Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-04T08:11:18.064Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The People, Rhetoric, and Affect: On the Political Force of Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2012

MELVIN L. ROGERS
MELVIN L. ROGERS*
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
*
Melvin L. Rogers is Assistant Professor, Department of Politics, University of Virginia, 1540 Jefferson Park Avenue, P.O. Box 400787, Charlottesville, VA 22904 (mlr2d@virginia.edu). In June 2012, he will be Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Emory University, 561 S. Kilgo Circle, Bowden Hall, Atlanta, GA 30322.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In recent decades, the concept of “the people” has received sustained theoretical attention. Unfortunately, political theorists have said very little about its explicit or implicit use in thinking about the expansion of the American polity along racial lines. The purpose of this article in taking up this issue is twofold: first, to provide a substantive account of the meaning of “the people”—what I call its descriptive and aspirational dimensions—and second, to use that description as a framework for understanding the rhetorical character of W.E.B. Du Bois's classic work, The Souls of Black Folk, and its relationship to what one might call the cognitive–affective dimension of judgment. In doing so, I argue that as a work of political theory, Souls draws a connection between rhetoric, on the one hand, and emotional states such as sympathy and shame, on the other, to enlarge America's political and ethical imagination regarding the status of African-Americans.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 106 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 188 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aldrich, Virgil C. 1939. “An Ethics of Shame.” Ethics 50: 57–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Danielle S. 2004. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. [1983] 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Appiah, Anthony. 1992. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Aristotle. 2007. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. Kennedy, George A.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Balfour, Lawrie. 2011. Democracy's Reconstruction: Thinking Politically with W.E.B. Du Bois. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, Michael. 2005. Democratic Discourses: The Radical Abolition Movements in Antebellum American Literature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Bromell, Nick. 2011. “W.E.B. Du Bois and the Enlargement of Democratic Theory.” Raritan 30 (4): 140–61.Google Scholar
Canovan, Margret. 2005. The People. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Carby, Hazel V. 1998. Race Men. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cicero. 2001. On the Ideal Orator, trans. May, James M. and Wisse, Jakob. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. [1939] 1985. “Creative Democracy: The Task before Us.” The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953, Vol. 14, ed. Boydston, Jo Ann. Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Dred Scott v. Sandford. 1857. 60 U.S. 393.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. [1887] 1985. “To Secretary of Harvard University.” In Against Racism: Unpublished Essays, Papers, Addresses, 1887–1961, ed. Aptheker, Herbert. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 5–6.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. [1897] 1986a. “The Conservation of the Races.” In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan. New York: Library of America, 815–26.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. [1903] 1986b. The Souls of Black Folk. In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan. New York: Library of America., 357–547.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. [1903] 1986c. “The Talented Tenth.” In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan. New York: Library of America, 842–61.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. [1926] 1986d. “Criteria of Negro Art.” In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan. New York: Library of America, 990–1002.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. [1940] 1986e. Dusk of Dawn. In Writings, ed. Huggins, Nathan. New York: Library of America, 770–71.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. [1904] 1996. “On The Souls of Black Folk.” In The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Sundquist, Eric J.. New York: Oxford University Press, 304–5.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E.B. [1920] 1999. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Ferris, William H. 1913. The African Abroad, Vol. 1. New Haven, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse, and Taylor.Google Scholar
Frank, Jason. 2010. Constituent Moments: Enacting the People in Postrevolutionary America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Garsten, Bryan. 2006. Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gooding-Williams, Robert. 2009. In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-modern Political Thought in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. [1988] 1996. “Popular Sovereignty as Procedure.” Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. Rehg, William. Cambridge: Polity Press, 463–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contribution to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. Rehg, William. Cambridge: Polity Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jűrgen. 2001. “Constitutional Democracy: A Paradoxical Union of Contradictory Principles?” Political Theory 29 (6): 766–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Cheryl. 2005. The Trouble with Passion: Political Theory beyond the Reign of Reason. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hill, Adams Sherman. 1878. The Principles of Rhetoric and Their Application. New York: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Horsman, Reginald. 1981. Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. [1774] 2006a. “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” The Essential Jefferson, ed. Yarbrough, Jean M.. Indianapolis: Hackett, 3–17.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. [1776] 2006b. “Declaration of Independence.” The Essential Jefferson, ed. Yarbrough, Jean M.. Indianapolis: Hackett, 23–26.Google Scholar
