Submitted by philosophybreak t3_zkr99s in philosophy
Black Existentialism is so named because it investigates the construction of racial identities through the lens of existentialism. You could draw similarities to how Simone de Beauvoir used existentialism to investigate the identities imposed upon women. I.e. you are not starting from scratch in your analysis of your relationship to reality; you are starting from an identity (a negative/limiting identity) that has been constructed for you. Lewis Gordon's work focuses on how one can shed the 'double consciousness' and 'bad faith' of seeing oneself through the eyes of others. Progress here comes "when you don’t accept the idea that you’re intrinsically a problem. Instead, you shift and argue there’s a problem with a society that makes people into problems". Hopefully that helps - more in the interview!
This makes a lot of sense. Not sure what the other commenters here are on about (I assume they’re on the kneejerk reactionary “why I not included GRUG” kick).
Black Existentialism in this context is not something that the average white person in America/Europe has direct experience with, which makes it a meaningful distinguisher from regular ol existentialism.
For a philosophy subreddit, y’all mfs love to take things at face value and get emotional over the use of the word black.
Then give it a different name. While black people (in america) are heavily disenfranchised, so are the Uyghurs in China, the tibetans in Tibet, Ethnic Muslims in many parts of the world, whites (currently) in south africa, the list goes on.
Ignoring the fact that from the viewpoint of most biologists 'race' as a concept doesn't exist, what he's tlaking about (according to your summary) has nothing intrinsically to do with african americans, more to do with dominant and sub-dominant subcultures.
The existence of Black Existentialism does not preclude a broader all-encompassing viewpoint.
A direct examination of the concept from the perspective of one specific group is perfectly valid, and could even be a precursor to a broader theory.
And I’m sure that a closer examination of other disenfranchised groups would also reveal meaningfully distinct characteristics between those groups such that a single group cannot perfectly generalize to all groups, thus requiring a much broader effort to properly construct a general theory.
It's not perfectly valid, because it's naming black people - not african-american people - but all black people, including those who are in dominant positions of power in their given societies.
If the viewpoint is really so-specific to the united states, then call it that. But I HIGHLY doubt that is the case.
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I’m not a person that has interest in celebrating or promoting empowerment based on my race, but it’s most certainly an interesting topic to think about and discuss.
On the surface, race empowerment does not seem like a bad thing for any race to promote, yet it’s only considered acceptable by certain races mainly due to the historic amount of racial hate through most of modern history.
I understand the apprehension of some folks to openly allow and tolerate members of all races celebrating racial empowerment, however we should also use critical thinking and clear judgement to distinguish between what is actual hate and what is empowerment.
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I came here to post this! True existentialism shouldn’t need an adjective… if we are horrifyingly alone in our existence, clinging to skin groups adds to the absurdity. This is very much loving the dents and scars of your sisyphusian boulder.
Oof...the very notion that (in this case, blackness) would be a "dent in your sisyphusian boulder" begs the notion that "blackness" is a flaw one is saddled with.
Rather than speak againat it, you've managed to reinforce the notion that sometimes a differentiation based on inherent starting point is needed...the "black experience" is predicted on both living it but also having it imposed on you, at birth, by a larger societal group who wants to "other" you from the get go, before you even have a chance to form your own identity.
Read Black Skin, White Masks for a unique blend of existentialism stemming from Sartre as well as a depiction of the particular experience of blackness as colonized subject. He actually talks about the overlap of existential freedom and breaking free of forms of white guilt for the white person as well as feelings of black interiority for the black person.
There are unifying things about existential experience, but also definitive experiences of racial oppression, historically or otherwise.
I think there are a lot of nuanced takes from vantage points other than the main European existentialists and absurdist(s).
Sounds like an interesting read! I’ll check it out.
Philosophy is how we interface with the world, so I agree that the argument is nuanced. It has to be or it’s useless. Camus’ famous quote “the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion,” for me, is the action at the conversation’s end. Everything else are scars on our personal boulder for us all to fawn on, proselytize about, and so on… which is all apart of the absurdity (to me), but it makes for spirited conversation… 🤓
I did think the distinction between “black” consciousness and “Black” consciousness was pretty interesting.
I do, however, wonder how far existentialism is compatible with any form of “identity” in the normal sense of the word. As Gordon points out, experience is relational. This means that our identities are radically open and hybrid.
Example: Growing up in the post-segregation South left an indelible imprint on my consciousness in terms of music-jazz—and language, especially improvisational humor. Of course, none of this stops me from being a nerdy white guy. And yet these experiences and loves reshaped me in a way that I can’t fully articulate. What is my “identity”?
>I did think the distinction between “black” consciousness and “Black” consciousness was pretty interesting.
