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Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought
The intellectual history of the last quarter of this century has been marked by the growing influence of Africana thought--an area of philosophy that focuses on issues raised by the struggle over ideas in African cultures and their hybrid forms in Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean. Existentia Africana is an engaging and highly readable introduction to the field of Africana philosophy and will help to define this rapidly growing field. Lewis R. Gordon clearly explains Africana existential thought to a general audience, covering a wide range of both classic and contemporary thinkers--from Douglass and DuBois to Fanon, Davis and Zack.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfictionRace
Hardcover
First published April 1, 2000
About the author
Lewis R. Gordon
42 books79 followersLewis Ricardo Gordon is an American philosopher who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, philosophy of human and life sciences, phenomenology, philosophy of existence, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. He has written particularly extensively on race and racism, postcolonial phenomenology, Africana and black existentialism, and on the works and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon.
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April 17, 2026
AN ANALYSIS OF THE ORIGINS AND VARIETIES OF AFRICANA EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT
Lewis Ricardo Gordon (b. 1962) is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Connecticut; he previously has taught at Brown University, Yale, Purdue University, Temple University, as well as Toulouse University in France, and Rhodes University in South Africa.
He reports in the Preface of this 2000 book, “This book is dedicated to William R. Jones, professor emeritus of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Florida State University… [Previously] Jones taught philosophy of religion at the Yale Divinity School. It was during that period that … his classic work on Africana religious thought, ‘Is God a White Racist?’ appeared… At the heart of Jones’s analysis was the conviction that oppression must be overcome, but no such overcoming can emerge without a critical understanding of human reality. Jones emerged, in other words, as an existential revolutionary. He took very seriously the existential insight that struggle involves negotiating the relationship between institutions and situated human beings.
“In 1974, this commitment took the form of ‘Crisis in Philosophy: The Black Presence,’ his urgent call for the development of a black professional philosophical community, which was published by ‘The Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association.' His efforts motivated the young Lucius Outlaw, Leonard Harris, and several scholars of philosophy … to organize discussion groups, thus leading eventually to the founding of the American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Blacks in Philosophy. That committee has since had a great influence on the path from black philosophy to Afro-American philosophy.” (Pg. ix-x)
He wrote in the first chapter, “Africana existentialist philosophy is a branch of Africana philosophy and black philosophies of existence. By ‘black philosophy’ what is meant is the philosophical currents that emerged from the question of blackness. I distinguish Africana philosophy and black philosophies because the latter relate to a terrain that is broader than Africana communities. Not all black people are of African descent: indigenous Australians, whose lived reality is that of being a black people, are an example.” (Pg. 5-6)
He observes, “[Jean-Paul] Sartre stands as an unusual catalyst in the history of black existential philosophy. He serves as a link between Richard Wright and Frantz Fanon (undoubtedly the 20th century’s two most influential Africana existentialist ‘men of letters’) and the historical forces that came into play for the ascendance of European philosophy of existence in the American academy. These forces provided a context for the academic work of Africana philosophers such as William R. Jones (who wrote his dissertation on Sartre), Noel Manganyi (who produced two books heavily influenced by Sartre’s existential phenomenology of the body), Angela Y. Davis (who studied French existentialist thought as an undergraduate), and Anthony Bogues (whose path from theology to existential Marxism emerged from engagements with the writings of Sartre). Other black academic philosophers who have been influenced by Sartre’s work, by way of either Sartre himself or philosophers like Frantz Fanon or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, also include Robert Birt, Bernard Boxill, Tommy Lott, Thomas Slaughter, Percy Mabogo More, Naomi Zack, and the present author.” (Pg. 9)
He argues, “Given our conception of philosophy of existence, it is clear that the history of Africana philosophy… has its own unique set of existential questions. The same applies to the African and Afro-Caribbean wings of Africana thought… We find a constant posing of the teleological question of black liberation, the ontological question of agency, and the question of black identity in the midst of an antiblack world. The irony is that, as Fanon has shown in ‘Black Skin, White Masks,’ one cannot in critical good faith raise the question of the black without raising these accompanying existential questions.” (Pg. 10-11)
