black theology, he insists, was “one of the most powerful theological inventions of the twentieth century,” but because it remained situated in the academy (and focused primarily upon conversation with other forms of mainstream twentieth century theology, especially neo-orthodoxy), it never became fully embedded in the black church as a “movement” with “the drumbeat of prophetic zeal” (20). The time is ripe, however, for black theology to breach the walls of academe and do that work more consciously on the ground. “Cultivating communities of resistance, rooted in a deep sense of shared identity, is essential to the task of liberation and casting alternative visions of the world.” This is key to “developing a postcolonial theology of liberation” (129) and, by extension, fomenting social change through orthopraxy. The leveling effect of modernity was to reduce all things to a singular realm: it was to remove the theological superstructure of society and replace it with a secular infrastructure of pseudo-religious spirituality that only masquerades as piety, even as it appropriates the worst tendencies of capitalism and globalism. Bell argues that liberation theology’s strength is its positive ecclesiology, which pushes back against this leveling to assert the existence and persistence of a church that will recognize the practice of faith as intrinsically—instead of derivatively— social, political, economic. It will begin by conceiving of Christianity not as the apolitical custodian of abstract moral values like ‘love’ that have to be translated into politics but, rather, as a social, political, economic formation (an ensemble of technologies of desire) vying with other formations (technologies of desire) on a single field of lived experience… This ecclesiology will recognize the Church as an ‘uncivil society,’ a society that does not heed the siren call of state-power, a society that refuses the invitation to be another interest group in civil society…[and] will avoid the privatizing, de-­ politicizing acids of modernity and recognize the Church…as a public in its own right [sui generis]. (Bell 2006, 72)

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What unites liberation theology with insurrectionist ethics is this “uncivil” sociality that stands firmly on the side of the wretched and dispossessed in militating for liberation. As Daniel Izuzquiza has pointed out, in addition to liberation theology’s methodological focus on praxis and theological focus upon the God of the oppressed, a “theology of martyrdom” is also a critical contribution. Martyrs can refer to figures like Camilo Torres or Oscar Romero, but also “the thousands of anonymous martyrs killed for the sheer fact that they are poor” (Izuzquiza 2009, 12). Even in pointing this out, however, Izuzquiza warns that “A theology of martyrdom should carefully avoid an exaltation of violence,” as this is mistaking the significance of martyrdom in the victimization and suffering of the martyr, rather than in the exaltation of their life’s significance in the light of God (Ibid., 13). This, too, is consistent with the necessity in insurrectionist ethics not to get too wedded to violence as the only example of insurrectionist praxis. Indeed, the critical pragmatism of insurrectionist ethics admits of a multitude of possible expressions of an insurrectionist ethos in particular situations.10 The immanent critique of the church by liberationists is also consistent with the skepticism of insurrectionists toward the tendency of Christianity to uphold status quo oppressions. But ultimately, the lingering challenge for insurrectionist ethics is what is asserted as its most basic feature: namely, the sufficiently thick conception of personhood that warrants a duty to engage in revolutionary action. I believe that such a conception, if it is to carry the weight of ultimacy, should be considered religious, and not merely by coincidence. In the end, the religious aspect of experience is that which drives our most profound desire for wholeness and integrity— the viable agency and lofty aspiration that can only come with the affordance of dignity. Such an affordance is not coincidentally religious; it is definitively so.

On Insurrectionist Theology of Liberation In Longing for Running Water, Yvonne Gebara is critical of “first wave” Latin American theologians for their adhesion to traditional theological methodologies and ideological imports from Europe. Even as theologians refocused their efforts on the fundamental issue of the plight of the poor, Gebara writes, “Liberation theology did not in reality propose a new  See McBride (2021, 53ff).

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epistemology. All it did was to bring some aspects of the epistemology that characterizes the modern era into a theological perspective that sought the integral liberation of the Latin American poor” (Gebara 1999, 45). Gebara points out that while there is merit to many of the ethical “upshots” of liberation theology, they are largely born of doctrinal ­ Thomistic/ Augustinian views of God’s life and human life that are often disconnected with the lived experience of the poor and marginalized. Gebara’s critique is echoed in critiques of the “first wave” of Black Liberation theology as well. Hill, in Prophetic Rage, points out Cone initially responded to and adopted neo-orthodox and Barthian categories to articulate a theology of black oppression. “Black theology became institutionalized” in justificatory discourses with Euro-American interlocutors, and was “in some sense cut off and alienated from the masses of poor black people and ghettos in urban centers around the world. Black theology, instead of speaking to, with, and for black people, became preoccupied with legitimization and the concerns of methodology” (Hill 2013, 28). Gebara and Hill agree that the conceptual framework in which liberation theology was first presented was inconsistent with its goal of inspiring and motivating liberatory praxis as the fundamental duty for Christian ethics. In spite of its provocative and revolutionary message, and owing to its development via institutions academic institutions like Union Theological Seminary, as well as working groups of Latin American priests, liberation theology across the Americas was early and often in need of correction and redirection back to its roots. Gebara proposes adopting an ecofeminist perspective that makes the plight of the oppressed and marginalized “our own” (Gebara 1999, 49). Hill advocates regaining a sense of black liberation theology’s “prophetic rage,” which he describes as “a comprehensive, holistic (mind/body) perspective that draws on the collective wisdom, strength, resilience, and faith of the biblical prophetic tradition, the prophetic voices throughout history, and the narratives of enslaved Africans who faced down the dogs of meaninglessness and suffering through a militant determination to be free, human, and dignified agents of their own existence” (Hill 2013, 47–48). This sounds to me an awful lot like insurrectionist ethics—actually, it sounds to me like the proposal of an insurrectionist theology, an understanding of God that does not merely put God on the side of the oppressed in their oppression, but understands God to be on the side of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation. Insofar as the insurrectionist ethos demands

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“a willingness to disrupt stable social arrangements” that deny the pragmatic good of dignity to human persons, insurrectionist theology would not shy away from claiming the revolutionary activity of God on behalf of the oppressed, and the moral demand for faithful Christians to join in these endeavors. Importantly, insurrectionist theology would employ concepts and categories that are not derivative from doctrinal positions, but rather that come directly out of the history of resistance to oppression that is the experiential basis for insurrectionist ethics. In any discussion of insurrectionist ethics, the elephant in the room is the question of violence—and so, too, with any talk of “revolutionary” or “radical” Christianity. As was pointed out above, early on Cone was willing to endorse black Americans engaging in violence, though he later moved away from this position. Hill, in his attempt to recapture of the spirit of black theology with “prophetic rage,” follows Cone in acknowledging the thoroughgoing presence of violence in the oppression faced by black Americans. However, Hill argues that insurrectionist violence would only beget more violence. “Empire and cultures of violence know what it means to respond to violent acts of aggression, but the unequivocal march of nonviolence is both politically and spiritually debilitating” (Hill 2013, 52). Nonviolence, Hill maintains, expresses the “alternative vision of peace” of Jesus Christ that, under conditions of empire, can have a transformative spiritual and political effect.11 Insurrectionist ethics surely doesn’t deny the effectiveness of nonviolence; in fact, one of the character traits of the insurrectionist that is most valuable is the strategic sensibility to meet oppression with effective resistance. Insurrectionist theology must likewise be sufficiently pragmatic in its ethical prescriptions. For this reason, it is not inaccurate to claim Martin Luther King Jr. for the canon of Insurrectionist Theology, even as one could claim Nat Turner, Henry Highland Garnet, Malcolm X, Fr. Camilo Torres, Fr. Gaspar Lavinia, or any of the 920 clergymen who co-signed a statement entitled “Latin America: Lands of Violence” in June, 1968.12

11  In a similar vein, Izuzquiza argues that liberation theology be committed to a “real option for the poor that assumes a kenotic solidarity embodied in nonviolence” (p. 18). 12  “We, ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ…cannot condemn an oppressed people when it finds itself obliged to use force to liberate itself; otherwise, we would commit a new injustice upon the people…We believe it is not the business of the ecclesiastical hierarchy as such to determine the technical means by which a temporal problem is to be solved most efficiently and effectively. But it must also not try to hamper men, Christian or not, from attaining their most ample freedom, in accord with the evangelical principles of fraternity and justice…[through the] just violence of the oppressed, who find themselves forced to use it to gain their liberation.” (Qtd. in Torres and Gerassi 1971, 442–446).

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Context is critical here. As Lionel McPherson points out in his essay “The Cost of Violence,” King’s decision in favor of nonviolent direct action tactics in the civil rights struggle may have been born out of a “pragmatic skepticism about the utility of political violence” more than anything else (McPherson 2018, 266). Likewise, the decision of some Latin American priests to join violent insurrections was born of the particular conditions on the ground at the time. Insurrectionist ethics does not imply a demand for violence in all cases; its only demand is results—the proof is in the liberation. Insofar as Christian nonviolence can disrupt systems of oppression and achieve the goal of securing human dignity, it is a worthy strategy. At the same time, violence cannot be excluded as a possible strategy when conditions are such that non-violent measures will not prove effective. This points to an underexplored dimension of insurrectionist ethics: namely, its intersection with Just War Theory [JWT]. Today JWT is primarily discussed in the context of conventional warfare between states; however, it was originally conceived as a critical conceptual framework to define the limits of violence allowable to Christians under conditions of empire (see Meagher 2014, esp. chs. 4–5). For most of history, JWT was tied to doctrinal Thomistic/Augustinian theology…but what if it was, in the words of Gustavo Gutierrez, “reread from the side of the poor”? (1983, 201) This would seem like an important dimension in the development of a full-blown insurrectionist theology, insofar as it would provide a rationale for the insurrectionist Christian’s openness to strategies of violence on behalf of the oppressed.13

13  In Ethics of Insurgency (2015), Michael Gross gestures in this direction. There he argues that JWT can be used to delineate the morality of violence in the context of guerilla warfare (and, presumably, insurrections as well). Gross’s project focuses on assessing the morality of specific tactics guerilla fighters employed from the perspective of contemporary JWT; needless to say, the theology of liberation figures little in this work. Nevertheless, this opens up an interesting avenue of inquiry into the nature of religious justifications of revolutionary violence.

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Conclusion In this chapter, I have considered the prophetic roots of insurrectionist ethics in a few of the “proto-liberation” theologians of the nineteenth century, and argued that the coincidence of insurrectionist ethics and liberation theology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is not only interesting, but significant. The insurrectionist ethos, marked as it is by subversive virtues like guile and irreverence, would appear on its face to be the mirror image of the religious ethos. But when religion is “reread from the side of the poor,” as in liberation theology, adopting these virtues and engaging in strategies to subvert the reigning social order becomes a matter of “ultimate concern.” As Hill and Bell point out, it is long past time to cease treating liberation theology primarily as a novel scholarly position to be debated in seminaries and university religion departments. Reading liberation theology through the lens of insurrectionist ethics returns this discourse to its roots in lived experience and revolutionary social programs. Moreover, such a reading highlights the stratagems and virtues already expounded in liberation theology that are opposed to the religious status quo (particularly among Christians in America) and makes the ethical awareness of wretchedness the very heart of the faith. Taking the practical consequences of this newfound ethical awareness seriously demands of any Christian with eyes to see and ears to hear a radical rethinking of what it means to be “religious.” While many eschew this identity, insisting instead on the inherent secularity of (post)modern society (and, consequently, the moral project of realizing full personhood), I insist that religion is not done with humanity. So, whether it be a thin, naturalistic philosophy of religion (which I expect most insurrectionists would abide), or a more robust framework (as in liberation theology), insurrectionist ethics should not be thought without this religious dimension.

References Bell, Daniel. 2006. Liberation Theology After the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering. Routledge. Blight, David W. 2018. Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. First Simon & Schuster hardcovered. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Bonpane, Blase. 1985. Guerillas of Peace: Liberation Theology and the Central American Revolution. South End Press. Carter, Jacoby Adeshei. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 49 (1): 54–73. Cone, James H. 1973. Black Theology on Revolution, Violence and Reconciliation. Dialog 12 (1): 127–133. ———. 1997 [1975]. God of the Oppressed. Orbis Books. ———. 2019. Black Theology and Black Power. Orbis Books. Cooper, Valerie. 2011. Word Like Fire: Maria Stewart, the Bible, and the Rights of African Americans. University of Virginia Press. Cox, Harvey, ed. 1967. The Church Amid Revolution. The Association Press. Douglass, Frederick. 1852. Oration Delivered in Corinthian Hall. Lee, Mann & Company. Garnet, Henry Highland, and Joel Schor. 1977. Henry Highland Garnet: A Voice of Black Radicalism in the Nineteenth Century. Greenwood Press. Gebara, Ivone. 1999. Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Fortress Press. Green, Emma. 2021. A Christian Insurrection: Many of Those Who Mobbed the Capitol on Wednesday Claimed to be Enacting God’s Will. The Atlantic, January 8. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/evangelicals-­ catholics-­jericho-­march-­capitol/617591/. Accessed 22 February 2021. Gross, Michael L. 2015. The Ethics of Insurgency: A Critical Guide to Just Guerrilla Warfare. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Gutierrez, Gustavo. 1973. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation. Orbis Books. ———. 1983. The Power of the Power in History: Selected Writings. Orbis Books. Harris, Leonard. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and Liberation. Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 49 (1): 93–111. ———. 2020. A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader. Bloomsbury Publishing. Hill, Johnny Bernard. 2013. Prophetic Rage: A Postcolonial Theology of Liberation. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Izuzquiza, Daniel. 2009. Rooted in Jesus Christ: Toward a Radical Ecclesiology. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1996. Basic Philosophical Writings. Edited by Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi. Indiana University Press. McBride, Lee A., III. 2017. Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, 225–234. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2021. Ethics and Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing.

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McPherson, Lionel K. 2018. 12. The Costs of Violence: Militarism, Geopolitics, and Accountability. In To Shape a New World, 253–266. Harvard University Press. Meagher, Robert E. 2014. Killing From the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War. Cascade Books. Otto, Rudolf. 1926. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational. H. Milford, Oxford University Press. Scriven, Darrel. 2003. A Dealer of Old Clothes: Philosophical Conversations with David Walker. Lexington Books. Shepherd, Aaron Pratt. 2020. Challenging the New Atheism: Pragmatic Confrontations in the Philosophy of Religion. Routledge. Tillich, Paul. 2001. Dynamics of Faith. Zondervan. Torres, Camilo, and John Gerassi. 1971. Revolutionary Priest: The Complete Writings & Messages of Camilo Torres. New York: Random House. Walker, David, and Henry Highland Garnet. 1848. David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of America, with a Brief Sketch of His Life and Also Garnet’s Address to the Slaves of the United States of America. JH Tobbit. https:// gutenberg.org/ebooks/16516. Accessed 12 July 2022. Warnock, Raphael G. 2020. The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness. NYU Press.

CHAPTER 5

Vicente Riva Palacio’s Mexican Insurrectionist Ethics Sergio Armando Gallegos Ordorica

Introduction Though insurrectionist ethics has been amply theorized through both the pioneer work of Leonard Harris (2002) and subsequent work of scholars such as Lee McBride III (2013, 2017, and 2021), Jacoby Carter (2013) and Kristie Dotson (2013), one of the gaps in the current body of scholarly literature on insurrectionist ethics is that it has been primarily focused on US figures such as Henry Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Alain Locke and Angela Davis.1 This circumscribed focus can be misleading since it may suggest that ethical concerns about how to resist systemic racialized 1  This is not because the insurrectionist spirit is a US/North-American phenomenon, but rather because Harris and his students and followers, given their social positions and historical context, initially focused on Alain Locke and various US abolitionists. But Harris allows that the insurrectionist spirit and the rebellious character traits may manifest differently in different contexts or cultures (I thank Lee McBride III for this observation).

S. A. Gallegos Ordorica (*) Department of Philosophy, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_5

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oppression and about how subordinated groups can articulate emancipatory projects are restricted to the US or to Anglophone authors in the Americas. The main purpose of this chapter is to argue that instances of insurrectionist ethics have emerged historically in  locations across the Americas different from the US. Specifically, I want to argue that an insurrectionist ethics is articulated in the work of the Mexican novelist and historian Vicente Riva Palacio (1832–1896), who was the grandson of Vicente Guerrero, an Afro-descendent general in the Mexican Independence War who is nowadays considered as one of the founding fathers of Mexico. Specifically, this chapter aims to offer a detailed analysis of one of the main historical works of Riva Palacio, Mexico a través de los siglos. El virreinato (1889), in which he retraces and examines the development of Mexico during the colonial period, focusing on the slow process of nation-­building that took place. If my reasoning here is correct, the upshot will consist in showing that, in addition to the work done by Harris and by other contemporary US scholars to present and defend an insurrectionist ethics, there are other contributions to insurrectionist ethics that have emerged in different locations and at different time periods across the Americas as a result of the common history of resistance of certain oppressed groups against slavery and colonialism. Here is my strategy. Through a careful textual analysis of Mexico a través de los siglos. El virreinato, I show that Riva Palacio endorses an ethical stance which is attuned to the Mexican context where it emerges and which also possesses all the main features that, according to Harris and McBride III, are characteristic of an insurrectionist ethics. To accomplish this, I first provide a brief in Sect. 2 overview of Riva Palacio’s life and political activities in order to present the historical context in which he penned Mexico a través de los siglos. El virreinato. Having done that, I rehearse in detail in Sect. 3 the central features of an insurrectionist ethics—which include (i) a willingness to defy norms when these norms sanction or perpetuate either oppression or injustice, (ii) a defense of a notion of personhood that motivates action against forms of oppression or injustice, (iii) a selection of certain groups of individuals as representatives of others for the purpose of creating effective social agency and (iv) an approval of certain character traits as valuable when faced with oppression. Subsequently, I turn in Sect. 4 to a close analysis of Riva Palacio’s book (in particular, to the second chapter of the second part) and I show that his exposition of the situation of the different groups that composed the

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population of New Spain at the end of the sixteenth century is structured by an insurrectionist ethics since the four abovementioned features are present in his discussion. Finally, in Sect. 5, I offer a brief conclusion and outline some potential lines of future inquiry.

A Brief Overview of Vicente Riva Palacio’s Life and Political Activities Vicente Riva Palacio was born in 1832 from the union of Mariano Riva Palacio, a prominent lawyer and liberal politician, and Dolores Guerrero, daughter of the Afro-descendant leader Vicente Guerrero. In virtue of the paternal influence that shaped his early years, he studied law, graduated in 1854 and subsequently became immersed in politics, becoming affiliated with the liberal current in Mexico. After having served as congressman in 1856 and 1861, he sided with President Benito Juárez during the French Intervention in Mexico (1862–1867), and he fought as a liberal and republican guerrillero against the puppet emperor Maximilian of Austria, who was imposed by the French in coalition with Mexican conservatives. Subsequently, after the withdrawal of the French invaders and the collapse of the Second Mexican Empire, Riva Palacio continued his political career under the re-established republican government, serving for two terms as Secretary of Fomento (Development) during the presidency of Porfirio Diaz. In parallel to his political career, Riva Palacio pursued also various literary endeavors, authoring several novels and short stories based on his experiences as a soldier during the French Intervention and the access that he had to colonial archives.2 Though he was for a long time a political ally of Porfirio Díaz, Riva Palacio turned against him when Díaz chose as a temporary successor (and placeholder) the general Manuel  González Flores, since Riva Palacio had ambitions of his own. After Riva Palacio mounted political attacks against González Flores in 1882, he was put in prison in 1883 (with the tacit backing of Porfirio Díaz) where he stayed until 1886, when he was banished to Spain. It is during his imprisonment that he penned Mexico a través de los siglos: el Virreinato.

2  All the drafts of Riva Palacio’s literary production (as well as his correspondence, official papers and personal documents) can be found in the Vicente Riva Palacio archive that is currently housed at the University of Texas at Austin. See https://txarchives.org/utlac/finding_aids/00031.xml.

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Given the political and historical context in which Riva Palacio lived (which involved the Mexican-American war during his late teens and then the French intervention in Mexico during his early 30s), Riva Palacio was primarily concerned both in his political activities and his endeavors as a novelist and as a historian to create a solid and  well-defined sense of national identity that he perceived Mexico was still deprived of, despite having achieved independence from Spain in 1821.3 Indeed, for him, one of the main reasons that Mexico lost the Mexican-American war in 1848 and fared initially very poorly against French invaders in the early 1860s was that Mexico was torn apart by linguistic, political, social and racial divisions. As a result of this, a good portion of his work as an historian and novelist is geared towards not only presenting and rehearsing the main events that shaped Mexico during the colonial period, but also articulating a narrative that justified the revolt of all the main oppressed groups that composed the colonial population (i.e., mestizos, Amerindians and blacks) against Spanish domination and that also promoted a sense of a shared Mexican national identity for all these groups based on a common history of resistance to the oppression imposed on them by Spaniards. The history that Riva Palacio produced is, in light of this, a militant project that aims to paint the colonial period as laying down the seeds of a common national identity as well as setting progressively the stage for the emancipatory struggles that swept the country during the second decade of the nineteenth century and for the triumph of the republican forces against the French-backed Mexican conservatives in 1867.4 In fact, for Riva Palacio, the emancipatory struggle against Spain could only succeed once there was a common racial identity that had emerged as he makes clear in the following passage:

3  As some of his commentators such as Clementina Díaz y de Ovando (1985) have noticed, in all his works Riva Palacio was deeply concerned with creating a sense of Mexican identity anchored in republicanism. In this respect, his role is parallel in many respects to that of Giuseppe Mazzini in Italy during the Risorgimento period and to that of Bartolomé Mitre in Argentina during the second half of the nineteenth century. 4  In particular, José Ortiz Monasterio (2004, 203) concedes that, while Riva Palacio attempted to present a more impartial historical narrative than those articulated by previous Mexican historians such as Lucas Alamán (who was deeply conservative) and Carlos Bustamante (who had more liberal inclinations), for him “the defense of the republican system is a non-negotiable principle.”

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All the attempts to achieve independence were unsuccessful until the mixing of races had not produced a new people, exclusively Mexican. What human beings feel, think, believe and desire is a function not only of their individual organisms, but of the race to which they belong. There is, in all human beings, not only an individual idiosyncrasy but a racial idiosyncrasy, like a patina on a canvas that provides a harmonious accord to all the figures, while each one maintains its own color. Each race sees things and human beings through a lens that provides for each one a different hue (…)5

Thus, given this conception of race that Riva Palacio endorses (which has some interesting parallels with the one that José Vasconcelos articulates roughly thirty-six years later in The Cosmic Race), the political project of Riva Palacio can be better understood. Since Mexico had been able at the time that he wrote to become independent from Spain by having established a rudimentary national identity (which was fragile, as the US and French foreign invasions made clear), Riva Palacio then viewed the history that he wrote as contributing to bolster and solidify an emerging sense of national Mexican identity that was based on a mixed-race heritage and was developed against the background of a series of shared struggles by different groups against foreign oppression and imperialistic endeavors (initially imposed by Spain during the colonial period, and then subsequently by the US and France in the nineteenth century). Having provided a brief biographical overview of Riva Palacio’s life and outlined the general aim of his literary and scholarly endeavors, I want to turn now to discuss in more detail some of the central features that characterize an insurrectionist ethics.

Insurrectionist Ethics: Four Central Features According to Harris’ original presentation and discussion of the concept in his early work, insurrectionist ethics revolves around the central claim that (2002, 192) “a philosophy that offers moral intuitions, reasoning 5  Riva Palacio (1889, 471): “Toda tentativa de independencia era infructuosa mientras el cruzamiento de las razas no produjese un pueblo nuevo, exclusivamente mexicano. Los hombres sienten, y piensan, y creen y quieren no sólo según su particular organismo sino según la raza a que pertenecen; hay en el hombre, además de una idiosincrasia particular, una idiosincrasia de raza, como una veladura sobre un cuadro que da una entonación armónica a todas las figuras, conservando cada una de ellas, sin embargo, su propio colorido; cada raza ve los hombres y las cosas a través de un cristal que tiene para cada una de ellas diferente matiz (…)”

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strategies, motivations and examples of just moral actions but falls short of requiring that we have a moral duty to support or engage in slave insurrections is morally defective.”6 Taking as foundational the moral demand to revolt against all forms of slavery (or, at least, to assist those who partake in slave insurrections), Harris then goes on to suggest through a careful analysis and discussion of the words and deeds of figures such as David Walker, Maria Stewart, Henry Thoreau and Lydia Child that the fundamental moral demand that underpins an insurrectionist ethics is usually manifested in four ways or, putting things in a slightly different way, that four traits or features typically characterize an insurrectionist ethics. For instance, when Harris discusses the case of Thoreau, he stresses that Thoreau heeded the fundamental moral demand of insurrectionist ethics by deliberately violating or refusing to obey laws that he deemed unjust as they sanctioned or perpetuated oppression and injustice (e.g., by refusing to pay poll taxes that supported the Mexican-American war and slavery). In virtue of this, for Harris (2002, 195), one of the most important features of insurrectionist ethics, which appears quite clearly in the case of Thoreau, is “a willingness to defy convention, popular preferences and the instrumentality of law by sanctioning the use of civilian violence against reigning authority” when convention, popular preferences and the law help maintain an oppressive and unjust status quo. This willingness to defy oppressive conventions and to break unjust rules does not solely boil down to the use of physical force but it may express itself, as McBride III (2017, 227) emphasizes, in different ways such as “satirical publications, irreverent protest, civil disobedience [or] subterfuge.” In addition to a readiness to violate norms and social conventions when those support or help maintain conditions of injustice and oppression, another way in which the core moral demand of insurrectionist ethics is manifested according to Harris is in the development and the embrace of a conception of personhood that motivates actions against injustice. In particular, Harris notices that, in the case of a deeply engaged ethical insurrectionist such as Lydia Child, she endorsed a very wide conception of personhood (which included not only black slaves, but also women, Native people and poor urban whites) that ultimately pushed her to 6  I focus here on the early work of Harris since it is most relevant for my goal, but it is important to notice that Harris has broadened in his later writings (e.g., 2020) the scope of the concept to include racism, immiseration, the robbing of corporeal health and necrobeing (I thank Lee McBride III for this observation).

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undertake a series of actions throughout her life: “after the civil war, Child crusaded for Black suffrage and land redistribution and designed a school reader for emancipated slaves; she campaigned against the dispossession and genocide of Native Americans, publicized the plight of the white urban poor, championed equal rights for women, and worked to promote religious tolerance and respect for non-Christian faiths” (2002, 196). This disposition is also mirrored, according to Harris, by other proponents of an insurrectionist ethics such as David Walker insofar as he endorsed in his Appeal a conception of human personhood that led him to maintain that that racial slavery was the most degrading form of servitude since it turned race into a boundary separating persons from objects.7 A third way in which the fundamental moral demand of insurrectionist ethics is usually carried out consists in the creation and selection of certain groups as representatives of all others for the purposes of creating appropriate conditions for an emancipatory social agency. Indeed, as Harris (2002, 207) stresses, for ethical insurrectionists “commitment to humanity is always commitment to some group of humans first and always requires the use of representative heuristics.” This is due to the fact that, according to Harris (2002, 198), advocates of insurrectionist ethics typically advocate for or support the liberation of certain groups with the goal of making them vanish so that the individuals that compose them would fully integrate on an equal footing a more encompassing human community: “whether insurrectionists see themselves as representing a group that would eventually disappear or whether they see themselves as representing the broad interest of humanity that should be used to end fractured or essentialized local groups, insurrectionists envision a world overcoming the very bounded local identities, categories and kinds that they represent.” In this respect, the example of Maria Stewart, which is mentioned by Harris and discussed in more detail by Carter, is particularly enlightening because, as Carter (2013, 68) clearly observes, “African-Americans have never been a monolithic community, and the division between Northern and Southern Negroes of her day were not lost to Stewart. Yet and still, she understood the necessity of forming strong communal bonds between Blacks in order to effectively resist White oppression.” 7  Harris ultimately wants to dismantle these boundaries. See his discussion on “Tradition and Modernity” (2020), where he argues that, since we will never afford dignity to those on the other side of the barricado, we ought to struggle to dismantle or dissolve these boundaries to create a morality of cultural reciprocity.

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Finally, for Harris, the fundamental moral demand of ethical insurrectionism is also expressed in the high esteem of certain character traits such as guile, cunning and aggressiveness that are developed by certain groups when faced with injustice and oppression, since those traits can be useful when either engaging in insurrectionary behavior or supporting disrupting actions against oppressive norms, policies, and institutions. In particular, Harris (2002, 208) maintains that “the metaphorical reincarnation of Walkerian character traits [is] appealing—tenacity, irreverence, aggressiveness, self-assurance, self-confidence, enmity and passion—because they help make possible the sort of advocacy and authoritarian voices that demand liberation of the enslaved.” Some of these character traits (in particular, irreverence and passion) emerge in prominent ethical insurrectionists such as Thoreau, and they enable him, as McBride III  (2013, 37) points out, to use his literary talent to support the cause of the enslaved by penning blistering satires of the hypocrisy of the well-mannered Christian supporters and enforcers of fugitive slave laws: “In his reform papers, [Thoreau] repeatedly likens genteel America to hell and accuses those people who support the capture, rendition, and enslavement of any human of being minions of the devil.” Keeping these four features in mind, let us turn now to the work of Riva Palacio

The Four Key Features of Insurrectionist Ethics in the Work of Riva Palacio Having rehearsed in detail the features that, according to Harris, McBride III, and Carter, characterize insurrectionist ethics,8 let us consider now specifically in which respects the work of Riva Palacio exemplifies these features. In relation to the willingness to defy norms when these norms help create or maintain instances of oppression or injustice, Riva Palacio makes clear at various points in his work that he admires both individuals and groups that are willing to defy norms when these create and perpetuate forms of oppression and injustice. Let me mention just two examples of this attitude. First, when Riva Palacio recounts the revolts 8  McBride (2021) has noted that, underlying the four features initially highlighted by Harris, there are two important attitudes that advocates of insurrectionist ethics seem to share: (1) the disruption or challenging of racist practices and institutions along with the intervening background assumptions that sustain them and (2) the building and iterative transvaluation of traditions and the shaping of futures to the extent that it is possible.

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of black slaves in the coast of the Gulf of Mexico (particularly, in the mountainous parts of Veracruz), he discusses the key role of Gaspar Yanga, a slave of likely Angolan origin who escaped from bondage, in founding, along with other cimarrones who had fled plantations and mines, the first Black free settlement or palenque in New Spain around 1630.9 In particular, Riva Palacio mentions admiringly how Yanga and his companions, having raided successfully Spanish settlements for years and fought the Spanish military forces deployed against them to a standstill in their mountain stronghold, were able to negotiate their surrender in exchange of their freedom and of their status as vassals entitled to a judge and a priest: (…) and Yanga and his main companions capitulated, offering to surrender all the fugitive slaves and promising to build a village if all were given freedom. This village would be the bulwark and the protection of Spaniards in those mountain ranges, because the blacks committed to not allow that those places would become asylums for fugitive slaves or bandits. They swore to be faithful vassals of the king and requested in exchange a minister of justice and a priest.10

This is particularly striking because the lord-vassal relation involves, as historians have pointed out, a series of mutual obligations between  the parties  involved. Thus, in virtue of this, Riva Palacio  expresses a strong admiration for these maroons who were able to force Spaniards to establish this relation, which involved explicitly  acknowledging the maroons’ humanity. In addition to this example, Riva Palacio also cites approvingly in a further part of the book the actions undertaken by the Yaqui Amerindian leader Lautaro in Sinaloa against the attempts of Spanish conquistadors to take over the lands of the Yaqui: Lautaro not only attempted to promote in his people patriotism and courage, but he also taught them how they should seek cover from gunfire, how to advance or retreat, and which places were more favorable to face the

 For further discussion on the importance of Yanga, see Cruz-Carretero (2005).  Riva Palacio (1889, 550): “(…) Y el Yanga y sus principales compañeros capitularon ofreciendo entregar a todos los esclavos fugitivos y prometiendo fundar un pueblo, si se les daba a todos la libertad. Este pueblo sería el baluarte y la garantía de los españoles en aquellas serranías pues los negros se comprometían a no permitir que aquellos lugares en lo de adelante sirviesen de asilo a esclavos fugitivos o bandoleros: protestaban ser fieles vasallos del rey y pedían un ministro de justicia y un cura de almas (…)” 9

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Spaniards in combat or to block their march and defend themselves from them.11

In virtue of these favorable characterizations of the actions and the characters of Yanga and Lautaro as they resisted attempts to be enslaved or have their lands taken away from them, it is rather clear that Riva Palacio views favorably a willingness of people to defy norms (e.g., by killing Spanish soldiers or encomenderos, plundering plantations or refusing to submit to Spanish domination) when these norms maintain and perpetuate oppression and injustice. Because of this, Riva Palacio’s work adopts an orientation that involves challenging or disrupting racist practices and institutions, as well as the background assumptions that sustain them. Let us turn now to the second key feature of an insurrectionist ethics, which is a defense of a notion of personhood that motivates action against forms of oppression of injustice. In this respect, Riva Palacio seems clearly to endorse a conception of personhood or humanity that includes freedom as a key component. This can be appreciated in a passage where Riva Palacio discusses the attitude of certain Dominican friars (in particular, Bartolomé de las Casas) and praises the stance that they took against Spanish soldiers and encomenderos: From the very first days following the discovery of the Indies by Columbus, the Catholic kings began to dictate laws that would protect the freedom of the Indians and that would secure the humane treatment that they deserved. But all these laws were unsuccessful; greed was more powerful than the law; and particulars interests trumped the dispositions of the monarchs.12

Given this conception of personhood that is intimately connected with freedom and with humane treatment, Riva Palacio then argues that the systematic enslavement of Amerindians and their brutal exploitation at the hands of Spaniards within the encomienda system justified taking 11  Riva Palacio (1889, 560): “Lautaro no sólo procuraba alentar en los suyos el patriotismo y el valor, sino que les enseñaba cómo debían ponerse a cubierto de los fuegos de fusilería, cómo acometer o retirarse, y qué lugares eran más a propósito para presentar combate a los españoles, o impedirles la entrada y defenderse de ellos.” 12  Riva Palacio (1889, 335): “Desde los primeros días del descubrimiento de las Indias por Colón, comenzaron los Reyes Católicos a dictar leyes que protegieran la libertad de los indios, y que aseguraran el humano tratamiento al que eran acreedores; pero aquellas leyes fueron infructuosas: podía más la codicia que el derecho, y el interés particular más que las disposiciones de los monarcas.”

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moral action against this systematic and dehumanizing oppression. In particular, Riva Palacio presents as a commendable example to emulate the actions of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who used his ecclesiastic authority to attempt to force Spanish encomenderos to respect the freedom and humanity of Amerindians: (…) but what made Las Casas the head of those who demanded freedom and good treatment for Indians (…) was the fact he did not limit himself to denounce or complain, but he indicated the remedy. He anathematized the armed Conquest; he used the terrible faculties that he had as a bishop to forbid his clergy to absolve in confession those who had Indian slaves (…) he wanted the world to recognize as a principle of law and as a consequence of Christian religion that the war waged against Amerindians to conquer them was unjust (…)13

As this passage clearly shows, Riva Palacio makes clear that the notion of personhood that Bartolome de Las Casas endorsed (and that he also subscribes to) motivates taking moral actions against systematic forms of oppression.14 In particular, for Riva Palacio, given that Las Casas had a high position within the Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy, one of the best ways in which he could act against the systematic oppression that Amerindians were subject to was by ordering his clergy to refuse to absolve Spanish encomenderos guilty of inhuman abuses against Amerindians. In relation to the third key feature of insurrectionist ethics, which involves the use of a group of individuals as a representative of a larger oppressed population for the purpose of creating social agency geared towards emancipation, Riva Palacio makes clear in a passage where he enumerates the main groups that were part of the Spanish caste system that he views one group as a representative of the whole population of

13  Riva Palacio (1889, 347): “(…) pero lo que convertía a Las Casas en el jefe de todos aquellos que reclamaban libertad y buen trato para los indios (…) era que Las Casas no se limitaba a la denuncia o a la queja; indicaba el remedio, anatematizaba la conquista armada; usaba de las terribles facultades que tenía como obispo para prohibir a su clero que absolviese en el tribunal de la penitencia a los que tuvieran esclavos indios (…) quería hacer que el mundo reconociera como principios del derecho y como consecuencias de la religión cristiana que la guerra que se hacía a los americanos en son de conquista era injusta (…)” 14  This conception of personhood might be restricted to Christians, but it is parallel to the argument that David Walker’s Appeal deploys. Harris wants to broaden the notion of personhood or humanity.

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oppressed castas during colonial times. In order to see this clearly, let us consider the following passage: The son of Spaniard and Indian was called mestizo or coyote. From mestizo and Spaniard, castizo. From castizo and Spaniard, Spaniard. From Spaniard and black, mulatto. From mulatto and Spaniard, morisco. The jump-backward was the one that had black features but was born in a white family. (…) From the union of jump-backward with Indian came the chino. From the chino and mulatta came the lobo. From the lobo and mulatta, the gibaro. From the gibaro and Indian, the albarrazado. From the albarrazado with black, the cambujo. (…) To this long and ridiculous classification, one could add the names of the castes product of the mixes of Chinese and Filipinos with the other races, but these have not reached us, and the names of these mestizos cannot be found in any manuscripts or books.15

What is particularly interesting about this long passage is that, though the term mestizo was originally used to designate just one particular caste (which was comprised by the offspring of Spaniards and Amerindians), Riva Palacio employs it at the end of the passage as a term that encompasses all the other racial mixes in order to create, through the use of a  Riva Palacio (1889, 472): “El hijo de español e india se llamaba mestizo o coyote.  De mestizo y española, castizo.  De castizo con española, español.  De español con negra, mulato.  De mulato con española, morisco.  El salta-atrás era el que tenía caracteres de negro, naciendo de una familia blanca (…)  Del salto-atrás casado con india nacía un hijo al que llamaban chino.  Del chino con una mulata salía el lobo.  Del lobo con mulata, el gíbaro.  Del gíbaro con india, el albarrazado.  De albarrazado con negra, el cambujo (…)  A tan larga y ridícula clasificación pudieran agregarse los nombres de las castas en que se mezclaban los chinos y habitantes de las Filipinas con las otras razas; pero no han llegado hasta nosotros ni se encuentran en los manuscritos ni en los libros los nombres que estos mestizos recibían.” 15

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synecdoche, a common mixed-raced national identity shared by all castes.16 In doing this, he uses the oppression of the mestizos by Spaniards as a way to denounce the oppression of all other mixed-race groups by Spaniards in New Spain, and also as a way to defend the right to autonomy of all these groups from the Spanish crown by appealing the idea of an emerging national mixed-race identity in which all the oppressed groups become progressively amalgamated: The mestizos, like the Indians, could not receive the sacred orders, nor the habits of the lay brothers during the first years of the Spanish domination, even though the friars and the rulers acknowledged that their intelligence was notable and that they great aptitudes for the arts and sciences. The Spaniards (…) viewed the mestizos instinctively with fear, since the understood that these despised men who were shut from all honors and public positions, were the mighty seed of a new people that (…) would eventually acquire the indisputable right to its autonomy and form a new nationality in the territory (…)17

What is particularly remarkable about this passage is that, initially, Riva Palacio establishes a parallel between mestizos and Amerindians, showing that both groups were subject to the same discrimination with respect to their opportunities to be ordained as priests. But subsequently, the mestizos become the focus of Riva Palacio’s discussion, since they come stand for Amerindians. To accomplish this, Riva Palacio employs a form of representative heuristics that relies on the fact that, since mestizos are partially descended from Amerindians, they inherit their intelligence and their 16  For further discussion of this strategy, see Alain Locke (1992) “Modern Race Creeds and Their Fallacies,” in Race Contacts and Interracial Relations, pp.  63–83. In addition, see Harris (1999) “What, then, is Racism?”, in Racism, pp. 437–450 and McBride III (2021), “Evoking Race (to counter race-based oppression), or Adversarial groups as an absolute”, in Ethics and Insurrection, pp. 89–108. Both Harris and McBride III suggest, following Locke, that racial identities might be deployed or utilized, and then discarded. 17  Riva Palacio (1889, 478): “Los mestizos, como los indios, no podían recibir las ordenes sagradas, ni aún el hábito de los legos en los primeros años de la dominación española, aun cuando los frailes y los gobernantes reconocían y confesaban que su inteligencia era notable, y muy grande su aptitud para las ciencias y las artes. Los españoles (…) veían a los mestizos instintivamente con temor, comprendiendo que aquellos hombres tan despreciados y a quienes pretendían cerrar las puertas de los honores y los cargos públicos eran el germen poderoso de un pueblo nuevo sobre la tierra (…) que llegaría a adquirir el indisputable derecho de su autonomía, formando una nueva nacionalidad en el territorio (…)’

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aptitude for the arts and sciences, in addition of inheriting the intelligence and aptitudes of Spaniards. Using this reasoning, Riva Palacio then moves on to argue that the mestizos are “the seed of a mighty new people” which, in virtue of its origins and of its qualities, acquire an “indisputable right to their autonomy”. This right to autonomy, though at first attributed to the mestizos, is supposed to extend later to all  the other socio-racial groups insofar as they become constituents of the Mexican nation, which fuses them all in a single national group. Because of this, Riva Palacio’s work can be seen as illustrating an iterative transvaluation of traditions and practices, since it shows how the colonial practice of limiting the access to priesthood to Spaniards ultimately gave rise to a demand from the lower castes to have access to same rights and privileges that the Spaniards enjoyed. Finally, regarding the fourth central element of an insurrectionist ethics, it is clear that Riva Palacio gives high esteem to certain character traits that emerge in groups when they are faced with debilitating networks of oppression. In particular, Riva Palacio makes patent that, in his view, the colonial caste system imposed by the Spaniards promoted the emergence of diverse character traits in different groups. Riva Palacio’s view is noteworthy because, even though the traits that he ascribes to different socio-­racial  groups in New Spain (in particular, taciturnity, unruliness and cunning) have traditionally been considered as negative features within the Western philosophical tradition, these traits are presented explicitly  as positive character traits that subjugated groups developed in order to resist, as best they could, the systematic oppression that they were subject to. For instance, in the case of Amerindians, blacks and mestizos, Riva Palacio writes the following: Thus, the Indian, vanquished and maltreated, having everything to fear from the Conquistadors, without any hope of salvation other than the one promised by Christian missionaries, became henceforth taciturn, melancholic, somber, silent regarding secrets to the point of perishing before making any revelations, deeply distrustful and superstitious; the blacks, victims of bondage and all of its consequences, (…) turned scheming, unforgiving and always ready to revolt (…) The castas, primarily the mestizos from Spaniard and Indian, became astute, because they understood that only

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through cunning they would be able to forge a path forward in a society composed of two naturally antagonistic races (…)18

As we can appreciate, Riva Palacio clearly considers taciturnity,19 unruliness and astuteness as positive features since they are taken to be moral traits of character that help the various groups that composed the population of New Spain to resist in different ways the systematic oppression that they were subject to at the hands of the Spaniards.

Conclusion Let me conclude. I have argued here that the work of Vicente Riva Palacio (at least In Mexico a traves de los siglos. El virreinato) involves a form of insurrectionist ethics since it displays all the key features that Harris and McBride  III have singled out in their characterization of the notion, including the active disruption and the challenging of racist practices and institutions as well as the background assumptions that support them, and the iterative transvaluation of traditions and the shaping of futures. If Riva Palacio’s work can indeed be seen as presenting a form of insurrectionist ethics that is parallel to the projects articulated by figures such as Thoreau and Douglass in the nineteenth century, two interesting questions arise: Are there other non-US  figures in the Americas (particularly, in the 18  Riva Palacio (1889, 480): “así el indio, vencido, maltratado, teniendo que temerlo todo de los conquistadores, sin más esperanza de redención en el mundo que el milagro del que tanto les hablaban los misioneros cristianos, fue desde entonces taciturno, melancólico, sombrío, reservado en el secreto hasta sufrir los tormentos de la muerte antes que hacer una revelación, y profundamente desconfiado y supersticioso; los negros, victimas de la esclavitud y todas sus consecuencias (…) se conservaban hipócritas, rencorosos y dispuestos a la sublevación. (…) Las castas, principalmente los mestizos de español e india, resultaron astutos, porque comprendieron que solamente a base astucia podrían abrirse paso en aquella sociedad compuesta por dos razas antagonistas por naturaleza (…)” 19  The attribution of taciturnity to Amerindians and its characterization as a positive trait that was exercised to resist oppression traces back to the beginning of the Spanish conquest. Indeed, according to some Spanish chronicles—in particular, that of Francisco López de Gómara (1552), the last Aztec emperor Cuauhtémoc was tortured after the fall of Tenochtitlán by Hernán Cortés to make him reveal the location of the Aztec treasury, but he endured the torment without revealing its location. In virtue of this, taciturnity became associated with Amerindians as a defiant attitude aimed at resisting Spanish oppression, and it was even admired and praised by Anglophone authors such as the US poet Alan Seeger (1916, 29–30) in his poem “The Torture of Cuahutemoc” (I thank Jacoby Carter for pushing me to clarify the role of taciturnity as an insurrectionist trait in the Mexican context).

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Caribbean and in South America) that articulated also in the nineteenth century forms of insurrectionist ethics?20 And, if so, is it possible to try to offer an Inter-American framework to understand how these different projects of insurrectionist ethics emerged and evolved? I intend to address these questions in future work.

References Carter, Jacoby. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 54–73. Cruz-Carretero, Sagrario. 2005. Yanga and the Black Origins of Mexico. The Review of Black Political Economy 33 (1): 73–77. Díaz y de Ovando, Clementina. 1985. Vicente Riva Palacio y la Identidad Nacional. México, DF: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Dotson, Kristie. 2013. Querying Leonard Harris’s Insurrectionist Standards. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 74–92. Harris, Leonard. 1999. What, Then, is Racism? In Racism, ed. Leonard Harris, 437–450. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. ———. 2002. Insurrectionist Ethics. In Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. John Howie, 192–210. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. ———. 2020. Tradition and Modernity: Panopticons and Barricados. In A Philosophy Born of Struggle. The Leonard Harris Reader, ed. Lee McBride, 235–247. New York: Bloomsbury. Locke, Alain. 1992. Race Contacts and Interracial Relations. Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race. Washington, DC: Howard University Press. López de Gómara, Francisco. (1552) 2021. Historia de las Indias. Edited by Monique Mustapha, Louise Bénat-Tachot, Marie Cécile Bénassy-Berling, and Paul Roche. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez. McBride, Lee, III. 2013. Insurrectionist Ethics and Thoreau. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 29–45. ———. 2017. Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, ed. Naomi Zack, 225–234. New  York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2021. Ethics and Insurrection. New York: Bloomsbury.

