1.5 Black Existentialism PDF

Study Section 1.5: Black Existentialism  Study Outcomes After completion of this study unit, you should be able to: explain what Black Existentialism is and how it inflects standard existentialism. give an account of the main ideas of Black Existentialism and the thi...

Study Section 1.5: Black Existentialism  Study Outcomes After completion of this study unit, you should be able to: explain what Black Existentialism is and how it inflects standard existentialism. give an account of the main ideas of Black Existentialism and the thinkers associated with this school of thought.  LEWIS GORDON: Africana Philosophy of Existence Born in 1962. Lewis Ricardo Gordon is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works on the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, social and political theory. A distinguished professor and head of department. Main interests: Africana Philosophy; Black Existentialism, phenomenology.  Africana Philosophy Refers to theoretical questions raised by struggles over ideas in African culture and their hybrid and creolized forms in Europe, North America, Central and South America and the Caribbean. It also refers to questions raised by the historical project of conquest and colonization since 1492 and the subsequent struggles for emancipation. Enrique Dussel refers to such struggles as modernity’s “underside” in contrast with Western philosophical treatment of ideas from Descartes to Kant. Regards Western modernity more as a march of sword and Bible than reason and moral persuasion.  The History of Black Existence Focuses on the lived, existential reality of the day-to-day situation of their denied humanity and the historical irony of their emergence in a world that denied their historicity. Black theorists addressed both the historical transformation of Africans into blacks and the struggle to transform the historical moment of global conquest into a period of freedom. It’s the liberation writer’s effort to contribute to the construction of new forms of life. We have, then, a symbiotic dualism. On the one hand, there is the identity question. Who, in a word, are Africana peoples? And then there is the teleological question: For what ought such people be striving? This latter concern often takes a liberatory form: How might the peoplehood of dehumanized people be affirmed?  Africana Existential Philosophy What is Africana thought and what should be its methodology? The lived reality of values was needed to position the centrality of an “inner life” of black folk. Africana existential philosophy is a branch of Africana philosophy and black philosophies of existence. But isn’t “existentialism” a white, European philosophy? Can it address black existence? Yes → Existential philosophy addresses problems of freedom, anguish, dread, responsibility, embodied agency, sociality, and liberation; it addresses these problems through a focus on the human condition. In the African context James ask the question if slaves did not wonder about freedom; suffer anguish; notice paradoxes of responsibility; tremors of broken sociality, or a burning desire for liberation?  Black “Existentialism” or “Philosophies of Existence”? Gordon: “existentialism” is a fundamentally European ideological movement. Gordon prefers the term “philosophies of existence” or “existential philosophies”. The writings of Frantz Fanon (Black Skin, White Masks), Du Bois (Souls of Black Folk), Toni Morrison’s (Playing in the Dark) have shown us anxiety, dread and despair were on the modern world’s underside. The racial problematic for Africana people is twofold. On the one hand, it is the question of exclusion in the face of an ethos of assimilation. On the other hand, there is the complex confrontation with the fact of such exclusion in a world that portends commitment to rational resolutions of evil. Signals the question of liberation on one level and the critique of traditional (read: European) ontological claims on another.  Black “Existentialism” or “Philosophies of Existence”? Jean-Paul Sartre stands as an unusual catalyst in the history of black existential philosophy → his work influenced a great number of black existentialist thinkers: e.g. Fanon, Biko, Gordon himself. It would, however, be an error to construct Africana academic existential philosophy as a fundamentally Sartrean or European-based phenomenon. One cannot in critical good faith raise the question of being black without raising these accompanying existential questions; questions unique to black existence. Not overly theoretical / it emphasizes “praxis” (practical value for life). Black people have been uniquely racialized historically. But it’s not just a question of physical appearances (skin colour), it is a question of the values placed upon what has been interpreted as “given” → i.e. what does it mean to exist as black?  