Papers by Peter Capofreddi
What happens when an adult learning experience reveals a learner’s entire approach to life is fut... more What happens when an adult learning experience reveals a learner’s entire approach to life is futile and untenable? This paper presents an autoethnography and analysis of a stage in my own process of understanding adult learning experiences that have profoundly disrupted my adaptive coping mechanisms. I invoke Lerner and Montada's (1998) concept of victim blaming to analyze my fragile coping mechanisms and how they were disrupted. My experience is then situated in relation to adult education literature on maladaptive learning experiences (Merriam et. al., 1996). The epistemic relationship of adaptive and maladaptive personality aspects is then analyzed (Rozuel, 2005). The concluding section locates and examines a theme of pre-meditated, deliberate de-adaptation in canonical adult education literature (Lindeman, 1926).
Learning about injustice can reveal aspects of the learner’s identity that are complicit in legit... more Learning about injustice can reveal aspects of the learner’s identity that are complicit in legitimizing and reproducing injustice. Learning experiences are potentially transformative when their ethical consequences demand changes in aspects of the learner's identity. Mezirow's (1997) claim that learners often reintegrate with society on the learner’s own terms is rendered implausible by sociology (Goffman, 1959; Fanon, 2008). In order for a learner to reintegrate into society while still honoring the transformation demanded by a radical learning experience, the learner may require an (at-least) bifurcated form of integration, in which the old (essentially untransformed) identity reintegrates into capitalist society, while the new (transformed) identity integrates for the first time into counterhegemonic social networks (if any exist and are accessible) in which transformative learning experiences of the learner are respected and honored (Eneau, 2017, p. 171).
The interlocking pattern of ownership of the means of ideological production and the means of car... more The interlocking pattern of ownership of the means of ideological production and the means of carceral labor extraction in effect assures cinema will be loyal to the same institutions and power structures that support the prison industrial complex. Loyalty to easy profits made on the backs of poor Black communities easily overrides internal norms of art such as commitment to justice and truth. “Much like the prison-industrial complex, cinema is an institution called on to pull its weight as an apparatus for the accumulation and exchange of Slaves” (Wilderson 2010, 115). The propaganda apparatus of the settler colonial state is called upon to legitimize racist police practices that produce a steady, reliable supply of slave labor for profitable private prisons.
Neoliberal austerity policies make Black trans and trans of color lives vulnerable. Hegemonic dis... more Neoliberal austerity policies make Black trans and trans of color lives vulnerable. Hegemonic discursive formations of gender binarism and whiteness inflict additional vulnerability on trans of color minds and bodies by imposing what we call conceptual austerity on discourses surrounding gender and transness. Discursive regimes deployed under the banner of Marxism claim to offer an alternative vision to neoliberalism. These nominally liberatory discourses end up also inscribing a form of conceptual austerity, however: class reductionism. This paper repurposes arguments and methods from trans of color critique to resist class reductionism and attempts to articulate a more capacious intersectional analysis that can simultaneously account for oppressions based on race, gender, sexuality and class.
Colonizer psychiatry collapses the categories of procedural and ethical rationality and therefore... more Colonizer psychiatry collapses the categories of procedural and ethical rationality and therefore can’t admit the possibility of ethical virtuosity or supererogation. Colonizer psychiatry has precisely two fundamental ideal types: the normal (useful to capital) and the pathological (disruptive to capital). These fundamental ideal types admit of subtypes, but not of alternatives. Supererogatory states of seclusion are both opaque to philistine scientific observation and useless in the production of weapons and commodities. Colonizer psychiatry therefore finds no need to distinguish between suberogatory and supererogatory gestures of seclusion. Both are disruptive to capital.
The culture of white supremacy includes what Saidiya Hartman calls a “nexus of pleasure and posse... more The culture of white supremacy includes what Saidiya Hartman calls a “nexus of pleasure and possession.” Whites are free to enjoy their property, which of course includes their slaves. At the same time, enslaved Black people are compelled to dissimulate enjoyment of their bondage. The nexus of pleasure and enjoyment also has an epistemic component. If truth is not enjoyable, whites are free to choose something else. Both ethical and epistemic responsibility are subordinated to affect. The pursuit of happiness is never marred by concern with the plight of the slave. Afropessimism demands a challenge to the epistemic hegemony of affect, rescuing affectively uncomfortable but historically well documented truths from the oblivion of acquiescence to fragility.
Whiteness is ordinary, unremarkable, irrelevant, implicit, assumed, unnoticed. The unremarkabilit... more Whiteness is ordinary, unremarkable, irrelevant, implicit, assumed, unnoticed. The unremarkability of whiteness implies a postracial society where whiteness confers no special privilege. The unremarkability of whiteness also paradoxically shows whiteness has the special privilege of being unnoticed and unremarked. The unremarkability of whiteness implies whiteness is normatively privileged and at the same time normatively irrelevant, a contradiction even the whitest logic will have to concede. A tragic observation about contemporary discursive regimes intended to be liberatory —discourses such as trans studies, gender studies, queer studies, disability studies — is that the unremarkability of whiteness routinely passes as a normatively neutral assumption.
