Community in Crisis: The Ethics of Alphonso Lingis and Asbestos in Davidson

Julie Moock

Humanities 104

Dr. Denham

April 27th, 2020

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Moock
The notion of community, and the subsequent ordering of human social structures, has

been widely discussed in many academic spheres. Alphonso Lingis, a renowned ethics

philosopher, in his 1994 The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, presented a

two-fold definition. In “the rational community,” there lies a common discourse such that one

“formulate[s] all his encounters and insights in shared universal terms.”1 One’s actions in this

community are for the collective and established because “our fathers have taught us to do so.”2

Yet, this rational community cannot be demarcated without excluding its antithesis, “the other

community, the intruder” with nothing in common.3 As these communities interact, Lingis finds

that it is not merely difference which bifurcates, but a sense of contestation to each’s social

arena. For Lingis, the sole experience that unites these groups is looming mortality, a

“community in death.” 4 Lingis posits that amidst the intersection of disparate communities,

mutual fear and grief towards death may serve as a possibility for interaction. Detaching Lingis

from the theoretical, this paper uses his argument as a lens to examine a local community

fractured by race, the town of Davidson, North Carolina. Considering the pitfalls of the rational

community and the intruder on a tangible scale unearths centuries-old power structures which are

unassailable.

Confronted with Lingis’s controversial theory, Gert Biesta, a public ethics scholar,

responded quite critically. Biesta yields there is a natural division between the rational

community and the intruder as “all communities produce their own strangers.” 5 Yet, Biesta

1
Alphonso Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, Indiana
University Press, 1994, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzc06, 4.
2
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, 4.
3
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, 4.
4
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common 155.
5
Gert Biesta, “The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common: Education and
the Language of Responsibility,” Interchange 35, no. 3, 2004: 313,
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02698880.
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claims such binaries produces an attitude of assimilation and/or exclusion which he names “man-

eating.”6 The terms rational and other, for Biesta, bear a connotation of superiority which

presumes conflict. Rather than to cling to these labels, only interacting via Lingis’s supposed

community in death, Biesta offers instead the idea of “living with strangers.” 7 Different and

varied identities, he argues, should be protected to cultivate unity in the face of competing

agendas. Biesta’s claims alter the framework proposed by Lingis, yet he ultimately finds the

existence of a moral responsibility to bridge communities.

As Lingis and Biesta differ on the degree to which disparate communities must interact,

Sara Ahmed’s “Re-imaging Communities” calls for just that, a re-defining. Ahmed seeks to

“disentangle community from identity.” 8 By this she means, a community forged on the basis of

identity leads to a policing of who may be counted and legitimized. Ahmed argues that perhaps

we need not to search for a commonality but rather focus on the literal “common ground” we

walk on.9 Thus, when Lingis’s rational community interacts with the intruder, we may bypass

moral claims of identity in favor of building spaces for safe inhabitance. Ahmed finds that

community is never complete, instead a continual work in progress that centers on the

connection between the physical ground and those that share it. Overall, Ahmed modifies

Lingis’s argument to redirect the site of commonality from mortality to the land we inhabit.

Current scholars, seeking to modify Lingis’s notion of community, have not yet settled

what a community’s responsibility is to bridge differences. Despite the unfinished landscape,

there is also a growing need to apply Lingis’s concepts to modern life. Similarly to Ahmed’s

focus on community land, James Magrini, author of “Ethical Responses to Nature’s Call,”
6
Biesta, “Education and the Language of Responsibility,” 313.
7
Biesta, “Education and the Language of Responsibility,” 313.
8
Sara Ahmed and Anne-Marie Fortier, “Re-Imagining Communities,” International
Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 3, 2003: 256, https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779030063001.
9
Ahmed, “Re-Imagining Communities,” 256.
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challenges the audience to combat our human foot-print on the ecological sphere using elements

of Lingisian community. A useful tenet of Lingis’s theory is the “wide-open skies, the dry

sparkling air” which separate communities find proximal and familiar.10 Magrini implements this

to say communities are deeply rooted in the nature. Due to humanity’s link to the natural world,

Magrini writes that all individuals have a collective responsibility to “rescue Nature from our

environmental crimes.”11 For Magrini, this feat is made possible by the Lingisian idea that

mortality elicits “care and empathy” from one community onto another.12 While Magrini’s larger

text calls to address climate change, his argument suggests that since all communities face

environmental decline, we can use this shared empathy to rescue one another. Both Magrini and

Ahmed’s arguments offer the environment the community inhabits as a space for bonding.

Amid debates on the Lingisian community, it is a worthwhile approach to apply current

theories of community to physical spaces. Less than a mile down the road from Davidson

College lies a community fractured not only by race, but by an environment contaminated with

asbestos. Former Davidson graduate Rosalia Polanco, in her 2017 Capstone research with Dr.

Eriberto Lozada, uncovered the town’s history with asbestos, as well as the disproportionate

impacts on communities of color. Entrenched in the racial politics of the American south, the

town of Davidson had always fostered a “regional pattern of group discrimination.”13 Yet, this

discrimination became actualized through the establishment of the Carolina Asbestos Company

in 1932. This warehouse was developed on the west side of town, taking the place of an old mill

that deployed segregated housing practices for African American workers. These segregated
10
James Magrini, Ethical Responses to Nature’s Call: Reticent Imperatives, Routledge,
2019, 132.
11
Magrini, Ethical Responses to Nature’s Call, 132.
12
Magrini, Ethical Responses to Nature’s Call, 132.
13
Rosalia Polanco, “They Will Never Let Us Forget Who We Are”: A GIS and
Environmental Justice Analysis of Asbestos Exposure in the Town of Davidson,” Davidson
College, 2017, 15.
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housing practices have left their mark on the town, leaving a majority the black population

concentrated on the west side of the train tracks, virtually next door to the asbestos. The town of

Davidson is home to two disparate communities which parallel Lingis’s theory.