20  In the case of the Spanish Caribbean, Stephanie Rivera Berruz (2018) has shown that Luisa Capetillo’s radical praxis (which revolves around the emancipatory possibilities of labor empowerment through union organizing, free love and education) embodies a form of insurrectionist ethics.

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Ortiz Monasterio, José. 2004. México eternamente. Vicente Riva Palacio ante la escritura de la Historia. México, DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica/ Instituto Mora. Riva Palacio, Vicente. 1889. México a través de los siglos. El Virreinato. Vol. 2. México: Ballescá Editores. Rivera Berruz, Stephanie. 2018. Writing to be Heard: Recovering the Philosophy of Luisa Capetillo. Essays in Philosophy 19 (1): 1–18. Seeger, Alan. 1916. Poems. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

CHAPTER 6

Resistance and Multiplicity: Insurrectionist Ethics and Afro-Indigenous Acts of Solidarity Andrea J. Pitts

Leonard Harris’ pivotal essay “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology and Pragmatism,” provides a compelling set of standards for American pragmatists to development normative frameworks that uphold the demand that resistance to slavery is morally meritorious. Harris’ argument traces acts of rebellion among African American abolitionists in the antebellum South, as well as acts of opposition to slavery by white abolitionists during that same period. One facet of Harris’ account involves the function of “representative heuristics.” He proposes that insurrectionist acts often involve the utilization of identity categories by insurrectionist agents that the agents themselves seek to overturn. For example, Maria W. Stewart and David Walker, both born free people of color, developed narrative voices that identified their respective goals with the overturning of U.S. racial slavery. These goals entailed the elimination of categories such as “slave,” “slaveholder,” and all other administrative and legal

A. J. Pitts (*) Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_6

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apparatuses that supported the institution of slavery. Specifically, Harris notes that they each harnessed “a sense of identity” or collective “we” in their respective writings that directed their normative demands within a group dynamic that called for the transvaluation and transformation of the extant racial categories that existed during their lifetimes. Thus, taking its direction from references to Black and Indigenous struggles present in Harris’ oeuvre, this chapter turns to politicized acts of resistance among Black and Indigenous communities. More specifically, the essay traces the functions of representative heuristics within solidarity work that enact logics of resistance to both settler colonization and anti-Black racism, among other forms of oppression. Through this analysis, we see that Harris’ views about insurrection and normativity entail that both oppression and resistance are the result of multiplicitous forms of agency. To carry out this analysis, I first turn to the influence of Alain Locke (1885–1954) on Harris’ own writings on race and interracial relations. This brief examination of Locke’s own philosophical positions on forms of interracial and transnational solidarity help shed light on some of Harris’ orientations toward these same issues. Notably, we can find in Harris’ editorial work and writings a trajectory of thinking of forms of revaluation and collective resistance that trace a methodological path similar to that of Locke. This, then, helps foreground the importance of interpreting Harris’ insurrectionist ethics as a call for interracial and transnational solidarity networks among differing social groups by addressing Lockean concepts such as cultural pluralism and value relativism. In the second section of this chapter, I examine Locke and Harris on representative types, and this section creates the scaffolding for the function of multiplicitous logics of resistance among African diasporic and Indigenous peoples in the final section. To conclude, then, I demonstrate how Harris’ account of insurrectionist ethics supports writings on shared struggles among Black and Native communities, and offer this reading to help develop strands of multiplicitous agency that surface through Black, Indigenous, and Afro-­ Indigenous acts of resistance.

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Locke and Harris on Cultural Pluralism and Critical Relativism In a 2017 interview with Azuka Nzegwu published in the Journal on African Philosophy, Harris responds to a question from the interviewer regarding whether and how people of African descent should be guided or shaped by African-derived values. Harris responds in the following way: Like the philosopher Alain Locke I believe that African contributions to the worlds’ intellectual growth is massive and rarely appreciated. Trying to foreground those creations and contributions in every arena is a valuable mission; yet, racial exceptionalism is misguided. There is no world of polylogics—where every race has an authentic moral personality and providence or the nature of history encodes races with a destiny or unique contribution to a mythical transcendental sphere of knowledge. (Nzegwu 2017, 149)

Here, Harris positions his response to Nzegwu’s question through a descriptive alliance with Locke’s work. Notably, this stance regarding a rejection of “polylogics” or sustained, rational explanations for patterned racial contributions is an important feature of Harris’ proposal of what he describes as an “actuarial” account of racism in his later work (Harris 2018a), which I return to below. For our purposes here, however, we can focus on Harris’ attentiveness to Locke’s writings and what Harris notes in the passage above as “racial exceptionalism.” More generally, Harris’ work, as he states throughout this interview and his oeuvre, is deeply influenced by Locke’s philosophical thinking and methodological commitments. In this vein, I suggest we turn here, briefly to Locke’s analysis of race and the relationships between Indigenous and African diasporic peoples to shed further light on Harris’ own commitments to the heterogeneity of oppression and the need for multiplicitous forms of insurrectionist acts. Harris writes in a chapter reflecting on his work on Locke that he “discovered features of Locke’s philosophy, accidently, in the course of research for [his 1983] anthology Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of African American Philosophy from 1917” (Harris 2017, 128). Harris’ anthology was the first edited collection that focused exclusively on the works of African American philosophers. In the research for that book, Harris took note of the immense philosophical scholarship of Locke, an observation which then extended his frustration and curiosity into why Locke had

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virtually no books, analysis, or reception literature to his name within the profession of philosophy. Aside from Locke’s role as the first African American Rhodes Scholar, the first African American to receive a doctorate degree in philosophy from Harvard, and his importance within the context of the Harlem Renaissance, including works on poetry, art, and music, Locke had never been considered a philosopher. Thus, it was Harris’ writings, along with the generation of scholars educated by him and/or collaborating with him, that ushered in Locke’s writings and lifeworks as a significant part of U.S. philosophical history. It is thus an oversimplification to state that Locke has had a significant impact on Harris’ philosophical thinking. However, regarding Locke’s impact on his thinking on the relationships among Afro-diasporic and Indigenous communities, I note here (at least) three specific areas of influence: cultural pluralism and critical relativism, which I address in this section, and representative types, which I address in the following section. Regarding Locke’s work more generally, it is important to note, as Jeffrey C. Stewart has argued, that “Locke can be credited…with removing race from its biological basis and putting it squarely in a cultural foundation” (Stewart 1992, xxv). While prominent anthropologists such as Franz Boas rejected strictly biological or evolutionary justifications for racism in the early twentieth century, Locke, in a series of lectures delivered in 1916 at Howard University, outlined an extensive set of arguments that thoroughly denaturalized race and the production of sociopolitical and economic processes that perpetuated racism (Ibid.). Locke offered an account of racial groups and racism as inherently dynamic and subject to constant change due to shifting cultural and historical exchanges. However, unlike many anthropologists of the era (although similar to W.E.B.  Du Bois’ contributions on the topic), Locke argued that race and racial groupings were important facets of social life for non-dominant groups, and should thus continue to exist, despite their contingent and dynamic statuses. Race is instrumentally important, including racial identifications through art, literature, and other aesthetic means, he contended, to support group cohesion, processes of self-valuation, and the advancement of humankind. Regarding cultural pluralism, Harris notes that often the German-born Jewish philosopher Horace Kallen is credited with developing the notion (Harris and Molesworth 2008, 69; Harris 2017, 125–126). However, Kallen’s own work, as Harris makes clear, comments on the philosopher’s indebtedness to Locke for the critical import and significance of the

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concept of “cultural pluralism” (Ibid). Moreover, Harris notes: “Like Kallen, Locke held cultural pluralism to be a practical model through which congenial relations between conflicting cultural groups could be achieved. But unlike Kallen and other major American philosophers, Locke took substantively into account the implications of his philosophy for an understanding of racial identity and race relations” (Locke 1989, 13–14). In this way, Locke also lived out this form of cultural pluralism, seeking editorial and scholarly projects that studied the differences and common threads among African and African-diasporic communities. In Harris’ framing of Locke’s 1916 lectures, he distills three main points (Harris and Molesworth 2008, 122). The first traces the point above regarding the rejection of any scientific basis for race or racism. The second main point highlights the hybridity and the importance of historical contact among different groupings of people (Ibid). In this sense, Locke maintained that forms of cultural borrowings and exchanges resulted in the differences and valuations of social groups. From this thread, we can work through edited collections like When Peoples Meet: A Study of Race and Culture Contacts (1942) to see, as Harris states, “the book’s overriding argument, namely that civilization had benefited from the cultural contact of neighboring peoples, and in fact there was a ‘close connection between culture contacts and the growth of civilization itself’” (Ibid., 341, quoting Locke and Stern 1942). Moreover, Locke’s essays such as “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy” (1942) and “Values and Imperatives” (1935) demonstrate what Jacoby Adeshei Carter points to as a fundamental rejection of any “absolute” or “totalizing” framings of value within his work (Carter 2012). With respect to pedagogical ends, then, Locke’s work focused on the ability to interpret and consider materials and issues within a rich historical situation that would then illuminate the valuations within those contexts. He considered this a kind of “critical relativism” that would, in his words, “view values relativistically in time perspective, so as to comprehend value change and development, and likewise, to see them in comparative perspective, so as to understand and appreciate value diversity” (Locke 1989 [1950], 273). From this, we can note that Harris’ own editorial and scholarly works also embody the practice of cultural pluralism and critical value relativism. Specifically, the co-edited collection with Anne Waters (Seminole/ Choctaw/Chickasaw/Cherokee) and Scott Pratt, American Philosophies: An Anthology (Harris, Waters, and Pratt 2001) offers an overview of U.S. philosophical contributions from Afro-diasporic, Indigenous, and

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white philosophers across what is today the United States. In particular, the authors include essays and political declarations that span differing cultural and colonial contexts that frame the current existence of the settler colonial U.S. state. For example, the book opens with King Ferdinand of Aragon’s 1493 “Letter to the Taino/Arawak Indians” that was sent with Christopher Columbus on his second trans-Atlantic trip to the Caribbean. The letter was intended to be read to the Taino/Awarak peoples to justify European conquest and their submission to the Catholic church. The book also includes a 1680 letter on the Pueblo revolt, by the then-governor of Santa Fe de New Mexico (a province of New Spain) Don Antonio de Otermin, in which Otermin recounts his failures against an Indigenous uprising. The volume also includes works by Indigenous peoples including Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha (Seneca), Zit Kala Sa (Lakota), Laura Cornelius Kellogg (Oneida), John Wannuaucon Quinney (Mahican), and Luther Standing Bear (Lakota). Alongside these philosophical contributions, the edited collection contains writings by abolitionists such as Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, and Lydia Maria Child, as well as authors important during the post-bellum era such as Anna Julia Cooper and W.E.B.  Du Bois. The book also includes white American women and men, including those of the so-called “Classical Pragmatist” tradition such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, and white women in the U.S. pragmatist tradition such as Suzanne K. Langer and Jane Addams. It is important to note that Anne Waters and Scott Pratt’s contributions to the volume are immense, and their knowledge and expertise in the collection surely helped shape the rich array of primary source materials on Indigenous philosophical issues spanning the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. However, Harris’ own philosophical training and expertise in African American, African, and Africana philosophy demonstrates a crucial collaborative effort that places Africana philosophy in conversation with Indigenous philosophy. In this sense, Harris’ collaborative work with Waters and Pratt in this collection demonstrates a commitment to Lockean values of pluralism within philosophy. Moreover, the volume appears to take up a deep historical contextualism about the need for understanding differing forms of cultural exchange—for example, the success of the Pueblo rebellion against New Spain in the late seventeenth century and its creation of settler anxiety among the administrators of New Spain, or Anna Julia Cooper responding to a white feminist in the 1890s who sought to separate “women’s” oppression from Indigenous and Black

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struggles in “Women versus the Indian.” In this sense, the collection shares with When Peoples Meet, as Harris notes in a 2018 essay, “the sort of cultural pluralism Locke considered crucial for a viable democracy” (Harris 2018b, 4). Further, while the anthology extended Locke’s commitment to the continued need for communal and aesthetic valuations among non-­ dominant racial groups, Harris’ seeks to do the same for philosophy in the United States. We could thus compare the editorial work to that of Locke and Stern in When Peoples Meet to that of the Harris, Waters, and Pratt. The latter establish, within philosophy in the early 2000s, what the former did for race studies in the 1940s, namely, both offer a contextualist and pluralist framing of the contributions of racially distinct groups of peoples. More generally, Harris’ work embodies similar commitments to pluralism and critical relativism. For example, his writings often employ a diasporic approach to thinking of Black struggle. While careful to highlight to distinctiveness of African American thought, he does not subsume or erase the differences among African and Afro-diasporic thinkers. For example, in the interview with Nzegwu, Harris points out that “African American philosophers engage radically different issues than most African philosophers, whether Alain Locke or Angela Davis. Race dominates the Americans and West Indians; almost none have anything to say about creating geographically bounded nations, entitlements to learn or publish in a language besides English, or anything to say about any religion other than Christianity” (Nzegwu 2017, 147). Likewise, in this same interview, Harris refutes views about a common “African mind” or form of knowledge shared by all Black peoples of the continent. He notes in response to Nzegwu’s question regarding the preservation of black knowledge traditions: Preserving intellectual legacies is a constant project involving publication, supporting archives, hosting conferences, and promoting potentially influential books, etc. There is nothing that matches “black knowledge” let alone an epistemological framework that matches black life. There is no “Negro” or “African” mind somehow embedded in competing African traditions and religions, let alone contemporary life. Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo do not share some sort of common African or black ‘knowledge’. Romantic racialism (which says all Africans are authentically African if they share the same set of principles from some illusionary ancient era of undifferentiated life) including some forms of Afrocentricity, are just that, romantic (Ibid., 147–178).

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In this sense, Harris demonstrates a commitment to cultural pluralism that can be traced back to a number of thinkers that he cites as influential on his work, e.g. Locke and Edward W. Blyden (Ibid., 149). However, unlike the Afrocentricity of Blyden, Harris follows Locke’s rejection of any underlying unified African knowledge tradition, all while maintaining a commitment to the critical valuation and importance of African cultures and knowledge traditions for Afro-diasporic communities (Stewart 2018, 375).

Locke and Harris on Representative Types Regarding representative heuristics, the third main theme to which Harris directs Locke’s readers in the 1916 lectures is “that [racial groups and their values] were best understood as represented by a “civilization type” (Ibid.). This term, drawing from the works of Georg Simmel and Alexander Crummell, would refer to a kind of ideal that would arise from the cultural exchanges among differing social races or social groups (Stewart 1992, xxxi). Within this ideal, however, social races and groups could maintain their identifications and cultural specificity—as Locke rejected the assimilation of non-dominant groups under a dominant model (Ibid). “Representative classes” or “representative types” would provide a way to thereby preserve such groups in the face of potential erasure under assimilation. Harris writes in this regard, “Locke believed that group identity was inevitable, and the only way to manage it was to make it possible to have groups offer reciprocal tolerance to each other and for each to encapsulate its values into a representative type” (Harris and Molesworth 2008, 125). This form of representative type seems to play a pivotal role in Harris’ framing of the importance of representative heuristics. While an insurrectionist ethics appears to reframe the focus of Locke’s critical insight regarding group solidarity, Harris continues to explore the need for aesthetic and conceptual representatives of social groups necessary for preserving group cohesion, valuation, and meaning. In particular, Harris’ views on telos, history, and social agency are relevant on this point. He states in “The Horror of Tradition or How to Burn Babylon and Build Benin While Reading A Preface to a Twenty-­ Volume Suicide Note” (1992–93) that he “resonate[s] with the politicized side of [an] invention approach to the history of traditions; it holds, in general, that traditions are historical constructions” (Harris 1992–93, 98). Within this approach, Harris includes the work of V.Y. Mudimbe, a

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Congolese philosopher whose work Harris contrasts with that of Blyden on the role of an underlying telos or structure of history. Notably, Harris writes that Blyden’s Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race has an appeal that V. Y. Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa does not; Blyden provides a sense of the past and a telos for a collective identity that gives cause to a willingness to sacrifice for future generations and defend African peoples against the actual murderous and exploiting Europeans. The coherent social nexus that Blyden provides is primordial and providential; the nexus Mudimbe provides is accidental, contrived, alien, and the consequence of adaptations to force (Ibid., 106). In this sense, Harris notes the tremendous appeal that a providential or historicist view, like that of Blyden provides. Yet, he locates his own position within that of Mudimbe’s (and arguably Locke’s) whereby Living persons in a multiplicity of associations and networks participate in shaping and reshaping their being, individual and social … Persons share in a common nature as transvaluing social agents bonding through fluid forms of social identity (Ibid.). Elsewhere, in another essay examining the role of telos in history through an analysis of Blyden, Harris echoes the point above, stating There is no Blyden-type intrinsic logic of history, one that assures regeneration, redemption, vindication, and self-realization as a function of unchanging natures or an imagined destiny that would be a neat negation of existing miseries and satisfy existing ideals of the good. (Harris 2014, 65)

Thus, Harris’ own writings support a view of history as committed to the struggles and solidarity of African and Afrodiasporic peoples, but honoring these ends through the social agency, pluralism, and creative capacities of these diverse groups. This point, then, reframes Harris’ commitments to what he describes as representative heuristics in “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism” (2002). In that pivotal essay, there are no revolutions or insurrections without representative heuristics, that is, without women who see themselves as representing “women” as an objective category; without persons who see themselves as representing the interests of the poor; without workers who see themselves as the embodiment of meritorious traits; without environmentalists who see themselves as

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pressing for the best interests of all sentient beings by pressing for the interests of environmentalists”. (Harris 2002, 202)

Here, Harris draws from a strand of naturalized epistemology to argue that acting on behalf of some cause involves a form of “representing” that cause. Yet, what is meant by “representing” in this case, specifically for pragmatists, is unclear, and Harris poses such a challenge to his contemporaries. Namely, he appears to be seeking to support the commitment to giving meaning and “cause to a willingness to sacrifice for future generations and defend African peoples” as he stated in his analysis of Blyden nearly a decade earlier. Yet, in this case, Harris’ challenge to pragmatists is to ask them to defend a view that he is aware that someone like Locke and others had already begun to develop in the early twentieth century, a view that has been largely overlooked by white philosophers in the U.S. pragmatist tradition. That is, “representative heuristics” appears as a proposal for pragmatists thinkers in the twenty-first century to develop framings of agency, institutional organization, historiography, and so on that honor the commitments that oppressed peoples have to eradicating the terms and sometimes peoples who are oppressing them. Yet, against figures like Blyden, who argue that such “representatives [are] living vessels, and sacrificial vassals for a future as conceived by the dead or living imaginations,” Harris turns to Lockean notions of instrumentalism, pluralism, and contingency among resistant struggles. In such an account, Locke’s conception of “civilization types,” as a form of “consciousness of kind” or “a sense of kind belonging” whereby individuals consider themselves as members of social groups appears relevant (Harris 1997, 244). Locke, as Harris explains in a 1997 essay, believed that such inclinations for “kind-belonging” or community identity were “healthy, natural, normal, and an instinct that may go astray” (Ibid.). That is, while identifying with one’s race, nation, or class may arise from an inclination, such inclinations are not “intrinsic to a given group” (Ibid., 245). They are, rather, contingent social constructions that arise through cultural exchanges (Ibid.). As Harris puts it: The relationship between a social group and a kind consciousness is thus asymmetrical; the first is contingent on the second but the second is neither contingent nor causal of the first” (Ibid.). In this framing, when consciousness of kind or forms of identification are viewed as “permanent and invariable” this is when such inclinations may, in Harris’ words, “go astray” (Ibid., 244).

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Thus, representative heuristics, when read through this Lockean lens, entails that what is “represented” by insurrectionists agents when acting on behalf of a given social group is not the reification of some naturalized ontology. Social identities are not images or depictions of underlying permanent features or shared characteristics. Rather, as Harris writes in “Insurrectionist Ethics,” representative heuristics is replete with inferential problems … Some of the classical ways that representativeRepresentative heuristics heuristics is used in relation to racial and ethnic stereotyping include metonymic displacement, metaphysical condensation, fetishistic categorizing, and dehistoricizing allegories that strip the racial or ethnic category from being understood as a historically changing group. RepresentativeRepresentative heuristics heuristics is often a way of reifying the subject” Harris, Leonard (Harris 2002, 197). Here, similar to his discussion of the “going astray” of Lockean consciousness of kind, Harris directs our attention to epistemological views regarding group- and individual-identification that can also go astray. However, such forms of thinking are, nonetheless, helpful and thereby “inform [us of] what sorts of categories we live through and how those categories inform our lived experience” (Ibid., 198). This view, then, in the 2002 essay on insurrectionist ethics, includes Locke’s own quest to end “limiting and provincial identities of segregated communities” that would eventually open up to a “broader identity of humanity; a broader identity that would be mediated by local identities with much less meaning and stability than existed in human history” (Ibid.). Accordingly, Harris considers Locke as someone who directly participated within the kind of representative heuristics that he describes, and as such, I propose that we find some of the germinating seeds of this discourse in Harris’ writings on Lockean civilization types and consciousness-of-kind thinking. Notably, Harris’ more recent writings on insurrectionist act likewise support a reading that can be traced back to Lockean notions of pluralism, critical relativism, and representative heuristics. Specifically, Harris’ 2018 essay “Necro-Being: An Actuarial Account of Racism” provides support for a reading of forms of multiplicity within insurrectionist acts. Harris’ views of an “actuarial account of racism” and “necro-being” in particular help frame his earlier insights. First, regarding necro-being, he states: Racism is a form of necro-being: it kills and prevents persons from being born. It is absolute necro-tragedy. There is no redemption for the worst of its victims. Dominant groups acquire longer lives, assets, and high senses of

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self-worth at the cost of the extinction or sustained subordination of the subjugated. Racism kills as a function of the way especially health and wealth benefits occur to the communities for which racists belong through the aegis of fatal inventions of race. Racism is a polymorphous agent of death, premature births, shortened lives, starving children, debilitating theft, abusive larceny, degrading insults, and insulting stereotypes forcibly imposed. Racism persists because it works sufficiently well in an imperfect world to ensure a confluence of benefits, especially the most important benefit— namely, health benefits, for enough people over generations. It effects the preconditions for the possibility of embodied wellbeing. In addition, recursive and compounded benefits allow for sustaining vast differences in life chances. The relationship between dominant and subjected groups is one in which health can be understood as transferred from one to the other. Racism, as polyhedron, is only one variable in a vast range of sometimes ambiguous and multifarious influences of different saliences making necro-­ being. (Harris 2018a, 273–274)

Harris’ statement here that racism is “polymorphous” and a “polyhedron” demonstrate a deep pluralism, not simply about entities like social groups, values, and so forth, but also about the character of the collective social forces that create the tragedy of racism. Throughout the essay, Harris engages a number of prominent theorists of racism, including Charles Mills and Jorge Garcia among others, to argue against any prevailing logic or explanation that can account for the immense misery and violence encompassed within racism. He describes “racism as [a] polyhedron,” as a way to account for the many valences of racism, and to critique any one logic that seeks to unify racism. An actuarial account, by contrast, is not an explanation, but a “description” that offers aesthetic, imaginative, and affective features to poetically render subtlety and nuance to the concept of racism. He writes: An actuarial account, as a descriptive account, foregrounds racism as undue death by providing a way of seeing, portraying, comporting, and depicting vast arrays of race based miseries. The benefit of an actuarial account is that it helps us to see a vast range of miseries in ways that explanations fail to convey (Ibid., 274). In this sense, Harris challenges explanatory accounts that seek to unify the vastness of racism across multiple communities worldwide. On this point, he asks:

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General features of racism do not neatly map to particular conditions. That is one reason why explanations of miseries in radically different societies should vary; a logic fails to make substantive distinction between what life means to different populations even if structures are identical. How can I see the racism that helped kill Tasmanians by 1843 and Tutsis in the Rwandan holocaust in 1994 without assuming that there is a single general cause or identical structure of emotions or forms of production? I could not see the intricacies of the miseries for themselves as themselves if I presume a logical social structure and a well-defined derivation manual that maps particular circumstances or events to the structure. How can I see the racism faced by the Rohingya of Myanmar, particularly when entrapped in Burmese refugee camps caged in animal pens and the racism that is causative of the exceedingly high rate of suicide among African American males in 2017? How can I see the racism that helped kill the Ganga, suppressed indigenous nationalities of South Africa under apartheid, and killed black Americans when ‘black’ is an identity used to help destroy indigenous nationalities, promote modernity (which includes African American culture as a model of modernity often imitated by Africans), and create deep senses of loss?. (Ibid., 278)

Harris appears to express in this passage a deep skepticism about the use of explanatory logics to account for the varied and prevailing presence of racism in its many forms. Likewise, at the close of the paragraph, Harris refers to the “tortured history” of the identity “black” and the “invention” of “Africa” that has erased the ethnic differences and specificity of African and Afrodiasporic peoples around the world. In this, he credits racial identities as productive and value-giving, but not without their own tragic consequences for the formation and existence of vastly distinct peoples. As such, he writes: “There are no innocent historical agents, i.e., there are no identities, modes of consciousness or class formations that function as conduits for the salvation of necro-being” (Ibid., 277). While on the surface Harris may appear far from the seeming optimism of representative heuristics and insurrectionist acts in this essay, he does discuss resistance and responses to racism within the essay. Notably, however, he argues that Responses to structural violence, ranging from marooning to ethnocide, are not a matter of gathering together individual intentions to see how they coalesce into collective intentions that then translate, via some account of reasons or emotions causing behavior, into action … It is hard to think of the persistent struggles against racism as a matter of isolated individual

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e­ xistential beings deciding to feel despised and then cooperating with others to resist racist practices. ‘Being despised’ exists as a social condition—that is, senses of being lowly occur in a context of what one knows or feels what it is to be lowly: loss of face, loss of bodily privacy, and so on. Certainly, the oppressed and oppressors intentionally engage in actions, but the point is that persistent struggles against racism and persistent feelings of being despised under racist regimes can be fruitfully thought of in ways other than segregated individual intentions or intentions coalescing together to form collective intentions. (Ibid., 286)

Thus, the deep pluralism of racism entails a deep multiplicity of responses to it. As such, representative heuristics may still function, as in the formation of maroon communities or revolts, but all such responses are not unequivocally shaping a providentially unified future for all peoples subjugated by racialization. Lastly, it is important to note that Harris concludes the essay with several notes regarding struggle against racism. While he asserts the “myriad of local and international associations of skilled individuals [who] champion the struggle,” he also remarks that “death for racism is the death of the agential efficacy of the raciation; status, wealth, class, and health no longer ‘transferred’” (Ibid., 299). Within these terms, Harris reminds his readers of the multiplicity of struggle against racism, and a potential shared future—created through those actions and not deriving from some underlying causal or historical necessity—that casts the differential distribution of deathliness and life “into the dustbin of absolutely forgotten history” (Ibid.). Accordingly, the challenge from Harris is for us, his readers, to learn from, create, and continue to act in the service of such a collective yet pluralist imagining.

Multiplicitous Resistance among Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous Communities We can thereby begin with what Harris states directly about Indigenous communities. Alongside the editorial work mentioned above, Harris states directly in his 2018 essay “Necro-being: An Actuarial Account of Racism,” that “racism … suppressed indigenous nationalities of South Africa under apartheid, and killed black Americans when ‘black’ is an identity used to help destroy indigenous nationalities, promote modernity (which includes African American culture as a model of modernity often imitated by

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Africans), and create deep senses of loss?” (Harris 2018a, 278). Harris does not offer a direct citation here, but in a statement discussing Black identity, he cites Achille Mbembe’s Critique of Black Reason (2017) and Mudimbe’s The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (1988). He states that “Black identity participates in creating boundaries, cultural impositions, and categories. Necro-being as I conceive it is not made palatable by thinking of African Americans as a population with an exceptional history or teleology” (Harris 2018a, 277). Reading these passages alongside one another, Harris appears to be referring to Mudimbe’s analysis of the colonial impact that the category of race has had on Indigenous peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, Mudimbe and Mbembe both refer to the homogenizing functions of race categories during the colonial conquests across the African continent, and to the forms of justification for violence and cruelty that were enacted through such forms of racialization. In this manner, Mbembe comments on the function of race during the nineteenth century: As a result of colonization, groups of people who did not claim the same origin and who did not share the same language, much less the same religion, were forced to live together in the midst of territorial entities forged by the iron of conquest … This led to the emergence of nationalisms that accorded vital importance to links of blood, family attachments, tribal unity, and the cult of unmixed origin … The politics of race, then, also operated as an instrument for creating internal divisions. In this regard race became a weapon of civil war before it became a weapon of international war”. (Mbembe 2017, 56–58)

Here, Mbembe analyses the divisions created through European colonial territorialization and the imposition of race categories on diverse Indigenous communities across sub-Saharan Africa. Secondly, Harris’ reference to Mudimbe appears to suggest that his comments regarding “when ‘black’ is an identity used to help destroy indigenous nationalities, promote modernity (which includes African American culture as a model of modernity often imitated by Africans)” are in reference to Mudimbe’s critique of Blyden’s support for European colonization. That is, Mudimbe provides a chapter analyzing Blyden’s support for the colonization project within late nineteenth century West Africa. Mudimbe writes:

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Blyden accepts the achievements of colonization under British law and views the British colonial experience as the best model for the promotion of civilization … It is well to keep in mind this general principle: Blyden considers colonization a way of elevating Africans to civilization and thinks that, if possible, this process must be done in English (Mudimbe 1988, 116). On this point, Blyden also supported Black American emigration to the continent in the hopes of furthering the “civilizing” project (Ibid., 117–118). Thus, we can read in Harris’ remarks an implicit invocation of Blyden and other Black intellectuals participating within the American Colonization Society and other forms of racial exceptionalism that distributed conceptions of inferiority and superiority among Black American and Indigenous peoples. On this point, then, we can perhaps imagine Harris’ critique of Blyden’s notion on a divine destiny for African American peoples, and his Lockean rejoinder that such racial exceptionalism is a form of consciousness-of-kind “run astray.” Moreover, as Lee McBride notes in his contribution to the 2013 symposium on Harris’ insurrectionist ethics, Insurrectionist ethics is a corollary of a larger project aimed at universal human liberation. Universal human liberation is concerned with liberating populations from oppressive and debilitating boundaries … Harris outlines those basic liberties—the bare minimum—that all human beings should be afforded; freedoms which should be extended to all human beings universally. Importantly, the focus is on securing these basic liberties universally, rather than establishing the right of a privileged few to accumulate and hoard assets and capital.” (McBride 2013, 31)

Within this purview and the Lockean threads developed above, we can begin to see how the Harris’ insurrectionist ethics is an approach that allows us to work through examples of Afro-Indigenous insurrectionist acts. Importantly, McBride adds several crucial dimensions to interpreting the Harrisian framework of insurrectionist actions. McBride notes four shared features among the representative practitioners that Harris analyzes in his 2002 essay—David Walker, Lydia Maria Child, Maria W. Stewart, and Henry D. Thoreau. The first two features involve the recognition by each of vast social injustices and forms of violence (Ibid., 32). The second feature was that all four persons held a conception of personhood and humanity that demanded action against such injustices (Ibid.). The third

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and fourth conditions, however, are directly relevant to representative heuristics. The third shared feature is that they each acted as advocates of particular oppressed groups, and supported the idea that “individuals or sub-groups within a population represent the whole population” (Ibid.). Within this framing, McBride appears to be sorting out the kind of consciousness of kind within Locke’s writings that functions in Harris’ work. That is, insurrectionist ethics is participating in a consciousness of kind activity whereby individual actors—Walker, Child, Stewart, and Thoreau, for example—become representative types of social groups, including insurrectionist examples within social races such as Black Americans and white Americans. Lastly, McBride’s fourth shared feature is that “The representative insurrectionists [chosen by Harris] gave esteem to character traits not conventionally deemed virtuous. On this view, self-assurance, audacity, aggressiveness, tenacity, passion, enmity, irreverence, and guile can be apt character traits to exhibit, especially when faced with terror, humiliation, and systemic brutality (Ibid., 33). McBride’s interpretation illuminates a broader normative project within Harris’ work that seeks to revalue forms of resistance to oppression within philosophy. Such forms of resistance, both in Harris’ original 2002 articulation of an insurrectionist ethics, as well as his earlier and later works, demonstrate interracial forms of advocacy, solidarity, and coalition building that push beyond the confines of one’s own contingent racial categorization. While not an eliminativist view by any means (see, for example, Harris’ interpretation of Locke on this point in 2018b, 8), his is a view that holds both the importance and contingency of racial group identification, while prioritizing a shared struggle to end all forms of misery, degradation, and deathliness worldwide, even those that may not impact or representatively refer to one’s own social group. With this framing of insurrectionist acts, along with the Lockean threads of critical relativism, cultural pluralism, and representative types that we have explored above, we can turn now to several authors who are also exploring the intricate relationships between Blackness and Indigeneity in the Americas to examine Harris’ approach. First, consider early historical work by Locke’s contemporary, Carter G. Woodson, whose historical corpus Locke describes as “an heroic and constructive accomplishment not merely to the Negro cause but to American history as such” (Locke 1951, 185, quoted in Harris and Molesworth 2008, 371). Under Woodson’s direction, the Journal of Negro History published three articles on African American and Indigenous relations during the years 1929–1933

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(Johnston 1929; Porter 1932, 1933). Moreover, nearly ten years earlier, Woodson published a piece titled “The Relations of Negroes and Indians in Massachusetts” (1920) documenting intermarriages and cultural exchanges among African American and Native American peoples in New England (Woodson 1920). W.E.B. Du Bois also wrote for The Crisis in 1930 an article on the intermarriages and interrelations among Indigenous and Black American communities in Virginia (Du Bois 1930). One prominent challenge within these early writings by African Americans was to confront Jim Crow-era segregationist policies that codified “racial purity” in social norms and the law (through legislation such as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924), as well as the prominent theoretical views at the time that races were the result of distinct biological types (Lovett 2002, 207–209). In this vein, Laura Lovett (2002) reads examples of nineteenth and early twentieth century African American interests in Indigenous communities and cultures of the settler United States, as well as the practice of claiming Indigenous ancestry by African Americans during this period as a response to segregationist and racial purity narratives prominent during the era. Specifically, her essay turns to the 1880s formation of the “Mardi Gras Indians,” groups of local African American and Creole residents of New Orleans who dress in handmade ceremonial adornments largely in the style of Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Lovett, as well as other scholars studying the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians, note that one of the founding members of these performance groups, Becate Baptiste Eugene, who identified as being of Choctaw descent, was likely also influenced by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show that traveled through New Orleans around the same time (Ibid., 200; Smith 1994). Lovett, Rayna Green (1988), and others note that such a tradition involves “playing Indian” and drawing on tropes of the “noble savage” that have been common stereotypes impacting Indigenous communities across the settler U.S. (Ibid., 195; Green 1988, 43; Deloria 1998) Yet, within the context of late nineteenth century and the tightening grip of segregationist policies impacting public space, Lovett writes that “By invoking Native American ancestry in a parade, African Americans symbolically resisted the white consolidation of power and segregation imposed on the city of New Orleans, once considered one of the most fluid racial societies in the United States” (Lovett 2002, 199). Similarly, Green argues that, unlike other performance traditions in which white actors donned Indigenous ceremonial or tradition garb in an attempt to mimic, mock, or take control of Indigenous customs, the Mardi Gras

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Indian troupes appear to have combined Amerindian practices within the already Afro-Caribbean tradition of Carnival/Mardi Gras, and used such practices to defy white conventions seeking to control public space and Black communities in New Orleans (Green 1988, 43). Accordingly, in a recent book on the Indigenous influences of the Mardi Gras Indians by Shane Lief and John McCusker, the authors note that much of the practices among these Carnival groups actually point to the musical and linguistic traditions of the Choctaw and Acolapissa communities and their continued impact on New Orleans music (Lief and McCusker 2019). They argue that while “playing Indian” was a common trope during Mardi Gras processions long before the creation of the Mardi Gras Indian troupes of Baptiste and other African American communities, the formation of these troupes signaled much more complex relationships. Such relationships included acting against the segregation policies at the time, including the formation of white supremacist troupes that were using the parades as a space to assert dominance. Additionally, Lief and McCusker note the commonality among many of the founders of the Mardi Gras Indian troupes, which included that many fought in the Union Corps d’Afrique during the Civil War. They thus had a “leading role in achieving their own liberty” (Ibid.). As veterans, men like Baptiste, Samuel Jerry, and Henry Horton (all founding figures in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition) “rechanneled their shared experiences as actual warriors into a Carnival identity … To identify as American Indians, who at that time were in open armed conflict with the American military, was to identify with fearless fellow travelers who symbolized pride and resistance to persecution, aggression, and genocide. It was an identity both subversive and fundamental in its declaration of humanity” (Ibid.). It is, then, against such oppressive formations and through cultural exchanges, prefaced by philosophers like Locke, that we are able to see the multiplicitous threads of insurrectionist acts by Native, Black, and Afro-Indigenous peoples. However, such forms of oppression may also include the erasure and neglect of Indigenous authors and political actors, who continue to fight against settler practices of land dispossession, the environmental, political, and cultural degradation of Native lifeways, and the assimilative tendencies to vanquish and vanish Indigenous communities worldwide. Accordingly, as Lief and McCusker note there is a relative dearth of academic historiographical perspectives from Native peoples themselves on the formation of New Orleans and its traditions. This patterned colonial erasure is one that demands a further turn to the bonds of oppression impacting Choctaw,

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Acolapissa, Tunica, Chitimacha, and the many other Native peoples who continue to live (or have lived) in the territory. Yet, turning to such a history is not without its own complicated relations. For example, Choctaw communities, beginning in the late eighteenth century through to the U.S.  Civil War, were slave owners and participated in the purchase and exploitation of enslaved Black peoples. As Barbara Krauthamer’s book on this history notes: “The history of slavery in the Indian nations is very much a part of southern history and U.S. history” (Krauthamer 2013, 1). As we have already noted, however, this is not the only context in which Choctaw and African American peoples interacted. As we find in Lief and McCusker’s work, even after Indian removal, Choctaw communities, as well as other Native communities continued to live in the surrounding areas of New Orleans. Notably, they trace this through the violent archive of runaway slave ads in The Picayune in the mid-1880s wherein a reward listing details a runaway, Henry, who spoke “English, French, and Choctaw,” and was thought to likely “try to go to the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, or Westward” (Lief and McCusker 2019). Lief and McCusker note that it was well known at the time that the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain was “a safe haven for maroon slaves, especially those with Native ancestry, as Choctaws had lived on that side of Lake Pontchartrain during the entire colonial period, and stayed there as Louisiana became a part of the United States” (Ibid.). As such, the deep contextual history of Choctaw-African American relations can point to many differing forms of oppression, including patterned displacement of Indigenous peoples from their lands, the brutality of the chattel slave trade practices by both whites and Indigenous peoples, the consolidation of segregation policies and “one-drop” rules, and the racial control and mapping of space in southern Louisiana. However, considering the maroon communities that existed on the edges of slaveholders’ anxieties, and that served as bastions of freedom for some, there are a plurality of stories that one could tell regarding insurrectionists acts, including, perhaps the most well-known lyrical and musical traditions of New Orleans in which the famous Mardi Gras refrain “Jockomo feena ne!” harkens to Mobilian Choctaw-Chickasaw phraseology (Ibid.) Turning to a philosopher of Choctaw, Seminole, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Jewish descent, Anne Waters, we can find further contextual moments for the shared struggles among Native and African American communities. First, Waters, in a section focusing on “Evental Being” and historical context, describes the Seminole territory of what is currently Florida:

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Florida was a land rich with hiding places … For in Florida, not only could … people kidnaped out of Africa have a possibility of escaping their enslavement, but the Africans, as the kidnapers knew, would be aided in these efforts by Florida’s Indigenous people … From the time when I was young, my mother told me how Florida far surpassed what became known in the history texts as the “underground railroad at the Ohio river.” She would lean over me, tapping her finger on the page of the book, and tell me that “that” was not the way it was, that we also had a story about the way things were. Our land, Florida, was the land of Indigenous Southern hospitality, the land eventually populated by Spanish Indian people, by African Indian people, by people of color, of indigenismo. Many Africans fled to Florida to escape the newcomers’ tortures inflicted upon Africans, as the newcomers practiced their capitalist trade, the legacy of slavery learned in the colonies of England. These Africans migrated, and were welcomed, assimilated blended with many of our people. These were some of my mother’s stories. (Waters 2004, 165–166)

This story, along with the persistent erasures of them, is what Patrick Wolfe calls the structure, and not event, that is settler colonialism (Wolfe 2006). Yet, as Aylosha Goldstein and J. Kēhaulani Kauanui propose in an analysis of the framework of settler colonization, Wolfe’s own articulation of settler colonial practices has become a common phrase that can sometimes “foreclose or bracket other formations—such as franchise colonialism and slavery—in ways that may sidestep how they are not only entangled, but also are co-constituted” (2016). Thus, against purity or foundationalist narrative, we can better understand the plurality of oppression through Black American and Native practices of cross-referencing and shared insurrectionist acts, such as Waters’ descriptions of the “hiding places” of Florida that remain alive in her mother’s stories. As such, I contend that works such as these, these dense histories of contextual complexity, cannot be read as insurrectionist acts except through a multiplicitous lens. As Harris’ approach reminds us, we must develop philosophical tools that render struggles against oppression morally meritorious. Without this, we have a diminished sense of agency, and without this multiplicity we may “go astray” by seeking acts of struggle that are free from historical contingency, cultural pluralism, and value relativism, or that fail to call for further efforts to locate the scope and range of oppressions that differing communities face. With this, we can echo the words of African American/Haudenosaunee poet, M. Carmen Lane, “we must examine again our resistance/like the ancestors uprooted/falling through into new life” (Lane 2015, 22).

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References Carter, Jacoby Adeshei. 2012. Alain Leroy Locke. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta. Summer 2012 Edition. Deloria, Phillip. 1998. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press. Du Bois, W.E.B. 1930. Virginia. The Crisis 37 (May 1930). Green, Rayna. 1988. The Tribe Called Wannabee: Playing Indian in America and Europe. Folklore 99 (1): 30–55. Harris, Leonard. 1992–93. The Horror of Tradition or How to Burn Babylon and Build Benin While Reading A Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note. The Philosophical Forum XXIV (1–3): 94–118. ———. 1997. Alain Locke and Community. The Journal of Ethics 1 (3): 239–247. ———. 2002. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism. In Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. J. Howie. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Harris, Loenard. 2014. Telos and Tradition: Making the Future  – Bridges to Future Traditions. Philosophia Africana 16 (2): 59–71. Harris, Leonard. 2017. Looking for Locke. In Oxford Encyclopedia of Race and Philosophy, ed. Naomi Zack. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2018a. Necro-Being: An Actuarial Account of Racism. Res Philosophica 95 (2): 273–302. ———. 2018b. Can a Pragmatist Recite a Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note? Or Insurrectionist Challenges to Pragmatism – Walker, Child, and Locke. The Pluralist 13 (1): 1–25. Harris, Leonard, and Charles Molesworth. 2008. Alain Locke: Biography of a Philosopher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harris, Leonard, Anne S. Waters, and Scott L. Pratt. 2001. American Philosophies: An Anthology. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Johnston, J.H. 1929. Documentary Evidence of the Relations of Negroes and Indians. Journal of Negro History 14 (1): 21–43. Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. 2016. ‘A structure, not an event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity. Lateral 5 (1). Krauthamer, Barbara. 2013. Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emanicipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lane, M.  Carmen. 2015. Sky Woman. In Calling Out After Slaughter, ed. M. Carmen Lane. Cleveland: GTK Press. Lief, Shane, and John McCusker. 2019. Jockomo: The Native Roots of Mardi Gras Indians. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Locke, Alain. 1951. Inventory at Mid-Century: The Literature of the Negro for 1950. Phylon 12 (2): 185–190.

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———. 1989. In The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, ed. Leonard Harris. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Locke, Alain, and Bernhard J. Stern. 1942. When Peoples Meet: A Study of Race and Culture Contacts. New York: Progressive Education Association. Lovett, Laura L. 2002. ‘African and Cherokee by Choice’: Race and resistance under Legalized Segregation. In Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America, ed. James F.  Brooks. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Mbembe, Achille. 2017. Critique of Black Reason. Durham: Duke University Press. McBride, Lee A. 2013. Insurrectionist Ethics and Thoreau. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 29–45. Mudimbe, V.Y. 1988. Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Nzegwu, Akuza. 2017. Interview with Professor Leonard Harris. Journal on African Philosophy 16: 144–151. Porter, Kenneth. 1932. Relations Between Negros and Indians Within the Present Limits of the United States. Journal of Negro History 17 (3): 287–367. ———. 1933. Notes Supplementary to ‘Relations Between Negroes and Indians. Journal of Negro History 18 (3): 282–321. Smith, Michael P. 1994. Mardi Gras Indians. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company. Stewart, Jeffrey C. 1992. Introduction. In Race Contacts and Interracial Relations: Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Race, ed. Alain LeRoy Locke, xix–lix. Washington D.C.: Howard University Press. ———. 2018. The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke. New York: Oxford. Waters, Anne. 2004. Ontology of Identity and Interstitial Being. In American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays, ed. Anne Waters. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research 8 (4): 387–409. Woodson, Carter G. 1920. The Relations of Negroes and Indians in Massachusetts. Journal of Negro History 5: 45–57.

PART III

Insurrectionist Ethics: Applications and Correctives

CHAPTER 7

Insurrectionist Ethics, Moral Suasion, and Violent Protests for Poor Policing Corey L. Barnes

Good cop, good cop, where is your dignity? Where’s your empathy? Where is your sympathy? Bad cop, where’s your humanity? Good cop, is that just a fantasy? —Ice Cube (“Good Cop, Bad Cop”) Hurt people holler…. [But] I think you draw the line at property damage. I think you draw the line at, you know, hurting people. [T]hose are the lines that you draw. —Van Jones1

1  This quote was taken from a conversation between interlocutors discussing protests in response to George Floyd’s murder by police officers on “Cuomo Prime Time” on June 3, 2020.

