Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Spring 2014 Black Existential Philosophy: Truth in Virtue of Self-Discovery James B. Haile Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Haile, J. (2014). Black Existential Philosophy: Truth in Virtue of Self-Discovery (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/614 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BLACK EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY: TRUTH IN VIRTUE OF SELF‐ DISCOVERY A Dissertation Submitted to McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By James B. Haile, III May 2014 i Copyright by James B. Haile, III 2014 ii BLACK EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY: TRUTH IN VIRTUE OF SELF‐DISCOVERY By James B. Haile, III Approved June 23, 2013 _______________________________________ ________________________________________ James Swindal Michael Harrington Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ______________________________________ Jerry R. Ward Professor of English Retired, Dillard University (Committee Member) _____________________________________ _____________________________________ James Swindal Ron Polansky Dean, McAnulty College and Chair, Department of Philosophy Graduate School of Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy iii ABSTRACT BLACK EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY: TRUTH IN VIRTUE OF SELF‐DISCOVERY By James B. Haile, III May 2014 Dissertation supervised by Dr. James Swindal In the past 20 years, within the discipline of philosophy there has been a burgeoning interest in the fields of Race theory, Africana, and African American philosophy, especially in the scholarship and questions concerning the experience and meaning of black existence; that is, within black existential philosophy. Despite this interest, though, there has yet to be a sustained study of the categories of black existential philosophy nor its concepts—there seems to have been the acceptance of traditional European existential categories and concepts merely applied to the questions of black existence. This work, though, offers a sustained examination of the existential categories—subjectivity (and objectivity), time, and history—as well as the partner concepts—freedom/autonomy, anxiety, despair, dread, and the absurd—to see if they can be applied to black existence, and to exam if the concepts themselves change when applied to black existence. What is more, in examining black existence, this work seeks to examine whether or not different categories of and concepts for existence emerge. iv DEDICATION To all those who have helped me to measure distances and record depths. v ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to acknowledge and thank the following people, without whom this project as a whole, probably, would not have come to fruition, and almost certainly not as it currently exists. I thank Dr. Jim Swindal for his support and for allowing me to explore my voice in this project and through this process. To Jerry W. Ward, Jr., I wish to thank you for those late night conversations and for your constant reminders to push myself and do well in the crafting of my profession: I thought once, and am now sure that you are, in fact, the “Little of Man at Chehaw Station”! To friends and colleagues, Tommy J. Curry, Brandon Hogan, Rufus Burnette, I wish to thank you all for the support and fellowship over all these years. And, finally, to my parents, James and Desiree, I express what I’ve imbibed all these years old and have found their expression here. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………………………… iv Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… v Acknowledgment …………………………………………………………………………………………… vi Introduction: Black Existentialism as Philosophy …………………………………. viii PART ONE: Black Existential Philosophy Chapter I: Towards an Existentiality of Black Existentialism ……………… 1 Chapter II: Ralph Ellison’s Techne …………………………………………………….. 56 Chapter III: The Actualization of the “subject” in Toni Morrison …………… 87 PART TWO: Black Existential Phenomenology Chapter IV: Reflections on Thomas F. Slaughter’s “Epidermalizing the World,” 30 Years Later…………………………………………………………………….. 136 Chapter V: Race, Place, and the Geography of Self‐Discovery ……………..... 162 Conclusion: Existentialism and the Future of Philosophy ……………………… 197 Index …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 207 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 210 vii ‐INTRODUCTION‐ Black Existentialism as Philosophy This work, Black Existentialism: Truth in Virtue of Self‐Discovery, serves as a primer or a meta‐philosophical discussion on the experience(s) of being black and the meaning of black existence through an engagement with the philosophical methodologies of existentialism and phenomenology. This work situates itself, principally, within historical and contemporary debates concerning the meaning of blackness and black existence; and, rather than utilizing concepts furnished by ‘traditional’ existential philosophy and phenomenology1 to understand the experience(s) of black existence, this work attempts to mine the foundation(s) of such concepts and ask whether these concepts, or any concepts, themselves can capture the experience of human existence. This work argues that any investigation into existence and analysis of experience require certain baseline assumptions and a framework through which any concept of living can arise. Currently, we find ourselves at the beginning of an investigation and an analysis, attending to the issue of how to begin, deciding on how to frame the key issues: what are the baseline assumptions and framework for thinking existence and the meaning of experience within the spectrum of blackness and black people; that is, what are the baseline assumptions for an interpretation of “the being of blackness” and by what process 1 ‘Traditional” here means ‘canonical’. Black existential philosophy and phenomenology (as it currently stands) simply takes European intellectual concepts—such as angst, forlornness, abandonment—and, rather than investigating their foundational upsurge as concepts to capture the experience of existence, these concepts are simply borrowed and attached to the experience(s) of black people. In our work, here, we interested in establishing a new foundation for black existentialism through an examination of the foundation for existence, and, by proxy, for these ‘traditional’ concepts. viii are these frameworks to be revealed? Our challenge here is to establish our framework and assumptions while also illuminating the framework and assumptions of ‘traditional’ existential philosophy and phenomenology in order to understand the nuanced historical relation of blackness, black existence and ‘race’; that is, part of our concern is to demonstrate that the connection between the meaning of blackness, black existence, and that of the history of ‘race,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘racialization’ has become so interwoven that we have difficulty thinking blackness without this history: ‘race,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘racialization’ have become the baseline assumption and the framework through which black existence and black experience is to be understood. Our key issue herein: to establish our existential and phenomenological framework in order to disentangle blackness and the meaning of black existence from the history ‘race,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘racialization.’2 Yet, as a prolegomena, we are tasked with the questioned, “how do we, within this history of ‘race,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘racialization,’ come to an understanding of black experience and the meaning of black existence, which is related to this history, but not reducible to it?” Our question has a specific contour in the form of a subseQuent questions: “what is black experience and the meaning of black existence,” becomes, “how does one determine the actions or expressions of persons as black?” and, “What does it mean to be black: that is, 2 Kwame Anthony Appiah raises a similar concern in his work, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture where he argues the ‘idea’ of Africa has come to shadow the actual living realities of African peoples. For Appiah, our difficulty in thinking Africa is due to our racialized thought. Appiah argues that ‘ethnicity or culture,’ rather than ‘race’ Better capture the meaning of African existence and the experiences of being African. Though I agree with Appiah’s criticism of our thinking of Africa in strictly ‘racialized’ ways, and even with his attempt to locate the meaning of existence and experience within the cultural, I think he did not go far enough in his positive articulation: for our work here, we want to argue that Appiah’s notion of culture is not sufficiently ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirit‐filled,’ But technical. ix what does it mean to act or produce blackness or black products?” The question of the meaning of blackness reveals itself further within a concrete concern of activity of production; yet, we must not lose sight of the theoretical concern of framework and the baseline assumptions that influence our findings and understanding to deem an activity or an artifact, ‘black.’ Our