Yancy and Caputo in 2015 [George Yancy, John D. Caputo: Looking White In the Face; July 02 2015 NYT http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/looking-white-in-the-face/]G.Y.: Is there a version of philosophy that binds us philosophers to the real, one that requires risking our necks for the least of these? J.D.C.: That is the attraction of postmodern philosophy to me, which is a philosophy of radical pluralism. It theorizes alterity, calls for unrelenting sensitivity to difference, and teaches us about the danger of our own power, our freedom, our we. I think that philosophy is not only a work of the mind but also of the heart, and it deals with ultimate matters about which we cannot be disinterested observers. So at a certain point in my career I decided to let my heart have a word, to write in a more heartfelt way, which of course is to push against the protocols of the academy. That is why I advised my graduate students, only half in jest, that it would be too risky for them to write like that, and safer to wait until they were tenured full professors! Furthermore, we do not merely write, we teach. Teaching means interacting in a fully embodied and engaged way with young people at a very precious moment in their life when they are most ready to hear something different. Here philosophy professors brush up against what I consider the religious and prophetic quality of their work, even if they resist those words. Our work is a vocation before it is a form of employment. Of course, this is possible in any philosophical style or tradition, but this is the special attraction of Continental philosophy for me. This style of thinking erupted in the 19th century with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, who wrote with their blood, as we say, and the young Marx, and stretched from phenomenology to post-structuralism in the 20th century, and came to a head under the name of postmodernism, the affirmation of difference and plurality in a dizzying, digitalized world. This tradition speaks from the heart, speaks to the heart. I came to philosophy through religion and theology and as a result philosophy has always had a salvific and prophetic quality for me. It has always been a way to save myself, even as in antiquity philosophy did not mean an academic specialty but a way of living wisely. This is all threatened today by the professionalization of the university, of our teaching and our writing. G.Y.: The 20th century French philosopher Jean-Franois Lyotard claimed that postmodernism involved a resistance toward and critical questioning of metanarratives big stories like the Enlightenment, the march of scientific progress, or the supremacy of the West, that legitimate nations or cultures. I think postmodernism has tremendous value in terms of critically engaging racism. Yet metanarratives are also powerful, and resistant to being undone. Besides encouraging white people to become more thoughtful, how do we do the deeper ethical work of dwelling near one another, recognizing our shared humanity? J.D.C.: Emancipation is a prophetic call that never stops calling. If we take it as a meta-narrative, then we run the danger of being lulled into a myth of progress, and we have seen how successful the right has been in reversing progress in civil rights and fair elections. But if I am dubious about meta-narratives, I am not dubious about prophetic action, which lies in singular sustained acts of resistance. I have several times used the example of Rosa Parks. She did not one day, out of the blue, refuse to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus, nor was she even the first one to do that. What she did that day was another in a long line of acts of resistance, but this one worked. This one linked as Lyotard would put it. It set off a citywide bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., which was led by a young pastor no one ever heard of who ran a local church, a fellow named Martin Luther King Jr. The rest is history a history the right would like to undo. So Rosa Parks did the right thing at the right time in the right place. She set off the perfect storm for racists! I have a hope against hope not in meta-narratives but in singular actions like that. Singular, but consistent and resolute.