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Consent Not to Be a (Human) Being: A Black Anti-philosophy of Science.

Authors :
Gillespie Jr., John
Source :
Philosophy Today. 2023, Vol. 67 Issue 4, p851-870. 20p.
Publication Year :
2023

Abstract

This essay produces a paradigmatic analysis of anti-Blackness from within the history and philosophy of biology in order to explore Frantz Fanon's concept of ontological resistance. Through developing Sylvia Wynter's notion of the Darwinian Imaginary alongside an Afropessimist paradigmatic analysis, the paper argues that scientific humanism's claim that the Black is "the ostensible missing link between rational humans and irrational animals" (Wynter 2003: 266) is a form of metaphysical violence that the Black cannot ontologically resist. This heretical reading of three canonical figures in Western bioscience—Carl Linnaeus, George Cuvier, and Charles Darwin—is an attempt to synthesize Wynter's demonic ground and Wilderson's grammatology in order to develop a Black anti-philosophy of science that thinks antagonistically about what it means to be "the missing link" in the chain of Human being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
00318256
Volume :
67
Issue :
4
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
Philosophy Today
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
174835374
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.5840/philtoday2023105506