Race, Coalition and Critique of Capitalism: Dialogues between Nancy Fraser and W.E.B. Du Bois

• Grant number: 24/01139-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2024
• End date: February 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Yara Adario Frateschi
• Grantee: Heitor Moreira Lurine Guimarães
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research project aims to analyze in what way must one problematize the race question in the wake of a critical theory of capitalism concerned about promoting coalition between different social struggles of the present. In order to do so, the research seeks to articulate two frameworks in which the union between anti-capitalist struggles plays a central role. The first corresponds to a certain part of Nancy Fraser's work comprehended between 2014 and 2022, including Capitalismo em Debate, Cannibal Capitalism and a set of articles about the nexus between capitalism and racism. The second corresponds to the epochal diagnosis presented by W.E.B. Du Bois in the classic essay Black Reconstruction in America, of 1935. The interest in the topic is justified insofar that both frameworks, despite their temporal gap, highlight the race question by means of a common argumentative strategy, that is, identifying interdependence relations between social groups affected by different kinds of oppression. The hypothesis is that a critical theory with those features must grasp the double role racism plays in sustaining the nexus between exploitation and expropriation, in the one hand, and in generating polarizations between whites and non-whites in order to stop them from gathering around anti-capitalist aspirations, on the other hand. As to the methodology, since the project deals primarily with rebuilding theses and arguments, the research will be essentially bibliographical, based on analyzing the aforementioned essays with support of specialized literature.