Its Black History Month, and we are publishing a story in The Neoliberal Journals that was published in our Commentary via LinkedIn, The Neoliberal Commentary and our Podcast, The Neoliberal Round on March 21, 2022.
We recently carried a podcast episode commenting on Florida’s ban on teaching students to “feel guilt” on history. It was also published as an article in last week’s LinkedIn newsletter, “The Neoliberal Commentary”. I wanted to add another point to the discussion surrounding this issue as we get into the topic of discussion for today, “Reimagining Peoples Within Critical Race Theory: Not Thinking Race And Moving Away from A Victim to A Hero Approach.”
The point is that Florida’s ban against teaching students to feel-guilt on history seems to be based on bad analysis, in that, it presumes that people aren’t responsible for their own emotions or their internal feelings or responses towards external stimuli. The fact is each person is different and unique and may have one feeling or reaction towards an external stimulus which differs from another when exposed to the same stimulus or stimuli. This is where Descartes was useful, when he arrived at “cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am)—pointing out that knowledge of reality is certain because of the inescapable proof of the reality of one’s own mind in the very act of doubting one’s own existence. This leads to the implication then, that we can’t really know anything outside of our own minds and reality of ourselves (See Descartes, Rene, “The Philosophical Works of Descartes, rendered into English,” Translated by Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross, 1911). Therefore, we are only aware of our own feelings and are the only ones who can truly make sense of reality for ourselves. But this ban seems to blame the truth of history contained in lessons that is actually on schools’ curricular or business programs aimed at developing diversity among their students and staff respectively. However, based on the subjective understanding of reality described by Descartes, we cannot assume a feeling for others, because we are outside of the realities of individuals, and individuals have minds that impress a subjective understanding of the experience of a particular reality or stimuli within their reality. Therefore, an experience and or feelings of guilt make up an individual’s personality and subjective understanding of reality. The ban assumes an experience on everyone and comes to a conclusion about a personal response. Further, if people feel guilty from exposure to stimuli, isn’t this a normal human response given the fact that we have consciences and rationality based on our human consciousness and therefore an idea of justice, fairness and discrimination. Further, this ban gives students tremendous authority over the classroom and learning, for any student can now say they “feel guilt” from any lesson in history that is taught.
This brings me to the topic for today: “Reimagining Peoples Within Critical Race Theory: Not Thinking Race & Moving Away from A Victim to A Hero Approach.” This connects to the issue of the dynamics of humanity as we look at privilege and power and solutions to the problems and challenges these pose for society. I have said that putting people in race is dangerous and disastrous; it constantly puts people against each other. Further, it is important to point out here that there’s no race only a human race. Race is a human conception or creation that came about around the 1600s – 1700s about the same time that Europe was about to embark on the most heinous and inhumane project: the enslavement of a black race or the slave trade. There was never any race only a human race which distinguishes humans from other beings or species. The argument or theory about races within the human race was proven to be a useful discovery and tool as it provided an acceptable argument that a civilized society based on laws and faith to use to justify the creation of a society based on race. (The same method was used to augment Christianity when St. Augustine Confessions was discovered as a useful tool to form the foundational principles of Christianity as it agreed with, supported and made the Christian faith exceptional during the race for a dominant religion.) At best, it was an extreme way of justifying the slave trade so as to satisfy some greed—maximize profit with the cheapest labor/cost. The race to profit from having a monopoly on sugar and growing spices in the Caribbean required a large and flexible, hard and a willing/complicit labor force that could be controlled at lowest cost possible. European elites had already realized that they could not rely on their countrymen given the type of labor required and the health risks involved in doing so. As such, they had come up with the idea which they turned into a plan, to enslave a set of people from Africa who they would objectify through a false theory of science about the biology of peoples to justify their plan/strategy. The elites knew that they could not have undertaken such a daring and heinous plan fearing backlash from the Pius and their civilized society. So, they engineered a plan that has been working against peoples, denigrating a set of human being into a set of savages via scientific means and then justify using those so-called savages on religious means that was at best a forced reading of the scriptures to justify a practice. Indeed, race was and still is a strategy that was useful to create a society whereby, that society could justify and feel good about its abuses, injustices and victimization of another set of people, so as to realize its greed for maximum and supernormal profit (profit which black people were never and are not allowed to access because they were treated like livestock that do not have value or use for money or profit.)
