Semester 1 Key Terms

Double Consciousness

In his text, Of Our Spiritual Strivings, W. E. B. Du Bois defines “Double Consciousness” as “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” (38). With this, there is a dissonance between the true self and the self one presents to fit in. In Du Bois’s work, Double Consciousness is applied to how black Americans exist in a constant state of two-ness due to the clash between blackness and Americanness. The feeling also is not present from birth, instead, it is when a person realizes that they are different that the feeling of separation crashes down and they are cut off never able to see or be seen in the same way again.

Barbra Browning writes about Capoeira in Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions saying, “The Portuguese tolerated the roda de capoeira because it was merely dance…within the circles, Africans in Brazil trained like fighters in the art of dissimulation”(Brrowning 91-2). The same dissonance seen with Double Consciousness is visible in dance circles such as Capoeira. The movement viewed from outside the circle is seen as purposeless, but in reality, the movement is training disguised as dance in order to hide it from onlookers.

Social Choreography

In her text, Battling in the Bronx, Imani Kai defines Social Choreography as “The ways that the people of a given society are trained to move…and to contort and comport their bodies” (Kai 64). These concepts are clear in the examples given by André Lepecki in Choreopolice and Choreopolitics. The anti-riot mounted police in Tatlin’s Whisper #5 shows how easily movement can be controlled to fit into an expected social norm when enforced by those people see as having more authority.

Imani Kai digs deeper into the concept of Social Choreography acknowledging how people are both made to move through a normative society, but also how it allows for deviations from typical moves. This side of Social Choreography reflects Lepecki’s other concept of Choreopolitics which embodies a reinvention of one’s movement in order to loosen their constraints and allow more room for freedom. The vastness of what Social Choreography covers allows it to be open to interpretation making it easily applicable to almost all situations.

Reason

In her book New Directions In Law and Literature, Ravit Reichman speaks on how people perceive reason, writing “From reasonable doubt…to the reasonable person, legal doctrine and discourse invokes the word as though its very utterance guarded against the opening of emotional floodgates”(Reichman 112). When referring to something as reasonable we think of it as something unbiased and correct. So it follows that a person who is not neutral and not impartial can not be reasonable. But, we say judges are impartial ruling bodies from the lowest court to the Supreme Court because their decisions must not be influenced one way or another. However, when being elected they have political parties listed that they are running under so even those at the highest level of law are not reasonable. If those at our highest level of court are not reasonable how do we hold anyone at all to this seemingly unreachable standard of reasonableness.

Unproductive

In her plenary discussion, Ravit Reichman made many claims that being unproductive in the way we view it is still productive just in a different way. She says to “Let yourself be bored”, and that, “The idea of wandering is really productive”. In a world where people are always in a rush to do or be the next thing, the idea of time being useful no matter how you use it completely contrasts this taught mentality.

I love the idea of allowing oneself to wander because it does not only have to be in a physical sense. Academic wandering is what helped me come up with some of my favorite parts from my portfolio specifically my blackout poetry. I had a rough idea of what my theme was going to be so I put off most things that I could not relate to directly to enjoy the process more which allowed me to return to a concept that I have not played with at all since middle school. Being bored with my methods allowed me to refine the concept to what it is now because I was able to keep returning with fresh eyes to my ideas because I never stayed on one thing for to long.

Imperative

In his text, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant describes an Imperative as “The conception of an objective principle so far as this principle is necessitating for a will” (Kant 530). Between the two, the good that results from the hypothetical imperative actions is seen as less than the good that results from the categorical imperative actions. This is because the only reason the hypothetical imperative action is good is because it is in pursuit of a goal.

He goes on to explain imperatives saying, “imperatives are expressed by an ‘ought’”(Kant 530). It is expressed with this uncertainty because it is working to establish a relation between the objective law of reason and a will that does not hold itself to the same rules. But, because the law is still imperfect as it is influenced by the subjective nature of the human will, the imperative can only be used as an idea of what should be done, not as an order of what to do.

Identity

During plenary when discussing identity Dr. Boyer said that the “16-year-old says he’s gay, because he identifies with it, but he was called faggot when he was 7, it was always there”(Boyer). This proposes the idea that identity is not something that a person chooses or finds out about themself, but rather it is something that is thrust onto a person. This shows how a person’s circumstances shape how a person views themselves concerning their identity.

This thrusting of identity is also present in W.E.B. DuBois’s work Of Our Spiritual Strivings where he says, “till one girl…refused my card…Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others”(DuBois 38). He was treated no differently by any of the other children he was exchanging cards with, but once he made this realization that he was different his world and his perception of himself was forever changed. He was seen with contempt, and because of this, he began to view the world with contempt in the same way.

Social Contract

In John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government the idea of Social Contract is to, “give up all the power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into society”(Locke Chapter VIII Section 99). This means that people must be willing to give up some freedoms to ensure the safety of more important ones such as life or liberty. But this idea of giving up some freedoms to protect others is easily exploited by those in power which leads to different versions of this idea coming forwards.

One such version is discussed in Charles W. Mill’s Theorizing Racial Justice lecture called a Domination Contract which is an “exclusionary contract among members of the privileged group to limit institutionalized equality to themselves while subordinating others”(45). This metaphor is more appropriate to how freedoms are exchanged within a society as it includes how equality differs between different groups, and how those in the most privileged classes create and maintain certain powers.

Nomos

In Robert Covers Forward, Nomos and Narrative, he introduces the idea of nomos as a “Normative universe”(Cover 4). This normative universe consists of a group’s shared set of values, beliefs, and narratives which give meaning to their sets of laws. The nomos helps to find a deeper understanding of how the law is interpreted through a cultural lens rather than just saying laws are true because they say so.

He then goes on to say, “To inhabit a nomos is to know how to live in it”(Cover 6). This acknowledgment that you must understand the cultural context of a nomos to be able to be fully engaged with it is interesting as it dispels the belief that the law is what fully governs us. It is rather social norms, including the created law and legal system, that serve to monitor actions and control freedoms within the system.

Works Cited

Boyer, Patricio. “Justice and Obligation” HumDavidson, 17 September, 2024

Browning, Barbra. Headspin: Capoeira’s Ironic Inversions. Indiana University Press, 2003.

Cover, Robert M. “The Supreme Court, 1982 Term.” Harvard Law Review, vol. 97, no. 1, 1983, pp. 1–306. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1340787. Accessed 11 Dec. 2024.

Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. The Souls of Black Folk Essays and Sketches. A. C. McClurg et Co, 1903.

“Introduction to Philosophy.” Edited by John Perry, Google Books, Google, 2016, www.google.com/books/edition/Introduction_to_Philosophy/MdBYrgEACAAJ?hl=en.

Johnson, Imani Kai, Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: The Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop (New York
, 2022; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Sept. 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190856694.001.0001, accessed 8 Dec. 2024.

Lepecki, André. “Choreopolice and Choreopolitics: Or, the Task of the Dancer.” TDR/The Drama Review, vol. 57, no. 4, Dec. 2013, pp. 13–27, https://doi.org/10.1162/dram_a_00300.

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Edited by C.B. McPherson, Hackett Publishing Company, 1980.

Mill, Charles W. “Theorizing Racial Justice.” Tanner Lecture on Human Values. Tanner Lecture on Human Values, 2020.

Reichman, Ravit. “Epes Lecturer Visit” HumDavidson, 5 December, 2024

Reichman, Ravit. “Law’s Affective Thickets.” New Directions In Law and Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017, pp. 109–122.

Johnson, Imani Kai, Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: The Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop (New York