African-American Philosophy Research Articles

Heyes’s Responses to Readers

In this response to readers, I start by summarizing and extending Megan Burke’s comments on interrupted time in the context of houselessness and the way vulnerable people are often denied their own temporality altogether. Burke suggests that there is something called “anaesthetized time” that approaches death, and they invite the project to consider more closely the varieties of power that some have over others’ time. I relate these remarks to a political tradition in African American philosophy that Elizabeth Freeman calls thanatomimesis. In her response to the book, Talia Bettcher argues that two of the overly dichotomous framings need to be broken up: postdisciplinary and anaesthetic time, and agency and passivity. I clarify this point and suggest that these comments might point toward more generative work, including in relation to Bettcher’s own project on intimate agency. Finally Alisa Bierria relates the work of Anaesthetics to her own project on incarceration, suggesting that in addition to being denied their own time, prisoners are rendered into temporal property. This is a helpful concept that, I suggest, could be linked more clearly to Bierria’s understanding of revelatory agency and to the time of the contracted present.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Legacy of Boston Personalism

A Considered African American Philosophy and Practice of Arms

In the spring of 1963, Holmes County, Mississippi voting rights activist Hartman Turnbow fought off a terrorist attack on his home with his sixteen-shot semiautomatic rifle. Later, Turnbow explained that his gunfire was perfectly consistent with the nonviolent philosophy of the freedom movement, declaring, “I wasn’t being non-nonviolent, I was protecting my family.” Turnbow embraced armed self-defense and political nonviolence without any sense of contradiction. In this, he channeled a generations-old practice and philosophy of arms that was an integral part of Black response to racist terrorism, mobbing, state failure, and majoritarian tyranny.

For Whom and How Does Philosophy Matter? A Response to My Interlocutors

ABSTRACTIn this article, I respond to various interpretations of important aspects of my authored book, Across Black Spaces. I discuss the importance of thinking beyond Eurocentric/Western meta‐philosophical assumptions regarding the production of knowledge. I articulate and defend forms of philosophical engagement that trouble sites of white privilege and white power. I highlight the importance of philosophy as a site for engaging issues of existential catastrophe and disaster. And last, I defend the position that African American philosophy is, by its historical development within the context of anti‐Blackness, a collective site of Black opposition and resistance.

Why African American Philosophy Matters: A Case for Not Centering White Philosophers and White Philosophy

ABSTRACT This article asks why African American Philosophy matters. The notion of the “Black philosopher” continues to be an enigma. African descendants are not generally associated with the revered location and status of “the philosopher” and with doing philosophy. In a celebration of the sustained work of the Black philosopher-practitioner, who continues to suffer a fate of deliberate academic “invisibility” and historical erasure, this article supports the expansion of philosophical categories, philosophical conversation, and philosophical inclusivity. This work contends that the marginalization of African American philosophy can be understood from a synthesis of Foucault’s thesis of “subjugated knowledge” (how certain discourses are routinely disqualified by dominant ones) and Black philosopher Lewis Gordon’s explanation of “subverted realization,” which is built in to “white” modern thought. Both key philosophers help locate the problem questioned here. The overriding current of the “white (main) stream” of philosophy, by its deliberate exclusion of African American philosophy, disqualifies it.