C. L. Barnes (*) Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_7

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A morality that won’t allow a slave to kill his master ain’t worth shit. —Leonard Harris2

Though a persistent and ever-relevant problem for many citizens of color, the problem of poor policing practices emerged for many in the US after the murder of George Floyd. And after video of his murder surfaced many citizens were outraged and took to the streets to protest. Though mostly peaceful, there were violent actions against property. Fires were set to cars, stores, and a police station. There were also violent actions taken directly against police officers. Protesters fought back when aggressively engaged, shot police officers, and struck a police officer with a vehicle. Then-president Donald Trump intimated that the protesters were terrorists, characterized protests as insurrections, and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1908 (LeBlanc 2020). Setting aside Trump’s intimation, characterization, and threat, a question was raised about whether and to what extent violent protests in response to poor policing are either justified or effective for changing policing practices. This question set up a debate between two broad African American philosophical approaches— namely, moral suasion and insurrectionist ethics. Leonard Harris distinguished moral suasion from insurrectionist ethics, and argued that moral suasion possessed inadequate character virtues for ending slavery (Harris 2020c). For Harris insurrectionist ethics possessed a counter set of character virtues and derivative actions that were more prudent and dignity-affirming for ending slavery. This chapter extends Harris’ distinction and charge against moral suasion to protests in response to poor policing practices. Moral suasionist tactics such as peaceful protesting that deny violence are ineffective responses to poor policing practices. An appeal to insurrectionist ethics shows violent protesting to be a justified response to poor policing that is necessary for an effective solution to the problem. I argue for violent protests in accordance with insurrectionist ethics in a few ways. First, I briefly distinguish moral suasion from insurrectionist ethics. Second, I show how Black people’s appeal to moral suasion is ineffective for changing poor policing practices. I do so in two ways. I 2  This quote comes from a conversation between Leonard Harris and I on March 27, 2018 at Purdue University wherein he vehemently opposed my Kantian solution to the problem of whites’ perceptions of black inferiority—as evidenced by slavery, Jim Crow, and a long history of racial subjugation in America.

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show that successful moral suasion implies being respected in a way that cannot be garnered by its approach. Afterwards I show that moral suasion cannot garner the sympathy to which it appeals by its approach. Third, I show that insurrectionist ethics avoids the preceding problems with moral suasion, and that—in accordance with insurrectionist ethics—violent protesting in response to poor policing is justified given the kind of environment to which poor policing contributes.

Moral Suasion and Insurrectionist Ethics Moral suasion is a set of beliefs and strategies about challenging injustice, and has a long tradition in African American political philosophy (Adeleke 1998, 127).3 It entails the use of rationality and moral sentiments, along with rhetorical devices to appeal to wrongdoers’ and “bystanders’”4 consciences. And it tends to be grounded in a set of universally applicable moral and rational principles that all persons can recognize and respect, and to which those treated unjustly must appeal when combatting oppression. The view tends to concede an arc of the moral universe bending towards justice, and because of this it often promotes the view that it is natural to the human spirit to desire justice. Appeals to both a moral universe and a natural desire for justice allow it to recommend persuasive tactics directed at those who fail to live up to moral ideals without the use of violence. These also explain why moral emotions such as shame and guilt are so useful for the suasionist. Because there are recognizable and practicable moral and rational principles, moral agreement on what those principles are, and a desire to bring about justice, those who commit immoral action can be shamed or guilted when they are shown the wrongness of their practices (Boxill 1995, 716). Shame and guilt then move wrongdoers to respect what justice requires. And so because persuasive tactics are thought to be both moral and sufficient for challenging injustice, suasionists reject the use of violence as both immoral and unnecessary. Now moral suasion proposes a particular set of character-traits, methods of cultivation, and action-types. Suasionist virtues are grounded in either religion, nature, reason, or shared beliefs that are owed to a 3  Moral suasion is commonly traced to Garrisonian abolitionism, but has been connected to Quakers and free blacks before Garrison. 4  I have “bystanders” in quotation marks because one might view inaction—particularly willful inaction—as contributing to or a form of brutalization.

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common founding document such as the Declaration of Independence or basic social/political institutions (Boxill 1995, 714). Harris gives us a set of virtues that are promoted by moral suasionists—namely, “benevolence, piety, temperance, restraint, serenity, and compassion” (Harris 2020c, 162). These traits promote a kind of unity with wrongdoers that has love and mutual respect as ends. The compassionate seek unity with others by understanding their position or at the very least pitying them for their practices. The restrained and serene union with others by way of meekness or a tolerant response that is slow to wrath. And the temperate—construed on Harris’ terms—deny themselves for the benefit of others. These traits are thought to be respectable or enviable traits that, if/when displayed by those who are oppressed, show the oppressed to be either civil or capable of civility; these traits are thought to humanize the oppressed in a way that sways oppressors to reconsider their immoral activity. From these virtues, a suasionist might propose specific actions as a response to injustice. Suasionists might propose turning the other cheek when violently assaulted, illustrating their commitment to restraint and the moral necessity of respecting the sacredness of life. The suasionist might attempt to reason with those who brutalize them, illustrating a commitment to universal moral knowledge, the desire for justice that is natural to the human spirit, or a kind of compassion. The suasionist might see it as necessary to display respect for authority, even from the recognition that it is that particular political authority’s job to dominate them. These actions show a kind of piety—a reverence or respect for the concept of law, order, and authority. The suasionist might speak with a diplomatic voice, or with sensitivity, perhaps withholding certain uncomfortable truths or refusing to say them with force from the virtue of compassion and restraint. Perhaps the suasionist will threaten violence (divine or human) as a rhetorical device. So the suasionist might say that: “God will smite down the evil,” or “InstitutionY must either cede our pleas or deal with violence from impatient GroupX,” or “There is only so much that an oppressed people can take before they….” And finally, these virtues are thought to be cultivated by “mental discipline, moral education, and industrial training” (Harris 2020c, 163). Though the term was coined rather recently by Harris, insurrectionist ethics has a rather long history in American political philosophy. It opposes moral suasion insofar as it rejects suasionists’ method and character virtues, and might reject suasionists’ actions. “Insurrectionist ethics…outlines the types of moral intuitions, character traits, and methods required

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to garner impetus and advocacy to materially and institutionally create communities fundamentally different from the confining and destructive conditions that constrict the freedom of denigrated populations” (McBride 2013, 30–31). It concerns itself with universal liberation, or “with liberating populations from oppressive and debilitating boundaries” (McBride 2013, 31). And so insurrectionists have the same goal as suasionists— namely, challenging injustice and securing rights and material benefits for oppressed persons. What insurrectionists seem to deny is piecemeal movement towards a democratic vision. It does not, however, deny a democratic vision or institutions. And so insurrectionists are not anarchists who want to “burn it all down.” Now suasionists and insurrectionists need not have different visions of the universe. Each can commit to conceptualizing the universe as a moral entity. David Walker held it to be true that there is a sense of justice in the universe, while socialist insurrectionists ceded the view that it is natural to the human spirit to desire justice, both of which tend to be endorsed by moral suasionists (Harris 2020d, 182–183). Further, both may have high regard for the concept of duty. Both may take duty to be necessary to motivate moral activity. And both may take adherence to duty to be necessary for moral flourishing. Recall that for the suasionist, one has a duty to refrain from violence. This duty does not depend on the likelihood that nonviolence will lead to success, and cannot be ignored because agents are oppressed. These consequential and situational reasons for committing an action are overridden by respecting what duty requires. Likewise, insurrectionists understand respecting duty to override consequential or situational reasons for action (Harris 2020d, 183). Moral flourishing depends on respecting what duty requires. Instead, “consequences and their predictions are not good criteria for justifying insurrection” (Harris 2020d, 183). Moreover, duty requires the cultivation of insurrectionist character virtues and actions derived from them. Lastly, while success or failure is neither necessary nor sufficient to motivate a moral commitment, insurrectionists—like suasionists— “normally believe that the outcome of their actions will lead to eventual success” (Harris 2020d, 182). Now the term “eventual” is important here, as the insurrectionist may concede that they will not enjoy the success resulting from their actions. Still, it would appear that for the insurrectionist, eventual success gives individuals a motive for action (albeit secondary to duty—perhaps a kind of faith in or reverence for

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insurrectionist actions).“There is no human progress without the discord of social conflict, insurrections and revolutions” (Harris 2020d, 183). Any individual’s actions may or may not succeed. However, future human progress depends on this sort of activity. So a vision of the moral universe, appeal to duty, and application of prudential reasoning may not separate the suasionist and the insurrectionist. What begins to separate them is the importance of satisfying basic drives. The centrality of these drives leads to divergent virtuous character traits, which may lead to radically different derivative actions. While love and unity are drives central to moral suasion, honor and self-­ respect are centralized in insurrectionist ethics. Honor is a social good accorded to particular members of the moral community that entitles them to deference and authority. Failure to be the kind of being who could possess it makes the being despicable and able to be dominated (Harris 2020b). This being has no right to authority. And if autonomy requires authority, and one has no right to authority, then one has no right to autonomy. Self-respect is construed as or inextricably linked to dignity. For Harris, dignity is a necessary condition for well-being that is brought about in the absence of “self-deprecation, self-loathing, degradation, subjection, [and] delimiting boundaries between peoples…” (Harris 2020a, 144). It is a universal value satisfied by certain social conditions, and is the result of persons living in an environment where they can express self-­ confidence and healthy agency. The centrality of honor and self-respect gives rise to a number of insurrectionist character virtues. These virtues are “tenacity, irreverence, passion, enmity, and frugality” (Harris 2020c, 162–163) along with “aggressiveness, self-assurance, and self-confidence” (Harris 2020d, 184). Many of these virtues are taken to be neither estimable nor prudent by suasionists because they do not promote the kind of love for and unity with wrongdoers or even bystanders. And thus, unlike suasionist virtues, possession and expression of them will not afford either group a kind of comfort. These virtues derive their value from their relationship to honor and self-respect, and from their usefulness in bringing about liberation and activity that is in conformity with respect from others. In this way, those who possess them keep the vision of and commitment to liberation ever present. Now insurrectionist virtues are neither antisocial nor unconcerned with how persons are viewed by the broader social community. Many of the virtues are motivated by a feeling of dishonor and a rejection of indignity.

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And many are motivated by an attempt to bring about conditions whereby a rightful being might possess dignity.5 Enmity is motivated by dishonoring some agent on the basis of a property that is irrelevant for according honor—say race (Harris 2020c, 168). Now we should not understand enmity simply as hatred—which may not make moral distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate targets. Rather, we should understand insurrectionist enmity as a kind of moral hatred directed at someone who has identified themself with an immoral cause, performed immoral actions, or lacks proper concern for the oppressed (Murphy and Hampton 1998, 61). It “is the most reasonable and emotionally coherent response to an insult of this magnitude” (McBride 2013, 32). So in being motivated by honor and dignity, these virtues are concerned with social perception and community. From these virtues, an insurrectionist proposes actions as a response to injustice that may radically contrast the suasionist’s. Rather than turning the other cheek or disqualifying violence, the insurrectionist may fight back when violently assaulted. And the insurrectionist is not concerned to evoke a sense of shame or guilt in those who act immorally, particularly if doing so comes at the expense of the honor or dignity of oppressed persons. The insurrectionist finds reasoning with brutalizers and perhaps even bystanders, and appealing to shame or guilt ineffective and imprudent. It is not by accident that wrongdoers wrong others; those who are committed to wronging others have thought it through and feel no compunction about it. And so attempting to evoke shame or guilt in someone who willfully wrongs will be ineffective. The insurrectionist recognizes that wrongdoers only appeal to reason and justice in the service of maintaining the status quo—that is, in service of their wrongdoing. Reasoning with an appeal to justice is a nonstarter. Insurrectionists see no need to respect political authority when it is their job to dominate them. Instead, they act from a kind of irreverence for these. Finally, insurrectionists see the suasionist’s threats of violence as empty and undignified if they are made without the resolve to violently resist. Mere threats—used as rhetorical devices—are not respect-worthy because they are empty. And these threats 5  Harris suggests that dignity is a sortial. Dignity “names a range of features that should be possessed by all beings of a kind.” What motivates certain insurrectionist character virtues and actions is that a person who should possess dignity realizes that they should possess it, but is denied it, and is motivated to do something about it.

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are demeaning because they are not respect-worthy. Why respect some agent who will not violently resist for themself, but will merely talk as if God or others will do so for them? Now, with these distinctions between the suasionist and insurrectionist, I turn to protests.

An Evaluation of Suasion and Peaceful Protests I take it to be obvious that insurrectionist ethics can both permit and require violent protests. It is also rather obvious that (as it regards the African American political tradition) protest that disallows violence is suasionist. Non-violent, peaceful protesting appeals to suasionist virtues such as compassion, serenity, and benevolence in the service of unity with wrongdoers that aims at mutual love. I want to show that moral suasion and protesting that disallows violence are ineffective for changing poor policing.6 Racial inequalities in policing Black  citizens have been a part of American history since the end of slavery. This is partially owed to the devaluation of Black lives and the presumption of guilt that Blacks face, even when performing mundane or rational activities (Stevenson 2018). Blacks have been surveilled and searched, disrespectfully spoken to, violently assaulted or aggressively engaged, arrested for rather insignificant reasons such as jaywalking, and fatally shot or mortally wounded without weapons at far greater rates than any other racial group (Davis 2018). Further, Blacks are much more harshly punished than whites for the commission of equivalent crimes (Smith and Levinson 2012; Levinson and Smith 2017). And so Blacks have born the brunt of inequalities in our criminal justice system (Higginbotham 1996). Now this history is undergirded by a long history of beliefs that Blacks are inferior, depictions of Blacks in certain demeaning ways, and desires to dominate Blacks by over-assertion, the creation of ghettoes, failed schools, lack of support for and outright discrimination against Black businesses, poor health care, and polluted neighborhoods, which is to say an environment wherein Blacks have significantly less of a chance to flourish. The long history of claims about racial inferiority, simianization and other demeaning forms of racial representation, and shear domination have led 6  I am qualifying the inadequacy of peaceful protesting and moral suasion for Blacks in America changing poor policing practices. I withhold judgment as to whether these can be adequate strategies for non-Black groups.

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to the current presumption of guilt that Blacks face by police officers (Henning 2018, 57).7 My claim is that the current presumption of guilt that Blacks face is the result of a perception of Blacks’ morally inferiority. This perception partially explains the systematicity of harsh, brutalizing policing tactics and overwhelming inequalities in the criminal justice system. Further, it accounts for a kind of appeal to respectability by suasionists, and explains why suasionist tactics such as peaceful, non-violent protests will fail to change them. Now the success of moral suasion implies either actually or possibly being respected. If it is not possible to garner respect (either because some agent8 is not the kind of being who is respect-worthy or because the ones from whom the agent attempts to garner respect are unwilling to respect them), then moral suasion cannot be successful. Insofar as this is the case, moral suasion depends on changing the representation of the suasionist in the mind of either the wrongdoer or bystander, and so depends on something beyond the suasionist for success. Stephen Darwall suggests that we might understand respect in at least two ways—namely, as recognition and appraisal respect (Darwall 1977). Recognition respect “consists in giving appropriate consideration or recognition to some feature of its object in deliberating about what to do” (Darwall 1977, 38). One can have recognition respect for laws, objects, persons, or actions. Recognition respect occurs when someone takes a specific feature of some thing, agent, etc. into consideration and acts from that consideration. So I might recognize that X is a person because they possess some relevant trait(t), and this determines how I act towards X; I am motivated to act in certain ways when engaging X because I recognize that X possesses some trait(t). I need not desire or love the thing or agent. It need not evoke an attitude in me. Whatever my attitude, recognition of X causes me to act towards it in certain ways. Appraisal respect is a positive attitude for “persons or features which are held to manifest their excellence as persons or as engaged in some specific 7  Kristin Henning begins an article about the role that poor policing practices play in the lives and socialization of Black boys as they become men with two rather incredible stories of Emilio and Tremaine. These stories illustrate the overaggressive and brutalizing force used by police officers against Black boys. And in the course of the article she discusses possible reasons for such poor policing, namely the creation of the Black super-predator, implicit biases against Blacks, and how these together motivate a presumption of guilty Black boys. 8  “Agent” here means something closer to “being” who acts intentionally. This being may not be perceived as a human, a full human, or a person.

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pursuit” (Darwall 1977, 38). It occurs when someone possess some skill, trait, or general character that motivates a positive attitude—a sort of esteem or adoration. With appraisal respect, the agent must be a person who possesses a particular disposition in order to evoke the attitude (Darwall 1977, 38). I might appraise Agent(Y) positively for their possession of personhood, skill(s), trait(t), or character(c). So, Lebron James possesses a great ability to facilitate and score, and (assuming that he also possesses the disposition to  play honorably from within the rules) this ability evokes a positive attitude in me. I might also appraise him for his possession of intellectual brilliance or moral clarity. The division between recognition respect and appraisal respect shows a certain flaw with moral suasion specifically, but also with Black approaches to gain respect from whites in America quite broadly. Moral suasion calls for Blacks to display certain traits that are “respectable” to either those who brutalize them or bystanders. These traits are character virtues of a “respectable” human person, and thereby show someone to be worthy of a certain kind of respect. One might think that these traits possess the potential of evoking a kind of appraisal respect. Manifesting these traits might cause other agents to have an attitude of positive appraisal for the suasionist. So Martin Luther King, Jr. was a “respectable” Black man that we all appraise positively because of his respectable character (though we might ignore other parts of his character). What is lacking however, and what moral suasionists intend the manifestation of these traits to garner, is a kind of recognition respect. The manifestation of these traits by the suasionist is intended to “humanize” the suasionist in the eyes of wrongdoers. Suasionists attempt to show that they possess a specific set of features that cause a change in how they are considered, and that then motivates wrongdoers to change their behavior or bystanders to assist in liberatory efforts. The problem is that the manifestation of the traits is insufficient to motivate this kind of consideration and change in behavior. Moral suasion attempts to garner recognition respect by way of appraisal respect. Yet given the history of race-relations in America, I think that the movement from appraisal to recognition respect is unlicensed. One may very well have appraisal respect for someone without recognizing them in a certain sort of way that would garner equal or fair treatment based on factual considerations, say full humanity or personhood. Now my claim that one will not garner recognition respect from traits that could garner appraisal respect is contrary to what Darwall thinks. He thinks that “we may say that the only beings who are appropriate objects

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of appraisal respect are those who are themselves capable of recognition respect, that is, of acting deliberately” (Darwall 1977, 47). So, one must be recognized as a person—as acting deliberately seems to imply personhood—in order to be an appropriate object of appraisal respect. Darwall also thinks that “if all persons should be treated equally, there can be no degrees of recognition respect for them, although one may be a greater or lesser respecter of persons” (Darwall 1977, 46). The inference from these is that appraisal respect implies recognition respect, and that either one respects all persons equally or one fails to respect all persons fully. What is clear is that agents who confer appraisal respect must also confer recognition respect, and that agents confer recognition respect to persons on equal footing. So: “When one is appraising an individual as a person, those features which merit positive appraisal are good-making characteristics of persons” (Darwall 1977, 46). Features that merit positive appraisal extend to all persons equally. I agree with Darwall if he intends to qualify these claims with “appropriateness.” However, when we examine the history of race-relations in America, necessarily undergirding appraisal respect with recognition respect is inaccurate. In America whites have used phrases like “hardworking” or “good” to describe certain Black slaves. Whites have also characterized “niggers” as “upright” or “virtuous.” In American history “slaves” and “niggers” were not considered persons or fully human. Those who used these phrases failed to recognize agents as persons or equal humans, but can be said to have respected the character of these inferior beings. Perhaps there is a contradiction involved in giving commands to those who lack humanity, or holding them accountable for observing laws. It seems irrational to think someone to possess the capacity to act deliberately and then fail to recognize them as persons. However: (1) in this country’s history whites have had no problem considering and treating Blacks as non-persons or -humans while acknowledging them as possessing traits, dispositions, proclivities, skills, and characters that are reserved for (good) persons or humans; and (2) considerations of agents as humans or persons have been staggered, where “human” and “person” are not univocal categories, which is to say that one can approximate full humanity or full personhood. Recognition of a full human or person may not exist when certain agents are conferred appraisal respect. On Darwall’s account, appraisal respect seems to regard one set of character traits when conferred to persons. This is seemingly why recognition respect is a necessary implication of appraisal respect being conferred.

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Because there is one set of traits to which one appeals when conferring appraisal respect, and because these traits are possessed by those recognized as persons, recognition respect as a person is taken to exist when one is conferred appraisal respect. However, if “human” and “person” are not univocal categories, then traits that evoke appraisal respect in agents can regard the class or category of “human” or “person” into which agents are placed. Further, one might only confer recognition respect to agents with a specific set of traits, and only when possessed by members of a specific class. So Blacks may be considered a different class of “human” or “person,” or at a different level of humanity relative to whites in the staggered overarching category “human.” Historically, whites have appealed to a certain set of traits that evokes appraisal respect for Blacks, and a different set that evokes appraisal respect for whites. Appraisal respect is most often accorded to Blacks when they peacefully resist oppression, while it is most often accorded to whites who violently resist oppression. Moral suasion, even if it elicits a kind of appraisal respect by appeal to “respectable” character traits, fails to elicit recognition respect as a full human or person. For Blacks in America moral suasion has a rather long history of failing to elicit recognition respect. Blacks have long believed that they can get whites to recognize them in a certain sort of way by appeal to certain characters, skills/talents, culture-products, assimilation tactics, etc. We see this with Frederick Douglass and many Black abolitionists (Harris 2020c and Carter Jackson 2019). Participants in the Harlem Renaissance appealed to artistic and cultural development as a way of garnering recognition respect from whites (Huggins 2007, 5). And throughout much of American history, many Black intellectuals and public figures have appealed to “the politics of respectability” as a way of garnering such respect (Kennedy 1997, 17–21; Kennedy 2015). However, Blacks (then and now) tend to be disillusioned when discovering that they are not conferred recognition as fully human or with personhood irrespective of advanced degrees, academic success, talents/skills, cultural ingenuity, wealth, or celebrity. It is 2023, and we are still calling for Black lives to be recognized as having a value equal to whites. Perhaps in a more direct way, Blacks are still saying, “Black Lives Matter.” What explains this disillusionment by the Black elite seems to be that whites have never had a problem appraising Black talent while failing to recognize Black humanity. This is a part of the reason why Black art has become so accepted, while Blacks themselves have remained unacceptable. And this is why one very basic aim of the Harlem Renaissance failed,

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namely that Black achievement in art and culture would humanize Blacks in the eyes of whites. Blacks thought that achievements in art and culture were able to move whites to stop discriminating against them, and that they would finally be treated equally before the law. In short, Blacks thought that such would change white racism. Historically, there has been too quick a move from appraisal respect to recognition respect—an inaccurate presupposition that if whites find Black contributions worthy of positive appraisal, then they will recognize Black humanity. Again, whites have had no problem embracing or esteeming the gifts of Black folk while at the same time reviling Blacks’ being. Perhaps in a manner that is a little different from what was described by Langston Hughes, whites have “taken my blues and gone” (Hughes 1995, 215). And so what Blacks have found throughout American history is an inability to be educated out of “nigger-status,”9 or escape it through wealth, ingenuity, or celebrity. Now the reason for Blacks’ failure to garner recognition respect from appraisal respect is that (unlike appraisal respect) recognition respect implies moral equality. Blacks have yet to be perceived as moral equals by those in law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and American institutions more broadly. Here “moral equality” is not intended to mean a kind of equality conferred on the basis of some morally relevant trait such as reason, sentience, or humanity (though this kind of equality has also been denied to Blacks). What is meant by “moral equality” is an equal capacity to act morally from a regard for what it requires. So, in conferring to someone recognition respect as a full human or person, one is committed to seeing the person as having equal capacity to act morally. Blacks must be recognized as possessing the capacity to act morally from a regard for what morality requires as a condition for Blacks being recognized as full humans or persons. The reason why moral equality is of such importance to recognition respect on the basis of full humanity or personhood is that it shows a kind of fitness to live “among us.” We see this in figures like Kant through appeal to moralized rationality (Kant 2008), and it is the reason why many think that certain violent offenders forfeit their right to life (Berns 1991). The extent to which one is judged incapable of appreciating and living a moral life is the extent to which one will be treated aggressively under the 9  A kind of “almost-” or “just about-” human status directly above slave, but far below either human or person.

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law and by law enforcement. This is so because one will be judged to live among us to the extend that one is judged capable of appreciating and living a moral life. And so the distance from which a group stands from full humanity or personhood marks the extent to which law enforcement will be aggressive, and the criminal justice system will be harsh towards group members. With Blacks in America, irrespective of whether such a capacity is grounded in reason, feeling, or intuitions, and irrespective of what blacks actually do in their day-to-day lives, there is a history of thinking Blacks to be far less or incapable of appreciating and acting from what morality requires. Thus, Blacks have been perceived as being less committed to appreciating and living a moral life.10 The denial of Blacks’ capacity is implicitly acknowledged by moral suasionists. Why appeal to certain traits in order to change the representation of Blacks in the mind of the wrongdoer or bystander if the current representation took Blacks to be capable of appreciating a moral life? Now it is just this capacity for appreciating what morality requires that is necessary for moral suasion’s success. Moral suasion’s success relies on invoking a kind of sympathy. However, the denial of moral equality makes those to whom it is denied unsympathetic; the perception of agents as morally inferior carries the reflexive perception that those agents deserve no sympathy, even when their claims are rightful. Insofar as this is the case, moral suasionist tactics will not be successful. Because Blacks are denied moral equality, appeals to wrongdoers and bystanders will not garner the kind of sympathy that moves them to recognize Blacks as fit to live among them as full humans or persons. My intuition is that many of the demeaning simianized representations of Blacks were/are supposed to do just that—namely, animalize Blacks in a way that makes Blacks (and their appeals to justice) less sympathetic (Affeldt 2015, 144 & 149 and Mills 2015, 28–29). We see this with officer Daren Wilson, who claimed that 10  This claim is not without some controversy. Laurence Thomas claims that this idea can be attributed to Jews, but that: “No one has ever held such a view of blacks…” (Thomas 2005). (Also see: Thomas 1993.) However, there is much evidence to the contrary. See Jordan (1968) for a broad overview. Further, Immanuel Kant, the figure about which Thomas writes in the aforementioned article, mentions the moral inferiority of Blacks (Kant 2007, 93). Still further, this is evident by much of the demeaning representation of Blacks as apes, over-sexualized brutes, and lascivious jezebels, such as that in D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation and as pictures of “Around Blacks Never Relax” meme that has become rather popular on social media cites.

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Michael Brown “had the most aggressive face. That’s the only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked” (Bouie 2014). Undoubtedly this appeal to Brown’s “demonic” look was both a strategic and effective move to lessen the jury’s sympathies for Brown to Wilson’s advantage. The “demonic face” indicated Brown’s lack of a capacity to appreciate and act from what morality requires—as demons are by nature evil and incapable of living a moral life. So recognition respect as a full human or person implies moral equality that if denied makes one unsympathetic. And Blacks’ appeals to moral suasion, in relying on sympathy, will be ineffective because Blacks are not seen as moral equals. Now if peaceful, non-violent protest in response to poor policing is a type of moral suasion, then such a strategy will be unsuccessful. Blacks who protest peacefully will not garner the kind of sympathy necessary to change poor policing practices.11 Such activity will not move officers and officials to change policing. Officers and officials will sympathize with officers and poor policing. Why? Because “morally inferior beings” are by nature hostile and must be aggressively engaged and harshly punished because they are unfit to live “among us.” I have tried to show two problems with moral suasionist approaches. First, successful moral suasion implies being conferred recognition respect that cannot be garnered by its approach, even if it can garner appraisal respect. Second, moral suasion relies on sympathy that it will not garner because Blacks are not perceived as morally equal to whites. These all bear on peaceful protesting because it is a moral suasionist tactic. If moral suasion fails, then peaceful protesting fails by implication. I will now evaluate insurrectionist ethics and violent protests.

An Evaluation of Insurrection and Violent Protests This final section has two aims. First, I want to show that insurrectionist ethics evades the difficulties that I posed for moral suasion. It does not suffer from the unlicensed move from appraisal respect to recognition respect, and it does not suffer from a failure to elicit sympathy. Second, I

11  It might be effective if whites peacefully protest in large numbers, insofar as whites will be more sympathetic agents because they are perceived as having the capacity to act morally from a respect for what morality requires. However, historically Blacks have not been able to rely on whites to sympathize with their causes or humanity/personhood on a large scale.

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want to show that violent protesting in response to poor policing practices is justified and necessary by appeal to insurrectionist ethics. It is a question as to whether one can evoke recognition respect on the basis of full humanity or personhood. And so it is a question as to whether any action aimed at evoking such respect is going to work. If some agent refuses to see you as a full human or person, then there may very well be nothing that you can do to change their perception. Further, aims to evoke this kind of respect are demeaning. An approach to achieving justice by garnering recognition respect from wrongdoers or bystanders puts the onus of changing behavior or motivating appropriate concern on the agent pursuing justice. The agent then bears the unfair burden of all’s continued failure to recognize and treat them in an appropriate way. One might take this to be demeaning because: (1) it makes the innocent morally responsible for others’ moral failing; and (2) inability to correct others’ moral failing will certainly come at the cost of the innocent’s self-esteem. I do not claim that the insurrectionist approach evades the unlicensed move from appraisal to recognition respect because it puts forth a better method of evoking recognition respect. Insurrectionists evade the unlicensed move because they do not have the aim of being conferred recognition respect on the basis of full humanity or personhood. Let us return to Darwall. Darwall makes a Kantian distinction between action in accordance with recognition respect and action merely in conformity to recognition respect. Darwall tells us that: “To have recognition respect for something is to regard that fact as itself placing restrictions on what it is permissible for one to do. It is of course true that one can ‘be respectful’ of something without having any respect for it (even of a recognitional sort)” (Darwall 1977, 40–41). Being respectful without having respect is acting merely in conformity to what recognition respect requires. Actions merely in conformity to recognition respect take into account interests of the actor as the determining ground for why their behavior is constrained or restricted in some way that likens recognition respect. There is no regard for a fact of some law, object, person, or action, where the agent sees this fact as alone sufficient to constrain or restrict behavior (Darwall 1977, 41). I take the insurrectionist approach to have the aim of moving wrongdoers and bystanders to treat those wronged in mere conformity to what recognition respect requires.

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My reason for claiming that the insurrectionist approach aims at actions merely in conformity to recognition respect on the basis of full humanity or personhood is that the approach does not seek unity with wrongdoers or even bystanders. Neither love nor unity based on it is the end of the agent’s aims. The insurrectionist has no psychological or teleological need for them. An insurrectionist’s conception of justice seems to regard a kind of treatment, and not the motives for the treatment. The primary vision for the insurrectionist is an environment wherein persons can express self-­ confidence and healthy agency. The relationship between agents in this envisioned environment—like a defendant behaving respectfully in front of a judge—need not be one wherein there is mutual love or actual recognition respect. Likewise, insurrectionist ethics evades the problem of being unable to evoke the sympathies of wrongdoers or bystanders because it does not seek to evoke sympathy. This is precisely why insurrectionist virtues are unconventional. However, the unconventionality of insurrectionist virtues does not concern the insurrectionist because they do not intend for the virtues to evoke a positive attitude, a sense of remorse, or deep affinity from others. These virtues are conceptualized as being self-affirming, justified, and necessary for gaining justice for the oppressed. One might respond with the following objection. Let’s assume that actions merely in conformity to recognition respect are what insurrectionists seek. And further, let’s assume that insurrectionists are not concerned to garner sympathy. Still, insurrectionist ethics falls short of moral suasion even as it evades problems related to suasion. Surely appraisal respect will be a more practical approach to getting whatever is in conformity to recognition respect than displaying virtues and performing actions that make wrongdoers or bystanders uncomfortable, or that pose threats to them. And so in the case of poor policing, surely peaceful protesting (in perhaps garnering a kind of appraisal respect and at least attempting to garner sympathy) has a better chance than violent protesting for moving law enforcement and government officials to action merely in conformity to recognition respect. I find this objection sophistical. Moral suasion requires Blacks to restrain themselves by requirements that those who oppress them refuse to acknowledge through their actions. At best Blacks achieve piecemeal change that keeps so many people locked into disadvantage and undue hardship. Because change is piecemeal, any changes that occur can very easily be scaled back when convenient for whites and others who are in

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power (Bell 1992). Further, it affords both wrongdoers and bystanders a kind of psychological comfort. There is no serious threat that forces them to rethink how they treat the oppressed, and at what expense their continued mistreatment or lack of concern comes. And so virtues exhibited by the suasionist would be ineffective for moving law enforcement and government officials to action in conformity to recognition respect because actions deriving from them put no pressure on law enforcement and government officials to change the status quo. Suasion’s restrictiveness preserves the status quo. This is primarily the reason why suasionist tactics could not bring an end to slavery. Even if it did garner appraisal respect and some sympathy, it could not shock most whites out of apathy (Carter Jackson 2019). Insurrectionists aim at radical change, and do so through means that force wrongdoers and bystanders to think about their actions, even if they do not rethink their lack of recognition conferred to rightful claimants. Now one might accept insurrectionist character virtues and agree that violent resistance is justified for eliminating something like American slavery, but deny that violent protests are permissible in response to poor policing. Slavery certainly produced a set of circumstances that justified— in fact required—violent approaches. The questions are: (1) what circumstances justify violent resistance such as violent protests; and (2) whether and to what extent poor policing satisfies those circumstances? Of the environments wherein violent protests might be justified, insurrectionists would assuredly justify them in environments where agents are condemned to the status of “living while dead.” This environment occurs within a “necro-political” context. A necro-political context is one wherein sovereigns are able to dictate who lives and how they live by dictating who must die and how those who must die, die (Mbembe 2003). Harris utilizes this idea and discusses it in much more local terms—as it relates to subjugated group-members. He terms the environment, the lived-­ experiences, and the status of the subjugated “necro-being.” Necro-being “is always that which makes living a kind of death—life is simultaneously being robbed of its sheer potential physical being as well as nonbeing, the unborn. Necro-being is nonbeing, categorically impossible being. Not invisible but nonexistent. Dead ghosts” (Harris 2020e, 70). Such an environment kills disproportionally and quite harshly, and is cyclical in a way that forces children of the subjugated to become heirs of death. This environment has the aim of completely destroying those living therein,

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obliterating them physically, psychologically, and spiritually. Necro-being subjugates life to death and the incessant fear of it. Honor and self-respect for the subjugated cannot be possessed herein. There is no possibility for either. The status of living death is dishonorable. It is a status to which no one would/could confer honor, if such means the entitlement of deference or authority. The obliteration of an agent disallows the flourishing of self-respect. The subjugated are forced to self-­ deprecate and self-loath. Now recall that honor and self-respect are centralized in insurrectionist ethics, that their centrality gives rise to a number of character virtues, and that many of the virtues are motivated by a feeling of dishonor and a rejection of indignity in an attempt to bring about conditions whereby rightful beings might possess both. Necro-being licenses violence for the insurrectionist because such a condition disallows honor conferred to rightful claimants and the development of self-respect in the harshest way. It negates both honor and self-respect, and renders them impossible. And given the extreme negation of honor and self-respect, violence is the only tool useful for bringing about liberation. Without question transatlantic slavery was an environment wherein agents were condemned to the status of “living while dead.” And without question insurrectionists’ violence was justified, even in the face of a near certain physical death. Insurrectionists understood that doing nothing would amount to death, while action to promote radical change may amount to the same (Harris 2020d, 176). The question is whether poor policing causes or contributes to necro-being in a way that justifies the use of violent protests. Necropolitics can produce a kind of social death, and a necro-being is the living instantiation of death. Poor policing contributes to Black subjects being living instantiations of death. Blacks are constantly subjected to and live with an incessant fear of death as a result of such practices (Browne-Marshall 2013, 51 & 76–88). From 2015–2020, research indicates that Black people were killed by police at 2.6 times the rate of white people (Lett et al. 2021). Blacks who are not killed have much to fear, as the risk of Blacks being killed is the highest among racial/ethnic groups. Black men face about a 1 in 1000 chance of being killed by police (Edwards et al. 2019). And so it is no surprise that police killings of unarmed Blacks have very adverse effects on Blacks’ mental health (Bor et al. 2018). Even when not killed, Blacks are incarcerated at far greater rates than whites. “Twice as many Whites as Blacks are arrested. Yet seven times as many Blacks as Whites are convicted of crimes. Black women represent the

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fastest growing segment of incarcerated persons. Black juveniles are disproportionately represented at every stage of juvenile justice proceedings” (Browne-Marshall 2013, 51). Things are no better when Blacks are released from prison: Today a criminal freed from prison has scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a freed slave or a black person living “free” in Mississippi at the height of Jim Crow. Those released from prison on parole can be stopped and searched by the police for any reason—or no reason at all—and returned to prison for the most minor of infractions, such as failing to attend a meeting with a parole officer. Even when released from the system’s formal control, the stigma of criminality lingers. Police supervision, monitoring, and harassment are facts of life not only for all those labeled criminals, but for all those who “look like” criminals. (Alexander 2012, 141)

Adding to Blacks being the instantiation of living death, recidivism and the preschool-to-prison pipeline aversely affect Blacks. And so Black children become heirs of death. Blacks, when not murdered outright, are often violently accosted and assaulted. This occurs even during and after officers learn of their innocence.12 Blacks both lessen their self-expression and curtail their own rights so as to limit interactions with police officers. There have even been discussions as to whether blacks should not wear certain clothes (Jeffers 2014), listen to certain music in their cars (Stevenson 2018), or even go out at night for fear of becoming targets for police officers. Immediately following George Floyd’s murder and the now infamous picture of officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, many people argued that there was a symbolic relationship between Floyd, the officer’s role and position of his body, and Black people in America. One such person was Minneapolis City Council-member Andrea Jenkins. In a PBS NewsHour interview, Jenkins said that: “It was not only a crime against George Floyd, although he suffered the most deep injustice. But in my mind, it felt like it was a symbol for a knee on the neck of Black America” (PBS 2020). What this analogy suggests is that the relationship between Blacks and officers has not been one of protection, but one of destruction, with Blacks bearing the weight of being destroyed. If the analogy is accurate, Blacks are in a process of being choked to death, even as they are 12   See: Antonio Smith’s story: https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/26/us/valdostawrongly-arrested-black-man-sues-police/index.html.

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living. They live a kind of non-existence—a kind of death—in America, with police officers violently contributing to their status. In what is rather disheartening but commonplace, many Black parents feel the need to have conversations (the “Talk”) with their children about how to avoid tense situations if/when they occur with police officers so that their children are less likely to be destroyed by police. A suasionist might appeal to “the Talk” as a strategy that would make violent resistance unnecessary. However, the biggest misconception about “the Talk” is that it actually works. Black teens are told to be respectful, which entails saying “sir” or “ma’am.” However, in many cases addressing officers as “sir” or “ma’am” is interpreted as condescension. And yet failing to address them as “sir” or “ma’am” is interpreted as intending disrespect. Black teens are told to make eye contact without looking nervous. However, looking officers in their eyes is perceived as overly aggressive behavior. And yet failing to make and maintain eye contact is perceived as signaling dishonesty. Black teens are advised to make a light-hearted joke to break the ice, or to ask about officers’ day. However, these attempts are often interpreted as either making light of the situation or attempting to “handle” officers. And yet preferring to stay on task, perhaps asking officers for clarification is perceived as overly assertive. And still further, Blacks may be killed before being given the chance to employ these tactics. Let us remember that Atatiana Jefferson was murdered in her own home before being given a chance to comply with an officer’s direct commands. And so one might say that “to be black in America is to live in terror. That terror is fast. It is glimpsed in cops giving chase to black men and shooting them in their backs without cause. Or the terror is slow. It chips like lead paint on a tenement wall, or flows like contaminated water through corroded pipes that poison black bodies. It is slow like genocide inside prison walls where folk who should not be put there perish” (Dyson 2017, 177). “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” (Garza 2014). Whether for parents who have to prepare their children for encounters with police officers, those who live with anxiety, or children who have to be overly circumspect and intentional about their actions, a large part of the terror for Blacks in America is caused by poor policing. Like slavery, I take this context to justify violent protests. And I take violent protests to be necessary to end it. This situation that Blacks face at the hands of police officers’ practices seems to convey that doing nothing amounts to death—if not immediate death, then a kind of living death.

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Police officers’ practices create a kind of terror, either in support of anti-­ Blackness or because of it. Certainly, poor policing makes it such that “life is simultaneously being robbed of its sheer potential physical being as well as nonbeing.”

References Adeleke, Tunde. 1998. Afro-Americans and Moral Suasion: The Debate in the 1830’s. The Journal of Negro History 83 (2): 127–142. https://doi. org/10.2307/2668536. Affeldt, Stefanie. 2015. Exterminating the Brute: Sexism and Racism in ‘King Kong’. In Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class, and Race, ed. Wulf D.  Hund, Charles W. Mills, and Silvia Sebastiani, 139–170. Zürich: Lit Verlag. Alexander, Michelle. 2012. The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press. Bell, Derrick. 1992. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. New York: Basic Books. Berns, Walter. 1991. For Capital Punishment: Crime and the Morality of the Death Penalty. Lanham: University Press of America. Bor, Jacob, Atheendar S. Venkataramani, David R. Williams, and Alexander C. Tsai. 2018. Police Killings and Their Spillover Effects on the Mental Health of Black Americans: A Population-Based, Quasi-Experimental Study. The Lancet 392 (10144): 302–310. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-­6736(18)31130-­9. Bouie, Jamelle. 2014. Michael Brown Wasn’t a Superhuman Demon to Anyone but Darren Wilson. Slate Magazine, November 26. https://slate.com/news-­ and-­politics/2014/11/darren-­wilsons-­racial-­portrayal-­of-­michael-­brown-­as-­ a-­superhuman-­demon-­the-­ferguson-­police-­officers-­account-­is-­a-­common-­ projection-­of-­racial-­fears.html. Boxill, Bernard R. 1995. Fear and Shame as Forms of Moral Suasion in the Thought of Frederick Douglass. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 31 (4): 713–744. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40320570. Browne-Marshall, Gloria J. 2013. Race, Law, and American Society: 1607 to Present. New York: Routledge. Carter Jackson, Kellie. 2019. Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Darwall, Stephen L. 1977. Two Kinds of Respect. Ethics 88 (1): 36–49. https:// doi.org/10.1086/292054. Davis, Angela J. 2018. Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. New York: Vintage Books. Dyson, Michael Eric. 2017. Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

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Edwards, Frank, Hedwig Lee, and Michael Esposito. 2019. Risk of Being Killed by Police Use of Force in the United States by Age, Race–Ethnicity, and Sex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116 (34): 16793–16798. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821204116. Garza, Alicia. 2014. A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement. The Feminist Wire. https://thefeministwire.com/2014/10/blacklivesmatter-­2/. Harris, Leonard. 2020a. Dignity and Subjugation (2018). In A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader, ed. Lee A.  McBride III, 143–157. New York: Bloomsbury. ———. 2020b. Honor: Emasculation and Empowerment (1992). In A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader, ed. Lee A.  McBride III, 113–128. New York: Bloomsbury. ———. 2020c. Honor and Insurrection or a Short Story about Why John Brown (with David Walker’s Spirit) Was Right and Frederick Douglass (with Benjamin Banneker’s Spirit) Was Wrong (1999). In A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader, ed. Lee A. McBride III, 161–173. New York: Bloomsbury. ———. 2020d. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism (2002). In A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader, ed. Lee A. McBride III, 175–187. New York: Bloomsbury. ———. 2020e. Necro-being: An Actuarial Account of Racism (2018). In A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader, ed. Lee A.  McBride III, 69–96. New York: Bloomsbury. Henning, Kristin. 2018. Boys to Men: The Role of Policing in the Socialization of Black Boys. In Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment, ed. Angela J. Davis, 57–94. New York: Vintage Books. Higginbotham, A. Leon. 1996. Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process Race. New York: Oxford University Press. Huggins, Nathan Irvin. 2007. Harlem Renaissance. New  York: Oxford University Press. Hughes, Langston. 1995. Note on Commercial Theatre. In The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, ed. Arnold Rampersad, 215–216. New  York: Random House, Inc. Jeffers, Chike. 2014. Should Black Kids Avoid Wearing Hoodies? In Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics, ed. George Yancy and Janine Jones, 129–140. Lanham: Lexington Books. Jordan, Winthrop D. 1968. White over Black American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Kant, Immanuel. 2007. Of the Different Races If Human Beings. In Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. Günter Zöller and Robert B.  Louden, 84–97. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 2008. Groundwork for the Mataphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy, ed. Mary J.  Gregor and Allen Wood, 41–108. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Kennedy, Randall. 1997. Race, Crime, and the Law. New York: Vintage Books. ———. 2015. Lifting as We Climb. Harper’s Magazine, January 22. https:// harpers.org/archive/2015/10/lifting-­as-­we-­climb/. LeBlanc, Paul. 2020. Trump Shares Letter That Calls Peaceful Protesters ‘Terrorists’. CNN Cable News Network, June 5. https://edition.cnn. com/2020/06/04/politics/trump-­letter-­protesters/index.html. Lett, Elle, Emmanuella Ngozi Asabor, Theodore Corbin, and Dowin Boatright. 2021. Racial Inequity in Fatal US Police Shootings, 2015–2020. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 75 (4): 394–397. https://doi. org/10.1136/jech-­2020-­215097. Levinson, Justin D., and Robert J. Smith. 2017. Systemic Implicit Bias. The Yale Law Journal 126: 406–416. http://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/ systemic-­implicit-­bias. May 27, 2020. PBS Public Broadcasting Service. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/may-­27-­2020-­pbs-­newshour-­full-­episode. Mbembe, J.-A. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40. muse.jhu.edu/ article/39984. McBride, Lee. 2013. Insurrectionist Ethics and Thoreau. Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society 49 (1): 29–45. https://doi.org/10.2979/ trancharpeirsoc.49.1.29. Mills, Charles. 2015. Bestial Inferiority: Locating Simianization within Racism. In Simianization: Apes, Gender, Class, and Race, ed. Wulf D.  Hund, Charles W. Mills, and Silvia Sebastiani, 19–42. Zürich: Lit Verlag. Murphy, Jeffrie G., and Jean Hampton. 1998. Forgiveness and Mercy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Robert J., and Justin D. Levinson. 2012. The Impact of Implicit Racial Bias on the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion. Seattle University Law Review 35 (3): 795–826. https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sulr/vol35/iss3/9/. Stevenson, Bryan. 2018. A Presumption of Guilt: The Legacy of America’s History of Racial Injustice. In Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment, ed. Angela J. Davis, 3–30. New York: Vintage Books. Thomas, Laurence. 1993. Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2005. Moral Equality and Natural Inferiority. Social Theory and Practice 31 (3): 379–404. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract200531315.

