Daniel James
INFO
I teach philosophy at the Technische Universität Dresden. My research focuses on classical German philosophy (especially Hegel), social philosophy (especially the philosophy of race), and the philosophy of social science. I am also interested in Africana and feminist philosophy, as well as in Marx and Marxism.
I’m currently engaged in two research projects:
In our collaborative project Hegel (anti)kolonial, Franz Knappik and I examine how racist and pro-colonialist elements of Hegel’s philosophy are connected with his metaphysics and other core elements of his philosophical system. Moreover, we explore the ambivalent legacy of Hegel’s philosophy, both in pro- and anti-colonial thought, and especially in the black intellectual tradition, as exemplified by W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, and Angela Davis. As part of the project, Franz and I also host an event series on Hegel and colonialism, racism, and anti-colonial thought. Some of our past events were in the news – you can read about them here (in German).
In our collaborative project Rasse: Negotiating a Fraught German Term, Leda Berio, Kurt Erbach, Benedict Kenyah-Damptey, Steffen Koch, Esther Seyffarth, Alex Wiegmann, and I use various empirical methods to investigate how talk and thought about ‘race’ and ‘Rasse’ differ in the United States and Germany. Moreover, we explore how these differences bear on the question of whether ‘Rasse’-talk should be conserved (including in a revised, social constructionist meaning) or eliminated (or, at least in some contexts, replaced with ‘racialization’ talk) in the German context.
Building on the findings of this project, I am currently also exploring how a conception of racism in terms of racialization (as opposed to race) can account for structural racism, as well as putative forms of racism that – like antisemitism, antislavism, and antiromanyism – are particularly relevant in the European context but hitherto underexplored in the philosophy of race.
Besides my scholarly work, I also co-organise the First-Gen Philosophers campaign (with Barbara Vetter in Germany, Simona Aimar in the UK, and Marcello Oreste Fiocco in the US), which seeks to make first-gen students and academics in philosophy more visible and explore ways to improve their situation in academia. We have collected the stories our colleagues and students have so far shared here (in German) and here (in English).
uPCOMING EVENTS and Announcments
On 9 December, I’ll give a talk titled “Reparations in a Warming World: Namibia and the afterlives of colonial injustice” at the Climate crisis, reparations and internationalist solidarity after the Berlin Conference workshop University of Cambridge.
I’m delighted to share that Franz Knappik’s and my Cambridge Element on Hegel and Colonialism has now been published – and the full text is available open access. You can read it here.
I’m pleased to share that my co‑authored paper with Leda Berio, Benedict Kenyah‑Damptey, Steffen Koch, and Alex Wiegmann — “Folk Concepts of Race, Cross‑culturally” — has been published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (open access here).
On July 19, I contributed remarks to Lange Nacht: Frantz Fanon 100, a special two-and-a-half-hour Deutschlandfunk Kultur feature marking Fanon’s centenary. You can access the podcast here
The recording of Franz Knappik, Jamila Mascat and my conversation with Andrés Saenz de Sicilia on “Hegel and Colonialism”, hosted by The Philosopher as part of its “On Philosophy” series, is now online!
Franz Knappik and I discuss our themed issue of the Hegel Bulletin on Racism and Colonialism in Hegel’s Philosophy and our future project on how academic philosophy might critically engage with its history in a new post on the Cambridge Core Blog.
I’m delighted to announce that the second volume of our themed issue, Racism and Colonialism in Hegel’s Philosophy, guest-edited with Franz Knappik for the Hegel Bulletin, is now available! Most contributions are open access, and you can check them out here and here.
My recent public talk, Warum wir über (das Wort) ‘Rasse’ reden müssen—delivered in July 2024 as part of the lecture series Sprachliche Ungerechtigkeiten organised by the Collegium Gissenum—was broadcast as part of the Deutschlandfunk Nova Hörsaal series and is now available as a podcast here.
Photo: Kirill Semkow
pAST eVENTS
On October 23, I gave a talk entitled “Because I’m not a NAZI?!?! Sociolinguistic Variation and Cross-Linguistic Race Talk” as part of the We Need to Talk Speaker Series at the University of Zurich.
On October 16, I gave a talk entitled “Racism as Racialised Oppression – or: How to Make a Cage out of a Bundle of Sticks” at the Political Theory Research Seminar at the London Sch
On August 11, I gave a talk entitled “Kinship or Kindhood? What Holds the Many Sites of Racism Together?” at the 46th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Feminist Philosophy – Language, Knowledge, and Politics, in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria.
On May 9, I gave a talk entitled “Directed, Yet Undertermined: Fanon, Hegel, and the Temporal Structure of Decolonisation” at the Fanon at 100 workshop at the University of Bergen, and later presented it at the Caribbean Philosophical Association conference Fanon at 100 in Le François, Martinique, on July 19.
On Februar 7, I gave talk entitled “Nothing Personal: Marx on Capitalist Domination.” at the The Metaphysics of Social Powers conference in Neuchâtel.
On November 8 2024, I gave a talk on “The Intersection of Class and Racialisation” at the Annual SWIP Germany Conference on “Structural Injustice”
During the winter semester 2024/25, I served as a substitute/guest junior professor of social philosophy and critical theory in the philosophy department at Humboldt University of Berlin. Returning to my alma mater — where I had taught for five years — was a rewarding opportunity to collaborate with friends and, above all, to work with such engaged students.