THE PHILOSOPHIES OF AMERICA READER: FROM THE POPOL VOH TO THE PRESENT EDITED BY KIM DÍAZ AND MATHEW A. FOUST

Reviewed by: The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Voh to the Present ed. by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust Justin Pack Edited by Kim Díaz and Mathew A. Foust The Philosophies of America Reader: From the Popol Voh to the Present Bloomsbury Press, NY. 450 pgs. Index The editors of this new collection are clear with their intention: "The Philosophies of America Reader aims to widen the scope of American philosophy beyond its traditionally traced borders" (xv). This actually undersells what they are doing, which is an effort to carve out a new space that could perhaps best be labelled "Philosophies of the Americas" and includes Latin American philosophy, Native American philosophy, African American philosophy, American Transcendentalism, Pragmatism and some Asian American philosophy. There are thus multiple potential audiences for this text: (1) traditional "American philosophy" programs, (2) pluralist programs looking for a text that speaks to the diverse peoples and traditions of the Americas, (3) programs looking for a textbook for "philosophy and diversity" or similar courses. There is a critical ambiguity at play here. "American philosophy" is most often taken to mean primarily pragmatism and "American philosophy" courses tend to focus on Peirce, James and Dewey. If someone who was not familiar with the typical academic divisions in philosophy took an "American philosophy" course, they might do so expecting a course that reflects the diversity of America (USA) or the Americas. Instead, they will find a course on pragmatism. One way to clarify this ambiguity would be consistently distinguish "pragmatism" from "American philosophy" and treat the former as a member of the latter. The editors were trained in traditional "American philosophy" and would like to widen the "notion of who might count as an American philosopher" (xviii). This is part of the efforts to recognize and recover figures that have not been traditionally emphasized, especially female and minority voices. In pragmatism, this could include figures like Jane Addams, Mary Parker Follett, Alain Locke or W.E.B. Du Bois. The editors claim that while such efforts are laudable, they tend to tokenize non-White and non-male voices. As such, it is not enough to highlight more figures within pragmatism, rather to avoid this tokenizing we may need to move beyond the boundaries of pragmatism. Thus The Philosophies of America reader seeks to expand "American philosophy" beyond pragmatism not only to philosophies of America (USA) but to philosophies of the Americas (North and South). [End Page 406] The result is not pragmatism, but "philosophies of the Americas" of which pragmatism is one approach existing alongside Latin American, Native American, African American and other philosophies. I suspect most pragmatist philosophy programs (that are committed to pragmatism) are not going to want to completely revamp their academic programs to this degree, but this text would serve as a good foundation to a course that locates pragmatism among other American philosophies. The Philosophies of America Reader is relevant to a much larger audience than pragmatists looking to be more inclusive. For pluralist philosophers and pluralist programs, this is a very exciting text. It takes multiple marginalized traditions and seeks to put them in conversation without tokenizing them. Absent from this text are the most dominant traditional voices in philosophy—analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. Instead we have the diverse philosophies of the Americas. A typical textbook in a philosophy and diversity course might be something more like a "world religions and philosophies" text book. This book however draws the boundaries at the Americas. This means that instead of Asian and African philosophies we get essays from Asian Americans and African American figures. As such, this book is not a replacement for "world religions and philosophies" text books, but a new space that is centered on the experiences of Americans and the philosophical problems of the Americas. The editors include a sample syllabus for a course called "Philosophies of America" that could easily work in pluralist programs as a philosophy and diversity text that is tied more closely to readers in the Americas than "world religion and philosophies" texts, or as a situating course for pragmatism programs. Inevitably the scale of the text creates...

“A Fulfillment So High”: New Directions in African American Philosophy for the Study of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Scholarship on Martin Luther King, Jr., and more recent works on Howard Thurman, have become widely appreciative of their contributions to a struggle for Black liberation. This study explicates how the philosophies of Thurman and King also contribute to a universal theme of self-transformation. To be sure, the challenge of self-transformation is aggravated by the oppressive circumstances faced by Black persons in a racist society; however, the resources offered by Thurman and King for personal transformation should be relevant to persons almost regardless of circumstance. This study presents four concepts shared in the personal-transformation philosophies of Thurman and King: (1) Existential Transformation, (2) Self-Altered Destiny, (3) Self Examination, and (4) Rejection of Irrelevance. These four concepts provide a new framework for reading Thurman’s and King’s writings in tandem with a view towards self-transformation and demonstrate why a philosophy of the Black experience would be of interest, and have benefit, for anyone.

The Philosophy of Black Lives Matter

The Philosophy of Black Lives Matter

Undoing Western Hegemony, Unpacking the Particulars:Taking Back Philosophy: A Review of Bryan Van Norden's Taking Back Philosophy A Multicultural Manifesto

