Philosophizing the Americas

by Jacoby Adeshei Carter (Editor), Hernando Arturo Estévez (Editor), Stephanie Rivera Berruz (Contribution by), Jacoby Adeshei Carter (Contribution by), Nadia Celis (Contribution by)

Overview

Philosophizing the Americas establishes the field of inter-American philosophy. Bringing together contributors who work in Africana Philosophy, Afro-Caribbean philosophy, Latin American philosophy, Afro-Latin philosophy, decolonial theory, and African American philosophy, the volume examines the full range of traditions that have, separately and in conversation with each other, worked through how philosophy in both establishes itself in the Americas and engages with the world from which it emerges.

The book traces a range of questions, from the history of philosophy in the Americas to philosophical questions of race, feminism, racial eliminativism, creolization, epistemology, coloniality, aesthetics, and literature. The essays place an impressive range of philosophical traditions and figures into dialogue with one another: some familiar, such as José Martí, Sylvia Wynter, Martin R. Delany, José Vasconcelos, Alain Locke, as well as such less familiar thinkers as Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, Hilda Hilst, and George Lamming. In each chapter, the contributors find fascinating and productive matrices of tension or convergence in works throughout the Americas. The result is an original and important contribution to knowledge that introduces readers from various disciplines to unfamiliar yet compelling ideas and considers familiar texts from novel and prescient perspectives. Philosophizing the Americas stands alone as a representation of current scholarly debates in the field of inter-American philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781531504939
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	04/16/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jacoby Adeshei Carter (Edited By)
Jacoby Adeshei Carter is an associate professor of philosophy, and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Howard University. He is the director of the Alain Leroy Locke Society, author of African American Contributions to the Americas’ Cultures: Lectures by Alain Locke and co-editor of Philosophic Values and World Citizenship: Locke to Obama and Beyond and Insurrectionist Ethics: Radical Perspectives on Social Justice. He is also series editor of African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora, published by Palgrave/Macmillan.

Hernando Arturo Estévez (Edited By)
Hernando A. Estévez was educated at DePaul University and Indiana University. He works on Latin American philosophy, political philosophy and continental philosophy. He is currently chair and professor of the Department of Philosophy, Arts and Literature, and former Dean of the School of Philosophy at Universidad de La Salle in Bogotá. Hernando is the editor and contributor of Teaching to Discern: forming connections, decolonizing perspectives (Bogotá: Ediciones UniSalle, 2019).