This has always annoyed me. Why do thinkers in critical theoretic circles feel the need to change the meanings of words - in ways that are supposedly extremely crucial to their points - via nothing more than capitalization differences? I still don't understand why that of all things would be the go-to algorithm for these types of academics.
I'm generally not a fan of existentialism and I don't exactly "get" this guy, so I can't perfectly represent his viewpoints. But the capitalization makes perfect sense to me. "Black" with a capital B refers to Black people as a distinct ethnic group, while "black" originally framed Black people in terms of darkness, impurity, and arbitrary racial norms and standards, the inverse of "white." The capitalization puts "Black" alongside "Asian" or "Cherokee" as a thing in and of itself.
I found his explanation of this needlessly opaque, but it's a pretty simple construct. Capitalization is just a way of framing Black identity in terms other than isolated attributes or social norms, like where someone falls on the "paper bag test."
I should mention that calling someone "black" without capitalization does not carry the racist connotations it originally did. With or without capitalization it's the preferred term. This is not to imply that "black" is a racial slur.
No as I'm reading it, I think the author would generalize both Black consciousness and black consciousness across many different racial groups. The distinction seems to be that black consciousness is the IMPOSED concsiousness that these groups experience (inferiority, enslavement) while Black consciousness is an act of self-realization that your own lived racial identity can serve as the basis for interacting with and analyzing reality
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but that doesn't make sense to me because simply having dark skin does not, in general, determine one's ethnicity. There are multiple ethnic groups (e.g., Arabic, Brazilian, the plethora of distinct African nations) that can exhibit such a phenotype of dark skin color.
So, what theoretically are they claiming is unifying all these distinct ethnicities? It sounds to me like the distinction is solely based on optimism versus pessimism towards these groups and peoples, i.e., something to be celebrated, rather than to be viewed through the lens of lazy stereotypes and prejudices.
Again, I'm probably misunderstanding your explanation though.
>Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but that doesn't make sense to me because simply having dark skin does not, in general, determine one's ethnicity. There are multiple ethnic groups (e.g., Arabic, Brazilian, the plethora of distinct African nations) that can exhibit such a phenotype of dark skin color.
This is largely true, and Gordon might actually disagree with the explanation I'm about to give. But Black people in the U.S., at least those whose ancestry goes back to slavery, have some common experiences. Slaves in particular had their their identities and genealogy erased, and in a sense are more a distinct ethnicity than European Americans since we can trace our ancestry more easily. So there's a commonality between most Black Americans that goes beyond skin color. They have a culture that is distinct from both Africans and other Americans.
It gets complicated when you consider that many Black Americans are immigrants from Africa. Gordon may be including them, or he may not. They share some commonalities, but not others. I'm not including people in all countries because this is, to my knowledge, a largely American construct. Other countries have different experiences with racial stratification.
Not every Black person agrees with this. But there is a rationale for it that goes beyond academic obsurantism. It is controversial and, again, I'm not agreeing with Gordon on everything. But I think the shift towards capitalization is both respectful and logically sound.
That's quite different than what I was assuming it meant. In reality, it practically has nothing even to do with ethnicity, which in a sense makes it a kind of misnomer. I'd certainly not include modern immigrants or even other dark skinned ethnicities under this specific meaning, as I suspect that doing so introduces quite a lot of obfuscation into the discourse on this subject.
Like I said, it's controversial. It is much harder to define "black" and "white" than it is to define "Asian" or "Mexican." Yet these constructs won't go away and the more they impact society and the individual, the more they become things in themselves. I don't think there's a perfect solution.
Gordon definitely seems to be operating from a less practical, tangible vantage point, which makes him harder to engage with than most people who draw this distinction.
>Yet these constructs won't go away and the more they impact society and the individual, the more they become things in themselves.
I mean, they're here because we create them and allow them to influence us.
With the advent of true equality under the law, families with mixed ethnicities, and the natural progression of human consciousness beyond simplistic constructs, I'd like to think that we can hopefully come to cast aside such limitations, rather than further ingrain them into our collective psyche.
Academics have to publish articles. And if they're the "black consciousness" academic that's what you are going to get ad infinitum.
Academics nowadays are living in silos separate from each other and the real world as they pursue their "area" slapping their highly focused cookie cutter research onto various topics.
>I do, however, wonder how far existentialism is compatible with any form of “identity” in the normal sense of the word.
It works for me. Identity is always (seriously, always) strongly tied in with context/environment/circumstance. Those are filtered through our imperfect perceptions and memories, etc. but they are still there and still very powerful. I don't think any serious existentialist would suggest that everyone can just casually discard their lived experience. It's there, and it shapes identity. True, we have more choices about that than we are often led to believe, but it's not a binary: our context is a powerful force, whether we flow totally with it, try to swim against the current, or try to find some way to zig with/against it orthogonally or whatever. It's there and it will always matter.