CHAPTER 8

Anti-ethics as Insurrectionist Ethics: An Analysis of the Normative Foundations of Philosophies Born of Struggle Alberto G. Urquidez

Anti-ethics is necessary to demystify the present concept of MAN. It is an attempt to expose the assumed ethical orientation of reason as an essential anthropological quality of the human—the futural self—as an illusion and a stratagem. …The Black male, as an anti-futural entity, resists the class mobility and assimilation alongside the oppressor. …His intimacy with death has bred a different eschatological calculus that enables him to struggle against oppression, to live within tyranny, despite the seeming permanence of the repressive conditions. Tommy J. Curry, The Man-Not, p. 186

A. G. Urquidez (*) Department of Philosophy, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_8

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Introduction: Anti-Ethics as Ante-Ethics This paper theorizes the normative dimensions of the lived experience of Black males. As a Brown Latinx male, my theoretical reflections do not stem from my own lived experience. Rather, they are largely informed by my reading of Tommy J. Curry’s (2017) The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood, which provides a justification for Black Male Studies. Curry’s The Man-Not develops a sustained argument for the reconceptualization of Black male oppression. Although his argument is specifically about the Black male, his argument may be extended to members of other oppressed groups insofar as they share similar conditions of oppression. For this reason, his argument, if successful, has deep significance for oppressed peoples and for normative philosophy, especially “philosophies born of struggle” (Harris and McBride III 2020; Harris 2000).1 The premise of The Man-Not is that Black male oppression is not explicable in racial terms alone. It is a function of race and sex. Curry cautions against the misleading use of “gender.” The gender categories Man and Woman denote human kinds whose full humanity is recognized and uncontested; yet Black people have historically been subjected to dehumanization under white supremacy; they have been racialized as “nonhuman” or “subhuman.”2 “Popular categories of analysis such as class, gender, and even race,” writes Curry, “suppose a universal human template upon which they imprint. But what is the applicability of human categories on the nonhuman? The Black male is negated not from an origin of (human) being, but from nihility” (2017, 6). Curry introduces the 1  My interest in philosophies born of struggle stems from my normative work on racism (Urquidez 2020), which draws on Leonard Harris’ insurrectionist ethical framework, and more recently on Curry’s anti-ethical framework (Urquidez 2021). This paper extends this engagement. 2  Curry emphasizes dehumanization or the nonhuman. While it is certainly true that Blacks have been categorized as “chattel,” there is a case to be made that this categorization has changed. Following Charles Mills (1997), the category “subperson” might be more appropriate for Blacks depending on time and place. For Mills, “Subpersons are humanoid entities who, because of racial phenotype/genealogy/culture, are not fully human and therefore have a different and inferior schedule of rights and liberties applying to them. In other words, it is possible to get away with doing things to subpersons that one could not do to persons, because they do not have the same rights as persons” (1997, 56). It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider the nonhuman-subhuman divide. As both categories fall on the lower ends of the human spectrum, I use these categories interchangeably.

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term “genre” as one that is sufficiently capacious to capture the lived experience of both the human and the non-human. The genre category that captures the non-human, and specifically the Black male, is Man-Not, which stands in contrast to the genre category Man, the category of the human.3 What does it mean to say that the Black male is negated from “nihility” or that the Man-Not lacks an origin of being and occupies a position of “non-being”? Curry explains: The problem confronting Black men and boys is not one of app[lying a definition]. The problem—which results in Black male death—is [rather] one of definition, in which the nature of Black men is thought to be synonymous with the negativity imposed on them. … Black men and boys are literally perceived as the dangers and fears that others project on them. Unbelievably, this general anxiety felt toward the Black male is suggested to be at the core of his being. Regardless of whether these fears are simply imagined, not at all actual, they operate as the cognitive marker of his perceptibility. Fear distinguishes the Black male body from other, less terrifying bodies. Consequently, the Black male is known by the potential he has to be a rapist, a murderer, or a thief. (2017, 169)

Nihility is the problem of being unthinkable. I herein underscore two preconditions of nihility, existential and material. Existentially, nihility defines the Black male as the “Nigger-beast” (the locus of pathology) (Curry 2017, 131). On one hand, the Black male is thought of as that dreadful, dangerous brute, seeking power and domination; on the other hand, he is that detestable thing that can be marginalized, disregarded, discarded. Materially, nihility thrusts social categories onto the Black male which dispose him to death and dying—poor health, sexual abuse, violence, incarceration, police brutality, routine killings, implicit bias, microaggressions, and so on. He is expendable, fungible, and his poor life prospects are empirically measurable and generally predictable.

3  It is unclear whether Man is a category that encompasses white men and white women (the category of the human), or whether the category Human is the broader category. At times, as when Curry first introduces the term “Man-Not,” he distinguishes (following Maria Lugones (2010, 744)) not-men and not-women. At other times, he seems to speak of “Man” in more general terms, Man signifying the genre category of the human and Man-­ Not signifying the genre category of the non-human (see, e.g., 2017, 188).

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In the fifth chapter of The Man-Not, entitled “In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope and the Reality of Anti-Black (Male) Death that Demands Our Theorization of the Anti-Ethical,” Curry argues that Black Male Studies should eschew normative ethical theorizing. For purposes of this paper, normative ethical theory is concerned, inter alia, with providing principles of moral conduct. Ethical principles regulate behavior by guiding moral decision-making in the context of personal and interpersonal relations. “Ethics” or “moral philosophy” is that discipline and subfield of philosophy tasked with prescribing valid moral norms; that is, its task is to determine how things ought to be. Curry’s critique begins with the observation that ethics, qua academic discipline, is a futural subject matter, one concerned with projecting humanity into the future. The problem here is that humanity consists of men and women who are racialized as white. White-centrism in ethical theory means that ethicists will tend not to center Black people’s experience, for Blacks are genre-d as not-human. Moreover, the Black male’s vulnerability and temporal proximity to death confines his aspirations to the present. As an anti-futural entity, ethics neither centers the Black male’s aspirations and values, nor are any duties conferred upon whites that derive from his humanity. In this way, ethical discourse functions to safeguard white interests. As Curry puts it, ethical “perceptions of the world and its white architects are determined by the will of white supremacy to maintain virtue throughout all ethical calculations” (2017, 184). This, the white myopia of ethics, is written into its disciplinary standards and praxis despite its ostensible claim to theorize general ethical principles that are valid for all. In other words, the white myopia of ethics consists in its limited application to the human which excludes those beings racialized as non-human. Curry calls the rejection of the ethical stance anti-ethics. Curry’s critique of ethics in conjunction with the name he gives to his approach might be thought to convey a categorical rejection of ethical theorizing tout court. The prefix “anti-” might be thought to indicate that the anti-ethical stance has no “positive side,” no positive ethical dimension. One argument for this reading is that the non-human lacks genuine ethical options under white supremacy (for this is part and parcel of dehumanization); therefore, there can be no ethics of the oppressed, only anti-ethics (defiance). Another argument for this reading is Curry’s adamancy that ethical theorizing has a hegemonic, ideological function that ultimately advances white interests. In addition to these arguments derived directly from Curry’s account of anti-ethics, Curry makes two additional claims in

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The Man-Not that are consistent with this radical reading. First, Curry sometimes makes claims to the effect that the Black male is somehow incapable or beyond theorization within the academy.4 Second, Curry’s (2021b) insistence upon empiricism and his strong opposition to appeals to intuition and moralizing might be thought to undermine fundamental components of the praxis of ethical theory. These considerations lend support to what I call the radical reading of Curry’s anti-ethical stance. The radical interpretation is defined by the call upon Black Male Studies scholars to abandon any and all forms of normative ethical theorizing. It seems to me that the radical reading—a purely negative understanding—of the anti-ethical stance obscures the theory’s positive side, which consists in the legitimate hope of the Black male or of the non-human more generally. The radical reading would have us understand that acts of resistance are valued merely for their (limited) utility. However, this proposal strikes me as overlooking the moral worth of resistance. Resistance, I will argue, is more than an understandable response to oppression; it is an ethical response. I will defend an alternative, moderate reading that validates the positive content of anti-ethics. To defend the moderate reading and unpack the positive side of anti-ethics, this paper offers a conceptual analysis of Curry’s notion of anti-ethics, with the aim of clarifying the normative foundations of the theory. I ask whether and in what sense anti-­ ethics can be conceived as an ethical stance and argue that Curry subscribes to an ethical theory as he defines the term “ethics.” The question of whether ethics can exist for the Man-Not can be motivated via the arguments in favor of the radical reading. One such argument is that the ethical decision-making of oppressed peoples is constrained by the will of whites; consequently, the Man-Not (and perhaps other nonwhites) lack any and all genuine ethical options. To assess this proposition we need to ask: Does white hegemony amount to the annihilation of “any 4  For instance, in the introduction of The Man-Not, Curry writes: “I suggest that anti-­ ethical thought is the only way for scholars and activists to move toward a more accurate study of Black men and boys, because it is only in the recognition of the incompatibility between Black (male) life and the supposed civility of American society that we truly understand how institutions, policies, and dehumanization function to concretize the caste status of Black men and boys and, by consequence, the larger Black community” (2017, 38). The implication seems to be that ethical theory necessarily proceeds from the false premise that “Black (male) life” is compatible with “the supposed civility [ethicality] of American society.” Ethical theory thus seems destined to get the analysis wrong. However, I argue that ethical theory is possible that does not presuppose the civility/ethicality of American society.

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and all” ethical options? Does white domination annihilate Black ethical agency? If not, what is the extent of the coerciveness imposed by the white will? Prima facie, it strikes me as implausible to suggest that the will of white supremacy annihilates Black ethical agency altogether. An adequate ethical theory ought to recognize this fact, anti-ethics included. I explore how the anti-ethicist might defend the claim that some genuine ethical options are afforded the non-human. My position can be expressed in Curry’s terminology. As an anti-futural entity, certain ethical options pertaining to the future may be off limits to the non-human (Black male), but others, particularly ethical options pertaining to the present, including various modes of resistance, are available. My thesis that anti-ethical theory is compatible with Black (ethical) agency must address the objection that ethical theory is intrinsically ideological, for Curry. Ideology is herein understood in the pejorative sense that signifies a form of discourse that has a hegemonic social function (Shelby 2003, 2014). One can certainly find textual support for this reading in Curry, who argues, for instance: “When morality is defined not by the empirical acts that demonstrate immorality, but by the racial character of those in question, our ethics become nothing more than the apologetics of our tyrannical epoch” (2017, 184). Must ethical theory, or attributions of ethical value, be ideological? I see no reason to think so. I contend that the anti-ethical stance embraces the underlying normative commitments of Leonard Harris’ insurrectionist ethics. Harris’ theory emerges from the struggle of oppressed peoples and postulates the duty to insurrect as an ethical response to oppression. As Harris explains: A philosophy that offers moral intuitions, reasoning strategies, motivations, and examples of just moral actions but falls short of requiring that we have a moral duty to support or engage in slave insurrections is defective. Moreover, a philosophy that does not make advocacy—that is, representing, defending, or promoting morally just causes—a seminal, meritorious feature of moral agency is defective. (2002, 192)

If Curry’s anti-ethics presupposes the ethical duty to insurrect, then the theory cannot consistently assert that ethics is inherently ideological. This for two reasons. First, anti-ethics would be a self-refuting theory, as this would make it an ethical theory that proclaims that all ethical theories are hegemonic; hence it too is hegemonic and should therefore be

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abandoned.5 Second, insurrectionist ethics is characteristically anti-­ hegemonic. Insurrectionist ethics is committed to the duty to resist oppression and the cultivation of insurrectionists. The aim is to identify, and to determine how best to foster, the insurrectionist character traits and consciousness necessary to dispose individuals to oppression-­ abolitionist projects (Harris 2002; see also McBride III 2017; Carter 2013). The suggestion that Curry’s anti-ethics has a “positive” side, a prescriptive ethical side which is not merely critical or parasitic upon ethics, immediately runs into an objection: If Curry’s anti-ethics turns out to be an ethical position, how can such a position not be self-refuting? In other words, how is “anti-ethics” to be understood? To specify the positive content of anti-ethics, it is important to specify the character of the rejected ethical content expressed by the term. I argue that the word “ethics” as it appears in the term “anti-ethics” signifies a particular body of ethical theorizing as opposed to ethical theorizing as such, a theory I call the idealist approach. If this is correct, Curry’s anti-ethics is not anti-ethics per se, but anti-idealist-ethics. I refer to the positive side of ethical engagement that is characteristic of Black Male Studies—ethics in the service of Black folk— realist ethics. This approach is founded on the legitimate Black hope that can be articulated in terms of an insurrectionist ethics. My argument implies that the term “anti-ethics” is potentially misleading, as it potentially obscures its positive ethical content, hence also its broader significance. The positive content of Curry’s anti-ethics lies principally not in what it rejects (its critique of idealist ethics), but in what it accepts (its realist hope which consists in its commitment to the means of liberation— i.e., resistance, defiance, insurrection). There is another important theoretical upshot, as well. Insurrectionist ethics is a positive ethical theory precisely because it makes an ethical demand. This demand is made in the face of oppression and is directed at the oppressor. It is a demand (in the present) to be a futural entity; the  eschewal  of one's  anti-futural status makes one's ethic a presentist ethic. It is “presentist” not just in the sense that it colors contemporary decision-making (for presumably, all ethics does this), but in the sense 5  Unlike anti-ethics, insurrectionist ethics is a self-proclaimed ethical theory, and not just in name. Kristie Dotson explains: “Harris is concerned with standards for evaluating the adequacy of moral theories that have the goal of guiding our deliberations about what actions are forbidden, permissible or dutiful, and what goods, such as freedom from oppression, are worth advocating for in the public sphere” (2013b, 74).

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that its prescriptions are defensive in nature. In other words, its prescriptions, which are discharged in acts of resistance, are directed at defending Black life against the present white threat. To occupy a position on the register of non-being means to be continually occupied by the necessity of defending one’s humanity. Defending Black humanity is partly a function of existential necessity; it is partly a function of the futility of futural normative arguments given the apparent permanence of nihility. Still, insurrectionist acts aim at resistance, not merely from existential necessity, but from a desire to affirm Black humanity, i.e., the realization of a truly ethical world by way of bringing about the complete ethical agency of oppressed groups. The ethical demand of insurrectionist ethics enables us to think of anti-­ ethics as ante-ethics, as a condition of the possibility of genuine ethics or moral community.6 The duty one has is not a duty to act ethically by the standards of people who can take their future for granted (for that is not possible for the Man-Not), but an ethical duty that precedes futural ethical conduct. For it aims to bring about the conditions under which the oppressed individual could have a future, could act “ethically” by the standards of an inclusive futural community. Such a world would be one in which the oppressed individual has full ethical agency because he is no longer oppressed and thus has access to the full gambit of ethical options. My argument, sketched above and detailed below, aims to establish a meaningful sense of the word “ethics” that stands in contradistinction to its meaning in the expression “anti-ethics.”

“You Must Choose”: Idealist or Realist Ethical Hope In the chapter, “In the Fiat of Dreams,” Curry introduces the anti-ethical stance. He begins the relevant section, “The Fiat of Dreams: Anti-ethical Thought and Its Relevance to Futural Subjectivity,” with a discussion of hope. As the discussion unfolds it quickly becomes clear that hope, for Curry, is intricately bound up with the problem of ethics. His argument turns on the premise that the reasonability of moral judgment (a claim about how things ought to be) depends on the viability of descriptive judgment (a claim about how things are). I will not attempt to do justice  The suggestion to use the term “ante-ethics” was made by Jacoby A. Carter.

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to every dimension of Curry’s analysis, as that would require lengthier discussion. Instead, I focus on select dimensions of his critique of ethics and ethical deliberation. I do so by developing a distinction between idealist and realist ethics, which will prove indispensable to Curry’s anti-­ ethical stance. Curry targets what Henry Sidgwick calls “the method of ethics,” which (perhaps more than any other) has significantly shaped the disciplinary orientation of ethics. In 1874, Sidgwick defined ethics as “any rational procedure by which we determine what individual human beings ought— or what is right for them—or to seek to realize by voluntary action” (2019, 1, quoted in Curry 2017, 183). Ethical deliberation is deliberation about what reasonable individuals ought (or have a right) to do. From Hume we learn that ought implies can. Curry expands this Humean insight: ought “implies a projected (futural) act. The word [“ought”] commands a deliberate action to reasonably expect the world to be able to sustain or support” (2017, 184). What it is “reasonable” to expect the world to be able to sustain or support is what is probable on the evidence, not what is merely logically possible.7 A purely hypothetical discussion about “how things ought to be,” one regarding a future that no amount of feasible action could possibly bring about, is useless fantasy, pie-in-the-sky idealism.8 Given that ethical prescription is directed at the realization of an ethical outcome (a future one hopes to achieve or perpetuate), the action must be capable of realizing such an outcome. Hope thus enters the picture. Hoping for something (in a sense that implies believing)  differs from merely wanting it. It might be reasonable to want to be free because one is entitled to be free. It does not follow that it is reasonable to hope to be free. If it is reasonable to hope that things ought to be one way rather than another then that is because there is some viable (and not merely possible) path toward achieving what is hoped for. Herein lies the challenge for the Man-Not. Historically, white people have dominated Black people. A Black male in the United States today 7  Evidentialism has a long history. For instance, it is evident in David Hume’s work (see note 9). A classic statement of this principle is provided in William K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” (Stephen and Pollock 1886). Curry’s commitment to evidentialism merits further discussion. Unfortunately, the literature on “the ethics of belief” is vast and beyond the scope of this paper. 8  What I mean is that it is useless from the perspective of the oppressed. It goes without saying that ideology is useful for the oppressor.

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understands that it is possible for him to die or be killed at any moment by powerful forces that seek his annihilation. What legitimate hope can he have if he understands that he is subject to powers outside his control? What moral ends can the Black male reasonably expect the world to sustain or support? Can he hope for liberation, for example? While some moral ends may seem feasible, others seem less so. In this circumstance, the following choice emerges: • Idealist Reaction. Though racism seems insurmountable, the Black man chooses to engage in ethical deliberation with (and about) whites, on the hope that his reasonable belief about racism’s apparent intractability will prove false. His choice expresses his faith in the power of ethical reason (moral suasion) to motivate ethical action; more specifically, it expresses his faith that ethical reason might initiate transformational change in the consciousness of his oppressor. • Realist Reaction. Though racism seems insurmountable, the Black man refuses to engage in ethical deliberation with (and about) whites, thinking this pointless and unproductive given racism’s apparent intractability. His choice expresses his lack of faith in the power of ethical reason (moral suasion) to motivate ethical action; more specifically, it expresses his lack of faith that ethical reason might initiate transformational change in the consciousness of his oppressor. To decide between these options, the norm of evidentialism seems to reign supreme in Curry’s thought. For our purposes, the evidentialist principle may be roughly defined as the claim that belief is rational to the degree that it is proportionate to the evidence.9 Presupposing this principle, Curry argues that idealist ethics is evidentially unfounded, for it is based on the false premise that liberation is achievable. In a world that is framed and controlled by the white oppressor it is unreasonable to think the world could sustain or support actions seeking the complete liberation of Black people (2017, 184). Given the unfeasibility of securing certain 9  This is roughly Hume’s formulation of the principle in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. “In our reasonings concerning matter of fact,” writes Hume, “there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence” (Beauchamp 1999, 170).

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basic ethical goals in an anti-Black world, Curry rejects idealism. While the Black male wants to be free, he does not hope for freedom but for something achievable. I discuss the content of the achievable in the section “The Ethical Stance of Anti-Ethics.” In this section and the next, I elaborate and motivate Curry’s case against idealism. Why is hope in liberation unfeasible? Curry’s first argument echoes his endorsement of Derrick Bell’s (1992a, 1992b) historical thesis that racism is a permanent feature of society. As a matter of historical record, whites have displayed a seemingly insatiable will to dominate Blacks, as though compelled by addiction or pathology. The history of white racism continues into the present, for whites today are unwilling to give up their power and dominant social position (Curry 2008, 2009). Racism, then, is permanent, not because it is too complex or onerous to resolve, but because white people stifle the liberationist projects of racially subjugated groups. The hope that whites will change at some unspecified futural date is a false hope belied by the history of white racism. Yet, traditional ethical theory takes neither the history nor contemporary manifestations of white racism seriously. On the contrary, it often proceeds on the premises of white virtue and racial egalitarianism. The call for reparations for chattel slavery to American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS) helpfully illustrates the limitations of ethical theory. What makes this a good case study is that a robust reparations programs is arguably necessary, in colonial states like the United States, to curtail the most significant material harms of white supremacy (Darity Jr and Mullen 2020). To the degree that reparations make it into mainstream political discourse the issue is not rigorously and seriously considered, even within “progressive” circles. Consider the congressional bill H.R.40, which was introduced in 2019 by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and co-sponsored by various Democrats. The bill “establishes the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” which “shall examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies.” Not only does the bill fall short of legislating reparations, it does not require Congress to heed the commission’s recommendations, which means it is unlikely to succeed. Consider next the 2020 Democratic presidential candidacy of Marianne Williamson, who championed a $200–$500  billion reparations plan as part of her presidential campaign. Besides the fact that her presidential campaign had little chance of succeeding—largely because her campaign was not backed by the political establishment of the

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Democratic Party—her reparations proposal falls woefully short of what William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kristen Mullen argue is necessary to eliminate the Black-white wealth gap. They argue that the racial wealth gap is the proper measure of a successful reparations program because wealth is “the most robust indicator of the cumulative economic effects of white supremacy in the United States” (2020, 263). One way to eliminate the racial wealth gap is to give ADOS “a share of the nation’s wealth comparable to their share in the nation’s population.” By this standard, “a reparations outlay of $10.7 trillion, or an average outlay of approximately $267,000 per person for 40 million eligible black descendants of American slavery [is required to achieve parity]” (2020, 264). This approximation is indexed to 2019 and thus increases with each passing year. It seems that present calls for reparations are vague or symbolic, on the one hand, or fall short of real economic parity, on the other hand. What explains this fact? Given that a genuine reparations program would dismantle a fundamental component of America’s racial hierarchy, perhaps a partial explanation as to why future calls for reparations are likely to disappoint is that the majority of (white) Americans do not want to equalize the playing field. That a serious reparations program is politically unfeasible in the United States illustrates how certain basic necessities and entitlements, no matter how ethical or reasonable, are denied to Blacks. For Curry, normative justifications of reparations come to naught  given white opposition, except as critical (anti-ethical) stances that expose the “colonial morality” underwriting liberalist discourse (Curry 2011). While Curry’s fundamental objection to idealism is epistemic, it would be misleading to present his critique as purely epistemic. In fact, his theory is a contribution to “the ethics of belief,” for he offers a series of interconnected moral arguments against ethical hope within a context of oppression. If idealist ethics is falsified by the fact that racism is likely to persist owing to whites’ domineering will, then his second objection is that the idealist stance has a psychic toll on the internal lives of oppressed individuals who misguidedly place their faith in false hope. Curry characterizes false Black hope as an unwarranted faith in miracles: the hope that, by some miracle, one’s oppressors will have a change of heart and no longer seek to oppress Black people. Following Emile Durkheim, Curry contends that pursuing a goal which is unattainable condemns one to a state of perpetual unhappiness or disillusionment. One source of false Black hope is the belief of he who thinks he will live to see the ideal of universal humanity realized in white people, or that white people will be transformed by

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moral argumentation into benevolent actors. False ethical hope can be a source of stress, anxiety, and the like. For instance, a misguided belief in the politics of reparations or in the politics of Black Lives Matter can heighten one’s level of frustration with whites, foment anti-white resentment, or germinate other psychic harms.10 Third, prolonged false hope and exacerbation of psychic turmoil can devolve into a state of internalized tragedy—depression, self-hatred, or wretchedness; what Curry calls “nihilism.” Curry powerfully elucidates this state by drawing on Huey P. Newton, an individual who gave his all in the service of the liberation of Black people. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, recalls the history of this political movement in his 1973 autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide (2009). Curry’s discussion centers the opening section, “A Manifesto: Revolutionary Suicide.” Here Newton introduces what he calls spiritual death, or a life of “quiet desperation.” This is a form of nihilism in which victims of long-lasting oppression have ceased to fight back against their oppressors, as expressed in the attitude “What’s the use?” Consider the enslaved African. If his soul has been sufficiently crushed through the violent process of “seasoning,” he may see no point in resisting. This is defeatism: the phenomenon whereby the internal toll of constant disappointment and psychic harm weigh so heavily on one as to overwhelm one into resignation. Extreme expressions of resignation include self- or other-destructive behavior, among the most extreme of which is self-inflicted death by suicide, what Newton calls “reactionary suicide.” When resignation does not lead to reactionary suicide, it leads instead to spiritual death, a less extreme but no less painful manifestation.

Ethical Alienation as Spiritual Death This brings us to Curry’s fourth objection to the idealist ethic, which consists in an extension of Newton’s conception of spiritual death. A striking form of internal turmoil and spiritual death is the existential state I call ethical alienation. Ethical alienation, or giving up one’s ethical agency, is a form of spiritual death that’s based on the internalization of ethical ideology: either the magical power of moral suasion or the self-delusional 10  For a critique of the organizational structure and the intersectional political strategy of Black Lives Matter, see Curry (2021a). For allegations and concerns about apparent fund mismanagement of the Black Lives Mater Global Network Foundation, see Nicholas Kulish (2022).

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conviction that the moral community somehow has already been ushered in. As Curry elaborates: Hope, as the foundation of these ethics where oppression is thought to be mediated through a rationalized faith in the humanity of one’s oppressor, is nihilistic, at best. Such hope paralyzes the oppressed through an a priori duty to the oppressor. Such a duty confines oppressed people to a faith in the potential of a not-yet-present white humanity that could learn to respect Black life without any evidence that this quality can or does exist within the dominant racial group. …[Such hope amounts to] nothing more than the fiat of an ahistorical dream. (Curry 2017, 182)

The passage reiterates Curry’s fundamental objection to idealist ethics—that it is false or “nihilistic.” The claim that white humanity could learn to act ethically toward Blacks is “ahistorical” and hence “without evidence.” Given whites’ moral psychology and their interest in white supremacy, it is unlikely that white people will extend equal ethical regard to Black humanity. In short, the ethical hope in the not-yet-present humanity of white people is epistemically unreasonable, for Curry. What remains to be unpacked is how false ethical hope breeds ethical alienation and how this relates to what Curry calls the paralyzing notion of an “a priori duty to the oppressor.” In the remainder of this section I clarify this duty vis-à-vis two forms of ethical alienation. First, ethical alienation may spring from the conviction that, despite the historical failure of moral suasion, a genuinely white ethical outlook could be brought about, as if through magic. Ethical alienation emerges from waiting patiently for a futural, spontaneous moment of moral recognition. One anticipates the time when one will have finally become a proper object of respect, a person in the eyes of the oppressor and a fullstatus member of the moral community. If Curry is correct that this magical hope in moral recognition is misguided, then the key of moral suasion that is thought to open the door to recognition and reconciliation will fail and the door will remain closed. Living with the false hope that the oppressor will eventually change is akin to living in the grip of a lie, which sets up a situation of predictable frustration and perpetual disappointment. Over time, the lie that anticipates a truly ethical community takes its psychic-­emotional toll and reduces one to powerlessness. The feeling of helplessness is exacerbated by the knowledge that precious time and

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energy wasted on anticipating futural white virtue could have been expended asserting one’s humanity and committing acts that demand the other’s respect. The second form of ethical alienation is a function of having internalized an ethical ideology such as liberalism or egalitarianism, which asserts that ethical duties between whites and Blacks are equal and bidirectional. Consider these commonly held ethical presuppositions: Human beings, including white people, are rationally autonomous moral agents (persons) that must be respected. Compelling change by means of physical (or other forms of) coercion, as opposed to compelling change by means of moral persuasion, is disrespectful to the agency of human beings (persons).

If whites are thought to be rational moral agents, then the last of these propositions implies that whites could learn to respect Black life and could become ethical in the future. These propositions might be taken to undermine the supposition that whites are vicious or that they are unlikely to change in the future, for to think as much is to deny whites’ agency and sensitivity to moral reasons; consequently, this supposition disrespects the humanity of whites. If white people are inherently rational and persuadable by means of ethical argumentation, then historical claims such as Bell’s contention that racism is permanent are based on unethical premises (like the claim that history establishes the viciousness of whites). Suppose that Blacks internalize the proposition that white humanity is entitled to respect. Then they might come to believe that certain reactions to the demonstrated immorality of whites is ethically off limits. For example, Blacks may feel that it would be unethical for them to embrace coercive modes of achieving liberation because coercion is morally harmful to whites. What, then, can Blacks do to affirm their own humanity? A natural response would be that Blacks might see it as their moral duty to embrace incrementalism and moral suasion as means of ushering in the not-yet-­ present white humanity. Conciliatory projects might be thought to be the only appropriate means to cultivating whites’ ethical potential as a vehicle of securing Black humanity. We have seen that faith in a not-yet-present white humanity undergirds a moral duty (limitation) upon the oppressed, which obligates them to act ethically toward white humanity. This sense of obligation ultimately generates a second form of alienation. Spiritual death results from a sense of

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personal moral responsibility that curtails one’s sense of agency (specifically, one’s oppression-resistance efforts). To uphold the humanity of whites at the same time one suffers under white-perpetrated oppression requires the suppression of, and disillusionment with, the moral conviction that whites are similarly obligated to extend ethical regard to Blacks. Since whites, as a group, flout this obligation, the claim that ethical duties go both ways has tacitly been qualified by the fact that only Blacks are actually expected to carry out their moral duties. That is, only Blacks are burdened and held accountable for their moral transgressions. In this way, the oppressive conditions under which the Black individual is forced to act are transformed into just conditions that confer ethical burdens to the oppressed. This position is clearly disingenuous and unfair, given the historical context described above. The historical context exposes the ethical judgment imposed upon Blacks for what it is: it is a demand that Blacks forfeit their ethical agency. Under ethical idealism, any rebellious response to conventional ethics that demands a fundamental change to the power differentials that undergird white oppression is rendered unethical. To acquiesce to this request is to resign one’s agency. For example, the enslaved individual who hopes for the transformation of the enslaver cannot at the same time plan and orchestrate a slave revolt; for this is inconsistent with his ethical hope. For this reason, this form of self-alienation, this emasculation of one’s sense of self and agency, which results either from the misguided belief in bidirectional ethical reciprocation or from the misguided hope in white ethical transformation, culminates in ethical alienation. In an effort to stave off ethical alienation, the Black person reminds the white person that he too is a human being, that “Black lives matter!” The call may be heard to some degree, but it is never adequately addressed. At best, the cry for liberation may occasion reformism. In this way, what is properly understood to be an ethical cry for liberation is heard as a call for gradualist reform. The call thereby becomes a “repressive utterance,” as Curry observes, for the element of liberation is silenced, shunned, momentarily tabled—in a word, repressed on ethical grounds. For instance, the premise of bidirectional ethical obligation in a community of moral equals may be invoked by whites to rationalize their ethical demand that Blacks fall in line, that they settle for a more incremental approach, or that they wait their turn (at some unspecified date projected indefinitely into the future, an argument King rejects in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”). When calls for “liberation” and “justice,” like calls for more or renewed

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ethical discourse, become euphemisms for “wait your turn” or “reformism” their meaning is diluted. When true liberation and justice are not seriously entertained, calls for “liberation” and “justice” mock these very ideals and function as cruel jokes, inflicting additional harm.

The Ethical Stance of Anti-ethics The aforementioned considerations11 motivate Curry’s fundamental question: What becomes of ethics to the oppressed when they realize that the following inference is mistaken: “To argue, as is often done, that the government, its citizens, or white people should act justly assumes that the possibility of how they could act defines their moral disposition” (2017, 183). What ethical hope is reasonable for the Black person, the Black male in particular, given the immoral disposition of whites (which whites describe as “moral”)? “Under such complexities,” writes Curry, “the only ethical deliberation concerning racism must be anti-ethical, or a judgment refusing to write morality onto immoral entities” (2017, 183). Curry’s anti-ethical stance challenges his reader to imagine ethical theorizing starting from the premise that whites are racist (unethical) in the present and will continue being so in the future. The goal is to imagine what ethics could consist in on the supposition of white viciousness. Obviously, ethical deliberation cannot aim at persuading whites to change their minds, for whites are not responsive to reason. Whatever 11  The aforementioned considerations do not exhaust Curry’s critique of idealist ethics, which includes an interesting argument regarding the concept of racism and its role within liberal discourse. Since ethics starts from Western man a priori (whites), notions like racism get to be defined by whites. Racism thus becomes “not death or the end of an ethical calculus or a moral evaluation itself but, ultimately, a call for all moral and liberal people in America to condemn racism as a practice. This call is not paramount; however, it is weighted next to other democratic values that preserve this great white society…that is, the very values that have justified the doom of Black bodies…At best, these appeals encourage reformism” (2017, 185). The death/nihility/non-being of the Black male ought to “[invalidate] the persuasiveness of morality, the embodied virtue, of democratic citizens.” However, under white supremacy, the death of the Black male inspires ethical thought in the form of ethical condemnations of anti-Black racism as well as proclamations of ethical self-transformation (personal transformation from “non-racist” to “anti-racist”). Such calls and personal transformations occasionally lead to reformist results that marginally benefit the Black male, but none that actually lead to his liberation. Western ethics is thus grounded in Black male death. “Their corpses are forgotten so that those who live can enjoy the illusion of futurity” (2017, 186). I intend to return to this complex ideological function in future work.

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“ethics” amounts to for Curry, its orientation must differ significantly from that of traditional ethics, where moral suasion is uncritically presupposed. Curry defines ethics (following Sidgwick) as a rational procedure for deciding what is right for one to seek to do by voluntary action. Given this definition, I argue that Curry’s anti-ethics is an ethical theory in Sidgwick’s sense insofar as it takes a decisive moral stance on right and wrong action. What determines “right” and “wrong” action, on Curry’s ethics, however, is less clear. What is the fundamental source of ethical value on his account? I argue that insurrectionist ethics explains the fundamental source of value undergirding the anti-ethical stance. Anti-ethics does not derive its name from the justifiable (presentist) hope that it embraces. Rather, it derives its name from the unjustifiable (futural) hope that it rejects. As mentioned in the introductory section, there are textual reasons to think Curry opposes ethics altogether. For example, Curry maintains that judgments exhibiting the anti-ethical stance are made from within a register of non-being and are thus predicated on an imperfect and narrow set of options. One might argue that the imperfection of these options or the coercive imposition of these options undermines Black ethical agency. Alternatively, one might wonder whether anti-ethics’ rejection of idealist hope renders it essentially hopeless or nihilistic. In this section, I argue that these aspects of the anti-ethical stance do not undermine Black ethical agency. The presentist focus of anti-ethics is linked to a source of moral hope that endows the stance with moral worth. Curry’s anti-ethical stance is defined by resistance and defiance of conventional norms which prove upon analysis to be limited by a commitment to white humanity. Resistance at once expresses the Black male’s “rejection of the futural self as impossibility” and his embracing of the present moment: “the Black male confronts the now that defines his resistance against the oppressive forces at the foundation of racism and patriarchy” (2017, 187). I believe the presentist and anti-futural elements of the anti-ethical stance have moral worth. To see this, consider two types of value, instrumental and inherent value, that are presupposed by the anti-­ ethical stance. Anti-ethics presupposes instrumental value insofar as it requires practical reason, or deliberation which is constitutive of defiance and resistance. As such, it involves the exercise of reason and, specifically, the logic of survival and resistance. For example, it is impossible to insurrect at every possible moment, so one must deliberate about when it is best to strike

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and when it is best to conform to traditional ethical convention. Another example is that, in a given situation, there is typically a spectrum of available options available. For instance, there may be several possible means of resistance. In exercising his discretion the agent exercises reason to determine the tactically superior means. Curry characterizes this logic as an “eschatological calculus that enables him to struggle against oppression, to live within tyranny, despite the seeming permanence of the repressive conditions” (2017, 186). His eschatology is an imminent one, for the Black male’s proximity to death restricts all his resistance efforts to the present (defending his humanity). Still, such a prudent anti-futural entity acts carefully and diligently. Even the enslaved individual must await the right opportunity to act, create a plan of attack, and choose how best to persuade others to assist in the attack. His time may be running out, but he is resourceful with the time he has. It follows that instrumental value enters Curry’s anti-ethics in at least two ways: first, resistance efforts involve prudential deliberation; second, survival requires some degree of conformity to conventional ethical norms (it is a further question how we should think about the moral status of conventional ethical norms in an oppressive society). Anti-ethics additionally presupposes the notion of inherent value. The starting point for the anti-ethical stance is the judgment that it is right and intrinsically good for oppressed individuals to seek their liberation by means of voluntary action. The intrinsic value of liberation confers moral worth onto one’s liberationist attitudes and actions. That this is the case is confirmed by Curry’s affirmation of the moral worth of liberation. In his own words, death resulting from oppression-resistance efforts is “a more just” than death by either spiritual death or reactionary suicide (quoted below). The question arises: What explains the relationship of instrumental and inherent value, on Curry’s analysis? To answer this question, it is illuminating to relate Curry’s anti-ethics to Harris’ insurrectionist ethics. In “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” Harris’ (2002) defense of insurrectionist ethics unfolds in the context of an intricate argument that, at certain points, contrasts consequentialist and deontic value. This makes his argument useful in elaborating Curry’s anti-ethics. Harris seems to concur with the contention (of Bell and Curry) that overcoming racial oppression is unfeasible if not impossible. As he writes: “it is arguable that hope for ending the misery of existing generations is highly unlikely” (2002, 203). This informs his

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defense of two propositions which may appear to stand in tension with one another, but are in fact compatible: • Anti-consequentialist claim: Insurrectionist acts lack pragmatic value as liberationist strategies because their historical inefficaciousness suggests that they are unlikely to be successful. (Harris 2002, 202, 204) • Deontological claim: Insurrectionist acts have inherent value because they are the only sort of act that has ever brought about liberation; hence, the sort of act that is most likely to bring about liberation.12 On the one hand, while insurrectionist acts are potentially instrumental to the liberation of oppressed groups, the ethical value of insurrectionist acts is not conferred by a consequentialist or pragmatic calculus. On the other hand, while it is true that insurrectionist acts are unlikely to succeed, the simple fact of the matter is that liberation is impossible without a struggle. This latter point provides a hint at what Harris takes to be the ground that confers moral value to insurrectionist acts. We need to look more closely at the deontological foundations of insurrectionist ethics. In “Walker: Naturalism and Liberation,” Harris (2013) defends an ethic that he ascribes to the slave abolitionist, David Walker. According to Harris, Walker “believed that slaves had a natural intrinsic disposition to resist oppression, demonstrated or not. That intrinsic disposition was a feature of human nature.” Insurrectionist acts are justified as manifestations of the intrinsic inclination to be free. Harris continues: “This is Walker’s naturalism: the disposition to resist oppression and a correlative duty [to resist oppression] are facts of existential being” (2013, 96–97). Harris’ argument implies that the ethical worth of insurrectionist action is linked to the worth of human beings and human nature. The desire for 12  “There is no human progress without the discord of social conflict, insurrections, and revolutions. These are instrumental social actions. The outcomes are uncertain. Even if one is committed to an evolutionary view of change, there is no history of evolution without the history of insurrections, revolts, and revolutions. The uses of intelligence, dramatic rehearsal, dialogue, and discourse are hardly the sole modes through which institutions fundamentally change” (2002, 203). Importantly, while Harris maintains that insurrectionist acts are “instrumental,” he does not seem to hold the view that insurrectionist acts are instrumentally justifiable, for in order to be instrumentally justifiable the desired outcome would have to be likely on the evidence (which, he is clear, liberation is unlikely).

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liberation is the impetus that compels insurrectionist action, but whence its moral worth? The logic runs something like this: Life under an oppressive, unethical regime dehumanizes members of the oppressed classes—their humanity, personhood, and dignity is degraded—rendering their lives wretched; the only way to prevent or overcome this state of wretchedness is to resist this dehumanization; therefore, it is the duty of the oppressed to resist their oppressors and assert their humanity. I take this to be insurrectionist ethics’ core logic. Harris (2013, 96), for example, argues that Walker’s (1965) APPEAL, originally published in 1829, is an insurrectionist argument directed at persuading the enslaved to assert their humanity. Walker draws on his naturalistic ethic to argue that the enslaved individual is a human being whose “wretchedness” is incompatible with her/his basic human nature. Normal life for Walker should include the possibility of accumulating assets, transferring assets to one’s progeny, loving one’s partner, and freely selling the product of one’s labor (Harris 2002, 205). The failure to attain these goods renders one’s life wretched, save for acts of resistance. Since the only way to reclaim one’s dignity from this wretched state is to resist the oppressor, resistance acquires inherent value even if the attempt ultimately fails. Applying Harris’ analysis of insurrectionist ethics to Curry’s anti-ethical stance, we arrive at the following analysis. Curry implicitly subscribes to Newton’s concept of “revolutionary suicide,” which signifies the likely tragic resistance of a person who understands that (1) liberation will not happen without an assault on the establishment; (2) resistance will likely hasten pain, suffering and death for oneself; and (3) liberation is unlikely to be achieved in one’s lifetime (the revolution is not for the benefit of oneself, but for the benefit of one’s subjected group). “Death complicates the now,” says Curry. “It emphasizes the complexity of the present” (2017, 187). Consider what it meant for Newton to live in the present. Rather than hope for a future of what is not to be (long life, defined by good health, well-being and recognition), Newton hoped that his death would not be in vain, that it would contribute to the struggle. He lived by the principle that real generosity toward the future lies in giving everything to the present. Similarly, for the Black male death is possibility. It offers an end to the tragedy, a life beyond the confines, what DuBois celebrated as escape from this world for his son. Newton is reacting against passivity—the idea that Black men should not resist and reject the moral order established by their oppressor. To not act against, to

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remain passive and non-actional, encourages death, just as acting, resisting, moving toward revolution implies “repression, counter-terrorism…prison, and funerals.” To act against the world that condemns the life of Blacks is to accept death as a consequence—a more just death. (2017, 187)

Resistance efforts that instantiate revolutionary suicide are, analytically, acts of insurrection. That insurrectionist acts are unlikely to succeed does not diminish their moral worth, for they do not derive their moral worth from their actual consequences. Rather, their moral worth is a function of the fact that liberation is befitting of humanity.13 According to Walker’s naturalism, there is dignity in committing acts that aim at liberation. As oppression involves the denial of dignity, the illegitimacy of oppression is exposed in acts of resistance. Resistance, being the only viable path toward liberation, embodies revolutionary suicide. The fact that liberation is most likely to occur as a function of resistance exhibits self-respect. It is resistance, then, that secures the moral worth of the insurrectionist act because resistance is an expression of self-respect. The idea of respect for humanity, including self-respect, creates room for a conception of hope. Previously it was argued that Curry’s critique of ethics contains an implicit distinction between hope and desire. While it makes sense to say that the insurrectionist ethicist “places hope in liberation” we have seen that this manner of speaking can be misleading insofar as the goal of liberation is improbable. Given the prospect of successful resistance (which culminates in liberation) is low, it is unreasonable to hope (believe) that resistance will bring about liberation. It might be objected that the term “hope” can be interpreted as synonymous with “wants” or “desires,” as in desiring or wanting liberation. This, however, is not the “hope” that is in question (for hope in the sense of wanting liberation is compatible with the revolutionary stance and does not necessarily lead to resignation). It is less misleading and more accurate to say 13  We must distinguish what an action is directed at from what an agent thinks the action is likely to bring about. An action is directed at a certain end or goal. The end or goal is the desired consequence, the expected outcome if the action is successful. A slave revolt, for example, is directed at liberating the slave from the oppressor. An agent who participates in a slave revolt might be said to “hope” for liberation. That the agent desires or intends to achieve liberation does not imply that the agent “hopes” for liberation in the sense that denotes what the agent thinks is likely to occur by his action (i.e., a propositional attitude). The agent may act with the intention of achieving liberation knowing full well that the slave revolt is likely to fail.

