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How to Become a Philosopher from the (dis)Comfort of Your Own Home

2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/19446489.17.2.02

1944-6489

Sunny Williams Heenen,

Misinformation and Its Impacts

Gun Violence Has Been On The Rise again lately. Trapped indoors, we had enjoyed a long period without it. People were dying from something else.We're all always dying, of course. Heidegger describes us as being-toward-death (Sein-zum-Tode). Each of us is only traveling in one direction—toward the end. That end has snuck up on hundreds of thousands of people over the last fifteen months. But there was a particular end that resonated with me; it was George Floyd's death that transformed me into a philosopher.When we received word that The University of Texas at Dallas campus was officially closing in recognition of the pandemic, I was pursuing a PhD in Literature and teaching an undergraduate writing course. The lockdown was expected to continue for two weeks, so UT Dallas simply extended Spring break, and we reckoned we'd all be back on campus shortly. I never could have expected that three of my life's biggest changes were looming on the murky horizon. The murk is actually a dangerous cloud of COVID particles, the future whispered conspiratorially. But I couldn't see it.In those two weeks of lockdown, it was becoming increasingly clear that we would spend the rest of the semester teaching and studying virtually. As an instructor, I began learning how to utilize various online instruction tools and platforms. I was only worrying about the basics, because this was temporary, and because I'm a bit of a Luddite, that rare type of “elderly millennial” who believes technology is ultimately harming us. At least, I used to believe that. You will be teaching online for the next seventeen months, the future whispered conspiratorially. But I couldn't hear it.When you help to run literary magazines and honor societies on your campus, there's a lot of free food popping up everywhere you turn. In quarantine, the food isn't free. But there is a benefit to this: you get to choose your food, and I was finally able to stop choosing donuts. It's only a tiny tumor, but the doctors kept recommending a plant-based diet as one of my treatments. What better time to try it than a short two-week stint at home? See if I like it; go back to the donuts when campus opens up again. You will be a vegan forever, the future whispered conspiratorially. But I couldn't taste it.When he was murdered, I couldn't watch the video. I read a transcript, and it was more than I could bear. By the time people were marching in the streets in protest, I had been in quarantine for three months. The sadness and anger I felt were overwhelming. Sitting inactively in the comfort of my own home while all of this was happening was uncomfortable, discomforting, unheimlich. I wanted to march too. But courage is something I have only had when forced to have it, like the time some guy tried to steal my mother's purse, and I punched him in the face.My mother married a cop when I was 12 years old. He used to barge into the bathroom when he knew I would be naked. He never touched me though. He touched another person instead, one night when he was out on patrol, and he told her that if she didn't sleep with him, he would plant cocaine on her and arrest her. She refused the proposal, got arrested, and had the courage to fight him in court. She won, and he lost his badge. I don't know how she won. No one wins against cops. What happened to George Floyd didn't surprise me at all.But it changed me. Feeling like a coward for avoiding the protests, blaming it on the tumor, a bona fide pre-existing condition, I wondered what else I could do from my couch. I didn't march. I didn't make much of myself in quarantine, honestly. I didn't record two albums, like Taylor Swift did, or produce a comedy special highlighting isolation, like Bo Burnham did, or run for president, like Kanye West did. I didn't work on any of the three books I've started. But I donated money from my small teaching salary to bail funds for the protesters. When the election was nearing, I signed up for calling banks to help voters get registered. I suppose I could have spent more time arguing for racial equality with conservatives on the Internet, but arguing with Heidegger is far more productive. (Both situations involve Nazis, of course.)Mostly, I listened, and I read.I listened when Gloria Anzaldúa lamented that “[i]nstead of surreptitiously ripping off the vital energy of people of color and putting it to commercial use, whites could allow themselves to share and exchange and learn from us in a respectful way” (Anzaldúa 20). I listened when the beloved and belated Charles Mills explained that “[w]hite self-conceptions of identity, personhood, and self-respect are then intimately tied up with the repudiation of the Black other” (Mills 58). I listened when Darren Walker said that “[w]hite Americans need to hear that race is a problem from white Americans before they actually believe it” (Carlos Watson Show). I listened when W. E. B. Du Bois declared that “[w]hiteness is the ownership of the Earth, forever and ever, Amen” (Du Bois 45).What we saw in the cop who murdered George Floyd was whiteness. Not as an identity, but as a belief in an archaic ideology that privileges, excuses, and uplifts the white “race” as “civilized,” while incessantly proving otherwise. Whiteness is a hegemonic system of societal traditions that have always allowed this kind of treatment toward people of color or marginalized peoples. Whiteness has always “Othered,” but difference is not inferiority; difference should be celebrated. Hierarchical social perspectives based in whiteness, which promote division instead of embracing difference as power, must be dismantled. As a person who has benefitted from many of the systems of this white franchise, I felt called to play a part in its dethroning. If it's true that white people will only listen to other white people, I had to be the one to listen to people of color and then empathetically and effectively convey those truths to white people. Somehow.Soon, I noticed that this self-proclaimed literature major, this person with a BA and an MA in literature, was not picking up fiction anymore. Many delightful novels and poetry volumes stared back at me from my overflowing bookshelves, reminding me that I'd promised to read them this summer, but I was betraying them. Instead, I was collecting books by Fanon and Anzaldúa and Yancy and Davis and Sullivan and hooks in huge piles all over my apartment. I spent $1,657 on books in 2020, according to my tax forms. (Thank you, insurmountable suffocating student loans.) I felt called to examine identities and how they are formed from a Western history of social and political dominance. I felt called to learn how we ended up here and how we might change direction. I felt called to investigate the meaning of life, as experienced by people of color. I needed philosophy. I ached for it. I devoured it. Sometimes, I made a little noise, like when you smell vegan banana bread in the oven.Contrary to popular belief, literature and philosophy are, indeed, fellows. I wasn't starting from scratch in the Summer of 2020. My interdisciplinary background featured a semester as the editor for the Africana studies journal at California State University, Northridge, an extensive list of courses in postcolonial studies, and, most relevant for philosophical purposes, a distinct focus on critical theory and feminism within my years of literature studies. In addition, I grew up in a small rural town in East Texas. So race had always been on my mind, for better or for worse, and I had been angry at the capitalist white supremacist patriarchy for a long time. But now, I was furious. And fury ignites action. And maybe even courage.By the Fall semester, I went to the head of the Humanities Department at UT Dallas and told him that I wanted to study philosophy. I had meetings with the head of the Philosophy Department (who is now my dissertation advisor), and there were endless forms, but with a little convincing, they granted my wish. It has been strange to find my calling in such a delayed fashion, and in such heartbreaking circumstances. I will forever use my voice to speak out against injustice, but more importantly, I will forever be listening and learning, and then teaching. You are a philosopher, the future whispered conspiratorially. And I can feel it.