Lewis Gordon - Race Theodicy

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Lewis R Co rdo n

Race

Theodicy and the Norma tive

Emancipatory Challenges of Blackness

a

ace, as Sylvia W ynter argu es , is also a biod-

icy (Wynter 20 06 :14 2). By this, she m ea ns tha t

the theodicean grammar of the world in which

race was con stituted is also, we should u nd ersta nd ,

one about the negotiation of life and death. A m on g

its man y consequ ences, race is about in one se ns e

who lives and w ho dies. In an othe r sense , its nor-

mative significance leads to a rephras ing of y ho is

supposed to live an d w ho to d ie. '

heodicy l i teral ly m ea ns god's just ice.

From theo (god) and dike (justice), the word

em erges from a problem forged by expectations of

a good or benevolent, om niscient, and om nipo tent

deity. Such a bein g is pres um ed to be com mitted

to what is r ight—in some reasoning even more,

where the being itself s what is right an d good—

wh ich m ake s the em ergenc e of evil and injustice a

major problem. If the deity has the capacity to

eradicate evil, indeed, th e ability to have prevented

its emergence in the first place, why are there

manifestations of evil and injustice?

Th e p roblem raises a variety of vexing prob-

lems for all except perhaps the most extraordi-

nary of the faithful or the m ost naive am ong th em .

If the deity's benevolence is a necessary condi-

tion of i ts existence, th en the p resence of iniquity

The South tlantic Quarterly

112:4 Fall 2013

DOI 10.1215/00382876 -2345252 © 2013 Duke Unive rsity Press



ordon • Race Theo dicy and Emancipatory Challenges 727

means, from a systemic point of view, systematically dead. This dimen-

sion of theodicy, then, shifts as normative investment moves from knowl-

edge and society to life, from biology

{bio-logos

to

biodicy (life-justice). We

could call this the presupposition of inherently lived justification.

Such is not only the story of race but also the specificity of its modern,

Manichaean manifestation. That protorace had its origin in theological natu-

ralism brings these considerations to the fore. The world of theological natu-

ralism was, after all, one in which the theological and the natural were insep-

arable. There w s no supernatural in that world bec use the natural w s what

the deity produced. Thus, instead of the natural and the supernatural, pri-

mary distinctions

in

Western modernity,

there w s

the natural and

the

unnat-

ural. The latter simply meant that which deviated from the former. In medi-

eval Christian theology, the unnatural

w s

that which deviated from Christ,

which made it also evil or demonic. Among such deviations were two refus-

ing

groups:

Jews and M ushms.

The etymology of

race

points to this theological natura lism but with

odd considerations. The prototerm was

raza,

which referred to breeds of

dogs and horses, and then Jews and Moors.^ The complicated issue with

dogs and horses, as we know, is that the ir em ergence from their ancestral

species was through hum an involvement. Thus, their natural form was

heavily mediated or, under another interpretation, deviated. It would be

odd to consider dogs and horses unna tura l, however. That they are

domesticated animals signals a relationship between them and the hum an

beings they serve. Jews and Moors represented a deviation from the natu-

ral in a similar way: each supposedly part of G-d's creation, they

are,

never-

theless, deviations through supposedly human hubris. Comparing them

with domesticated animals, then, signaled also the social role they were

expected ultimately

to

play. Thus, in the reconquest, referring more to an

order of power than to historical fact, since there was not a prior Christian

conquest of Islam because the latter emerged after Christianity and w s in

fact the conqueror, the search for signs, markings, of unnatural origins

was am ong its governing activities well attested to by the Inquisition.

The question of origins was, however, among the considerations of

raza.

The term was not German, Latin, or Greek, languages that dominated

the northern Mediterranean northward, but Arabic, Hebrew, and Egyptian.

As

variation of such words as

ra

(Arabic),

rosh

(Hebrew), and

ra

(Egyptian),

words referring to head and beginning, its significance for origins was

clear. The Afro-Muslim conquest of Iberia, which created Andalusia, no

doubt offered distinctions premised on origins—a consideration not only



728 The South tlantic Quarterly • Fall 2 13

among the conquered Christ ians but a lso among the Muslims who were

transform ed the m ore their faith reached beyond w estern Asia.*

Th e Christian trium ph in G renada in 1492 meant, among m any things,

the ex pansion of a legitimation crisis, where orig ins beca m e a constant con-

sideration even as ships reached shores in which those who greeted them

were no t Ch ristian, Jew, or M uslim. The epistemic u pheavals that followed,

where justification shifted from the deity to the question of deities them-

selves, where accounting for the natural required nontheological sources, led

to new examinations of origins and correlative anthropologies: raza was

adopted, adapted, and transform ed into classification system s thr ou gh w hich,

