In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18.4 (2004) 300-304



[Access article in PDF]

White World-Traveling

Penn State University
La solidaridad requiere el reconocer, comprender, respectar y amar lo que nos lleva a llorar en distintas cadencias. El imperialismo cultural desea lo contrario, por eso necesitamos muchas voces. Porque una sola voz nos mata a las dos.... Pero si no aprendo tus modos y tu los mios las conversación es sólo aparente. Y la apariencia se levanta como una barrera sin sentido entre las dos.... Porque entonces ya no dialogamos. El diálogo entre nosotras requiere dos voces y no una.
—María C. Lugones (1983, 573)

In his captivating essay in this issue of Journal of Speculative Philosophy, on Geneva Smitherman, African American Language, and Black resistance to white domination, George Yancy issues an invitation to white philosophers, and by extension white people in general. "Regarding white philosophers," he claims, "I believe that it is the job of knowledgeable and responsible Black philosophers ... to invite them to enter African American semiotic spaces of discursive difference and overlap" (Yancy 2004, 275). Given the constitutive relationship of word and world, the existence of African American semiotic spaces is crucial to the representation, power, and survival of Black experiences. White people's recognition of the importance of African American Language thus can be a sign that they value those experiences and wish to combat the racism that attempts to eliminate, assimilate, and "forget" them. For white people to enter African American semiotic spaces can be a way for them to fight white privilege by helping "make 'inroads against the established power-lines of speech'" (Yancy 2004, 274).

For these reasons, I ultimately wish to accept Yancy's generous invitation. Before I do so, however, I want to point out the dangers contained in it. These are dangers that Yancy is well aware of. He understands that before a Black philosopher invites white people into his or her world, he or she should be knowledgeable of the risks involved, and that as a Black philosopher engages with white world-travelers, he or she must remain responsible to the Black communities and experiences that are being shared with others. It is his white readers (myself included), whose good-hearted, antiracist intentions sometimes blind them to the racist damage they do, who concern me. [End Page 300]

As I have begun to work more with Latin American philosophy and Latina feminism, I have been wrestling with the issue of linguistic world-traveling.1 As María Lugones explains in the epigraph above, solidarity across cultural and racial differences requires recognition, comprehension, respect, and love, and these, in turn, require genuine dialogue. For a dialogue to be genuine, more than one voice must be included, but this is possible only if each of the participants in the conversation understand the other's language or way of communicating. A "dialogue" that takes place only in Standard American Language reinforces the cultural imperialism that demands one voice.

Lugones does not provide English translations of the Spanish portions of her essay co-authored with Elizabeth Spelman. She and Spelman require their readers either to travel to Lugones' world to engage in dialogue or to realize that they are unprepared for genuine dialogue across racial and cultural differences and, as a result, are missing the full meaning of Lugones' remarks. White/Anglo women's lack of preparation for dialogue with women of color is not uncommon and, moreover, it goes beyond their typical ignorance of languages other than English. It often extends to ignorance of the history, geography, culture, food, politics, and other important features of nonwhite worlds. As Lugones and Spelman explain, "white/Anglo women are much less prepared for this dialogue with women of color than women of color are for dialogue with them in that women of color have had to learn white/Anglo ways, self-conceptions, and conceptions of them" (Lugones and Spelman 1983, 577). This asymmetrical preparedness is produced by an inverse relationship of power and knowledge. Latina and other women of color often have less power...

pdf