The Politics of Survival: Peirce, Affectivity, and Social Criticism (review)

Although Charles Peirce is generally not interpreted primarily as a social-political philosopher, several commentators on Peirce have contended, along with Lara Trout, that his philosophy “provides significant resources to add to contemporary discussions of social criticism” (11). Trout’s bold, creative, and lively volume, however, is perhaps the first to develop that point systematically and in depth. By reading Peirce as a social critic, Trout argues, we allow the various strands of his thought to come together more fully and, at the same time, see more clearly the blind spots in his thinking: “social criticism helps Peirce be more Peircean” (15).

Trout makes a very compelling case (although this author was already favorably disposed to her thesis). In order to appropriate Peirce in such a creative, provocative, and productive manner, Trout makes several bold and important moves, some of which build upon previous Peirce scholarship, while others are strikingly original. Let me highlight some of those general but distinct moves in her interpretation of Peirce as a theorist of social criticism. First, by re-reading Peirce through the work of neurobiologist Antonio Damasio, Trout simultaneously thickens Peirce’s notion of affectivity, as one staunchly rejecting any mind-body, thinking-feeling dualism, and brings his Darwinism up-to-date. Obliterating any sharp separation of the cognitive from the affective directs social criticism to consider the non-conscious habits that sustain social patterns of injustice and their ideological defenses.

Second, Trout makes social-political use of Peirce’s phenomenological categories. “Firstness” is used to describe the manner in which the young child takes the sensory data of her world for granted, as socially-politically unproblematic, and uncritically absorbs the prejudices of those upon whom she is dependent for survival. Building here upon the work of Vincent Colapietro, Trout then speaks of “social secondness,” as “socially dictated environmental resistance,” and coins the term “socio-political secondness” to identify more specifically “social secondness that is not encountered equally by all members of society” (58) but stems from distinct structures of power that advantage some to the disadvantage of others. Social secondness thus makes social critique possible, as a sort of “social thirdness” (not Trout’s term). Moreover, Trout emphasizes, following Colapietro’s account of agency in Peirce’s semiotics, how thirdness is not merely instinctive and reactionary to problematic secondness but can also actively set goals for the organism beyond mere survival—what she terms “proactive thirdness” (103–04). Such a social-political reading of Peirce’s early phenomenological categories shows how Peirce’s later “critical common-sensism,” which “calls for the critical examination of the common-sense beliefs that underwrite human cognition” (229), evolves from those categories.

Third, Trout underscores how inquiry for Peirce is rooted in the “social principle”: that is, far from being a “disinterested” search for abstract Truth, inquiry is born of the realization that strong, ever-increasingly inclusive communities serve both the individual’s and the species’ survival interests. Scientific inquiry is thus rooted in agapic sympathy, the desire to include in community even the weakest and most disadvantaged (see 208–10). Epistemology is inextricably political.

Fourth, Trout is rightfully critical of Peirce for not understanding adequately the politics of inquiry, for insufficiently seeing how power structures that undergird the method of authority can continue to operate within scientific method, although he provided fundamental insights for understanding the relationship between epistemology and politics. Her criticism of Peirce in this regard echoes criticisms that African-American scholars, such as Alain Locke and Cornel West, make of pragmatists generally, including Dewey, namely, that the latter are naïve with respect to the power structures enframing inquiry and experimental method.

Trout’s work is at its best when it argues generally that Peirce provides powerful theoretical tools for social criticism, and she is to be commended for wanting to put such potent tools to work in solving real-world problems. I find troublesome, however, her choice of race as the primary example for demonstrating those...