The Question(s) of Existential Meaning Fanon: Black defiance to black dehumanization has been historically constituted as “madness” or “social deviance”. In the face of unreason, nihilism gnaws at black existence. Black existence stands as an existential enigma → since black existence was dehumanized and therefore neglected as a philosophical question. The question then becomes, for black existents → Why continue existing in a world where blackness has been ontologically negated? No one chooses to have been born under racial designations, but the choice to go on living, and especially choices that involve recognizing one’s racial situation, has implications on the meaning of one’s birth.  Black Existential Philosophies Self-value also emerges from valuing one’s desire to bring meaning to one’s existence. Black power demands, among its values, first and foremost the recognition and valuing of black people as sources of value. Examples of black existentialist thinkers: Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, W. E. B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, Aimé Césaire, Angela Y. Davis, Toni Morrison, Cornel West, bell hooks, Joy Ann James.  From Fanon to Biko and Beyond: Looking For Ways to Maintain Fidelity to Humanity Written by Jacques Depelchin, a Congolese writer and activist. It is a review of a book on “Fanonian practices” in South Africa. Fanon and Biko were commited to searching for ways of maintaining humanity. One could call such a commitment ‘fidelity to humanity’. This kind of focus and commitment to maintain humanity (to a radical rupture from the practices promoted by capitalism) started long before European philosophers addressed their minds to it. Fanonian practices can be seen as those practices that seek to break away from what is imposed by a system (capitalism) that is determined to do away with humanity.  Looking for ways to maintain “fidelity to humanity” Which ways of maintaining (and destroying) that conscience of a moral and just way of living did humans develop? Would it be far-fetched to suggest that individuals like Oppenheimer, Césaire, Fanon or Biko understood humanity in its broadest dimensions, as it had grown from its origins? Both Fanon and Biko were determined to resist being boxed-in by the limitations on humanity imposed by those who sought to destroy it while rebuilding it after their own image → note the existential undertones here. How do we achieve human solidarity in the world? → Ubuntu? Example: without the sense of solidarity connecting all human beings, the organised politics against apartheid could not have been sustained.  Fidelity to Humanity Question: can it be said that from the days of Fanon, through Biko’s days until today humanity’s conscience has increased? Given what is taking place in the world, it is difficult to respond affirmatively. Modernisation and capitalism have undermined our fidelity to humanity. The preoccupation with humanity, in the immediate aftermath of WWII, has been replaced by one dominated by humanitarianism → BUT is humanitarianism the most efficient way of maintaining fidelity to humanity? → we need a human existence of solidarity (humanity), not just charity (humanitarianism). We need practices that move away from splitting humanity toward a healing process framed by those who never reneged on their origins → is it a coincidence that Fanon was a psychiatrist, and Biko was studying to be a medical doctor?  Critique of Capitalism Fanon saw most clearly how the capitalist system ate away at humanity from within and from without. South African practices of splitting humanity reached its zenith with apartheid. But, one should never forget that apartheid is but a variation of something that itself grew out of (1) slavery and (2) colonisation. These two are clearly connected to the expansion of an economic system (capitalism) that rested on predation and fission. Both Fanon and Biko understood that in order to combat these two violent processes of destruction, humanity (as in humankind) would have to resort to what it had practiced, long before the invention of capitalism. Under contemporary capitalism, the poor become the new colonized, the new “Wretched of the Earth” (Fanon).  Fidelity to Humanity In January 2013, Taso Aso, the Japanese Minister of Finance called for the country’s old people to die as quickly as possible, because caring for them was a waste of money → Capitalism seeks to to liquidate humanity and its history. The process of humanity finding out that fidelity to itself was not a given has a history that goes much deeper than, say, ubuntu, humanism or new humanism may suggest. The term Ubuntu probably pre-existed Sartre’s and Fanon’s uses of ‘humanism’ and/or ‘new humanism’. Fidelity to humanity was not invented by the West. On the contrary, fidelity to humanity was precisely lost in the supposed “progress” of Western modernity. We need to return to a thinking that pre-dates the rise of “Modern humanity”. Fanon and Biko knew this well, and their thinking continues to inspire us towards greater human solidarity, which is truly an existential concern. THANK YOU!