Undoing Western Hegemony, Unpacking the Particulars:Taking Back PhilosophyA Review of Bryan Van Norden's Taking Back Philosophy A Multicultural Manifesto David H. Kim (bio) As the title suggests, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto offers a critique of the profession of philosophy and an inclusive vision for its future. Importantly, unlike many philosophical critiques of philosophy, this book is not merely meta. It delivers a bona fide introduction to philosophy while exemplifying the kinds of conceptual sensitivities and skills that can help students see that philosophy is distinctively valuable. The author, Bryan Van Norden, provides compelling and learned articulations of these projects, all with a language that newcomers to philosophy will find accessible, witty, and polemically engaging. So I think this book is an impressive achievement and [End Page 619] an important voice to be added to the chorus that has for some decades been calling for a transformation of philosophy in the Western world.1 I largely agree with the aims and much of the content of this book, so after a brief overview of the book's claims, I offer two in-house or sympathetic critical considerations. They are less debunking criticisms and more invitations to the author to elaborate on unclarified but potentially controversial implications of his views. Specifically, I raise the question of what curricular configuration the inclusion of what he calls "Less Commonly Taught Philosophies" (LCTP, for short) should take. To some extent, I play the part of a policy analyst asking a political philosopher how her views would be applied in the real world, where the ensuing discussion could lead to a return to and revision of the original philosophical proposal. My second point expresses some worry that the notion of LCTP, as articulated by Van Norden, suggests that its instances are somewhat fungible and thus obscures some important differences in subsets of them. As I will discuss, there are real differences in the exclusionary dynamics of Chinese philosophy and, say, African American philosophy. I think Van Norden would be sympathetic to the concern I raise, and so I invite him to address it. Synopsis This book originates from a 2016 New York Times opinion piece co-written with Jay Garfield that critiqued the philosophical ethnocentrism of the Western philosophy profession and ignited something of an online furor. The book consists of a foreword from Jay Garfield that describes the content and impact of the piece and five chapters that expand upon the claims and vision of the original article. The first chapter lays out a compelling extended case for why philosophy in the United States must diversify, why it must incorporate LCTP, or, as a second-best option, explicitly rename itself to convey honestly the kind of provincialized philosophy that it is, namely "Anglo-European philosophy." A crucial part of his case has to do with the tremendous value of LCTP as philosophy, and so the second chapter plays an important role in offering a rich account of what it would mean to bring disparate traditions, like Western and Chinese ones, into deep philosophical dialogue. In an accessible and philosophically illuminating manner, Van Norden polemically compares and contrasts broad features of Western and Chinese metaphysics and normative theory, using comparative tropes like the articulation, defense, and critique of individualism. For example, he offers an extended discussion of Descartes' cogito and its related Aristotelian-inspired bare substance concept of individuals, and juxtaposes this with the contrary anti-substantialist views that emerge in the Buddhist dialogues of Monk Nagasena and King Milinda, where humans are likened to a chariot, a mere assembly of parts that acquires a name for purely conventional purposes. In this connection, Van Norden also [End Page 620] explicates Fazang's case for the deep constitutive relationality of all things on the model of parts of a building, like rafters, that have their nature identified entirely by their relation to larger relational structures, which in turn are relationally identified by other relevant relational structures, and so on and so forth, without any recourse to a transcendent or Archimedean substance-making or essence-giving moment. Equally interesting is Van Norden's treatment of the Hobbesian warring individualized state of nature and...

Africana Philosophy as Prolegomenon to Any Future American Philosophy

ABSTRACTThe whiteness of American philosophy must be appreciated as an epistemological and ontological achievement. Thus, I contend that the only way forward for American philosophy entails an Africana philosophical critique, which consists of two methodological ventures—one deconstructive and the other radical. I will briefly present six voices that exemplify this Africana philosophical critique. The deconstructive voices include (1) Sylvia Wynter's genealogy of “MAN,” (2) Leonard Harris's insurrectionist challenge to Pragmatism, and (3) Charles Mills's and Chandra Mohanty's rejection of Ideal Theory. The radical voices include (1) Lewis Gordon's Africana-existential-phenomenology as a decolonial “antidote” to Eurocentrism, (2) Tommy Curry's culturalogical solution to the “derelictical” and “methodological” crises of African American philosophy, and (3) Africana literature as “new” philosophy.

Guest Editors' Introduction

Guest Editors' Introduction

Three Recent Texts in Africana Philosophy: Overcoming Disciplinary Decadence

The following essay is a review of three recent texts in Africana philosophy. These three texts are united by the overarching theme of the teleological suspension of mainstream philosophy. Lewis Gordon takes a global approach to Africana philosophy and his text engages the issue of the historiography of Africana philosophy; George Yancy’s approach is situated within the subtradition of African American philosophy and his text pursues a critical Africana study of the existential reality of whiteness; and Neil Roberts situates his work within the subtradition of Afro-Caribbean philosophy, with the declared goal of tackling the concept of freedom.

