Double Consciousness

Double Consciousness Defined

The phrase double consciousness itself stemmed from a passage in the first chapter of Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, called “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” In this chapter, Du Bois describes how the descendants of Africans feel not a single self-consciousness but a sense of twoness, of being a U.S. citizen as well as a Black. These two identities represent two simultaneous [Page 412]selves—American and African or American and Black.

Although today the term double consciousness is almost always solely attributed to Du Bois and his work, the term itself was not created by him and would have been familiar to his contemporaries. The term had currency in at least two major avenues available to his educated readership: in medical psychology to refer to cases of split personality and in literature speaking of a transcendental division between the divine and the material world, which inhibited true self-realization. In each case, Du Bois likely relied on the phrase to make his ideas familiar to his readers, both in rallying Black Americans and in creating a basis of empathy among White Americans.

In the psychological literature, the idea of double consciousness, made popular by several cases of split personality highlighted in Harper's magazine, made clear that the two selves were not only distinct but fundamentally opposed to each other. Although seen to be abnormal, the state of double consciousness was not seen as deviant; there was genuine sympathy and integrity attached to the subjects of this psychological double consciousness. This created a helpful and non-damaging metaphor and familiar language for Du Bois when he spoke about the dignity of this struggle for African Americans, who Du Bois posited as struggling to synthesize an integrated self out of two conflicting identities.

The term was similarly useful for those readers familiar with literature and transcendental thought. Much of Du Bois's work carries a deeply spiritual aspect, and many have interpreted his concept of double consciousness to refer to what Du Bois felt African Americans had to offer U.S. society: a deeply spiritual African identity, which could help to offset the harms and conflict many felt inherent to the materialism of U.S. society. This strain of literary thought was well known in Ralph Waldo Emerson's work, and was likewise adopted by many philosophers of the time, including Du Bois's mentor at Harvard, William James.

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