Andreas-Johann Sorger

When examining the problem racism poses for philosophy, it is typically understood in one of two ways. On the one hand, the interpretive approach takes the racist statements of canonical philosophers like Hume, Voltaire, or Kant and subjects them to critical scrutiny to determine whether they have implications for their otherwise distinctly philosophical insights. On the other hand, the institutional approach locates racism in the institutional features and structures of academic philosophy, noting for instance the lack of diversity amongst both philosophy faculty and philosophy curricula. In my thesis, I argue that, although both approaches point out something useful about racism in philosophy, neither is adequate to fully capture the scope of philosophical racism; that is, the problem racism poses for the discipline. Interpretive approaches, I suggest, retain an individualist focus that unduly narrows the scope of inquiry, while institutional approaches neglect the conceptual dimensions to racism by focusing exclusively on institutional reform. Instead, I draw on recent developments in the philosophical literature to suggest that we should think of racism as being ideological in the pejorative sense. To make my case, I begin by bringing W.E.B. Du Bois’ reflections on racism into conversation with contemporary practicefirst accounts of ideology. My aim here is to articulate a Du Boisian account of ideology that can accurately track its historicised, functionalist, and interpretivist dimensions. I then pair this account with the methodological reflections of disciplinary historians, who understand academic disciplines not only in terms of the theoretical contributions scholars make, but also in terms of the academic practices that are enacted within a wider institutional nexus. The result is a theoretical framework that can analyse philosophical racism, by showing how a racist ideology can come to be embedded in the institutions of academic philosophy. This broadens the site of analysis of philosophical racism to include both conceptual and institutional dimensions, which I suggest can adequately capture the nature and scope of the problem.

The goal of this paper is to reconceptualise the relationship between politics and sporting practice with the aim of gesturing towards broad themes that a political theory of sport could explore. Many philosophical theories of sport, including the dominant mutualist view, are internalist: they suggest that there is some distinctive logic internal to sports that must feature in the best explanation of our sporting practices. Yet, in attempting to articulate this distinctive internal logic, mutualists quarantine sport from its wider context to understand sporting practice on its own terms. This methodological decision, I argue, invites the unwarranted assumption that sporting practice and politics constitute two separate domains bearing little to no relation to one another. Consequently, mutualism provides us with an impoverished understanding of sporting practice – especially in colonial contexts. Against this view, I use CLR James' writings to show how the internal norms and rules of cricket simultaneously perpetuate an oppressive social structure and articulate the beginnings of an emancipatory political project. This, in turn, has the potential to connect debates within the philosophy of sport to questions around resistance and oppression.