Michael Monahan | University of Memphis (original) (raw)

Books by Michael Monahan

The 19th-century German thinker G.W.F. Hegel is a towering figure in the canon of European philos... more The 19th-century German thinker G.W.F. Hegel is a towering figure in the canon of European philosophy. Indeed, most of the significant figures of European Philosophy after Hegel explicitly address his thought in their own work. Outside of the familiar territory of the Western canon, however, Hegel has also loomed large, most often as a villain, but sometimes also as a resource in struggles for liberation from colonialism, sexism and racism. Hegel understood his own work as aiming above freedom, yet ironically wrote texts that are not only explicitly Eurocentric and even racist. Should we, and is it even possible, to bring Hegelian texts and ideas into productive discourse with those he so often himself saw as distinctly Other and even inferior?

In response to this question, 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. The task is not simply to compare and contrast Hegel with some 'outsider' figure or tradition, but rather to reconsider and reconfigure our understandings of all of the figures and ideas brought together in these cross-disciplinary essays.

How does our understanding of the reality (or lack thereof ) of race as a category of being affec... more 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 andmethods 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 commitment to 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 among racialcategories.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 occasionallyunited 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 subjectivitythat 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 ongoing contestation and negotiation of the meaningand significance of those very categories.

Papers by Michael Monahan

Philosophies, 2024

Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks opens with a discussion of language in the colonial settin... more Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks opens with a discussion of language in the colonial setting. I argue that this is at least in part due to Fanon’s background in phenomenology, and the crucial role that intersubjectivity plays in the phenomenological account of the subject. I begin by demonstrating the phenomenological underpinnings of Fanon’s chapter on language. I then further develop the background phenomenological account of the subject, showing how this informs Fanon’s project. I then develop a sonic account of the subject, arguing that metaphors of sound best represent the phenomenological account of the subject. Finally, I build on this sonic account to draw out the implications for our thinking about communication and liberation in Fanon’s work and beyond.

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications, Apr 1, 2003

Political life can be understood as a manifestation of competing notions of what it means to be h... more Political life can be understood as a manifestation of competing notions of what it means to be human. In other words, a political point of view can be understood as an implicit understanding of what separates human beings, as political agents, from nonpolitical forms of life (which may include all or some animals, or even in some cases homo sapiens who lack certain mental and/or moral capacities) or mere objects. A given political view will also have something to say about the relationship between particular political agents, and the ...

Thinking the US South: Contemporary Philosophy from Southern Perspectives, 2021

What does it mean to be a Southerner? The North/South divide has global, regional, and local sign... more What does it mean to be a Southerner? The North/South divide has global, regional, and local significance. The ‘Global North’ is defined in terms of relative wealth, food security, health outcomes, and political stability, while the ‘Global South’ has significantly lessened indicators in these (and other) various social goods. In the western hemisphere, the boundary between north and south shares similarities with the global distinction, but includes significant linguistic and cultural aspects. Finally, the United States, the distinction shares certain of these global and regional features, but is above all conditioned by the historical rupture of the U.S. Civil War of the 1860’s. In this paper, I will work through these different ways of drawing the North/South distinction in order to better identify their similarities and differences. I will argue that a key feature of this distinction is its fundamental relationality - there can be no south without a north (and vice-versa). This creates a paradigmatically dialectical relation between the two terms, where neither can be understood independently of the other, and they together constitute a way of understanding the world that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. By working some of the movements of this dialectic in each arena, and their relation to each other, I hope to challenge directly the pretension to purity that informs so much of the dominant modes of thought relating to each of these North/South divides. For instance, the global divide is linked directly to the distinction between the modern and the traditional, With respect to this particular volume, my contribution will work to situate the U.S. conception of the northern and the southern within its regional and global contexts.

Critical Philosophy of Race, 2021

The rise in the public profile of “alt-right” and “white nationalist” groups in recent years is o... more 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. My argument in this essay 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.