Therefore, as a progressive and advanced society that is more aware of the truth, we should now move away from thinking in terms of race as it was a useful strategy for a backward society driven by greed and a competitive drive for dominance which created a society based on race to facilitate the application of an economic system that was heavily invested in the slave trade. According to Andrew Curran the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment and, more recently, Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely, and the William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan University in an article in the Times entitled: Facing America’s History of Racism Requires Facing the Origins of ‘Race’ as a Concept. “Racialized thinking, especially when weaponized by our politicians, must be repudiated at every turn. Part of an effective rebuttal to such malicious positions may come from extending our understanding of racism to include the anecdotal, spurious and pseudoscientific birth of these ideas centuries ago. This may ultimately be something that every American can agree on wherever we come from, we are all the unfortunate heirs of a deadly and illegitimate science,” (https://time.com/5865530/history-race-concept/)
However, I will go further than Andrew and add, not only are we to face race as a concept, but also see it as a strategy within a context of greed and unfair and reckless gain. Strategy is evident in politics, business, international relations and even within colonialism and how those societies were conquered and developed. In fact, Andrew goes on to say in the Times article I referenced above that “The histories of slavery and racism in the United States have never been more pertinent. This is also the case for the comparatively understudied history of race as a concept, without which it is impossible to understand how Europeans and their colonial “descendants” in the United States engineered the most complete and enduring dehumanization of a people in history. The logic behind the history of race initially seems deceivingly clear: to justify the forced deportation of 400,000 Black Africans to North America (and another eleven million to other parts of the Americas between 1525 and 1866), Europeans and their American heirs found it necessary to debase and revile their captives. Yet today’s racism is more than a malignant byproduct of the 19th-century American plantation system; it also grew out of an elaborate and supposedly “scientific” European conception of the human species that began during the Enlightenment,” (https://time.com/5865530/history-race-concept/).
Indeed, there was never a race, and it has been the belief among many Black and white Americans that black peoples in Africa at one time had slaves and enslaved their own brothers. But this is not true; because Africans who negotiated their life away to the Europeans who outsmarted them, never thought of themselves in terms of or identified as any race of black people. They were states (tribal) as much as the Europeans were citizens of nation states or monarchies. There were fierce fighting and wars between these African states (tribes) for dominance, and various African states did enslave their captives. However, the slavery practiced was not the kind or on the elaborate scale as the slave trade. Certainly. the Africans allowed their drive for power to be their downfall. The Europeans made deals to give the African states (Tribes) guns for slaves. The Africans were more than happy as they thought that they could now dominate the other states (tribes), but the Europeans made the same deal with all the other states (tribes). In the end, the Europeans facilitated the demise of Africa and were able to penetrate the region for a time. The Europeans realized that they had a huge market for sugar and that the tropics and the new world could provide tremendous opportunities for cultivating products such as sugar that had a growing demand that was exploding. The race was on to monopolize sugar and having a cheap slave labor force that ensures this was what they could’ve come up with. So, the issue of race is a construction that served a particular purpose in history which at this moment in time should be at least made obsolete as it is backward thinking. In fact, just as we can place a ban on teaching students to “feel guilt” on history we can place a ban on teaching a false theory about race. In fact, if we are to truly resolve the issues of race such as the feeling of guilt from teaching or talking about an unpleasant past, we may find the better answer in teaching a united race instead of races. But we are conditioned in various ways to continue to think in racial terms.
Further just as Florida is trying to deal with the issue of guilt through bans that only breeds more racial tension and suspicion, while the society face practices of discrimination, there are those who are putting out projects and works that reimagine the way we view slaves or black people in history. They are moving away from the “victim approach” to the “hero approach”. So that black people can have a positive image of themselves in history instead of a negative one or a defeated one. This is another way we deal with emotional issues surrounding the problem of race stemming from the past. Ultimately, it is by moving away from racial thinking or a society of race that we will engender true healing, for then it would be a society of love, and that is the greatest miracle. Furthermore, when we can work together to deal with scars of the past without politicizing it can we truly strengthen our race relations and unite a nation. How do we do this? A solution to consider is to move away from racial thinking. Yet we are conditioned to think in those terms, even in today’s world. But what purpose does that serve? Moreover, and importantly, another way we can develop a more united human race which was the original intention, is for black and brown people to begin to move away from thinking about their past with a defeatist and victim mentality. That’s seems to be the recommendation of new black scholars, who are trying to reimagine and reinvent the slave in history. I want to lift up Dana Berry’s Book “Price For Their Pound Of Flesh.”