over time , we have race. But along with th is transfo rma tion were also contin-

ued forms of rationalization. Thu s, as deviance was m arked by a shift from

normative centers, old theologically symbolic markers of the light and the

dark, Manichaean throughout, continued. There was no hope of a good deal

for the nig ht in this ta le /

The historical si tuat ion of the dark, which eventual ly became the

black, was m arke d before the d ebates betw een Bartolomé de Las Casas and

Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda about the humanity of Native American popula-

tions and their salvation both spiritually and biologically, through appeal to

he ath en ish an d darker sources from Africa (see H an ke 1974). T he recon-

qu est had already set the stage for the relationship w ith the black, but th is

blackness was one in which refuge could not be sought in the soul because

of its already betrayed pre sence in the color of skin. To mak e m atte rs worse,

the populations thus marked by blackness had no reason to have expected

such, which meant their inauguration into this schema, an epidermal one

as Fanon (1967) characterized it, were without knowledge of the logic that

erased th eir inn er or lived reality. A form of am nes ia w as necessary to tran s-

form people from a world in which they once saw them selves as the future—

as, in other words, their version of modern—to the Fanonian problematic

near the end of les damnés de la terre In reality, what am I? (Fanon 1991;

penu lt imate eh.).

This problematic of blackness is symbiotically linked to the world in

which Christendom was t ransformed into Europe, where Germanic and

Mediterranean Christians were transformed into whites. As there was no

reason to have considered them selves black or African prior to the impo si-

tions of these identit ies on them from kidnapping to Middle Passage to

enslavement, black existence became marked by the peculiarity of paradox

and melancholic displacement. The former was a consequence of having to

have always bee n w hat one beco me s. Th e melanch olia is to be en dem ic to a



ordon •

Race Theodicy and Emancipatory Challenges 729

world in wh ich on e is rejected—to b e hom eless in the ep och to which one is

indig eno us. Paradoxes are brou ght about throu gh displacement at levels of

identity, for to be black is no t to be; it is to be, as Fano n observ ed, in th e

zone of nonb eing. Th us, blackness is fundam ental to the formation of

Euro-

pean m odern ity as it is one that imagin es itself legitimate and pur e throu gh

the expurg ation of blacknes s. It is, in other words, the theodicy of Eu ropean

modernity.

Du Bois saw this problem in many ways. In one sense, he formulated

it as the problem of being a problem. This realization led to a schism in

wh ich a consciou sness of society and of not belon ging to it thr ou gh paradox-

ically bein g end em ic to it is one of Du Bois's great insigh ts. H e o utlined well

the theo dicean problematic of blackness as the ab sent term , even in its pres-

ence. This logic required apartheid behavior even at epistemic levels, as

Railand Rybalka (2010) correctly observed, and that consideration moved

more radically to the conditions for the possibility of thought itself (see also

L. R. Gordon 2006). In effect, i t demanded purification of theory, which

m ean t theory that behaves, theory that abides by the r ules, theory, in other

words, with limited vision. The reference to vision is no accident here, as

theory etymologically em erges from the Greek infinitive theorein ( to see ),

throu gh w hich we get theoria. As with theodicy the theological groundings

of this concept should b e evident, wh ich rem ind s u s of a basic insight of the-

oretical work as an attem pt to see w hat deities wo uld see. To see as a god—

indeed, as G-d—would be an extraordinary achievement for humanity,

w hich is no doubt why m uc h of early m od ern reflection on decoding th e uni-

verse took the form of deciphering the language of G-d. Where G-d is seen

as light, however, there is no d arkne ss, which m akes all tru th, all thou ght,

ultimately withou t contradiction. Truth and th oug ht obey G-d in this theo -

logical metaph ysics precisely becaus e the deity could com m an d their obedi-

ence.

In that conception, necessity and sufficiency meet because thought

and deed, from that which is om niscient and om nipotent, are one.

