Corey Reed

Should we conceptualize domains like Black existentialism and phenomenology as Continental philosophy? Answering this question is difficult for a few reasons. First, Continental philosophy is both specific to a geographic region (Europe) while simultaneously producing theories with utility for many liberation and resistance projects. Second, Africana discourses are often developed in the wake of colonialism, racism, and oppression, making them connected to, and simultaneously a critique of, the European colonial education. Third, Black existentialism and phenomenology, like many Africana methods, are often evaluated by how well they coincide with Western traditions, whether through Western theorists (like Sartre) or by domain intelligibility (Black existentialism compared to Existentialism itself). This project explores these issues and asserts that these Black, philosophical enterprises are undeniably connected to the Continental tradition but conceptualizing them as Continental requires a redefining of Continental philosophy.

How can educational institutions, from primary to higher, engage in the development of Black students’ racialized self-knowledge? Research has shown that deeper self-realization (self-knowledge) in Black students yields positive results regarding student success (Miquelon and Vallerand 2006; Austin 2018). However, philosophically speaking, what self-knowledge (via one’s Blackness) is, and how we develop it across educational spaces, is still unclear. This article uses the terms Kujitambua (Swahili for “self-knowledge”) and Busara (Swahili for “practical wisdom”) to describe educational aims for schools that desire to seriously engage in Black student’s development through the examination of Blackness. This article utilizes James Baldwin’s and Alain Locke’s assertions about perception, justice, and education to argue that deepening one’s Kujitambua and Busara are critical for Black student success in and beyond school.

When Black agents engage spaces and phenomena that suggest a racialized, potential danger, Black agents shift in their existential understanding of themselves and their phenomenological engagement with the world. This article describes that existential and phenomenological change, and examines the issue of hypothetical anti-Black racism. Utilizing Sartrean and Fanonian conceptions of existential phenomenology, this article explicates three terms: Black nausea, Black vertigo, and a phenomenology of caution. These terms are used to describe the tension that Black agents experience when they are confronted with phenomena related to the history of anti-Black racism, and that confrontation brings their Blackness to the surface of their consciousness. This article argues that “Black paranoia” is an inappropriate label for a justified phenomenology of caution, and that Black freedom includes addressing these nauseating phenomena.

How does patriarchy affect one’s conception of personal freedom? Patriarchy raises this existential question, not just for women but for other identities such as marginalized men. Using Simone de Beauvoir’s thoughts on patriarchy and existentialism, the author argues that an existential framework for patriarchy gives greater insight into the ways patriarchy is interconnected with other oppressions, affects marginalized men and others who do not identify as women, and alters people’s conception of choice as they engage the world.

Abstract:“Black art” is often understood as being inherently political. In examining two major Black arts movements, the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movement, many of the works attributed to those periods fit the description of “political art” but not all of them. Black art movements are not defined exclusively by similar styles or methodologies, like Expressionism or Surrealism, either. Instead, Black art movements are complex movements that blend social, political, and aesthetic criteria. In this article, I list seven conditions that I take to be jointly sufficient for a Black art movement to be signified as such. In this assertion, I also argue that this current era, paralleling the Black Lives Matter movement, is worthy of Black art movement signification, if we update the mediums by which the conditions are met in the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts movement.

For those who subscribe to a pro-Black political ideology, like that of Pan-Africanism or Black Nationalism, is there a specific moral obligation between Black agents to protect one another against intersectional/multidimensional oppressions? Africana people are often subjugated to other forms of domination outside of anti-Black racism exclusively. When examining offenses against Black women, queer Black people, poor Black people, etc., both Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist ethics suggest a moral obligation of protection to all Africana people, but there are varying ways that obligation is explicated. In this argument, I assert that Amílcar Cabral’s text Resistance and Decolonization provides a critical framework for the ways in which disenfranchised, Africana people should be advocated for by their Africana counterparts that take Black collectivity seriously. This argument, as a starting point, conceptualizes Africana people defending one another as a form of decolonization, and it describes four dimensions of moral obligation for defense both within and outside of Black communities: political, economic, cultural, and armed defense.