Joe and I understand conjuring as a magical means of transforming reality. In the same way
the study of chemistry and the periodic table create a network of signs that enable some to
apprehend and transform reality, magic is a system of correspondences. Conjuring is about
expressing and connecting those inner, more spiritual powers. We all feel the affective power
of magic when we gain perspective or connection through the music we listen to, or the
community functions we participate in. Debate in and of itself is a site of magic and conjuring.
The charismatic charm of speakers giving a powerful speech, that transcendent feeling of a
debater controlling the rhetorical space of the room is an example of conjuring at its finest.
Headley 4 (Clevis, Prof of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University, What White Looks Like:
African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question, "Delegitimizing the Normativity
of "Whiteness": A Critical Africana Philosophical Study of the Metaphoricity of "Whiteness,"
p 90-92)
Consistent with my Africana philosophical perspective on whiteness, I argue that understanding whiteness requires investigating the
metaphorical environment of whiteness. Hence, Africana philosophy’s task of making
whiteness cognitively visible means
denouncing its chameleonic tendencies by exposing the various metaphorical disguises that, like the
Klansman’s hood, have served as camouflages for whiteness. AFRICANA ROOT METAPHOR OF CONJURING AND WHITENESS I
want to begin accounting for the ontological reality of whiteness by situating it within the scope of a root metaphor. From an Africana
philosophical perspective, the grammar of conjuring, unlike the discourse of constructionism, 7 connotes not
only the sense of
the making of reality but also the idea of the radical transformation of social reality through immaterial
means. Furthermore, I do not intend to view conjuring as being totally incompatible with constructionism. Both conjuring and construction
support the idea of reality as a human creation. However, constructionism is modeled upon an architectural metaphor, which connotes the
idea of physical construction. But conjuring, unlike constructionism, is more closely associated
with the phenomenon of
human consciousness as a constitutive, meaning- giving activity. Consciousness is not a mere passive reflection on
the world but, rather, it constitutes realities by endowing objects and situations with meaning. Hence, conjuring is
more closely connected to immaterial transformations of the world, a notion not always captured in the metaphor of construction to the extent
that the latter con- notes fabricating artifacts. Furthermore, while “construction” implies that there is no world until it is constituted,
“conjuring” on the other hand suggests a double implication. It implies
both that we conjure up the world in the sense of
constituting it, but also that we transform a previously constituted world. I will say more about the difference
between conjuring and construction shortly. Theophus Smith argues that one root metaphor of African and African-American culture is the
metaphor of conjuration. Smith specifically underscores the idea of conjuring
as the phenomenon of the
transformation of reality. “Conjure” or “conjuration,” according to him, can be variously understood as: a metaphor that circumscribes
black people’s ritual, figural, and therapeutic transformations of culture. But conjure phenomena are treated not only as literary or cultural
metaphor. Conjure
is fundamentally magic. It is first in consideration the magical folk tradition of black North Americans. Its
practices have traditionally performed their craft in order to heal or harm others by the operation and invocation of extraordinary powers and
processes. More concisely and comprehensively stated: Conjure
is a magical means of transforming reality. Here the term
“magic” is best understood as one system, among humanity’s more primal cognitive systems, for mapping and
managing the world in the form of signs. 8 In embracing the notion of conjuring both as metaphor and as ritual practices, Smith
considers three meanings of “conjure” pertinent to his project: “(1) to invoke or summon (up) a spirit, as in sorcery; (2) to effect
by the use of ‘magical’ arts; and finally (3) to summon up an image or an idea as an act of imagination.” 9 In
stressing the creative and active aspects of conjuring activity, Smith seeks mainly to underscore the social transformative
potential of conjuring activity. Commenting on the use of “the Bible as varieties of conjurational performances,” Smith writes:
“Conjure is construed . . . as a pharmacopeic (or healing-harming) practice and features
a performative use of speech and
ritually patterned or imitative behaviors. [C]onjurational performances at the level of social history employ biblical fig- ures with
a curative intention, [ ...] and for the purpose of reenvisioning and transforming lived experience and social
reality through mimetic or imitative operations.” 10 It is my contention that we can employ the idea of conjuring, as one means of
transforming social reality, to explain the ontological reality of whiteness. The metaphor of conjuring enables us to gain a
more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of making the world white. The grammar of conjuration, unlike the language of
construction, supports discourse about the phenomenon of calling into being or summoning whiteness into
the world. And, as Smith states, such summoning or calling of whiteness into being can be alternatively understood as a
whitening of the world, a “magical” transformation of the world, for making the world white oppositionally entails
making blackness the diabolical other, subject to marginalization or even elimination. Indeed, consistent with Smith’s
idea of conjurational practices being healing-harming, we can effectively understand why whiteness can be a source of existential healing, in
the sense that it makes power available to one group while, simultaneously, being a source of harm to those who do not share in the power of
whiteness. As a historical note, it is interesting to note efforts to invoke and appeal to symbols and images of white supremacy precisely during
times of economic and political crises, when whites perceived their interests to be threatened. Conjuring
whiteness at these times
functions to reinforce structures of feeling that sustain certain ways of understanding social reality and
that leave the reality of whiteness unquestioned.