Journal of World Philosophies, 2019

Why decolonize knowledge and philosophy? Pascah Mungwini proposes that epistemic decolonization s... more 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.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2020

The theme of the 2018 Spindel Conference was “Decolonizing Philosophy.” In this introduction, I w... more The theme of the 2018 Spindel Conference was “Decolonizing Philosophy.” In this introduction, I will elaborate on this theme as a way to set the stage for the essays in this volume. Beginning with the question of what it means to consider philosophy “colonized” in the first place, I will focus on the subfield of the history of philosophy as a way to draw out my account. After elaborating what I take the claim that philosophy is colonized/colonizing to mean, I will turn to ways one might approach its decolonization. Again, my principle focus will be on the history of philosophy, though I take my analysis to extend beyond this subfield. Finally, I will elaborate four key tasks that I take to be essential to the decolonization of philosophy.

Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, 2019

In their recent texts, Neil Roberts (Freedom as Marronage) and Mariana Ortega (In-Between) each a... more In their recent texts, Neil Roberts (Freedom as Marronage) and Mariana Ortega (In-Between) each approach themes of resistance to oppression as fundamentally about a kind of movement. Roberts emphasizes flight in his text, while Ortega wrestles with a desire for belonging and the need to cultivate that belonging through what she terms ‘hometactics.’ This paper will explore what I take to be a productive tension between the emphasis on flight and home, and will argue that the tension is indeed productive in the best sense. For home and the sense of belonging are ultimately enhanced through moments of distance and discomfort.

This is the editor's introduction to the forthcoming anthology in the "Creolizing the Canon" seri... more This is the editor's introduction to the forthcoming anthology in the "Creolizing the Canon" series with Rowman and Littlefield International (in cooperation with the Caribbean Philosophical Association). In it, I offer an account of what I mean by "creolization" in the context of this volume, and why I take Hegel's account of reason (as expressed in the Logic) to be essentially creolizing.

One recurring theme in philosophical work from and on the Americas has to do with the relationshi... more One recurring theme in philosophical work from and on the Americas has to do with the relationship between European Modernity and Colonialism. Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter’s penetrating analysis of this relationship offers a description of what she refers to as “European Man,” in which particular European (patriarchal, bourgeois, and white) accounts of “the human”, and especially of the human as rational, posit themselves as universal. What is significant about her critique of this view, is that she does not simply abandon notions of universality, or even humanism, but rather directs her work toward a call to theoretical action in the form of “the Human project,” in which the failures of the European Enlightenment project are avoided in favor of a more genuinely universal and liberatory account of the human. This chapter stands as an effort to take up the challenge posed by Wynter’s analysis, focusing in particular on the ways in which a particular understanding of reason informed European Man as an ideal, and suggesting what understanding of reason would be most appropriate to Wynter’s liberatory humanism.

South African Journal of Philosophy, Mar 2014

In this essay, I examine the use of the concept of privilege within the critical theoretical disc... more In this essay, I examine the use of the concept of privilege within the critical theoretical discourse on oppression and liberation (with a particular focus on white privilege and antiracism in the USA). In order to fulfill the rhetorical aims of liberation, concepts for privilege must meet what I term the ‘boundary condition’, which demarcates the boundary between a privileged elite and the rest of society, and the ‘ignorance condition’, which establishes that the elite status and the advantages it confers are not publicly recognised or affirmed. I argue that the dominant use of the concept of privilege cannot fulfill these conditions. As a result, while I do not advocate for the complete abandonment of the rhetoric of privilege, I conclude that it obscures as much as it illuminates, and that the critical theoretical discourse on liberation and oppression should be suspicious of its use.

It is both humbling and thrilling to have one's work submitted to such careful and thoughtful scr... more It is both humbling and thrilling to have one's work submitted to such careful and thoughtful scrutiny by scholars one has admired for so long. Professors Goodin, Gordon, Headley, Mendieta and Nichols have offered rich readings of my text that provide me with an opportunity to elaborate and expand upon some of the key ideas. While each of the review essays makes some unique claims or critiques of The Creolizing Subject, what struck me upon first reading them was they way in which they all fit together.

Just over ten years ago, in the midst of the so-called culture wars, the Association of American ... more Just over ten years ago, in the midst of the so-called culture wars, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) launched Diversity Digest. We felt that a newsletter would play an important role in creating and sustaining a community of leaders and learners who shared the view that diversity is inextricably linked to claims of excellence in higher education. Diversity Digest met our highest expectations. As Diversity Digest now becomes Diversity & Democracy, we introduce a new name and a new design.