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that the insurrectionist places hope in the struggle or in resistance itself. This statement expresses an ascription of inherent value to resistance itself.14 The insurrectionist wants liberation and commits acts consonant with this desire; yet, what is thought likely to result is not liberation but death. The Man-Not, qua insurrectionist, places his hope in the struggle, which is precisely what is perpetuated by his ongoing resistance efforts. In short, it seems that insurrectionist ethics is capable of providing an adequate normative grounding for Curry’s anti-ethical stance, one that is consistent with the conception of hope Curry articulates. Since Harris, like Kant, is a non-consequentialist, it is instructive to contrast what these philosophers think confers moral worth to action. For Kant, the moral worth (esteem) of an action is determined by the intention of the agent when the action is done from duty or out of respect for the moral law  (Gregor 1996, 49).  Kant further  maintains that human auonomy is the source of the moral law itself. Ultimately, Kant argues that moral value is to be understood solely in terms of the rational nature of human beings, hence independent of any contingent facts about the empirical world such as the biological nature of human beings. This thesis might seem incompatible with the naturalistic component of insurrectionist ethics, whose liberationist end seems to require that moral prescriptions be informed by social context, as well as results. Another apparent difference is that it seems Kant can ground his non-consequentialist ethic in self-legislation and the intention to follow the moral law for its own sake because he takes the autonomy of moral agents for granted. That is, the personhood or humanity of persons is assumed to be relatively stable within the moral community, such that Kant’s theory need not concern 14  Derrick Bell recalls a conversation with Mrs. MacDonald when he asked her where she found the courage to continue working for civil rights in the face of intimidation, powerlessness, and violence: “‘Derrick,’ she said slowly, seriously, ‘I am an old woman. I lives to harass white folks.’” Bell comments: “Mrs. MacDonald did not say she risked everything because she hoped or expected to win out over the whites who, as she well knew, held all the economic and political power, and the guns as well. Rather, she recognized that—powerless as she was—she had and intended to use courage and determination as weapons ‘to harass white folks.’ Her fight, in itself, gave her strength and empowerment in a society that relentlessly attempted to wear her down. Mrs. MacDonald did not even hint that her harassment would topple whites’ well-entrenched power; rather, her goal was defiance; and its harassing effect was more potent precisely because she placed herself in confrontation with her oppressors with full knowledge of their power and willingness to use it. Mrs. MacDonald avoided discouragement and defeat because at the point that she determined to resist her oppression, she was triumphant” (1992a, 378–379).

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itself with establishing the humanity of persons whose dignity is routinely contested by substantial segments of society. Harris, by contrast, cannot take the autonomy of the enslaved for granted, as the humanity of enslaved persons is routinely disrespected and their humanity contested. He thus argues for a naturalistic foundation in the notion of health or well-being as the source of the natural human yearning for freedom. These differences notwithstanding, I argue in the next section that the normative foundations of insurrectionist ethics can be grounded in the Kantian idea of humanity as an end in itself. I leave open the question of whether the absolute worth (dignity) of humanity is best understood in terms of the rational nature of human beings. What is more, I underscore a temporal constraint on the duty of insurrection inasmuch as it is a duty for oppressive societies (what I term anti-ethical societies). The upshot is that the  duty of insurrection is an ante-ethical principle, a condition for the possibility of a true moral community I have argued that the natural desire of the Black male to be free, to inhabit a truly ethical world in which his aspirations are valued, and the resistance efforts this inspires are esteemable as expressions of human dignity. The refusal to engage in ethical deliberation with whites, to write morality onto immoral entities, can be acts of self-respect. After all, through such acts nihilism and spiritual death can be avoided. The sense in which anti-ethics is “anti-” or against ethical theorizing is that it is parasitic upon conventional morality which is idealistic (e.g., in its presumption of white virtue)  and harmful to Black humanity. Anti-ethics is not opposed to morality per se, for it starts from the moral premise that satisfying basic human needs is a “fact of existential being,” as Harris puts it. A human being is entitled to basic rights, material necessities, and the common decency (or benevolence) of others.15 The Black male is right to 15  In this way, insurrectionist/anti-ethics is committed to a conception of humanity, as Harris points out and Lee McBride III emphasizes: “Insurrectionist ethicists maintain conceptions of personhood and humanity that motivate moral action against obvious injustice or brutality, justifying militancy and radical action on the behalf of persecuted peoples. …This commitment to humanity, to the recognition and dignity of oppressed persons, offers ardent motivation to engage in insurrectionist moral action” (McBride III 2017, 228–229). Ethics is, inter alia, the attempt to bring a certain conception of the human community into being. “We are not entrapped in the current world where we can only imagine likely possibilities for the immediate future. We can imagine unlikely worlds that do not exist” (Harris 2018, 155). Given this “hermetic, unsubstantiated, and unmitigated acceptance of persons as agents due dignity,” the community should be transformed so that it aligns with the ideal of humanity (Harris 2018, 155).

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reject anything less and, indeed, his humanity confers a moral duty upon him to insist upon his humanity. One question raised by my analysis is: Why call Curry’s insurrectionist ethics “anti-ethics”? Is there theoretical value in describing it thus? While it is true that Curry’s term is misleading insofar as it implies the wholesale rejection of ethics, his terminology has some important virtues. First, it has a negative connotation worth retaining, for it reminds that a certain form of ethical deliberation is futile and existentially harmful to oppressed peoples. Namely, an idealist ethics which uncritically writes morality onto immoral (white) entities can lead to spiritual death and ethical alienation. Second, the term “anti-ethics” has an affirmational connotation worth retaining: for it connotes a praxis of refusal. This praxis or politics consists in revolutionary consciousness and dignity through the display of insurrectionist virtues. Finally, the term “anti-ethics” is instructive insofar as it gestures at the imperfect nature of insurrectionist conduct. Insurrectionist action is imperfect in at least three ways. First, insurrectionist acts are unlikely to achieve the ultimate end of liberation. Second, insurrectionist acts are less than ideal: in an ideal world respect for persons would be exhausted in the display of conventional virtues and in the proper disciplining of the vices. Sadly, in a world that suppresses the humanity of some, insurrectionist acts and virtues are necessary to extend respect to dehumanized groups. Third, insurrectionist acts are imperfect in that they target the oppressor in ways that do not exhibit regard for his or her well-being; for example, the destruction of his or her person or property (Harris 2002, 208). The last of these imperfections can be clarified in terms of an objection to anti-­ ethics, which I now explain and reply to. Because Curry’s positive ethics addresses the problem of nihilism, it is rooted in the Black experience of whites as vicious actors. When ethical theory does not center white people, it is susceptible to dismissal by traditional moral philosophy. Moral philosophers have historically dismissed non-white-centered ethical thought on three grounds. First, nonwhite-­ centered ethics may be rejected as “poor” (e.g., second-rate or uninteresting) ethical theorizing; typically, such thought is marginalized and ignored. Second, nonwhite-centered ethics may be dismissed as non-ethical theorizing; that is, it may be said not to qualify as ethical because it fails to meet a minimal condition of ethics—namely, to project humanity, white men and women, into the future. Finally, and most radically, nonwhite-­centered ethics may be critiqued as anti-ethical theorizing in the pejorative sense

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that it transgresses a valid ethical norm or principle.16 Curry’s positive ethics is likely to be dismissed on this third ground for its implication of white viciousness. The allegation would be that insurrectionist/anti-ethics blatantly advocates violence and other immoralities, particularly against whites. This is an interesting objection the reply to which underscores some important theoretical insights of insurrectionist/anti-ethics. A traditional ethical point of view recommends that it is right for a person to seek by voluntary action the basic conditions of human well-being: happiness, freedom and good health. There is a caveat, however: one may pursue such basic human goods provided one does not disrespect others in the process. The clause may seem reasonable given two common presuppositions of ethical theory (noted in section “Ethical Alienation as Spiritual Death”); first, that it is normally disrespectful to compel rational agents to action by coercive means; second, that it is respectful and preferable to compel action by rational means (i.e., moral suasion). I argue that, in oppressive societies, these norms of respect should be rejected by the insurrectionist whose resistance efforts are incompatible with having respect for the self and a robustly inclusive humanity. The immoral community that stipulates itself as moral refuses the Black male certain possibilities that are essential to his humanity. If the Black male wishes to apply the oppressor’s norms  of respect to himself or his group, he is confronted with an ethical dilemma, what conventional morality presents as two “unethical” options. On the one hand, the Black male has an ethical right to certain goods; on the other hand, any possible exercise of this right necessarily violates a putative ethical duty: that is, he must act disrespectfully to himself or to others. If he chooses to pursue his basic needs by disrespecting and/or harming the other, say, a white person, he seems to violate an other-regrading duty; if he chooses not to pursue his basic needs, he seems to efface and emasculate himself thereby acting unethically by violating a self-regarding duty (via  spiritual death or ethical alienation). Fortunately, there is an easy way out of this moral paradox, for we can reject the set of options that entrap one and redescribe the situation. By acting in pursuit of his own basic needs and thereby acting defiantly (even aggressively) toward the white person, the Black male neither 16  For helpful discussions of the white-centric evasion of nonwhite approaches to philosophy, see (Dotson 2013a; Curry 2010).

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“disrespects” nor violates the “rights” of the white person. For example, the insurrectionist duty—which he may discharge through violent action, the destruction of property, or other forms of aggression or compulsion— is not unethical if it is a means to liberation. After all, the white oppressor was never entitled to his dominant social position which he acquired by unethical means, for the sake of unethical ends. That is, the norms that the white community depended upon to acquire and secure unearned privilege for white people was unethical to begin with. The theory of insurrectionist ethics facilitates the exposure of the immorality of prevailing ethical conventions by unmasking thee supposed “norms of respect” as norms of domination. Under conditions of domination, the oppressor has hegemonic control over moral discourse. Consequently, the ability to define what is called “ethical” and “respectful”  resides with the oppressor. Fortunately, the insurrectionist ethicist recognizes that what is called ethical is not necessarily what is in fact ethical. For instance, the conventional moral philosopher’s conception of respect generates an “ethical dilemma” or the idea that the Black male is faced with two immoral options. We have seen that one of these options—namely, one’s self-regarding duty to resist oppression—is not immoral. Properly understood (which is to say, from the perspective of the oppressed) the ethical dilemma dissolves. Still, where oppression exists, it is possible to speak of an existential ethical dilemma facing the oppressed person. This individual must decide whether, on the one hand, to fight for what one has an ethical right and obligation to pursue, or whether, on the other hand, to acquiesce to the oppressive powers that are capable of ending his life or exacerbating his suffering. The ethical dilemma one faces is an ethical dilemma to oneself and perhaps to other similarly oppressed individuals. There is no ethical dilemma toward the oppressor. The existential dilemma directed at the self is real, but springs from an insight underscored by insurrectionist ethics: the duty to resist. It is because one is aware of one’s own humanity and one’s inherent entitlement to equal moral regard that one is confronted by the sense that one must resist the oppressor. No doubt, it may be extremely difficult, for all sorts of existential reasons, to adopt the insurrectionist/ anti-ethical stance; yet the possibility is there. It would, therefore, be a mistake to hold that, under conditions of oppression, the Black male lacks genuine ethical options. Acknowledging the ethical dimension of Curry’s anti-ethics allows us to account for the role of value and duty on this theory—for example, the intrinsic value Curry assigns to the realist sensibility

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that locates hope and spiritual uplift in dignified acts of resistance. A role for ethics seems available to the anti-ethicist once the concept has been reclaimed from the oppressor.

Respect for Persons and the Duty of Insurrection My aim in this section is to delve deeper into the normative foundations of insurrectionist ethics and anti-ethics. To that end, I provide a select comparison of Harris’ and Kant’s notions of respect for persons. I argue that Harris’ analysis deepens our understanding of the Kantian notions of respect and dignity. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant provides several formulations of the categorical imperative, including the following: “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (Gregor 1996, 73).17 While there are problems with using this first formulation of the categorical imperative as a means of “testing” whether a given maxim conforms to the form of moral duty, its analysis of the form of moral duty is nonetheless insightful.18 Namely, it seems correct that moral duties operate on the conception of law, i.e., the demands of duty are conceived as universal norms (exceptionless rules). Harris’ conception of the duty of insurrection is consistent with this element of the formulation insofar as the duty to resist oppression is conceived as a law, i.e., a universal (exceptionless) moral rule. Consider next Kant’s second formulation: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (Gregor 1996, 80). According to Allen Wood, Kant’s second formulation, known as the Formula of Humanity (FH), is superior to the first because it specifies the substantive content of moral duty by basing duties “on the absolute worth of rational 17  Kant’s alternative presentation of this first formulation is: “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature” (Gregor 1996, 73; Kant’s emphases are removed from all quotations). The difference in these two presentations, according to Wood, is that the first refers to “law” qua legal doctrine, i.e., a normative principle; hence, to ask “whether you could will your maxim to be a universal law, is to ask whether you could will that all others should be permitted to follow it.” The second presentation refers to a “law of nature,” i.e., “a universal rule against which it is causally impossible for anyone to act” (1999, 80). 18  For a reconstruction and critique of Kant’s first formulation of the categorical imperative, see Wood, “The Formula of Universal Law,” Kant’s Ethical Thought (1999, 76–110).

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nature as an end in itself.” Continuing: “Though FH takes the form of a rule or commandment, what it basically asserts is the existence of a substantive value to be respected. This value does not take the form of a desired object to be brought about, but rather the value of something existing, which is to be respected, esteemed, or honored in our actions” (Wood 1999, 141). Hence, moral acts, for Kant, have expressive value; that is, they are valued not for what they bring about, but for what they express about the existent beings for the sake of which the action is performed, namely, “proper respect or reverence for the worth of humanity” (Wood 1999, 141). Harris might accept FH, or the notion that humanity possesses absolute worth, for in “Dignity and Subjection” he writes: “Human dignity should be considered a good due all persons” (2020, 155).19 In accordance with FH, how do we determine what acts count as using humanity “always at the same time as an end”? In other words, how do we decide whether a particular action expresses proper respect for the absolute worth of humanity? According to Wood, we cannot answer this question by reference to the moral law alone, that is, by mere analysis of the categorical imperative. This is because a Kantian argument from FH about whether an action expresses due respect for humanity always requires “intermediate premises,” that is, premises informed by experience. Wood presents Kant’s argument against suicide this way, for example: 1. Always respect humanity, in one’s own person as well as that of another, as an end in itself. 2. The act of suicide always fails to respect humanity in one’s own person as an end in itself. 3. Therefore, do not commit suicide. As this example illustrates, it is impossible to arrive at the conclusion that the act of suicide is wrong without “some claim about what the act of suicide expresses concerning the worth of humanity” (Wood 1999, 152). What the act of suicide expresses about the worth of humanity, however, 19  However, I say that Harris “might” agree with Kant’s FH principle, because Harris expresses hesitancy about accepting an anthropocentric view of humanity or personhood. He points out that if a certain conception of humanity in the traditions of Buddhism or Jainism is correct, “then all sentient beings are due the kind of status that warrants seeing them as possessors of inalienable goods” (2020, 144).

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is contested. For instance, it is possible to deny the conclusion of this argument by accepting the first premise and denying the second. Wood argues that the need for intermediate premises makes it possible for one to reject some of Kant’s arguments in favor of particular moral duties without rejecting Kant’s FH principle. For example, if someone wanted to defend the act of suicide, she “might argue that for a person [afflicted with a horrid and debilitating disease], the act of suicide expresses respect for the worth of humanity and protects the dignity of rational nature in the face of the degrading condition with which the person is threatened” (Wood 1999, 152–153). In a similar vein, Harris might question the intermediate premise of a Kantian FH argument against committing acts of insurrection as a means of liberation. Consider this argument for the wrongfulness of an act of insurrection: 1. Always respect humanity, in one’s own person as well as that of another, as an end in itself. 2. An act of insurrection (in the service of liberation) always fails to respect humanity, in one’s own person or in that of another, as an end in itself. 3. Therefore, do not commit any act of insurrection (in the service of liberation). Against this argument, Harris might object that premise two is false. Perhaps some acts of insurrection—namely, those undertaken in the service of liberation—are respectful of humanity in one’s own person or in that of another. Harris’ argument might be that certain acts of insurrection express the absolute worth of humanity by virtue of rejecting the social conditions that enable subjection, indignity and oppression. One reply to this argument is that this use of Kant’s FH principle is misguided because acts of insurrection encompass acts of violence and even murder (directed at oneself or at others) which clearly disrespect humanity; as such, they violate FH. For example, should we say that some enslaved person who decides one day to kill his enslaver and run away to procure his freedom acts from respect for humanity in his own person? The objection to Harris would likely be that the notion of using humanity in the person of the oppressor (as in killing the oppressor) as a means of respecting humanity in the person of the oppressed is confused. For the

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other person (the oppressor) that one uses as a means is not at the same time used as an end in itself. How might Harris respond to this critique of insurrectionist acts? I explore a Harrisian response by considering a particular act of insurrection—namely, suicide (willful, nonaccidental self-murder). Suppose that the act is an instance of revolutionary suicide. To begin, in any context, suicide is an extreme act that is committed at least in part from desperation and always under less than ideal circumstances. Hence, it is always possible to describe the act as “problematic” in the sense of being “undesirable.” Yet, as Wood points out, is not clear that suicide is always problematic in the sense of being morally wrong. Harris can defend the act of revolutionary suicide by invoking a form of reasoning that parallels Wood’s defense of suicide; that is, Harris “might argue that for a person [subjected to a degrading state of subjugation and debilitating sense of oppression], the act of [revolutionary] suicide expresses respect for the worth of humanity and protects the dignity of rational nature in the face of the degrading condition with which the person is threatened” (cf. Wood 1999, 152–153). The Harrisian argument is thus that it is a misuse of FH to blame the agent of revolutionary suicide for an act that is itself validated by FH, for FH arguably requires moral agents to overthrow the social conditions of subjection. This for two reasons: first, the social conditions of subjection treat subjected persons as mere means rather than ends in themselves; second, the conditions of subjection undermine the prospect for a healthy sense of self-conception among the oppressed, thereby obstructing their ability to discharge the self-regarding duty of self-respect. In short, it is arguable that the duty of insurrection is derivable from FH. The act of killing the slave master is compelled by the necessity of resisting the dehumanizing condition of subjection that disrespects humanity. That Harris can adopt something like the Kantian principle FH does not mean that he and Kant do not have substantive disagreements. For example, the Harrisian-Kantian idea that all human beings are entitled to respect, for Harris, has social-structural implications that Kant seemingly omits if not rejects. In “Dignity and Subjection” Harris claims that entitlement to dignity “requires a fundamental change of reality; otherwise, forms of collective degradation will continue to abound” (2020, 155). A striking feature of Harris’ paper is that his analysis of dignity does not center the respect or disrespect that is expressed by individual acts or action types (e.g., suicide or charity). Rather, his analysis of dignity centers the respect or disrespect that is expressed by a society’s constitutive social

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arrangements. His analysis of dignity enables him to explore how the condition of subjection and oppression is relevant to the moral assessment of social structures. Specifically, I read Harris as arguing for a view of moral assessment according to which the justice/injustice of social arrangements should be given priority in the analysis of dignity. An adequate account of dignity must preclude the indignity of subjection. Given this desideratum, Harris argues that “Conditions of possibility should, rather, be a central feature of what defines the basis of what gestures are capable of being warranted [as expressions of dignity]” (2020, 155). He cautions against centering the “gestures” and conception of dignity of a particular culture or society, because he thinks that every contingent set of gestures and conception of dignity is provincial, sociohistorically conditioned and subject to transvaluation (i.e., modified and replaced over time). The challenge, for him, is to link dignity to humanity in a way that does not privilege the provincial gestures and ideations of a particular human community (otherwise this opens the door to subjection). In arguing that a theory of humanity’s absolute worth should not center any particular group’s conception of dignity, we need not follow Harris in asserting that all such conceptions are necessarily mistaken.20 Harris’ more important point is that any and every conception of dignity that conceives it as an internal, hidden human essence will invariably unpack that essence in a way that privileges the provincial norms of a particular society, and this in turn is objectionable because such a conception can lead to (or rationalize) oppression. For this reason, Harris argues that a theory of dignity or humanity’s absolute worth must center the social conditions that promote human health or well-being. Harris, of course, is aware that a community’s health and well-being is invariably linked to its conception of dignity and that consequently all such notions are invariably variously conceived and essentially contested by different communities. He therefore concludes that the focus of a theory of dignity must be on the “conditions of possibility” of well-being, that is, “efficacious agency and achievable aspirations.” For although it is true that substantive notions of health and well-being are always provincial—and that consequently, “what aspirations exist and what gestures represent respect are forms of social existence that are invariably transient, always undergoing transvaluation and 20  For example, Harris writes that the view that persons inherently have worth (dignity) is “false because it postulates an intrinsic being as if there were a static sui generis species being” (2020, 151).

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transposition”—a conception of dignity as that which is a function of efficacious agency and achievable aspirations enables the proliferation of substantive views of dignity without at the same time enabling subjection. Of course, Harris’ argument does not admit every possible conception and expression of dignity, for it sets a limit on permissible conceptions and expressions: a conception of dignity (and the gestures exhibiting it) are permissible only if it is consistent with a set of social arrangements that enable all human beings to have efficacious agency and achievable aspirations. To conclude, the ethics of insurrection is arguably grounded on a modified Kantian duty ethics. The duty of insurrection is conceived as a universal moral law whose moral force can be fruitfully understood along the lines of something like FH. That being said, Harris’ insurrectionist ethics argues that preserving human dignity is a social endeavor and not merely an individual endeavor. The dignity, or moral worth, of human beings is suppressed not merely by the wrongful acts of fellow human beings but by social arrangements that give undue power to those afforded efficacious agency and achievable aspirations, on the one hand, while denying that same power to those not afforded efficacious agency and achievable aspirations. A society that degrades the humanity of a sub-group of society while opposing the correction of such degradation thereby opposes humanity and is properly characterized an anti-ethical society. Curry’s anti-ethical stance is not a stance against ethics per se, but a stance against the antiethical community that opposes humanity in the persons of Black folk. Privileged members of oppressive societies tend to employ ethical arguments, like those found in the ideology of idealist ethics, to rationalize the oppressive social order. Consequently, one of the tasks of what Curry calls “anti-ethical” inquiry is to expose the indignities of anti-ethical societies, including the epistemic errors and ideological functions of its discourse.

Conclusion This paper has sought to unpack the meaning of the term “anti-ethics” in a way that does not reduce the term’s meaning to mere defiance and that does not reduce the praxis of anti-ethical inquiry to mere naturalistic explanation. For that purpose, I have sough to clarify the normative foundations of Curry’s anti-ethics by drawing on the conceptual resources of Harrisian insurrectionist ethics. I have sought to develop a conceptualization of ethics that does not deny the substance of Curry’s critique of traditional moral philosophy. I briefly summarize that conception here.

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For Curry, the Man-Not genre category proceeds from a place of nihility or non-being. Failure to fall on the register of being does not mean that the Black male is literally not human, for understood literally the claim that Black people are not human is (biologically) false. Rather, to exist in nihility means existing in such a way that one’s humanity is not recognized. So, existing in nihility, as a man-not, presupposes what I now call “social ostracism” and “anti-ethical society.” Social ostracism is group oppression that violates the dignity of its members by way of denying their basic rights or by way of subjecting them to humiliation, insult, lack of meaningful work, and so on. Where a group experiences social ostracism and is made to feel excluded from the moral community as a function of the organization of society, and where said exclusion is met (by and large) with moral indifference by the society, the society itself stands condemned as unjust and immoral. This is an anti-ethical society. I have explored Kant’s notion of the inherent value of persons or the idea that persons have dignity or absolute worth. Respect for persons, for Kant, is expressed in intentional acts. Extending this thought by way of Harris’ insights, I argued that social arrangements likewise express notions that may be respectful (and disrespectful). A set of social arrangements that produces social ostracism can express attitudes, such as contempt, that disrespect the ostracized groups. Harris plausibly argues that the preconditions that make dignity possible are efficacious agency and achievable aspirations, for it is under such conditions that a sense of self-worth is generated and becomes sustainable for most persons. Unfortunately, these conditions also make subjection possible; that is, subjection is made possible when these preconditions are made available to some social groups and denied to others. Building on Harris’ insight, I argued that respect for persons demands that the preconditions of dignity be extended to all persons; for only then can we rule out the indignities that invariably flow from subjection. It is the task of ethical inquiry to criticize these forms of disrespect. Curry’s approach to normative philosophy is consistent with the literature on social/ideology critique (Shelby 2003). I have thus explored how ethical principles such as the notion of the inherent worth of persons can be insidiously deployed to rationalize social ostracism (as in arguments from moral suasion or bidirectional moral obligation). However, Curry’s approach, as I understand it, aims to go further than ideology critique. His entrance into normative theory begins with

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the premise that racism is a permanent feature of some anti-ethical societies (namely, western “colonial” states). He then asks: What becomes of ethics when we start from the premise that hope for including the humanity of Black folk within the moral community is unlikely? Curry thinks this premise must complicate our understanding of ethical theory. He calls his own approach to moral inquiry “anti-ethics.” Anti-ethical inquiry is nonideal inquiry into vexing existential questions of meaning, hope and morality within an anti-ethical society. For example, anti-ethical inquiry concerns itself with ameliorating, as much as possible, the wretched condition of spiritual death and its attendant consequences, such as reactionary suicide, alcoholism, and pathology. In any society, its system of norms will be internalized by most members of the society, especially the dominant and privileged classes. The system of norms that is regarded as ethical within the society— “conventional morality”—proceeds from a register of being, which means that common sense ethical ideations center those persons that are thought to be human and are thus treated as such within society. Their aspirations for how things ought to be can be theorized by ethical theory because they are futural subjects; that is, the very goal of ethical theory is to project their humanity into the future. Suppose that the United States is an anti-ethical society that opposes Black humanity, and the humanity of the Black male in particular. Because the Black male is thought to be a man-not (not human), this not only affects how he is regarded within society (insofar as he is subjected to disrespect by the self-proclaimed “moral community”), but his ethical thought becomes “unthinkable” in the sense that his ethical aspirations for the future go unheeded irrespective of their moral reasonability. For example, moral arguments in defense of reparations for chattel slavery will at best lead to unsatisfactory reformism, because improper moral education and moral confusion are not the fundamental obstacles to reparations. Rather, the social ostracism that targets Black people also and simultaneously precludes viable racial reconciliation (i.e., reparations). The social ostracism itself exists because it sustains a system of racial oppression that serves the interests of whites. I argued that the normative foundations of Curry’s anti-ethical approach can be fruitfully analyzed by reference to Walker’s naturalistic principle that human beings have a natural inclination to resist oppression. On Harris’ articulation of insurrectionist ethics, the natural disposition to

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insurrect under conditions of oppression explains the correlative duty of insurrection under oppressive conditions. I have argued that this duty coheres well with a modified and expanded Harrisian-Kantian notion of respect for persons (e.g., Kant’s FH principle). If I am right that the duty of insurrection is grounded in the general ethical mandate to respect the dignity of all peoples, then it would seem that abolishing subjection (i.e., liberation from oppression) is a necessary condition for validating more conventional forms of ethical theory. In this sense, anti-ethical inquiry is ante-ethical inquiry. My argument regarding the normative foundations of insurrectionist/ anti-ethics starts with the premise that the Black male recognizes his own humanity; hence, he understands that he is entitled to respect. His natural recognition for well-being includes a desire for self-respect and moral recognition (respect from others). Assuming he somehow manages to retain a sense of self-respect under the oppressive conditions, his natural inclination impels him to resist the system of social ostracism and subjugation. Hence, the duty of insurrection, which demands liberation, is born. If this is so far correct, the moral duty of insurrection is an ethical principle that speaks to the dignity of oppressed peoples residing within anti-ethical societies. I submit that this is precisely the sort of duty required by Curry’s Man-Not theory, for the anti-ethical stance is the ethical stance of subjugated peoples condemned to live in an anti-ethical society. Harris’ insurrectionist ethics does not only confer moral worth onto insurrectionist acts but also onto insurrectionist “advocacy.” If my wedding of these two theories is correct, then practitioners of anti-ethical theory thereby discharge their duty of insurrectionist advocacy and their acts are due esteem. Acknowledgements  Many of the ideas in this paper benefited from conversations with Marielynn Herrera, Justin Litaker, Megan Mitchell, and Jacoby A. Carter. I am grateful to Megan Mitchell (2021) for her review of my (Re-)Defining Racism. Her comments compelled me to think more deeply about responsibility for implicit racial bias and ultimately led me to write this paper. I am grateful to Jacoby A. Carter for the opportunity to discuss an earlier draft of this paper with students in his course, “Philosophical Assumptions and Social Conflict,” and for providing insightful comments on a previous draft.

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References Beauchamp, Tom L., ed. 1999. David Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Oxford Philosophical Texts, 1748. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Original edition. Bell, Derrick. 1992a. Racial Realism. Connecticut Law Review 24: 363–379. ———. 1992b. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. Basic Books. Carter, Jacoby Adeshei. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 49 (1): 54–73. Curry, Tommy J. 2008. Saved by the Bell: Derrick Bell’s Racial Realism as Pedagogy. Philosophical Studies in Education 39: 35–46. ———. 2009. Will the Real CRT Please Stand Up? The Dangers of Philosophical Contributions to Critical Race Theory. The Cut 2 (1): 1–47. ———. 2010. The Derelictical Crisis of African American Philosophy: How African American Philosophy Fails to Contribute to the Study of African-­ Descended People. Journal of Black Studies 42 (3): 314–333. https://doi. org/10.1177/0021934710367899. ———. 2011. The Political Economy of Reparations: An Anti-ethical Consideration of Atonement and Racial Reconciliation Under Colonial Moralism. Race, Gender & Class 18 (1/2): 125–146. ———. 2017. The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. ———. 2021a. He Never Mattered: Poor Black Males and the Dark Logic of Intersectional Invisibility. In The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives, ed. Brandon Hogan, Michael Cholbi, and Alex Madva, 59–90. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2021b. II–Must There Be an Empirical Basis for the Theorization of Racialized Subjects in Race-Gender Theory? Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 121 (1): 21–44. https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoaa021. Darity Jr., William A., and A.  Kirsten Mullen. 2020. From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. UNC Press Books. Dotson, Kristie. 2013a. How Is This Paper Philosophy? Comparative Philosophy 3 (1): 121–121. ———. 2013b. Querying Leonard Harris’ Insurrectionist Standards. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy 49 (1): 74–92. Gregor, Mary J., ed. 1996. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical philosophy. Cambridge University Press. Harris, Leonard. 2000. In Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of Afro-American Philosophy from 1917, ed. Leonard Harris, 2nd ed. Kendall Hunt Publishing.

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———. 2002. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism. In Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. John Howie, 192–210. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ———. 2013. Walker: Naturalism and Liberation. Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society 49 (1): 93–111. https://doi.org/10.2979/ trancharpeirsoc.49.1.93. ———. (2018). Dignity and Subjection. In Lee A. McBride III (Ed.), A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader (pp.  143–158). Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Harris, Leonard, and Lee A.  McBride III. 2020. A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Kulish, Nicholas. 2022. After Raising $90 Million in 2020, Black Lives Matter Has $42 Million in Assets. New York Times. https://www.nytimes. com/2022/05/17/business/blm-­black-­lives-­matter-­finances.html. Accessed 17 May 2022. Lugones, María. 2010. Toward a Decolonial Feminism. Hypatia 25 (4): 742–759. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-­2001.2010.01137.x. McBride, I.I.I., and A.  Lee. 2017. Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, 225–234. New  York: Oxford University Press. Mills, Charles W. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Mitchell, Megan. 2021. Moral Responsibility for Racial Oppression. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-­021-­10189-­1. Newton, Huey P. 2009. Revolutionary Suicide. Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. New York: Penguin. Original Edition, 1973. Shelby, Tommie. 2003. Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory. The Philosophical Forum 34 (2): 153–188. https://doi.org/10.1111/ 1467-9191.00132. ———. 2014. Racism, Moralism, and Social Criticism. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 11 (1): 57–74. https://doi.org/10.1017/ s1742058x14000010. Sidgwick, Henry. 2019. The Methods of Ethics. Good Press. Original edition, 1874. Stephen, Leslie, and Frederick Pollock, eds. 1886. Lectures and Essays by the Late William Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S. 2nd ed. London: Macmillan. Urquidez, Alberto G. 2020. (Re-)defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2021. Reply to My Critics: (Re-)defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24: 679–698. Walker, David. 1965. In Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, ed. Charles M. Wiltse. New York: Hill and Wang. Original Edition, 1829. Wood, Allen W. (1999). Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PART IV

Insurrectionist Ethics: Pragmatism and Naturalism

CHAPTER 9

Leonard Harris’s Insurrectionist “Challenge” to Pragmatism Gregory Fernando Pappas

Leonard Harris’s work on Alain Locke and his insurrectionist ethics are invaluable contributions to American philosophy, but for some reason his criticism of pragmatism in “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism”1 continues to get the most attention by recent scholarship in American philosophy (Medina, McBride, Carter,

1  Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” in Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. J.  Howie (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).

G. F. Pappas (*) Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, State College, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_9

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Koopman2). The criticism is now well known as the “insurrectionist challenge”, it presses pragmatism to show how it can facilitate insurrection and revolt against moral abominations such as slavery. For some, the implication of the challenge is that pragmatism and insurrectionism are incompatible; for others, there is still hope that at least future pragmatism could meet the challenge. But overall the legitimacy or soundness of the insurrectionist challenge has not been questioned. I will argue that while the challenge stresses important notions and values, none of the arguments presented by Harris, and repeated by others, undermine the adequacy of pragmatism (old or new) in any significant way. Pragmatism is compatible or includes everything that Harris accuses it of lacking, or it has good reasons not to meet the expectations of adequacy assumed by Harris. In Harris’s essay one finds in fact different versions of the challenge or perhaps different challenges depending on different weaknesses that he sees in pragmatism. Pragmatism does have weaknesses and should be subject to criticism, but I will show why none of the challenges work by providing a reply right after each of the versions of the challenge. Before considering the different versions of the challenge I must first point out certain general ambiguities in Harris’s text. Ambiguities about the Challenge: First, it is not clear at times if the challenge is directed to pragmatism as a philosophy or is it about the pragmatist philosophers themselves as persons. This makes a difference. That the classic American pragmatists did not properly engage with racial injustices strike me as non-controversial. I may even agree that their ignorance is not excusable and that the insurrectionist thinkers Harris mentions (David Walker (1785–1830), Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880), and Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879)) are better moral examples. However, nothing 2  See José Medina, “Pragmatism, Racial Injustice and Epistemic Insurrection: Toward an Insurrectionist Pragmatism,” in Pragmatism and Justice (Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Jacoby Carter, “The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics,” Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society 49 (2013): 54–73; Lee McBride, “Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Race and Philosophy, ed. Naomi Zack (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); “Insurrectionist Ethics and Thoreau,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 29–45; Colin Koopman “Contesting Injustice: Why Pragmatist Political Thought Needs Du Bois” (discussion paper at 2016 SAAP conference) http://www.american-philosophy.org/saap2016/openconf/modules/r equest.php?module=oc_ program&action=view.php&id=39.

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interesting or important follows about the adequacy or defectiveness of pragmatism as a philosophy.3 Second, it is not always clear if Harris’s problem with pragmatism is that (a) it has limitations in the sense that it does not have resources it should have, or (b) there are aspects central to it that are incompatible with an insurrectionist or any proper ethical view. These are two different claims and Harris navigates between them. This makes a difference. If the problem is just (a) then it could mean an insufficiency that points to a possible fix, but (b) is a more serious problem since it means that there is something about pragmatism at its core that is problematic. Let’s examine all versions of the challenge. The Duty Challenge: Pragmatism does not have or cannot accommodate a duty to disobey, resist, and actively fight against social practices and political institutions that perpetuate oppression. This is how Harris formulates the challenge: “A philosophy that … falls short of requiring that we have a moral duty to support or engage in slave insurrections is defective” (2002, 192).4 Reply: Pragmatism’s commitment against oppression is a function of its opposition to non-democratic relationships (and its commitment to democratic values) and its commitment to amelioration. Oppression (among many other social evils) is what one needs to be on the lookout for, and inquire into its causes, if one is really committed to amelioration and the ideal of democracy as a way of life. To be open to consider (evaluate) any possible means of ameliorating problematic situations of injustice (including insurrection, revolution, violence, etc.) is what pragmatism prescribes. Hence, pragmatism is open to the idea that there are situations, especially those in which there is systematic oppression, where insurrection is not just an option but a moral duty, and maybe even the supreme moral duty that trumps all others in a particular situation. But it usually

3  What makes me think that Leonard Harris wants the target of his challenge to be pragmatism as a philosophy and not the particular lives or character of classical pragmatists philosophers is the fact that he recognizes that some pragmatists have engaged in resistance and insurrection against racial injustices, but what is not so clear is that they have done so “as a function of their pragmatism”: “Certainly, John Dewey, Alain Locke, and Jane Addams held deep commitments to uplifting the downtrodden. My query is whether there exist features of pragmatism that require, as necessary conditions to be a pragmatist, support for participation in insurrection” (2002, 200–201). 4   Leonard Harris. “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 192.

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requires a context sensitive moral intelligence (judgment) to determine this. I am afraid that this context relativism about duties is just not good enough for Harris. For it falls short of having in its philosophical system an explicitly formulated and defended moral duty to support or engage in insurrection. Even some general duty to do what one can against oppression may not be sufficient. Nothing less than a duty to insurrection, active fighting, revolution, and needing to get rid of the oppressor would do for Harris. Pragmatism does not have teeth, even at its best it is wimpy. Harris, however, does not provide an argument for such a strong and particular requirement for any philosophy to be adequate, beyond stressing the urgency and evilness of some oppressive events. Pragmatism can be receptive of how entrenched evil can be in some situations and therefore requiring drastic measures, without the need to make a particular duty of insurrection central in the way suggested by Harris. Such a move would in fact go against its commitment to pluralism, contextualism, and empiricism. Pragmatism recognizes the irreducible and important place for “duties” in moral life (more on this later), but these are relative to situations and there is just no duty so important that prior to any situation we need to make it supreme or a requirement of adequacy. This is what traditional modern ethics has done and it is a mistake that goes against the practical wisdom needed to be sensitive to the plurality of moral evils in the world and good judgment. The Compelling Motivation Challenge: Harris also thinks the motivation to seek insurrection needs to be part of an ethics or philosophy for it to be adequate. He says, “if there are no resources in pragmatism to motivate and encourage persons to be insurrectionists, it is defective”(Harris 2012, 208),5 “I query whether Pragmatism offers compelling intuitions, strategies, motivations, and examples for persons to be insurrectionists or to support slave insurrectionists” (Harris 2012, 192).6 “Would a Jamesian subject feel compelled, against popular sentiment, to promote, organize, or encourage slave revolts and insurrections? Would such a subject organize slave escapes, knowing that they would need to kill Jim and Jane Crow slave-catchers” (Harris 2012, 199).7

 Ibid., 208.  Ibid., 192. 7  Ibid., 199. 5 6

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Reply: First, it is not clear the basis of Harris’s motivational requirement or expectation in philosophy. Since when has philosophy been the best place to look for compelling motivations to do anything, especially for feeling compelled to participate in revolts and insurrections? Philosophy strikes me as more powerful and useful when it makes people question or disrupt the feeling compelled (by custom, habits, or authority) to do certain things we take for granted. Philosophy is for pragmatism primarily a tool for criticism and not for motivation. Philosophy is important in order to critically examine and justify the reasons to revolt, but compelling motivations to action are better found on reading literature, seeing movies, and in general the arts. In these other mediums the wretched of the earth are depicted in such visceral and concrete ways that it would compel to action even the most insensitive philosopher. More importantly, pragmatism assumes that the specific evils experienced in particular problematic situations by a character and a community (that cares to ameliorate present social experience into a more democratic direction) is enough of a compelling motivation to try to do whatever is necessary and required to transform such evils. In other words, there are no better sources of motivation to try to eradicate the problems of viciousness, exploitation, oppression, injustice than experiencing (directly or indirectly) the problems themselves. For pragmatism the need for an external motivation (independently of the concrete problems experienced) is as puzzling as the need for an external standard (to be found in a theory or philosophy) in order to be able to ameliorate problematic situations. Dewey insisted that “there are plenty of negative elements, due to conflict, entanglement and obscurity, in most situations of life”8 and we do not require to look for motivation and standards elsewhere (2008, 195). Unless one is somehow totally insensitive, living is a matter of finding oneself in situations that require and demand amelioration. The present trouble, strife, suffering in a situation can be sufficient reason and motivation to pursue insurrection or any other means of amelioration. Dewey said that “men have constructed a strange dream world when they have supposed that without a fixed ideal of a remote good to inspire them, they have no inducement to get relief from present troubles, no desires for liberation from what oppresses” (MW:14 2008, 195).9 Similarly, Harris’s 8  Middle Works of John Dewey, volume 14, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 195. 9  Ibid.

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requirement that any adequate moral philosophy needs to provide as part of its content a motivation to advocate insurrection is puzzling. Why aren’t the particular viciousness, expropriation, oppression and other present evils found in these situations the sufficient compelling motives? The Normative Justification Challenge: What is missing in pragmatism are not just compelling motives but normative grounds (reasons and conceptual resources) to justify insurrection. For this particular version of the challenge Harris relies on questionable assumptions about what is in the philosophical backbone of pragmatism. One of them is that pragmatism is a form of consequentialism, i.e. the ultimate criteria of right/ wrong, proper/improper is a maximization of good consequences. According to Harris, this is not good enough to justify a duty for the sort of rebellion of insurrectionists; who know well how unpredictable and risky are their actions in terms of future consequence, but nevertheless feel obliged to risk their lives for the sake of liberation. Hence, Harris runs against pragmatism, the same sort of argument we are familiar with against consequentialism in ethics; it just fails to capture the moral richness of lived experience, and for Harris in particular, it cannot account for the moral imperative for insurrection in light of the atrocities created by slavery and racism. Here is how Harris puts it, “What are the pragmatist sources for justifying insurrection, given that the outcomes of insurrectionist actions or support for such action are not predictable…. Instrumental and functional reasoning can be of limited value for predicting future events” (2012, 202).10 For Harris the problem with pragmatism is also that, like other consequentialist’s views, it prescribes the sort of calculative instrumental reasoning that does not square well with “insurrectionist moral sensibilities and character traits” (2012, 208).11 To make things worse, “Dewey’s method of intelligence” amounts to a “reasoning strategy” for the sake of “social engineering”; and his view of democracy prescribes merely civic and tame

10  Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 202. “Assuming we have duties that are not contingent on the successful outcome of action nor on effective predictions of what will become successful, what duties are there from a pragmatists standpoint to overflow slavery??” (203). “Are the normative resources so deeply ingrained in classical pragmatism adequate? Is the category of humanity understood in a way that would justify radical action on behalf of the downtrodden, even if the consequences were likely to be harmful to the actors and others?” (200). 11  Ibid., 208.

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“dialogue, debate”12 that precludes conflict and insurrection (Harris 2012, 206). Reply: Some of the above characterizations of pragmatism are narrow, others are mistaken, and others are just common caricatures. First, pragmatism has never been, in any form or fashion, a form of consequentialism. Dewey was a critic of the myopic character of any view of moral life that reduces our moral duties, virtues and struggles to a matter of maximizing good future consequences (Dewey 2008 LW:5, 279–88).13 Right or wrong or good judgment is not a matter of applying some consequentialist’s criteria or calculating (predicting) future consequences. What may justify insurrection is the particular problematic situation, one in which possible consequences is only one among many other present context relative factors to consider in coming to a good judgment. For Dewey “duties” (including a duty to insurrection) have their proper irreducible place in moral life and cannot be reduced to, nor are they always trumped by calculation of good consequences. This is why moral life and struggle is so tragic and ethical theories are inept since “the necessity for judgment and choice come from the fact that one has to manage forces with no common denominator” (Dewey LW:5, 280).14 Second, Dewey rejected as narrow the view of deliberation as a matter of calculation (prediction) and found the subordination of the present for the future in consequentialist or teleological views to be absurd and repugnant. He would agree with Harris about the “the unpredictability of outcomes” and that “the outcomes of insurrectionist actions or support for such action are not predictable” (Harris 2012, 204).15 Dewey even thought that moral views that see the present as a mere means to a remote future lack wisdom. After all, the present is what is most under our control, while the future is not. Therefore, to subordinate the present to the future “is to subject the comparatively secure to the precarious, [to] exchange resources for liabilities”

 Ibid., 206.  This is obvious from reading Dewey’s “Three Independent Factors in Morals” (Later Works of John Dewey, volume 5, 279–88). 14  Later Works of John Dewey, volume 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 280. 15   Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 204. 12 13

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(Dewey MW:14, 183).16 In any case, for Dewey the locus of moral effort and meaning is the present and it is for the present. Third, pragmatism is not a view centered on prudential reasoning or social engineering; nor is it a view that prescribes the sort of “dialogue” that precludes conflict and insurrection. But Harris somehow thinks Dewey’s view is just about “community consent” via dialogue and would not recognize that sometimes “riots, organized and spontaneous, are important and influential features helping to create social change” (Harris 2012, 200).17 Harris says, “pragmatism’s penchant for prudence and dialogue is sufficient to suggest that pragmatism is woefully inadequate” (2012, 208).18 Leonard Harris is able to make pragmatism seem alien or incompatible to insurrectionist thought by relying on the same sort of caricature of the pragmatist’s view of democracy that have made them seem incompatible with Fanon. According to this caricature democracy entails the type of civil negotiation, discussion, communication, consensus, reasonableness that is devoid of conflict, tension, differences, power, etc. This naïve and sanitized view is indeed nothing but in some situations cynical or hypocritical devices to preserve the status quo and forms of oppression. But this not the most generous take of what pragmatists are up to. There is nothing about Harris’s insurrectionist nor Fanon’s position on revolution and violence that is inconsistent with the pragmatist’s democratic prescriptions. The pragmatists preference for democratic means is perfectly consistent with, in fact, presupposes that whatever means we employ we must be sensitive to the particular context. This means that revolution and violence may be perfectly justified in some situations. Sometimes true liberation and the road towards democratization requires that, for example, a particular colonial system be violently destroyed, and this may have been Fanon’s best context sensitive judgment. This is the view of Fanon found in the most recent book of pragmatists philosopher Richard Bernstein. In Violence: Thinking Without Banisters19 Bernstein presents us a Fanon that is remarkably sensitive to what liberation requires at a particular point in time (a key intelligent-democratic 16  Middle Works of John Dewey, volume 14, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 183. 17   Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 200. 18  Ibid., 208. 19  Richard J. Bernstein, Violence: Thinking Without Banisters (Polity: New York, 2013).

