The Black Humanist Tradition in Anti-Racist Literature
A Fragile Hope
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Epilogue: Writing Beyond Pessimism
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...
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Embodiment, Agency, and Conceptions of Hope in Black Humanist Thought
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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The (Im)Possibility of Interracial Relationships in John A. Williams’ Night Song
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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Precarity, Mourning, and Notes of Consolation in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
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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Introduction
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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Self-Reliance Towards Deep Democracy: Theorizing Racial Embodiment in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
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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Subjectivities Between Structure and Agency: Enlightenment Humanism, Gendered Trauma, and Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved
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...
