1 According to this stereotype, Black men in particular are assumed to be dangerous criminals.

2 To consider the phenomenological experience of some Black men who experience fear and paranoia by white women, see Yancy Reference Yancy2016.

3 In putting forward these stereotypes, I am aware that even in my attempts to counter them, there is a risk of causing harm through their very positing. My hope is that the benefits of consciousness-raising might outweigh this risk.

4 According to this stereotype, Black women are assumed to be promiscuous, immoral, and sexually available.

5 Although the movement was popularized by Alyssa Milano, it was a Black activist from Harlem, Tarana Burke, who started #MeToo a decade earlier (specifically for women of color who were victims of abuse). More on the importance of this in the second part of section II.

6 See Morton and Paul Reference Morton and Paul2019 for why “epistemic grit,” which involves resilient reasoning, can sometimes be epistemically rational.

7 One might ask, how is “epistemically responsible” distinct from “morally responsible” or “socially responsible’? My answer follows Davis Reference Davis2018, 725–27, in claiming that although I am only interested in the epistemic to the extent it is salient for justice, focusing on this dimension makes clearer some relevant harms and skills that might otherwise elude us. For example, understanding how systems exclude insightful knowers from contributing to social meaning is important for any moral/political agenda, but it comes into focus best through epistemic terms. For more on epistemic responsibility and the relationship between epistemic justification and ethical justification, see Code Reference Code1987.

8 I first encountered the term from José Medina, who uses the phrase “affectively numbed” to describe being ignorant of the racial aspects of social experience (Medina Reference Medina2013, 210). My use is more general but includes and builds upon this idea.

9 My view is sympathetic and consistent with Rima Basu's and Sarah Moss's thesis on moral encroachment in which the epistemic status of a judgment or opinion can depend on its moral features (Basu Reference Basu2018; Moss Reference Moss2018). My view focuses on the emotional or affective dimension of judgments, but these features undoubtedly overlap with moral features at times.

10 Intersectionality is the idea that single-axis frameworks for understanding oppression are inadequate for addressing individuals or groups who simultaneously experience multiple forms of oppression; this is because those forms of oppression overlap and are interdependent. “The ‘me too’ movement was founded in 2006 to help survivors of sexual violence, particularly Black women and girls, and other young women of color from low wealth communities, find pathways to healing. … In less than six months, because of the viral #metoo hashtag, a vital conversation about sexual violence was thrust into the national dialogue” (Me Too 2019).

11 Importantly, Dotson defines an epistemological system as “all of the conditions for the possibility of knowledge production and possession” (Dotson Reference Dotson2014, 121). This notion of “possibility” is crucial because Dotson in her later work emphasizes the importance of remaining “neutral” with respect to whether an epistemic resource contributes to knowledge or ignorance when considering it for purposes of resistance. She distinguishes between “knowledge attribution” on the one hand and “knowledge possession” on the other: One can be attributed with knowledge without really possessing it and vice versa. The “epistemic” in “epistemic conditions” is therefore not (or at least not only) normative but concerns at least in part de facto practices of knowledge-attribution in a given society. For Dotson, inquiries into knowledge-attribution concern whether one would attribute some knower with knowledge capacities where knowledge capacity refers to “someone's real, imagined or potential capacity to . . . be epistemically competent with respect to some domain of inquiry . . .” (Dotson Reference Dotson2018, 476). Importantly, within epistemologies of ignorance, such as those informed by patriarchy or white supremacy, nondominant subjects are often wrongly assumed to lack such capacities whereas dominant subjects are often wrongly assumed to possess such capacities. As this is already well-trod ground, I assume rather than argue for this, instead exploring how processes of differential knowledge-attribution work within epistemologies of ignorance.

12 Testimonial injustice occurs when a listener makes a judgment of a speaker's credibility that is deflated. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when an aspect of one's experience is obscured from collective understanding because of social marginalization (Fricker Reference Fricker2007).

13 On Dotson's picture, testimonial injustice can be addressed through redistributing credibility, a resource already in use for knowledge-production, and hermeneutical injustice can be addressed through the introduction of new concepts.

14 In earlier work, Dotson says third-order harm results in “contributory injustice” (Dotson Reference Dotson2012), which is caused by willful ignorance.