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virtue for Dewey). We can learn from Fanon that however important are our ideals we need not impose them into a situation. We learn from Fanon how non-violent strategies just do not work when facing such an entrenched colonial system, how non-violence sometimes just perpetuates colonialism. Bernstein says all this about Fanon without doubting for a moment that Fanon was committed to the same democratic values that Bernstein shares with the pragmatists tradition; including that liberation needs to include the participation of all the people (especially peasants) in the new nation, the importance of education as a source of the people’s empowerments, and the hope that countries would listen to, engage, and gain the participation of the wretched of the earth. The view that Pragmatism is a gradualist reformism that rules out insurrection and radical social change is false. Perhaps some pragmatists like Dewey should have come to the judgment during his time that a more radical action was needed in light of how serious were the racial injustices in the particular context of the USA. I happen to be sympathetic to this criticism, but this is irrelevant to whether there is anything about pragmatism that rules out insurrection or more radical social change. It is true that there is a seeming “conservative” aspect to pragmatism insofar as it holds that we should try to reflect (inquiry) as much as we can before jumping into revolution. One also finds in pragmatism a general preference for democratic means for democratic ends for reasons they have presented and that we could reexamine. But this preference is nothing more than a general principle (in Dewey’s sense of one among many “tools” open to question in particular situations); it is not a rule. Pragmatism has the virtue (in ethics and political philosophy) of being one of the most open, pluralistic, and context-sensitive view about the means (possible solutions) to ameliorate particular injustices; even if it has good reasons to favor some means over others (prior to a situation). Again, for pragmatism a context sensitive intelligence is paramount to moral life. While they may have good reasons to in general avoid non-democratic means and violence, this is not an absolute. Sometimes non-violent strategies just do not work in a particular situation or the situation is so grave that we must do whatever is needed. For Harris, however, the wide array of strategies of slaves to survive and resists (even poisoning the masters) is ruled out a priori by pragmatism. Harris admits the deep commitment of Dewey-Addams to the downtrodden but seems to find wanting a “necessary” connection between pragmatism and insurrection. He is right, but why is such a strong connection

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required? Such necessity seems to border on absolutism about the proper means to change the world. Pragmatism is not committed to insurrection by any means possible as some norm, which sounds like the end justifies any means. One final reply to the above challenge should address Harris’s assumption that pragmatism would disagree with his view that “there is no human progress without the discord of social conflict, insurrections, and revolutions”(Harris 2012, 202).20 He thinks he is raising a challenge to Dewey when he says “The uses of intelligence, dramatic rehearsal, dialogue, and discourse are hardly the sole modes though which institutions change” (203).21 But this is a serious misunderstanding of Dewey’s view. In his Lectures in China22 makes clear the importance of social conflict for possible amelioration of injustices in the world (Dewey 1973). The concrete experiential problems that are the starting point of social inquiry are the “the significant conflicts of groups, classes, factions, parties, peoples” (Dewey 2015, 16).23 Dewey goes on to characterize these conflicts as part of a historical process with a certain pattern. Dewey does not conceive history as a progression towards some ideal conflict-less state or world order. Instead, there have been a certain patterns or rhythms between phases of domination and emancipation. Context sensitivity requires that we pay attention to differences depending on the particular country and time. However, “In general it must be noted that certain areas and times have tended to concentrate upon certain forms”24 of domination (Dewey 2015, 18).25 Historically associations change but old forms tend to carry forward habits of domination that are sometimes hard to detect; only a change of conditions produce social conflict that reveals this unbalanced relation 20   Leonard Harris, “Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism,” 202. 21  Ibid., 203. 22  John Dewey, Lectures in China, 1919–1920, trans. and ed. Robert W.  Clopton and Tsuin-Chen Ou (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1973). 23  “John’s Dewey Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy (China),” in European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7, no. 2 (2015), eds. Roberto Frega (CNRSIMM, Paris), Roberto Gronda (Università di Pisa), 16. 24  Ibid., 18. 25  In America, for instance, Dewey notices that the tyranny of the economical dimension of life have recently been the dominant interest. “The contemporary West, especially America industrial and economic groups cutting across the other forms of life, and tending to subordinate them to its own unchecked aggrandizement.” Ibid.

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between associations. Dewey mentions some historical examples, like slavery and the subordination of women to men. But he gives a very general description of the process by which individuals and societies move from experiences of injustice to a critical reflective awareness of the situation, and sometimes the quest for a more-just order. In the first stage, “there is such an equilibrium that the suppressed group or class is not aware of its suppression, or takes it as part of the established and necessary order of things. There are not opportunities that suggest an idea of a different state of things, and hence no idea of an effort to bring about change. When slavery is most complete, when government is most successfully despotic there is no thought of slavery or despotism as evils to be protested against” (Dewey 2015, 23).26 “Only when conditions are such as to stimulate a consciousness of powers which are not expressed and satisfied is there definite revolt and effort at change” (Dewey 2015, 23).27 The second stage, is “that of restlessness, discontent”(Dewey 2015, 23).28 Changes in social conditions makes possible that a suppressed or dominated group become aware of their suppression, i.e., that they have not had a social channel for expression or participation. Gradually their demand moves from a mere demand for revolt and individual expression to become “a demand for a chance to perform a badly needed social function. The claim shifts from a right to a neglected social duty” (Dewey 2015, 23).29 Dewey then presents the possibility of a third stage where there is a recognition of the claims made by the oppressed as a social need and good. There is no guarantee of a third stage or even a smooth transition to it. Dewey is not naïve about forces that usually operate against some resolution of conflicts. For instance, initially the dominant groups “have the authority, the prestige of custom to back them. Just because they represent what is established, the customary and instituted order, they appear to embody the claims, authority and majesty of society” (Dewey 2015, 20).30 Meanwhile, the claims of the subdued or suppressed group are seen as anti-social or against the common good. “When they revolt, and desire to change things in order that some other social interest may have fuller  Ibid., 23.  Ibid. 28  Ibid. 29  Ibid., 23. 30  Ibid., 20. 26 27

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expression, they do not appear to be acting in behalf of any social purpose or good at all” (Dewey 2015, 20).31 It is only after a social revolt and with time that the claims of the subdued group are acknowledge or recognized as social goods or as part of the common good (Dewey 2015, 20).32 Dewey calls for a certain realism or coming to terms with the fact that disruptive changes as well as stability (some oppressive and some not) are features of social life as a historical process. “Institutions, conventions, modes of social control that direct the thoughts and acts of the members of society are bound to grow up; they are inevitable; it is impossible to get rid of them” (Dewey 2015, 25).33 They are “not only inevitable, but also in some form indispensable, useful” (Dewey 2015, 25).34 Social conflict and disruptions of the status quo are not only bound to recur, this is how we can find out injustices. What is needed is to develop the needed social intelligence to make the best of the stable and the precarious aspects of the social process. This entails abandoning the quest for Vtheoretical a priori formulas about the good or just society or any “wholesale ism” (Dewey 2015, 25).35 Instead, it requires developing an empirical context sensitivity and discrimination between better and worst in the different conflictive and tragic situations of social life (Dewey 2015, 25).36  Ibid.  The struggle for the recognition and rectification of a social inequality is usually met with much resistance and characterization of those making the demands as just pursuing disturbance for the sake of some special treatment or self-interest. When in fact, those in power are the ones that are usually masking their one-sided interests, which have become institutionalized and conventionalized under some higher social value. “An innate egotism is clothed and armed with socially important purposes and supports” (Ibid.). 33  Ibid., 25. 34  Ibid. 35  Ibid. 36  We can rely on some knowledge of previous social conflicts, the lessons learned from history and theories, but ultimately discriminating between good and bad institutions, laws, and associations will be a matter of having a context sensitive intelligence to study present forces and come to a more reasonable judgment; rather than relying on the authority of some ideology or theory. This means “an appeal to intelligence, not to bias and prejudice and vested interests, to inquiry to trace causes and consequences, to see what produced this or that institution or arrangement, the historic method, and also to trace consequences, to see how the arrangement works, what effects it produces—and the same for any proposed measure of reform, improvement. The practical difference is thus the substitution of the scientific method for the method of opinion, dogmatic assertion, bitter recriminations and disparaging name calling, epithets of abuse. Method of analysis, of taking things in details and discriminating, instead of wholesale isms” (Ibid.). 31 32

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The Advocacy Virtues Challenge: Pragmatism does not have and cannot accommodate “advocacy” and “insurrectionist moral sensibilities and character traits.” (Harris 2012, 208).37 Harris says “a philosophy that does not make advocacy—that is, representing, defending, or promoting morally just causes—a seminal, meritorious feature of moral agency is defective” (192).38 It will do no good to point to Jane Addams. Harris even recognizes that “Certainly, John Dewey, Alain Locke, and Jane Addams held deep commitments to uplifting the downtrodden” his query “is whether there exist features of pragmatism that require, as necessary conditions to be a pragmatist, support for participation in insurrection” (200–201).39 He says monks, liberation theologists, are “agents of insurrection—but it is not clear that pragmatists are on the world historical stage as agents of insurrections as a function of their pragmatism” (201).40 Harris believes that pragmatism has no room for the strong commitment entailed by advocacy because their view of the self is in comparison passive and borders on self-deprecation. He explains that Advocating is always expressed in an authoritative voice; advocates want their ideals to shape or become reality. Moreover, character traits of aggressiveness, self-assurance, self-confidence, tenacity, irreverence, passion, and enmity are evinced and applauded by insurrectionists. …Is it the case that pragmatist see the self as necessarily lacking if it is bereft of such traits as aggression, self-assurance, self-confidence, tenacity, and irreverence?….. But what principle or conception of fulfilling lives is there in pragmatism that says we are compelled to act in ways that prevent people from living selfdeprecating lives? (Harris 2012, 201)41 Reply: First, it is false that pragmatism has not acknowledged the importance of the sort of heroic active list of virtues that Harris highlights in the insurrectionists. I have no idea why Harris thinks that pragmatism instead emphasizes self-­deprecation or passive virtues. Pragmatism stands out in the history of philosophy as assuming a view of the self as an active agent in process (and not a passive spectator) and pragmatists were critical of education that encourages passivity. But even in regard to the virtues, Dewey emphasized the importance of the “executive” aspects of character, i.e. of the capacity to sustain action and 37   Leonard Harris, Pragmatism,” 208. 38  Ibid., 192. 39  Ibid., 200–201. 40  201. 41  Ibid.

“Insurrectionist

Ethics:

Advocacy,

Moral

Psychology,

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thought in the midst of pain, hardship, obstacles, and resistance from the environment. The executive habits include initiative, self-­control, and especially courage. Dewey says, “the chief ally of moral thoughtfulness is the resolute courage of willingness to face evil for the sake of the good” (Dewey MW:5, 379).42 As I have argued courage is one of the most important virtues and “operative instrumentalities in Dewey’s ideal community” in order to go against any forms of authority (e.g., custom, tyranny, despotism) as well as facing the precariousness in life (Pappas 2008, 90).43 I agree with Harris that the insurrectionist activists and philosophers he mentions, David Walker (1785–1830), Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880), and Maria W. Stewart (1803–1879), and Henry D. Thoreau (1817–1862); are great moral examples. However, I am not sure why pragmatism cannot or would not think of these people as moral examples. It is perhaps a weakness of the classical pragmatists that they do not make enough reference to concrete and historical moral examples. One could even argue that it is especially problematic their failure to mention so many contemporary models among minorities and marginalized groups: individuals that exemplify the very struggle for a more democratic existence they encouraged, in a country where discrimination, cultural genocide, sexism, racism, and other evils are commonplace. However, this failure or weakness of the classical figures is not evidence of something intrinsically wrong or limiting about pragmatism. In fact, the rectification of this weakness in the classical figures has been going on for many years. Scholars and followers of pragmatism have been providing concrete examples of pragmatism at work, or at least some national and international examples of moral exemplars that were influenced to some degree by some of the pragmatists’ ideas, for instance, how students of Dewey in Latin America, India, and China have had the courage to work on significant democratic reforms (Stroud 2016; Pappas 2011).44 Harris could reply that this is not as impressive as the moral examples available to other philosophical and religious 42  Middle Works of John Dewey, volume 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press), 379. 43  See chapters 10–12 in Gregory F. Pappas’s John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). “Courage is needed for more than the few heroic moral acts we will do in our life. Courage is needed at every step of the way for the instability, indeterminacy, and uncertain possibilities inherent in every moral situation” (90). 44  For example, see Scott R.  Stroud’s “Pragmatism and the Pursuit of Social Justice in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar and the Rhetoric of Religious Reorientation,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46, no.1: 5–27. For the influence of Pragmatism in Latin American social struggles there are many examples in Pragmatism in the Americas (ed. Gregory F. Pappas, Fordham University Press, 2011).

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movements. Indeed, Pragmatism does not have yet a Christ, a Socrates, or a Fanon. So what? Why should it be able to point out exemplary individuals as devoted followers of the philosophy in order to find adequate their ideas? In sum, I have considered different versions of the challenge and find none of them convincing to find Pragmatism defective. There may be a way to reconstruct the challenge in such a way that it raises a serious challenge to pragmatism, but in its present form it does not. The problem is that the challenge is based on questionable assumptions about pragmatism but also that Harris expects from pragmatism what pragmatism itself says we should not expect from a philosophy or an ethics. Is there anything important about the challenge worth recuperating? I happen to agree with Harris that we need more willingness to participate in insurrection but this is only because many, and perhaps more, problematic situations today call for it. Context determines this. Pragmatism is a philosophy that encourages one to be open and sensitive to such situations that call for insurrection; but to be open and sensitive to a duty to insurrection is not the same as having some a priori or special duty of insurrection. Pragmatism prescribes a broad and vague, but nevertheless serious commitment to ameliorate problematic situations, including ameliorating the conditions of the wretched of the earth and the democratization of everyone’s existence. But it does not, and cannot have, any absolute commitment, prior to these situations, to one particular way or means to do any of this. Pragmatism has a space or a place for insurrection but it is only one among many possible means of amelioration, and therefore it makes no sense to make this means necessary or a function of being a pragmatist. But for Harris it seems that to be open and willing to be insurrectionists when the situation calls for it is not good enough.

References Dewey, John. 1973. Lectures in China, 1919–1920, Trans. and ed. Robert W. Clopton and Tsuin-Chen Ou. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. ———. 2008. The Later Works of John Dewey, Volume 5, 1925 – 1953. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ———. 2015. Lectures in Social and Political Philosophy (China). European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 7 (2): 7–44. Harris, Leonard. 2002. Insurrectionist Ethics: Advocacy, Moral Psychology, and Pragmatism. In Ethical Issues for a New Millennium, ed. J. Howie. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

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Pappas, Gregory F. 2008. John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ———., ed. 2011. Pragmatism in the Americas. New  York: Fordham University Press. Stroud, Scott R. 2016. Pragmatism and the Pursuit of Social Justice in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar and the Rhetoric of Religious Reorientation. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46 (1): 5–27.

CHAPTER 10

Responding to Racial Injustice: Insurrection and Social Justice Pragmatism in Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Richard Rorty Chris Voparil

Leonard Harris’s provocative argument that any philosophy which fails to require “a moral duty to support or engage in slave insurrections” and to make direct advocacy of just causes central to its understanding of moral agency “is defective” (2020, 175) initiated a crucial, if slow-to-develop, reckoning for the pragmatic tradition. As Lee McBride explains, “by considering the insurrectionists and what they are rebelling against, we are exposed to new considerations and alternative perspectives.” “To recognize these practitioners of insurrectionist ethics and their contexts,” he continues, “changes the American philosophical tradition’s narrative” (2013, 30, 39). Jacoby Carter similarly anticipated that “work in American philosophy across these two traditions is likely to uncover new problems, innovative resources, and novel solutions aimed at advancing fundamental social transformation in the interest of justice” (2013, 71). Indeed, Kristie Dotson expanded the insurrectionist challenge to include “the epistemic

C. Voparil (*) Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_10

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demand to situate oppression so as to better approximate the bonds of oppression and the range of oppressors one faces” (2013, 89). John Kaag developed a close cousin of insurrection, “subversion,” which he defines as “the ability to gradually infiltrate hegemonic ways of thinking and to work from within to reform unjust social practices” (2013, 47–48). José Medina has advanced conceptions of “guerilla pragmatism” (2013, chap. 6) and “insurrectionist pragmatism” (2017). Colin Koopman (2017) responded to the insurrectionist provocation by instigating a related “contestational” challenge that he pushes pragmatists to take up. These interventions have been salutary; we need more like them. There also is a sense in which the insurrectionist challenge to pragmatism has been interpreted too narrowly. Of the two dimensions of the insurrectionist challenge distinguished by Carter (2013) that any adequate philosophy must address, the conceptual and the motivational, the former has predominated.1  Yet the conceptual preoccupations of philosophers don’t bring us any closer to responding to injustice, and risk becoming instead merely a matter for philosophers to debate. To elucidate this limitation, I suggest that the conceptual and motivational challenges involve two distinct views of normativity, both of which operate within Harris’s thought. The preoccupation with conceptual commitments looks to decontextualized normative grounds for validity, while the motivational side sees normativity as residing in our situatedness within networks of moral relations and communal values. My argument is that responding to racial injustice demands developing the latter within a social justice pragmatism that includes but extends beyond insurrection. It is important to recall that for Harris insurrectionist ethics are part of a broader project of practicing philosophy differently by orienting it to the immiserated and by “includ[ing] the excluded” (Harris 2020, 22). In keeping with this project, my primary claim is that the quest for social justice in general and racial justice in particular demands the resources of both insurrectionism and pragmatism. Harris is rightly unequivocal: any perspective lacking dedicated resources and clear support for practicing insurrection “as necessary conditions to be a pragmatist” is inadequate (2020, 181). Pragmatic appeals to “quaint platitudes about democracy, sympathy, and communal discourse” (McBride 2013, 31) are grossly inadequate, even insulting, in the face of the inhumanity of chattel slavery. 1  Medina similarly insists that pragmatism “must create conceptual and motivational space for insurrection” (2017, 203).

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However, when we broaden our scope to include responding to the range of contemporary racial injustices and the need for ongoing transformation of the dominant white culture, I suggest that an insurrectionist ethics alone is not enough.2 In this chapter I focus on the issue of racial injustice and develop a conception of social justice pragmatism by drawing on the unlikely pair of Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Richard Rorty.3 The first section establishes the distinction alluded to above between decontextualized and situated normativity, and suggests that the conceptual challenge is a red herring if our concern is responding to injustice. The second section highlights the social critical resources exemplified in the unification of critical thought and action in Wells-Barnett’s radical intellectual activism, what Anthony Bogues has termed her “radical praxis” (2003, 48). This social criticism, which marshals historical analysis, social scientific evidence, a species of deconstruction, and unassailable arguments, is evident in her anti-­ lynching campaign’s critique of the discursive link between rape and lynching. Wells-Barnett’s intellectual interventions manifest aspects of insurrectionism and pragmatism, getting us beyond an either/or, and exemplify how to attack the construction of Black bodies as inherently threatening today. In the third section I call attention to the rather less likely contribution of Rorty. If Wells-Barnett adds an important critical dimension, Rorty prompts us to rethink insurrectionism’s focus on our conceptual commitments—specifically, the assumption that getting our normative concepts right is essential for generating righteous action in the name of justice. Recognizing that the relation between our philosophical orientations and our political actions is contingent rather than necessary, the transformative thrust of his pragmatism actively cultivates motivational resources to support responsiveness to concrete injustice. We see where Rorty’s project aligns with both Harris’s critique of classical pragmatism’s reliance on rational argumentation and his own emphasis on the imagination. The final section brings together the insights of Wells-Barnett and Rorty for fostering relations of responsiveness to “social transformation in the interest of justice” (Carter 2013, 71). 2  On the limits of insurrectionism, along with suggestions for augmenting it, see Dotson (2013), Kaag (2013), Koopman (2017), Medina (2017), and Taylor (2017). 3  While beyond the scope of the present essay, Carter’s (2013) argument for a distinctly feminist insurrectionist ethics no doubt is important as well.

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These two very different thinkers give us a picture of intellectual production in the service of social justice—that is, a model of intellectual agency or praxis whose highest priority is not refining conceptual commitments but promoting a moral commitment to the reduction of suffering through the generation of collective action. In Wells-Barnett this is evidenced in her anti-lynching campaign of the 1890s. In Rorty it takes the form of his exhortations to philosophers to prioritize democracy over philosophy and to make “intervening in cultural politics” to expand the reach of our moral community their primary assignment (2007, ix–x). His insights into the role of the imagination in our perceptions of others led him to take up a human moral phenomenon that philosophers have neglected, namely “the person whose treatment of a narrow range of [human beings] is morally impeccable, but who remains indifferent to the suffering of those outside this range, the ones he thinks of as pseudo-­ humans” (1998, 177). Before proceeding, let me offer three preliminary clarifications. First, on Rorty, I want to make clear that this is not a brief for Rorty as an insurrectionist. That said, I do want to point out that Rorty’s perspective is not implicated in Harris’s critique of classical pragmatism.4 If, as Harris charges, “James, Dewey, Locke, and Addams seem to presuppose… a self that is already motivated to desire the well-being of others” (2020, 185), Rorty instead makes the active, ongoing cultivation of motivation to act on behalf of others the cornerstone of his project.5 In contrast to Dewey’s faith in dialogue, discourse, and intelligence, Rorty was attuned to contexts in which argumentation and appeals to reason are of no use and called attention to how our philosophical assumptions can put us into undemocratic relations with others.6 He emphasized the importance of prophecy and “unwarranted assertions” (1998, 50) for spurring social change, and offered a detailed analysis of the ways we deprive others of full human personhood, counseling us to be attentive to those who may have been excluded from our community. In ethics, Rorty sought to turn us away from abstract questions, like “Why should I be moral?” and toward more pressing ones, like “Why should I care about a stranger, a 4  Interestingly, McBride notes in passing that “Harrisian philosophy” is “like (Richard) Rorty without the bourgeois American exceptionalism” (2020, 10n10). See Voparil (2020, 2014) for a full picture of Rorty’s ethical-political resources. 5  See, for example, “Justice as a Larger Loyalty,” in Rorty (2007). 6  See Voparil (2014).

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person who is no kin to me, a person whose habits I find disgusting?” (1998, 185). Indeed, in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity’s (1989) chapter on “Solidarity” he explicitly took up the question, of fundamental concern to Harris, of what “compels individuals to reject their own community, citizenship, and national allegiance to risk their lives for the well-being of strangers?” (Harris 2020, 181) and made the expansion of our affective ties to distant and different others his project’s key moral priority.7 Unlike the forms of pragmatist social psychology that, as Harris rightly points out, reject “we” categories as suspect (2020, 180), Rorty, to much disdain from critics, made them central.8 In sum, even though vulnerable to insurrectionist criticism, Rorty offers an alternative conception of normativity that may better serve social justice than previous iterations of pragmatism. Second, on Wells-Barnett, I want to acknowledge the perils that accompany the reclamation of her work by privileged academics who, as Patricia Hill Collins has reminded us, often “contextualize her ideas and career with analytical frameworks that reflect their [own] particular concerns” (2002, 19). By interjecting Wells-Barnett into the context of Harris’s insurrectionist challenge to pragmatism and putting her in dialogue with Rorty, I likely am guilty of this to some extent already, even as I consciously try to eschew making a case for Wells-Barnett as a pragmatist or using her work as a pawn in some internecine skirmish. I aim to take up the insurrectionist challenge, not just to defend pragmatism, but to explore the complementary resources that these traditions offer each other in response to broader questions about the adequacy of any philosophy in the face of concrete racial injustice. Here I seek to marshal the resources of Wells-Barnett’s analyses and actions for concerns that drove her work— namely, mitigating the violence authorized by the construction of Black bodies as inherently threatening by moving the broader citizenry to take action against this violence. Nevertheless, putting Wells-Barnett’s intellectual activism in conversation with Rorty’s pragmatism courts, as Tommy Curry rightly has argued, reinscribing her within a liberal democratic

 See Voparil (2011).  See, for example, Medina (2017, 211). Medina’s take on Rorty’s position on solidarity, like many, is a caricature. 7 8

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paradigm that obscures the more radical agitationist philosophy that informs her critique of white supremacy (2012, 458).9 Lastly, while I can’t develop the full picture here, I understand social justice pragmatism as incorporating the myriad responses that the range of actual injustice, including the spectrum from historical legacies and institutional racism to implicit biases and microaggressions, demands— responses from insurrection to patient self-criticism and self-remaking, both individual and collective. Above all, it prioritizes what Harris calls “advocacy of just causes” and responsiveness to concrete injustice. I take cues from the case Medina makes for an “insurrectionist pragmatism” sufficiently broadened beyond its experimentalist and meliorist tools to accommodate more radical modes of response to and active transformation of injustice. As he rightly asserts, “American pragmatists have long been charged with ignoring an all-American injustice: the injustice of treating racial minorities as non-citizens or second-class citizens.” Yet for Medina, “pragmatism can and in fact should allow for insurrection and radical change in response to radical forms of exclusion and subordination such as those we can find in the American racist past and present” (2017, 197). I intend social justice pragmatism to incorporate Medina’s epistemological project, while moving outside the epistemic domain to include the ethical, the aesthetic, and imaginative elements highlighted by

9  Curry (2012) makes a compelling case for the influence of T. Thomas Fortune’s agitationist philosophy on Wells-Barnett and for her commitment to the radical agenda of the Afro-American League, especially with regard to the economic dimensions of white opposition to Black progress that spur lynching. This is an important corrective that gives us a fuller, more accurate picture of both the historical genealogy and the critical content of her ideas. In places, Curry may risk reducing Wells-Barnett to Fortune’s ideas. As I argue here, there are other dimensions of her project that fall outside Fortune’s agitationist thought, even if his ideas are the best frame for interpreting her antilynching interventions. In suggesting Wells-Barnett might be read as an insurrectionist pragmatist, I follow Joy James in interpreting Wells-Barnett as “merg[ing] Black feminism and Black nationalism” (qtd. in Bogues 2003, 67), such that Fortune’s agitationist philosophy is augmented by the particular concerns of Black women. See also Aptheker (1982), who suggests that “the antilynching crusade of Black women was also a movement—a Black women’s movement—against rape,” that used the resources, ideas, and paradigms available to Black women at the time (54). Similarly, Carter reads Maria Stewart as practicing a distinctly feminist insurrectionist ethics (2013, 55).

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Wells-­ Barnett and Rorty.10 Wells-Barnett and Rorty, in their different ways, advance a morally-oriented paradigm of intellectual activism that seeks, in Wells-Barnett’s words, to “arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen” (2002, 17) and promote moral agency, by fostering broad-based forms of sympathy and imaginative identification capable of galvanizing an American public to take action to rectify racial injustice. Even if, like Wells-Barnett, we see little reason for optimism, these tools of a social justice pragmatism have a role in the larger insurrectionist struggle.

Insurrection and Normativity The insurrectionist challenge to pragmatism is, fundamentally, about normative resources—specifically, whether the motivations, moral commitments, and actions of pragmatists are sufficient to authorize support of just causes and engagement in insurrectionist interventions that subvert, through violence when necessary, unjust institutions and social arrangements. For Harris, the precise concern is whether the normative features of pragmatism “require, as necessary conditions to be a pragmatist” support for insurrection (2020, 181). To avoid any suspense, I think the answer here is that they do not. I say this not because I think pragmatists are unlikely to support insurrection under certain conditions. As we shall see, both Wells-Barnett and Rorty embraced the possibility of circumstances where one needs to reach for one’s gun, literally. However, openness to this possibility is not sufficient for Harris; pragmatism must “require, as necessary conditions to be a pragmatist” support for insurrection (emphasis added). In my view, pragmatism’s attentiveness to contingency, fallibilism, chance, agency, and choice makes the idea of necessary conditions that require anything, in the sense of compulsion without our active choice and agency, a nonstarter.11 This limitation of pragmatism no doubt is consequential for Harris. However, I want to suggest that by the same token there are no “necessary conditions” that by the simple fact of their existence require 10  These dimensions are present, either implicitly or explicitly, in Medina’s rich and nuanced account. My aim here is merely to capture these dimensions in a different way without having to stretch the epistemic label so far that it is no longer practically helpful. See also Dotson’s (2013) call for greater attention to epistemic conditions. 11  Ramberg has characterized such philosophical approaches more broadly as reducing humans to “subservient responders” to the nature of things (2008, 444).

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insurrection from insurrectionist philosophers either. To put it another way, the “conceptual” challenge to pragmatism is a red herring when our concern is responding to actual racial injustice. Harris’s quest for “good criteria for justifying insurrection” (2020, 183), as if merely procuring logical grounds to warrant a propositional claim were sufficient to decide whether to commit insurrectionist acts, is an amiable pursuit for philosophers but misplaced as a response to actual injustice and not paramount among his historical exemplars of insurrectionist ethics.12 Everything, for both insurrectionism and pragmatism alike, comes down to the motivational challenge of how to instigate decisive action in the face of uncertainty, unpredictability, a lack of absolutes, and the human capacity for agency and choice. Even those who already subscribe to an insurrectionist ethics need to determine how and when and in what form action is called for when injustice is experienced or encountered.13 Harris certainly gets this and devotes ample space to the role of character traits, like aggressiveness, tenacity, and enmity, as well as moral sensibilities that support taking risks on behalf of others, to “motivate and encourage persons to be insurrectionists” (2020, 186). The point I want to emphasize is that the conceptual and motivational challenges an insurrectionist ethics poses to pragmatism rest on two distinct conceptions of normativity. When insurrectionism is merely a matter of getting our conceptual commitments right or applying a predetermined set of classificatory criteria, all the weight is put on decontextualized grounds for validity. By contrast, the motivational side of insurrectionism entails that normativity resides in our situatedness within networks of moral relations and communal values. Experience, affective bonds to others, and sympathetic identifications all play a role in our normative orientation toward others and the world. Indeed, as Harris puts it in other moments, “There is no algorithm for this” and no escape from the dilemmas of choice. “All warrants,” he holds, “rely on some form of visceral (i.e., affective, experiential) foundation” (2020, 197, 204). My aim here is to expand the relevance of the insurrectionist challenge rather than curtail it. Indeed, focusing on the conceptual side interprets 12  Harris’s exemplars of an insurrectionist morality, including David Walker, Maria Stewart, Henry David Thoreau, and Lydia Child, with the exception Walker’s “a secular and theological basis for insurrection,” find their motivations for support of insurrection elsewhere than in their philosophical commitments. See Harris (2020, chaps. 10–11). 13  Harris likewise recognizes the need for creating a personal sense of stability given constantly changing, radically shifting, and incongruous conditions” (2020, 202).

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the challenge too narrowly. Insurrectionist ethics are part of a broader project of practicing philosophy differently by orienting it to the immiserated and by “includ[ing] the excluded” (Harris 2020, 22). When Harris references Alain Locke’s (1989) notion of “imperatives” he relies on this second conception of normativity, rooted in Locke’s insights about the inextricability of values from the process of valuation and the experiences and affective modes at play in this process (e.g., Harris 2020, 27, 218).14 In these moments, Harris highlights the importance of moral communities and direct encounters for stimulating normative impulses for action. He recognizes that “moral commitments are influenced by the way we explain and conceive communities” (2020, 224). By moral community Harris means “membership in a society in which persons grant, prima facie, trust, empathy, admiration, and obedience to persons that are otherwise strangers” (2020, 167). He establishes that “The moral community of America is most often conceived in ways that exclude the African American community” and discusses lynching as an “exemplary form of emasculation and exclusion from the moral community” (2020, 124, 114). In these contexts he appeals to what he calls Locke’s “radical imagination” (2020, 195) and emphasizes building not only “communities of trust” but “resistance traditions” (McBride 2020, 7–8). Harris’s insights here into the limitations of pragmatism’s understanding of social change are crucial. He confesses that “Locke, arguably, was not an insurrectionist” (2020, 196). Pragmatists, by and large, affirm a conception of social change “without the discord of social conflict, insurrections, and revolutions” (Harris 2020, 183). The chief engines of such change—things like “the uses of intelligence, dramatic rehearsal, dialogue, and discourse” (Harris 2020, 183)—come already calibrated to the pragmatists’ slow machinery of progress. After all, as Harris powerfully conveys, “pregnant women, children, old men, and young men were lynched, beaten, raped, threatened, and coerced while the world of relatively civil abolitionist discourse and protest occurred” (2020, 185). Having outlined these two conceptions of normativity, we can say that Wells-Barnett and Rorty offer resources to augment the side of Harris’s insurrectionism that sees insurrectionist acts, or their absence, as a function of the norms and scope of the moral communities of which we are a part and the nature of our experiences within them. The contributions of 14  See Locke (1989) and Harris (2020, chap. 11). On Locke’s notion of imperatives, see Gbadegesin (1999).

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Wells-Barnett and Rorty align around two insights in particular. The first is the need to move beyond conceptual preoccupations to the intellectual praxis of engaged social criticism. The failures of moral suasion in the face of the horrors of slavery and lynching rightly noted by Harris are not to be remedied by procuring stronger or different normative grounds at the level of philosophical concepts. The second is that their intellectual praxis aims directly at fostering “persons who want a different world and are willing to be insurrectionists of one form or another” (Harris 2020, 184), even as they eschew appeals to concepts or abstract duties that unerringly require us to be insurrectionists. The following two sections develop this reading of Wells-Barnett and of Rorty, respectively.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Critical Praxis At the core of Wells-Barnett’s anti-lynching campaign is her debunking of the discursive linkage of Black men to the threat of rape employed in the rhetorical justification of lynching’s legitimacy and continued practice. She understood not only that lynching was a politically motived act, and not a reasoned application of criminal justice; she grasped that lynching was “An excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property and thus keep the race terrorized” (qtd. in Aptheker 1982, 67).15 As Anthony Bogues suggests, contextualizing the practice historically in ways that still resonate today, “lynching was part of a broader colonial pattern of Western oppression in which the crushing of the black body was a ritual enactment of domination and a public confirmation of white supremacy” (2003, 57). In her astute analysis, Wells-Barnett perceived, as Bettina Aptheker explains, that “the dialectics of the lynch mentality required the dehumanization of Black men (as rapists), Black women (as prostitutes), and white women (as property whose honor was to be avenged by the men who possessed them)” (1982, 62). To challenge this complex constellation of white supremacist and patriarchal mythologies, Wells-Barnett marshaled brute facts that had been catalogued by the white press, historical analysis, tightly constructed arguments, evocative journalistic accounts of the suffering and the humanity of lynching’s victims, a scathing critique of white morality, community-development strategies, and the efforts of various political organizations.16 Significantly, she foregrounded material  As Curry (2012) establishes, this is one of T. Thomas Fortune’s key insights.  See, especially, Aptheker (1982), Bogues (2003), Collins (2002), and Curry (2012).

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conditions and was not preoccupied with the normative justification of her conceptual commitments. Wells-Barnett defined a multidimensional strategy that included appeals to economic self-interest, to affect, and, ultimately, to armed militancy. As Curry establishes, she had a keen sense of the limits of moral suasion of whites. She understood the “capitalist impulse of white culture” (Curry 2012, 458) sought to foster a North American sense of shame through heightened contrasts with Britain’s relative moral superiority and, when all else failed, held that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home [to provide] that protection which the law refuses to give” (Wells-Barnett 2002, 52). She outlined a program of economic resistance that included both boycott and emigration in the manner later employed in Montgomery during the civil rights period.17 Clearly, she was not content to await an awakening of white conscience, and understandably so, given “the well-known opposition growing out of slavery to the progress of the race” she validated (2002, 39). She herself had witnessed firsthand that “the mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American” (2002, 41). At the same time, she nevertheless continued to appeal to whites for sympathy and support. Throughout her anti-lynching writings, including Southern Horrors (1892), A Red Record (1894), and Mob Rule in New Orleans (1900), Wells-Barnett expresses her exasperation and surprise at, yet still seeks to remedy, the failure of the white citizenry’s “public sentiment” to be moved by the “barbarism of Lynch Law” (2002, 124–25). Her broad aims, as she explains in Southern Horrors, were twofold: first, to “arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen;” and, second, to contest stereotypes so as to recover the humanity of African Americans (2002, 25–26). Then, as often now, the “American moral sensibility,” as Frederick Douglass put it in a letter to Wells-Barnett, remained largely unresponsive, lacking the “scream of horror, shame, and indignation” that Douglass and others expected, or at least hoped, the “lynch abomination” would produce (qtd. in Wells-­ Barnett 2002, 28). Wells-Barnett recounts seeing a “slight” uptick in public sentiment surrounding “the spirit of justice” against lynching, but clearly this wasn’t enough. What was needed is the creation of “a healthy public sentiment” 17  As she puts it, “The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effective than all the appeals ever made to his conscience” (2002, 51).

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robust enough to demand and sustain lawful punishment of lynchers (2002, 47–49). Invocations of sympathy and moral sentiment already were rampant on the other side, as evidenced by “the appeal of Southern whites to Northern sympathy” that Wells-Barnett highlights in the charge leveled at her that those “who condemn lynching express no sympathy for the white woman in the case” (2002, 39). These efforts needed to be counterbalanced. Even if pessimistic about its prospects, she sought to cultivate collective moral sentiment to support the anti-lynching cause. Indeed, as Harris has argued, for insurrectionists, “moral sensibilities […] including a willingness to lend support or act when consequences are likely to be unfavorable in the immediate future, disadvantageous for individual actors, and contrary to popular beliefs and practices,” are important sources of motivation in the face of injustice (2002, 208). As I outline in the next section, it is to this program for developing moral sensibilities that center on cultivating responsiveness to injustice and advocacy of just causes that Rorty offers resources. Both Rorty and Wells-Barnett seek to develop what Medina calls “an adequate sensibility” for injustice (2017, 201). While for Wells-Barnett this clearly wasn’t the only or the most promising avenue of transformation, they both aim to foster broad-based forms of sympathy and imaginative identification capable of galvanizing an American public to take action against racial injustice. I seek to retain this collective project within a social justice pragmatism that includes but is not limited to insurrection.

Rorty’s Alternative Normative Resources Rorty, the insouciant and ironic, self-described “piecemeal reformist” and “postmodernist bourgeois liberal,” is clearly an unlikely insurrectionist, to say the least. His pragmatism would seem to undermine multiple pillars of an insurrectionist ethics. To name only a few: he rejected conceptions of duty and authoritarian moral commitments; he advocated amelioration over revolutionary change; he advanced a program for achieving moral progress through cultivation of what Thoreau derisively mocked as the “quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity [without any] outbreak” (qtd. in Harris 2020, 178); and he embraced what Harris calls “romantic notions of persons as subject to change without force” (2020, 178). Whatever truth there may be here, this picture doesn’t capture the range of resources his pragmatism offers. Briefly stated, Rorty’s contribution vis-à-vis the insurrectionist challenge resides in the claim that we drop

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conceptual worries about normative grounds and focus on promoting moral sensibilities that support altering unjust social practices. This move follows from his insights into the limits of rational argument for combating entrenched prejudice and about the contingent nature of the relation of our philosophical to our political commitments. A Rortyan response to the insurrectionist challenge would promote advocacy of just causes by shifting us away from appeals to duty and particular conceptual commitments, and toward the active cultivation of moral agency, recognizing with Harris “how moral commitments are influenced by the way we explain and conceive communities” (Harris 2020, 224). The crucial move in Rorty’s conception of normativity, as Susan Dieleman has argued, is reversing the priority of epistemology over community. Not unlike some feminist epistemologists, for Rorty “community comes before the postulation of these sorts of [epistemic] norms” (Dieleman 2013, 45).18 He recognized that even our conceptions of rational agency are, in part, a function of “membership in our moral community” and “what it is to count as a moral agent” to someone in this community (1979, 191n23, 1998, 177). What results is an alternative, noncriterial conception of rationality understood as “responsibility to larger and more diverse communities of human beings” (Rorty 2003, 46). Rorty viewed the attribution of normative statuses as a matter of recognition: “a courtesy extended potential or imagined fellow-speakers of our language” (1979, 190). As a result, it can be withheld or denied. If rationality is understood in terms of our relations with others, then to be rational is “to be willing to pick up the jargon of the interlocutor rather than translating it into one’s own” (1979, 318). Rorty’s critique of the limitations of rational argumentation aligns significantly with Harris’s.19 Like Harris, who affirmatively quotes Veena Das that “Something other than rational argumentation is called for” when seeking to convey experiences of novel injustices (qtd. in Harris 2020, 197), Rorty held that “the notion of ‘argumentative procedures’ is not relevant to the situation in which nothing familiar works and in which people are desperately (on the couch, on the barricades) looking for something, no matter how unfamiliar, which might work” (1991a, 190). In an essay on feminism, Rorty calls our attention to the problem of a claim about injustice that is “a voice saying something never heard before.” In  For an in-depth discussion of Rortyan normativity, see Calcaterra (2019).  For some of Harris’s remarks on Rorty, see Harris (2020, chap. 15; 1994).

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such cases, “appeal to rational acceptability by the standards of the existing community” is insufficient because it is precisely these standards and the boundaries of this community that are being challenged (Rorty 1998, 202, 214). Because logical means of argumentation and persuasion rely on appeals to antecedently shared criteria to function, they are incapable of expanding the frame of moral deliberation. For this reason, forms like prophecy, which Rorty describes as “all that nonviolent political movements can fall back on when argument fails,” are needed (1998, 207). The space of moral deliberation can only be expanded by “non-logical” means—novel metaphors, redescriptions, and creative misuses of language—and “unwarranted assertions,” like a voice saying something never heard before.20 Rorty’s view, then, is that normativity resides not in our conceptual commitments but in the ethical orientation of the communities and practices in which we are enmeshed. Rather than assuming that normativity and agency follow from rationally recognized universal and unconditional moral obligations, he locates them instead in our “affectional relations” (2007, 44). In place of duty or obligation Rorty substitutes the idea of expanding our affective ties to others so as to create a “community of trust” constructed upon the shared moral agency of being willing to take action to end the suffering of another (2007, 55). As discussed above, this view of normativity aligns with Harris’s emphasis on moral communities and what he calls the “visceral (i.e., affective, experiential)” basis of normative commitments (2020, 204). Focusing on this situated normativity gives us a different answer to Harris’s question of what duties exist, from a pragmatist standpoint, to overthrow slavery (2020, 183). It challenges the assumption, seemingly held by Harris, Carter, and Medina alike, that, as Medina expresses it, we must develop “arguments for the duty to resist complicity with exclusion and oppression,” since any philosophical stance, whether pragmatist or insurrectionist, that lacks such a “normative ground for conceptualizing and justifying insurrection” is inadequate, presumably because it would be deficient in its motivational power (2017, 204). On the Rortyan view, by contrast, the preoccupation with philosophical justification takes us away from extending the moral community’s range of responsiveness to injustice. Rorty’s account of the moral imagination and project of expanding our ability to sympathetically identify with the suffering of strangers are  See Rorty, “Feminism and Pragmatism” (in 1998), and Voparil (2013).

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expressly directed to contexts where appeals to deliberation and the exchange of reasons are inadequate. When it comes to entrenched prejudices, his insight is that “reason can only follow paths that the imagination has first broken” (2010b, 520). Or, to put it another way, he understood the limits of inference: we cannot justify our beliefs (in physics, ethics, or any other area) to everybody, but only to those whose beliefs overlap ours to some appropriate extent. (This is not a theoretical problem about ‘untranslatability’, but simply a practical problem about the limitations of argument. It is not that we live in different worlds than the Nazis or the Amazonians, but that conversion from or to their point of view, though possible, will not be a matter of inference from previously shared premises) (1991b, 31n).

For Rorty, then, to “rethink our judgments of particular people” we must look to the imagination rather than argument (2010a, 390). The reason for this is that “liberat[ing] one from one’s own previous ways of thinking about the lives and fortunes of individual human beings” cannot be achieved through “fitting what is said into a coherent set of inferential relationships to other utterances” (2010a, 391). His point is that moral progress is not a matter of an increase in rationality, nor does it involve developing what Dewey called intelligence.21 The crucial factor is sympathetic imagination: how wide one is willing to draw the limits of one’s moral community and how to cultivate relations with those who fall outside those limits. Moving outside such limits is possible only through developing our “skill at imaginative identification” with these excluded or distant others. This recognition of the limits of rational argument to alter entrenched beliefs creates an opening for insurrectionist actions where all other means are inadequate. For his part, Rorty looked only as far as forms like prophecy as “all that nonviolent political movements can fall back on when argument fails” (1998, 207). However, he also didn’t shy away from times when the appropriate response is “to reach for our guns” (2000, 14).22 A similar dynamic plays out with the importance insurrectionists attribute to a normative conception of personhood. Drawing on Carter’s reading of Maria Stewart as a feminist insurrectionist, Medina holds that, “As Carter has argued, insurrection is required by (and not simply rendered  For Harris’s critique of Dewey’s appeals to intelligence, see, e.g., (2020, 183, 202).  See also Rorty (1987).

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compatible with) Stewart’s account of the normative commitments associated with human subjectivity and human agency and, more specifically, by her notion of full personhood” (2017, 203). He continues, “Stewart’s concept of ‘full personhood’ can justify radical acts on behalf of the downtrodden, even if the consequences of such acts were likely to be destructive of practices and institutions and harmful to the actors and others” (2017, 204). Medina sets out to procure an analogue to Stewart’s normative conception of personhood in Dewey’s notion of human flourishing. While this effort is salutary as far as it goes, it assumes the kind of noncontingent linkage from our normative commitments at the level of theory to our habits of action that Rorty has given good reason to question. The assumption that Stewart’s or any other conception of full personhood “can justify radical acts on behalf of the downtrodden” is beside the point where these groups already have been excluded from the community of justification in question. Rorty’s approach would shift us away from relying upon an assumed link between conceptual correctness and agency to instead make our primary task the active cultivation of the moral sentiments that would support such agency.

