Philosophy Born of Struggle

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Philosophy Born of Struggle

• Slave Narratives as The Origins of Africana and
  Black Philosophy in the Americas
• Lecture delivered by Sharifa Wright, PhD
  Candidate in Social and Political Thought

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History of Black Slave Narratives

• Slave narratives, written by persons of African
  descent who were enslaved during the
  trans-Atlantic slave, first appeared in the late
  18th Century.
• A Narrative of the Most remarkable Particulars in
  the Life of James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, an
  African Prince was published in England in 1772
• The Interesting Narrative and the life of Olaudah
  Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African was
  published seventeen years later in 1789, the same
  year as the French Revolution and 13 years after
  the American Revolution of 1766.
• The first known narrative in the Americas was
  published Connecticut in 1798 entitled A
  Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture
  Smith, a Native of Africa But Resident above
  Sixty Years in the United States of America,
  Related by Himself.
• The majority of these narratives were published
  in North America between 1830 and 1865 in
  conjunction with the American abolitionist
  movement.
• It is believed that over 6,000 slaves from North
  American and the Caribbean wrote accounts of
  their livesroughly 150 of these have been
  published and authenticated.

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Some Elements of Slave Narratives

• Written by Himself/Herself The Importance of
  Freedom through Literacy
• Autobiography as a Cultural and Political
  Manifesto
• Rigorous critique of the institution of slavery
  and the rationales for slavery
• Political Texts to motivate and validate the
  Abolitionist movement
• Use Judeo-Christian Ethics to highlight ethical
  contradictions in slave societies and slave
  masters existence
• Demonstrate the development of syncretic
  Christianityorigins of Black Liberation Theology
• Utilize humanist language to assert positive
  black existence and negotiate the problems of
  black existence in modernity (Origins of
  Negritude Thinking, Black Existential Thought
  (such as Fanons Black Skin, White Mask)

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Written By Him/Herself

• In literacy lay true freedom for the black
  Henry Louis Gates Jr.
• In 1740 South Carolina passed the following
  law 
• Be it therefore Enacted by the Authority
  aforesaid, That all and every Person and Persons
  whatsoever, who shall hereafter teach or cause
  any Slave to be taught to write, or shall use or
  employ any slave as a Scribe in any Manner of
  Writing whatsoever, hereafter taught to write,
  every such offense forfeit the Sum of One Hundred
  Pounds current Money.
• Frederick Douglass
• Having no fear of my kind mistress before my
  eyes,(she had then given me no reason
• to fear,) I frankly asked her to teach me to
  readHere arose the first cloud over my Baltimore
• progress, the precursor of drenching rains and
  chilling blasts. Master Hugh was amazed at the
• simplicity of his spouse and unfolded to her the
  true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar
• rules necessary to be observed by masters and
  mistresses, in the management of their human
• chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the
  continuance of her instruction telling her in
  the first place
• that the thing itself was unlawful that it was
  also unsafe and could only lead to mischief. To
  use
• his own wordsif you give a nigger an inch, he
  will take an ell he should know nothing but
  the
• will of his master, and learn to obey it
  learning will spoil the best nigger in the
  world if you
• teach that nigger how to read the bible, there
  will be no keeping him.

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Autobiography as a Cultural and Political
Manifesto

• Slave Narratives probed the social and political
  relationships among black slaves
• The black slaves narrative came to be a
  communal utterance, a collective tale, rather
  than just an individuals biography. Each slave
  author in writing about his or her personal life
  experiences, simultaneously wrote on the behalf
  of millions of silent slaves still held captive
  through the U.S.south. Each author then knew
  that all black slaves would be judgedon their
  character, integrity, intelligence, manners and
  morals. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
• These texts explored race-relations under slave
  systems -- in particular black-white
  relationships are studied and discussed from a
  black perspective and mixed raced existence is
  provoked in light of the racial politics of slave
  society.
• Similarly these texts revealed the nature of
  white cultural domination
• I no longer looked upon them as spirits, but as
  men superior to us and therefore I
• had the stronger desire to resemble them, to
  imbibe their spirit and imitate their
• manners. I therefore embraced every occasion of
  improvement
• Olaudah Equiano