Epis temic theodicy takes the f i^rm, however , of demanding the

supervenience of consistency models of rationality. In effect, i t requires

rationalizing reason's obedience. A problem emerges, however, when the

scope of th is effort in clud es its own evaluation. It begs th e qu estion for ratio-

nality to assess its ow n con sistency, since it is consistency itself tha t is up for

evaluation. To evaluate consistency or rationality requires something more,

and that is reason. What, in other words, if reason doesn't behave.^ And what

if its delinqu ency is precisely bec ause, as an ev aluator, it m u st b e above, para-

doxically even, itself? T hes e kin ds of que stions reveal the c ontra diction s of




m etasy stem s, of any theoretical mo del that m us t evaluate itself But brought

down to earth in the context of these reflections, i t means addressing the

sides of theory that rationality hope d to sup press, and what are they other

than their darker sides? Theory, in other words, could articulate the light

only because its reach is also into its negations, namely, the zones of non-

being (for more, see Gordon 2010b).

Th is un der stan din g leads to rethin king som e key features of the em er-

gence of colonized epistemic practices. To identify them as colonized means

to adm it their suppressed term s, their hidde n or feared und ersides. The previ-

ous meditations on theory bring to the fore considerations of practices of sci-

ence as well. Here we are in a terrain s imilar to Du Bois's (1903) reflections on

potentiated double consciousne ss, where the contradictions of false particu-

larities unveil and enlarge the gram ma tical practices of know ledge—in mo re

prosaic language, the universalizing, as opposed to universal, activities of

exp andin g tho ugh t (for discussion, see Hen ry 2 005 ; and J. A. Gordon 2 007 ).

And made plainer: This means blackness, broader in scope, unmasks the

false security of wh iteness. Reality, in other words, is always bigger th an that.

Among the many instances of this unfolding is the constellation of

epistemic practices known as the human sciences. One fallacy is the ten-

dency to treat thes e sciences as pure, wh erein their com pleteness is dem -

onstrated and then they are methodically applied to h u m an beings.^ W hat

is m issing is the un der stan din g that hu m an being was already racially

inflected t hr ou gh the presup position of epistem ic practices prem ised on

normative whiteness. The human sciences emerged, after all , out of the

question . What is man?^ But as we have seen, that question em erged thro ug h

encounters with the extraordinary and the different . When a presumed

h u m an we m eets them, interrogat ion emerg es on the quest ion of

wh ether we are they. This rup ture leads to me ditations on the question

of stan dard s by which we are dete rm ined as who or what we are and they

are the same for what they are. This identity question, however, leads to fur-

ther meditations on those standards, and in them is the additional problem-

atic of what is a h u m an being (for m ore, see Gordon 2onc). This philosophi-

cal anthropological question, if we will, is rendered more difflcult by the

epistemic upheavals that emerged from a collapsed theological naturalism.

Where necessity no longer reigns as a god, where idea does not mean exis-

tence, where the human being must take hold of the responsibility for what

is seen (secular theory), the possibility of wh at to becom e is the me taphysical

and epistemic investment in no less tha n the m ode rn problematic

oí free om

in an epoch conditioned th rou gh and th rou gh by the presuppo sition of racial



ordon • Race Theodicy and Emancipatory Challenges 731

difference. In blackness, in other words, emerged three conditions of mod-

ern thought itself—namely, philosophical anthropology, freedom, and the

justificatory practices of both (see Gordon 2010b, 2008).

Th e em ergence of the first is already outlined and un derstood thro ug h

the historical reality of systems denying the humanity of whole groups of

h u m a n b eing s in the first place. Such denial, contradictory in term s (because

it relies on the suppo sed no nhu m anity of some hu m an groups, of putt ing

outside of human relat ions that which depends on human relat ionships),

inevitably leads to the effort to force behavior on human subjects through

epis tem ic an d political acts of closu re. The pro blem , however, is tha t a closed

hu m an being, a hu m an being without possibi lity, is not properly a hu m an

being. ' Freedom, then , becam e an intim ate condition of h um an exemplifi-

cation. As symbiotic, the two faced legitimating ques tions, and th us the jus-

tificatory practice— is black ness justifiable?— em erged (see, e.g., Go rdon

2 0 0 0 :

ch.

1).

I have elsewhe re called this th e m etacr itique of reaso n p recisely

becau se of the black side of tho ug ht p rem ised on contradictions of reason

(see Gordon 2010b). A Fanonian allegory is perhaps useful here. In Black

Skin

White Masks

Fano n (1967: ch. 5) observed th e fiight of reaso n w he n th e

black enters the roo m . Th e black could force reason's obedience, bu t this

will no doubt be unreasonable. But reason's fiight as he reached out to it is

also unreasonable. The black faces, in other words, the nightmare of unrea-

sonable reason. Barred from the u se of force, th e only alternative is to reason

with such (unreasonable) reason (see Gordon 2oiid). This reasoning, if we

will, is the co ntinued bu rde n of blacknes s.