In this essay, I bring together some of hooks’ most important writings on love in order to clarif... more In this essay, I bring together some of hooks’ most important writings on love in order to clarify her account of the relationship between love and liberation. The focus of this exploration of hooks’ thinking on these subjects will be limited to a largely theoretical level, both in the interests of brevity, and because I believe that, if we are to take seriously hooks’ insights here, the elaboration of the more practical details must be undertaken in and through a “beloved community”.

In his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre argues that it is the milieu of scarcity that gener... more 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.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche offers an account of human value and meaning as “s... more In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche offers an account of human value and meaning as “self-overcoming”. Rather than focusing on fixed and universal values, principles, and goals, this ethos stresses growth, change, self-criticism, and self-improvement. The value of human endeavor, for him, lies not in strict adherence to some fixed standard or set of standards, but rather in the constant transcendence of those standards. This paper will explore the relation between the practice of traditional martial arts and Nietzschean self-overcoming. The study of the martial arts is, in many ways, very much in keeping with this aspect of Nietzsche’s ethos, and thus serves as an excellent vehicle for exploring and exemplifying Nietzschean “self-overcoming”. At the same time, taking seriously Neitzsche’s account of self-overcoming can help to illuminate the martial arts not only as an object of study, but most importantly as an ongoing practice of self-overcoming. While my explicit focus will be on the martial arts, I will point toward ways in which Nietzschean insights are applicable to many different kinds of athletic endeavor.

Philosophy and Social Criticism

This paper argues for the practice of the “education of racial perception” as a critical componen... more This paper argues for the practice of the “education of racial perception” as a critical component of any struggle against racial oppression (and for a liberated humanity generally). Taking the phenomenological ontology suggested by Linda Alcoff’s recent book Visible Identities, I argue that the project of educating our racial perception is a way to critically assess the way in which our perception of race both conditions and is conditioned by a racialized social world. By learning more about and ultimately challenging this relation we affirm our responsibility and agency in the face of an oppressive status quo.

The 19th-century German thinker G.W.F. Hegel is a towering figure in the canon of European philos... more The 19th-century German thinker G.W.F. Hegel is a towering figure in the canon of European philosophy. Indeed, most of the significant figures of European Philosophy after Hegel explicitly address his thought in their own work. Outside of the familiar territory of the Western canon, however, Hegel has also loomed large, most often as a villain, but sometimes also as a resource in struggles for liberation from colonialism, sexism and racism. Hegel understood his own work as aiming above freedom, yet ironically wrote texts that are not only explicitly Eurocentric and even racist. Should we, and is it even possible, to bring Hegelian texts and ideas into productive discourse with those he so often himself saw as distinctly Other and even inferior?

In response to this question, 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. The task is not simply to compare and contrast Hegel with some 'outsider' figure or tradition, but rather to reconsider and reconfigure our understandings of all of the figures and ideas brought together in these cross-disciplinary essays.

How does our understanding of the reality (or lack thereof ) of race as a category of being affec... more 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 andmethods 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 commitment to 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 among racialcategories.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 occasionallyunited 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 subjectivitythat 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 ongoing contestation and negotiation of the meaningand significance of those very categories.

Philosophies, 2024

Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks opens with a discussion of language in the colonial settin... more Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks opens with a discussion of language in the colonial setting. I argue that this is at least in part due to Fanon’s background in phenomenology, and the crucial role that intersubjectivity plays in the phenomenological account of the subject. I begin by demonstrating the phenomenological underpinnings of Fanon’s chapter on language. I then further develop the background phenomenological account of the subject, showing how this informs Fanon’s project. I then develop a sonic account of the subject, arguing that metaphors of sound best represent the phenomenological account of the subject. Finally, I build on this sonic account to draw out the implications for our thinking about communication and liberation in Fanon’s work and beyond.