Sometime ago, I was wrapping with a fraternal line brother of mine from “Phi beta sigma” about the book ” Price For Their Pound Of Flesh,” in preparation for a presentation I had to deliver at a class at Georgetown on said book, exploring Berry’s efforts to reimagine and reinvent the black slave within America’s Slave history. I concluded that Berry does a very good job in her book to lay out her argument. The impromptu wrap session is worth sharing. I recorded, transcribed and edited the discussion to only include my raw, unedited and uncanny analysis. The Discussion was captured in two separate takes, recording 1 and recording 2.
Recording 1: Wrapping About Dana Berry’s Book: “Price For Their Pound Of Flesh.”
What makes Her [Dana Berry] unique is that she is using a modern-day concept to describe the issue of slavery, within Capitalism. Berry is creative and interesting in terms of how she was able to utilize an interdisciplinary approach to talk about slavery. Say for example, Criminality or the issue of rape, especially with the advent of the “me too movement” and the “Black Lives Matter movement,” there is this issue with the victims who are rising up, which is not new to black people’s history of resistance so that they are seen as resistant to laws and law enforcement even within today’s current thinking. In fact, in the “Me Too” movement, what was important for them was highlighting their victimization and abuse. The “me too movement” brought into clearer view people’s tendency to look at the perpetrator, not the victim; when crimes are committed the attention is on the abuser which continues the power dynamic of abuse. The victim is rarely heard or seen and if they are seen, they are seen to be weak or deserving of their abuse or victimization, thereby re-victimizing the victim. The victim is always described in light of the perpetrator and the abuse, as if one cannot detach from the experience. So, is Dana infusing this experience and idea of approaching abuse and victimization with the experience of slavery? Yes, that is my understanding of her method even if she may not know that she is doing so. I say this because I believe Berry in her book wants to move away from a conception of viewing the slave without a soul, one that degrades their personhood, and such a concept is what the slaves never had and worked against through a variety of means. Yet history does not represent those concepts of the slave idea of themselves. But Berry champion that in her book. The common practice and challenge that Berry is addressing in her book project is this, that when people in a racial society think about the slaves’ past, they think about it in accounting terms, the slave as property and as victims, a people that continue to experience this denigration and the scars of the past given the continuation of a racial society. The implication here is that people think about one as property because you’re thinking about the slave in the eyes of another. But what about thinking about the enslave in the eyes of the slaves? How do they, the enslaved feel about themselves in history? Therefore, Berry presents a myriad of actual slave stories pulled from the archives that were once lost or hidden that tell the slaves’ perspectives. In doing do one get the sense, that the slave speaks from the grave a vilification for him or her who at one time was never seen or heard or valued except as a working animal in the back corners or fields of society. And what she has discovered from her reading of the material, she pieced together in “Price for Their Pound of Flesh” showing that the slave was resilient and valuable to him or herself. She is moving from the victim—mentality to the hero. What is the victim mentality in slavery? Every time people talk about slavery, such as mainstream historians, they talk or wrote about the slave as property, the slave as valuable only in so far as he is valuable to somebody else—to the white man, to his owner (external value). This value is based on the slaves’ worth which is the ability to work, an external conception of himself and every time you talk about slavery it’s always a bad experience or you talk about it always as a negative, the dark side. But Berry here is moving away from that and attempts to do so by looking in the mind of the slave (their internal conception of themselves) based on their untold stories and tries to empower the slave by giving them a voice. Berry uses archives that contained newly unearthed documents about the slaves’ efforts to resist and preserve their sense of value, dignity and self-worth through rebellion and or various forms of resistance. In effect she is attempting to reimagine and reinvent the slave. She does so by beginning to talk about her childhood where she shared her story of how her parents made a concerted effort to her and her siblings on hikes and tours and taught them to have internal value and a strong sense of lineage that she concluded influenced her sense of value and dignity as a person today. Berry doesn’t want a history based on degrading the slave, because it also helps to continue the victimization of black people. When black people reminisce about their foundation, the idea of property comes to mind because you’re thinking about it in the eyes of a white race that had strategically planned for this reaction and mentality and provide a stapled history that continue to shape the slave as defeated and weak victims of an unfortunate past. We are conditioned to constantly think in racial and categorical terms which finds support in a false science. Yet we continue to base our societies on such a science. How then can we trust science and any society that holds on to vestiges of the past that strategically and systematically denigrate a set of human beings? So that we can continue White Privilege or to promote an inequal society with poor and rich peoples and variations in between.
