This book presents an intellectual history and theoretical exploration of black humanism since the civil rights era. Humanism is a human-centered approach to life that considers human beings to be responsible for the world and its course of history. Both the heavily theistic climate in the United States as well as the dominance of the Black Church are responsible for black humanism’s existence in virtual oblivion. For those who believe the world to be one without supernatural interventions, human action matters greatly and is the only possible mode for change. Humanists are thus committed to promoting the public good through human effort rather than through faith. Black humanism originates from the lived experiences of African Americans in a white hegemonic society. Viewed from this perspective, black humanist cultural expressions are a continuous push to imagine and make room for alternative life options in a racist society.
Alexandra Hartmann counters religion’s hegemonic grasp and uncovers black humanism as a small yet significant tradition in recent African American culture and cultural politics by studying its impact on African American literature and the ensuing anti-racist potentials. The book demonstrates that black humanism regards subjectivity as embodied and is thus a worldview that is characterized by a fragile hope regarding the possibility of progress – racial and otherwise – in the country.
Author(s): Alexandra Hartmann
Series: Studies in Humanism and Atheism
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 217
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
Notes on Western Humanism and Black Humanism
Black Humanism and Literature
Overview of Chapters
References
Chapter 2: Embodiment, Agency, and Conceptions of Hope in Black Humanist Thought
Embodied Subjectivity and Embodied Blackness
Embodied Trauma
Resisting (Through) Embodiment: Conceptualizing Agency
Exposing Whiteness: Implications for Undoing White Supremacy
Hope in the Black Humanist Tradition
References
Chapter 3: Self-Reliance Towards Deep Democracy: Theorizing Racial Embodiment in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
Challenging Ideologies, Advancing Self-Reliance
Agency and Human Existence
“I Had No Dignity:” Self-Conception and the (Lived) Body
“I Am Invisible, Understand:” Uncovering the Logic of Racism
“I Speak for You:” The Relationality of Action
References
Chapter 4: The (Im)Possibility of Interracial Relationships in John A. Williams’ Night Song
The Structural Is in the (Inter)Personal
Reflections on Whiteness and the Inescapability of White Privilege
Imagining a Humanist World: Love and Solidarity in the Face of Betrayal
References
Chapter 5: Subjectivities Between Structure and Agency: Enlightenment Humanism, Gendered Trauma, and Community in Toni Morrison’s Beloved
(Challenging) The Logic of Enlightenment Humanism
Looking at Embodied Whiteness
Black Feminist Futurity: Agency, Healing, and the Self in Community
References
Chapter 6: Precarity, Mourning, and Notes of Consolation in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
The Materiality of Existence and Black Precarity in Historical Continuity
On Black Sons, Motherhood, and Conceptions of Responsibility
Mourning Against Social Death: Affection, Touch, and Song
References
Chapter 7: Epilogue: Writing Beyond Pessimism
References
Index
