What is Existentialism? And Why "Black" Existentialism?

A first attempt at a definition of existentialism and why the qualifier "Black" is both necessarily and helpful for understanding the trajectory of the course, the content of the thinking, and the character of philosophy that emerges from Black existentialism.

Show Notes

What is existentialism? And why append the qualifier "Black" to the title "Black Existentialism"? This first piece sets out the agenda for the course, a formal framework for thinking about the material and its sensibility. The existentialist emphasis on lived-experience and embodied presence to the world introduces, unwittingly for so many European innovators, questions of race, gender, and sexuality into the meaning of existentialist thinking. I try to outline how and why this is the case, making an argument along the way for the salience of existentialism for thinking about the Black experience in its unity and also its diversity.

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.