Quite true, experience is the primary concern for existentialists; however, there may not be a simple relationship between experience and the labels we normally use for identity. The question “Who am I?” is at the heart of existentialism. The question “What is my identity?” isn’t quite same question, at least in the terms we usually use for identity—class, race, gender,etc.
At least, that’s where my thinking is at right now.
> I don't think any serious existentialist would suggest that everyone can just casually discard their lived experience. It's there, and it shapes identity. True, we have more choices about that than we are often led to believe, but it's not a binary
You can think of it as probability distributions across numerous variables, the population, and time. So in the case of racism (and various other -isms, experienced from a particular frame), as time progresses the whole distribution will retain approximately the same shape (reflecting the relative levels of the racism within the population) while the entire distribution can move towards less racism (absolute decrease in the aggregate).
That's a hypothesis, for sure. I don't know of any empirical evidence to suggest that the size and shape of the distribution of racism within a given population necessarily stays invariant while the mean changes.
Agreed, that's why I used "approximately" - technically/tautologically, it changes to the degree that it changes, and that value is not known because there is no way to measure it accurately, so people tend to ~imagine a value (or, choose one from a wide variety of inaccurate representations) that aligns with their preconceived notions.
He's pretty flippant about discarding certain views with without much explanation. For instance, the idea that seriousness is an inherently closed view of reality. Some people are too uptight, sure, but you can absolutely take seriously the task of being openminded and exploring the world.
It's normal to care deeply about some parts of the world, and thus take them seriously, while keeping an open mind. It's actually really important. For one example, think of a time when a friend or family seriously fucked up and needed help. Like if they had an addiction or financial problems. A lot of people would take their situation seriously and be open-minded in order to empathize with the person who's suffering despite their own part in their suffering. That's just an example of a serious attitude being important for openmindedness. Someone who's flippant or too playful about their friend's problem might not be helpful if, indeed, their friend requires help. You'll have a hard time being empathetic if you don't take someone's situation seriously.
You can be serious about finding and exploring the world around you in all sorts of things, including stuff like art and engineering design.
It seems like the author's statement on seriousness being an inherently closed view of the world is not totally accurate. Playfulness is valuable, and legitimately important for thinking laterally; but being playful can be limiting in itself, especially in a complex topic, like engineering or empathizing with trauma, where care is absolutely needed in order to make much progress. So I think the author made a highly generalized statement that, as a result, isn't too useful imo. I think that's not great for an essay where the main idea is openmindedness and considering the whole world as-is.
If that's what you got from his discussion of seriousness as a refusal to see nuance in all situations then as others have pointed out you literally are too serious about the use of the word. If there's anywhere you should be open to understanding the context and entirety of what's written rather than being pedantic it's in philosophy.
I think you're fixating way too hard on the terminology he decided to coin for the idea. Do you disagree about the content of the idea, its name aside? I also disagree with the naming choice but it seems relatively unimportant to discuss.
>but being playful can be limiting in itself, especially in a complex topic, like engineering or empathizing with trauma, where care is absolutely needed in order to make much progress
but he is talking about philosophy, which is inherently general, not as specific as a given engineering problem.
btw the most exciting products of engineering are always the ones which are attempting to break paradigms.
>but he's talking about philosophy, which is inherently general,
Philosophy needs to be precise aswell, and it absolutely must relate to actual events the real world (such as engineering, art, socializing, etc), or else it is not useful at all (maybe still interesting, though). The author involves real-world specific context in his article plenty.
It's not good form to make an extremely broad and general statement in philosophy unless you can back it up by elaborating. Maybe he elaborates in his book, but in this article, he denounces "seriousness" - an incredibly broad and frequent feeling in humans - without being precise enough for it to be meaningful.
> btw the most exciting products of engineering are always the ones which are attempting to break paradigms.
I completely agree, and I firmly believe most of those engineers take their jobs seriously. Even as they break boundaries.
I think there are some explanations of seriousness dropped here and there in the article, and it is not exactly what you mean. it is rather used for following rules without questioning, respecting discipline to the detriment of creativity.
this means someone can be serious in their work (in your terms) without following the seriousness of the subject (in the author's term).
he suggests playfulness for example to break well known dichotomies, or an other example to adopt foreign ideas instead of translating everything to familiar terms.
at least this is my recollection.
That's not the meaning of 'seriousness' in English, though. That's my point. This author is using 'seriousness' as a stand-in for being committed to rules or being closedminded. Just refer to the thing itself or make a new word rather than defining a word that already has a different, relevant definition.
Literally, that's not a definition of seriousness. Defining seriousness such that serious things and people are always closed-minded really seems like a bad idea. Seems very closed-minded in itself.
