The Center Must Not Hold: White Women Philosophers on the Whiteness of Philosophy

CMNH is an important step in trying to dislodge whiteness as a transcendental norm. It prompts us to enact critical practices in doing a kind of philosophy that builds up an anti-racist world. One of CMNH”s extraordinary strengths is that it is infused with innumerable non-traditional, often obscure, culturally and historically rich examples….It stands out from and is a valuable contribution to contemporary feminist scholarship and critical race theory and proves to be an important resource for undergraduate and graduate students.

How can intelligent, well-meaning lovers of wisdom become so unwise? In The Center Must Not Hold, George Yancy brings together contributors who confront this urgent question with candid, thoughtful analyses of their own whiteness, the whiteliness of Philosophy and the pitfalls of anti-racist and feminist theorizing. Let us listen to these white women allies in our quest to create self-reflective, inclusive, and coalitional philosophies so as to destabilize the reign of whiteness in a discipline that professes not only the love of wisdom but also the love of justice. — Mariana Ortega, Professor of Philosophy, John Carroll University

With rare exception, philosophy―even feminist philosophy―has remained cool toward the critical analysis of race, racism, and racial privilege. In this powerful, demanding, and insightful volume, women philosophers unflinchingly tackle the discipline’s refusal to interrogate its discursive practices, its silence, its more or less conscious collusion in the construction of ‘whiteness.’ This work breaks new ground in its challenge to all who need and love and do philosophy. — M. Shawn Copeland, Boston College

The authors of these chapters demonstrate the necessary philosophical expertise to qualify the book as a major source of knowledge production on the structural components of whiteness. Its major strength lies in revealing how sources of resistance to the whiteness of philosophy as an academic discipline can indeed be found by way of white subjectivities. White women philosophers” desire to open their discipline to the work of people of color attempts to revise nothing less than Western hegemonic racialized gender discourse. In this respect, The Center Must Not Hold is a major contribution not only to philosophy and race studies, but also to critical whiteness studies, as it matures in the second decade of the new millennium.

Barbara Applebaum is professor in the Department of Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University.

Jessica Krim is associate professor, chair, and secondary education program director at Southern Illinois University.

Berit Brogaard is cooper fellow, professor of philosophy and director of the Brogaard Lab for Multisensory Research at the University of Miami and professor II at the University of Oslo.