15 Although addressing first- and second-order exclusion can be “reduced” to a redistribution of social and political power, on Dotson's view, resistance toward third-order exclusion is “irreducible” to these factors. This distinction does not mean, as Dotson assures us toward the end of the 2014 article, that these efforts can or should be sought in isolation from one another. Rather, it illuminates that there are different kinds of strategies and skills needed for resisting epistemic oppression (even if these efforts are often complementary).

16 I prefer my use of “epistemic” to “epistemological,” though the terms are often used interchangeably in the literature, insofar as the latter word technically refers to a “theory of knowledge.” “Epistemic” is thus more apt for referring to those epistemic practices, resources, and modes of resistance that constitute factors of resilience.

17 This does not mean, however, that alternative resources lie “outside” of the system in any ontological way. Given Dotson's definition of an epistemological system as “all of the conditions for the possibility of knowledge production and possession” (Dotson Reference Dotson2014, 121), it would be fetishizing at best, and dehumanizing at worst, to assume the resources generated by marginalized knowers exist outside of these conditions. I thus align myself with others who argue that many of the concepts and resources needed for epistemic resistance already exist within marginalized communities (Mason Reference Mason2011; Medina Reference Medina2011a; Pohlhaus Reference Pohlhaus2012; Dotson Reference Dotson2014). This makes sense, insofar as it is active exclusion of marginalized resources in contemporary society (rather than, say, isolation) that often constitutes the inadequacy of governing epistemic resources. This also illuminates why Dotson's epistemological system includes both conditions for knowledge-attribution and conditions for knowledge-possession (see note 11). This distinction was made after her 2014 article upon which my own analysis is based. It's therefore helpful to reread the earlier article in light of these later insights.

18 When Dotson says we have to go “outside” the set of resources, it's important to keep in mind that this “going outside” is an epistemic exercise, not an ontological one (see note 17). Dotson's use of Lorraine Code's distinction (drawing from Castoriadis) between the “instituted social imaginary” and the “instituting social imaginary” is helpful here (Code Reference Code2008). The instituted social imaginary “carries normative social meanings, customs, expectations, assumptions, values, prohibitions, and permissions—the habitus and ethos—into which people are nurtured from childhood” (Dotson Reference Dotson2014, 119). The instituting social imaginary, on the other hand, is the creative-critical activity of a society in which it exercises its ability to put itself into question.

19 It is helpful to see that a distinction between systems and resources is importantly at play in Dotson's account yet is not always obvious. The inadequacy of epistemic resources causes an epistemological system to be harmfully resilient. Furthermore, those resources primarily responsible are those that have a disproportionately greater influence on a system's workings, namely, “dominant epistemic resources,” or “governing epistemic resources.” The inadequacy of these resources, then, must be noticed for the sake of resisting resilience. Because of both the undue influence dominant resources enjoy throughout multiple areas of the social landscape (media, politics, education, and so on), and also because of the deep structural assumptions that accompany these resources, widespread uptake of alternative resources would require radically different practices (which follow different rules), or the kind of deep structural change third-order resistance requires.

20 This is related both to Medina's notion of “meta-blindness” in which one is unable to detect “one's inability to understand certain things” (Medina Reference Medina2011, 28), and to Mills's work in which he thinks about the obstacle to combating white ignorance (Mills Reference Mills, Sullivan and Tuana2007) for the sake of a new Black radical liberalism in the following way: “How can you critique what you don't even see?” (Mills Reference Medina2019).

21 Both Dotson and I are indebted to Mills's account of “white ignorance” in which he considers socially based mis-cognition caused by racialized patterns of domination and subordination (Mills Reference Mills, Sullivan and Tuana2007). In much of Mills's work, drawing from Marxism, he emphasizes the shortcomings of ideal theory, prescribing that we rather begin our theorizing from the nonideal, material conditions that we inhabit. Dotson suggests that inquiries into knowledge-attribution, rather than knowledge-possession (see footnote 11), heed this call for nonideal theory. “Real world dynamics and possibilities serve as the engine of Knowledge Attribution accounts” (Dotson Reference Dotson2018, 478).

22 I build here upon Medina's (Reference Medina2019) work on the desensitization of publics to the struggles of marginalized groups and upon Judith Butler's work on “ungrievability” (Butler Reference Butler2004; Reference Butler2016). According to Butler, within dominant epistemic frameworks some lives do not “count” as lives worthy of consideration because dominant subjects are rendered “senseless” or desensitized before them. This results in affective distortions that further violence against these lives.

