Ambiguities of Associations: James Baldwin and the Case of the Nation of Islam

Abstract

The role of associations in political life is a long-standing interest for American political theorists. Typically, a vibrant associational life is understood to support democratic institutions and guard against tyranny. Another function, one that has received increased philosophical attention, is the space associations provide for marginalized groups to furnish distinct concepts and vocabularies capable of capturing their members’ experiences of oppression. However, in this article, I draw on James Baldwin’s reflections regarding the rising popularity of the Nation of Islam, to argue that philosophers should not overlook either the deleterious effects of injustice on people’s capacities, even when aggregated into associations, to effectively capture the realities of their oppression or the complex ways in which even morally repugnant hermeneutical resources can usefully serve an association’s practical causes. It is therefore necessary to develop additional, more ambivalent evaluative standards to capture the complex knot of epistemic and political functions associations perform.