Unlike Lingis’s theory, however, the looming threat of asbestos, a lethal agent, has not

sparked a bridging moment for the white and black populations within the town. The town has

been aware of asbestos contamination since 1934, as an N.C. Supreme Court Case was filed, yet

the plaintiff lost the case as the Courts upheld the Asbestos Co.’s position. Again in 1941, there

was a request from a towns member to cover “an open ditch emanating” asbestos, yet the board

did not address the concerns.14 While concerns were raised again in the 80s, testing was not

completed until 2016 when one EPA worker was quoted saying, “we were never going to make

all the asbestos go away.”15 Polanco’s interviews with current town residents highlighted the

racial injustice the town has perpetuated. In each interview Polanco conducted with Davidson

residents, death of a relative due to asbestos related complications were also mentioned. One

interviewee expressed the town “didn’t care. There were just black people on that strip—it didn’t

make them no difference.”16 Davidson’s long history with asbestos calls attention to the town

leadership’s indifference to the health risks to the black population on the west side.

Racialized power structures in Davidson are historically ingrained in the fabric of the

town. Lingis might argue that the presence of asbestos, which threatens the lives of town

residents, might create “brotherhood, an accompaniment in dying with the other.”17 Yet, such an

olive branch moment has not occurred. Asbestos related deaths have occurred in the community

since the 1930s, but witnessing such mortality has not suddenly created an urgency to end racism

14
Polanco, “They Will Never Let Us Forget Who We Are,” 18.
15
Polanco, “They Will Never Let Us Forget Who We Are,” 30.
16
Polanco, “They Will Never Let Us Forget Who We Are,” 36.
17
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, 179.
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or bridge the divide between the two populations in Davidson. The racialized structures evident

in the town, such as historical housing practices, are so deeply rooted, that a power dynamic

exists. The town’s all white board has failed to address these concerns and advocate for EPA

cleanup. The asbestos is evidence of institutional racism executed on the bodies of black

residents, and those voices have not been adequately heard by the town. I argue that while

Lingis’s theory targets communities such as Davidson, the historical oppression that is intrinsic

to Davidson, and modern communities, render Lingis’s theory obsolete.

Within Lingis’s theory, the fundamental site of divergence from reality is in facing the

other. Lingis claims that the stimulus for approaching the other is witnessing, face to face, “the

vulnerability of naked skin” and “the anxieties of pain that agitate those surfaces.”18 It is from

this viewing of suffering that, according to Lingis, compassion and compulsion to action are

derived. There is there crucial aspect of this face to face interaction, however, which is

unfulfilled. Lingis writes, the rational hand “extends into the place of the other’s dying.”19 By

this, he means the two communities would ideally come to stand on a level playing field, free of

opposing institutions. This disregard for social structure and full exchange of power upon sight

does not occur when power is indoctrinated. As is the case in Davidson, witnessing black

children “covered in white powder [asbestos] on the playground” did not prompt action.20 The

conversation on the influence of encountering another’s face is dynamic and spans far beyond

the scope of Lingis, yet in terms of applying his theory, one’s face alone does not dissolve

existing power differentials. Regardless if the white and black communities in Davidson were to

find a space for face to face interaction, that does not guarantee that residents can step away from

the roles of power which dictate society. While the issue of asbestos is ever-present in the town
18
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, 176.
19
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, 175.
20
Polanco, “They Will Never Let Us Forget Who We Are,” 31.
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of Davidson, white residents have not properly witnessed its ill effects. Instead, the

environmental toxicity which plagues minority residents has been largely ignored, even as both

communities live within the same town. The decades old imbalance has not, and cannot, be

overhauled by Lingis’s logic.

It is important to understand that Lingis’s suggestion for unifying communities cannot

stand. Even though Lingis proves to be invalid in application, using his theory as a lens is helpful

to ponder solutions to division. In order to form the united community that Lingis speaks of, we

must “extend into the place of the other’s dying.”21 Bryan Stevenson, author and founder of the

Equal Justice Initiative, offered advice on how to form such a united community in our post-

slavery world during a lecture given at Davidson College. Primarily, he encouraged the audience

to “get proximate” and “get uncomfortable.”22 For Stevenson, we cannot overcome structural

racism without first addressing the issue on an individual scale. Members of a community must

come into close contact with those that are suffering. We must bear witness and recognize that

injustice is perpetuated because individuals accept the system in which it occurs. It may be

uncomfortable to challenge the town’s prevailing attitudes, but only discomfort will yield

change.

21
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, 175.
22
Bryan Stevenson (speech, Reynolds Lecture, Davidson College, January 28, 2020).
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Bibliography

Ahmed, Sara, and Anne-Marie Fortier. “Re-Imagining Communities.” International Journal of

Cultural Studies 6. no. 3. 2003: 251–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/13678779030063001.

Biesta, Gert. “The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common: Education and the

Language of Responsibility.” Interchange 35. no. 3. 2004: 307–24.

https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02698880.

Lingis, Alphonso. The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common. Indiana University

Press. 1994. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gzc06.

Magrini, James. Ethical Responses to Nature’s Call: Reticent Imperatives. Routledge. 2019.
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Polanco, Rosalia. “They Will Never Let Us Forget Who We Are”: A GIS and Environmental

Justice Analysis of Asbestos Exposure in the Town of Davidson.” Davidson College.

2017.

Stevenson, Bryan. Speech, Reynolds Lecture, Davidson College, January 28, 2020.