How does our understanding of the reality (or lack thereof ) of race as a category of being affect our understanding of racism as a social phenomenon, and vice versa? How should we envision the aims and methods of our struggles against racism? Traditionally, the Western political and philosophical tradition held that true social justice points toward a raceless future - that racial categories are themselves inherently racist, and a sincere advocacy for social justice requires a commitmentto the elimination or (...) abolition of race altogether. This book focuses on the underlying assumptions that inform this view of race and racism, arguing that it is ultimately bound up in a politics of purity - an understanding of human agency, and reality itself, as requiring all-or-nothing categories with clear and unambiguous boundaries. Racism, being organized around a conception of whiteness as the purest manifestation of the human, thus demands a constant policing of the boundaries amongracial categories. Drawing upon a close engagement with historical treatments of the development of racial categories and identities, the book argues that races should be understood not as clear and distinct categories of being but rather as ambiguous and indeterminate (yet importantly real) processes of social negotiation. As one of its central examples, it lays out the case of the Irish in seventeenth-century Barbados, who occasionally united with black slaves to fight white supremacy - and did so as white people, not as nonwhites who later became white when they capitulated to white supremacy. Against the politics of purity, Monahan calls for the emergence of a creolizing subjectivity that would place such ambiguity at the center of our understanding of race. The Creolizing Subject takes seriously the way in which racial categories, in all of their variety and ambiguity, situate and condition our identity, while emphasizing our capacity, as agents, to engage in the ongoingcontestation and negotiation of the meaning and significance of those very categories. (shrink)

The article discusses the concept of Hegelian recognition. The four central tenets of the agonistic interpretation of Hegelian recognition are discussed. First, recognition requires participants to occupy one of the two roles such as recognizer and recognizee. Moreover, it asserts that recognition is a relation of asymmetry. The article addresses the concept of pure recognition. In this concept, the agent is able to exist as a self-conscious agent for another self-conscious agent. Furthermore, the uses and abuses of recognition are also (...) addressed. (shrink)

In his Critique of Dialectical Reason , Sartre argues that it is the milieu of scarcity that generates human conflict. His account of scarcity is rather ambiguous however, and at points he seems to claim that conflict is inevitable given the context of scarcity. In this article I provide a brief account of Sartre's position, and offer a critical evaluation of that position. Finally, I argue that Sartre's claims regarding the necessity of conflict are excessive, and that the resources provided (...) in the Critique offer a means to re-evaluate our relationship to scarcity. (shrink)

Love is a recurring theme in bell hooks' thought, where it is explicitly linked to her understanding of freedom and liberation. In this essay, I will bring together some of hooks' most important writings on love in order to clarify her account of the relationship between love and liberation. I will argue that, for hooks, the practice of love and the practice of freedom are inextricably connected, and any liberatory project must be undertaken within the context of an ethics of (...) love. (shrink)

The rise in the public profile of “alt-right” and “white nationalist” groups in recent years is often described as a rise in “hate groups.” The presumption in this nomenclature is that these sorts of groups are defined essentially in terms of their shared hatred for some or all nonwhite individuals and groups. However, the rhetoric of such groups is couched not as hatred, but rather in terms of “self-love”—they do not hate other groups, they are just looking out for themselves. (...) The author's argument in this article is that, even if we assume the sincerity of white nationalists' claims to be only interested in sustaining and defending whites and whiteness, the kind of “self-love” this exhibits is morally and politically pernicious precisely because it is constitutively linked to a foundational contempt for nonwhites. (shrink)

Why decolonize knowledge and philosophy? Pascah Mungwini proposes that epistemic decolonization should be implemented to remain true to the spirit of philosophy and to the idea of humanity. Aaron Creller, Michael Monahan, and Esme Murdock focus on different aspects of Mungwini’s proposal in their individual responses. Creller suggests some “best practices” so that comparative epistemology can take into account the parochial embeddedness of universal reason. While Monahan underscores that world philosophy as a project must openly acknowledge its own incompleteness and (...) its instantiation in different world philosophies, Esme Murdock uses Glissant’s thoughts to make a case for the right to opacity as a strategy for subverting the dominating power of Euroamerican reason. In his reply, Mungwini underscores that philosophy will be able to increase the amount of justice, beauty, and truth in this world only when its practitioners begin to exhibit genuine pluralism in their work. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume address global, regional, and local landscapes, cosmopolitan and indigenous cultures, and human and more-than-human ecology as they work to reveal place-specific tensional dynamics. This unusual book, which covers a wide-ranging array of topics, coheres into a work that will be a valuable reference for scholars of geography and the philosophy of place.

This dissertation is a formulation of a theory of racism that transcends the narrow focus upon individual intentions and attitudes, capturing the ways and means by which it becomes an "institutionalized" part of the larger social context. I argue that this larger institutional level of racism is what makes it oppressive, as opposed to simple prejudice or dislike. Chapter one establishes this basic position, and moves directly into an analysis of oppression, appealing to five basic "premises" which delineate the boundaries (...) within which any adequate theory of oppression must function. The chapter concludes by claiming that a successful theory of oppression, which must be understood in terms of a related notion of freedom, requires a "positive" theory of freedom, rather than the "negative" one that dominates contemporary discourse on race. Chapters two and three develop a concept of positive freedom, and a corresponding understanding of racism , using Hegel, Sartre, and Frantz Fanon. I argue that a successful theory of racism can be constructed with a foundation in Hegelian recognition, aided by the appropriation of the social ontology developed by Sartre in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. I use Fanon's texts both to provide important insights overlooked by Hegel and Sartre, and to provide a theater in which to demonstrate the interpretive and analytic power of the theory of racism as it develops. Chapter four lays out the final theory, and applies it to several compelling contemporary contexts. (shrink)

Creolizing Hegel brings together transdisciplinary scholars presenting various approaches to creolizing the work of Hegel. The essays in this volume take Hegelian texts and themes across borders of method, discipline, and tradition.

Articulating a creolizing theory of freedom and liberation, this book emphasizes a dynamic account of existence by appealing to a sonic metaphor of resonance and dissonance. It draws together a diverse set of figures and traditions including G. W. F. Hegel, Steve Biko, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sylvia Wynter, and Lewis Gordon.

Love is a recurring theme in bell hooks' thought, where it is explicitly linked to her understanding of freedom and liberation. In this essay, I will bring together some of hooks' most important writings on love in order to clarify her account of the relationship between love and liberation. I will argue that, for hooks, the practice of love and the practice of freedom are inextricably connected, and any liberatory project must be undertaken within the context of an ethics of (...) love. (shrink)

Derrick Darby’s Rights, Race, and Recognition and Ronald R. Sundstrom’s The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice are two recent efforts to answer the challenges that race and racism pose to liberal theory. Darby draws upon civil rights and abolitionist discourse to advance an “externalist” account of political rights, while Sundstrom explores the strains placed upon liberalism by recent demographic trends. In this review essay, I provide a brief account of their overall arguments, and offer some further (...) critical considerations. (shrink)