My research focuses on normative questions that arise within interpersonal relationships and political theories. Within that context, I have special interests in questions about social justice and emotions such as love, sympathy, compassion, and tenderness.
Works In Progress
Books
Love Hates Us.
My book, Love Hates Us, situates ethical non-monogamy within the Black feminist tradition of progressive Black sexual politics. The book analyzes how marriage and monogamy are partially responsible for discrimination and social marginalization that African American polyamorists encounter across a range of social institutions in a post-civil rights era America. By analyzing the particular social and political challenges faced by Black polyamorists in the U.S., it also reveals how one’s socio-political positionality in contemporary African American romantic relationships, resist or reproduce racist ideologies.
New questions about race, gender, sexual, and romantic relational identity are more pressing than ever. How are racialized sexual subjects such as Black people in polyamorous relationships positioned along multiple axes of oppression? What kind of capital—financial, social, political, or cultural—is able to be mobilized by non-monogamous relationships among Blacks? How much of racial justice involves the liberation of Black non-monogamists? What are the penalties and privileges that accompany race, gender, and sexuality in polyamorous living and identifying? How are the experiences of pleasure and danger differentiated and mediated not only by race, gender, and sexuality, but also by romantic relationality? How, in other words, are differences politicized in non-monogamous relationships? These are questions that the book investigates.
In the U.S., the dominant expectation for romantic relationships is that they are dyadic—comprised of two, and only two partners. The institution of marriage implicitly reifies this expectation for dyadism. That is, legal recognition and protection, as well as privileges that translate to social capital and power, are reserved for the preservation of the “couple” legitimated by marriage. However, contending with the developmental history of American sexual revolutions uncovers that not all romantic love styles adhere to the dyadic or monogamous model. It excludes polyamorists; that being people who engage with, and sustain multiple romantic or sexual relationships at a time, with the knowledge and consent of all parties involved. Love Hates Us critically examines how the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and romantic relationality challenge norms that actively oppress and pervade Black lives in America, and specifically polyamorous Blacks.
Scholarship in the philosophy of love and social & political philosophy has begun exploring the stakes and harms of excluding multiple party unions from marriage. Existing work on non-monogamies identify a set of norms that, as freestanding systems of oppression, interlock to generate a unique and variegated set of oppressions for non-monogamous people. Among these norms are: (a) mononormativity, (b) heteronormativity, and (c) amatonormativity. Love Hates Us asks how might these systems converge with anti-Black racism in ways that shape American social inequality?
Love Hates Us is a work of social theory and explores these questions through a theoretical framework of intersectionality. The book’s primary concern is the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and romantic relationality.
Articles in Progress
Civic Indifference and Black Suffering (Funded by the Center for Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University)
Much of the work in contemporary political philosophy shares what Salamawit Terrife has called “psychic investment in political subjecthood.” In other words, the lion’s share of political philosophy is preoccupied with learning how liberal societies can become more inclusive by broadening the definition of “political subjecthood,” while prioritizing the “human” as the quintessential political subject. Therefore, a good amount of political philosophy sees those marked Black in the American society as being brought into the fold of humanity after the end of formal slavery.
My project “Civic Indifference and Black Suffering” takes a cue from Saidiya Hartman who situates the Emancipation from slavery as a “non-event” and Fred Moten who asks whether the socio-ontological category of “humanity” permits us to understand the social life (and social death) of Black (non-)being and fungibility. Black’s status as fungible “others” in our social landscape is what ultimately led Fanon to discover himself as “an object amidst other objects” in Black Skin, White Masks and it is what leads Frank Wilderson III toward an analysis of slavery that avoids situating slavery as a historical event, but instead as an ongoing relationship between those marked Black and the power which attaches to whiteness. Thus, for Wilderson, the fragmentary incorporation of those marked Black into the political landscape, falls short of establishing their claim to full humanity and consequently indexes what he calls the “always/already” situation of the Black as slave even in the wake of the abolition of formal chattel slavery.
