A random thought I've been having. So much of what our scholarship means is determined not only by the substantive arguments we make, but who we take ourselves to be talking/disagreeing with. The latter is often implicit. As someone who works on race I think this gets lost.
For instance, I've noticed a tendency on the Left to assume that anyone who deals with race must be a part of an ongoing conversation with DiAngelo/Kendi/1619 project. As if these figures determine the salient questions/presuppositions of the field.
As if one must have a fully worked out critique and justification for how what you're doing departs from theyre doing. Or else you must be implicitly cosigning it. No shade to those who do work on these things! But when I sit down to write Kendi doesn't live in my head rent free.
It doesn't even occur to me that these things are salient because I take myself to be part of an altogether different conversation with some settled assumptions and other open disagreements. In other words, I think most scholarship, for better or worse, has an idiom.
I think we get into a lot of trouble and confusion when we do not take the time to at least glimpse these different idioms before engaging. Or at least acknowledge they exist. And platforms such these develop whole ecosystems that deny these idioms, I think.
Ideally, I think it would be great for all of us to be curious about these different idioms and learning their questions. But objective time constraints etc. make it impossible to universalize this. I still think it would be a virtue to learn what other people care about and why.
I think this might make disagreements more robust and fruitful. Although I must admit that I, personally, fall short of this ideal of curiosity around scholarship idioms.
I still think it is important to not assume one immediately knows what is meant if a scholar uses "race" or "racial capitalism" or what have you. We are not all having the same conversations, but the times when we can bring idioms together and learn can be really amazing.
What I'm saying is that when I dunk on Heidegger I am deploying a specific idiom. But I do acknowledge that others most definitely exist
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