23 Black, Latina, and (other) decolonial feminisms have developed robust literature on the importance of including embodied experiences for purposes of knowledge-production. See Ortega, Medina, and Pitts Reference Ortega, Medina and Pitts2020 for recent work in Latina feminism on the issue, and Rogers Reference Rogers2018 for a list of texts on the topic of “embodied epistemology.”

24 These resources include “resources of the mind, such as language to formulate propositions, concepts to make sense of experience, procedures to approach the world, and standards to judge particular accounts of experiences” (Pohlhaus 2011, 718).

25 See DiAngelo Reference DiAngelo2018 on “white fragility.’

26 See Medina Reference Medina2011b; Reference Medina2013 on “epistemic friction.’

27 See note 7.

28 Keeping these two analytics separate is important for intersectional considerations regarding white women's racial privilege, and Black men's gender privilege, or taking seriously their “sub-contractor” status (Pateman, Mills, and Mills Reference Pateman, Mills and Mills2007).

29 This example is building in assumptions about class that often, but not always, accompany white supremacy patriarchy.

30 Stereotypes often function as implicit biases (Brownstein and Saul Reference Brownstein and Saul2016) or “controlling images” (Collins Reference Collins2000), operating under the threshold of consciousness or explicit cognition. We should therefore pay attention to the way in which they function affectively despite the implicit bias paradigm being notoriously cognitivist. Insofar as stereotypes have both affective and cognitive content, then, we might consider them to be “cognitive-affective epistemic resources.” When false, they will be inadequate resources for producing epistemically responsible beliefs and judgments.

31 This will hardly be a new insight for critical race theorists like Charles Mills, who have argued that personhood cannot be taken for granted within a racist social world, or for many working within the tradition of Afro-pessimism (Mills Reference Mills2015; and see especially Wilderson Reference Wilderson III2020) which theorizes blackness using Saidiya Hartman's term of “ontological death,” as opposed to human subjectivity (Hartman Reference Hartman1997).

32 This claim builds upon Moss's thesis that “Opinions formed by profiling can be epistemically deficient in virtue of failing to constitute knowledge, or more generally, in virtue of lacking any number of positive epistemic features” (Moss Reference Moss2018, 180).

33 “It wasn't until the Center on Wrongful Convictions became involved that the Illinois Appellate Court ruled in 2012 that Rivera's conviction was ‘unjustified and cannot stand,’ and thus that the state would dismiss all charges. Rivera had served 20 years in prison” (Lackey Reference Lackey and McCain2018, 12).

34 Importantly, as Dotson points out, the different varieties of epistemic exclusions are not mutually exclusive. Although this is clearly a case of first-order epistemic exclusion, or testimonial injustice, it can also be a case of third-order epistemic exclusion, or of epistemic resilience (especially because the case is exemplary and not merely a one-off case, representing systematic governing assumptions about Black and brown men).

35 Relevant to the inability of whites to view Black subjects as subjects is Robin Bernstein's “racial innocence” (and the way nineteenth-century white girls, through “doll play,” learned to see black dolls [and black bodies] as incapable of experiencing pain) (Bernstein Reference Bernstein2011).

36 In his discussion of stereotyping, Lawrence Blum argues that “respect for other persons, an appreciation of others’ humanity and their full individuality is inconsistent with certain kinds of beliefs about them” (Blum Reference Blum2004, 262)

37 Or, Rivera is “framed” epistemically and juridically by this affective lens.

38 This is consistent with Mills's suggestion that white ignorance is the norm rather than the exception in systems of white supremacy. My analysis is also sympathetic with Mills's suggestion that affect is part of white ignorance (Mills Reference Mills, Sullivan and Tuana2007). In later work, he expands upon this idea by highlighting the fact that racialized interactions are bodily and corporeal, phenomenologically experienced, as much as they are political, economic, or cultural (Mills Reference Mills2019).

39 For a rich discussion of different ways the term intersectionality has received uptake in Black feminist theory, see Nash Reference Nash2019a.