From September 1 to October 15 2024, I was SPIRE guest researcher at The Department of Philosophy and First Semester Studies (FoF) at the University of Bergen.
On October 8 2024, gave a talk titled ‘On Being Off-White: Towards a Theory of Partial Racialisation’ at the Critical Theories Colloquium in the Department of Philosophy and First Semester Studies (FoF) at the University of Bergen.
On September 11 2024, I gave a talk titled ‘Marx on Capitalist Domination’ at the Critical Theories Colloquium in the Department of Philosophy and First Semester Studies (FoF) at the University of Bergen.
Tereza Hendl’s, Morgan Thompson’s and my paper “Who Counts in Official Statistics? Ethical-Epistemic Issues in German Migration and the Collection of Racial or Ethnic Data” is now published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy! Open access here.
On July 9 2024, I gave a talk on “Warum wir über (das Wort) »Rasse« reden müssen [Why we need to talk about (the word) ‘Race’”] in the context of the “Collegium Gissenum 2024: Sprachliche Ungerechtigkeiten [Linguistic Injustices]” lecture series in Giessen.
On June 20 2024, I participated in a panel discussion titled “Wessen Freiheit und Gleichheit? Zum Umgang mit Georg W.F. Hegel” [Whose Freedom and Equality? On How to Engage Georg W.F. Hegel], as a part of the event series “Provenienz des Rechts: Zum Umgang mit Antisemitismus, Rassismus und Sexismus im juristischen Wissen” [The Provenance of Law: On Addressing Antisemitism, Racism, and Sexism in Legal Knowledge].
On April 29 2024, I gave a talk entitled “Warum wir über Rassismus streiten (und warum das OK ist) in the context of the “Umkämpfte Begriffe:” lecture series, hosted by the Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf.
On April 23 2024, I gave a talk entitled “Welche Rolle spielen soziale Perspektiven im Umgang mit dem philosophischen Kanon? G.W.F. Hegel und Frederick Douglass in Angela Davis’ Lectures on Liberation als Fallstudie” in the context of the “Vergessene Stimmen in der Philosophie: das Thema der Kanonerweiterung” lecture series at the University of Basel.
On April 12 2024, I gave a talk on “Why we disagree about racism (and why that’s OK) at the “Critical Race Theory and its Impact in Intersectional Perspectives” conference at the University of Hamburg.
I was “Global Scholar in Residence” at Vanderbilt University from Februar 26 to March 22 2024. There, I gave a talk entitled “Black History is World History at the Vanderbilt Philosophy Colloquium on March 4.
On February 8 2024, I gave a talk entitled “Schwarze Geschichte ist Weltgeschichte” on the occasion of Black History Month at the Humboldt-University of Berlin.
On December 14/15 2023, I gave a talk on “‘Black Enlightenment’ Perspectives in Philosophical Pedagogy” at the workshop on “Bridging Divides:
Rethinking Reparative Politics through a North-South Dialogue” at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
On November 25 2023, Franz Knappik and I hosted a workshop in our “Hegel (anti)kolonial” series on “W.E.B. Du Bois and classical German Thought” at Humboldt-University of Berlin.
On November 16 2023, Rebekka Hufendiek and I presented our paper on “Science and Ideology” at the fem.wis – Standpunkte aus der feministischen Erkenntnis- und Wissenschaftstheorie conference in Dortmund.
On October 26 2023, gave a talk on C.L.R. James’s subversive appropriation of Hegel’s philosophy of history and its paradigm, the Haitian Revolution, titled “Black History is World History” at UCL (hosted the Department of Philosophy and Sarah Park Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation and the EDI team of UCL Arts & Humanities).
I presented a paper on “White Supremacy as a Racialised Structure of Domination” at the Structural Domination conference in Dresden on September 19 2023.
Kristina Lepold, Bastian Ronge, and I presented our paper on “Critical Theory’s Racial Blindspot” at the Futuring Critical Theory conference in Frankfurt am Main on September 13 2023,
I presented my paper titled “Can Charles Mills’ Account of White Supremacy Capture Antislavism and Antisemitism?” at the MANCEPT workshop “The Hidden Terms of the Racial Contract: Exploring the Fine Print.” on September 11 2023.
I presented my talk “Partial Racialisation” at the Social Ontology 2023 conference in Stockholm in August 2023.
I presented my talk “Narrative, Ignorance, and the History of Philosophy: Lessons From Feminist Philosophy of Science”, at the Workshop Philosophinnen in der akademischen Philosophie sichtbar machen: Wie geht das? in Bielefeld in May 2023.
Tereza Hendl, Morgan Thompson and I presented our talk “Who Counts in Official Statistics?” at the Workshop Ethics Against the Odds? in Mainz in August 2022, at the Symposium New Directions in the Science of Structural Oppression, in the context of the PSA 2022, in Pittsburgh in November 2022, and at the Feministische Philosophie im Dialog in July 2023 in Dresden.
I presented my talk “Racialisation Across the Colour-Line” at the workshop Philosophieren mit Charles Mills in Berlin in July 2022 (in English), and at the Wider den Rassismus conference in Munich in November 2022 (in German).
Leda Berio, Benedict Kenyah-Damptey and I presented talks on our project Rasse: Negotiating a Fraught German Term at the 1. Fachtagung zum Nationalen Diskriminierungs- und Rassismusmonitor in Berlin in June 2022 and at the Rassismus und Philosophie conference in Münster in October 2022.
Daniel James 