As we celebrate Black History Month, it is important that we not think of that history as complete. The Black diaspora constitutes a complex existential tapestry that is still being woven — a tapestry of agency, creative expression, suffering, pain, joy, resistance and imaginative futures. In short, not only is the telling of Black history incomplete, but its future is not a fait accompli. Hence, though we celebrate Black History Month annually, we must also continue to examine the constantly unfolding dynamism of embodied Black spiritual, aesthetic, ethical and intellectual practices. It is with this understanding that I turn to the rich theme of Black existentialism.
Most have heard of existentialism as a philosophical approach propounded by such Western/European thinkers as Søren Kierkegaard (who is said to be the father of the intellectual movement), Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and even the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. But what about Black existentialism? What are its presuppositions? What are the social and historical conditions that have shaped its philosophical (even metaphilosophical) insights, especially insights that are crucial to Black people in the contemporary U.S.?
To address these questions, I turned to the work of E. Anthony Muhammad, assistant professor of educational research at Georgia Southern University. In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Muhammad discusses how Black existentialism functioned as a crucial site for his own existential explorations and intellectual development, and his most recent book, Discovering Black Existentialism.
George Yancy: Delineate what you see as hallmarks of Black existentialism. Also, share some of the historical and contemporary figures who are instrumental in shaping this incredible philosophical perspective.
E. Anthony Muhammad: For me, alterity (or otherness) is what lies at the core of Black existentialism and, specifically, the racialized alterity that manifests as the anti-Black terror, oppression and subjugation of white supremacy. I see this antagonistic relationship between white society and its Black “Other” as the source of the concerns with freedom, anguish and liberation that philosopher Lewis Gordon identified as core features of Black existentialist thought. But what has always accompanied this alteric disposition of whites toward Blacks is suffering. As you point out in your work (and I’m thinking here of your book, Black Bodies, White Gazes), it is precisely the suffering of Black bodies — the lynching, the killing by police, the slaughter of Black people in grocery stores — that represents the existential reality of being Black in America. However, I don’t want to paint a totally dire picture because, in addition to racialized alterity and the concomitant Black suffering that accompanies it, a third hallmark of Black existentialism is affirmation, redemption. Despite white society’s unrelenting efforts throughout the centuries, we are still fighting, still existing, and in many cases, thriving.
As for prominent figures, I personally cast a wide net in my conceptualization of Black existentialism. For example, I see figures as temporally and stylistically diverse as Frederick Douglass (and others who penned........