An online IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Anthony Neal (American Philosophical Association Fellow 2023; Mississippi State University)
Under Hume’s Foot…Violent Abstractions
An author’s footnotes, sometimes referred to as footers, can occasionally create tension or pressure upon the writings of another author through the choice of information disclosed. In some instances, the pressure is placed upon the general reader and not an author at all. This pressure can come in the form of shock regarding what the author has chosen to envelop under the cover of the main text. To this end, the subtext can set the context and even the pretext upon which the main text stands. Therefore, the information disclosed can be thought to reside under the foot of the body which is the main text. However, David Hume’s footnote, which consists of his thoughts concerning Francis Williams, an educated Black man from the Caribbean, exposes the problematic within the enlightenment ideal. Hume’s main text of “On National Characters,” stands on the dehumanization of Black people among others in the form of a foot(er). Hume adds to the actions that are aimed at abstracting inherent value from the Black individual’s person through the limiting of conceivable notions of their potential. This is indeed a violent abstraction. The focus of this chapter will be this abstraction in the form of racist thinking derived from perceptual frameworks. The aim is to show how racist thinking develops within modern society’s political and economic structures, which constitutes an integral component of the perceptual framework through the creation and manipulation of symbols. As such, I posit that racist thinking is bound within the cultural memory and imagination. It is not a problem of value, as it is sometimes presupposed, but it is a problem found in the construction of knowledge. David Hume serves simply as an exemplar.
Click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/86535202023
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Please note that this seminar is online-only.