Reconstructing the Social Sciences and Humanities: Antenor Firmin, Western Intellectual Tradition, and Black Atlantic Thought and Culture

Mocombe Paul C

doi:10.36959/763/498

Abstract

In 1885, the nineteenth-century Haitian lawyer, statesman, anthropologist, and Egyptologist, Joseph Antenor Firmin (1850-1911), published his work, De l'egalite des races humanines (The Equality of the Human Races) as a rebuttal to Arthur de Gobineau's, 'Essai sur l' inegalite des races (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races).

Highlights

IntroductionSchooled in Haiti and Paris, in 1885, the nineteenth-century Haitian lawyer, statesman, anti-racist intellectual, anthropologist, and Egyptologist published his magisterial text, De l’égalité des races humanines (Anthropologie positive) (The Equality of the Human Races) in Paris in the form of an impassioned “scientific rebuttal” to Arthur de Gobineau’s scientific racism and, against his central thesis of the ontological superiority of the Aryan-White race and the ontological inferiority of the Black race
Joseph Anténor Firmin (1850-1911) was born in Le Cap, Haiti in 1850
Mocombe’s [1] social theory and method of “phenomenological structuralism,” thereby reconstructing the universality of the social sciences and humanities to account for the contribution of black (Haitian) Atlantic thought and culture, without any references to racial essentialism, which for me was the intent behind Firmin’s [3] work, or reactionary logics of oppression as embodied in constructs such as “double consciousness,” Afrocentrism, noirisme, black modernity, etc

Summary

Introduction

Schooled in Haiti and Paris, in 1885, the nineteenth-century Haitian lawyer, statesman, anti-racist intellectual, anthropologist, and Egyptologist published his magisterial text, De l’égalité des races humanines (Anthropologie positive) (The Equality of the Human Races) in Paris in the form of an impassioned “scientific rebuttal” to Arthur de Gobineau’s scientific racism and, against his central thesis of the ontological superiority of the Aryan-White race and the ontological inferiority of the Black race Gobineau articulated his ideas on the subject of racial hierarchy and racial essentialism of the human races, and correspondingly the history and achievement of the white race in modernity in his controversial and unfortunate text, Essai sur l’inégalité des races (An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races) (1853-1855). Mocombe’s [1] social theory and method of “phenomenological structuralism,” thereby reconstructing the universality of the social sciences and humanities to account for the contribution of black (Haitian) Atlantic thought and culture, without any references to racial essentialism, which for me was the intent behind Firmin’s [3] work, or reactionary logics of oppression as embodied in constructs such as “double consciousness,” Afrocentrism, noirisme, black modernity, etc

Background of the Problem

Conclusions