Gloria Anzaldúa characterizes a subject’s identities, her understandings of herself and her world... more Gloria Anzaldúa characterizes a subject’s identities, her understandings of herself and her world, in terms of narrative formation. The subject in oppressive cultures is expected to, and to a great extent often does, formulate her identity narratives by unconsciously locating herself within larger social narratives, oppressive narratives that she did not create or consciously consent to. Anzaldúa proposes a method of developing alternative narratives, in which subjects create their own identity narratives through a self-directed process. This process includes (1) dismantling oppressive societally-imposed narratives and (2) searching for narratives of liberation.
In The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (1915), Carter G. Woodson observes that slaveholders,... more In The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (1915), Carter G. Woodson observes that slaveholders, “believing that slaves could not be enlightened without developing in them a longing for liberty,” decide in the end to outlaw slave education. In The Mis-Education of the Negro, published eighteen years later, we find Woodson lamenting, “the Negro trained in ... literature, philosophy, and politics” is unable to put this knowledge to use because he is compelled to “function in the lower spheres of the social order” where this knowledge is useless.
When education succeeds in making the Negro think, says Woodson, this only makes him “malcontent.” Woodson here concedes wage slaves can’t be enlightened without developing in them a longing for liberty. But unlike in the case of chattel slavery, Woodson proposes that wage slaves avoid enlightenment to avoid this state of malcontentment. Woodson prescribes vocational education as pragmatic and disparages humanities as a mere source of discontent, reinscribing the perverse logic of slaveholders.
Weber’s description of rationally legitimate domination makes it clear that the conventional form... more Weber’s description of rationally legitimate domination makes it clear that the conventional form of rationality instantiated in legitimate domination does not coincide with ethical rationality (ES584). Insofar as the legitimacy of procedurally rational forms of legitimate domination depends on their pretensions to ethical rationality, Weber’s intervention ethically delegitimates rationally legitimate domination. “People with rigorous ethical standards” (ES587), “religious virtuosi” (ES542) and finally Weber himself, respond to this ethical delegitimation in at least three different ways:
(1) by attempting to overcome legitimate domination (revolution, reform);
(2) by attempting to flee legitimate domination (inner-worldly asceticism, world-rejecting asceticism, world-fleeing contemplation, disability); or
(3) by attempting to describe and document the perverse rationality of legitimate domination with unflinching detachment and scientific precision (pariah intellectualism).
This paper represents my attempt to document and understand these responses.
Weber’s description of rationally legitimate domination makes it clear that the conventional form... more Weber’s description of rationally legitimate domination makes it clear that the conventional form of rationality instantiated in legitimate domination does not coincide with ethical rationality (ES584). Insofar as the legitimacy of conventionally rational forms of legitimate domination depends on their pretensions to ethical rationality, Weber’s intervention ethically delegitimates rationally legitimate domination. “People with rigorous ethical standards,” “religious virtuosi” and finally Weber himself, respond to this ethical delegitimation in at least three different ways.
Kierkegaard's account of the epistemic effects of neighbor love shows how it successfully overcom... more Kierkegaard's account of the epistemic effects of neighbor love shows how it successfully overcomes obstacles to awareness, including limitations resulting from the lover's situatedness in ordinary worldly relationships, attitudes and commitments. Kierkegaard offers a rejoinder to accounts of moral knowledge which find epistemic subjectivity inescapably situated within a unitary relational community.
Readers of the New Testament who take 2 Cor 6:14-7:1 into account will be compelled to question t... more Readers of the New Testament who take 2 Cor 6:14-7:1 into account will be compelled to question the optimistic view that work is inherently virtuous, and develop a more cautious and nuanced conception of work. The market indiscriminately aggregates all consumer demand while stripping off accidental characteristics that might allow us to ascertain whether a demand is reasonable, charitable and just. Fulfilling demand therefore makes market participants complicit with consumers who make unreasonable, uncharitable or unjust demands. The fragment warns us not to allow ourselves to be so easily yoked into an economic system where every dollar is precisely equal to every other dollar, where righteous and lawless demands aren’t distinguished, where demands which, morally considered, are very unequal, are treated as equal.
Aristotle reasonably claims that in order to make right ethical choices, a mind must be trained t... more Aristotle reasonably claims that in order to make right ethical choices, a mind must be trained to competently employ the discourse (lógos) in which ethical questions are posed and discussed. This discourse must include predications of ethical qualities such as good, bad, just, unjust, courageous, cowardly, etc. In this paper we show how Aristotle distinguishes various senses of predication, and uses these distinctions to resolve aporias in ethical discourse. An impoverished form of ethical discourse incapable of predicating qualities is described. In an appendix, the question whether ethical discourse can be divided into specialized roles that work together to reach ethical decisions is raised and discussed.
