The (F)utiliy of Knowledge: The Democratic Faith of W.E.B. Du Bois and Jane Addams
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Patia, Kaitlyn Grace
- Graduate Program:
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 26, 2019
- Committee Members:
- Kirtley Hasketh Wilson, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Kirtley Hasketh Wilson, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Rosa A Eberly, Committee Member
Jeremy Engels, Committee Member
Debra Hawhee, Outside Member
Denise Haunani Solomon, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Democratic Faith
Rhetoric
Memory
Addams
Du Bois
Poetics
Storytelling
Agitation
Hull-House - Abstract:
- Democratic faith, as I delineate it in this project, is expressed by people struggling for their voices to be heard, believing that systemic change through collective effort is possible. I define democratic faith as a way of being and acting with others that is characterized by a fundamental belief in the transformative power of people co-existing in community to shape a world that makes that co-existence possible. In other words, democratic faith is the belief in the potentialities of particular kinds of social and political relations and the capacity to practice those relational modes. I focus on W.E.B. Du Bois’s and Jane Addams’s experiences with racialized and gendered violence, suffering, and marginalization, and how these experiences informed their approaches to social change. I examine how Du Bois used collective memory of the abolitionists to cultivate support for the Niagara Movement’s cause. I introduce and develop Du Bois’s concept of “civic death” and argue that practices of memory are an important source of “civic life” within Du Bois’s democratic faith. I argue that, as a lifelong storyteller, Du Bois cultivates a practice of civic imagination that responds to conditions of symbolic and material violence. This faith emerges out of his view that knowledge in other forms has failed to effect the kind of changes he wanted to see in the world. I explore the relationship between feminist social memory and storytelling in Addams’s discussion of the “devil baby” tale, a “fairy tale” authored by marginalized women. I argue that inter-generational connections among women forged in part through feminist social memory around the devil baby tale functioned as a way to survive and as a foundation to organize among women whose living conditions were characterized by gendered violence, death, and social marginalization. For Addams, the consciousness-raising of feminist social memory led the way to justice and the relational bonds it forged justified continued labor even when justice was not forthcoming. Finally, I consider the challenges of getting people to see and sense perspectives outside of their own and reflect on the question of if this endeavor can ultimately overcome its weaknesses. I outline a “poetics of democratic faith,” an approach to social change that is characterized by the rhetorical forms of narrativity and imagination. A poetics of democratic faith cultivates feeling through shared experiences and endeavors. I offer the conclusion that, though it is grounded in experiences of death, violence, and suffering, the democratic faith of Addams and Du Bois offers compelling ways for us to live in—and change—the world with others.