Mirror Sites:
CSUDH - Habermas - UWP - Archives
Practice Module on This File

California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: October 20, 2002
Latest Update: October 20, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Reinterpreting W.E.B. DuBois for the Twenty-First Century

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, October 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Sunday, October 22, 2002, Mike wrote:

Subject: W.E.B DuBois AND "Double consciousness"

Hello there. my name is Mike. I have been looking around on the internet and sites keep coming up w/ information regarding W.E.B DuBois AND "Double consciousness" that you have some part of. From what i have gathered, you are a professor. I am not one of you students, if that is the case, but i am a student studying DuBois. I am trying to find another way dubois showed a Double consciousness other than the racial issue. I am pretty desperate. i have to write a 15pg paper, and i have been only able to fill about 10 of them using the racial issue. if you could just point me in the correct direction i would be so grateful. If you dont know or do not have time to contact me, i understand, and i am gratetful that you even took your time to read this. well thanks for your time again. thank you very much

Mike

On Sunday, October 20, 2002, jeanne responded:

Well, Mike, you're right about me being a professor. And I am busy. The site takes lots of time, and I'm pressed for time right now. But try this: Reinterpret "double consciousness" in terms of social theory today. DuBois refers to double consciousness as a tension of conflict in inclusion. In some ways, as a boy, he was included. In others, he was not. And race was the primary focus for that exclusion.

But as he took up his career, and began to write social theory, he discovered that whites had no clear ideas of who or what Negroes represented. So one other way in which he showed his double consciousness was in the recognition of the harm that race exclusion created. For this reference I use Maria Pia Lara's Moral Textures. According to Pia Lara one of the first steps in dealing with harm is bringing that harm to recognition level. (Pia Lara's Intro) Index to Recognition of Harm. Through his study of the American Negro, in which he brought out the false unstated assumptions about Negroes, Du Bois contributed to an understanding of social theory that has led us today to the point of self-reflexive theory, in which we accept responsibility for questioning our own cultural baggage and our own denial of where that cultural baggage leads us.

Would I call Du Bois a postmodernist for this contribution to today's theory? Good gracious, no. Not with the definition that pervades the academy today. But then again, if I'm allowed outside the academy, I would certainly say that Du Bois led sociologists like me to understand how much there was we didn't know, how much there was more than one "truth," and how much truth was a matter of perspective. So maybe I would say he was one of our forefather's in understanding the tolerance of ambiguity true science has to take into account. Another helpful reference if you need to expand more might be Martha Minow, Inclusion and Exclusion in American Law.

Hope that helps. Would you mind giving me permission to upload this to the site, so others in the same predicament can have reference to the material, too?

Good luck, jeanne

On Sunday, October 22, 2002, Mike wrote:

No i wouldn't mind at all. That was very helpful, and im grateful for your time. thank you very much. have a nice night

Mike