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications, Apr 1, 2003

Political life can be understood as a manifestation of competing notions of what it means to be h... more Political life can be understood as a manifestation of competing notions of what it means to be human. In other words, a political point of view can be understood as an implicit understanding of what separates human beings, as political agents, from nonpolitical forms of life (which may include all or some animals, or even in some cases homo sapiens who lack certain mental and/or moral capacities) or mere objects. A given political view will also have something to say about the relationship between particular political agents, and the ...

Thinking the US South: Contemporary Philosophy from Southern Perspectives, 2021

What does it mean to be a Southerner? The North/South divide has global, regional, and local sign... more What does it mean to be a Southerner? The North/South divide has global, regional, and local significance. The ‘Global North’ is defined in terms of relative wealth, food security, health outcomes, and political stability, while the ‘Global South’ has significantly lessened indicators in these (and other) various social goods. In the western hemisphere, the boundary between north and south shares similarities with the global distinction, but includes significant linguistic and cultural aspects. Finally, the United States, the distinction shares certain of these global and regional features, but is above all conditioned by the historical rupture of the U.S. Civil War of the 1860’s. In this paper, I will work through these different ways of drawing the North/South distinction in order to better identify their similarities and differences. I will argue that a key feature of this distinction is its fundamental relationality - there can be no south without a north (and vice-versa). This creates a paradigmatically dialectical relation between the two terms, where neither can be understood independently of the other, and they together constitute a way of understanding the world that cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. By working some of the movements of this dialectic in each arena, and their relation to each other, I hope to challenge directly the pretension to purity that informs so much of the dominant modes of thought relating to each of these North/South divides. For instance, the global divide is linked directly to the distinction between the modern and the traditional, With respect to this particular volume, my contribution will work to situate the U.S. conception of the northern and the southern within its regional and global contexts.

Critical Philosophy of Race, 2021

The rise in the public profile of “alt-right” and “white nationalist” groups in recent years is o... more 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. My argument in this essay 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.

Journal of World Philosophies, 2019

Why decolonize knowledge and philosophy? Pascah Mungwini proposes that epistemic decolonization s... more 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.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2020

The theme of the 2018 Spindel Conference was “Decolonizing Philosophy.” In this introduction, I w... more The theme of the 2018 Spindel Conference was “Decolonizing Philosophy.” In this introduction, I will elaborate on this theme as a way to set the stage for the essays in this volume. Beginning with the question of what it means to consider philosophy “colonized” in the first place, I will focus on the subfield of the history of philosophy as a way to draw out my account. After elaborating what I take the claim that philosophy is colonized/colonizing to mean, I will turn to ways one might approach its decolonization. Again, my principle focus will be on the history of philosophy, though I take my analysis to extend beyond this subfield. Finally, I will elaborate four key tasks that I take to be essential to the decolonization of philosophy.

Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, 2019

In their recent texts, Neil Roberts (Freedom as Marronage) and Mariana Ortega (In-Between) each a... more In their recent texts, Neil Roberts (Freedom as Marronage) and Mariana Ortega (In-Between) each approach themes of resistance to oppression as fundamentally about a kind of movement. Roberts emphasizes flight in his text, while Ortega wrestles with a desire for belonging and the need to cultivate that belonging through what she terms ‘hometactics.’ This paper will explore what I take to be a productive tension between the emphasis on flight and home, and will argue that the tension is indeed productive in the best sense. For home and the sense of belonging are ultimately enhanced through moments of distance and discomfort.

This is the editor's introduction to the forthcoming anthology in the "Creolizing the Canon" seri... more This is the editor's introduction to the forthcoming anthology in the "Creolizing the Canon" series with Rowman and Littlefield International (in cooperation with the Caribbean Philosophical Association). In it, I offer an account of what I mean by "creolization" in the context of this volume, and why I take Hegel's account of reason (as expressed in the Logic) to be essentially creolizing.

One recurring theme in philosophical work from and on the Americas has to do with the relationshi... more One recurring theme in philosophical work from and on the Americas has to do with the relationship between European Modernity and Colonialism. Jamaican theorist Sylvia Wynter’s penetrating analysis of this relationship offers a description of what she refers to as “European Man,” in which particular European (patriarchal, bourgeois, and white) accounts of “the human”, and especially of the human as rational, posit themselves as universal. What is significant about her critique of this view, is that she does not simply abandon notions of universality, or even humanism, but rather directs her work toward a call to theoretical action in the form of “the Human project,” in which the failures of the European Enlightenment project are avoided in favor of a more genuinely universal and liberatory account of the human. This chapter stands as an effort to take up the challenge posed by Wynter’s analysis, focusing in particular on the ways in which a particular understanding of reason informed European Man as an ideal, and suggesting what understanding of reason would be most appropriate to Wynter’s liberatory humanism.