In my view, civic indifference offers an interpretative philosophical framework through which we might better understand the paths of reasoning that lead these thinkers to such staunch conclusions. For example, in redirecting our attention away from de jure social and political changes and toward our socio-ontological orientation of indifference toward Black suffering, civic indifferences helps us better understand what Michelle Alexander has in mind when she writes “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Consequently, my work contributes to Black studies, social and political philosophy, and the philosophy of emotions by applying philosophical analyses of indifference to the subject of Black suffering in a meaningful intellectual query that helps us generate future possibilities for building a more just world.
In this paper, I offer a social constructionist account of Black love. The philosophy of love has not recorded many contributions from Black philosophers on the subject. As a result, despite the growing popularity and importance of the notion ‘Black Love’ among Black folks inside and outside of the academy, it has been woefully under theorized by Black philosophers. To this point, some philosophers have pointed out that there is a tacit acceptance among Black lovers (and perhaps Black philosophers alike) that “Black love is dead.” However, when Black theorists do write about Black love they conflate matters of Black love with matters of Black marriage. This conflation also appears in work that archives the historical trajectory of intimate relationships among Black folks in America. For example, Dianne Stewart and Tera Hunter have both recently discussed Black love as it pertains to marital relationships among Black folks. One shortcoming of this approach is that it renders the erotic love experienced by some Black lovers—such as Black polyamorists—illegitimate and invisible. Thus, the knowledge gleaned about Black love in discussions of Black marriage are, at best, incomplete given this limited scope. In this work, I ask “What is Black love if it is something more than monogamous romantic love and marriage?”
Drawing on Tera Hunter’s notion of the third flesh—a reconfiguring of the idea that through marriage “two become one flesh”, that indexes the superior relationship of master to slave in the antebellum United States—I argue Black love is essentially a non-monogamous notion rooted in rupture. For example, the intimacies among Black people in bondage were necessarily subject to interventions by their master’s participation in the domestic slave trade, thereby making “normal” monogamous relationships virtually impossible. Many Black intimacies were fragmented, fractured, broken, and non-dyadic. My argument centers the ways Black love has been constrained by racist social institutions, traditions, and practices in America and argues for a more comprehensive notion of “Black love” that includes the erotic love experienced among Black folks in non-marital relationships—including Black polyamorists. On my view, Black love characterizes intimate caring relationships among Black relata not excluding relationships of erotic love and sex.
Finally, it is worth pointing out how the account challenges the ways we think about romantic love and complicates how we think about race in America. A primary corollary the paper establishes, for example, is that as Black love and “romantic love” were shaped differently by racism and America’s institutions and practices, romantic love (i.e. a notion that centers a loving subject who is an autonomous and dignified individual) and Black love are ontologically distinct.
Polyamory in Black: A Companion Justification for Minimal Marriage
Recently, American marriage has been scrutinized by philosophers and political theorists. For example, Elizabeth Brake has argued that marriage ought to be reformed because it unduly discriminates against friendships and other forms of caring non-monogamous relationships. Alternatively, Tamara Metz has argued that American marriage ought to be abolished because it violates the principle of liberal neutrality. On Metz’ view, marriage is drawn from comprehensive moral doctrines that posit marital relationships as having distinctive moral standing. While each of these rationales do just fine in problematizing American marriage, in this paper I offer and defend an additional and equally compelling rationale for minimal marriage. I argue that the dyadic condition on American marriage functions to uphold anti-black racism in a post civil rights era America.
Talks
Relata: Toward a Social Ontology of Black Love.
This talk makes the case for developing a metaphysics of Black Love. In this talk, I argue that “Black Love” and “Romantic Love” are ontologically distinct phenomena in our social landscape. Inasmuch as romantic love requires subjects that are discrete, autonomous, rational, and sovereign, it is an open question whether African-Americans are appropriately accommodated as subjects under Western notions of romantic love. Further, in line with the Black Liberation and polyamorous traditions, I introduce the term “relata” to capture the kinds of subjects that can be found engaging in Black love.