Berry carefully weaves together stories from American slaves from archives and show how they value themselves. In fact, their rebellion was part of how they valued and attempted to recover that value. she the kind of valid that they play some their cells through rebellion. Dana Berry’s opening statements in her book laid the foundation for her argument as she reminisced about her childhood and development towards adulthood. In the author’s note, at the beginning of the book, she writes about her upbringing and how her parents were professors and that they (in her family) didn’t see race because they lived in a community of black professionals who were professors and teaches and very educated black people who made a concerted effort to empower their children by not by not feeding them the external history but more the internal one. So that they could appreciate themselves. Berry in her book was doing what her parents did. She seems to be on an empowerment journey. Berry in her book is seeking to empower the slave or the descendants of slaves when they approach their history. That is what she is aiming to do. The thing is, when you study her method, she used subjects of the story-slaves. Dana’s book responds to the slave from the grave who are asking: what about our feelings and the value we placed on ourselves to secure a future for our children and grandchildren. That is what separated the slave from actual livestock, slaves were treated as livestock as if they don’t have a soul, but their ways of resistance made them more than livestock. That’s the point she makes in her book, that she is driving home.
Further, for Berry, the slave had a soul and she presented that by looking at the lifecycle of a slave where at various points in their life cycles in history they demonstrated that belief in their value as having a soul. Moreover, Berry is making an argument based in accounting terms, not necessarily an economic one, as some would argue. The fact is that when she does her analysis of the slave in slave society, she shows it in terms of an appreciation and depreciation of the slaves’ value as livestock, not in those exact terms. She described that concept when she explained and highlighted how slaves were valued at various points within the lifecycle of a slave’s life (psychological principle). Berry goes on to say that their asset value is either appreciated or depreciated, and when slaves get to a certain age, when their value has been depleted, they are disposed of via accounting means. Here we see how the slave was valued as a soulless stock assessed in accounting terms. The slaves were treated as that, but she then shows how the slave resisted this type of valuation to protect their individuality over and against their former masters’ conception of the black man and woman. She talks about the lifecycle of a slave and in developmental or social psychology, theorists such as Erik Erikson, Maslow, Kohlberg, Piaget and Sigmund Freud provided theories on the psychological development that human beings experience, (Freud and Piaget deals with the conscious, and the cognitive development, but Erik Erikson looks at the physical and social development (example, 0-5, 6-11 etc.) So, Berry draws from these disciplines to plot her study because for her the value of the slave changes throughout his or her lifecycles. (Yes, that is very interesting.) Therefore, she is using psychology as a method because psychology is within the realm of such topics as value and concerns itself with the issue of self-value or self-concept. When Berry talks about self-value or soul value, she is really looking at self-concept, self-esteem and empowerment. Indeed, Psychology studies self-esteem and self-concept of the self or selves. In Psychology we learn about how human being compartmentalize themselves into the various self: the real, the imagined and the actual. So, Berry here takes a psychological approach in looking at the slave, mixed in with accounting so as to arrive at her conclusions and to realize her goals. Indeed, in doing so she does a very good job in putting this book together and making her case.