He continues, “This is not to say that Africana philosophy is existential in the sense of reducing it to a philosophy of existence. It is, instead, to say that the impetus of Africana philosophy, when the question of the black or the situation of black people is raised, has an existential impetus. That Africana philosophy cannot, and should not, be reduced to existential philosophy is paradoxically because of a central dimension of the philosophy of existence itself: the question of existence, in itself, is empty. Philosophy of existence is therefore always a conjunctive affair; it must, in other words, be situated. This is because... the sine qua non of an existential philosophical anthropology is the paradoxical incompleteness of existential questions… What this means, then, is that theory---any theory---gains its sustenance from that which it offers FOR the lived reality of those who are expected to formulate it. Africana philosophy’s history of traditional Africana Christian, Marxist, feminist, pragmatic, analytical, and phenomenological thought, then, has been a matter of what specific dimensions each of these approaches had to offer the existential realities of theorizing blackness.” (Pg. 11)
Later, he explains, “a phenomenological analysis … explores the intersubjective framework of meanings, the impact of multiple intentions and sociality, to present interpretations that, at the same time, do not fall into the trap of bad faith. This is so because phenomenology distinguishes between interpreting ontological judgments and making them… We can now move further into the complex world of race and racial oppression. Our first observation is that racism is a form of dehumanization, and that dehumanization is a form of bad faith---for to deny the humanity of a human being requires lying to ourselves about something of which we are aware.” (Pg. 85)
Of Africana religious thought, he reflects, “recent African American religious thought reveals a complex struggle over its relation to theology and a heterogeneous social world. At the heart of this struggle are the problem of secularism and the metatheoretical problem of whether THEORY is facing its twilight. What is outstanding about [Josiah] Young’s and [Victor] Anderson’s projects is that they have placed problems of method into focus. Each project is, however, legitimated by the transformative project of the authors, wherein God seems more like an afterthought. Young announced God as his ultimate concern, although his arguments have sent a theodicean message of theistic assessment. There are religions without a formal deity, but there are no religions, to my knowledge, without ultimate concern (or an ultimate set of concerns). Perhaps this makes Anderson’s apperceptively written work the most prescient representative of an age of grotesque religious secularism.” (Pg. 152)
In the final chapter, ‘Words and Incantations: Invocations and Evocations of a Wayward Traveler,’ he reveals, “Writing---GENUINE writing---is magical. This is something I have always known. My love affair with writing began in early childhood. I hated sports, but I loved drawing, music and science. Drawing for me was a world of wonder. I drew many pictures that eventually faded into words and reemerged as worlds. Worlds eventually took many forms of expression. I discovered I had an aptitude for music through banging out rhythms on makeshift drums. Music, for instance, was a world that danced through my mind and caressed my soul with such ecstasy that I often play drums and the piano, to this day, with my eyes shut. Science for me was a creative world. It was a world of madness and joy, a world of experiments that sparked excitement when they worked, a world in which I experienced some accolades vicariously through giving my experiments to one of my brothers, who would occasionally win first prize in a science fair.” (Pg. 175)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary African-American philosophy, existentialism, and related topics.
Lewis Ricardo Gordon (b. 1962) is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Connecticut; he previously has taught at Brown University, Yale, Purdue University, Temple University, as well as Toulouse University in France, and Rhodes University in South Africa.
He reports in the Preface of this 2000 book, “This book is dedicated to William R. Jones, professor emeritus of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Florida State University… [Previously] Jones taught philosophy of religion at the Yale Divinity School. It was during that period that … his classic work on Africana religious thought, ‘Is God a White Racist?’ appeared… At the heart of Jones’s analysis was the conviction that oppression must be overcome, but no such overcoming can emerge without a critical understanding of human reality. Jones emerged, in other words, as an existential revolutionary. He took very seriously the existential insight that struggle involves negotiating the relationship between institutions and situated human beings.
