Political Science

Ayantu Israel-Megerssa is a sixth-year PhD candidate in Political Science at Brown University. Her focus is on political theory. Megerssa’s dissertation reconsiders René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy in order to inquire into the politics of skepticism now. She worlds Descartes and argues that - rather than one philosopher’s doubt - Descartes’ skepticism was a response to the increasingly diverse social order of his time. Before Descartes’ skepticism, there was a racial politics of skepticism, an attention to which opens up new lines of inquiry for thinking about the relationship between epistemology and politics today. In diverse societies, people see things radically differently and often lack common ways to reach agreement in perception or judgment. Through an engagement with the skeptical meditations of disparate black thinkers, from Patricia Williams to Calvin Warren to Anna Julia Cooper, Megerssa suggests the doubt of the Meditations reemerges as a critical heuristic for naming the disorientations – but also, potentially, the promises – of life in multi-racial plurality. 

Megerssa holds a M.A. in Political Science from Brown, and a B.A. in International Studies with a minor in Political Science from the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching interests include early modern skepticism and political thought, democratic theory, black critical theory, feminist theory, political theory in literature and film, and the history of political thought.

Job Market Paper Title:

Worlding Descartes 

Job Market Paper Abstract:

In his Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes conjures a picture of his doubt as the brainchild of solitary genius, thought up one afternoon in his legendary stove-heated bedroom. This picture has been largely accepted by both the Cartesian and anti-Cartesian literatures. My paper challenges this picture. Instead of its exceptionality, I want to emphasize the typicality of Descartes’ doubt. My paper asks: might Descartes’ doubt have been occasioned by his encounter with newly racialized others? Might his doubt - and the form of certainty he furnishes in response - have been Descartes’ attempt at negotiating the political and racial disorientations of his time? 

To this end, my paper works to “re-world” Descartes’ doubt by placing him into the racial context of early modern France and the Netherlands where he lived and worked for most of his life. Descartes himself had nothing explicit to say about race in the modern sense. It would be surprising if he had. The modern concept of race did not coalesce in the popular imagination until the decades after Descartes’ death. Still, Descartes lived and wrote in a racialized world. Drawing on the political and art history of the period, I suggest that certainty becomes a problem for Descartes within the racial context of 17th century Netherlands. At the start of Descartes’ supposedly apolitical philosophy is a racial politics of skepticism, an awareness of which might inspire new approaches to multiracial democracy now.