Human Studies 23: 317–323, 2000.BOOK REVIEW

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The Thought of Prejudice and The Prejudice of Thought

Jon Mills and Janusz A. Polanowski, (1997). The Ontology of Prejudice. Amsterdam – Atlanta, GA: Rodopi. 198 pages including bibliographic references and index. It is not without reason that Mills and Polanowski’s (1997) The Ontology of Prejudice opens with three introductory statements: a preface, a forward, and an introduction. Indeed, we might think of them less as introductions than as clear warnings – calls to abandon our preconceived attitudes toward the authors’ subject matter. Without such forewarning, many might be deterred from venturing past the first line of chapter one, “Every person by nature is racist” (11). Pressing on proves quite worthwhile, for we quickly discover that, far from intending to justify racism, the authors are attempting to cut into the subject of prejudice in an innovative way. In response to those who would disperse prejudice into a manifold of appearances (e.g. sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism), Mills and Polanowski identify an underlying essence. In contrast to those who would treat prejudice as the unfortunate, but contingent, outcome of one’s environment and upbringing, Mills and Polanowski label it a necessary aspect of human existence. They resist those who would call for a universal humanism, an eradication of prejudice in all its varied forms. Such efforts, they claim, are futile and misguided, for we cannot escape prejudice – its nature is bound up with our own. They describe prejudice as universal and apriori, a necessary constituent of self, individual identity, and group identity. Furthermore, the authors extend this approach to prejudice into both a dialectical ethics and a processual, prejudicial metaphysics. The Ontology of Prejudice offers a highly interesting approach to the subject of prejudice and the construction of identity. The authors construct an impressive synthesis of philosophy and psychology, providing detailed commentary on such varied figures as Freud, Heidegger, Sartre, Hegel, and Whitehead. They further include detailed summaries where appropriate, helpful for the reader who may not be familiar with all of these traditions. Despite this attempt at making the text accessible to a more general audience, it is better suited to those already exposed to these subjects than to those broaching them for the first time. Although the book is highly readable, even poetic, the

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writing suffers occasionally from a denseness and technicality that hinders the flow of the argument. Nevertheless, the project undertaken by the authors is ambitious and engaging. Racism, for example, is termed a particular manifestation of the prejudice underlying human existence; pleas for tolerance and universal love are deemed misguided attempts to ignore the ubiquity of prejudice, the sense in which prejudice is necessary to the formation of our identities. Mills and Polanowski thereby violate many contemporary assumptions regarding prejudice, boldly stating that “[c]ontrary to traditional belief, prejudice itself is not a negative attribute of human nature or development. It is the apriori condition necessary for the construction and evolution of the self and that of civilization”(1). Prejudice, they therefore tell us, should be understood not as a malicious aberration of socialization, but as “the preferential self-expression of valuation” (11). A preference indicates the presence of valuation. We prefer something because we value it more highly than the alternative. Such a value preference in turn indicates a judgment; to say that we prefer something over an alternative is to indicate that we have already judged the options, that we have made a discrimination (11–12). Perhaps most significantly, preference, value, and judgment indicate the self as their center of reference. To prefer is to desire something for ourselves; we value that which helps or pleases us. At the heart of preference, as a judgment illustrating valuation, is therefore an implied relationship to self, a self-reference. Prejudice, then, is bound up with a dialectic of sameness and difference, self and other. Where we see this dialectic at work, Mills and Polanowski conclude, there we see prejudice, “a person’s subjective preference or preconceived bias for her/his own inclinations and desires” (11). Having proposed this redefinition of the phenomenon in question, Mills and Polanowski spin out its implications for the study of social interaction. Attacking those who would attempt, through education, to wipe prejudice from the earth, the authors use their redefinition of the term to demonstrate its necessity, proceeding first through an examination of the structures of the self. Essential to our selves, our human subjectivities, is this refigured notion of prejudice. Indeed, the authors explain, this is quite obvious if we but look to the faculty of reason. At the most basic levels of cognitive activity, we find a dialectic of sameness and difference. To think, we must differentiate self from object, link particular with universal; simply said, “thinking involves distinguishing the contents of what is being thought” (17). The content of all thought is based on the prejudicial dialectic of same and different, self and other. At the same time, Mills and Polanowski draw on Hegel’s Logic to demonstrate the workings of prejudice in the form of thought. Hegel’s dialectic, illustrating the “process of thought thinking itself,” demonstrates the self-differentiation and self-reference that is the overriding characteristic of prejudice (16). The structure of cognition,

