The Black Humanist Tradition in Anti-Racist Literature
A Fragile Hope
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The epilogue brings Black humanism into conversation with critical posthumanism. Arguing that the latter has blind spots when it comes to race, it shows that posthumanism thereby reinforces problems of liberal...
Book
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This chapter develops a theoretical framework for the study of a Black humanist worldview. Building on critical phenomenology and philosophy of race, the author argues that Black humanism conceives of humans a...
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This chapter turns to John A. Williams’ Night Song (1961) as a Black humanist novel to study its profound analysis of the workings of race and how they impede on interracial relationships. Racial habits and embod...
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In this chapter, the author argues that Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) views humans as existing in extension with the natural world but still abides by an anthropocentrism because it is concerned with ...
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This chapter introduces humanism as an important but overlooked tradition in Black intellectual history. It first distinguishes Black humanism from Western humanisms by showing that Black humanists openly chal...
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This chapter reads Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) as a Black humanist novel and a profound theorization of racial embodiment. This also heavily influences the novel’s take on democracy. Dominant ideologies ...
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This chapter examines Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1989), which narrates the pervasive nature of racism while simultaneously challenging the antiblack logic of Enlightenment humanism in its gendered dimensions. The a...