Polyamory in Black: A Companion Justification for Minimal Marriage. Lecture Series on Social Rights and Relationship Goods. (Watch Talk)
Recently, American marriage has been scrutinized by philosophers and political theorists. For example, Elizabeth Brake has argued that marriage ought to be reformed because it unduly discriminates against friendships and other forms of caring non-monogamous relationships. Alternatively, Tamara Metz has argued that American marriage ought to be abolished because it violates the principle of liberal neutrality. On Metz’ view, marriage is drawn from comprehensive moral doctrines that posit marital relationships as having distinctive moral standing. While each of these rationales do just fine in problematizing American marriage, in this paper I offer and defend an additional and equally compelling rationale for minimal marriage. I argue that the dyadic condition on American marriage functions to uphold anti-black racism in a post civil rights era America.
Our Hearts Confined: Marriage and Black Polyamorous Non-being
In recent years, Black writers have taken interest in the stark decline of marriage among African Americans citing rates from the 1960s as high as 61% alongside present rates of about 32%. At the same time, we are witnessing a rise in cultural and intellectual interest around radical intimacies such as polyamory—having more than one sexual or romantic relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. The subject of non-monogamy as a Black phenomenon has made its way into the mainstream, showing non-monogamous intimacies (ethical and otherwise) to be of interest to Black folks in America. In spite of this, scholars have tended to offer solutions to the supposed “marriage decline” that aim to get Black folks to marry in larger numbers while leaving marriage’s numerical constraint intact (i.e. dyadic, monogamous). None of these proposals, in other words, consider a wide enough range of possible frames for intimate Black relationships that include marriage’s recognition of polyamorous Black intimacies.
The primary argument this talk makes is that the extension of marital rights and recognition to polyamorous Black intimacies, as such, is a necessary component of Black liberation in America, lest the institution be abolished. Marriage is already being met by this challenge. For example, in 2020, the city of Somerville, MA, expanded the rights of marriage to include people who are polyamorous. In 2021, Cambridge, MA, followed suit. New questions about race, gender, sexual, and romantic relational identity are more pressing than ever. How are racialized sexual subjects such as Black folks in polyamorous relationships positioned along multiple axes of exclusion? How are differential attitudes about Black polyamorists politicized in ways that reify and extend anti-black racism and oppression? What kind of capital—financial, social, political, or cultural—is able to be mobilized by non-monogamous relationships among Blacks who cannot marry? These are questions that this talk explores.
The talk also makes an equally important secondary argument—namely, that Black polyamorous epistemologies are situated in the Black radical tradition; they radically reimagine and carefully engineer transformative ways not only of Black loving, but also Black being. I advance that their intimacies are born of struggle and leverage radical ways of resisting assassination-style assaults, both intra- and interracially, against their personhood, aimed at their non-being.
Publications
Books
Why It’s OK to Not Be Monogamous, Routledge, 2023
We are taught that romantic love follows a linear trajectory. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in the baby carriage. This means that for many people, marriage is the goal of romantic love. In America, the institution of marriage exclusively protects marital relationships that are comprised of two and only two people. The belief that romantic love aspires toward marriage, then, involves the idea that romantic love exists between two and only two people. Some call this “monogamy”. While most people implicitly or explicitly hold up monogamy as the most valuable form of romantic love and sexual intimacy, some people have also wondered if its lofty status is justified. What person in a long-term monogamous relationship hasn’t wished or fantasized about romantic and sexual relations with people other than their partner? And the downsides of monogamous relationships are felt, at times, by most people engaged in such relationships, including, but not limited to, restrictions on self-discovery, limits on friendship, sexual boredom, and a circumscribed understanding of intimacy and specialness.
Despite these negative feelings and a general ambivalence towards monogamy, the idea that we can be in romantic love with multiple people or that we can participate in multiple romantic or sexual relationships at the same time, will unsurprisingly strike many people as “odd”. However, non-monogamy’s oddity is far from an argument against its moral acceptability. Is it okay to NOT be monogamous? In this book, Why It’s OK to NOT be Monogamous, I argue that a variety of non-monogamies are in fact morally permissible. Specifically, this book picks out polyamorous relationships—a subset of non-monogamous relationships that are romantic relationships with more than one person and with the full knowledge and consent of everybody involved—as an exemplar of moral virtues that justify its moral permissibility.