Fostering Relations of Responsiveness We can bring Wells-Barnett’s and Rorty’s insights together by recognizing two things: that our motivation to commit insurrectionist acts or engage in direct advocacy of just causes is a function of the strength of our ties to concrete others, and that counteracting dehumanization requires cultivating positive sympathies. In addition to arousing a sense of injustice, in recounting the details of the actual victims of the violent injustice of lynching, Wells-Barnett sought to counter stereotypes and to humanize the victims. What Rorty grasped is that the provision of moral knowledge via rational argument does nothing to address the humanity denied to these specific groups. “For everything turns,” he wrote, “on who counts as a fellow human being,” on “membership in our moral community” (1998, 177). As Harris puts it, “commitment to improving the conditions of humanity requires that persons share meager resources with strangers and take personal risk they could well avoid” (2020, 186). To the question, “Why should I care about a stranger, a person who is no kin to me, a person whose habits I find disgusting?,” Rorty counsels us to tell stories— “sad and sentimental stories”—that begin, “Because this is what it is like to be in her situation—to be far from home, among strangers,” or “Because

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she might become your daughter-in-law,” or “Because her mother would grieve for her” (1998, 185). Responding adequately to these questions entails moving out of a narrowly epistemic frame to an ethical and political one, where the representationalist correctness of belief becomes secondary to how our beliefs orient us ethically toward others. Here the imagination displaces reason as the engine of moral improvement—specifically, the moral use of the imagination, what he calls “the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers.” Rorty understood that solidarity or “fellow feeling” is not “achieved by inquiry but [created] by imagination”: that is, by “increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation of other, unfamiliar sorts of people” (1989, xvi). Rorty shifts away from the epistemological because the project of normative justification is always relative to a particular audience and to our practices. If the “downtrodden,” to use Harris’s term, already have been excluded from our practices, the project of finding adequate grounds for our beliefs in order to require insurrection will do nothing to remedy this exclusion. As Rorty explains: Not every language user who comes down the road will be treated as a member of a competent audience. On the contrary, human beings usually divide up into mutually suspicious (not mutually intelligible) communities of justification—mutually exclusive groups—depending upon the presence of sufficient overlap in belief and desire. This is because the principal source of conflict between human communities is the belief that I have no reason to justify my beliefs to you, and none in finding out what alternative beliefs you may have, because you are, for example, an infidel, a foreigner, a woman, a child, a slave, a pervert, or an untouchable. In short, you are not “one of us,” not one of the real human beings, the paradigm human beings, the ones whose persons and opinions are to be treated with respect (2000, 15).

For Rorty, “to broaden the size of the audience [we] take to be competent, to increase the size of the relevant community of justification” not only is relevant to democratic politics; he states  that “it pretty much is democratic politics” (2000, 9). The transformative potential of Rorty’s account has been developed in Tracy Llanera’s research into the centrality of what she calls, drawing on Rorty, “redemptive relationships,” particularly in cases where people have abandoned lifelong membership in hate groups. In Llanera’s view, “the

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force of better arguments, and the long and patient employment of conversational virtues—while necessary and critical for triggering belief-­ revision—do not illuminate the tipping point of apostasy cases” (2019, 7).23 These individuals “change because their self-conceptions have evolved to accommodate reasons and justifications outside both their range of epistemic recognition and existential sphere of care” (2019, 3). Rortyan normativity includes the role of redemptive relationships as noncognitive factors that help bring about changes in self-descriptions, or what Rorty (1989) called one’s “final vocabulary.” In these cases, counterarguments against the belief systems of hate groups only become transformational amid the presence of redemptive relationships. Llanera concludes that “disillusioned extremists have a better chance at successful reformation and social reintegration when treated with compassion, empathy, and kindness” (2019, 14). Llanera (2017) also establishes that Rorty’s turn to literature involves cultivating potentially redemptive relationships. For Rorty, the shift away from rationality toward sentiment culminates in the project of “sentimental education,” which he described as “manipulating sentiments in such a way that [people] imagine themselves in the shoes of the despised and oppressed” (1998, 179). Rorty’s primary concern in his turn to the imagination is moral agency—our ability to be moved to action by the suffering of others (185). To be clear, “compassion, empathy, and kindness” and reading literature are not offered here as in any way adequate to the condition of the slave, which surely does require insurrectionist acts well beyond what these means are capable of generating. Responding to racial injustice in other forms demands additional efforts, including those directed at the dominant culture. The program for educating moral sentiments and developing redemptive relationships advocated by Rorty advances Wells-­ Barnett’s aim to “arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen” (2002, 17). Again, my argument isn’t that Rorty is an insurrectionist, only that if we follow both Wells-Barnett and Medina in envisioning a full spectrum of responses to racial injustice, as in a social justice pragmatism, then Rorty has insights for motivating insurrectionists and anyone else to respond more adequately to racial injustice. 23  Calcaterra, likewise, holds that on Rorty’s picture of normativity, “any interpersonal and intercultural relationship is not only ‘sentimental’ but also contains an interpretative process of the reasons of others” (2019, 97).

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Rorty’s insights also are in keeping with Paul Taylor’s (2017) effort to expand Medina’s perspective to include the “aesthetic dimensions” of epistemic injustice—specifically, the roles of affect and the imagination. As we have seen, Harris himself emphasizes the imagination. One of Medina’s key claims is that fighting racial epistemic injustices and resisting our complicity with them “requires epistemic insurrection, not only at the individual and conscious level, but also and more importantly at the level of subverting institutional designs and social practices so that new and more fair patterns of social perception, social communication and social relationality can emerge” (2017, 245). Appeals to rationality are ineffective in the context of those we exclude from full humanity, on Rorty’s view, because there are no imaginative paths for reason to follow that lead to these others. The problem is that these strangers or despised others become “unthinkable” (Rorty 1999, 223). This limitation is less an epistemic problem than one of anemic moral imagination. That is, we are unable to imagine them as conversation partners, much less as fellow members of our community. The crucial factor is sympathetic attachment, how wide one is willing to draw the limits of one’s moral community, and how to cultivate relations with those who fall outside those limits. Moving outside such limits is possible only through developing our “skill at imaginative identification” with these excluded others—something that Llanera establishes often comes about only through patient conversation and cultivating relationships over time.

Conclusion I have sought to expand the insurrectionist challenge beyond formal criteria and a preoccupation with the conceptual by highlighting the resources of Wells-Barnett and Rorty for advancing “social transformation in the interest of justice” (Carter 2013, 71). Their respective forms of intellectual praxis direct all their energies to motivating such transformation. Were Wells-Barnett and Rorty insurrectionists? Rorty surely was not; Wells-Barnett on occasion was. Insurrectionism and pragmatism need not be framed as an either/or. One way of establishing their continuity, as we have seen, is through their understanding of normativity as situated within communal, affectual relations to others, and an emphasis on extending ties of moral responsiveness, rather than as a matter of decontextualized justification or epistemic warrant of concepts.

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Surely, though, we should not collapse the differences between insurrectionism and pragmatism. The insurrectionist challenge to pragmatism targets the scope and speed of pragmatism’s commitment to social change, and the lengths to which we are willing to go—and how much we are willing to risk—to attain the exigent eradication of injustice. Too often, from Dewey and Jane Addams to Rorty, the conceptual whiteness of pragmatism and the privileged standpoints of its practitioners have compromised the urgency and efficacy of radical transformation of unjust institutions and relations in the name of communication “without rancor” (Hamington 2005, 173) or some other end besides transformation itself. In the eloquent words of Martin Luther King, Jr., the “great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice” (1986, 295). Insurrectionism is a necessary check on the propensity for even a well-intentioned dominant majority to put the brakes on social change. As King also knew, “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” (1986, 292). If, as Harris holds, “Insurrection is the negation of a world… an attempt to create a new world hopefully with no remainder from the old” (2020, 202), then it indeed seems a long way from pragmatic meliorism. That even a social justice pragmatism has resources that speak to what Harris calls “necro-being” or to promote “the negation of the racial identity of the oppressor and the oppressed” and the “destruction” of class, status, racial, and ethnic distinctions (2020, 198, 217, 229), is doubtful. Still, the need to support “resistance struggles intended to create new traditions and alternative communities” (Harris 2020, 221) suggests the importance of a wide array of tools and orientations that go beyond acts of insurrection to create movements and sustain them over time. There seem to be no a priori conceptual or motivational barriers to pragmatists, as Medina holds, “making available not only reforms and gradual changes, but also a broad spectrum of insurrectionist possibilities and radical changes” (2017, 197–98). Indeed, I see Wells-Barnett as exemplifying this full range of means. Yet her agitationist philosophy and the militancy it authorizes are not the only avenues she pursued; her anti-­ lynching writings aimed to activate a sense of injustice among white citizens and to undermine the racist stereotypes that devalue the humanity of Black men and women, even if she was pessimistic about their prospects.

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The incisive social criticism she marshaled to deconstruct the link between rape and lynching remains necessary to deploy today in the face of the discursive construction of Black bodies as inherently threatening as a justification for police shootings, and to the denial of full humanity of Black citizens that currently persists. Rorty’s recognition of the radical contingency of human life suggests that the relation between philosophical orientation and political radicalism assumed by the insurrectionist challenge is too tight. Promoting advocacy of just causes and insurrectionist responses to injustice are less a matter of getting our concepts right than of cultivating more inclusive ethical and affective commitments, often as a result of visceral experiences. As Rorty understood, greater responsiveness to injustice is achieved through the cultivation of the “moral sensibilities” that Harris himself cites as “important sources of motivation for insurrectionists” (2020, 186).24 By focusing on the cultivation of our affective ties to others, Wells-Barnett’s and Rorty’s resources extend to the project of cultivating what Medina calls “intergroup racial solidarity” (2017, 210). Indeed, “joining in solidarity with all those who oppose racism” is not only a form of collective moral agency but, for white folk, can be a means of “letting one’s whiteness recede” (Yancy and Butler 2015, 9). For his part, Harris insists that “not simply emotion or empathy as opposed to reason, but wakefulness” is needed (2020, 197).25 This is crucial, and points away from the status of our concepts. By combining the insurrectionist and critical impulses of Wells-­ Barnett with Rorty’s social justice-oriented pragmatism, I have sought to broaden the response to Harris’s insurrectionist challenge by gesturing toward a social justice pragmatism which aims to incorporate both.

 Similarly, Medina argues that repairing the refusal to come to terms with a violent and unjust past demands “developing an adequate sensibility for American racial injustices” through “a long and difficult process of rethinking values, ideals, institutional arrangements, and practices” (2017, 200). 25  Here Rorty’s insistence on the importance of unwarranted assertions, combined with Llanera’s insights about fundamental conversions of belief through “redemptive relationships,” suggest a program for attaining the transformation Harris’s “wakefulness” invokes. See also Turner (2012). 24

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References Aptheker, Bettina. 1982. Woman’s Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press. Bogues, Anthony. 2003. Black Heretics, Black Prophets: Radical Political Intellectuals. New York: Routledge. Calcaterra, Rosa M. 2019. Contingency and Normativity: The Challenges of Richard Rorty. Boston: Brill-Rodopi. Carter, Jacoby. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 54–73. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2002. Introduction. In On Lynchings, ed. Ida B.  Wells-­ Barnett, 9–24. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Curry, Tommy. 2012. The Fortune of Wells: Ida B.  Wells-Barnett’s Use of T.  Thomas Fortune’s Philosophy of Social Agitation as Prolegomenon to Militant Civil Rights Activism. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 48 (4): 456–482. Dieleman, Susan. 2013. The Contingent Status of Epistemic Norms: Rorty, Kantian Pragmatisms, and Feminist Epistemologies. In Richard Rorty: From Pragmatist Philosophy to Cultural Politics, ed. Alexander Gröschner, Colin Koopman, and Mike Sandbothe, 31–48. New York: Bloomsbury. Dotson, Kristie. 2013. Querying Leonard Harris’ Insurrectionist Standards. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 74–92. Gbadegesin, Segun. 1999. Values, Imperatives, and the Imperative of Democratic Values. In The Critical Pragmatism of Alain Locke: A Reader on Value Theory, Aesthetics, Community, Culture, Race, and Education, ed. Leonard Harris, 277–290. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Hamington, Maurice. 2005. Public Pragmatism: Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells on Lynching. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19 (2): 167–174. Harris, Leonard. 1994. A Response to a Conversation: Richard Rorty. Sapina: A Bulletin of the Society for African Philosophy in North America 5 (2): 14–16. ———. 2020. A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader. Edited by Lee A. McBride. New York: Bloomsbury. Kaag, John. 2013. Transgressing the Silence: Lydia Maria Child and the Philosophy of Subversion. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 46–53. King, Martin Luther, Jr. 1986. A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by James W. Washington. New York: HarperCollins. Koopman, Colin. 2017. Contesting Injustice: Why Pragmatist Political Thought Needs Du Bois. In Pragmatism and Justice, ed. Susan Dieleman, David Rondel, and Christopher Voparil, 179–196. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Llanera, Tracy. 2017. Richard Rorty and the Concept of Redemption. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 82 (2): 103–118. ———. 2019. Disavowing Hate: Group Egotism from Westboro to the Klan. Journal of Philosophical Research 44: 1–19. https://doi.org/10.5840/ jpr2019108139. Locke, Alain. 1989. Values and Imperatives. In The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, ed. Leonard Harris, 34–50. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. McBride, Lee A. 2013. Insurrectionist Ethics and Thoreau. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1): 29–45. ———. 2020. Editor’s Introduction. In A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader, ed. Lee A. McBride, 1–10. New York: Bloomsbury. Medina, José. 2013. The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. New  York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2017. Pragmatism, Racial Injustice, and Epistemic Insurrection: Toward an Insurrectionist Pragmatism. In Pragmatism and Justice, ed. Susan Dieleman, David Rondel, and Christopher Voparil, 197–213. New  York: Oxford University Press. Ramberg, Bjørn. 2008. Rorty, Davidson, and the Future of Metaphysics in America. In The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy, ed. Cheryl Misak, 430–448. New York: Oxford University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1987. Thugs and Theorists: A Reply to Bernstein. Political Theory 15 (4): 564–580. ———. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. New  York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991a. Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1991b. Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998. Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers. Vol. 3. New  York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1999. Philosophy and Social Hope. New York: Penguin Books. ———. 2000. Universality and Truth. In Rorty and His Critics, ed. Robert B. Brandom, 1–30. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2003. Some American Uses of Hegel. In Das Interesse Des Denkens: Hegel Aus Heutiger Sicht, ed. Wolfgang Welsch and Klaus Vieweg, 33–46. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. ———. 2007. Philosophy as Cultural Politics: Philosophical Papers. Vol. 4. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 2010a. Redemption from Egotism: James and Proust as Spiritual Exercises. In The Rorty Reader, ed. Christopher Voparil and Richard J.  Bernstein, 389–406. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2010b. The Fire of Life. In The Rorty Reader, ed. Christopher Voparil and Richard J. Bernstein, 520–521. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Taylor, Paul C. 2017. An Aesthetics of Resistance: Deweyan Experimentalism and Epistemic Injustice. In Pragmatism and Justice, ed. Susan Dieleman, David Rondel, and Christopher Voparil, 215–230. New York: Oxford University Press. Turner, Jack. 2012. Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Voparil, Christopher. 2011. Rortyan Cultural Politics and the Problem of Speaking for Others. Contemporary Pragmatism 8 (1): 115–131. ———. 2013. Pragmatist Philosophy and Persuasive Discourse: Dewey and Rorty on the Role of Non-Logical Changes in Belief. In Persuasion and Compulsion in Democracy, ed. Jacqueline Ann K. Kegley and Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński, 133–151. New York: Lexington Books. ———. 2014. Taking Other Human Beings Seriously: Rorty’s Ethics of Choice and Responsibility. Contemporary Pragmatism 11 (1): 83–102. ———. 2020. Rorty’s Ethics of Responsibility. In A Companion to Rorty, ed. Alan Malachowski, 490–504. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 2002. On Lynchings. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. Yancy, George, and Judith Butler. 2015. What’s Wrong With ‘All Lives Matter’? The New York Times, January 12. Accessed January 16, 2015. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-­wrong-­with-­all-­lives-­matter/.

CHAPTER 11

Discernment behind Asylum Walls; Or, The Limits of Efficacious Reasoning Lee A. McBride III

There is burgeoning interest in Leonard Harris’s insurrectionist philosophy. Much of this interest circles around insurrectionist ethics—its virtues, its necessary and sufficient conditions, and Harris’s criticism of philosophical schools of thought that fail to advocate for slave insurrection (McBride 2013). In this chapter, I skirt these issues, opting to focus on the broader contours of Leonard Harris’s idiosyncratic philosophy, philosophia nata ex conatu. 1 Here, I pay special attention to apperception and efficacious reasoning. I argue that we must take into account the cognitive and

1  The Latin phrase “philosophia nata ex conatu” translates to “philosophy born of struggle.”

L. A. McBride III (*) Department of Philosophy, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_11

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rational limitations of human beings to understand Harris’s proffered conception of efficacious reasoning in moral contexts.

Thinking within This Cauldron of Constant Death During the fifth century BCE, Parmenides of Elea wrote an inspiring poem. Therein, we find the protagonist traveling in a (mortal) chariot pulled by wise mares toward the heavens, toward the celestial path of the goddess. The axel shrills bright sound, the wheels aflame. He is escorted by the daughters of the Sun from the house of Night toward the light (Parmenides 2011, 57). As they leave the house of Night, these immortal escorts, these divine maidens, push back their veils from their heads; they travel high in the sky, gaining safe passage through the guarded gates. The protagonist finds himself on the broad road of Justice, Right, and Truth. There, he is received by the goddess. The goddess directs the protagonist down the path of Truth; she implores him (and us) to inquire into what-is. “What-is” refers to what is ultimately True. In this fashion, the goddess gives us reason to presuppose an unchanging, eternal reality that transcends our corporeal, empirically experienced world. We are told: “What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, a whole of single kind, unshaken, and complete” (Parmenides 2011, 59). The goddess disparages the alternative path—the path of the mere opinions of mortals, in which there is no certainty, no fixed truth. On this common path, human beings, through empirical investigation, inquire into what-is-not (i.e., they inquire into things which come into being and pass away). The goddess implores us: Judge not by your senses, but by reason (logos) (59). Parmenides’ poem is loaded with philosophical impetus. It suggests a form of rationalism; it clearly preferences an a priori approach to knowledge acquisition—by reason alone. I find it fascinating that some contemporary philosophers still uphold the type of position evoked in this poem. For example, Patricia Curd claims: “Thinking like a mortal is something that one can overcome” (Curd 2004, 121). She explains: Not all human beings must remain mortal thinkers; we can learn how to stop thinking like mortals. Once we do this, we have it in our power to grasp divine truth about things that the knowledge of what-is can give us. …All human beings must begin by thinking like mortals; yet this need not be our fate. (Curd 2004, 131)

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Hence, philosophers of this ilk gesture toward an immutable transcendent reality. Note well, on this view, human beings are not bound to the typical human limitations. We do not have to be mere mortal thinkers. We can, apparently, exceed these human boundaries and reason like immortals. We, too, can leave “the house of Night” and grasp the immutable Truth. Leonard Harris offers a different picture. Harris argues that philosophy should not be left to effete intellectuals and armchair absolutists engaged in idle speculation or mental jousting. Philosophy should not be left to renunciants looking to escape the physical body, or those seeking to free their souls from that which tethers them to this gross realm of things that come to be and pass away. Philosophy, according to Harris, should begin by lurking here in the world (Harris 2020, 14). Harris postulates a world in the making, a world that still bristles with unprecedented variation, anomalies, plate tectonics, non-Euclidean triangles, ionizing radiation, emergence, neutrinos, and strange objects that fall outside of our conceptual maps. This, according to Harris, is an amoral world—a world without an immanent final end or telos; a world without guaranteed redemption for those who suffer necro-being; a world that does not come readymade with one unambiguous derivation manual that will guide our moral judgments and actions (Harris 2020, 71–72, 275). Harris, like Jose Ortega y Gasset, maintains that any viable philosophy will “contain a properly articulated declaration of the vital perspective responsible for it” (Ortega y Gasset 1961, 92). In other words, a viable philosophy should declare its own provincialism, its own bias and prejudice. Philosophies are, then, understood as value-laden, as opposed to value-neutral. Philosophers should recognize the value-ladenness of our reasoning. Our descriptions, our evidential claims, our depictions of objective material conditions, our moral imperatives will be (to some extent) value-laden, arising from a concrete perspective bearing a set of intervening background assumptions (Harris 2020, 20; Anderson 1998, 24). Human beings are, thus, depicted as corporeal beings, organic beings with proclivities and limitations. Harris is working against Parmenides’s Poem and the dictates of the goddess. Human reasoning is not engaged in the immortal grasping of transcendental truths; human reasoning is employed in this phenomenal realm, this realm of change and mutability—this “cauldron of constant death” (Harris 2020, 19). One striking feature of Harris’s philosophy is the attenuation (or, the diminution) of human reason. Harris’s philosophy born of struggle is

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offering a depiction of human reasoning that keeps our corporeal, cognitive, and epistemic limitations in view. Efficacious reasoning becomes a pragmatic activity. We engage in reasoning with hopes of struggling through the environment, resolving issues, or securing valued experiences. Human beings, on this view, are very much mortal organisms.

Condemning Racism without a Totalizing Account Harris’s philosophia nata ex conatu offers a compelling way to think about racism. In “What, Then, Is Racism?,” Harris describes racism as “a polymorphous agent of death, premature births, shortened lives, starving children, debilitating theft, abusive larceny, degrading insults, and insulting stereotypes forcibly imposed” (Harris 2020, 55). Racism, on this view, names networks of interrelated forces and barriers which conspire to systematically strip a racialized population of its humanity, typically involving degradation, unspeakable terrors, and humiliation (Harris 2020, 55). Racist practices and institutions invariably deny a racialized population ownership of, or access to, material resources, stunting that population’s ability to accumulate and transfer assets across generations. Thus, racism is a polymorphous network of interrelated forces and barriers which allows one group to empower itself by not only stigmatizing and dehumanizing a targeted group, but also stripping the subordinated group of its assets and material resources (Benedict 1999, 35–36, 39; Harris 2020, 227; McBride 2017, 225). The view links racism with material disparity and the denial of basic human dignity, helping to explain how stigmatized populations are stripped of honor and assets. It captures both the terror and brutality, as well as the material and corporeal losses of racism. It keenly emphasizes the actual destruction of life, and thereby futures, of racialized populations. Racism, on this account, remains pointedly polymorphic. Racism manifests in various forms, given differing variables and contexts. The modes in which racism manifest in twenty-first century United States need not resemble the modes in which racism manifests in twentieth century South Africa or sixteenth century Hispaniola. “Whether the madness occurs in Cambodia, Rwanda, Germany, Croatia, Guatemala, or America, when persons are described, ascribed, stereotyped, and symbolized as racially abject, the fact of one’s phenotype—imagined or apparent—is used to warrant degrading representatives of the subjugated population” (Harris 2020, 56).

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In a more recent article titled “Necro-Being,” Harris further develops this conception of racism, paying particular interest to an extreme form of racism: necro-being. Necro-being is “that which makes living a kind of death”—life that is being robbed of corporeal health, life expectancy, and potential progeny (Harris 2020, 70). In necro-being, there is no redemption for those subjected to undue ill-health and death—necro-­being signifies unadorned tragedy. Harris articulates an attenuated (yet nuanced) explanatory account of racism as necro-being. He attempts to depict racism, making use of an actuarial mode of analysis (Harris 2020, 77). Actuaries use mathematics, statistics, and financial theory to measure and manage risk and uncertainty. An actuary pays attention to context-bound empirical data to surmise life expectancy, salient risks, and rates of death. Harris suggests that we apply this actuarial approach to racialized populations and the various forms of racism they endure. An actuarial account tracks premature death and thereby makes undue death and its accompanying conditions depict; it foregrounds death and ill-­ health.… When applied to racism, this helps to create a picture of racism and discloses the axis of power, knowledge, and ethics endemic to its reality. (Harris 2020, 87)

“Racism persists, and its persistence can be depicted, if not explained, by looking at how recursive and compounded benefits allow for sustaining vast differences in life chances” (Harris 2020, 89). This way of explaining racism aims to avoid the impediments readily evident in competing explanatory models. The actuarial account aims to avoid (i) the misguided use of rational-intentional causal explanations, (ii) the misguided view that racism can be reduced to one global logical system, and (iii) the limitations of social kind racial realism (Harris 2020, 77). Harris limits this actuarial approach to the mere depicting or picturing of racism, rather than a totalizing explanation of racism (Harris 2020, 75). Clear depictions are, of necessity, confined to fairly narrow parameters. Depictions do not provide images, details, or conditions for those manifestations of racism that fall outside of the analyzed parameters. Depictions, so understood, allow us to give accounts of various polymorphic manifestations of racism. That is, depictions should facilitate our ability to morally condemn the immiseration and corporeal death of necro-being within particular parameters. In other words, this actuarial approach allows us to

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imagine a way of morally condemning racism without committing to the view that racism has one totalizing logical form. The actuarial account allows us to condemn racism without committing to the view that (each manifestation of) racism reduces to a social contract undergirded by white supremacy (Mills 1998, 126). It allows us to condemn racism without committing to the view that racism reduces to a causal account reliant upon the intentional/volitional judgments and ill-will of rational agents (Garcia 1999, 399). It allows us to imagine condemning racism without the need for a comprehensive explanation of its ultimate causes. It allows us to imagine condemning racism without committing to the categorization of racial kinds as objective communities. Actuarial depictions, thus, allow for heuristics and guiding principles for moral condemnation of racism. And these heuristics and guiding principles will be based upon statistical correlations, patterns, and trends in risk, morbidity, and undue death. Thus, racism remains a polymorphous agent of death, debilitating boundaries, and demeaning stereotypes imposed, but the actuarial account allows us to recognize that the mode, type, and bite of racial necro-being will differ depending on the context. We, as finite reasoning agents tarrying in the realm of things that come to be and pass away, will not likely discern one totalizing account of racism. There are far too many anomalies, too many variables, too many caveats.

Enlightenment Rationality (from the Other Side of the Barricado) Harris’s philosophy prods us to reconsider the standards by which we assess mature (modern) human reasoning. In “Tradition and Modernity,” Harris offers a critique of Enlightenment rationality, that which is often passed off as the modern “scientific” method of reasoning (Harris 2020, 235). Given the proclivities within the hegemonic techno-industrial order of things (of the Anglo-European West), Enlightenment rationality is tacitly held up as the standard of sound thinking—the mark against which we measure mature forms of reasoning. One may think of the Scottish Enlightenment, the French Encyclopedists, or Immanuel Kant’s celebrated essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” In these sources, we find advocacy for a particular form of rationality that arises through discursive exchanges in Western European intellectual history. Developments throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth

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centuries—from Bacon, Descartes, and Galileo to Leibniz, Newton, and Kant—trace a development of methods of reasoning. Chief among them are “enumerative reason (natural ordering), evidentialism (rules of evidence determining objective certainty), and material causal explanations” (Harris 2020, 236). This modern approach to reasoning is described as universal, liberating rational peoples from superstition and the arbitrary claims of authority. Reason allows access to laws of nature, foundational moral principles, and the like, (purportedly) freed from subjectivity and personal sentiment. Reason, in this guise, becomes the mark of cultural coming-of-age, of being enlightened. Harris prods us to critically reassess our views of Enlightenment rationality. He points out that heteropatriarchy, acquisitiveness, colonialism, phenotype-based racial categories, the dispossession of indigenous peoples, and the plunder of the Global South are part and parcel of Enlightenment reasoning. The thinkers of the (European) Enlightenment used bifurcated categories to establish hierarchies: true or false, real or illusion, rational or emotional, man or woman, Christian or heathen, civilized or savage. As such, slavery, colonialism, and imperialism are constitutive features of modernity and Enlightenment thinking—not accidental (Harris 2020, 236). Enlightenment reasoning justified chattel slavery and manufactured and implemented ever more efficient slave transporting and disciplining devices. It produced the barricado, a fence-like contraption for separating the sailors from the chattel; it was a modern technological device that was extremely helpful in putting down slave revolts on transatlantic slave ships during the Middle Passage. Enlightenment reason produced ever more efficient ways of dominating the natural environment, extracting raw materials, and exploiting the labor of subordinated groups and vulnerable populations. It conceived and produced the modern penitentiary, the panopticon, and, arguably, the carceral state. The point here is not to reject all the products of Enlightenment reasoning; rather, the point is to note the ghastly and depraved features inherent to Enlightenment reasoning. (Remember, Enlightenment rationality is often used as a standard by which to judge the maturity of a culture or civilization.) In contrast, Harris suggests that Enlightenment reasoning is one mode of reasoning among many; he challenges the idea that any one hegemonic method of reasoning should be used as the criterion or standard by which to assess the maturity of the reasoning methods of all other disparate populations (Harris 2020, 236). As Harris puts it, the panopticon is a paradigm for modernity—modern society is carceral (237). But the barricado

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is a fitting paradigm for both modernity and slavery. Nota bene, the barricado separated the populations on the slave ship, facilitating the dehumanization and subjection of the beings on the other side of the fence/ boundary (Harris 2020, 237–238). Moving forward, we will likely have to separate ourselves from modern European Enlightenment conceptions of reason and rationality. That is, we will have to separate ourselves from (racist, imperialist, heteropatriarchal) Enlightenment valuations and conceptual categories to remove unnecessary boundaries that separate human beings and confine some of us to one side of the metaphorical ship.

Agonism or Antagonism? Or, Reasoning behind Asylum Walls We can distinguish between agonism and antagonism (Mouffe 2013, 7). “Agonism” denotes the struggle or contestation between political opponents. Typically, norms, deliberative procedures, and institutions are accepted. Agonistic give and take, dialectical contestation, can be seen as a healthy and expected occurrence in a pluralistic heterogenous democracy—a society that tolerates a diversity of views and creeds (cf. Rawls 1999, 319–323). “Antagonism,” in contrast, denotes the struggle or contestation between political enemies; norms, institutions, or political procedures are not agreed upon. Antagonistic contestation typically involves blatant attempts to vanquish one’s enemy. For instance, Fanon writes: “The work of the colonist is to make even dreams of liberty impossible for the colonized. The work of the colonized is to imagine every possible method for annihilating the colonist” (Fanon 2004, 50). Moreover, antagonism often comes with intentions to abolish, annihilate, or destroy brutal or egregious hegemonic orders, institutions, or norms (e.g., chattel slavery, colonial subjection, Indigenous/native erasure, feudalism, jus primae noctis, sex trafficking, etc.). Much of the consternation and handwringing about insurrectionist ethics revolves around this divide: agonism or antagonism? Are we presently engaged in an agonistic struggle or an antagonistic struggle? Are you my political opponent or my mortal enemy? Should we be looking for gradual revision or sweeping abolition? Or, when should we engage in insurrection? This again raises questions about human discernment and our ability to proffer apt or compelling judgments from our value-laden perspectives. Unfortunately, definitive answers to these questions are not easily discerned. There is no simple algorithm,

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no decision procedure that easily deduces the answer for every case (Harris 2020, 20–21, 33, 156, 197). In “Autonomy Under Duress,” Harris argues that our moral concepts and our reasoning procedures are always value-laden, ensnared in tacit, context-bound webs of meaning and intervening background assumptions. In other words, our moral concepts and reasoning procedures are always enwebbed in what Foucault terms an “episteme.” An episteme comprises the tacit intervening background assumptions of a discourse in a given epoch—“the order of things” (Foucault 2010, 191). Harris argues that procedures for reasoning from principles or concepts to practice are incomplete in ways that tend to ignore the importance of background assumptions. Hence, there are limits for what we can reasonably expect from philosophical concepts and reasoning procedures. In history we find that the intervening background assumptions of the current epoch in the Anglo-European West has tacitly encoded particular stigmatized groups to be singled out and valued differently. Based upon such assumptions, ethical reasoning from principle to action could easily authorize a wellordered democratic society that features a population of innately, permanently subordinated persons (Anderson 2015, 31–32; Harris 2020, 104; McBride 2021, 45). (The United States of America established itself as a sovereign democratic republic in 1776, espousing inalienable rights and that all men were created equal. And, without consternation, there were enslaved Afrodescended populations de jure until at least 1863.) In “Can a Pragmatist Recite A Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note? Or Insurrectionist Challenges to Pragmatism—Walker, Child, and Locke,” Harris revisits this theme of intervening background assumptions and how they affect human perception and valuation. Again, we are always ensnared in some background assumptions, some valuations, but we should try to escape the intervening background assumptions that condition undue misery and necro-being (Harris 2020, 204). Basic psychology indicates that human beings never simply observe and analyze experience (using pure reason alone). Rather, observations always occur with background assumptions bearing a value-laden angle of vision (Harris 2020, 206). In this article, Harris evokes a metaphor. Harris invites us to “Imagine that we are all in an Asylum” (Harris 2020, 206).2 We, the patients, are 2  Lunatic (or insane) asylums, now defunct, were institutions for the shelter, treatment, or confinement of individuals bearing mental illness, exhibiting behavioral disorders, or posing a direct threat to themselves or others.

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treated poorly; our conditions are exasperated by the conditions within the Asylum. The managers abuse us, and yet these managers also serve as our counselors. We protest. The managers beat patients randomly to maintain order and civility. The ritual abuse and protest is normalized. The neuroscientists and bioethicists in the front office provide the scientific justification for the dispensing of opiates. We take joy in watching people get beaten and/or humiliated on the television. Our requests for more potatoes are denied; we are given rice, the price of dinner is increased, and the walls are decorated with pictures of potatoes (Harris 2020, 206–207). Monthly, we have “family night,” where patients and managers are kind to one another. The next morning things return to normal. Patients are brutalized, controlled, and disciplined. No one is cured; additional wings of the Asylum are under development. Madness, yes? Harris, through metaphorical imagery, is suggesting that our hegemonic culture and its attending approaches to philosophy are mad/insane. In other words, the intervening background assumptions (or the episteme) operate as an asylum, trapping us in a hegemonic order of things that facilitates degradation, misery, and necro-being (Harris 2020, 206). Harris does not want to reform the Asylum; he is not trying to procure potatoes au gratin, more edifying television shows, or fewer beatings within the Asylum. Harris suggest that we leave the Asylum. Insurrectionist philosophy, on this account, is a leaving, a breaking with established authority, a disavowing of norms. Transvaluation. Leaving the Asylum would be like leaving the valorized methods and institutions that maintain prevalent asymmetries in the assigning of dignity, while (i) recognizing trauma and duress, cognitive dissonance, and loss of faith, and (ii) creating alternative categories, values, and images of possible futures (Harris 2020, 207). As such, insurrectionist philosophy is the negation of a world, an attempt to create a new world (Harris 2020, 202–203). Insurrectionist philosophy forefronts the process of searching and making difficult decisions under conditions of trauma, insecurity, and fear, especially for the subjugated (203). Ideally, it provides resources to imagine a new social world radically different from this one (204). Insurrectionist philosophy should provide resources that make it possible to imagine and articulate a new way forward; it should proffer the animus/spirit needed to escape conceptual asylums, to negate the conventional categories and valuations, and redraw our conceptual maps in untested ways (McBride 2021, 121).

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By such means, Harris compels us to build critical traditions and challenge the episteme, to take part in the deconstruction and revaluation of the intervening background assumptions; but any position we take will be value-laden, resting on some alternative episteme. But the point is: we can leave the present Asylum. It is possible.

And Yet, We Create; Or, Moral Reasoning without an Algorithm Harris offers an account of human reasoning that includes phenomena that exceed our conceptual maps. Everyday human reasoning, on this view, relies heavily upon heuristics. Heuristics are cognitive tools, rules of thumb, stereotypes that help us maneuver through the world (Harris 2020, 194). Heuristics are helpful, but prone to bad inferences, fallacies, misjudgment. In any case, we deploy heuristics all the time. For instance, when you meet someone new, we typically utilize our heuristics to group and identify this person. Do you I go in for a handshake, a hug, air kisses on both cheeks? Do I serve pork, or meat at all? Representative heuristics help us to categorize and react to people, objects, and situations. But our stereotypes and heuristics can be misleading. Some people who are from that place do not go in for air kisses. Some people of that ethnic or religious lineage do consume pork. Not all hippies are vegetarians. There are outliers, liminal cases, and multiplicitous individuals that fall outside of our best conceptual maps. Not all human beings fit neatly into a phenotype-­ based race; not all manifestations of racism fit neatly into one all-­ encompassing account. Again, the point is that the world is messy and human reasoning is limited. We do the best we can with our human capacities, including our conceptual maps, heuristics, and stereotypes. To exclude this from our philosophical discussion of epistemology, our theory of knowing, is to ignore a prominent and inescapable feature of human reasoning. To claim that human reasoning is limited is not to claim that we cannot engage in knowledge creation. The claim is more so directed at recognizing the fallibility and corrigibility of human reasoning. To be fallible is to recognize that our best notions may be mistaken and subject to revision. To be corrigible is to recognize that there is at least the potential for our knowledge claims to get better and better—and by “better” I mean more accurate in description, more explanatory, more corroborated, more

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reliable, or more fruitful in lived experience. The picture of efficacious reasoning offered by Harris remains open to a fallibilist approach to actuarial statistics, evidence-based claims, and experimental inquiry, but it resists the move to positivism, scientism, and absolutism. Again, there is an attempt to keep human reasoning within this motley world still in the making. Harris, following Alain Locke, asserts that no philosophy can ignore the question of value ultimates and imperatives. Locke writes, “we must take care not to exile our imperatives, for after all, we live by them” (Locke 1989, 34). The suggestion, here, is that we, as organic beings feeling and reasoning our way through the phenomenal world, can still create social norms and imperatives without eliciting transcendental claims about an antecedently immutable Reality. Human values can be projected and codified. Intersubjectively, we can objectify our moral attitudes, and norms can be created. For example, if sufficiently determined standards are codified, we can judge sheepdog trials and diving competitions without making second-order metaphysical claims about the essential qualities of the Australian Cattle Dog or the Platonic form of the reverse 4½ somersault in the pike position (Mackie 1990, 26–27).3 That is, we can judge the perceived qualities of the Australian Cattle Dog and the intricacies of various dives based on socially constructed standards of valuation. By analogy, it is possible to establish moral imperatives and value ultimates without making second-order metaphysical claims—without making reference to some noumenal realm apart from human valuation. Furthermore, the establishment of such norms and imperatives may be integral to socially establishing moral values (Carter 2010, 217–218; Mackie 1990, 42–43). As Alain Locke points out: “Norms control our behavior as well as guide our reasoning” (Locke 1989, 34). By such means we can establish normative principles and value ultimates without resorting to arbitrary dogmatic claims or absolutism. Value ultimates can function as heuristics (or stereotypes) of feeling-attitudes and dispositional imperatives of action-choices, which are only secondarily reinforced by

3  J.L. Mackie makes a distinction between first-order ethical theory and second-order ethical theory. First-order ethical theory deals with moral actions and the competing moral principles that help us to discern the appropriate action (Mackie 1990, 16). Second-order ethical theory deals with highly abstracted questions of ontology, that which is and is not included in the fabric of the universe, the nature of moral judgment, the nature of normativity, etc.

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reason and judgment (Locke 1989, 36).4 Values and norms, then, can arise from emotional preferences and affinities, from corporeal modes of human valuing (Locke 1989, 36, 38). Through objective comparison of basic human values we can discern particular basic equivalences or “functional constants” which can replace our outmoded imperatives and arbitrary “universals” (Locke 1989, 55). These common-denominator values are “pragmatically confirmed by common human experience” (56). Harris’s approach to ethics, then, allows for the establishment or creation of values and norms. But Harris is clear that these norms and values would arise within a context and a group of valuers. They would remain historically contingent and subject to future transvaluation. The view leaves space for cultural incommensurability and value discrepancies. In light of extant incommensurability and cultural conflict, Harris suggests starting with a morality of cultural reciprocity (Harris 2020, 243). Such a view does not presuppose one singular form of reasoning as the standard of maturity (or enlightenment). Conceding reciprocity across cultural difference fosters the possibility of cross-cultural communication. It requires all persons, independent of group membership, should be considered members of the moral community and thus due dignity (244). Harris writes: A morality of reciprocity drops the expectation that honor and dignity will be awarded from the gaze of those on the other side of the barricado. Honor and dignity can be achieved from within the world of those that accord one another full personhood, that is, from everyone sharing the same side of the ship (244).

Again, if the barricado is an apt paradigm for modernity, and the barricado separates human beings from exploitable (human) commodities, we may very well need to leave modernity and its accompanying conception of reasoning, if we expect honor and dignity to be afforded to everyone on the metaphorical ship. We mortals can engage in efficacious reasoning and the ongoing creation and re-creation of our conceptual maps, our norms and values, our traditions. But this will entail a fashioning, a creation on our part. Harris writes: 4  Heuristics are cognitive shortcuts, rules of thumb, stereotypes that are used when one must make a decision but lacks either ample time or the accurate information necessary to make the decision.

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Reasons for why we should live one way or another or act one way or another are not ‘reasons’ etched in the wily world of transcendental codes hiding in plain view or with the help of a derivation manual taking our minds step by step from grand principles or tacit contracts to loving cats rather than dogs. (Harris 2020, 21)

We can fashion new conceptions of “human being,” we can imagine and work to institute new reciprocal relations between cultures, we can work to shape a future with less subjection, less necro-being. But it will take critical analyses and imagination, perhaps a view from outside the Asylum walls.5

References Anderson, Elizabeth. 1998. Pragmatism, Science, and Moral Inquiry. In In Face of the Facts, ed. R. Wightman Fox and R. Westbrook, 10–39. Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. ———. 2015. Moral Bias and Corrective Practices: A Pragmatist Perspective. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 89: 21–47. Benedict, Ruth. 1999. Racism: The ism of the Modern World. In Racism, ed. Leonard Harris, 31–49. Amherst: Humanity Books. Carter, Jacoby Adeshei. 2010. New Moral Imperatives for World Order. In Philosophic Values and World Citizenship, ed. Jacoby Adeshei Carter and Leonard Harris, 217–233. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Curd, Patricia. 2004. Thought and Body in Parmenides. In Parmenides, Venerable and Awesome: Proceedings of the International Symposium. Edited by Néstor-­ Luis Cordero. Las Vegas, NV: Parmenides Publishing. Fanon, Frantz. 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. London: Penguin Classics. Foucault, Michel. 2010. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Vintage Books. Garcia, Jorge L.A. 1999. The Heart of Racism. In Racism, ed. Leonard Harris, 398–434. Amherst: Humanity Books. Harris, Leonard. 2020. A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader. Edited by Lee A. McBride III. New York: Bloomsbury.

5  Katherine McKittrick writes: “Sylvia Wynter taught me that radical theory-making takes place outside existing systems of knowledge and that this place, outside (demonic grounds), is inhabited by those who are brilliantly and intimately aware of existing systems of knowledge (as self-replicating) and that this awareness provides theoretical insights and projections of humanity that imagine a totally new way of being” (McKittrick 2021, 23–24).

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Locke, Alain. 1989. The Philosophy of Alain Locke. Edited by Leonard Harris. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Mackie, J.L. 1990. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. New York: Penguin Books. McBride, Lee A., III. Ed. 2013. Symposium on Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (1, Winter): 27–111. McBride, Lee A., III. 2017. Insurrectionist Ethics and Racism. In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, ed. Naomi Zack, 225–34. New York: Oxford University Press. McBride, Lee A., III. 2021. Ethics and Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed. London: Bloomsbury. McKittrick, Katherine. 2021. Dear Science and Other Stories. Durham: Duke University Press. Mills, Charles W. 1998. Blackness Visible. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mouffe, Chantal. 2013. Agonistics. Brooklyn: Verso. Ortega y Gasset, José. 1961. The Modern Theme. Translated by James Cleugh. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Parmenides. 2011. Parmenides of Elea. In A Presocratics Reader, 2nd ed. Edited by Patricia Curd and Translated by Richard McKirahan and Patricia Curd, 55–65. Indianapolis: Hackett. Rawls, John. 1999. Theory of Justice, Revised Ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

PART V

Insurrectionist Ethics: Past, Present, and Future

CHAPTER 12

Death by a Thousand Cuts: Insurrectionist Ethics in a Present less Oppressive than the Past Jacoby Adeshei Carter

Introduction Social justice is an ideal. It is an ideal assertion contrary to fact that envisions a world guided by conceptions of justice that may or may not be realized, populated by persons of sufficient character and the requisite dispositions to act on conceptions of justice that serve to realize desirable living conditions of equity and fairness. But it is not for that reason any less a matter of existential importance. Lives are benefitted by the denial of social justice, as well as by its attainment. The crucial question for either alternative is not whether benefits accrue, but to whom and for what reasons. The assertion that social justice is an ideal implies that the de facto state of affairs, the world in which people actually live is not one uniformly

J. A. Carter (*) Department of Philosophy, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6_12

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characterized by justice. Whether in practice, policy or theoretical construction, social justice, and correlative phenomena such as liberty, equality, diversity etc. are not ubiquitous, and rarely intended to apply universally. People are not by nature unbiased, even if no particular bias is universal. To be sure, theories of justice, principles of justice, or putative concepts of justice may be couched in universal language, but they are almost always, explicitly or implicitly, coupled with qualifications, demarcations, conditions and restraints that preclude universal scope and application whether as a practical or theoretical matter. This chapter is intended to provide a new definition of insurrectionist ethics that cuts in many ways against the grain of positions already engraved in the literature. That is done by considering the various elements of a novel definition of insurrectionist ethics. One that treats fundamental, structural, and systemic oppression as the conditions that give warrant to an insurrectionist response. A notion of necro-depictions is articulated as an essential conceptual tool to understanding the duty to insurrect or resist oppression. It is here argued that insurrectionists ethics is an anti-­ ethical position that operates from an understanding of the severe ethical constraints under which oppressed people are forced to deliberate about the appropriate ends to seek through voluntary action. Insurrectionist ethics requires the transvaluation of existing values, and radical reformulation of conceptions of personhood, humanity, and liberation, among others, to render comprehensible its radical aims of social transformation, and abolition of present conditions of oppression. …prescribes individual or coordinated actions on behalf of the oppressed… Insurrectionist actions can be done by an individual person in a single instance, or may be a series of actions performed over time by a single individual. They may also be actions performed by two or more individuals in a given instance, or a series of actions by two or more people performed over a period of time. Finally, insurrectionist actions can oscillate between individual actions and collective actions performed over time. Those actions performed individually or collectively in a single instance are insurrectionist acts or single acts of insurrection. A series of actions performed individually or collectively are insurrections or insurrectionist campaigns.

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Insurrectionist ethics is a framework for justifying actions by and on behalf of the oppressed. It aims to rationalize a range of oppositional responses to injustice. This much insurrectionist ethics has in common with all other programs of social justice. The aim of insurrection is not straightforwardly to provide a specific set of prescribed actions or categories of actions that advance social justice (Harris 1999, 230–233). Rather, insurrectionist ethics aims to provide warrant to a wide range of actions to combat the oppression faced by particular populations. Advocacy for specific oppressed populations is a central feature of insurrectionist ethics. John Brown was not a member of the racialized population for which he advocated, neither where Henry David Thoreau or Lydia Child. Membership in the population for which one advocates is not required. Leonard Harris has argued that insurrectionists regard the identity groups for whom they act as anabsolute. He explicitly attributes such a view to David Walker and seems to regard it as a characteristic feature of insurrectionist ethics (Harris 1999, 2002, 2013, 2018, 2020a). Social aggregates are anabsolute. That is, social groups can appear solid and well defined, like classes, races or ethnic groups, but they are not well defined in reality. They are immanently objective. They can be conceived as ontological for purposes of explanation, but they are not objectively stable kinds; they are not material objects. Abstractions are misleading, including conceptions of the self as a kind of coherent abstract being (Harris 2020b, 29).