Additionally, what I found strikingly powerful was that in the beginning of the book, Berry quoted a slave in the introduction. In fact, the book is bereft with quotes, words and statements by slaves. That is one of the things I appreciate about Berry’s book. Personally. In fact, several students I taught recently stated that they didn’t know that slaves spoke or that there were volumes of slaves’ writings until a class on Caribbean Thought that looked at historians that are now reimagining slaves and producing documents by slaves from archives that were never utilized or considered in mainstream historical literature and academia. Moreover, I had received a book from an old, retired teacher living in my apartment building in Harlem NYC and I used it in a lecture and shared the contents with the students. It was a huge encyclopedia that was entitled “The Journal Of Negro History” published in 1925 in Washington D.C. by the Association for the study of Negro Life and History. It was part of several volumes, and I was provided with that one volume and in it were several documents and letters from as early as 1848, where slaves were writing letters about themselves, their deplorable condition and pleading for justice and to be freed. Majority of the students who were black were mildly surprised at this, as they didn’t realize that Slaves didn’t only speak but read and write and published literature and had an interest in Shakespeare as I had also shared a letter from a slave that quoted Shakespeare as he wrote about his plight and need for freedom and improved conditions. Indeed, the slave had a mind, an intellect and an affinity for literature and everything else that the other set of humanity had. Berry did well to lift up the ways Slave thought about themselves and that slaves thought of themselves as people who had a sense of the self, for they had a soul. That’s what Dana Berry is driving at.
On the issue of the Slave woman, Dana Barry is woman, a black woman, and that’s what separates Barry’s work here from any other within a field usually dominated by men. Further, I believe Berry is a feminist; she writes another book about woman of color on the importance of the woman in American history. If you read many of the history books about slavery, men have had a primordial position, in that, it is always the man, the “Mandingo” that takes the center stage, but here in her book she not only emphasizes the male, but she also made an effort to highlight or to lift up the woman and divulges much time and several chapters on the woman. She looks at how slavery survived because of the woman’s uterus. She explored the value of the woman given her reproductive prowess which helped to perpetuate slavery. Berry goes further to distinguish between American slaves, those born in America and those that came from Africa or the Caribbean. This distinction is usually not noted or highlighted that the uterus provided a means to cultivate slaves as a financial opportunity which minimized the need for trading or importing slaves. The uterus ensured that slaves could be reared in the US, while the number of imported slaves diminished. Yet Berry was able to point out a situation where the value of lave was also tied to this distinction. Importantly, the value of the woman is underscored in her work as she realizes the goal of giving voice to the voiceless or the victims or those whose voices are lost in history. She writes this book within the context of what was going on in America with the “Me Too Movement,” giving voice to the victim and reinventing the slave, by talking about them because women are usually left out. She talks about the woman’s internal value, not just about her having a uterus that perpetuate slavery which was an external value, in addition to her work value. Berry shares how the woman goes out of her way to protect her children. In another book that attempts to reimagine the slave by looking at slaves’ resistance as a way to preserve his or her value, Warren in her book entitled, “New England Bound: Slavery And Colonization in Early America,” published in 2016 by Liveright Publishing Corporation, told a story pulled from historical archives about a slave woman who was about to be raped. Warren explained that the slave woman was more upset about being raped than being slave, which Warren concluded was an indication of the slaves’ strong values and internal sense of self. To the external man she was property but to herself as a woman she was human with her internal sense and value of herself.
Recording 2: Wrapping About Dana Berry’s Book: “Price For Their Pound Of Flesh.”
There’s one more thing that I must add. As I read Dana’s book, she does something really interesting here; she talks about the fact that she didn’t see race in other words a public and a private self until she went to a public school, that’s when her friends treated her with disdain, because in a sense she was living a segregationist life; that’s my criticism of her book. Dana said that she didn’t see race only until she was met with the private self, within people of her own peers; the people that look like her. But when she moved beyond that as a child and went to a certain school, it was different and then she says they looked down and pitied her and then when she finally went to college, black college. she felt good. In a sense I think she has to be careful here because her arguments may be misleading as she seems to be now celebrating segregation. Berry’s argument suggests that black people can only identify with his own people but not outside of that. That is one of my criticisms, this whole issue of value and the fact that it brings into question the whole matter of segregation and integration because she seems to make an argument that integration gave her this false sense of self, because she was looked down on, her self-value was in Jeopardy or challenged by the external value of the other when in the public away from private. When she went to school in the public, she felt intimidated by those who pitied her for being black. But that when she lived in her community (the private) her parents did everything in their powers to ensure that she had a very strong conception of herself. In essence the public provided a challenge for her as she was face-to-face with an external conception of the self. But when she is in her community with her family, she is faced with the internal, which may lead to several ideas about segregation and integration. From this it would seem that segregation was useful for it promoted the internal over the external for the slave. This she explained was driven by a history that was not from the top down, but from the bottom up, not one of victimization, but one that celebrates the “soul value of the slave, one that celebrates the indomitability of the black woman and the black man, the slave and what they were able to go through and what they did to preserve themselves. So, it’s within our own black community that we find escape, therefore, why are we fighting against integration? Why is integration so bad if Berry here is lifting up the idea that celebrates or the implication of her argument would seem to suggest that black people would do better among themselves than integrated with others so that they should not integrate but stay within their own community so that they don’t have to feel discriminated against. Therefore, she has to be careful about that and has to put her argument in a broader perspective that does not defeat where we are so far in terms of integration. Another critique of her book is in terms of her implications around US policy or not just US policy but postindustrial policy or the argument that would suggest that you cannot compensate for the past Because you have all those records and archive is that available. Let me tell you after slavery people who had to release or free their slaves after slavery was abolished were compensated for their loss. This same appropriation should not and must not be appropriated and applied to their children and grandchildren today.