Although these refiections pertain fundamentally to the epistemic

challenges of blackness, I do not thin k they are radical eno ugh . O ne presu p-

position of decolon izing th e ep istemic c onditions is that it will lead to a form

of norm ative cath arsis. Th e pres um ptio n is that a form of false

knowle ge

is

sequ estering the k inds of responsible activities n eeded to think and act better,

and by the latter I me an at least ethically an d justly. Th ese n orm ative term s

are often presumed as prisoners behind European-nurtured epistemic walls.

W hat if there is another layer of imp risonm ent? W hat if the p resu m ed nor-

mative resources to be unle ashe d from the p uttin g aside of epistemic infelici-

ties persist at a more radical level—that

is,

at those of the n or m s themselves?

In his critique of European colonialism, Aimé Gésaire (2000: 41)

raised a similar concern w hen h e argued that what transpired in World War

II was not anom alous but instead was a manifestation of the actual values

Eu ropea ns lived in the colonies, namely, Hitlerism (see also M aldonado -

Torres 2 0 0 8 b : ch. 1). It was no t only tha t E uro pea n co lonialism actively




fought against the hu m an ity of colonized subjects bu t also that the mod es or

techno logies of colonization were expressions of Europe itself That being the

case, Césaire's analysis of what emerged on the European continent was sim-

ply its value system tu rn ed inward. H is argu m en t was not that there w eren't

good thin gs about Europe. As a h u m an com mu nity, it also had bad elem ents,

and as those were pushed outward to the colonies (in theodicean language,

outsid e of the god), they eventually spilled over into a vengeful re tu rn .

Césaire identified a problem later echoed by Fanon in his encomium

for peop le of what is today called th e global South to look beyond Europe for

inspiration, develop new concepts, and set afoot a new humanity. The con-

ceptual question alerts us to the epistemic challenge, but Fanon's praxis

de m an d ( set afoot a new hu m an ity) spea ks to a task at th e level of lived

reality. Even more. Fanon earlier in the same passage encouraged going

beyon d the Greco-Latin ped estal of Eu ropean values (see Fanon

1991:

ch. i

and conclusion; for discussion, see Gordon 2010a). While proponents of

those values mig ht attempt to defend them as human

v lues

or

univers l val

ues this n orm ative critique question s suc h an assertion on a par with that of

double consciousne ss an d potentiated double consciousness. Is it not an other

case of European particularity asserting itself

a s

h u m an universality? And

even more, as we saw in the philosophical anthropological question, isn't

part of a radical crit ique the question of privileging one group of human

beings as the h u m an in the first place?

We are on familiar terrain. For as with the theological and epistemic

questions, the normative one faces the problem of theodicean grammar as

well. Are the norms for which many of us are fighting in the name of, say,

racial justice or liberation from antiblack racism free of normative coloni-

zation even where they may be so at an epistemic level? Isn't it presumptu-

ous to think that the decolonization of knowledge has the same norms as

its consequence?

We do already have a clue on this potentially vexing problem. Black-

ness,

after all, as the und ers ide of theory, is a relational concept (see Gordon

2010b). To thi nk of blackness m ean s always to imag ine it in relation to som e-

th in g else, since to do so is to establish at least a phenom eno logica l relation-

ship of thought to its object or subject (Gordon 2010b; see also Gordon

2011b). This basic relationship offers the critique of the theodicean one,

where the role of a god in effect elim inate s th e rest of the world by beco m ing

an exclusive domain. It requires being without an outside and thus being

outside o f rel tions w ith anything else. The distinction of being-in-relations ver-

sus nonrelationality raises a normative difference since blackness, and its



ordon •

Race Theodicy and Emancipatory Challenges 733

relatioriship no t only to the in clude d bu t also the excluded, prom ises an ever-

widening normative range.

An exam ple of this difference is what we could call justice talk. Th is

activity is often done as if it is all-encom passin g but insufficiently add resse d.

Thus, there is always the search for justice as though every normative

arrangement of social institutions has simply fallen short of i ts virtue, as

John Rawls

(1971:

introduction) esp oused thr ou gh his claim of justice as the

prim ary virtue of institutions. Th is pres um ption works, of course, if justice

were simply a term already present in every h um an com m unity and simply

standin g within the n orth ern European tradition of thou ght as a term trans-

latable into its correlate in other languages. But translatability often begs

m any im po rtan t question s of h u m an difference. It could not only be the case

that justice was not translated bu t in fact imp osed bu t also tha t its scope,

even where translatable, is part of a smaller no rmative field within t he frame-

work of the n on-E urop ean group to which it is posed. If this is correct, th en

the pro pon ent of justice ha s the task not only of un de rsta nd ing what is com-

m on about justice across h u m an com m unities b ut also what could be learned

beyond justice across the m as well. W here justice is asserted in a theodicean

way, this is a terrifying tho ug ht, as i t req uires looking at the u nd ers ide of

justice only as injustice instead of w hat may be right or good beyond

justice.

