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4Affect and Revolution: On Baldwin and FanonPhaenex: Journal of Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture 7 (2). 2012.This essay explores a philosophical encounter between Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin framed by the problem of the affect of shame. In particular, this essay asks how the affect of shame functions simultaneously as the accomplishment of regimes of anti-black racism and the site of transformative, revolutionary consciousness. Shame threatens the formation of subjectivity, as well as, and as an extension of, senses of home and belonging. How are we to imagine another subjectivity, another relation …Read more
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Difference and Sense: The Problem of Relation in the Work of Emmanuel LevinasDissertation, The University of Memphis. 1996.This work presents a reading of the development of the heretofore neglected problem of intentionality in the texts of Emmanuel Levinas. It is my contention that through such a reading one uncovers the method of justification operative in Levinas enigmatic notion of ethics. This legitimation aims at both demystifying the paradoxical language of Levinas writing and rendering accessible his notion of ethics. In addition to providing a point of access to Levinas own thought, the dissertation helps t…Read more
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12Creolization as Decolonial TheoryResearch in Phenomenology 54 (1): 74-91. 2024.What does Édouard Glissant have to contribute to theorizing decolonization and a philosophy of difference? And how is this contribution tied to rethinking place (from Caribbean to Caribbeanness) and world (comprised of creolized culture and identity)? This essay takes up Glissant’s work in the context of questions of history and memory, with particular focus on how historical experience grounds philosophical work on place and world through articulations of identity, language, cultural production…Read more
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Deconstruction as diaspora : on Derrida, Africa, and identity's deferralIn Grant Farred (ed.), Derrida and Africa: Jacques Derrida as a Figure for African Thought, Lexington Books. 2019.
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Elsewhere of HomeIn John E. Drabinski & Eric Sean Nelson (eds.), Between Levinas and Heidegger, State University of New York Press. pp. 245-260. 2014.
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6IntroductionIn John E. Drabinski & Eric Sean Nelson (eds.), Between Levinas and Heidegger, State University of New York Press. pp. 1-12. 2014.
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7Decolonizing the WestIn Corey McCall & Phillip McReynolds (eds.), Decolonizing American Philosophy, Suny Press. pp. 63-79. 2020.
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29Senghor's Anxiety of InfluenceJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 24 (1): 68-80. 2016.An examination of the question of influence in Senghor's work, with particular attention to the concept of assimilation - which I argue allows Senghor to responsibly adopt notions from French vitalist and life-philosophy traditions, despite their close ties to colonial and imperial histories.
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10The Hither-Side of the Living-Present in Levinas and HusserlPhilosophy Today 40 (1): 142-150. 1996.
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12Martinique Between Fanon and NaipaulJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 30 (2): 128-145. 2023.An argument for the proximity, if not absolute sameness, of Naipaul and Fanon on the status of the West Indies in the age of colonialism and independence struggle.
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4Atlantic Theory and TheoriesJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 30 (2). 2023.Notes on Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy XXX, no. 2 (2022)
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7Glissant and the middle passage: philosophy, beginning, abyssUniversity of Minnesota Press. 2019.In dialogue with key theorists of catastrophe and trauma--including Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, George Lamming, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Derek Walcott, as well as key figures in Holocaust studies--Glissant and the Middle Passage hones a sharp sense of the specifically Caribbean varieties of loss, developing them into a transformative philosophical idea. Using the Plantation as a critical concept, John E. Drabinski creolizes notions of rhizome and nomad, examining what kinds of aestheti…Read more
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814 Poetics of the MangroveIn Arun Saldanha & Jason Michael Adams (eds.), Deleuze and Race, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 288-299. 2012.
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9Levinas and the Postcolonial: Race, Nation, OtherEdinburgh University Press. 2011.What can we learn from reading Levinas alongside postcolonial theories of difference? With that question in view, Drabinski undertakes readings of Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Edouard Glissant, and Subcommandante Marcos in order to rethink ideas of difference, language, subjectivity, ethics, and politics. Through these philosophical readings, he gives a new perspective on the work of these important postcolonial theorists and helps make Levinas relevant to other disciplines concerned with postco…Read more
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29Sites of relation and “tout-monde”: Reflections on glissant’s late workAngelaki 24 (3): 157-172. 2019.This essay tracks the movement in Édouard Glissant’s work from thinking relationality as creolisation to Relation as such, to a globalised sense of cultural contact and transformation he ca...
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31The possibility of an ethical politics: From peace to liturgyPhilosophy and Social Criticism 26 (4): 49-73. 2000.This essay examines the possibility of developing an ethical politics out of the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas' own work does not accomplish this kind of politics. He opts instead for a politics of peace, which, as this essay argues, falls short of the demands of the ethical. Thus, this essay both provides an account of Levinas' own politics and develops resources from within Levinas' own work for thinking beyond that politics. An alternative, liturgical politics is sketched out. In a liturg…Read more
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11Vernaculars of HomeCritical Philosophy of Race 3 (2): 203-226. 2015.This essay examines James Baldwin's conception of what he calls “black English” and its link to historical and cultural identity. I link Baldwin's defense of black English to his reflections on the sorrow songs and sound, which draws on long-standing accounts of musicality as the foundation of the African-American tradition. In order to demonstrate this relation to the tradition, the essay puts Baldwin's remarks in relation to Frederick Douglass's and W. E. B. Du Bois's description of the sorrow…Read more
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12The Hither-Side of the Living-Present in Levinas and HusserlPhilosophy Today 40 (1): 142-150. 1996.
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29The Enigma of the Cartesian InfiniteStudia Phaenomenologica 6 (n/a): 201-213. 2006.In Levinas’ hands, the problematic of transcendence challenges phenomenological description by positing, as primary, that which is outside intentionality. How, then, to think about this transcendence outside intentionality? This essay explores the possibilities of a description of transcendence through Levinas’ and Marion’s readings of the Cartesian idea of the Infinite. What emerges from these readings of Descartes’ idea of the Infinite is a sense of indication that is fundamentally elliptical,…Read more