40 Heeding the caution of Patricia Hill Collins (Collins Reference Collins, Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus2017), I resist claiming that Kimberlé Crenshaw “coined” “intersectionality” as it gives value to intersectionality only insofar as it has been recognized by the academy (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1989; Reference Code1991). Giving Crenshaw this kind of authorship erases the long history of Black feminist scholar-activists who have been theorizing about these phenomena for decades. Although Crenshaw uniquely and very helpfully packaged these ideas into a form that was more readily theorized and digestible in academic philosophy, theorizing on these themes remains indebted to a long history of thinking about multiple and interlocking oppressions. See, for example, Truth Reference Truth1851/1972; Combahee River Collective Reference Nicholson1974/1997; King Reference King1988; Collins Reference Collins2000; Reference Collins, Lott and Pittman2003; Harding Reference Harding2004. For more on how easy it is to perpetuate epistemic oppression when theorizing about it, even in our attempts to counter it, see Dotson Reference Dotson2012.

41 See Hammonds Reference Hammonds, Hammonds, Bobo, Hudley and Michel2004 for an analysis on how one can avoid reinstantiating hierarchical power dynamics when making legible experiences that have occluded dominant consciousness.

42 By “buzzword,” Kathy Davis means the term easily captures interests, and therefore enables one “to express familiarity with the latest developments in feminist theory, without necessarily exploring all the ramifications of the theoretical debates” (Davis Reference Davis2008, 75).

43 “Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going in all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic in an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes from all of them. Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in an intersection, her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination … but it is not always easy to reconstruct an accident: sometimes the skid marks and injury simply indicate that they occurred simultaneously, frustrating efforts to determine which driver caused the harm” (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1989, 149).

However, Crenshaw gives two different metaphors for depicting “intersectionality” (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991). The “intersection” metaphor is more popularly taken up, but the “basement” metaphor offers a hierarchical way of looking at marginalization that might be harder to subsume into white individualism:

“Imagine a basement which contains all people who are disadvantaged on the basis of race, sex class, sexual preference, age, and/or physical ability. These people are stacked—feet standing on shoulders—with those on the bottom being disadvantaged by the full array of factors up to the very top, where the heads of those disadvantaged by a singular factor brush up against the ceiling. Their ceiling is actually the floor above which only those who are not disadvantaged in any way reside. . . . Those above the ceiling admit from the basement only those who can say that ‘but for’ the ceiling, they too would be in the upper room. A hatch is developed through which those placed immediately below can crawl. Yet this hatch is generally available only to those who—due to the singularity of their burden and their otherwise privileged position relative to those below—are in the position to crawl through. Those who are multiply-burdened are generally left below unless they can somehow pull themselves into the groups that are permitted to squeeze through the hatch. As this analogy translates for Black women, the problem is that they can receive protection only to the extent that their experiences are recognizably similar to those whose experiences tend to be reflected in antidiscrimination doctrine” (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1989, 151–52).

See Carastathis Reference Carastathis2013 for more on how leaving the basement metaphor behind has resulted in an uprooting of the term from its origins in Black feminism and in an obscuring of the hierarchical power relations of Crenshaw's analysis.

44 Ehrenreich goes on to attribute this universalizing move to a “myth of equivalent oppressions,” which arises because of a “North American liberal culture on abstraction, formal comparisons, and myths of equivalence. Like color-blind, formal-equality-based definitions of discrimination . . . the notion that oppression is universal is an equalizing myth that threatens to obscure important structural inequalities in our society. Thus, some have criticized the ‘myth of equivalent oppressions’ as a harmful—although probably unintended—byproduct of intersectionality theory” (Ehrenreich Reference Ehrenreich2002–2003, 271). Collins notes the importance of retaining intersectional analysis on groups in order to avoid these “assumptions of Individualism [which] obscure hierarchical power relations of all sorts [my emphasis]” (Collins Reference Collins, Lott and Pittman2003, 205–30). For more on the relationship between Western individualism and color-blind racism, see Mills Reference Mills, Sullivan and Tuana2007.

45 According to the Fourteenth Amendment, gender-discrimination cases demand “intermediate scrutiny,” whereas race-discrimination cases demand “strict scrutiny,” requiring different burdens of proof for each (Wex Legal Dictionary 2017a; 2017b). The fact of these different levels of scrutiny (and thus different legal procedures) construct the law such that Black women and other women of color have to choose which variety of discrimination, race or gender, “relegates the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling” (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1991, 2).

46 This is not to deny that intersectionality's “buzz” hasn't also had many important positive byproducts, even if it illuminates some of the underexamined negative consequences of its popular uptake.

47 Collins notes that intersectionality's entrance into the academy was largely responsible for its epistemic appropriation: “intersectionality seemed to travel more smoothly through the academy when Black women and other subordinated social actors minimized forms of knowing that empowered them in social movement settings.… What remained was pressure to produce a depoliticized version of intersectionality that was individualized and fragmenting” (Collins Reference Collins, Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus2017, 118). For an interpretation of some of the racial temporal logics, both problematic and promising, that have accompanied intersectionality's institutionalization, see Nash Reference Nash2014.

