A Philosophical Anthropology of Race and the Geographies of Liberation

Posted: 18 Sep 2017

Date Written: September 16, 2017

Abstract

In the final pages of Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon argues for the emergence of what he calls a “new humanity”. Efforts of human beings to realize themselves and their conditions as liberated, he reasons, must entail a disposing of Europe as the standard against which all else is judged. Much like the project of decolonization, establishing a new humanity is a totalizing project that must take seriously all domains in and by which the human being is implicated, which includes, necessarily, the spatial. In other words, liberation must involve a contending with all domains involved in the oppression of black people. This isn’t to deny progress where it is made in other domains, but instead to acknowledge the meticulous efforts by racists to construct a world where one is everywhere reminded of the problem of blackness. A deconstruction of that world must be attended to with an even greater measure of care. Thus, I examine the ways in which liberation necessarily takes on a spatial quality. In doing so, I pay particular attention to how contemporary black liberation movements, like Black Lives Matters, articulate their positions in spatial terms.

Suggested Citation

Melonas, Desiree, A Philosophical Anthropology of Race and the Geographies of Liberation (September 16, 2017). 2018 National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS) Annual Meeting, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3037967

Desiree Melonas (Contact Author)

Birmingham-Southern College ( email )

Birmingham-Southern Collee
900 Arkadelphia Road
Birmingham, AL 35354
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Abstract Views
311
PlumX Metrics