Framing Du Bois as an Existentialist

Show Notes

Discussion of the first chapter of W.E.B. Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk, framing his work in that chapter as an existential characterization of and response to Black subjectivity in an antiblack world. In particular, I am interested in how we understand critical concepts like "the veil," "double consciousness," and "the color line" emerge from the everyday lived-experience of Black embodied presence to the world - living as the hyphen in "African-American." Du Bois deploys a series of anecdotes that move away from autobiography and toward a full accounting for the structure of Black subjectivity and being as alienated, resistant, and full of beleaguered but also resilient forms of self-assertion. This roots his thinking in existentialist insight and thinking.

What is Black Existentialism?

Podcasted process pieces from my course Black Existentialism. The course introduces one of the most important and potent mid-century intellectual movements - the existentialist movement - through a series of black Atlantic thinkers. Our keystone will be Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, which is arguably the most important work of Black existentialism from this period. Across the semester we will see why existentialism, with its focus on the ambiguities and ambivalences of lived-experience, had such a deep impact on Black thinkers across the diaspora. We will see these existentialist insights register in literature, philosophy, and film. Old and new.