PHILOSOPHY 281 Africana Political Philosophy

This is the syllabus for my undergraduate level seminar on Black Political Thought.

This article addresses the need for a broader embrace of transdisciplinary scholarship to revive the humanities and promote critical pedagogy in the Western academy. Such an embrace of creolized academic inquiry would allow students and academics alike to properly contextualize the rise of neo-fascism and white supremacist violence that have become all too common in today's society.

Apologia— Several exceptions notwithstanding (e.g., some titles treating the Reconstruction Era), this bibliography begins, roughly, with the twentieth century. I have not attempted to comprehensively cover works of nonfiction or the arts generally but, once more, I have made— and this time, a fair number of—exceptions by way of providing a taste of the requisite material. So, apart from the constraints of most of my other bibliographies: books, in English, these particular constraints are intended to keep the bibliography to a fairly modest length (around one hundred pages). This compilation is far from exhaustive, although it endeavors to be representative of the available literature, whatever the influence of my idiosyncratic beliefs and preferences. I trust the diligent researcher will find titles on particular topics or subject areas by browsing carefully through the list. I welcome notice of titles by way of remedying any deficiencies. Finally, I have a separate bibliography on slavery, although its scope is well beyond U.S. history. * Or, if you prefer, " self-fulfillment and human flourishing (eudaimonia). " I'm not here interested in the question of philosophical and psychological differences between these concepts (i.e.. self-realization, eudaimonia, etc.) and the existing and possible conceptions thereof, but more simply and broadly in their indispensable significance in reference to human nature and the pivotal metaphysical and moral purposes they serve in our critical and evaluative exercises (e.g., and after Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, in employing criteria derived from the notion of 'human capabilities and functionings') as part of our individual and collective historical quest for " the Good. "

Introduzione di Sandro Mezzadra Pubblicato in W.E.B. Du Bois, Sulla linea del colore. Razza e democrazia negli Stati Uniti e nel mondo, a cura e con un'introduzione di Sandro Mezzadra, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2010. «But here in Virginia you are at the edge of a black world. The black belt of the Congo, the Nile, and the Ganges reaches by way of Guyana, Haiti, and Jamaica, like a red arrow, up into the heart of White America» W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess (1928) «In the folds of this European civilization I was born and shall die, conditioned, depressed, exalted and inspired. Integrally a part of it and yet, much more significant, one of its rejected parts» W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn (1940) «Time would pass, old empires would fall and new ones take their place, the relations of countries and the relations of class had to change, before I discovered that it is not quality of goods and utility which matter, but movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have come from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there» C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary (1963) 1. «Una strada diversa dalla nostra» Nato a Great Barrington (Massachusetts) nel 1868, tre anni dopo la fine della Guerra civile, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois si spense ad Accra, nel Ghana da poco indipendente, il 27 agosto del 1963. Il giorno dopo si svolse la storica marcia su Washington del movimento per i diritti civili. Roy Wilkins, il segretario della «National Association for the Advancement of Colored People» (NAACP) che Du Bois aveva contribuito a fondare nel 1909 e di cui era stato a lungo uno dei dirigenti più prestigiosi, prese la parola subito dopo che Odetta Holmes ebbe finito di cantare O Freedom: «il dottor Du Bois», comunicò alle decine di migliaia di donne e uomini che avevano invaso Washington in quella storica giornata, «è morto». «Indipendentemente dal fatto che negli ultimi anni egli abbia scelto una strada diversa dalla nostra», continuò Wilkins, «è indiscutibile che all'alba del ventesimo secolo è stata la sua voce a convocarvi qui quest'oggi, nella lotta per questa causa» 1 .

Knowledge is the beacon that illuminates dark alleys of ignorance to provide us with the key to unlock doors to a world full of bright visions and promises. With knowledge, our humanity is aroused with impassioned zeal and rooted in a firm ground to enable us to help others reach their full potentials. Knowledge helps us transcend the human rustiness that comes with crudity and lack of sensibility and replaces it with compassion, understanding, and forgiveness. I dedicate this dissertation to all those who through their munificent acts of encouragement helped me to realize my ambition of earning a doctorate degree. I particularly efficient secretaries in the Department of English; Dr. Sandra Shannon and Dr. Nkonko Kamwangamalu, formerly director of the Graduate Program who counseled me never to quit in spite of the hiccoughs. My regards also go to Dr. Jeff Westover, formerly of the English Department, Ms. Crystal Duncan, who always provided me with assistance regarding my remission of tuition, irrespective of how tardy I was with my application, Mr. Brian Johnson and Ms. Melody Morales of Financial Aid, and last but not least, to my wife, Cecilia and my children, Adelaide, Ronald, and Eleanor, who challenged me invariably to ensure that I not only stayed the course but also completed the journey. I have come to the end of one journey with this dissertation, but it is also the beginning of another journey that I have accepted and hope to excel on it as well, by the Grace of God. Once again, I thank you all. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A dissertation informed by the fiction and non-fiction of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois is certainly an ambitious project because of the many diverse topics and issues that garnered his attention in his life time. Although this dissertation focuses mainly on the novels of Du Bois, it has, nevertheless, proven to be an ambitious undertaking as I delved into hitherto uncharted waters in dissertation projects with the use of cosmopolitanism in deconstructing his fiction. My hope is that in such an undertaking, I have made an invaluable contribution to existing scholarship on W.E.B. Du Bois. As a result, I like to express my appreciation to my Committee members for the expert manner in which they guided me as I worked on my project. ABSTRACT Although Du Bois's vast expanse of scholarship resonates with critical themes of cosmopolitanism in his texts, the majority of cosmopolitan theorists refrain from any extended treatment of him in critical book-length studies. Paul Gilroy, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ross Posnock, Charles Briggs, Ifideoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, and Nico Slate, among others, have addressed Du Bois's treatises with the lenses of cosmopolitanism. However, this dissertation is not just an argument on one aspect of cosmopolitanism, but its argument on cosmopolitanism details an understanding of cosmopolitanism in Du Bois's fiction as evolving from universal humanism to discrepant and black. Chapter One of the dissertation proposes that The Quest of the Silver Fleece is grounded in Western Enlightenment tradition, which is informed by universal cosmopolitan humanism. Chapter Two examines discrepant cosmopolitanism in Dark Princess: A Romance and suggests that there is an evolution in Du Bois's world view because of World War I and colonialism, necessitating a dislocation of the West as central to cosmopolitanism in the novel. Chapter Three analyzes The Black Flame with the lenses of black cosmopolitanism, with Du Bois effectively combining history and fiction to tell the story of the African American experience from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to 1954. Pan-African and Pan-Asian ideals undergird the black cosmopolitan framework of the trilogy. Chapter Four interrogates Du Bois's intellectual influences outside America and Europe and focuses on his intellectual and political influences in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean and how those influences helped shape his utopian desire for an inimitable colored world in which equality and justice could prevail to all through the lenses of cosmopolitanism. In the Epilogue, Kwame Nkrumah and Barack Obama become purveyors of Du Boisian cosmopolitan ideals after Du Bois's death in 1963. The dissertation vi