I think you are too serious about the meaning of that word.
Similar response to someone else:
Yes, language changes naturally over time. If it is an intentional change on his part, I think it's a bad change.
What do we call our old version of "seriousness" now? Why change it, why lose it? Why tie up "closedmindedness", which we have a word for, with a related but totally distinct thing?
He's conflating two different things and using then using one of those two things to denounce the other. I do not abide that in an essay about openmindedness. He absolutely didn't have to choose a specific, different word.
Someone is downvoting you for simply asking why the author of the article needlessly tortures the meaning of a word. This sub is too serious... lol
Language is fluid and changes constantly. All of human history can tell you that. Why is this specific situation so different?
Yes, language changes naturally over time. If it is an intentional change on his part, I think it's a bad change.
What do we call our old version of "seriousness" now? Why change it, why lose it? Why tie up "closedmindedness", which we have a word for, with a related but totally distinct thing?
He's conflating two different things and using then using one of those two things to denounce the other. I do not abide that in an essay about openmindedness.
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I can't believe my initial comment was deleted for the reason given. 90% of the sub should be nuked given that reason.
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Total head-scratcher. Why are all the rules up for interpretation, but black consciousness has ontological status? This whole thesis boils down to the belief that you can’t actually say anything meaningful.
I’m not sure what your usage of ontological means here.
Black consciousness having independent existence which all observers have to acknowledge. This is what I don’t understand about relativism-it’s fine to be open-minded, unserious, and “transdisciplinary” if you like at one point, but what do you do when the various cultures and philosophies you’re approaching open-mindedly conflict with one another? Because they do conflict, all the time. Do you believe multiple contradictory things and deny nothing? That seems to veer from open-mindedness into simple mindlessness.
In theory that appears to be Gordon’s suggestion, but it’s pretty obvious that he picks favorites (“Black consciousness”) and opposes their contraries (“white narcissism”) like everybody else in the real world.
Skipped this article to listen to an actual audio interview and Gordon is quite reasonable on systemic racial issues. It’s my first time encountering him and his ideas, and while I do have social justice fatigue generally, Gordon didn’t really trigger me in that way. Seems like a chill, worldly dude making smart observations on race.
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This is pretty much why all religion and philosophy fall short.
Once you try to name the mother of 10,000 things it’s no longer the mother of 10,000 things
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>Existence is infinitely richer than our descriptions of it. So, rather than cling to reductive explanations that only ‘close’ life’s possibilities...
Eh, sure you can dig into anything as deep as you want to go. To look at any economic detail, you could follow that into sociology, psychology, neuroscience, biology, chemistry, nuclear physics, and quantum mechanics. Or you could look at any of the potential layers built upon economics. So sure, "infinitely richer" in the sense that is all this stuff is complicated.
....but the solution is to reject reductive explanations? They just pointed out that there's an infinite amount to know about anything. How do you wrap your head around anything? You first learn a simple version. "Things fall down". THEN you learn about orbits. Then you get into spacetime. Of course you reduce it down to something manageable. You learn about edge cases and expand your knowledge, but you have to start somewhere.
"Clinging" to the simple explainations isn't a good idea. It's not going to get you into orbit. But learning about orbits doesn't mean things stop falling down.
Interesting
Abstract
Lewis Gordon is Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs in the United States, and is one of the leading scholars of Black Existentialism. In this interview, we caught up with Professor Gordon about his book Fear of Black Consciousness, which explores how racial identity and human meaning are constructed through history, art, and popular culture. Drawing on an extraordinary breadth of references, Gordon ultimately argues against ‘seriousness’ or ‘closedness’ towards the worlds we make, and advocates for a radical love and openness towards the multitudinous possibilities of reality:
>“For us to deal with the richness of existence, for us to acknowledge the many ways of living in the world we manifest simultaneously, the approach has to be multidimensional… People are seduced by reductive thinking, simplified thinking… but to be genuinely curious, you begin to realize reality is just bigger than you are. To have a real commitment to reality and truth, you have to reach beyond yourself, which means you could get your butt kicked. So you need to have some courage: the idea of philosophers who have no courage is an abomination… I’m arguing that we’re not trying to constrain future humanity to this mess we have made. Instead, we’re trying to open up the possibilities for future humanity to live lives worth living.”
What are lives "worth living"? And if only the future of humanity may be able to do so does that mean we, now, aren't?
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Well stated. I hope i could include my 4 biracial grandchildren. I teach them things removed from history books. You have a beautiful perspective ✨🥇👍💯
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I don't mind being a student. What I do mind are idiots who think they should be my teacher.
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Calling ourselves perpetual students is extremely reductive.
soulstudios t1_j015uvw wrote
Weird. Why name your brand of existentialism after your ethnicity? Seems a very limiting viewpoint.