48 For example, some subjects will appear as resistant actors in their use of the depoliticized term, increasing their credibility and social power in some contexts even when they are unknowingly (or knowingly) undermining the concept's intended aim. See Ahmed Reference Ahmed2012 for how the concept of “diversity” functions similarly as it travels in the university setting to increase a university's social power at the expense of marginalized staff and students.

49 See Burke Reference Burke2017. This does not mean that the originators of the term meant for “Me Too” to serve only Black women (even if they were initially concerned with women of their own race), but it would certainly be against their aims to exclude or only marginally include women of color in a movement using the term.

50 This list includes, among others, actresses Ashley Judd, Angelina Jolie, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Beckinsale, Rose McGowan, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mira Sorvino, Uma Thurman, Heather Graham, Annabella Sciorra, and Daryl Hannah.

51 This list includes, among others, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey, Louis C. K., Ben Affleck, Brett Ratner, James Toback, Matt Lauer, and Charlie Rose.

52 As of January 2020, charges have finally been brought against R. Kelly, decades after allegations started surfacing publicly. The mini-series Surviving R. Kelly has played a large role in increased public outcry and demand for justice (see Leung and Williams Reference Leung and Williams2019).

53 The lynching of Black men during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was often justified through false rumors that they had raped white women.

54 Note the same metaphor was also used in 1991 by Clarence Thomas, when he called hearings before the Supreme Court that concerned allegations against him of sexual harassment, as a “modern-day lynching.” This worked to further discredit and alienate Black victim Anita Hill from her Black community. See Stansell Reference Stansell and Morrison1992. Crenshaw also considers this issue of “dividing the race” when considering the potential allyship between Black men and women in the 2 Live Crew scandal (Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw and Meyers1993).

55 If in the case of “nude,” the inadequacy lay with the concept itself being structured in favor of white subjectivity, then in the case of intersectionality and #MeToo, it is dominant usage of the concept that begins to take on inadequate racist assumptions. This occurs through a universalizing gesture that obfuscates the differences these epistemic resources were meant to highlight. Crucially, I want to flag that many folks do not notice the inadequate ways “intersectionality” and #MeToo are employed to flatten difference in popular discourse. This is precisely because resilient systems operate in sneaky ways, absorbing resistant resources in order to avoid deep transformation. Inadequate usages of resistant concepts are thus hard to notice, especially when operating under the guise of resistance, such as when a straight white woman says “Yas Queen.” She may think she is expressing solidarity and inclusion toward queer POC culture by sharing and enjoying the sentiment, but all the while she obfuscates the expression's origin (in drag culture) and its resistant purpose to celebrate difference, in order to include herself. I do not want to claim every use of a resistant expression in dominant discourse is problematic, but rather that we may be able to more appropriately assess the harms of seemingly innocuous utterances through more appropriately considering the intentions and experiential origin by which these resistant resources are generated. Combating numbness is important for such a consideration. Some helpful questions might be: Am I helping to increase knowledge about marginalized experiences when using this concept? Have I made myself aware of the origin of this term, and about the differences between my experiences and the experience such a term was intended to highlight or uplift? How am I accounting for these differences and contributing to the original cause the term was meant to serve?

56 Another candidate for the dominant affective investment of numbness in this case is a distinct form of “white paranoia” in which failing to protect women of color, whether in antidiscrimination law or in the case of #MeToo, is justified by the need to avoid “opening the floodgates” on our legal system. In this case, those who are vulnerable are cast as parasites who could bring about the downfall of the state if their rights were protected, or their injuries were recognized. Such an affective state goes against the idea put forward by the Combahee River Collective who suggest that liberating the most vulnerable would liberate everyone (this is also implied by Crenshaw's basement metaphor [Crenshaw Reference Crenshaw1989; see note 43]). Rather, vulnerable populations fail to register as subjects with their own interests and perspectives to be protected, and rather register affectively as threats that need to be managed.

57 Note, a fourth option would be to not be numb toward any aspect of the experience under consideration, in which case she might be able to consider and respond to the testimony of sexual assault by Black women with both appropriate interest and horror. In this case, she would have countered any numbness created by her own trauma, and also by false stereotypes. In the final section, we will think about how measures of affective resistance might help make this fourth option more prevalent and feasible.

