Elvira Basevich is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy at The Graduate Center, CUNY in 2017. Her first book, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Lost and the Found is forthcoming with Polity. Her recent articles have been published in Journal of Political Philosophy and Philosophy & Social Criticism.
What are you working on right now?
I am currently writing my next book that reconstructs and defends Du Bois’s theory of justice. I argue that Du Bois rethinks constructivist social contract theory to provide a method — to wit, “the method of excluded groups” from Darkwater — to establish and ground principles of justice for nonideal modern societies with a history of racial exclusion. Du Bois puts pressure on Kant’s and Rawls’s conceptions of public reason by focusing on the distinct obstacle that racial exclusion poses for the acquisition and exercise of democratic literacy. In a public sphere saturated by white supremacist ideology, Du Bois shows that we need an alternative model of public reason that is robust enough to construct and ground fair terms of social cooperation and thereby “correct” deviations from justice, but thin enough to serve as a shared normative basis for action and judgment in a profoundly unjust society.
What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy?
I would like to see more engagement of major historical figures in Africana philosophy by analytic and continental normative political philosophers. Africana philosophy has the power to transform standing conventions of what Charles Mills calls “whitestream” philosophy. Unfortunately, often precisely those philosophers who pride themselves in understanding the true nature of justice, freedom, and progress seldom show good will toward or a genuine philosophical interest in the black historical experience and the black philosophical tradition. The point is not just to be inclusive for the sake of inclusivity. The point is to do better philosophy by refining what one takes to be a tenable argument or definition of a concept.
I am also keen for someone to come along who can demonstrate why Kant’s model of passive citizenship is absurd from the standpoint of anyone who has even a cursory knowledge of the history of social movements in the 19thand 20thcentury. To suggest that progress requires an individual to “work” themselves into active citizenship mischaracterizes why that individual is a “passive citizen” in the first place: their social group is denied public recognition for no good reason. They cannot participate in the public sphere precisely because no one in interested in welcoming them as a civic equal. Becoming an active citizen cannot just mean somehow “extracting” recognition from those unwilling to give it. If this is true, then an excluded individual cannot “bootstrap” themselves into active citizenship; rather, to assume the position of an active citizen requires dominant members of the polity to change their own habits of judgment toward vulnerable social group. Du Bois’s notions of the color-line and the veil provide an excellent illustration of this phenomenon: the stubborn and deeply unreasonable reluctance of the white-controlled polity to recognize the valid claims of citizens of color. Without taking habits of racist misrecognition in the public sphere into account, Kant fails to provide a plausible theory of reform that explains what it takes to transition from active to passive citizenship for a vulnerable social group. This is just one example of the kind of productive crosspollination that could happen in rereading normative political philosophy from the standpoint of a major figure in Africana philosophy!
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
That I have built a life around my love of learning and my sense of justice.
If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
How the crystal ball works!?
What is your favorite sound in the world?
Water dripping through a filter. So satisfying. Also leaves rustling. And cicadas singing in the late summer.
If you could be anyone else for a day, who would that be and why?
A school crossing guard — one of the many unsung heroes of the world. Even now, I feel so much better when they tell me exactly when to cross the street.
What three things are on your bucket list that you’ve not yet accomplished?
I would love to one day to (1) witness the annual commemoration on August 6th in Hiroshima of the U.S. dropping the atom bomb on Japan. Residents of Hiroshima and visitors float thousands of paper lanterns along the Motoyasu River in the night to evoke world peace and the memory of the 140,000 lives lost, (2) visit the graves of my maternal grandfather and great grandparents on the remote border of Kazakhstan and China, and (3) get tenure.
Name a trait, skill or characteristic that you have that others may not know about.
Crow pose. Maybe also my interest in pop culture.
What books are currently on your ‘to read’ list?
Colleen Murphy’s The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, and Inés Valdez’s Transnational Cosmopolitanism: Kant, Du Bois, and Justice as a Political Craft. I am also really looking forward to forthcoming books by Melvin L. Rogers, Chike Jeffers, and Frank M. Kirkland. Lastly, I recently visited Salem’s House of the Seven Gables and picked up Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eponymous novel; it has been sitting unopened on my nightstand ever since.
If you were an ice cream what flavor would you be?
The most complicated, busiest one, with too much stuff thrown into it. Like pretzels, fudge, cookie dough, dried coconut flakes, strawberries.
What’s your top tip or advice for APA members reading this?
Avoid making too many assumptions about what is philosophically important and interesting.
What advice do you wish someone had given you?
Do not wait for permission. Just trust yourself enough to do whatever it is you aspire to do.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
She seems to be very mature and learned, moreover, her insight into philosophy and the way she wants to contribute in this field speaks volume about her dedication to the subject.