AFR 327
Topics in Philosophy of Race: Hegel and Africana Philosophy Fall 2022
Division II Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed PHIL 319
This is not the current course catalog

How are individual and social subjects formed, and how do they connect to questions of race? What is the nature of consciousness and how can it be unhappy, false or double? What do we mean when we talk about racial capitalism? This course introduces philosophy students to these and related questions through a parallel reading that brings together 19th century German philosopher Hegel and a tradition of Africana philosophy running through Douglas, Du Bois, Fanon, Gilroy, Hartman and Wynter. While Hegel studies tends to occur in isolation from philosophers in the Africana tradition, many of the above explicitly refer to and take up questions in Hegel. This course argues that by reference to the historically specific modes of subjectivity and sociality that resulted from the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Haitian Revolution, for instance, we can better understand and address long-standing questions in European Social Philosophy. Topics to be considered include the nature of freedom (both individual and social), the master/slave dialectic and subject constitution, self-consciousness and double consciousness, the stages of history, and racial capitalism