Yancy 8 (George, Prof of Philosophy at Duquesne University, Black bodies, white gazes : the continuing
significance of race, p. 229)
The white
student's objection raised the issue of how white interlocutors, when in discussions involving race and racism, may
deploy theory as a way of not being forced to examine aspects of their own white subject
(more than they realize)
position . Indeed, the deployment of theory can function as a form of bad faith. Whiteness, after all, is a master of concealment; it
is insidiously embedded within responses, reactions, good intentions , postural gestures , denials , and structural and
material orders. Etymologically, the word "insidious" (insidiae) means to ambush-a powerful metaphor, as it brings to mind images and scenarios
of being snared and trapped unexpectedly. Whiteness as a form of ambushing is not an anomaly. The operations of whiteness are by no means
completely transparent. This is partly what it means to say that whiteness is insidious. The moment a white person claims to have arrived, he/she
often undergoes a surprise attack, a form of attack that points to how whiteness ensnares even as one strives to fight against racism. Shannon
Sullivan states, "Rather
than rest assured that she is effectively fighting white privilege, when engaging in resistance a
person needs to continually be questioning the effects of her activism on both self and world .,,3 Although there are
many white antiracists who do fight and will continue to fight against the operations of white power, and while it is true that the regulatory power
of whiteness will invariably attempt to undermine such efforts, it is important that white antiracists realize how much is at stake. While
antiracist whites take time to get their shit together, a luxury that is a species of privilege, Black bodies and bodies of color
continue to suffer, their bodies cry out for the political and existential urgency for the immediate undoing of
the oppressive operations of whiteness . Here, the very notion of the temporal gets racialized . My point here is
that even as whites take the time to theorize the complexity of whiteness, revealing its various modes of resistance to radical transformation,
Black bodies continue to endure tremendous pain and suffering.
Doing theory in the service of undoing whiteness comes with
its own snares and seductions, its own comfort zones, and reinscription of distances . Whites who deploy theory in the
service of fighting against white racism must
caution against the seduction of white narcissism, the recentering of whiteness , even
if it is the object of critical reflection, and, hence, the
and traumatized Black
process of sequestration from the real world of weeping, suffering ,
bodies impacted by the operations of white power . As antiracist whites continue to make mistakes
and continue to falter in the face of institutional interpellation and habituated racist reflexes, tomorrow, a Black body
will be murdered as it innocently reaches for its wallet. The sheer weight of this reality mocks the patience of
theory .
Nayar 99 (Jayan, Law Student at the University of Warwick, Re-Framing International Law for the 21st
Century: Orders of Inhumanity, 9 Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems 599, Fall 1999, ln)
I wonder if the searching for comfort in the mind relieves what is already known . When we speak of a
change in our understanding of the world, this heralded "epistemic transition" that is supposed to be the hallmark of "post-modern
knowledge," what we
are really talking about is the way in which we who are afraid to accept our own
responsibility for the many expressions of violence in the world, although we know it, seek to find a means of
making sense,
from a distance , of violence , of madness. By changing the way in which we understand the world intellectually
therefore we postpone again that time when pain and joy are allowed to filter into our hearts in lived emancipation, with all their messy
repercussions. Instead we remain largely untouched within this realm of theorized emancipation.
It is not easy however to keep
our distance. It requires a lot of effort in order to not see and feel. We have to keep ourselves constantly busy . This
spiral of constant reinterpretations of violence through so many theories becomes almost an anaesthetic. When I plunder through my
"readings," as I search for further articulations of "good ideas," with my daily musings over "theoretical frameworks," as I keep myself busy, I
am diverted from asking why--what is this all for? I know that if I stop, if I have a moment or two for reflection, if I deny
myself the distractions of "good ideas," that question re-emerges ; in our quiet moments, if we allow ourselves quiet
moments, we
cannot hide from ourselves. If we take away the numbing comfort
and security of
our
professional reason for being, we are faced with the disconcerting uncertainties of our responsibility
in being . This is not easy. Yet, perhaps, it is only when we are pulled in every direction with doubt, conviction, pain and joy, that we are
able to share in the emancipatory wisdom of humanity that has been the lived life of generations before us and of generations to come. Life
then ceases
to be a problem to be solved. Rather it reveals itself as a journey to be traveled, and travailed. In all
wonder, I take my first tentative steps. And the directions for these steps must always be the subject of personal and collective judgment,
nurtured through conversation rather than orders, relationships rather than orderings, in located worlds rather than in the abstracted "world,"
in living rather than in acting.