Black Existentialisms

Graduate / Professional

This course is an introduction to Black existential thought as it developed in the writing of African American and Afro-Caribbean authors. Existentialism typically describes a historical movement in philosophy and culture associated with mid-twentieth-century European intellectuals that asked how individuals constitute themselves within and beyond the given constraints and possibilities of their situation. But a deep tradition of Africana philosophies of existence—Black existentialism—are related to yet distinct from this European tradition. Throughout the course we explore key existential concepts such as freedom, liberation, authenticity, responsibility, action, situation, anguish, dwelling, the gaze, and the Other as they have been imagined in Black diasporic expressive cultures. Questions we will ask include: How have Black writers developed existential ideas in novels, poetry, and drama? How does the mid-century encounter between European and Africana existentialisms animate the literature of Black freedom struggles in the US and across the colonial and postcolonial world? How does Black existentialism understand the (im)possibility of self-making within societies structured in dominance, and what might an existentialist understanding of Black collectivity look like? How can Black existential thought provide productive opportunities to reevaluate some of the dialectics that have shaped conversations in Black studies such as hope/despair, being/nonbeing, humanism/antihumanism, and social life/social death? Readings may include work by Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, Lewis R. Gordon, Nathalie Étoke, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, Henry Paget, Angela Davis, Richard Wright, Adrienne Kennedy, Jesmyn Ward, Ann Petry, William Melvin Kelley, George Lamming, Sam Selvon, Toni Morrison, and others. This is an introductory-level seminar, and no previous knowledge of the course content is expected. W 1:30pm-3:25pm