Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper argues that W.E.B. Du Bois’ double-consciousness contains an implicit theory of recognition, and that this theory has been misrecognized as Hegelian. Since the 1980s there has been a remarkable turn towards reading Hegel’s Phenomenology as a central influence of double-consciousness. I survey and criticize the historical evidence offered for this position and offer a novel historical account. I argue that the appropriate theoretical predecessor of Du Boisian double-consciousness is Adam Smith’s theory of the impartial spectator, which he drew principally from William James while studying at Harvard. Du Bois takes up the Smithian framework wherein a subject internally measures themselves against the normative perspective of a socially-derived spectator. In double-consciousness, Du Bois describes a case in which one’s internal spectator is prejudiced against themselves, and in which one is responsive to the divergent normative perspectives of two conflicting cultural communities. This situation frustrates the normative development of African Americans, Du Bois argues. I analyse this implicit theory of (mis)recognition, which I call Du Bois’ partial spectator theory. I conclude by arguing that the Hegelian interpretations of double-consciousness obscure this rich problem description and thereby undermine its diagnostic and critical force.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".