The Last Human

Polity · 2022 · 2 citations

• Political Science
• Political Science
• Sociology

The Gratifications of Whiteness

Oxford University Press eBooks · 2022 · 40 citations

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Aesthetics

Abstract This is the first book-length study of W. E. B. Du Bois’s conceptualization of American whiteness. While many popular and scholarly accounts of Du Bois’s thought focus on his famous claim that whiteness has functioned as a “public and psychological wage” in the United States, this book reveals a more complex analysis that speaks powerfully to contemporary conditions. Whiteness, Du Bois shows us, is not one thing, but many. Focusing on three key motifs found in his work—wage, pleasure, dominion—this book investigates the “gratifications of whiteness” Du Bois theorized. It argues that whiteness is composed not only of the status rewards that secure capitalism but also the enjoyment of gratuitous Black suffering and a quasi-religious conviction that the world belongs to those marked as “white.” In addition, the book brings Du Bois’s ideas into creative encounter with the present. It shows that Du Bois can help us recognize contemporary whiteness as a multifaceted formation, which provides a sense of social standing (wage), delivers feelings of pleasure born of Black pain (pleasure), and sanctions a worldview in which white skin supplies a “title to the universe” (dominion). The book also explores whether and how these patterns of racialized gratification might be undone.

Du Bois and Racial Capitalism: Symposium on Andrew J. Douglas, <i>W. E. B. Du Bois and the Critique of the Competitive Society</i> , Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2019

Political Theory · 2020

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Sociology

A Political Companion to W.E.B. Du Bois. Edited by Nick Bromell. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2018. 376p. $80.00 cloth.

Perspectives on Politics · 2019-08-21

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

The Whiteness of the Weasel

River teeth · 2019-01-01

The Whiteness of the Weasel E. J. Myers (bio) We are not alone. I've known since boyhood that houses often have critters—that the structures we humans perceive as ours often contain other denizens who don't happen to share this proprietary attitude. The resulting interspecies disagreement often leads to conflict. During twenty-five years of residence in suburban New Jersey, for instance, I fought a low-intensity war against the squirrels on the property that my wife and I owned there. These cute troublemakers persistently invaded and nested in our attic, and I resolutely set traps to catch and relocate them to a nearby nature preserve. The result: nearly three hundred squirrels deported over the course of a quarter century. Following this and other experiences, I'm not surprised that when we moved to Vermont, the old house we bought would appeal to wildlife, nor am I shocked to hear scratchy sounds coming from the ceiling and the walls. Neither am I astonished one January morning when Edith announces: "There's a rat in the bathroom!" She utters these words emphatically but without alarm. "A rat? Are you sure?" "It's big, it's white, and it has huge black eyes." Having closed the door, Edith has trapped this critter in the room. [End Page 131] I'm puzzled by her description. It's true that a large rodent might well be a rat, but I'm surprised by the color. Most wild rats are gray, brown, or black. I've never heard of one that's white. I tell Edith I'll investigate; I ease into the bathroom; I look around. I sit on the closed toilet for a while and wait in silence. There's neither sight nor sound of an intruding animal. I don't doubt that she has spotted something, but whatever she saw has somehow escaped. A day later, after Edith has left Vermont for a work assignment, I prepare the house for my own week out of town. One of my chores is to move firewood from the attached garage into the house and then stock two racks near the wood stoves. I make multiple trips into the garage. On my third or fourth trip, something catches my attention: a rustling sound in the far right corner. I can't see what's making it. Then, after fifteen or twenty seconds, I catch sight of the intruder. A small creature, long and lithe, emerges from beneath the ride-on mower and slinks into view. Altogether white except for its black eyes and the black tip of its tail, this animal rears up on hind legs and stares at me. I grasp that it's a weasel of some sort. I'm struck at once by its beauty. This animal is agile, supple, and alert. Despite my total ignorance of weasels, I decide that this one is female. She stares at me with interest but without any sign of alarm. I realize just then what has drawn her out: a bag of frozen garbage that I had carelessly left on the garage floor the previous night. One corner has been chewed open. This little beast has clearly been exploring the trash. Even as I watch, she scampers over to the bag, pokes her head inside, and returns to pilfering whatever she can extract. I step closer. She startles at once and darts under the mower. There's no sign of her for several minutes. Impatient, I return to my task of stocking firewood. Each time I return to the garage, however, I find her exploring the garbage, so I walk over, surprise her with my approach, pick up the bag, and remove it. My later visits to the garage show her still present as she attempts to figure out what happened to her smorgasbord. It's clear to me that I can't let this animal remain here. For all I know, she is the source of the scratching sounds that Edith and I heard on the second floor. Spotting one such creature probably means that [End Page 132] others are present—an entire family, even. Very well, then: they have to go...

Grace Hellyer and Julian Murphet, eds.: Rancière and Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2016. 272 pp.

Arcadia - International Journal for Literary Studies · 2019-05-31

Beyond the Psychological Wage: Du Bois on White Dominion

Political Theory · 2018-08-17 · 74 citations

W.E.B. Du Bois’s reading of whiteness as a “public and psychological wage” is enormously influential. This essay examines another, lesser known facet of Du Bois’s account of racialized identity: his conceptualization of whiteness as dominion. In his 1920–1940 writings, “modern” whiteness appears as a proprietary orientation toward the planet in general and toward “darker peoples” in particular. This “title to the universe” is part of chattel slavery’s uneven afterlife, in which the historical fact of “propertized human life” endures as a racialized ethos of ownership. The essay examines how this “title” is expressed and reinforced in the twentieth century by the Jim Crow system of racial signs in the United States and by violent “colonial aggrandizement” worldwide. The analytic of white dominion, I argue, allows Du Bois to productively link phenomena often regarded as discrete, namely, domestic and global forms of white supremacy and practices of exploitation and dispossession. Ultimately, the entitlement Du Bois associates with whiteness is best understood as a pervasive, taken-for-granted horizon of perception, which facilitates the transaction of the “wage” but is not reducible to it.

The Non-Scandal of American Oligarchy

Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) · 2017-04-20

Over the last decade, the term oligarchy has emerged in scholarly and popular commentary as a name for the United States' political regime. Although this claim is meant to mobilize its addressees, I argue that it neglects the broader neoliberal social settlement within which wealth-based domination occurs. Drawing on Gram-scian political theory and analyses of neoliberal culture, I show that today's hegemonic configuration includes a distinctive form of common sense which minimizes the degree to which rule by the rich can register as a scandal. The universalization of market values helps validate inequality and erodes the distinction between economy and polity—twin developments that dampen the critical charge the oligarchy label tries to carry.

Making Change Popular: Woodly's The Politics of Common Sense

Theory & Event · 2016-01-01

Just Life: Bioethics and the Future of Sexual Difference. By Mary C. Rawlinson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. 266p. $90.00 cloth, $30.00 paper.

Perspectives on Politics · 2016-12-01

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.