Africana Thought
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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: May 16, 2001.
Latest update: July 13, 2003.
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

African-American Philosophy: Theory, Politics, and Pedagogy
By Lewis R. Gordon

A little more than two-thirds of the way down the file, you'll find these two paragraphs:

"Our philosophical anthropology that founds our politics and pedagogy should also resist human closure. In existential language, we should take responsibility for our role in conceptual formation, that our lived-reality of participation and action precede themes of conceptualization and essentialization. Our students should be the optimism of possibilities. In effect, this means recognizing them as sites of agency where their education is as much their responsibility as ours.

The turn to philosophical anthropology and anti-reductionism brings us to the question of universal themes. The leitmotif of Africana philosophy has also clearly been a critique of false universalism. White normativity, for instance, appeals to a universality that is so by default. By reducing the domain of humanity and the questions that are most relevant to humanity, white normativity emerges. In truth, human reality is broader in scope and relevant sets of questions."

I'll get to the essay tomorrow. jeanne, Wednesday night, May 16, 2001. Obviously, I didn't get back to it. Hope to soon. jeanne, Sunday night, July 13, 2003.

Discussion Questions

1. Gordon brings up the role of essentialism earlier in the paper. Here he insists that we must resist "human closure." What do yo usuppose he might mean by that?

   Consider that recent philosophy speaks of the postmodern concept of man usurping the role of God, of making all things relative to himself/herself. For African Americans the effects of slavery and colonization mean that they have only recently begun to recognize their potential in making human decisions for all humankind. Thus, Gordon says, humanists like Cornel West and Patricia Collins are unwilling to give up their so recently won humanism. For me, "human closure" speaks to the concept that anyone "knows" just what human is or, for that matter, ought to be. And as long as any "Others" have been left out of our understanding of what "human" is, not all truth claims have been considered, and our knowledge remains incomplete, and thus, must remain open, not closed.

   Essentialism, the saying of what is, what are who a person is, according to Sartre's existentialism must follow existence, or the lived experience. None of us can be defined before we have lived, and have completed that living. Essence remains open. If one speaks of the essence of some group of humans that has been excluded, that involves an absolute disrespect for the right of those humans to define their own essence through their lived experience. To declare man or God or essentialism dead is to declare that we "know" what man or God or "essentialism" is, and we have somehow gone beyond that. I, like Cornel West and Patricia Collins, and Gordon, I presume, find that arrogant in the extreme.

2. How does Gordon see the relationship between openness and pedagogy?

   Consider that he speaks of lived experience necessarily preceding conceptualization, rationalization. In pedagogy he suggest that we should take responsibility for our complicity in the normative definition of the concepts and rationalizations by which we live. If we suggest to our students that some things just "are the way they are because . . . " we are denying that we and the context in which we live had anything to do with the way we perceive them, whether we are the colonized or the colonizers.

   In pedagogy we socialize our children. We must develop forms of pedagogy that permit and encourage them to take responsibility for their part in the interdependent collective of which we are all a part.

3. In the second paragraph above what is Gordon saying of white privilege?

   Consider that Western thought has traditionally conceived of itself as "right," as "the way things are." Gordon is saying that the way things are is that way just because many were excluded from controlling their own lives and experiences. Things were the way the colonizers defined them, for they had the power to so define them. Now, the colonized are adding new perspectives and new definitions to what is through their own lived experience. One of the "big questions" today is how we help the colonized and the colonizers to understand the years of habit and privilege that have skewed our vision of the global community. This is the kind of issue Habermas refers to when he seeks a critical approach that will allow us to live at peace within our differences.