Slide 1
Du Bois asks what happens when society devalues you
The writer and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois explored how Black Americans reckon with society’s devaluing gaze as well as their own self-understanding.
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Self-understanding is not formed in complete privacy. Du Bois describes a tension in which a Black American must also reckon with a dominant society's devaluing view. That imposed judgment can become part of the conditions under which the self is understood.
Slide 2
He develops this tension as double consciousness
Du Bois develops double consciousness in writings on Black life in the United States, including The Souls of Black Folk. It concerns self-understanding under racial exclusion.
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Du Bois develops double consciousness in his writing on Black life in the United States, including The Souls of Black Folk. The concept belongs to a history of racial exclusion and unequal recognition, not simply to the experience of enjoying two cultures.
Slide 3
The two views do not carry equal power
A person’s aspirations and a racially dominant society’s judgment have unequal social power. The society’s view is imposed through that hierarchy.
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One perspective concerns a person's own aspirations and understanding. Another is imposed through a society organized by racial hierarchy. These perspectives carry unequal social force: the pressure of a dominant society differs from an exchange of opinions between people with the same power.
Slide 4
Calling it just two identities misses that pressure
Reducing double consciousness to having two identities leaves out the social domination central to the concept.
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Describing double consciousness as just having two identities removes the social domination the concept helps expose. Its later interpretations vary, and no single description exhausts Black experience. The idea is a philosophical account of social conditions, not a clinical diagnosis.
Slide 5
Understanding yourself also involves the social world
Du Bois connects self-understanding to institutions and social recognition. The concept shows why an inward question also concerns the unequal conditions in which people are seen.
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Du Bois makes self-understanding a question about institutions and recognition as well as inward reflection. The concept directs attention to how unequal social judgments can constrain the terms on which a person is seen and can come to see themselves.
Sources
- Double Consciousness
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy