A Matter of Long Centuries and Not Years

Du Bois on the Temporality of Social Change

Bibliographic Data

ID6350792
AuthorsJennie C Ikuta (0000-0001-8289-0702, University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume52
Issue2
Pages289-316
Publication date2024-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0090-5917 • E-ISSN: 1552-7476
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00905917231195584
OpenAlexW4386931662
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited18

In light of the summer 2020 protests and their subsequent backlash, questions about the prospective timeline for achieving a racially just society have taken on renewed significance. This article investigates Du Bois’s writings between 1920 and 1940 as a lens through which to examine the temporality of social change. I argue that Du Bois’s turn to the role of white unreason explains the dual temporality of his political vision and the dual strategies that ensue. According to Du Bois, white supremacy is upheld not only by ignorance, but also by white unreason, reproduced through generations of institutional conditioning. Du Bois therefore turns to propaganda for transforming white unreason, thereby making a racially just society possible. But because the transformation of white unreason through propaganda is a slow process, Du Bois argues that Black Americans must ensure their survival through voluntary self-segregation. By presenting us with a framework of social change, Du Bois models how advocates of racial justice might navigate defeat without devolving into defeatism

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ignorance · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Temporality · White (mutation · White supremacy · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Critical Realism in Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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