The Center for the Humanities Presents: Pioneers of Africana Philosophy, 3/19
Pioneers of Africana Philosophy
Friday, March 19th to Saturday, March 20th, 2021, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM EDT
Fri, Mar 19th to Sat, Mar 20th, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM (EDT).
This conference will take place online via Zoom.
Register here to access the Zoom link.
“Africana Philosophy” is the term that has been coined to designate philosophy in Africa and the African Diaspora (the Caribbean; the two Americas, North and South; Europe; Asia), both in the pre-modern and modern periods. In modernity, this philosophy will be fundamentally shaped by the experience of transnational racial subordination: racial chattel slavery in the Atlantic world, colonialism, and then continuing diasporic racial oppression in nominally post-slavery and post-colonial societies. Thus, it is arguably in modernity that a subset of Africana Philosophy becomes “Black” Philosophy. As such, Black philosophers have played a crucial role in pioneering what is now known as Critical Philosophy of Race: the philosophical examination of race from a “critical,” anti-racist perspective.
This 2-day conference “Pioneers of Africana Philosophy” looks back in paying tribute both to the historic pathbreakers of the past and the still living pioneers of the present who—under the most difficult and unfavorable conditions—were eventually able, after decades of struggle both within and outside the academy, to get Africana Philosophy and Critical Philosophy of Race recognized as legitimate areas of philosophical exploration and inquiry. But it also looks forward—given this historic experience of racial oppression—to exploring the contribution Africana thinkers can make to the understanding of our present national crisis, and to developing suggestions for how best to resolve it.
Click here to Register and for access to the Zoom link. Free and open to the public.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE, SPEAKERS & PRESENTATIONS:
Friday, March 19th
WELCOME
10AM-1:00PM: Panel 1: What is Africana Philosophy?
Dwight Murph (Philosophy, John Jay College, CUNY): “Black Consciousness and the Emergence of Black/Africana Philosophy”
Howard McGary (Emeritus, Philosophy, Rutgers University): “African American Philosophy: A Retrospective”
Leonard Harris (Philosophy, Purdue University): “What, Then, Is Philosophy Born of Struggle?”
John H. McClendon III (Philosophy, Michigan State University): “The Recovery and Reconstruction of Pioneering Conceptions in Africana Philosophy: From the Standpoint of Dialectical Materialism”
Discussion moderated by Charles Mills.
2:00-4:00PM: Panel 2: Inferiority, Racism, and Justice
Bill E. Lawson (Philosophy, Emeritus Professor at the University of Memphis): “Something about Inferiority”
Alfred Prettyman (History, Ramapo College of New Jersey): “How Do We See Each Other?”
Bernard Boxill (Emeritus, Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): “Should African American Philosophers Be More Interested in Corrective Justice than in Distributive Justice?”
Discussion moderated by Juan Battle.
4:30-6:30PM: Panel 3: Black Lives, Gender, and the Black Aesthetic
Kathryn Sophia Belle (Philosophy & African American Studies, Pennsylvania State University): “Audre Lorde’s Conceptualizations of Care”
Joy James (Humanities, Williams College): “’A Republic, if You Can Keep It’: Captive Maternals Leverage Democracy”
Albert Mosley (Emeritus, Philosophy, Smith College): “Funky Music in the Philosophy of the Black Aesthetic: It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got that Swing”
Discussion Moderated by Sergio Armando Gallegos Ordorica.
Saturday, March 20th
10AM-12:00PM: Panel 4: Black Radical Kantianism, White Supremacy, and Herrenvolk Democracy
Frank Kirkland (Philosophy, Hunter College & The Graduate Center, CUNY): “Kantian Thoughts, Du Boisian Proposals, and Hegelian Reflections on Contractually Liberal and Contractually Racial Dispositions”
Robert Gooding-Williams (Philosophy, and African American and African Diaspora Studies, Columbia University): “The Moral Psychology of White Supremacy and the Theory of Democratic Despotism”
Derrick Darby (Philosophy, Rutgers University): “Herrenvolk Democracy and the Black Demos”
12:30-2:30PM: Panel 5: African and Afro-Caribbean Philosophy
Souleymane Bachir Diagne (French & Philosophy, African Studies, Columbia University): “A Humanism and a Politics of Ubuntu and Nite”
Mickaella Perina (Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Boston): “Afro-Caribbean Philosophy: Poetics, Historicism and the World of Relations in Between”
Discussion moderated by Gary Wilder.
3:00-5:00PM: Panel 6: Reconstructions I, II—and III?
John Pittman (Philosophy, John Jay College, CUNY): “Du Bois on Race and Reconstruction”
Paget Henry (Sociology and Africana Studies, Brown University): “Africana Philosophy and the Possibility of a Third Reconstruction”
Discussion moderated by Linda Alcoff.
5:30-7:00PM: KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Lucius Outlaw (Philosophy & African American and Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University): “Black Lives and Existence: Misadventures in Academic Philosophy”
Discussion moderated by Charles Mills.
Click here for the full Abstracts of each speaker’s presentation.