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like the content, is prejudicial, a movement of thought as it denies itself and recovers itself, a journey of self-differentiation and self-recovery. Even if we look beneath consciousness, peering into the depths of the unconscious, Mills and Polanowski contend that we find prejudice at work – the faculty of desire, like the faculty of reason, is wholly dependent upon prejudice. Indeed, as in the case with cognition, prejudice can be seen at the levels of both form and content. Our unconscious desires, projected onto others, show the dialectic of self and other, sameness and difference – for “what we find most abhorrent within we must hide from ourselves through projective regurgitation” (21). At the same time, the metapsychology of Freud provides us a glimpse of the prejudicial form of desire. We find dialectical tensions running between both id and ego and ego and superego; these are the dialectical tensions of sameness and difference that constitute prejudice. The structure of desire reveals the ego’s process of self-differentiation and self-recovery – a process which is, through and through, prejudicial. Freud’s tripartite scheme thus testifies, as does Hegel’s dialectic, to the centrality of prejudice to the construction and operation of the self. The vision of a world without prejudice, the dream of egalitarian humanism, would in this way be nothing more than the vision of a world without selves. Mills and Polanowski further bolster this claim by pointing to the centrality of prejudice in the formation of identity, where the dialectic of self and other is nowhere clearer: “The individual’s sense of self is motivated from the need to define her/his identity as different from others, thus defining her/his uniqueness and individuality” (38). Simply put, constructing an identity involves absorbing or introjecting that which is judged similar, and simultaneously rejecting or projecting onto others that which is deemed different. Hence, we form our identities based on a sense of congruence and dissonance; we define and continually redefine ourselves as both similar to and different from others around us. Understood in this way, the authors reason, it seems “natural” that we should see ourselves to be like those of our race, and different from those of other races. Quite “natural” indeed, for this prejudicial process of identity formation occurs not only at the individual, but also at the group level. Our group maintains itself through the dialectic of same and different, which works, the authors claim, to encourage negative attitudes, and even hate, directed toward other groups or races. However, this prejudicial character of group identity opens up another line of inquiry for Mills and Polanowski, one which allows the authors to bring the insights of existential phenomenology to bear in the analysis of prejudice. Group identities, formed and maintained through prejudicial processes, form part of the social context within which we are born; hence, they partly constitute our “ontological facticity” (59). Appropriating Heidegger’s insights, Mills and Polanowski describe the interplay of individual and group identity as it relates

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to the “they” and inauthenticity (71–74). Simply put, the authors attempt to depict inauthenticity not as a taking refuge in prejudice, but as a “false” manifestation of prejudice. In more Heideggerian terms, Dasein, always already fallen, is lost in the choices “they” make, the prejudices “they” hold, and so on. Dasein in the mode of inauthenticity flees from “true” prejudice, from its own freedom to choose. Whether this is explained through Sartrean bad faith or the psychiatric concept of the “false self,” (77–82), the result is the same: a failure by Dasein to take responsibility for its own choices, a failure intimately bound up with prejudice. In their elaboration of Heidegger’s “call of conscience,” we see Mills and Polanowski make the move toward a dialectical, prejudicial ethics. Just as the call of conscience calls Dasein out of its everydayness for Heidegger, for Mills and Polanowski it is both a realization of inauthenticity and the movement toward authenticity. The call of conscience, in this sense, is the call of “true” prejudice, which is simultaneously the call to self: “the discovery or realization of one’s inauthentic modes of Being necessitates if not commands a dialectical movement toward the fulfillment of one’s authentic possibilities in the endless search of the true self. This double edge is prejudice” (87). With this statement, we see a synthesis of Heideggerian authenticity with the Hegelian dialectic; authenticity involves the drive toward “fulfillment,” an “endless search” for a “true self.” The authenticity of Heidegger thereby is married to the purposive, telic dialectic of Hegel, leading Mills and Polanowski to their elaboration of prejudice as a dialectical ethics. As we have already seen, the structure of thought, like the structure of desire, is dialectical; now we see the drive toward fulfillment which indicates this dialectic is “active and telic, deliberate and purposeful” (153). This reveals a new side to prejudice: “prejudice now becomes the coming to presence of ethical subjectivity” (90). Mills and Polanowski thereby indicate the sense in which “prejudice seeks higher unification,” an ever-striving toward the Absolute (93). The interplay of sameness and difference, seen at the level of both individual and group identity, drives the dialectic forward, resulting in ever-higher manifestations of prejudice, and hence of selfhood and identity. In its most complete form, as in the Hegelian dialectic, prejudice knows itself as itself – prejudice as absolute self-consciousness. The authors position this approach to prejudice and ethics as an alternative to the either/or of absolutism and relativism. We need uphold neither fixed moral laws nor an ever-fluctuating plurality of moralities. In contrast to both of these, a dialectical ethics is simultaneously preferential, because prejudicial, and dynamic, because processual. Mills and Polanowski concede that since the ultimate, Absolute manifestation of prejudice would be outside the human realm, prejudice can only exist as an eternal striving toward ultimate fulfillment. This dialectical ethics, in its drive toward ultimate fulfillment, is raised to a metaphysical level in the final chapter. Drawing on Whitehead’s process