Almost all insurrectionist activity is limited in scope. To be sure, one way to limit the scope is to identify a specific oppressed group, but there are other ways of circumscribing insurrectionist activity. Such groups may not be bounded by a shared identity. The specific groups for whom insurrectionist ethicists advocate may be demarcated by racial, ethnic, religious, class, gender etc. identities. That is, social identities that themselves result from or enable various forms of oppression may establish the group for which one acts. But there are other ways to limit the scope of insurrectionist activity. One may focus on particular systems or conditions of oppression. Think for example about prison abolition. If there is a  specifiable social group that is advocated for in this context it is one that will cut across many of the putative social categories used by social justice advocates. Aside from the specific form of injustice people victimized by this form of oppression face there may be little else, if anything, that binds them all into a coherent social grouping.

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Some oppressive social categories exist solely for the purpose of forming oppressed groups. Races are a good example here. Others are oppressed for membership in the group, but the group itself does not exist principally for purposes of oppression. Religious communities or gender identity groups are illustrative here. Any systematically oppressed group must be constructed as such. Even if the social identity with which they began was not one that made them the object of oppression, to face systematic oppression the group must be reconstructed, degraded, demeaned or vilified in ways that make its members targets of oppression. Insurrectionist ethicist need not think or act in terms of identities ascribed to them through oppressive social structures. Parity of an ascribed social identity with the assumed social identity of a dominate groups is not a necessary aim of insurrection. In every case insurrectionists treat these categories as meaningful, and act as though there is some objective stability to them. Elimination of oppressive social categories is the aim of some insurrectionist philosophies. Their campaigns if successful would see the end of the social identities ascribed to people for whom they advocate. Others seek an outcome that would retain the social identity in question, but eradicate the oppressive conditions faced by members of the group. …in direct opposition to oppressive institutions, structures, systems or conditions of control… Individual acts of insurrection and insurrectionist campaigns react to fundamental, structural or systemic forms of oppression. By fundamental is meant oppression that is basic within a given society across multiple domains be they economic, religious, political, social etc. Oppression that strikes at the most vital elements of life, the conditions that enable good health and delay premature death, the conditions that afford basic respect and dignity and the possibility of honor and esteem, the ability to accumulate and transfer wealth across generations, to form and secure meaningful familial bonds, is fundamental. It victimizes at the very foundations of physical, material and social well-being. Structural oppression is that conditioned by the political structure, laws, policies or institutions of a state, which simultaneously helps to shape the political, civil, cultural and economic operation of a state. Straightforward examples in the United States include slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Derecka Purnell notes in her recent book, Becoming Abolitionists, that “[p]olice manage inequality by keeping the disposed from the owners, the Black from the white, the

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homeless from the housed, the beggars from the employed” (Purnell 2021, 4–5). She demonstrates that present-day abolitionists movements are a species of insurrectionists ethics when she adds “[r]eforms only make police polite managers of inequality. Abolition makes police and inequality obsolete” (ibid., 5). Structural oppression is part of the basic structure of society in that it determines in part the categories of persons to be exploited, various mechanisms of extraction, and the beneficiaries of exploitive extraction. Oppression is systemic when it constitutes a widespread mechanism of unjust social control and extraction. Each of these forms of oppression can operate separately or in concrete with other forms. They may target specific social groups, or even be constitutive of oppressed groups. Insurrectionist ethics is a reaction against forms of oppression that constitute the very basis of societies in which they function. The basis may be formal or informal, codified into law and social practice, or historically entrenched. South African Apartheid, Jim Crow, India’s caste system, are examples of fundamental, structural and systemic forms of oppression that are not merely accidental within a given society, but historically, culturally, religiously or legally embedded in the formation and operation of society. Contemporarily, some abolitionist scholars have noted that, Policing is among the vestiges of slavery, colonialism, and genocide, tailored in America to suppress slave revolts, catch runaways, and repress labor organizing. After slavery, police imprisoned Black people, immigrants, and poor white people under a convict-leasing system for plantation and business owners. During the Jim Crow era, cops enforced segregation and joined lynch mobs that grew strange fruit from southern trees. During the civil rights movement police beat the hell out of Black preachers, activists, and students who marched for equality wearing their Sunday best. Cops were the foot soldiers for Richard Nixon’s War on Drugs and Joe Biden’s 1994 crime bill. Police departments pepper-sprayed Occupy Wall Street protesters without provocation and indiscriminately tear-gassed Black Lives Matter activists for years…Most Black people…trust the police…to be exactly what they have always been: violent” (Purnell 2021, 5–6).

Insurrectionist ethics is not limited to white supremacist patriarchal societies, neither is racism the only form of oppression to which it is opposed, though both are common forms of oppression to which it is a response. The insurrectionist’s attitude is not merely one of defiance, but righteous indignation. The insurrectionist does not grant that a patently

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unjust social order places any justifiable moral demand on the oppressed for compliance with the strictures of that system. Clearly, such an order can compel comportment in accordance with its dictates. People are held in bondage, children are separated from their parents and confined in cages, forced ballots are cast for de facto dictators, political dissension is held at bay through imprisonment, torture, and involuntary confinement. But temporary or prudential compliance in deed under threat of state power or violence need not be read as tacit consent to state moral authority. It may only be a practical concession. The defiant opposition to state authority that is characteristic of insurrectionist ethics may not always be on display. Insurrectionists acts are not warranted in every instance, and it would be impractical to prohibit one to refrain from, or forego, acts of insurrection in specific circumstances. …that generates a duty to insurrect or resist oppression… Classically, insurrectionists begin with the conditions of oppression because they give warrant to the duty to insurrect. The case is perhaps best made by David Walker. “Walker believed that slaves had a natural intrinsic disposition to resist oppression, demonstrated or not” (Harris 2013, 96) writes Harris. “That disposition was a feature of human nature” he surmises then that “[t]his is Walker’s naturalism: the disposition to resist oppression and correlative duty are facts of existential being” (ibid., 97). Reading Walker in this naturalist vein Harris notes first, that, Slaves were so cruelly debased as to become wretched (possessing contra-­ self-­interested behavior), slovenly (occasioned by the drudgery of forced labor), voluntarily subordinate (lacking self-respect, displaying deferential behavior, consciously acting against self-interest, aiding in the harm of others), servile (cravenly submissive), abject (hopeless, low expectations, content in a lowly status), and willfully ignorant (avoiding knowledge for fear of punishment) (ibid., 96).

“Escapes and insurrection required tremendous courage and social sacrifice—a form of courage and sacrifice that was unreasonable for Walker to expect of anyone” (ibid., 96). Both the duty to resist and normative framework of insurrectionist ethics are anti-ethical, that is, they arise and function within a normative context that places an unreasonable and unfulfillable normative demand on the oppressed (Curry 2017, 181–187).

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“The concepts that Walker used to describe slavery” Harris continues, “convey what he saw as racial slavery’s form of oppression, and it is that form that gives warrant to a duty to insurrect” (Harris 2013, 96). Insurrectionist ethics’ duty to insurrect requires the development of concepts sufficient to make understandable and estimable, voluntary action, contrary to putative moral dictates, that is far more likely to produce negative and undesired material consequences than positive, beneficial, or desirable outcomes. For Walker it was the severity, the truly inhumane treatment that slavery inflicted on the enslaved that gave warrant to a duty to insurrect. Walker simply could not conceive of the possibility of remaining a full person under those conditions (Walker 2000). The physical, psychological, and material consequences of slavery would exact a degrading toll on one’s sense of self, autonomy, self-respect, and self-interest. Harris writes, Walker gave no account of the link between natural dispositions and duties. He did not provide a criteria, criterion, or principle from which to derive a duty to insurrect, nor did he use Scripture to warrant his view. However, if his descriptions of racial slavery are apt, a defensible ethical theory would require insurrection to be a duty….His descriptions are so compelling that I do not need a separate “theory” or neat algorithms of duty justification. We have a natural desire for filial and social bonds, a natural desire to be self-­ regarding and other-regarding. These are given in what it is to be a person. We do not need a theory to tell us that we have a duty to care for ourselves (ibid., 97 emphasis mine).

Necro-depiction is the visual, sonic and written representation of that which makes living a kind of death, the visceral presentation of absolute negation, a horrible inescapable confrontation with the reality that produces necro-being and necro-tragedy, a life devoid of health and due regard, the uncomfortable witnessing of the permanent impossibility of receiving honor or justice (Harris 2020b). Necro-depictions are not simply visual representations of death and suffering. None of Walker’s necro-­ depictions are images. Readers are all likely familiar with the sorts of contemporary representations that constitute necro-depictions, to name but a few there are those of Sandra Bland, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, Alton Sterling, George Floyd, and Philando Castille. Depictions of their relegation to the status of necro-beings have been witnessed by millions. The tragic consequences of their

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victimization—children raised without fathers, parents forced to bury their children in the most unnatural of circumstances. Recognizing the visceral power of displaying the corporeal consequences of oppression, Emmet Till’s mother, Mammie Till, chose to have an open casket at her son’s funeral. She “wanted the world to see what they did to [her] baby.” Descriptions of lynching are apt illustrations of necro-depiction. Last night we retired between 10 and 11 o’clock. About 1 o’clock I awoke and found that the building was on fire and that the fire was making rapid progress. Then I aroused my husband. He jumped up and by the time several shots were fired into the building. I took my baby [Julia] into my arms, called the other children and followed Baker, who was making for the door. He reached the door, stuck his head out and was instantly shot several times in the body and through the head. He groaned, reeled and fell back in the building, near the door. Almost at the same time I myself was shot in the left arm, on which my baby was resting, and not being able to support the child any longer, I dropped it. I noticed, however that it had already been killed. After remaining there a few minutes…the other children and myself fled to the house of my neighbor for protection. We got there alive, but three of my [remaining] five children and myself are wounded (Chestnut 2008, 23).

Mary Church Terrell recounts in her article, “Lynching from a Negro’s Point of View,” the following description of a lynching as reported in Evening Post, a democratic daily of Vicksburg, Mississippi: When the two negroes were captured, they were tied to trees, and while the funeral pyres were being prepared they were forced to suffer the most fiendish tortures. The blacks were forced to hold out their hands while one finger at a time was chopped off. The fingers were distributed as souvenirs. The ears of the murderers were cut off. Holbert was beaten severely, his skull was fractured, and one of his eyes, knocked out with a stick, hung by a shred from the socket. Neither the man nor the woman begged for mercy, nor made a groan or plea. When the executioner came forward to lop off fingers, Holbert extended his hand without being asked. The most excruciating form of punishment consisted in the use of a large corkscrew in the hands of some of the mob. This instrument was bored into the flesh of the man and the woman, in the arms, legs and body, and then pulled out, the spirals tearing out big pieces of raw, quivering flesh every time it was withdrawn. Even this devilish torture did not make the poor brutes cry out. When finally they were thrown on the fire and allowed to be burned to death, this came as a relief to the maimed and suffering victims (Terrell 1904, 854).

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Similar descriptions are provided by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Eight negroes lynched in one week. Since last issue of the Free Speech one was lynched at Little Rock, Ark., where the citizens broke into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., and one in New Orleans, all on the same charge, the new alarm of assaulting white women and three near Clarksville, Ga., for killing a white man. The same program of hanging then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter. Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction. A conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. Commenting on this, The Daily Commercial of Wednesday following said: Those negroes who are attempting to make lynching of individuals of their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind, are playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand that there is no mercy for the negro rapist, and little patience with his defenders. A negro organ printed in this city in a recent issue published the following atrocious paragraph: “Nobody in this section believes the old threadbare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction. A conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.” The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. There are some things the Southern white man will not tolerate, and the obscene intimidation of the foregoing has brought the writer to the very utter-most limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough (Wells-Barnett 2001, 195).

Arguably, necro-depictions motivate actions (Carter 2013, 54–73). Implicit in Mamie Till’s decision is a recognition that visual presentation of the effects of oppression on oppressed Black bodies is unavoidable in the sense that they demand a reaction of some kind. Necro-depictions prompt decisive action in response to what is perceived. The kinds of actions they motivate and the level of personal investment they countenance is however indeterminate. Necro-depictions confront the receiver with an existential presentation that demands a response that manifests facts about the recipient. Callousness, indignation, pity, privilege, compassion, a sense of justice, complicity, righteous indignation, are all

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discursively revealed through encounters with necro-depictions. As illustrated in the quotation from Wells-Barnett, necro-depictions do more than covey the nature and intensity of oppressed suffering, they can candidly reveal the character, phobias, beliefs, and dispositions of oppressors: The white (he) experiences no punishment for his longing for Black servitude and his need to exploit and divest the Black worker here and there of (his) wealth. The white (she) has no uneasiness about her raping of, destruction of generations of Black selves—mothers, children, and men—and today usurps the historical imagery of “the Nigger” to politically vacate Blackness and demonize Niggers as beyond political consideration. She rewrites history, pens morality, and embodies the post-racial Civil Rights subject. As such, racism, the milieu of the white racist, is not the exposed pathological existence of the white race. Rather, it is valorized in white individuality, the individuality that conceptualizes white racism as a normative aspiration of what the world should look like and, even more damning, an aspiration that can be supported and propagated in the world (Curry 2017, 183).

It will likely be objected that necro-depictions are a flawed starting place for a duty to insurrect. Visceral reactions in themselves cannot ground moral action. Absent the intervention of reason, emotions or psychological dispositions can lead to actions that go far astray of those that would be deemed permissible by acceptable moral standards. Notice though that it has not been claimed that necro-depictions motivate moral action. There are important distinctions to draw between a depiction and what is depicted. Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, contains several representations of the horrors of slavery (Walker 2000). Mary Church Terrell’s and Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s descriptions convey the brutality of lynching and dispel many of the culturally imbedded myths racialized white people have about the phenomenon. Each develops concepts for understanding not only the material, but the spiritual, and psychological effects of these forms of oppressive violence as well as the existential damage that is done to persons as such. But a depiction of slavery is not enslavement, any more than a description of lynching is akin to being lynched. Still further distinctions can be drawn between one’s visceral and immediate reaction to a necro-depiction or what it depicts, and one’s considered responses to either. Necro-depictions can be gut-wrenching, and in being so may move one to act, but what the insurrectionist acts against is not the depiction, but what is depicted. The depiction is perhaps best understood as connected to the motivation to

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act, what is depicted is likely better understood in relation to the conditions to, and within which, one acts. Necro-depictions provide a conceptual and perceptual bridge between the existential fact of forms and instances of oppression, and one’s inclination to act. Going further Harris writes, Walker’s depiction of the slave as wretched, yet responsible, vied against the prevailing abolitionist ethos of presenting slaves as due pity and invested with ascetic, benevolent, placid virtuous natures. He was criticized because his tone was menacing, incendiary and provocative and his text claimed that slaves, no matter how abject and wretched they were portrayed in Walker’s APPEAL, were responsible bearers of self-regarding dispositions (Harris 2013, 98).

Necro-depictions do not merely represent states of immiseration and victimization, they may directly or indirectly present alternative and liberatory views of oppressed persons, or picture possible futures, estimable traits, frame felicitous criticisms, or promote prescient provocations. Purnell notes that “Black prison industrial complex abolitionists have developed alternatives to 911, created support systems for victims of domestic violence, prevented the construction of new jails, called for the reduction of police budgets, and shielded undocumented immigrants from deportation” (Purnell 2021, 6). A constant refrain by critics of insurrectionist ethics asks what if anything insurrectionists intend to replace existing oppressive structures. Some insurrectionist ethicists reject this question, believing that the onus is not on the victims of oppression to satisfy the beneficiaries of an unjust status quo that their class, gender, or racial privilege will be protected in the future. But despite that, some insurrectionists and contemporary abolitionists have “imagined and built responses to harm rooted in community and accountability.” “Abolition,” and insurrection, “is a bigger idea than firing cops and closing prisons; it includes eliminating the reasons people think they need cops and prisons in the first place” (Purnell 2021, 6). …informed by a rejection of customary morality that gives warrant to seemingly impossible forms of oppositional being that make seemingly absurd valuations understandable…

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Clear differences between insurrectionist ethics and other forms of social justice advocacy are not always drawn in the literature, and there is of course disagreement among philosophers who write about insurrectionist ethics on what precisely characterizes the normative framework of insurrectionist ethics. Lee McBride states that “[p]ractitioners of insurrectionist ethics exhibit a willingness to defy norms and convention when those norms sanction or perpetuate injustice or oppression” (McBride 2013, 2021, 54). McBride’s framing presupposes the moral neutrality of norms and conventions that undergird oppressive political orders. He recognizes that such norms and conventions can sometimes (perhaps even often) “sanction or perpetuate injustice or oppression” and it is when they do—supposing then that there are times when they do not—that a willingness to defy them is permissible or meritorious (McBride 2021, 54). Alternative approaches to insurrectionist ethics have a different starting point, contending instead that “[i]t is the process of, the appeal to, “getting whites to recognize” racist oppression that allows Black death to continue unabated, since it is the exact moment that whites are forced to engage racist problems in America…that animates aversion of the justice system” (Curry 2017, 183). Rather than holding out hope of the success of moral suasion or ameliorative programs of social justice, “the police state, the white citizenry, and the practice of American democracy itself (where the death of Black people/criminals/deviants/thugs remains normal and justified by whites” is understood to be the normative framework with which one begins (Curry 2017, 185). Some philosophers characterize insurrectionist ethics as an anti-ethical position (See Urquidez Chap. 8, this volume), the present author included. Curry observes that, Traditionally we have taken ethics to be, as Henry Sidgwick claims, “any rational procedure by which we determine what individual human beings ‘ought’—or what is right for them—to seek to realize by voluntary action.” This rational procedure is, however, at odds with the empirical reality with which the ethical deliberation must concern itself. To argue, as is often done, that the government, its citizens, or white people should act justly assumes that the possibility of how they could act defines their moral disposition. If a white person could possibly be not racist, it does not mean that the possibility of not being racist can be taken to mean that white people are not racist. In ethical deliberations dealing with the problem of racism, it is common practice to attribute to historically racist institutions and individuals universal moral qualities that have yet to be demonstrated. This abstrac-

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tion from reality is what frames our ethical norms and allows us to maintain, despite history and evidence, that racist entities will act justly given the choice. Under such complexities, the only ethical deliberation concerning racism must be anti-ethical, or a judgment refusing to write morality onto immoral entities (Curry 2017, 183).

McBride concedes the moral authority and agency of the perpetrators of injustice—such as racialized white people in a white supremacist society— even those who actively and intentionally engage in oppression when he writes that insurrectionists “are willing to challenge civic and moral authority when those authorities conspire to denigrate a population, allowing a dominant group to strip a subordinate group of its dignity, its property, or its efficacious agency” (McBride 2021, 54). “Such appeals” Curry argues, “lend potentiality-hope-faith to the already present/demonstrated ignorance-racism-interest of the white individual, who in large part expresses the historical tone/epistemology of his or her racial group’s interest” (Curry 2017, 184) The problem is that “[w]hen morality is defined not by the empirical acts that demonstrate immorality, but by the racial character of those in question, our ethics become nothing more than the apologetics of our tyrannical epoch” (Curry 2017, 184). Contrary to McBride, it is here argued that a key feature of insurrectionist ethics is a denial that witting or unwitting participants in fundamental, structural, or systemic oppression, for example, beneficiaries or proponents of patriarchal white supremacy, have any moral authority or agency to which the oppressed should appeal. The oppression of groups and individuals deemed non-white for the advantage of those deemed white is not pictured by insurrectionist philosophies as an aberrant, accidental, inadvertent, incidental, or unintended consequence of an otherwise morally benign, neutral, let alone, benevolent or praiseworthy, social order. White supremacy causes deficient moral sentiments among white people toward non-white peoples. Whites are conditioned either not to recognize non-white suffering or to view it as less severe than white suffering. This may be due to them seeing non-white suffering as different in kind from their own suffering. It is non-human or subhuman suffering. The being in question is less able to suffer the kinds of harms that a white person can suffer, they lack the capacity to suffer in ways that whites can. Or it may be claimed that aspects of their nonwhiteness, their racialized otherness, lessen their suffering; as for example many white medical

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practitioners believe that Blacks experience pain less severely that whites (Mills 1999, 91–109). Oppression and degradation of peoples racialized as non-white, denial of their humanity, or regulation to subhuman status, exploitation of their labor, lives and bodies, destruction of their languages, cultures, and religions, dispossession of their land and assets, and the circumvention of their ability to produce and transfer wealth across generations, and still other systems and mechanisms of oppression are foundational features, the very pillars upon which oppressive societies are built. Insurrectionist philosophies have in common a critical recognition of the fundamentally unjust constitution of structurally oppressive civilizations. Insurrectionists like David Walker, Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Fred Hampton, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), Mary Church Terrell, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur do not regard the injustice that is sustained or perpetuated by US norms or conventions as regrettable departures from an otherwise moral social order. All these exemplars of insurrectionists ethical theorizing make absolutely no concession to the moral authority or agency of those who are the direct or indirect beneficiaries of the norms or conventions that underwrite white supremacist patriarchal subjugation. Pace McBride, Voparil, and Pappas, the radicality of these thinkers and activists, their brand of insurrectionist ethics, which is decidedly not a quasi-­insurrectionist ethics, cannot be reconciled with any version of pragmatism (McBride 2021 and Chap. 11, this volume, Voparil Chap. 10, and Pappas Chap. 9, this volume. See also Nunes 2021). What is more, failure to appreciate the anti-ethical dimension of insurrectionist ethics is detrimental to the oppressed. “Hope,” Curry writes, “as the foundation of these ethics where oppression is thought to be mediated through a rationalized faith in the humanity of one’s oppressor, is nihilistic, at best” (Curry 2017, 182). Such hope encourages the oppressed to misunderstand the way the world is, to get things wrong. Aside from the obvious deleterious effect such misunderstanding will have on the efficacy of oppressed people’s agency, “[s]uch hope paralyzes the oppressed through an a priori duty to the oppressor,” thereby confining “oppressed people to a faith in the potential of a not-yet-present white humanity that could learn to respect Black life without any evidence that this quality can or does exist within the dominant racial group” (Curry 2017, 182). Historically, putative moral theory has failed to recognize some victims of oppression as moral agents due regard and subject to ethical treatment.

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Insurrectionist ethics proceeds from an understanding that advocacy is most efficacious when informed by a veridical understanding of the world. Laboring under moral suasionist delusions, in the face of continued oppression, or attributing undemonstrated moral qualities and sentiments to oppressors, is not commensurate with the insurrectionist attitude. Liberation, for the insurrectionist, neither requests nor requires the moral approval of oppressors. …motivated by a transvaluation of putative norms and values, or… Undoubtedly, transvaluation is an essential feature of insurrectionist ethics and abolition. The notion of transvaluation that underwrites the work of many scholars working on insurrectionist ethics is derived from Alain Locke (Locke 1989). Locke would likely have distanced himself from, if not outright rejected, many aspects of insurrectionist ethics. Insurrectionist philosophies of this stripe argue that a radical reimagining of the traits of character that make one virtuous, is an essential element of insurrectionist ethics. Yet, transvaluations are possible that do not challenge in any radical way the status quo conception of values. Arguably, Locke’s notion of transvaluation describes transformation between traditional Western values, and did not radically reconceive values as such, nor go so far as to offer reasons for regarding putative vices as virtues (Locke 1989, 31–50). Virtues such as temperance, chastity, truthfulness etc. are understood as a social mechanism that helps to pacify the oppressed in the face of their immiseration. Moreover, those who advocate transvaluation of virtue as an essential component of insurrectionist ethics often argue that traditional virtues do more to impede struggles for liberation than to promote such efforts. Advocates of transvaluation argue for understanding such traits as guile, duplicity, assertiveness, tenacity, truculence etc. as virtues of character in a context of struggling against oppression and advocating for subjugated populations. But this lighter version of insurrectionist ethics does not completely and fundamentally reject moralism about those who struggle for liberation, or the actions they perform in pursuit of that objective. Curry writes, For the oppressed racialized thinker, the ethical provocation is an immediate confrontation with the impossibility of actually acting toward values such as freedom, liberty, humanity, and life, since none of these values can be achieved concretely for the Black in a world controlled by and framed by the white. The

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options for ethical actions are not ethical in and of themselves; they are merely the options the immorality of the racist world will allow…Unfortunately, this ought constraint only forces Blacks to consciously recognize the futility of ethical engagement, since it is in this ought deliberation that they recognize that their cognition of all values is not dependent on their moral aspirations for the world…hence, all ethical questions about racism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness are not about how Blacks think about the world but about what possibility the world allows Blacks to contemplate under the idea of ethics (Curry 2017, 184).

Rather than proceeding from abstract philosophical speculation on the nature of value, as arguably is the case with Locke, insurrectionist accounts of transvaluation begin from the impossibility of some, perhaps all, forms of virtuous action, or positive value instantiation on the part of the oppressed within the dominant episteme. If putative virtues and values are unrealizable by the oppressed from the perspective of the dominate class, then aspiration to such virtues or values may result in either nihilism or a perpetual state of disillusionment and dissatisfaction. Insurrectionist ethics counsels a third way. In fact, much of Curry’s position seems commensurate with insurrectionist ethics in this regard, though he overstates the case in some ways. Oppressed peoples are not left unable to engage in moral deliberation, rather what is required of them is to shift the paradigm under which they contemplate responses to oppression. This is the impetus behind insurrectionist notions of transvaluation. It is a refusal to accept the parameters on ethical conduct prescribed and enforced by the beneficiaries of an unjust status quo. But more than that it is an effort to reimagine values and virtuous conduct that may promote a realizable liberation and freedom for the oppressed. McBride observes that “Harris argues that human virtues/excellences are always decidable, revisable and embodied” (McBride 2021, 48). What is intriguing about this observation, but left unanalyzed, is what seems to follow from it. If virtues and values are decidable, then they are assignable or deniable contrary to fact. That is, the decidability of virtues, the choice of which character traits count as virtues and which vices, and the choice of which human beings can embody them, leaves open the possibility of those decisions being made in arbitrary ways. Moreover, the subjective application of values to members of the dominate class and their denial to members of subordinate groups, is if not arbitrary, one of the ways that the power and privilege of dominate groups, and relative degradation and

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immiseration of oppressed peoples is effectuated. Virtue and good character have been assigned to the most racist, sexist, avaricious and murderous of American patriarchs, while viciousness has been assigned to the most freedom loving, egalitarian, and truthful resisters of white supremacy. Freedom, Equality, liberty, autonomy and patriotism have been the birthright and professed values of avaricious, deplorable, and ignorant citizens, while the underclasses’ quest for the same has been met with vitriolic xenophobia. It may be that this is changing in the minds of some, but that it has been the case is sufficient to make the point that who and what is determined to be virtuous or worthy of pursuing certain values need not track reality in any meaningful way. Perhaps does not track reality at all, but instead registers for particular traits, values and persons the putative episteme of a white patriarchal society. What choice then, besides nihilism or transvaluation? The decision for either is understandable to any but the most incredulous believer in the status quo. A distinction is drawn here for argumentative purposes between transvaluation, on the one hand, and conceptions of personhood and humanity on the other, but the two are related. Given what has been said about necro-depictions a distinction needs to be drawn between transvaluation or necro-depiction and conceptions of personhood and humanity as motivational. That the latter motivate is dubious, but it has been argued that the former do in fact motivate action. Aversion to oppression is an existential fact of persons, more than a logical consequence of conceptions they may hold. If that is right, resisting oppression may well be a logical consequence of a given conception, but that may fail to motivate action. …predicated on radical reconceptualization of social, political and moral conceptions… Adherence to the conceptual frameworks enabling oppression is untenable from the perspective of insurrectionist ethics. Charles Mills observed regarding the epistemological dimensions of The Racial Contract that “the governing epistemic principle could be stated as the requirement that—at least on controversial issues—non-white cognition has to be verified by white cognition to be accepted as valid.” He continues, “it is permitted to override white cognition only in extreme and unusual circumstances” (Mills 1999, 60). The claim that “conceptions of personhood and humanity…motivate moral action against obvious injustice or brutality” is dubious for several reasons (McBride 2013, 2021, See also

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Carter 2013). First, it is doubtful that notions of personhood or humanity motivate action generally, let alone moral action. Neither has tracked reality for much of the history of the modern world. Intelligent, autonomous, sentient, emotionally robust, and rational homo sapiens have been denied status and classification as human, denied personhood and the moral, epistemological and political rights and agency that is supposed to attach to it. All the while, white women in the antebellum South who sexually exploited Black boys and men were deemed the paragons of white virtue, and white men who enslaved their own children, are heralded as “Fathers of the Nation”. Mills writes that, Linked with this personal struggle will be an epistemic dimension, cognitive resistance to the racially mystificatory aspects of white theory, the painstaking reconstruction of past and present necessary to fill in the crucial gaps and erase the slanders of the globally dominate European worldview. One has to learn to trust one’s own cognitive powers, to develop one’s own concepts, insights, modes of explanation, overarching theories and to oppose the epistemic hegemony of conceptual frameworks designed in part to thwart and suppress the exploration of such matters; one has to think against the grain (Mills 1999, 119).

Putative notions of personhood and humanity have served as conceptual, material, and legal boundaries circumventing the life chances and possibilities of those racialized as non-white, such that the assertion that they can be refashioned into conceptions that motivate justice and liberation for the very populations to whom their status was denied strikes one as fanciful, and ungrounded optimism. The problem is that members of the dominate class seem not to be motivated to act by the conceptions of humanity or persons that they hold. They seem not to be so motivated because advocates for the oppressed the world over have frequently lauded the professed values and notions of personhood, freedom, humanity, fraternity, equality etc. of dominate groups that were contended to structure the very societies in which populations were oppressed through denial, in fact, complete disqualification for participation in these social goods. So, either these dominate classes were victims of an empirical misunderstanding that caused epistemological deficits in recognizing the applicability of such concepts to those they oppressed, or the denial was intentional. But then, why were the efforts of oppressed advocates indicated above unsuccessful. That is,

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they had at their disposal epistemological tools necessary to correct any cognitive mistakes on their part. And it is only owing to other cognitive mistakes—to the extent that blatant racism and patriarchal misandry are cognitive defects—on their part that the lessons could not be learned. What is important here is that in either case the concepts in question did not motivate oppressors to action on behalf of the oppressed. It failed it seems either because members of the dominant class were too ignorant, or too vicious, to comprehend the applicability of those conceptions to the persons they oppressed. But now one is compelled to ask, if these conceptions fail to motivate just, moral, or any action, in some cases, by members of the dominant class on behalf of the oppressed, why think that the very same conceptions would motivate action by the oppressed themselves? Likely it has not been the possession of a uniquely liberating conception of personhood or humanity that has motivated action against white patriarchal supremacy, rather it has been the existential critique from the perspective of the oppressed, demonstration not of a deep hypocrisy, but recognition of the intentional elevation of some, and subordination of others that is justified through conceptions of personhood and humanity that has carried motivational force. As such, it is the recognition of the role played by these conceptions in oppression and immiseration that motivates action, not the conceptions themselves. The distinction here is analogous to that drawn between necro-depictions and what is depicted. That a given instance, system or condition of oppression violates a particular conception of humanity or personhood may give rise to acts of resistance. It is a further question whether a given agent was motivated by the conceptions, or the existential reality of the injustice suffered. …aimed at radical transformation, abolition, or liberation from oppression. Thus far the point has hopefully been sufficiently made that insurrectionist ethics addresses itself to fundamental, structural, or systemic conditions of oppression. What remains to be elucidated is the aim of insurrectionists in addressing themselves to such concerns; that is, what they mean to accomplish. On the present view, the goal of insurrectionist ethics is radical social transformation that results in abolition of, or liberation from systems and conditions of oppression. No individual act need aim at such outcomes in toto; that is, particular actions or series of actions may only be constitutive

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of the ultimate goal. Moreover, there is a broad range of options in terms of what the eventual objectives of insurrection or abolition will look like. Some writers in this tradition have conceived the goal of insurrection as little more than exemption from present oppressive conditions (Harris 1999), others have coupled liberation with creation of new institutions and sources of community empowerment (Purnell 2021), and still others have understood the insurrectionists’ pursuit of liberation as a radical imagining of possible, yet unrealized futures (Harris 2018). Some writers on insurrectionist ethics (some of whom are contributors to this volume) take a less stringent position on its ultimate aims. Such writers contend that a more piecemeal and ameliorative approach to social justice is warranted and does not disqualify such positions as insurrectionist. The majority of those who take such a view work within the pragmatist philosophical tradition, so it is to that tradition that arguments against an ameliorative approach to insurrectionist ethics are best addressed. The desire to reconcile insurrectionist ethics with pragmatism results in an attempt to articulate a palatable quasi-insurrectionist ethics consistent with pragmatist fidelity to notions of democracy, freedom, equality, and liberalism (See for example Nunes 2021). Notice first, that these values are not transvalued. A pragmatism for the oppressed is not one that undercuts, aims to abolish, reject, refuse, dismantle or destroy notions of democratic inclusion, freedom, liberty, economic viability, or equality as these concepts are understood in pragmatism, or any other Anglo-European philosophical tradition. Instead, the reader is offered the rhetoric of inclusion, expansion, recognition, and progressive growth in the direction of a broader fulfillment of these specious platitudes. Martin R.  Delany and Alexander Crummell, were arguably insurrectionist ethicists, who unlike Frederick Douglass fundamentally rejected the belief that full and equal democratic citizenship in the United States was ever likely to be a reality for African descendant peoples  (See Delany 2003; Crummell 1995). David Walker, remained circumspect that equal democratic civilization could obtain between European and African descendent peoples, not only in the US, but anywhere in the world. W.E.B. Du Bois, who continues to be lauded as an adherent to pragmatist philosophy, supposedly influenced by the William James, abandoned American democracy, as a social environment that would ever allow the realization of full personhood and pluralistic democratic inclusion of Black peoples. One cannot simply ignore this history of Black intellectual thought. One salient feature of certain strands in Black Intellectual and political

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theorizing has been the belief that racism and white supremacist patriarchy are endemic features of US civilization, and the best that racialized non-­ white peoples can strive for is continued opposition to the various forms of dehumanization and subjugation they experience. Pragmatism, nor any other Anglo or European philosophical tradition, has offered anything of consequence to the cause of social justice for oppressed peoples. It remains committed to the idea that American democracy is good and desirable, and inclusion in that society ought to be the aim of non-white racialized peoples. Insurrectionist-minded Black thinkers have not been, and are not presently, committed to the same political aims. Political theorists who advocate for the oppressed in an insurrectionist vein have not been committed to the same putatively democratic principles. This is a fact that cannot be warmed over in the absence of a compelling case that pragmatism can offer prospects for liberation from white supremacist patriarchy. Pragmatists are not insurrectionists, they cannot be, because their social and political philosophies do more to usher in a kinder, gentler white supremacist patriarchy than to abolish it. The claims advanced by some that pragmatism is compatible with insurrectionist ethics do not bear historical or empirical scrutiny. Where is the pragmatist philosophy, who was its expounder, that seeks the utter unapologetic abolition of supremacist patriarchal systems? To be sure, pragmatist social and political philosophies that advocate white racial empire can be, and have been identified, the complicity of pragmatist figures such as Josiah Royce and Charles Sanders Pierce in such philosophies has been documented. But contemporary pragmatists argue by means of mere conjecture and speculation for a view of social justice compatible with contemporary sentiments on behalf of the anointed heroes and heroines of pragmatism that defies empirical and historical understanding. Worse yet, is when contemporary pragmatists argue that genuine opponents of white supremacist patriarchy such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Alexander Crummell, or Anna Julia Cooper did so either because they were influenced by pragmatism, or its canonical figures (in which canonization they are rarely included), or that in doing so they struck such resonances with pragmatism or its canonical figures that their thought is best characterized as pragmatist. Some scholars have contested this misreading of the Black Intellectual Tradition in a pragmatist vein to little avail (Carter 2018). Non-white minority dissent is easily ignored in a white supremacist patriarchal order. And this has proved no less true in the world of pragmatism than anywhere else.

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The revisionism of pragmatism, which suggests that its commitment to a perpetual reevaluation of existing social norms is wholly inadequate as a theory of insurrectionist advocacy. Openness to criticism and modification is two-sided; one can use it to devise more cleaver forms of oppression. That is, a philosophy that understands social norms to be perpetually open to criticism and revision, is not yet one that is sufficiently connected conceptually, nor in terms of its underlying motivations, to any emancipatory interest, let alone committed to advocacy of insurrection or radical social action in the interests of the least well-off or most viciously subjugated members of society. An even deeper issue involves the assumption that cooperative social action is the goal of either the oppressed group or the dominant group. Martin Delany advocated the voluntary though necessary immigration of African descendant peoples from the United States as the only possible means of liberation (Delany 2003). He harbored no desire to live cooperatively with white American slave holders. David Walker advocated the complete and utter destruction of chattel slavery (Walker 2000). Walker had no desire to cooperate with slave holders in any way. Angela Davis is an advocate for the abolition of prisons; not piecemeal, not in an indeterminate future, not as the result of rationally persuading violence workers of the error of their ways, but complete unmitigated abolition, immediately, and uncompromisingly. There is unlikely to be radical social change that is palatable to a willfully oppressive, or unwitting dominant group. Fundamental incommensurability is a fact of social life, especially in a world that creates Men-Not, and necro-beings. There is no racist white supremacist world in which necro-beings can exist as fully human, no masculinist anti-Black world in which the Man-Not is simply a man. This is to say, there are sources of conflict and struggle, immiserating conditions of degradation, deprivations of life, health, well-being, honor and respect that no amount of modification to existing norms will ameliorate.

Conclusion This then is what the proposed definition of insurrectionist ethics comes to: Insurrectionist ethics: (1) prescribes individual or coordinated actions on behalf of the oppressed (2) in direct opposition to oppressive institutions, structures, systems or conditions of control (3) that generates a duty to insurrect or resist oppression (4) informed by a rejection of customary morality that gives warrant to seemingly impossible forms of oppositional

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being that make seemingly absurd valuations understandable (5) motivated by a transvaluation of putative norms and values, or (6) predicated on radical reconceptualization of social, political and moral conceptions (7) aimed at radical transformation, abolition, or liberation from oppression. One might complain that the definition considered above seems a bit like an algorithm or a ten -point program, solely valuable for talking about social protest, nothing else. Some recent discussions equate insurrectionist ethics and abolition with justifying protest, and only that, too often limiting imagination to the here and now: not with apperception, new imaginations, avoiding bifurcations like civilized or uncivilized, valuation versus logic and reason, black or white. This is not the intent, nor what has been presented here. Given that Locke was right, we live by our imperatives, relative or not, this definition of insurrectionist ethics endorses tendencies, inclinations, orientations and value inclines that make possible a broad range of valuative vistas and reasoning strategies supportive of such (re) valuing. A wide range of oppositional responses, reasoning strategies, and imperatives appreciative of diverse contexts and not limited to instrumental reason, and protest that need not issue in immediate liberation for the oppressed but enable seemingly impossible forms of oppositional being are warranted under this definition. Readers of this volume may be compelled to ask: “How can I help it?” But, in the interest of justice, “We do have to start!” The reader may well ask, “Start what?” and taking heed of the immortal words of Amie Cesaire, “The only thing in the world worth starting: the End of the world, for Heaven’s sake” (Césaire 2001).

References Carter, Jacoby Adeshei. 2013. The Insurrectionist Challenge to Pragmatism and Maria W. Stewart’s Feminist Insurrectionist Ethics. Transactions of the Charles S. Pierce Society 49 (1): 54–73. ———. 2018. Race-ing the canon: American icons, from Thomas Jefferson to Alain Locke. In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race, ed. Paul C.  Taylor, Linda Martin Alcoff, and Luvell Anderson, 75–87. New  York: Routledge Publishing. Césaire, Aimé. 2001. Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. Edited by Annette Smith and Translated by Clayton Eshleman. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

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Index1

A Actuarial depictions, 242 Advocacy, 17, 48, 71, 96, 123, 137, 162, 209, 224, 225, 228, 233, 242, 257, 266, 269, 276 Advocacy virtues challenge, 209 Affectual relations, 231 Afro-Indigenous solidarity, 107–127 Agency, x, 24, 30, 63, 75, 77, 82, 90, 95, 99, 108, 115, 116, 138, 149, 162, 164, 172, 174, 209, 216, 219, 220, 225, 226, 228, 230, 233, 267, 268, 272 Anti-Black racism, 3, 108, 173n11 Anti-ethics, x, 157–192 Apperception, 237, 277

C Core tenets, 17, 23, 26, 48 Cultural pluralism, 108–114, 123, 127

B Black liberation theology, 62, 74

F Fallibilism, x, 219

D Duty challenge, 199 E Efficacious reasoning, 237–250 Episteme, 245–247, 270, 271 Ethical alienation, 169–173, 182 Ethical hope, 164–170, 172, 173 External resistance, 42, 45, 46, 50, 56

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. A. Carter, D. Scriven (eds.), Insurrectionist Ethics, African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16741-6

293

294 

INDEX

G Garnet, Henry Highland, 5, 62, 68, 84 Genre, xiii, 36, 159, 159n3, 160, 190 H Harris, Leonard, xiii–xxiv, 3, 4, 6, 10, 13, 16, 17, 21, 37, 40, 48, 49, 62–67, 75, 77–79, 89, 89n1, 90, 93–96, 94n6, 95n7, 96n8, 99n14, 103, 108–123, 134, 134n2, 136–139, 139n5, 144, 150, 151, 158, 162, 163, 175–177, 176n12, 179–181, 197–211, 214, 216–222, 224–226, 228, 232, 233, 239–250, 257, 260, 261, 265, 270, 274 Hay, Carol, 40–56, 43n11 Heuristics, x, xiv, 5, 72, 78, 95, 101, 107, 108, 114–117, 119, 120, 123, 242, 247, 248, 249n4 Human limitation, 239 I Idealist ethics, 163, 166, 168, 169, 181 Insurrectionist act, 107, 109, 117, 119, 122, 123, 125, 127, 164, 176, 176n12, 178, 181, 220, 221, 228, 230, 256, 264 Insurrectionist challenge, xiv, 47n26, 198, 213, 214, 217, 219, 220, 224, 225, 231–233, 245 Insurrectionist philosophy, 66n1, 80, 220, 237, 246, 267, 269 Internal resistance, 42, 45–47, 50, 51, 55

L Latin American theology/Latin American theologists, 73, 82 Liberation theology/liberationist theology, 61, 62, 64, 65, 72–77, 80–83, 84n11, 86 Locke, Alain, 89, 89n1, 108, 109, 113, 197, 199n3, 209, 221, 248, 269, 275 M Man-Not, 159, 165, 179, 276 Mexico, ix, xi, 90–93, 97 Moral commitment, 78, 137, 216, 219, 224 Moral community, vii, 138, 164, 170, 180, 216, 221, 227, 249 Moral imperatives, ix, 55, 202, 239, 248 Moral reasoning, 171, 247–250 Moral suasion, 69, 133–154, 140n6, 166, 169–171, 174, 222, 223, 266 Multiplicitous agency, 108 N Necro-depiction, 256, 261–265, 271, 273 Normative resources, 219, 224–228 Normativity, 5, 108, 214, 215, 217, 219–222, 225, 226, 230, 230n23, 231, 248n3 Norms, ix, x, 4, 16, 17, 20, 41, 44, 48, 90, 94, 96, 98, 124, 160, 164, 166, 174, 175, 183, 206, 221, 225, 244, 246, 248, 249, 266–269, 276, 277

 INDEX 

O Obligation, xiv, 39–56, 97, 171, 172, 183, 226 P Policing, ix, 133–154, 259 Political, xiv, 16, 20, 41n3, 41n4, 81, 84, 90–93, 112, 125, 135, 136, 139, 140, 167, 169, 169n10, 179n14, 199, 205, 215, 222, 225, 229, 233, 244, 258, 260, 264, 266, 271, 272, 274, 275, 277 Praxis, 62, 75–77, 82, 83, 104n20, 161, 181, 216, 222–224, 231 R Racial injustice, xiii, 198, 199n3, 205, 213–233 Rational capacity, 42, 43, 45, 46, 51, 53, 54 Realist ethics, 163, 165 Representative heuristics, x, xiv, 72, 78, 95, 101, 108, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120, 123, 247 Resistance, xiv, 3, 13, 17, 23, 39–42, 44–47, 50, 53–56, 66, 68, 70, 74, 76, 84, 90, 92, 107–127, 150, 153, 161–164, 174, 175, 177–180, 182, 184, 199n3, 208n32, 210, 223, 272, 273 Revolutionary suicide, 178 Riva Palacio, Vicente, 89–104 Rorty, Richard, 213–233

295

S Sambo, 39–42, 51 Self-interest, 48, 49, 52, 223, 260, 261 Self-respect, vii, 14, 39–56, 138, 151, 178, 260, 261 Settler colonization, 108 Social justice, xiv, 213–233, 255–257, 266, 274, 275 Social justice pragmatism, 213–233 Spiritual death, 169–173, 175, 180 Stewart, Maria, 40, 47, 47n26, 62, 65, 67, 68, 72, 94, 95, 107, 110, 114, 122, 123, 198, 210, 227 T Theology of liberation, 64, 80, 82–85, 85n13 Torres, Camilo, 75, 84 Transvaluation, viii, 4, 24, 35, 96n8, 102, 103, 108, 246, 249, 256, 269–271, 277 V Value relativism, 108, 111, 127 Violence (violent protests), 133–154 W Walker, David, 3, 4, 6–11, 40, 47–52, 62, 63, 65–69, 69n4, 72, 94, 95, 99n14, 107, 112, 122, 123, 137, 176, 177, 198, 210, 257, 260, 261, 264, 265, 268, 274, 276 Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 213–233, 263, 264, 268, 275 White virtue, 167, 171, 272