Stephanie Rivera Berruz is an associate professor of philosophy at Marquette University. She was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship for her work on Latin/a American philosophy for the academic year of 2017–2018. Her main research interests lie in Latin American philosophy and Latinx feminisms as well philosophy of race, gender, and sexuality. She recently co edited an anthology: Comparative Studies in Latin American and Asian Philosophies (2018), and her publications appear in Hypatia, Inter-American Journal of Philosophy, and Essays in Philosophy. Originally from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, Dr. Rivera Berruz has lived both inside and outside of the continental United States. She credits her migrations as inspirations for her interests in philosophies that explore myriad dimensions of identity.
Nadia V. Celis Salgado is a professor of Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx studies at Bowdoin College. She received her PhD in literature from Rutgers University, where she also specialized in gender and women’s studies. Her research explores embodiment, subjectivity and intimacy in Hispanic Caribbean literature and popular culture. Her publications include articles on Colombian Caribbean authors Marvel Moreno, Fanny Buitrago, and Gabriel García Márquez, as well as essays on dance and performance. Celis is the author of Cronica de un amor terrible: La historia secreta de la novia devuelta en la muerte anunciada de García Márquez (Lumen, 2023) and La rebelión de las niñas: El Caribe y la “conciencia corporal” (Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2015), which received the Nicolás Guillén Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association, and an Honorable Mention of the Premio Iberoamericano by LASA. She is also co-editor of the collection Lección errante: Mayra Santos–Febres y el Caribe contemporáneo (Isla Negra, 2011).
Tommy J. Curry is professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are in Africana philosophy, the Black radical tradition and Black male studies. He is author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press 2017), which won the 2018 American Book Award. He is the author of Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of Racial Empire (SUNY Press 2018), and has re-published the forgotten philosophical works of William Ferris as The Philosophical Treatise of William H. Ferris: Selected Readings from The African Abroad or, His Evolution in Western Civilization (Rowman & Littlefield 2016). He is also the editor of the first book series dedicated to the study of Black males entitled Black Male Studies: A Series Exploring the Paradoxes of Racially Subjugated Males published by Temple University Press. Dr. Curry is currently co editing (with Daw-nay Evans) the forthcoming anthology Contemporary African American Philosophy: Where Do We Go from Here for Bloomsbury Publishing (2019).
Daniel Fryer is assistant professor of law at the University of Michigan. His work draws on scholarship in social and political philosophy, law, the social sciences, and public policy. He is also influenced by social movements and intellectual discourse outside the academy. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Criminal Law and Philosophy, Ethics, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and The Washington Post.
James B. Haile, III is an associate professor of philosophy at University of Rhode Island. Haile specializes in philosophy and literature, philosophical aesthetics, and Africana philosophy. His most recent book, The Buck, the Black, and the Existential Hero was published by Northwestern University Press in 2020.
Chike Jeffers is an associate professor of philosophy at Dalhousie University and Canada Research Chair in Africana Philosophy. His research interests include Africana philosophy, philosophy of race, social and political philosophy, and ethics. He is the co-author of What Is Race? Four Philosophical Views (2019) and editor of Listening to Ourselves: A Multilingual Anthology of African Philosophy (2013).
Lee A. McBride, III is professor of philosophy at the College of Wooster (Ohio). McBride specializes in American philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of race. He is the author of Ethics and Insurrection: A Pragmatism for the Oppressed (Bloomsbury, 2021). He is the editor of A Philosophy of Struggle: The Leonard Harris Reader (Bloomsbury, 2020) and co-editor with Erin McKenna of Pragmatist Feminism and the Work of Charlene Haddock Seigfried (Bloomsbury, 2022). Additionally, McBride has published articles on pragmatist feminism, racism, food ethics, anger, leftist politics, and decolonial philosophy.
Michael Monahan is a professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis. His teaching and research focus primarily on the philosophy of race and racism, political philosophy, Hegel, and phenomenology. He is the author of Creolizing Practices of Freedom: Recognition and Dissonance (Rowman and Littlefield).
Adriana Novoa is a cultural historian whose specialty is science in Latin America, and with Alex Levine she has written two books about Darwinism in Argentina: From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870–1920 (University of Chicago Press) and Darwinistas: The Construction of Evolutionary Thought in Nineteenth-Century Argentina (Brill). She is currently completing another manuscript on this topic, which treats the politics of evolutionism and its relationship to gender and race: From Virile to Sterile: Masculinity and National Identity in Argentina, 1850–1910. Dr. Novoa’s articles have been published in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Science in Context, The Latinoamericanist, Cuban Studies, and Revista Hispánica Moderna, among others.
Susana Nuccetelli is professor of philosophy at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota. She is the author of Latin American Thought (2002) and co-author of Latin American Philosophy: An Introduction with Readings (2004). She co-edited the Blackwell Companion to Latin American Philosophy (with Ofelia Schutte and Otávio Bueno, 2009) and is a contributor to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Andrea J. Pitts is professor of comparative literature at the University of Buffalo, and author of Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance (SUNY Press 2021). They are also co-editor of Beyond Bergson: Examining Race and Colonialism through the Writings of Henri Bergson with Mark Westmoreland (SUNY Press 2019) and Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance with Mariana Ortega and José M. Medina (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Dwayne A. Tunstall is professor of philosophy and associate dean of inclusive excellence and curriculum at Grand Valley State University. His areas of specialty are African American philosophy, classical American philosophy (especially Josiah Royce), and existentialism. His research interests include moral philosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of religion, and social and political philosophy. He is the author of two books: Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce’s Ethico-Religious Insight (Fordham University Press, 2009) and Doing Philosophy Personally: Thinking about Metaphysics, Theism, and Antiblack Racism (Fordham University Press, 2013). He is also author of numerous articles and book chapters, including “Royce’s Ethical Insight and Inevitable Moral Failure,” in Joshua R. Farris and Benedikt Paul Göcke, eds., The Routledge Handbook on Idealism and Immaterialism (Routledge, 2021) and “The Spiritual Significance of Curry’s The Man-Not by Critic Tunstall,” in The Acorn (2018).
Alejandro A. Vallega is a professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon. He is also Research Fellow at the Center for Gender and African Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa. Among his publications are Tiempo y Liberación (Editorial Akal, 2021), Latin American Philosophy from Identity to Radical Exteriority (Indiana University Press, 2014), Sense and Finitude: Encounters at the Limits of Art, Language, and the Political (SUNY Press, 2009), and Heidegger and the Issue of Space: Thinking on Exilic Grounds (Penn State Press, 2003). His work focuses on aesthetics, Latin American thought, decolonial thought, decolonial epistemologies, and Continental philosophy.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Prolegomena to Inter-American Philosophy
Jacoby Adeshei Carter | 1