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Critiques of Slavery

• Mary Prince
• They are not all bad, I dare say, but slavery
  hardens white peoples hearts towards the blacks
  and many of them were not slow to make their
  remarks upon us aloud, without regard to our
  grief. Oh those white people have small hearts
  who can only feel for themselves.
• Frederick Douglass
• It is plain that a very different-looking
  class of people are springing up at the south,
  and are now held in slavery, from those
  originally brought to this country from Africa
  and if their increase do no other good, it will
  do away the force of the argument, that God
  cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is
  right. If the lineal descendants of Ham are alone
  to be scripturally enslaved, it is certain that
  slavery at the south must soon become
  unscriptural for thousands are ushered into the
  world, annually, who, like myself, owe their
  existence to white fathers, and those fathers
  most frequently their own masters.
• Henry Louis Gates
• The slave narrators sought to indict both those
  who enslaved them and the metaphysical system
  drawn upon to justify their enslavement.

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Abolitionist Texts

• British Abolitionist Movement
• First British Abolitionist group was formed by
  Quakers in 1783.
• In 1787 the Committee of the Abolition of the
  Slave Trade was established and it also included
  Baptist and Methodist.
• Equianos text , published in 1789, was an
  official pamphlet of the organization , prefaced
  by White abolitionist
• In 1820 the Anti-Slavery society was formed to
  target the institution of slavery after the
  Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807.
• In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and
  was attributed in part to the lobbying work of
  these groups.
• American Abolitionist Movement
• Up until 1806 Society of Friends, The
  Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and the New
  York Manumission Society worked to abolish
  slavery in northern states. Slave importation to
  America was banned in 1808.
• Douglass text published in 1845 was crucial to
  the second phase of the abolitionist movement and
  the civil war. His preface was also written by
  prominent white Abolitionist. Slavery was
  abolished throughout the United States after the
  Civil War in 1865.

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Christian Ethical Contradictions

• Harriet Jacobs
• They send the Bible to heathen abroad, and
  neglect the heathen at home. I am glad that
  missionaries go out to the dark corners of the
  earth but I ask them not to overlook the dark
  corners at home. Talk to American slaveholders as
  you talk to savages in Africa. Tell them it is
  wrong to traffic in men. Tell them it is sinful
  to sell their own children, and atrocious to
  violate their own daughters. Tell them that all
  men are brethren, and that man has no right to
  shut out the light of knowledge from his
  brother.
• Frederick Douglass
• The man, who robs me of my earnings at the end
  of the week, meets me as a class leader on Sunday
  morning, to show me the way of life, the path of
  salvation. He who sells my sister, for purposes
  of prostitution, stands forth as the pious
  advocate of purity. He who claims it is a
  religious duty to read the Bible denies me the
  right of learning to read from the God who made
  me.

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The Black Christian

• Equiano
• He taught me.. to read the bible I was
  wonderfully surprised to see the laws and rules
  of my own country written almost exactly here a
  circumstance which I believe, tended to impress
  our manners and customs more deeply on my memory.
  I used to tell him on this resemblanceIn short
  he was like a father to me and some even called
  me after him name they also styled me the black
  Christian As I could not get any right among men
  here, I hoped I should hereafter in Heaven.
• Jacobs
• No wonder slaves sing
• Ole Satans church is here below,
• Up to God free church I hope to go.
• James Cone
• What is Black Theology? Black Theology is that
  theology which arises out of the need to
  articulate the significance of black presence in
  a hostile white world. It is black people
  reflecting religiously in the black experience
  attempting to redefine the relevance of the
  Christian Gospel for their lives.
• From Black Consciousness and the Black Church

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Humanism in Slave Narratives

