Eva Boodman

Type

Text

Type

Dissertation

Advisor

Cormier, Harvey | Mendieta, Eduardo | O'Byrne, Anne | Alcoff, Linda.

Date

2017-05-01

Keywords

Philosophy | Complicity, Critical Race Theory, Feminist philosophy, Legal Theory, Political Philosophy, Whiteness

Department

Department of Philosophy

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76596

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

White ignorance is a pervasive, insidious form of structural racism that operates in habits, norms, laws and institutional practices. Rather than a lack of information, it is a “substantive†knowledge practice and a “need not to know†. This makes it very difficult to address. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that our prevailing models of responsibility tend not to serve us well when it comes to forms of structural racism like white ignorance, since they emphasize moral absolution and the preservation of innocence for individuals and institutions. The consequences of this include cycles of white disavowal, the inadvertent essentialization of racial identity categories, the racialization of moral concepts like guilt and innocence, and the “re-centering†of “dominant†social positions like whiteness. How can this normative problem be resolved? What normative approach can help address forms of structural racism like white ignorance that does not simply result in its reproduction? In this dissertation I argue that responsibility for structural racism should be understood as “complicit†. I argue against “liability†-centered models of responsibility and complicity, and for a model of responsibility that understands itself to be “complicit†in terms of social positions, complex identities and relationships. I argue further that “resistance†is central to the way complicit responsibility is discharged. I use the work of José Medina, Ernesto Javier Martinez, Linda Alcoff and Mariana Ortega to suggest some practices of “complicit resistance†that, by de-emphasizing guilt and innocence, can open the door to a cross-identitarian, collective movement to deflate, destabilize and de-supremacize whiteness. | 223 pages

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