PART I –INTER-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY: THEORIZING THE AMERICAS

1 Inter-American Philosophy: Born of Struggle?
Daniel Fryer | 11

2 Bringing Africa to the Americas: The Creolizing of Afro-Caribbean Philosophy
Chike Jeffers | 28

PART II –INTER-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF INDEPENDENCE AND STATE FORMATION

3 The 1812 Constitution of Cádiz: From Colonialism to Independence
Hernando A. Estévez | 49

4 Martin Delany and José Martí: Two Thinkers, Two Cubas
Dwayne A. Tunstall | 68

PART III –INTER-AMERICAN HISTORICISM

5 Illuminated in Black: Arturo Alfonso Schomburg’s Revolt against
Colonial Historicization—An Anti-Colonial Reflection on the Philosophy of (Black) History
Tommy J. Curry | 93

6 Chaos in the House of Reason: Positivism in the Americas, 1780–1900
Adriana Novoa | 117

PART IV –CURRENT TRENDS AND FUTURE POSSIBILITIES

7 Latin American Philosophy Has No Quine, So What?
Susana Nuccetelli | 147

8 Latin American Thought as a Path toward Philosophizing from Radical Exteriority
Alejandro A. Vallega | 162

9 Afro-American Writing: Motifs of Place
James B. Haile, III | 193

PART V –INTER-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF RACE

10 Alain Locke, José Vasconcelos, and José Martí, on Race, Nationality, and Cosmopolitanism
Jacoby Adeshei Carter | 235

11 Reason, Race, and the Human Project: Sylvia Winter,
Sociogenesis, and Philosophy in the Americas
Michael Monahan | 261

12 Race, Multiplicity, and Impure Coalitions of Resistance
Lee A. McBride, III | 284

PART VI –INTER-AMERICAN FEMINISM

13 La Negra’s Provocation: Corporeal Consciousness in
Nuestra Señora de la Noche by Mayra Santos-Febres
Nadia V. Celis Salgado | 307

14 Decolonial Feminisms and Indigenous Women’s
Resistance to Neoliberalism: Lessons from Abya Yala
Andrea J. Pitts | 326

15 The Menstruating Body Politic: José Martí, Gender, and Sexuality
Stephanie Rivera Berruz | 350

List of Contributors | 367

Index | 371

Editorial Reviews

This book brings the field up to date: the authors do not rehash older work and older interpretations of central texts, but engage the most current debates, around gender and sexuality, connecting Africana and African American thought to Latin American thought, creolizing the canon, the question of racial realism, and the political philosophical issues raised by indigenous resistance.—Linda Martín Alcoff, Hunter College

From the Publisher