An accountant assumes a dollar used to build a shelter for the homeless is precisely equal to a d... more An accountant assumes a dollar used to build a shelter for the homeless is precisely equal to a dollar used to build the fifth mansion of a billionaire. She must assume dollars of unlike origin and purpose are equal, or she wouldn't be able to sum her columns. What's worse is that an accountant can go through her entire life without ever being consciously aware she makes this assumption. Engineering, accounting, and all the other non-humanistic disciplines lack a medium of reflection rich enough to understand their own assumptions. They make assumptions. But they do so unconsciously. They lack the conceptual tools to bring their assumptions to consciousness. In his essay on the concept of criticism in German Romanticism, Walter Benjamin elaborates in great detail what is required for thought to achieve awareness of its assumptions. He finds in the German Romantics an idea for combining art with art criticism to create a medium of reflection rich enough to discover its assumptions. Benjamin's essay is obscure—I will argue, deliberately so. It makes stringent intellectual demands on the reader in an attempt to exhort her to independently work through the ideas presented, rediscovering them for herself. The present paper documents my own attempts to rediscover the medium of reflection Benjamin recommends.
Among the most urgent normative questions facing the intellectual leader in the present age is th... more Among the most urgent normative questions facing the intellectual leader in the present age is the question of how she should relate herself to the division of labor economy. Should she participate? If such participation is inevitable, is there some way she can participate without making herself into a merely partial human being? Because of the way today’s university is organized, the answer to such questions is already conceded before the study of normative questions has even begun. Philosophical inquiry itself is assumed to amenable to division of labor. Division of labor becomes part of the cognitive apparatus—an inescapable a priori judgment whose reality can no more be doubted than the reality of space and time. Or, as Marcuse puts it, “The societal division of labor obtains the dignity of an ontological condition.”
The classic texts of philosophy offer not merely knowledge, but also prescriptions and exhortatio... more The classic texts of philosophy offer not merely knowledge, but also prescriptions and exhortations. Their arguments are very often aesthetic rather than empirical in character. The Stoics present a way of life, for example, in the hope it will appear beautiful or noble. When we write philosophy today, on the other hand, we proceed as if our sole aim were to convey information as efficiently and succinctly as possible. When we read philosophy, we proceed as if our sole aim were to extract information as efficiently as possible. Seldom do we give our attention to the artful contrivances great thinkers have used to inspire in their readers the noble passion for truth and wisdom that allowed them to become great thinkers in the first place. Even more seldom do we attempt to produce any new such contrivances. In fact, the insipid academic writing style of our age often seems as if it were deliberately contrived to extinguish passion, or repel those who have it. We cultivate precision, but not passion, forgetting that both are requirements for a genuine philosopher.
“The wise man must not be ordered but must order,” demands Aristotle, “and he must not obey anoth... more “The wise man must not be ordered but must order,” demands Aristotle, “and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him.” In the real world we see unwise men give orders all the time. We see their orders obeyed. Must we wait for a better world with wiser rulers to fulfill Aristotle’s demand? Is Aristotle merely expressing a utopian dream? No. The example of Diogenes shows us that Aristotle’s demand can indeed be fulfilled by an individual philosopher, not in a future world, but right now, in this world, no matter how unwise its rulers. The wise woman will hear unwise rulers barking orders at her. But she will ignore them, and thus will not be ordered. If the less wise refuse to obey her, this doesn’t stop her from continuing to issue orders. She is a voice crying in the wilderness, asking an unwise society to find its way to wisdom.
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Papers by Peter Capofreddi
When education succeeds in making the Negro think, says Woodson, this only makes him “malcontent.” Woodson here concedes wage slaves can’t be enlightened without developing in them a longing for liberty. But unlike in the case of chattel slavery, Woodson proposes that wage slaves avoid enlightenment to avoid this state of malcontentment. Woodson prescribes vocational education as pragmatic and disparages humanities as a mere source of discontent, reinscribing the perverse logic of slaveholders.
(1) by attempting to overcome legitimate domination (revolution, reform);
(2) by attempting to flee legitimate domination (inner-worldly asceticism, world-rejecting asceticism, world-fleeing contemplation, disability); or
(3) by attempting to describe and document the perverse rationality of legitimate domination with unflinching detachment and scientific precision (pariah intellectualism).
This paper represents my attempt to document and understand these responses.
When education succeeds in making the Negro think, says Woodson, this only makes him “malcontent.” Woodson here concedes wage slaves can’t be enlightened without developing in them a longing for liberty. But unlike in the case of chattel slavery, Woodson proposes that wage slaves avoid enlightenment to avoid this state of malcontentment. Woodson prescribes vocational education as pragmatic and disparages humanities as a mere source of discontent, reinscribing the perverse logic of slaveholders.
(1) by attempting to overcome legitimate domination (revolution, reform);
(2) by attempting to flee legitimate domination (inner-worldly asceticism, world-rejecting asceticism, world-fleeing contemplation, disability); or
(3) by attempting to describe and document the perverse rationality of legitimate domination with unflinching detachment and scientific precision (pariah intellectualism).
This paper represents my attempt to document and understand these responses.