Martin Heidegger Saved My Life by Grant Farred
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Unthought Racism

Preparing for a situation or encounter before we are forced to confront it is the role of thought if I read Grant Farred correctly. As he says, “There is a crucial difference between the response produced by thinking and the response devoid of it…” But, as Martin Heidegger pointed out, “We do not know what thinking is.” And yet Farred insists “Martin Heidegger saved me because it is he who makes me, made me, think about what to say before I was called upon to say it.” To think about thinking is indeed a tricky business.

The point of Farred’s essay is to provide a thoughtful explanation of his confrontation with a middle class resident of his prosperous neighbourhood. Seeing Farred raking leaves in his garden, she asks this distinguished professor at a renowned university whether he would like additional work, presumably to do the same in her garden. Central to Farred’s account of this encounter is Heidegger’s concept of the Unthought and its very practical relevance to the issue of race.

What we casually call rational thought is actually a very irrational response grounded in a set of unrecognised and therefore unconsidered presumptions about the world and how it works. Uncovering these presumptions (one can hardly call them interests since they may simply be symptoms of neurosis or ignorance) before an encounter in which they are employed is the function of philosophy as I read Farred. Accordingly, “The only proper political response to the question that is presented without thinking, the question that is rooted in an objectionable politics, is to ‘speak’ thinking. It is to think before, long before, you are called upon to speak.”

The routine racism of the woman’s question to Farred (he a Black man doing manual labour in a well-to-do part of town) is generated by an immense cultural Unthought. Such a condition cannot be penetrated by rationality because it is its own rationality. It is probably not even accessible through psychological therapy since it isn’t bothersome to its ‘bearer.’ An angry or hostile response is only likely to reinforce racial presumptions.

Farred has in fact anticipated the woman’s Unthought. Prepared by his experience in apartheid South Africa as well as the bourgeoise United States, he has thought not only her Unthought but his own long in advance of his encounter with her. Farred recognises the collective characteristic of thought which often pretends to independence: “In thinking we stand, by ourselves, gathered into the thought of others, gathered by the thought of others, gathering others into our thinking. All the while our thoughts seek to gather others unto us.” Thus he is able to make a response which punctures her thinking (and his own), a provocation directed precisely at her Unthought without ever mentioning it. Farred simply replies, “Certainly, as long as you can match my university salary.”

I can’t claim to comprehend the nuances and subtleties of Heideggerian philosophy. Nor have I experienced the pervasive subtlety of racism. But I think I understand Farred’s point. Argument, in any of its forms, is inadequate to change minds. Thoughtful discourse of the kind he reports may indeed be an alternative. Preparing that “statement for the moment” by thinking about thinking could be just the tactic to pursue in combatting racism as well as the many other human ills.

Postscript: As I was reading Farred, this showed up in my newsfeed: https://apple.news/AyIeNoI53TJqOhOwPq...

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