“In 1974, this commitment took the form of ‘Crisis in Philosophy: The Black Presence,’ his urgent call for the development of a black professional philosophical community, which was published by ‘The Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association.' His efforts motivated the young Lucius Outlaw, Leonard Harris, and several scholars of philosophy … to organize discussion groups, thus leading eventually to the founding of the American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Blacks in Philosophy. That committee has since had a great influence on the path from black philosophy to Afro-American philosophy.” (Pg. ix-x)
He wrote in the first chapter, “Africana existentialist philosophy is a branch of Africana philosophy and black philosophies of existence. By ‘black philosophy’ what is meant is the philosophical currents that emerged from the question of blackness. I distinguish Africana philosophy and black philosophies because the latter relate to a terrain that is broader than Africana communities. Not all black people are of African descent: indigenous Australians, whose lived reality is that of being a black people, are an example.” (Pg. 5-6)
He observes, “[Jean-Paul] Sartre stands as an unusual catalyst in the history of black existential philosophy. He serves as a link between Richard Wright and Frantz Fanon (undoubtedly the 20th century’s two most influential Africana existentialist ‘men of letters’) and the historical forces that came into play for the ascendance of European philosophy of existence in the American academy. These forces provided a context for the academic work of Africana philosophers such as William R. Jones (who wrote his dissertation on Sartre), Noel Manganyi (who produced two books heavily influenced by Sartre’s existential phenomenology of the body), Angela Y. Davis (who studied French existentialist thought as an undergraduate), and Anthony Bogues (whose path from theology to existential Marxism emerged from engagements with the writings of Sartre). Other black academic philosophers who have been influenced by Sartre’s work, by way of either Sartre himself or philosophers like Frantz Fanon or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, also include Robert Birt, Bernard Boxill, Tommy Lott, Thomas Slaughter, Percy Mabogo More, Naomi Zack, and the present author.” (Pg. 9)
He argues, “Given our conception of philosophy of existence, it is clear that the history of Africana philosophy… has its own unique set of existential questions. The same applies to the African and Afro-Caribbean wings of Africana thought… We find a constant posing of the teleological question of black liberation, the ontological question of agency, and the question of black identity in the midst of an antiblack world. The irony is that, as Fanon has shown in ‘Black Skin, White Masks,’ one cannot in critical good faith raise the question of the black without raising these accompanying existential questions.” (Pg. 10-11)
He continues, “This is not to say that Africana philosophy is existential in the sense of reducing it to a philosophy of existence. It is, instead, to say that the impetus of Africana philosophy, when the question of the black or the situation of black people is raised, has an existential impetus. That Africana philosophy cannot, and should not, be reduced to existential philosophy is paradoxically because of a central dimension of the philosophy of existence itself: the question of existence, in itself, is empty. Philosophy of existence is therefore always a conjunctive affair; it must, in other words, be situated. This is because... the sine qua non of an existential philosophical anthropology is the paradoxical incompleteness of existential questions… What this means, then, is that theory---any theory---gains its sustenance from that which it offers FOR the lived reality of those who are expected to formulate it. Africana philosophy’s history of traditional Africana Christian, Marxist, feminist, pragmatic, analytical, and phenomenological thought, then, has been a matter of what specific dimensions each of these approaches had to offer the existential realities of theorizing blackness.” (Pg. 11)
Later, he explains, “a phenomenological analysis … explores the intersubjective framework of meanings, the impact of multiple intentions and sociality, to present interpretations that, at the same time, do not fall into the trap of bad faith. This is so because phenomenology distinguishes between interpreting ontological judgments and making them… We can now move further into the complex world of race and racial oppression. Our first observation is that racism is a form of dehumanization, and that dehumanization is a form of bad faith---for to deny the humanity of a human being requires lying to ourselves about something of which we are aware.” (Pg. 85)
Of Africana religious thought, he reflects, “recent African American religious thought reveals a complex struggle over its relation to theology and a heterogeneous social world. At the heart of this struggle are the problem of secularism and the metatheoretical problem of whether THEORY is facing its twilight. What is outstanding about [Josiah] Young’s and [Victor] Anderson’s projects is that they have placed problems of method into focus. Each project is, however, legitimated by the transformative project of the authors, wherein God seems more like an afterthought. Young announced God as his ultimate concern, although his arguments have sent a theodicean message of theistic assessment. There are religions without a formal deity, but there are no religions, to my knowledge, without ultimate concern (or an ultimate set of concerns). Perhaps this makes Anderson’s apperceptively written work the most prescient representative of an age of grotesque religious secularism.” (Pg. 152)
In the final chapter, ‘Words and Incantations: Invocations and Evocations of a Wayward Traveler,’ he reveals, “Writing---GENUINE writing---is magical. This is something I have always known. My love affair with writing began in early childhood. I hated sports, but I loved drawing, music and science. Drawing for me was a world of wonder. I drew many pictures that eventually faded into words and reemerged as worlds. Worlds eventually took many forms of expression. I discovered I had an aptitude for music through banging out rhythms on makeshift drums. Music, for instance, was a world that danced through my mind and caressed my soul with such ecstasy that I often play drums and the piano, to this day, with my eyes shut. Science for me was a creative world. It was a world of madness and joy, a world of experiments that sparked excitement when they worked, a world in which I experienced some accolades vicariously through giving my experiments to one of my brothers, who would occasionally win first prize in a science fair.” (Pg. 175)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying contemporary African-American philosophy, existentialism, and related topics.
March 8, 2023
Well written, though I wish the final chapter made up a greater bulk of the content. That felt like the peaking of the writing.
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October 17, 2023fragments
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