Race, theodicy, and normativity, then, pose special questions for our

age,

especially in terms of challenges raised by blackness. The last, for

instance , has a bad habit of dem on strating societal, scientific, and norm ative

contradictions. Blackness, constantly posed as illicit appearance, m ean s that

hopes for justice in a system premised on licit appearance leads not only to

contradictions bu t also to the m ainte nan ce of exclusion in the name of justice.

In the realm of science, there was the presumption that science is correctly

implemented through the exclusion of

race,

particularly b lackness. The cri-

tique is the sam e as on th e societal level: it is a theodicy th at elides the sym-

biotic foundation of i ts own system. The human sciences, for instance,

emerg ed out of wo rries and en counters w ith hu m an difference. Instead of

bad science prod ucin g race, it was, in other words, race that produced hu m an

science, since it required a meditation not only on the human but also the

r lly human. I have outlined som e of the no rmative problem atics in term s of

justice, but there is more to consider, for the normative dimensions of what

it means to be human also affect the conditions of appearance and other

norms such as those of violation and violence. If one is not supposed to

appear, then one ha s violated a no rm by doin g so (see, e.g., Gordon 2012).



7

he

South tlantic Quarterly • Fall 2 13

Blackness, then , is a challenge at the heart of what is to be done as

humanity refiects on how it is bound to its subsequent generations, how,

that

is,

it is bound to

itself

This binding, the hallmark of religiosity, raises

the question as

well,

in

a

secular age, of the extent

to

which religiosity itself

as

a

disavowed condition

is

also

a

blackened one. These refiections at levels

of knowledge and value, the separation of which

hope has been shown to

be neither neat nor even viable, I also hope will be of some use as we con-

tinue to refiect on the continued significance and future of things black.

Notes

To Sylvia Wynter, with continued admiration and appreciation.

I Th is is famiUar to anyo ne who reflects on racism and genocide. For critical disc us-

sion in these terms, see Feder 2008; Sheth 2009; and Gordon 2oua.

2 For readers wo nde ring about this expression,

G-d.

Th e answe r: I 'm in the Jew ish

ca m p and su bscr ibe to the logic of what is involved, includin g the h ubr is, of referring

to the ineffable or, at least, that which shouldn't be fully written or uttered.

3 For discu ssion , see, for exam ple, Gabriel

2011;

and ¿i i ek and Gabr iel 20 0g .

4 For discussion; see Gordon 20 08 ; and compa re also Gordon 20 04 .

5 See, e.g., Seb astian de Co varr ubia s Oro zsco (1611), who in his Tesoro

de la lengua.

explained the term as pertain ing to the caste of purebred ho rses, which are marked

by a bran d so that they can be recognized Raza in lineages is m ea nt negatively, as

in hav ing some raza of Moor or Jew (quoted and translated in Nirenberg 2 00 7: 79 ).

6 Literature on this subject is vast. In addition to Greer, Mignolo, and Quilligan 200 7, see

Mignolo

2003;

Davis

2003;

and Van Sertima 1992. Com pare also Gordon 2 00 8: ch. 1.

7 In addition to Gord on 20 08 , see also Go rdon 1995b; Baltazar 1973; Migno lo

2003 ,

2012;

and M aldonado-Torres 200 8a.

8 For disc uss ion of this fallacy, see Gordon 2 0 0 0 : ch. 4; J . A. Gordo n 2 00 6 ; and

Rybalka 2010.

9 See Fouc ault 1971 for a m agi steri al study of this que stion and the form ation of the

human sciences , and compare Wynter 2006 and Bogues 2006.

10 For mo re, see the discus sion of epistem ic closure Gordon 1995a: ch. 3.

11 For m ore on this problem and formulation, see Gordon 2013.

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C o p y r i g h t o f S o u t h A t l a n t i c Q u a r t e r l y i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s a n d i t s c o n t e n t

m a y n o t b e c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e c o p y r i g h t

h o l d e r ' s e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . H o w e v e r , u s e r s m a y p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l a r t i c l e s f o r

i n d i v i d u a l u s e .

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