• Humanism, generally speaking, refers to the
  ethical understanding that all human beings have
  the capacity to appeal to universal values and
  are therefore equal.
• The fundamental assumption of all slave
  narratives is that black people ought to be
  included in an understanding of humanity and thus
  these texts served to critique theories of being
  which ontologized racism by declaring blackness
  outside of the human.
• Sojourner Truth
• That man over there says that women need to be
  helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches,
  and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody
  ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-
  puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I
  a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have
  ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns,
  and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I
  could work as much and eat as much as a man
  when I could get it and bear the lash as well!
  And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen
  children, and seen most all sold off to slavery,
  and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none
  but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

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Interesting Narratives Not just stories

• Basic Definitions
• Philosophy the branch of knowledge that deals
  with ultimate reality, or with existence and the
  nature and causes of things (Metaphysics)
• Ontology the study of being or existence
• Epistemology the method of knowing
• Phenomenology the study of phenomena
  (happenings, events, things)
• Theology (Biblical) the study of the religious
  doctrines of the Bible of God, his nature and
  his relations with humans.
• Existentialism the study of the existence of the
  individual and the human condition (with an
  emphasis on themes of freedom, liberation, agency
  )

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Philosophy Born of Struggle

• What is Black philosophy?
• By black philosophy what is meant is the
  philosophical currents that emerged from the
  question of blackness. I distinguish Africana
  philosophy from Black philosophies because the
  latter relate to a terrain that is broader than
  Africana communities. Not all black peoples are
  of African descent indigenous Australians, whose
  lived reality is that of being black people, are
  an example. Similarly, problems of blackness are
  but a part of Africana philosophy. The divide is
  not only philosophicalwhere black philosophys
  normative and descriptive concerns may be
  narrower than Africana philosophysbut also
  cultural although there are Africana cultures,
  it is not clear what black culture is.
• Lewis Gordon, Existentia Africana Understanding
  Africana Existential Thought

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Africana Thought

• Africana Thoughtrefers to an area of thought
  that focuses on theoretical questions raised by
  struggles over ideas in African cultures and
  their hybrid and creolized forms in Europe, North
  America, Central and South America and the
  Caribbean. African Thought also refers to the set
  of questions raised by the historical project of
  conquest and colonization that has emerged since
  1492 and the subsequent struggles for
  emancipation that continue to this day. .. They
  are marked by the contrast between how the modern
  is often characterized in Western
  academythrough, say, philosophical treatment of
  ideas, from Rene Descartes to Immanuel Kant, or
  perhaps Michel Foucaults locating of modernity
  in nineteenth-century European thoughtand how it
  has been lived by those on its periphery.
• Lewis Gordon, Existentia Africana
  Understanding Africana Existential Thought

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Why is this important today?

• When Afro-Americans are viewed as passive
  objects in history, Afro-American history is a
  record of the exclusion of a distinct racial
  group from the economic benefits and cultural
  dilemmas of modernity. Politically, this
  exclusion has meant the white ownership of
  Afro-American persons, possession and progeny
  severe discrimination reinforced by naked
  violence within a nascent industrial capitalist
  order and urban enclaves of unskilled
  unemployables and semi-skilled workers within a
  liberal corporate capitalist regime. Culturally,
  this has meant continual Afro-American
  degradation and ceaseless attempts to undermine
  Afro-American self-esteem.
• When Afro-Americans are viewed as active
  subjects of history, Afro-American history
  becomes the story of gallantly persistent
  struggle, of a disparate racial group fighting to
  enter modernity on its own terms. Politically
  this struggle consists of prudential acquiescence
  plus courageous revolt against white paternalism
  institution-building and violent rebellion within
  the segregated social relations of industrial
  capitalism and cautious reformist strategies
  within the integrated social relations of
  post-industrial capitalism. Culturally, this
  has meant the maintenance of self-respect in the
  face of pervasive denigration.
• Cornel West, Philosophy and the Afro-American
  Experience in A Companion to African American
  Philosophy