Jefferson, Thomas. [1787] 2006c. Jefferson to Ann Willing Bingham. The Essential Jefferson, ed. Yarbrough, Jean M.. Indianapolis: Hackett, 159–60.Google Scholar
Kann, Mark E. 1999. The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
King, Martin Luther. [1963] 1986. “I Have a Dream.” A Testatment of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., ed. James, M.Washington. New York: HarperOne, 217–21.Google Scholar
Kingston, Rebecca, and Ferry, Leonard, eds. 2008. Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krause, Sharon. 2008. Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Maurice S. 2005 Slavery, Philosophy, and American Literature, 1830–1860. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, David Levering. 1993. W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race. New York: Henry Holt.Google Scholar
Lintott, Andrew. 1999. The Constitution of the Roman Republic. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marable, Manning. 1986. W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Radical Democrat. Boston: Twayn Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, Edmund. 1988. Inventing the People. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Morone, James. [1990] 1998. The Democratic Wish: Popular Participation and the Limits of American Government. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Morrison, Andrew. 1996. The Culture of Shame. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. 1978. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850–1925. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Näsström, Sofia. 2007. “The Legitimacy of the People.” Political Theory 35 (5): 624–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha. 2001. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Hear, Anthony. 1976. “Guilt and Shame as Moral Concepts.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77: 73–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posnock, Ross. 1996. Color and Culture: Black Writers and the Making of the Modern Intellectual. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rampersad, Arnold. 1976. The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois. New York: Schocken Books.Google Scholar
Reed, Adolph L. 1997. W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1998. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Kimberly. 1999. Dominion of Voice: Riot, Reason and Romance in Antebellum Politics. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Rogers. 1997. Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Rogers. 2003. Stories of Peoplehood. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomon, Robert. 2001. True to Our Feelings. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Solomon, Robert. 2003. Not Passion's Slave: Emotions and Choice. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. [1854] 2007a. “Address to the Legislature of New York.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Feminist as Thinker, eds. Du Bois, Ellen Carol and Cándida Smith, Richard. New York: New York University Press, 155–69.Google Scholar
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. [1860] 2007b. “Address to the Legislature on Women's Right of Suffrage.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Feminist as Thinker, eds. Du Bois, Ellen Carol and Cándida Smith, Richard. New York: New York University Press, 170–86.Google Scholar
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. [1878] 2007c. “National Protection for National Citizens.” Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Feminist as Thinker, eds. Du Bois, Ellen Carol and Cándida Smith, Richard. New York: New York University Press, 219–34.Google Scholar
Stepto, Robert. [1979] 1991. From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Tarnopolsky, Christina. 2010. Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato's Gorgias and the Politics of Shame. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez. 1990. 494 U.S. 259.Google Scholar
Valls, Andrew. 2010. “A Liberal Defense of Black Nationalism.” American Political Science Review 104 (3): 467–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, David. [1829] 2000. Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, ed. Hinks, Peter P.. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Bernard. 1994. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, James. [1787] 1911. “James Wilson in the Pennsylvania Convention.” The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, Vol. 3, ed. Farrand, Max. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfenstein, Eugene Victor. 2007. A Gift of the Spirit: Reading The Souls of Black Folk. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wolin, Sheldon. 1981. “The People's Two Bodies.” Democracy 1 (1): 9–24.Google Scholar
Yack, Bernard. 1996. “The Myth of the Civic Nation.” Critical Review 10: 193–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yack, Bernard. 2001. “Popular Sovereignty and Nationalism.” Political Theory 29 (4): 517–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zamir, Shamoon. 1995. Dark Voices: W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought, 1888–1903. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar