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MENTAL MODEL · M13194

Double Consciousness

Double Consciousness
CultureHigh supportPolitical Science
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Updated 2026-09-10

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Double consciousness is a concept in social philosophy that originally names an internal duality experienced by African Americans in a white-dominated society, produced by racialized oppression and disparagement. W. E. B. Du Bois introduced the notion into social thought in The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, and it has since been extended in debates about recognition, alienation, and self-estrangement.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Switch viewpoints: examine a situation through one's own eyes and through the external gaze at once. - Surface the tension: display the inner duality of the oppressed and explain the tearing of identity. - Trace the source: ask whether a self-image is one's own or an internalized dominant gaze.

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Anchor fast decisions

The mechanism is that the self-consciousness of the dominated must pass through the other's gaze: a dominant society imposes a disparaging image, and the dominated person both experiences herself from within and must view herself through a hostile external eye, with the two never merging. This division is not a psychological defect but the imprint of an oppressive structure, so emancipation means more than changing laws.

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Source support: Explicit

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    plato.stanford.eduhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness/ZH · Explicit
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