Articles
In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins argues for a progressive black sexual politics that includes a robust erotic autonomy for black women. In recent work on polyamory and subjectivity, scholars have highlighted the liberating and empowering effects on polyamorous women’s subjective experiences. However, some polyamorous women’s radicalized identities forecloses their access to the aforementioned liberty and empowerment. In this chapter, I introduce the need to include African American polyamorous women (AAPW) among this progressive black sexual politics. By showing mononormativity – the dominant assumptions of the normalcy and naturalness of monogamy – and its attendant social pressures as a freestanding system of oppression impacting the lived experiences of AAPW, this chapter highlights the convergence of multiple systems of oppression at the intersections of race, gender, romantic relationally and sexuality to generate peculiar challenges to African American polyamorous women in American society.
This paper shows how amatonormativity and its attendant social pressures converge at the intersections of race, gender, romantic relationality, and sexuality to generate peculiar challenges to polyamorous African American men in American society. Contrary to the view maintained in the “slut-vs-stud” phenomenon, I maintain that the label ‘player’ when applied to polyamorous African American men functions as a pernicious stereotype and has denigrating effects. Specifically, I argue that stereotyping polyamorous African American men as players estranges them from themselves and it constrains their agency by preemptively foreclosing the set of possibilities of what one’s sexual or romantic relational identities can be.
Monogamies, Non-Monogamies, and the Moral Impermissibility of Intimacy Confining Constraints
In this paper, I argue that intimacy confining constraints—or a categorical restriction on having additional intimate relationships—is morally impermissible. Though some scholars believe that this problem attaches exclusively to monogamous relationships, I argue that it also applies to non-monogamous relationships—such as polyfidelitous relationships—as well. As this point requires a deconstruction of the juxtaposition that erroneously places monogamy and non-monogamy as binary opposites, this paper reveals a variegated and interpenetrating field of intimate non-monogamous relationships, the existence of which gets us closer to realizing the transformative power contained within non-monogamous relationships.
Civic Tenderness as a Response to Child Poverty in America
This chapter presents a portrait of American children as situationally vulnerable and introduces the public emotion of civic tenderness as a response to the indifference that is routinely directed toward this vulnerability. Discussions of pro-social empathic emotions typically prioritize emotions like sympathy and compassion. While they are important in their own right, these pro-social emotions are responses to situations of current need. Civic tenderness is a response to situations of vulnerability. Insofar as a person or group is now in a situation of need, they had to have first been vulnerable to experiencing that need. Since vulnerability is conceptually prior to need, civic tenderness is prior to these other pro-social emotions. Through the process that I call tenderization, I explain how tenderness for poor and impoverished children’s vulnerability can be expanded to a society’s members, institutions, and systems.
Free Will, Alternative Possibilities, and Responsibility: An Empirical Investigation
Moral responsibility (MR) and free will (FW) have been topics of a considerable amount of research in philosophy. More specifically, philosophers have argued whether or not the responsibility of an agent’s actions are contingent upon the agent’s having the ability to do otherwise than she actually does. Libertarians hold that the truth of hard determinism undermines this very ability. This brings to the vanguard an important question, namely, can we still be responsible for our actions if hard determinism is true? In this paper, I explore what many libertarians take to be the implications for MR given the truth of hard determinism, arguing ultimately that a libertarian conception of FW is required for MR. That is to say that MR requires alternative possibilities. In doing so, I will consider what many take to be the most formidable opponent—Frankfurt-style counterexamples (FSCs)—to the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP).
It should be noted that my account is significantly different from most contemporary accounts for MR and libertarian FW in that I have sampled a group of people in order to see where their intuitions fall pertaining to alternative possibilities and FSCs. I will, then, appeal to that empirical data to build, bolster, and defend my argument. Hence, this will get us closer to achieving reflective equilibrium in matters concerning FW. 3’