Abstract
In The Alchemy of Race and Rights Patricia Williams notes that when people of color are asked to understand such practices as racial profiling by putting themselves in the shoes of white people, they are, in effect, being asked to, ‘look into the mirror of frightened white faces for the reality of their undesirability’ (1992, 46). While we often see understanding another as ethically and epistemically virtuous, in this paper I argue that it is wrong in some cases to ask another to attempt to understand certain positions or lines of thought. In developing my argument I draw on the work of María Lugones to argue for a view of agency that is epistemically interdependent. I examine the case described by Patricia Williams to demonstrate specifically how the understanding requested in this case unfairly undermines both epistemic and non-epistemic agency. I distinguish appropriate requests for understanding from inappropriate requests so as to make clear that I am not suggesting that it is wrong to make such requests when the understanding sought after is difficult, painful, or even when it forces one to reconsider the meaning of one’s actions. Finally, I examine an example from Susan Brison to show how strategic refusals to understand may provide a pathway toward new ways of knowing and being in resistance to oppressive regimes.
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Notes
- 1.
I use ‘ethically’ rather than ‘politically’ here to indicate that the kind of productivity involved, as I will show in the second half of this paper, is not toward any particular politically identifiable end but rather productive toward opening possibilities for a more ethical life together for which there are, as of yet, no defined ends.
- 2.
- 3.
The connection between understanding, practice, background assumptions and range of sensible responses is also demonstrated in the following anecdote from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty: ‘I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again “I know that that is a tree,” pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: “This fellow is not insane. We are only doing philosophy” ’(1969, #467).
- 4.
In ‘Forms of Life: Mapping the Rough Ground’ (1996) Naomi Scheman argues cogently that this fundamentally Wittgensteinian insight need not lead to relativism or caprice.
- 5.
It should be noted as well that part of the insult involved in cases like the one presented by Williams is that marginalized people are more often than not the ones being asked to understand. I owe thanks to Alison Bailey for reminding me of this point. What I aim to show in this paper goes further, arguing that even if this history of asymmetry were empirically absent there is something wrong in asking for some positions to be understood.
- 6.
- 7.
The point here is not limited to the sociological claim that different societies have different things they take to be significant for living a life. Rather, to build and to have a life that is sustained over time regardless of one’s particular society requires sets of social practices within which actions take on significance.
- 8.
See Loraine Code’s Rhetorical Spaces (1995).
- 9.
The fact that Lugones leaves the term open ended and ‘suggestive’ allows her to show rather than just say one of the key insights she develops in the essay in which she introduces it. Specifically, Lugones’s treatment of the term ‘world’ exemplifies the kind of attitude she advocates as a way of being with and loving others.
- 10.
- 11.
This kind of knowledge produces what W.E.B. DuBois referred to as ‘double consciousness’: ‘It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, – an American and a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder’ (1989, 3).
- 12.
Allsion Bailey’s ‘Strategic Ignorance’ (2007) details these types of cases. My own suggestion below differs insofar as it provides a way of thinking about the destruction of oppressive worlds, whereas Bailey’s suggestion is for considering how resistant subjects can get things done in spite of the continued existence of oppressive worlds.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to the women in the Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy for their suggestions and encouragement with regard to this essay. Thanks also to Madelyn Detloff and Heidi Grasswick whose input has greatly improved the clarity of my writing and ideas.
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Pohlhaus, G. (2011). Wrongful Requests and Strategic Refusals to Understand. In: Grasswick, H. (eds) Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6835-5_11
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