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philosophy, the authors contend that all that has come before in the text finally achieves clarification at the metaphysical level. Their dialectical ethics, based upon the redefinition of prejudice, is, according to Mills and Polanowski, but a “reflection of a greater metaphysical reality” (153). Drawing on Whitehead’s concepts of prehension, actual entities, and concrescence, Mills and Polanowski offer, in addition to their dialectical ethics, a metaphysics that links the workings of prejudice in the human mind to the workings of prejudice at the sub-atomic level. If taken to this most universal, most abstract level, Mills and Polanowski conclude, prejudice evinces not ugliness, but an incomparable beauty. The text is a powerful one; upon finishing the book, we find that we have been flown from everyday examples of racism to the highest reaches of metaphysical thinking. Further, the authors have attempted an impressive synthesis of a number of different thinkers and traditions. However, while these characteristics indicate the depth of the authors’ approach, they simultaneously point to its weaknesses. I do not believe, first of all, that the authors have successfully reconciled existential phenomenology with their ultimate commitments to psychiatry, Hegel, and Whitehead. Despite the many differences between Heidegger and Sartre, they are quite similar in their rejection of epistemology as a starting-point for inquiry. Both therefore roundly criticize theoretical programs which split self from world, inside from outside, mind from body, etc. Heidegger and Sartre would emphasize that the human is fundamentally an actor, not the knower of epistemology. However, I believe that Mills and Polanowski, throughout the text, demonstrate an implicit commitment to such assumptions, a commitment which undermines their attempt to bring phenomenology into their theoretical synthesis. This commitment to epistemology can be seen, for example, in their reading of Sartre. Mills and Polanowski fundamentally mischaracterize the differences between prereflective and reflective consciousness – they do not seem to realize that prereflective consciousness is, while not reflective, still intentionality (75–76; cf. Sartre, 1943/1956: 1ii-1iii). Thus, despite Sartre’s efforts to undermine the self/world dichotomy, the authors effectively isolate prereflective consciousness from the world, making it equivalent to “consciousness by itself” (76). As a consequence, they cannot fully appreciate Sartre’s critique of the Freudian unconscious and problematically equate good faith and conscious choice. While the authors’ discussion of Heidegger is more satisfactory than that of Sartre, we can still see this residual commitment to epistemology at work. In discussing Dasein and world, the authors fail to conceptualize the relationship in phenomenological fashion, again falling back into epistemological assumptions. They thus write that Dasein is “part of a world” (71). I would emphasize that such a characterization effectively separates Dasein from the world; it suggests that Dasein is an entity contained within a larger, more expansive entity. While this is unproblematic if one remains committed to