Syllabus, 2019

This course explores academic debates in anti-colonial, post-colonial, de-colonial, and Indigenous and settler-colonial traditions of inquiry. We explore these literatures in relation to analyses of empire and imperialism; anticolonial movements and thought; and political theories of decolonization.

I am most grateful to Professor Keisha N. Blain, who generated the first draft of this list with two posts at the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) blog (with further contributions from readers), thereby inspiring me to construct this updated compilation, one that now includes titles having in one way or another to do with what I christen "Black Cosmopolitanism." As with most of my other bibliographies, there are two basic constraints: books, in English. Aimé Césaire (26 June 1913-17 April 2008) 'We are trying to save millions of men from ignominy and death,' wrote Condorcet in 1788, in a text condemning the slave trade, 'to enlighten those in power about their true interests and restore to a whole section of the world the sacred rights given to them by nature.' The advent of black liberation in the Caribbean during the years 1788-94 confirms that la philosophie modern was not only the primary shaping impulse of the French Revolution but the primary spur to black emancipation in the late eighteenth-century Caribbean world. The social revolution that ensued during the years 1792-97 was not merely concerned with abolishing slavery as such, like the Christian abolitionist movements in England and Pennsylvania, but formed a broader, more comprehensive emancipation movement seeking to integrate the entire black population-'free blacks' and slaves-into society, legally, economically, educationally, and also politically.-The opening paragraph of the chapter on "Black Emancipation" in Jonathan Israel's Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre (Princeton University Press, 2014): 396. I have prefaced this particular compilation with the quote from a volume in Israel's invaluable "monumental trilogy" on the Radical Enlightenment because it reminds us of the cluster of fundamental philosophical, moral, social, political, and even psychological premises-that is, of philosophical ideas, ideals, and principles with urgent political significance-that emerged during the European Enlightenment generally and the French Revolution in particular which played a causal or catalytic role in the historical quest for Black emancipation, eventually articulated in several species of "Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, and Black Cosmopolitanism." Students of "historical materialism," in turn, will be quick to remind us of the cruel irony crystallized in C.L.R. James's pithy conclusion-after Jean Jaurès's six volume Histoire Socialiste de la Révolution Française in 1922-that the "slave-trade and slavery were the economic basis of the French Revolution." I'm assuming most readers know something about or can, without too much difficulty, make some rudimentary sense of the notions of "Pan-Africanism" and "Black Internationalism," even if, as with many political formulations, particular conceptions are "contested," in part because their meanings are (to some extent)-as we used to say-"open ended." With regard to cosmopolitanism,* the particular conception invoked here is meant in a nonpejorative sense, one that is perfectly compatible with what Tommie Shelby has termed "pragmatic black nationalism" in his book, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). It is likewise consistent with "Black liberation" in its deepest and most generous rendering, say, as implied in the title of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2016), or, as Robin D.G. Kelley has filled out the meaning of the mantra (taped to the inside top drawer of his desk): "Love, Study, Struggle," in his New Democracy Forum essay for the Boston Review (March/April 2006): "Black Study, Black Struggle" (and what Kelley elsewhere describes as the 'Black radical imagination' strikes me as redolent of a cosmopolitan ethos). Like cosmopolitanism itself, "Black cosmopolitanism" can assume several forms or differing strains of emphasis (e.g., 'Afropolitanism') as when we speak, with Kwame Anthony Appiah, of W.E.B. Du Bois's "cultural cosmopolitanism," or the with the late Günter H. Lenz, of Du Bois's "radical cosmopolitanism."

 Browse  About  Support SEP -Africana philosophy‖ is the name for an emergent and still developing field of ideas and idea-spaces, intellectual endeavors, discourses, and discursive networks within and beyond academic philosophy that was recognized as such by national and international organizations of professional philosophers, including the American Philosophical Association, starting in the 1980s. Thus, the name does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system, method, or tradition. Rather, Africana philosophy is a third-order, metaphilosophical, umbrella-concept used to bring organizing oversight to various efforts of philosophizingthat is, activities of reflective, critical thinking and articulation and aesthetic expressionengaged in by persons and peoples African and of African descent who were and are indigenous residents of continental Africa and residents of the many African Diasporas worldwide. In all cases the point of much of the philosophizings has been to confer meaningful orderings on individual and shared living and on natural and social worlds while resolving recurrent, emergent, and radically disruptive challenges to existence so as to survive, endure, and flourish across successive generations.