In closing, what is the ultimate of all things and the greatest miracle? The ability to live as one. For our unity is our strength and this facilitates progress and development. We are not talking about a unity where we are all identical, but one of diversity whereas as members of the human race we are one but unique which adds to the beauty of life. For life can be colorful as the universe exudes colors of all types everything working in balance.
So, let us abandon race, while working to heal the scars that race has inflicted on those who still bear its painful past. But we are conditioned to constantly think in racial and categorical terms which finds support in a false science. Yet we continue to base our societies on such a science. How then can we trust science and any society that holds on to vestiges of the past that strategically and systematically denigrate a set of human beings? So that we can continue White Privilege or to promote an inequal society with poor and rich peoples with variations in-between. References and further reading material are listed below the announcements.
This newsletter article will be available on the audio Podcast, The NeoLiberal Round via any podcast stream where you get your podcasts. The link below will take you to the anchor.fm episode but you may access this on any podcast stream.
Credits: This article was submitted by Rev. Renaldo McKenzie. Renaldo is the author of Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty And Resistance,” and is a Doctoral Candidate at Georgetown University. Renaldo graduated from University of Penn where he developed research interests in Neoliberalism, Power, privilege, status, inequality, poverty and the dynamics of human relations which include issues of race, elitism, neoliberal globalization and discrimination. Renaldo is also ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacraments by the United Church. Renaldo is also an Adjunct, where he teaches pro bono in areas of Caribbean and ‘Panafrica’ thought and perspectives. Send feedback to [email protected]
Announcement: Renaldo will be in Germantown Philadelphia at the Germantown Espresso Bar on Saturday April 2, 2022, from 8am – 2pm for a book signing of the book Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty And Resistance.
——
References And Further Reading:
- Berry, Dana. Price For Their Pound Of Flesh. Boston: Beacon Press, 2017.
- ANDREW CURRAN. Facing America’s History of Racism Requires Facing The Origins Of ‘Race’ As A Concept. Published in The Times, JULY 10, 2020 2:01 PM EDT.
- Descartes’ Epistemology. Descartes’ Epistemology (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- Erickson, Erik, H. Identity and the Life Cycle. NY: W.W. Norton and Company. 1994.
- Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its Discontent. W.W. Norton. Reprint 2010.
- How history textbooks reflect America’s refusal to reckon with slavery – https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/8/26/20829771/slavery-textbooks-history.
- McKenzie, Renaldo. C. Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty And Resistance. Charlotte NC: Palmetto Publishers. 2021.
- The Journal of Negro History. Volume X. Washington D.C. The Association for the Study of Negto History. 1925.
- Rosenthal, Caitlin. Accounting For Slavery, Masters and Management. Harvard University Press. 2019.
- Robert Hogan, John Johnson, and Stephen Briggs. Handbook of Personality Psychology. San Diego: Academic Press. 1997.
- Warren, Wendy. New England Bound: Slavery And Colonization in Early America. NY: Liveright Publishing Corporation. 2017.
- Watson, Richard. Cogito Ergo Sum: The Life Of Rene Descartes. ME. David, R Goodine Publishers. 2007.
- Wadsworth, Barry. J. Piaget Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development. Pearson College. 2003.