THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX: ON VIOLENCE, RACISM, AND MOURNING by ALFRED ...

181 Pages·2012·0.79 MB·English

THE CASSANDRA COMPLEX: ON VIOLENCE, RACISM, AND MOURNING

by

ALFRED FRANKOWSKI III

A DISSERTATION

Presented to the Department of Philosophy
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

June 2012
DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE

Student: Alfred Frankowski III

Title: The Cassandra Complex: On Violence, Racism, and Mourning

This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Philosophy by:

Naomi Zack Chairperson
Theodore Toadvine Member
Alejandro Vallega Member
Michael Stern Outside Member

and

Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research & Innovation/Dean of the
Graduate School

Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School.

Degree awarded June 2012
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© 2012 Alfred Frankowski III

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DISSERTATION ABSTRACT

Alfred Frankowski

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Philosophy

June 2012

Title: The Cassandra Complex: On Violence, Racism, and Mourning

The Cassandra Complex is a work in the traditions of critical philosophy and
psychoanalysis. In The Cassandra Complex, I examine the intersection of violence, racism,
and mourning. I hold that analysis of this intersection gives birth to a critical view on the
politics of memory and the politics of racism as it operates in its most discreet forms. What
makes violence discreet is that it escapes identity or is continually misidentified. I call that
structure of violence that escapes being identified as such “White violence” and argue that
this structure of violence undermines our normative ways of addressing racist violence in
the present. This creates a continual social pattern of misidentification, mistaken memory,
and mistaken practices of thinking about the violence of racism, both past and present. The
present form of this misidentification could be called post-raciality, but it is specific to how
we understand and remember our own history of anti-Black violence. I argue that post-
racial memory produces memory only to facilitate forgetting and thus is only seen as a
social pathology in the public sphere. The term “Cassandra Complex” provides an identity
for the type of social pathology that appears at the critical edge of political discursivity.
From the analysis of this social pathology, I argue that aesthetic sorrow, allegorical
memory, and a sublime sense of mourning disrupt the normative functioning of the social
pathology. Indeed, I argue that aesthetic sorrow makes the present strange by making the
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politically unbearable aesthetically unrepresentable. This sense of loss constitutes its own
history, appearing first as an aesthetics of anesthesia, then as a memory that is also an
amnesia. Thus, I hold that a robust notion of allegory can be translated into the public
sphere as a way of exposing the degenerative effects of post-racial memory. Moreover, I
hold that allegory allows for a social analysis of those political conditions that make public
that which has gone silent. I argue that an understanding the political significance of that
continual movement of silence is the task of understanding the present form of violence in
the post-racial.

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CURRICULUM VITAE

NAME OF AUTHOR: Alfred Frankowski III

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:

University of Oregon, Eugene
San Jose State University, San Jose, California

DEGREES AWARDED:

Doctor of Philosophy, Philosophy, 2012, University of Oregon
Master of Arts, Philosophy, 2005, San Jose State University
Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy, 2002, San Jose State University
Bachelor of Arts, Psychology, 2002, San Jose State University

AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Race

Aesthetics and Political Philosophy

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Philosophy Department, 2011-2012.

Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Humanities Program, 2009-2011

Graduate Teaching Fellowship, Philosophy Department, 2006-2009

Teaching Assistant, Philosophy Department (SJSU), 2003-2004

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GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS:

Collegium Phænomenologicum Summer Seminar, Citta di Castello, 2011

Promising Scholar Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2005-2006

The Robert Shapiro Award, San Jose State University, 2005

Ronald E. McNair Scholar, San Jose State University, 2004-2005

Outstanding Undergraduate Student Research, San Jose State University, 2004

PUBLICATIONS:

Alfred Frankowski, “Sorrow as the Longest Memory of Neglect: Aesthetic
Sorrow and Allegorical Memory in Du Bois, Davis, and Billie Holiday” African
American Review (Under Review)

Alfred Frankowski. “Reframing History: Allegory, History, and the Political in
Benjamin and Du Bois” PhænEx: a Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory
and Culture (Under Review)

Alfred Frankowski. “Temporal Consciousness: Accounting for the Consciousness
of Internal Time from James and Husserl in Dialogue with Philosophy of Mind.” McNair
Research Journal, 1, May, 2005: 105-133

Alfred Frankowski. “Playing Games in Business Ethics: Problems that Arise
within Game Theory when Applied to Ethics” Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of
Philosophy, 10, Spring 2004: 77-89

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to express my appreciation to Professor Zack for her support, guidance,
and mentorship. In addition, I would also like to thank the members of the University of
Oregon Graduate community for our many valuable conversations. Special thanks to
Edgar Temam, Emma Reed Jones, Elena Cuffari, George Fourlas, Rhea Muchalla,
Christy Reynolds, and Jose Mendoza for all of the support and conversations we have
had. Most importantly, I would like to thank my wife, partner, and moral and creative
compass, Francine Wien-Frankowski. Where this work succeeds it owes a great debt to
her.

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DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to Dorothy Johnson, whose person I remember little, but whose
character I have come to know well.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page

I. THE GREART EVASION: WHITE VIOLENCE, NEGATION, AND THE
STRUCTURE OF POST-RACIAL MEMORY. ........................................................ 1
1. White Violence as a Social Complex................................................................. 6
2. Forgetting and Its Shadow ................................................................................. 16

3. Post-Racial Discourse, Post-Racial Memory ..................................................... 27
4. The Cassandra Complex .................................................................................... 32
5. Notes .................................................................................................................. 37

II. THE RETURN OF THE AMNESIACS: POST-RACIAL MEMORY AND THE
DEPOLITICIZATION OF MEMORY. ...................................................................... 42
1. Amnesiacs and the Residue of Violence ............................................................ 45
2. Counter-Memory as Countering Anesthetic Memory ....................................... 53
3. Post-Racial Memory and the Depoliticization of the Suffering of the Past ....... 64
4. Critical Memory Revisited: Critique and Mourning .......................................... 72
5. Notes .................................................................................................................. 76
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