Through the Crucible of Pain and Suffering: African-American philosophy as a gift and the countering of the western philosophical metanarrative

In this article, I argue that African-American philosophy emerges from a socio-existential context where persons of African descent have been faced with the absurd in the form of white racism (This paper is a substantially revised version on an earlier article. See Yancy, G. (2011). African-American Philosophy through the Lens of Socio-Existential Struggle. Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 37: 551–574). The concept of struggle, given the above, functions as both descriptive and heuristic vis-à-vis the meaning of African American philosophy. Expanding upon Charles Mills’ concept of non-Cartesian sums, I demonstrate the inextricable link between Black lived experience, struggle, and the morphology of meta-philosophical assumptions and philosophical problems specific to African-American philosophy. Because of the philosophical pretensions of white Western philosophy, with it claims to universal truth and objective knowledge, the particularity of African-American philosophical concerns with questions of embodiment and race is often deemed ersatz or non-philosophical. In this article, I argue that whiteness as the transcendental norm is productive of a form of ignorance endemic to Western philosophical practices that are myopic and hegemonic. Finally, African-American philosophy is theorized as a gift, as a critical counter-narrative that can be deployed to fissure Western philosophy’s narcissism.

Thoughts on Thirty Years in the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

Thoughts on Thirty Years in the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

In Search of Epistemic Freedom: Afro-Caribbean Philosophy's Contributions to Continental Philosophy

In Search of Epistemic Freedom: Afro-Caribbean Philosophy's Contributions to Continental Philosophy

African-American philosophy: Through the lens of socio-existential struggle

In this article I argue that African-American philosophy emerges from a socio-existential context where persons of African descent have been faced with the absurd in the form of white racism. The concept of struggle, given the above, functions as both descriptive and heuristic vis-à-vis the meaning of African-American philosophy. Expanding upon Charles Mills’ concept of non-Cartesian sums, I demonstrate the inextricable link between Black lived experience, struggle, and the morphology of meta-philosophical assumptions and philosophical problems specific to African-American philosophy. Then, I provide a sketch of two early African-American philosophers whose philosophical work is, though neglected, indispensable to African-American philosophical legitimating practices and whose work is informed by the defining motif of struggle. Lastly, I demonstrate the efforts of Africana philosophers at creating philosophical sites that nurture a sense of shared struggle and community.

Introduction: New Directions in Feminism and Womanism in Africa and the African Diaspora

The idea for this special issue grew out of Purdue University’s 25th Annual Symposium on African American Culture and Philosophy, which was held November 5–7, 2009. The theme was “New Directions in Feminism and Womanism in Africa and the African Diaspora.” We sought a wide range of papers to explore theoretical aspects of Africana womanism, African feminism, black feminism, and womanism, as well as papers exploring facets of black women’s lives. The symposium generated rich dialogue around such topics as empowerment, health, mothering, representation, sexuality, spirituality, and black women in the academy. The symposium in many ways responded to the concerns raised by Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith in their groundbreaking All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave. The text essentially served as a call for black women’s studies, as they noted:

The Derelictical Crisis of African American Philosophy: How African American Philosophy Fails to Contribute to the Study of African-Descended People

Unlike many Black-specific disciplines in the academy (Black psychology, Black history, etc.), Black philosophy never completely forged a unique conceptual framework separate from American and continental philosophical traditions. Instead the field has continued to define its validity to the extent that Black authors extend the thought of white philosophers toward race. This epistemic convergence, or the extent to which Black theory converges with established white philosophical traditions and white racial sensibilities, continues to misguide many of the current philosophical techniques of Africana thought. Because this practice is so dominate, it has made current scholarship in African American and Africana thought derelict, in the sense that all investigations into Blackness are normatively and hence ideologically driven and not culturally relevant to the actual lives of Africana people.

The Existential Turn in African American Philosophy: Disclosing the Existential Phenomenological Foundations of Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race

The Existential Turn in African American Philosophy: Disclosing the Existential Phenomenological Foundations of Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race

An introduction to Africana philosophy

Introduction: Africana philosophy in context Part I. Groundings: 1. Africana philosophy as a modern philosophy 2. Classic eighteenth- and nineteenth-century foundations Part II. From New World to New Worlds: 3. Three pillars of African-American philosophy 4. Africana philosophical movements in the United States, Canada, and Britain 5. Afro-Caribbean philosophy 6. African philosophy Conclusion.