South African Journal of Philosophy, Mar 2014

In this essay, I examine the use of the concept of privilege within the critical theoretical disc... more In this essay, I examine the use of the concept of privilege within the critical theoretical discourse on oppression and liberation (with a particular focus on white privilege and antiracism in the USA). In order to fulfill the rhetorical aims of liberation, concepts for privilege must meet what I term the ‘boundary condition’, which demarcates the boundary between a privileged elite and the rest of society, and the ‘ignorance condition’, which establishes that the elite status and the advantages it confers are not publicly recognised or affirmed. I argue that the dominant use of the concept of privilege cannot fulfill these conditions. As a result, while I do not advocate for the complete abandonment of the rhetoric of privilege, I conclude that it obscures as much as it illuminates, and that the critical theoretical discourse on liberation and oppression should be suspicious of its use.

It is both humbling and thrilling to have one's work submitted to such careful and thoughtful scr... more It is both humbling and thrilling to have one's work submitted to such careful and thoughtful scrutiny by scholars one has admired for so long. Professors Goodin, Gordon, Headley, Mendieta and Nichols have offered rich readings of my text that provide me with an opportunity to elaborate and expand upon some of the key ideas. While each of the review essays makes some unique claims or critiques of The Creolizing Subject, what struck me upon first reading them was they way in which they all fit together.

Just over ten years ago, in the midst of the so-called culture wars, the Association of American ... more Just over ten years ago, in the midst of the so-called culture wars, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) launched Diversity Digest. We felt that a newsletter would play an important role in creating and sustaining a community of leaders and learners who shared the view that diversity is inextricably linked to claims of excellence in higher education. Diversity Digest met our highest expectations. As Diversity Digest now becomes Diversity & Democracy, we introduce a new name and a new design.

In this essay, I bring together some of hooks’ most important writings on love in order to clarif... more In this essay, I bring together some of hooks’ most important writings on love in order to clarify her account of the relationship between love and liberation. The focus of this exploration of hooks’ thinking on these subjects will be limited to a largely theoretical level, both in the interests of brevity, and because I believe that, if we are to take seriously hooks’ insights here, the elaboration of the more practical details must be undertaken in and through a “beloved community”.

In his Critique of Dialectical Reason, Sartre argues that it is the milieu of scarcity that gener... more 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.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche offers an account of human value and meaning as “s... more In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche offers an account of human value and meaning as “self-overcoming”. Rather than focusing on fixed and universal values, principles, and goals, this ethos stresses growth, change, self-criticism, and self-improvement. The value of human endeavor, for him, lies not in strict adherence to some fixed standard or set of standards, but rather in the constant transcendence of those standards. This paper will explore the relation between the practice of traditional martial arts and Nietzschean self-overcoming. The study of the martial arts is, in many ways, very much in keeping with this aspect of Nietzsche’s ethos, and thus serves as an excellent vehicle for exploring and exemplifying Nietzschean “self-overcoming”. At the same time, taking seriously Neitzsche’s account of self-overcoming can help to illuminate the martial arts not only as an object of study, but most importantly as an ongoing practice of self-overcoming. While my explicit focus will be on the martial arts, I will point toward ways in which Nietzschean insights are applicable to many different kinds of athletic endeavor.

Philosophy and Social Criticism

This paper argues for the practice of the “education of racial perception” as a critical componen... more This paper argues for the practice of the “education of racial perception” as a critical component of any struggle against racial oppression (and for a liberated humanity generally). Taking the phenomenological ontology suggested by Linda Alcoff’s recent book Visible Identities, I argue that the project of educating our racial perception is a way to critically assess the way in which our perception of race both conditions and is conditioned by a racialized social world. By learning more about and ultimately challenging this relation we affirm our responsibility and agency in the face of an oppressive status quo.