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epistemology, Heidegger is quite clear that we are not “part of” a world, but instead our existence is the disclosure upon the basis of which things can appear to us; or, in Heidegger’s (1927/1996) words, “[t]he being which is essentially constituted by being-in-the- world is itself always its ‘there’” (125). Hence, we cannot be separated from the world, nor can we even be “part of a world.” This underlying epistemological commitment can again be seen in their discussion of the process of identification. Their key terms in this discussion, introjection and projection, trade on the division between “inner” and “outer” that has been critiqued by a number of the thinkers Mills and Polanowski cite (e.g. Sartre, 1943/1956: 1i-1ii; Heidegger, 1927/1996: 50–53; Laing, 1967: 20– 21). Indeed, the authors’ consistent appeals to cognitive structures and mental “faculties” (including the “faculty” of prejudice) can be seen as yet another instance of epistemology rearing its ugly head; of the authors prioritizing thought (in the form of epistemology) over existence (67). This conflict between the authors’ epistemological commitments and existential phenomenology is only aggravated by their reliance upon the claims of evolutionary biology. While Mills and Polanowski do not claim that this field can supply us with all the answers regarding the evolution of prejudice, they frequently use the language of evolution to explain results or support arguments through appeals to functionality or survival value. For example, they write that “[d]ifferences among races are so conspicuous that they naturally lead to group identifications that delimit races in opposition to one another” (59; my emphasis). The appeal to “natural” racial differences is disturbing, not to mention problematic for phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Sartre. Similarly, the authors point to the functionality of racism (e.g. 41), moral absolutism (120), and social laws (e.g. 138). I would question the compatibility of this evolution-based approach, with its roots in naturalism and epistemology, and existential phenomenology. But the prioritizing of thought goes even further, if we consider Mills and Polanowski’s treatment of Hegel and Whitehead. In the first place, the authors do not attempt to argue in support of either Hegel’s dialectic or Whitehead’s process philosophy. I feel that some attempt to respond to the veritable truckload of critiques that phenomenology, postmodernism, and feminism (to mention but a few) have leveled against just these projects is in order. In short, I would ask the following question: How can we sustain the Hegelian/ Whiteheadian position advocated by the text in light of the devastating critiques of both telic/purposive dialectics and metaphysics as worthwhile philosophical projects? More importantly, however, it would seem that the authors’ reliance upon Hegel and Whitehead leads them to solve the problems of prejudice solely in the realm of thought. Mills and Polanowski take us from everyday examples of racism to the abstract notions of metaphysics – and leave us there. While their approach to prejudice is unquestionably provocative and insightful, they

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never bring us back to the concerns which would lead many readers to pick up the book in the first place – concerns with the everyday acts of racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, etc. When we reach the end of Mills and Polanowski’s text, we have come a long way, but it seems we are no closer to coming to grips with concrete, existential, lived manifestations of prejudice. Even if prejudice is a necessary part of human existence, and even if it is not in and of itself a negative phenomenon, we are still left with the all-too-real problems posed by particular manifestations of prejudice. How can we re-existentialize their project, moving back from the abstraction of metaphysics to the inescapable concreteness of our streets and urban areas? How can we compensate for the authors’ elevation of thought over concrete existence? While the authors brush against such questions (e.g. 60, 67–68), they prove unable to break the bounds of the Hegelian paradigm, unable to make the existential turn. In their concern for the ultimate beauty of prejudice, what happened to its ugliness? Here I would (prejudicially) appeal to an author Mills and Polanowski leave out of their text, Kenneth Burke. Nearly sixty years ago, Burke dealt with many of the same issues raised by Mills and Polanowski. His discussions of “merger and division” (1945/1969: 403–418) are startlingly similar to Mills and Polanowski’s redefinition of prejudice, as are his discussions of “order,” “hierarchy,” and “identification” (1950/1969:49–294). At the same time, Burke offers a conception of dialectic that does not suffer from the Hegelian excesses of teleology and purposiveness. Moreover, while Burke (1945/1969) offers us an ontology and metaphysics in A Grammar of Motives (1945/1969), he is also concerned with “the Human Barnyard, with its addiction to the scramble” – and therefore offers us an existential rhetoric in his next volume, A Rhetoric of Motives (1950/1969). Taken together, I believe that Burke’s texts offer a compatible account of the phenomenon of prejudice – but are able to emphasize, as Mills and Polanowski are not, that our shining, beautiful edifices of thought cannot ignore the ugliness ever-present in the Barnyard. Bryan Crable Villanova University, Philadelphia, U.S.A. References Burke, K. (1945/1969). A grammar of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burke, K. (1950/1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heidegger, M. (1927/1996). Being and time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY’ Press. Laing, R. D. (1969). The politics of experience. New York: Ballantine Books. Sartre, J. (1943/1956). Being and nothingness. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Gramercy Books.

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