58 This is not to downplay the positive effects of #MeToo. In fact, the concept of epistemic misdirection builds into itself the idea of there being positive byproducts from appropriating an epistemic resource. It's just that these positive byproducts, such as the creation of a culture of more accountability, disproportionately benefit white women.

59 The argument that we need greater consideration of affect for resisting systems of oppression and epistemologies of ignorance is by no means a new argument or insight. Significantly, one reason many feminist scholars argue for embodied experience and emotions to play a more central role in our investigation into knowledge is because of a frustration with the norms of a “pre-social epistemology” in which there has been “a more rigorously individualist activity/practice than moral-political practices could be” (Code Reference Code, Kidd, Medina and Pohlhaus2017, 91). Collins points out that it was when intersectionality entered the academy that it became depoliticized. This is because a seeking of objectivity leads many scholars to downplay or even reject the epistemic value of personal experience, emotions, and affect, making academic investigations themselves “affectively numbed.” Or, as Patricia Williams articulates the point, governing academic norms have created “bad affective investments” through a guise of “neutrality” (Williams Reference Williams1991). Affective resistance thus might find a particularly good starting point in the institutions we inhabit as scholars (see especially Anzaldúa and Moraga Reference Anzaldúa and Moraga1981/2015 and Anzaldúa Reference Anzaldúa1987/2007 for influential examples of how affect can be incorporated and epistemically valued within “academic” texts.)

60 Affective resistance is thus an important part of developing Code's instituting social imaginary (see note 18).

61 For example, see Gould Reference Gould2009 and Brown Reference Brown2019 for discussions of pleasure; Cheng Reference Cheng2000 and Nash Reference Nash2019b for discussions of loss and melancholy; Lorde Reference Lorde1981 and Cooper Reference Cooper2018 for discussions of anger and rage; and others. Many of these texts focus primarily on affects experienced by marginalized subjects who are under conditions of oppression or resisting conditions of oppression, but my own view of affective resistance, and especially when thinking about disinterestedness, considers (also, and at times centrally) the affective dispositions of those who are dominantly positioned.

62 See Code Reference Code2015 for a discussion of the relationship between care and epistemic practices in which she argues reclaiming care is epistemically vital. Such a reclamation might itself be another form of affective resistance (a form that can be supported by the form of disinterested engagement I am advocating for in this section).

63 Also relevant is Hume's argument that aesthetic judgment requires the removal of biases and prejudices. See Hume Reference Hume, Green and Grose1874.

64 Of course, this is not to say that only white cis men have interests in maintaining white supremacy, or that all white cis men share this interest. If, as many argue, white supremacy harms everybody, including white people and men (even as it privileges them as a group), some white people and men could develop more sociable and resistant interests through, perhaps, something akin to standpoint achievement for privileged subjects (see Collins Reference Collins and Guy-Sheftall1977/1995). Furthermore, it is well-trod theoretical ground that marginalized subjects can share interests with more privileged subjects in maintaining white supremacy patriarchy insofar as doing so maintains or advances their own individual social power (see Du Bois Reference Du Bois1903/1995; Collins Reference Collins and Guy-Sheftall1977/1995; Mills Reference Mills, Sullivan and Tuana2007). These interests to protect the system, then, (or to protect one's own privilege within a system) are paramount for the flourishing of harmful stereotypes and their constitutive affective numbness, and also for the flourishing of harmful resilience. See also Bheegly Reference Bheeglyforthcoming for a discussion of the conditions under which judging someone by group membership is wrong.

65 Though his form of disinterestedness is much narrower in scope than my own account, precluding emotions and “charms” from entering into judgment. See Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1790/2000.

66 Literature in political and reparative aesthetics provides much food for thought on this matter. See Ranciére Reference Rancière2015; Best Reference Best2016; and Chanter Reference Chanter2017. Insofar as politics are inherently “interested,” on Kant's picture, a strict interpretation of disinterestedness could appeal only to aesthetic judgments, not political ones. However, insofar as aesthetic contemplation provides a kind of “preparation” for contemplating the moral law, on Kant's view, he might very well be sympathetic to the social and moral import of cultivating disinterestedness, even if he denies any strict application (see Kant Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1790/2000).

67 Disinterestedness seems like just the kind of capacity needed for Code's “instituting social imaginary” (see note 18).