The “colorblind” society is often offered as a worthy ideal both for individual interaction and p... more The “colorblind” society is often offered as a worthy ideal both for individual interaction and public policy. The ethos of liberal democracy would seem to demand that we comport ourselves in a manner completely indifferent to race (and class, and gender, and so on). But is this ideal of colorblindness capable of fulfillment? And whether it is or not, is it truly a worthy political goal? In order to address these questions, one must first explore the nature of “race” itself. Is it ultimately real, or merely an illusion? What kind of reality, if any, does it have, and what are the consequences of its ontological status? This paper will explore the issue of colorblindness, focusing particularly on recent developments dealing with this topic from the continental tradition in philosophy. Beginning with the question of racial ontology, I will argue that race has a social reality that makes the practice of colorblindness, at least for the time-being, politically untenable, though it may still function as a worthy ideal for the (distant) future.

Within the philosophical literature on feminism and race theory Hegelian recognition is often cri... more Within the philosophical literature on feminism and race theory Hegelian recognition is often criticized for its appeal to antagonistic struggle. By compelling the Other to grant recognition, according to this criticism, one is simply re-inscribing the relations of domination and subordination that are the hallmarks of racial and gender oppression in the first place. This article offers and analysis and critique of this reading of Hegelian recognition, arguing that the agonistic conception of recognition as struggle is a grievously flawed reading of Hegel. By focusing almost exclusively dialectic of Master and Slave in Hegel’s Phenomenology, these accounts of recognition omit not only the account of “Pure” recognition which precedes it, but also the elaborations of recognition found both in the Encyclopedia and the Philosophy of Right. Within this broader context, it becomes clear that the agonistic account offered in the Master/Slave dialectic is not meant to be normative or prescriptive, and that there can be recognition beyond struggle. More importantly, in failing to adequately grasp Hegelian recognition, feminists and race theorists lose access to what I argue are some very powerful conceptual tools for understanding human oppression and liberation. It offers, as one example, an account of freedom that is fundamentally intersubjective not only on the more immediate level of the I/thou, but also at the level of the institutions, norms, and social practices that can either foster or inhibit relations of reciprocity. Recognition, understood properly, can thus provide a great deal to those of us theorizing oppression, and while there may be much in Hegel’s corpus worth criticizing, especially as regards his discussions of gender and race, his account of recognition needs to be taken seriously.

The CLR James Journal, 2021

The political thought of Alain Badiou has recently been taken up by scholars seeking to rework ou... more The political thought of Alain Badiou has recently been taken up by scholars seeking to rework our approach to emancipatory thought and praxis. Scholars such as Michael Neocosmos (2018), Nick Nesbitt (2008), and Madhavi Menon (2015) have all brought Badiou's thought to bear on practices of liberation in a variety of domains, including Africa and the Caribbean. In her new book, Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou, Elisabeth Paquette offers a careful critical engagement with Badiou's writings on emancipation, especially with respect to race. Working closely with Badiou's works over the past two decades, as well as some of the more promising attempts to employ his thought for liberatory projects by some of the thinkers mentioned above (Menon and Nesbitt, in particular), Paquette builds a compelling case that Badiou's theory of emancipation cannot ultimately account for race adequately, and that this proves to be a grave, perhaps even fatal, flaw in his political thought (Paquette 2020, 6). Though Paquette's book is organized around a critique of Badiou's thinking on race, the themes and arguments she takes are by no means limited to Badiou scholarship. Furthermore, her mode of approach is to work through the Afro-Caribbean thinkers like Aimé Césaire and Sylvia Wynter in order to mount her decolonial critique of Badiou. Her work in this text is thus of interest not only to students and scholars of Badiou's work, but to those of us who continue to think through

The recent texts of Derrick Darby and Ronald R. Sundstrom offer significant contributions not onl... more The recent texts of Derrick Darby and Ronald R. Sundstrom offer significant contributions not only to the growing philosophical literature on race and racism, but to liberal political theory generally. Though they are motivated by different questions, these books have some striking similarities, and complement each other very well.

Book review of Jane Anna Gordon's "Creolizing Rousseau"

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