This paper is a tentative attempt to set out some of the basic points for articulating an alternative philosophical praxis derived from some Black women's lives and experiences. It begins with an explanation of delegitimating processes and the importance of not dividing theory from practice. The essay offers six practices that outline the unique critical attitude that constitutes philosophical practices rooted in Black women's lived experience and asks “How we sound” when doing academic philosophy.

The article posits that philosophy’s visual bias has limited exploration of the ways in which sound, and the awareness of sound, offers an alternative framework for social change. It moves from sight to sound and from visual witnessing to sound-based wit(h)ness to illustrate the implications of sound as a form of political resistance. Combining insights from the work of Michel Foucault and Emmanuel Levinas with elements of the Black Vernacular tradition, it articulates the ways in which the blues, jazz and (...) work songs evoke distinctive sound-based wit(h)ness to perform philosophical interventions by destabilizing the status quo, offering a nonphenotypical account of black solidarity, and transforming what counts as work. (shrink)

Performative utterance -- How to slip the yoke: the Black (w)hole ritual -- Searching for the Black difference: Black philosophy and redemption songs -- A critique of Black philosophy: rethinking Black philosophical re-appropriations of humanism -- No more redemption songs: the Black difference and alterity.