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Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis
The Jamaican writer and cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter is best known for her diverse writings that pull together insights from theories in history, literature, science, and black studies, to explore race, the legacy of colonialism, and representations of humanness. Sylvia On Being Human as Praxis is a critical genealogy of Wynter’s work, highlighting her insights on how race, location, and time together inform what it means to be human. The contributors explore Wynter’s stunning reconceptualization of the human in relation to concepts of blackness, modernity, urban space, the Caribbean, science studies, migratory politics, and the interconnectedness of creative and theoretical resistances. The collection includes an extensive conversation between Sylvia Wynter and Katherine McKittrick that delineates Wynter’s engagement with writers such as Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois, and Aimé Césaire, among others; the interview also reveals the ever-extending range and power of Wynter’s intellectual project, and elucidates her attempts to rehistoricize humanness as praxis.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published December 8, 2014
110 people are currently reading
2333 people want to read
About the author
Katherine McKittrick
14 books131 followersKatherine McKittrick is a professor in Gender Studies at Queen’s University. She is an academic and writer whose work focuses on black studies, cultural geography, anti-colonial and diaspora studies, with an emphasis on the ways in which social justice emerges in black creative texts (music, fiction, poetry, visual art). While many scholars have researched the areas of North American, European, Caribbean, and African black geographies, McKittrick was the first scholar to put forth the interdisciplinary possibilities of black and black feminist geography, with an emphasis on embodied, creative and intellectual spaces engendered in the diaspora.
McKittrick has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from York University; she received her degree in 2004.
Since 2005, she has been Professor in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, with joint appointments in Cultural Studies and Geography. She is currently Editor at Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography.
McKittrick’s work has focused on black feminist thought and cultural geography, as explored in her book Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (2006). The book has been reviewed in Gender, Place & Culture, Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Religion, & Literature, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies and American Literature. The book was followed by Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (2007), which she co-edited with Clyde Woods. The book has been reviewed in Canadian Woman Studies.
McKittrick’s research draws on the areas of black studies, anti-colonial studies, cultural geographies, and gender studies, and attends to the links between epistemological narratives and social justice. Creative texts she analyzed include music, music making, poetry, visual art, and literature, while specifically looking at the works of Sylvia Wynter, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Robbie McCauley, M. NourbeSe Philip, Willie Bester, Nas, Octavia Butler, and Dionne Brand.
(from Wikipedia)
McKittrick has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from York University; she received her degree in 2004.
Since 2005, she has been Professor in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, with joint appointments in Cultural Studies and Geography. She is currently Editor at Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography.
McKittrick’s work has focused on black feminist thought and cultural geography, as explored in her book Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle (2006). The book has been reviewed in Gender, Place & Culture, Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Religion, & Literature, Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies and American Literature. The book was followed by Black Geographies and the Politics of Place (2007), which she co-edited with Clyde Woods. The book has been reviewed in Canadian Woman Studies.
McKittrick’s research draws on the areas of black studies, anti-colonial studies, cultural geographies, and gender studies, and attends to the links between epistemological narratives and social justice. Creative texts she analyzed include music, music making, poetry, visual art, and literature, while specifically looking at the works of Sylvia Wynter, Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Robbie McCauley, M. NourbeSe Philip, Willie Bester, Nas, Octavia Butler, and Dionne Brand.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
September 17, 2022
The Sylvia Wynter and Katherine McKittrick sections were absolutely amazing, after reading this I'm putting Wynter up there with Jameson as maybe one of the most important philosophers of our time (even though her arguments are quite contingent on other fields). Along with the other essays of hers I've read she's massively changed the way I look at humanity, language, race, gender, and any number of socio-biological positions.
Her basic argument that 1) Western thought hugely over privileges biological factors and believes itself to be purely scientific because it is the first tradition to be partically scientific (in the modern sense) and that 2) consciousness is (probably, she wagers) composed of how language interacts with our bodies and has the ability to selectively override biological / genetic factors [which no other species can do] , especially through epistemes and group narratives. She's basically arguing that Fanon's school of thought has been hugely neglected in terms of what it's potential implications are, and this is where 'being human as praxis' comes from - that Fanonian concept of sociogeny means that different modes (genres Wynter calls them) of being human are always praxis, they are always the physical acting out of language based instructions.
This has intersections with economics - (and how homo economicus has become one of the dominant frameworks of understanding the human mind) - biology - (and how social Darwinism and other forms of eugenics show that the story of evolution in modern terms functions as a kind of origin myth which can be selectively applied to justify hierarchy) - philosophy, history, Marxism, and pretty much anything you can think of. She takes a lot from Fanon and Cesaire. Good stuff. the other essays were a bit boring but I think I lack the background in critical theory that I need to understand them. There's definitely some big gaps in her theory (as I currently understand it) but in terms of being groundbreaking she's in the highest tier of philosophers in my book. The book gets a five stars despite these flaws because genius always deserves five stars, and Sylvia Wynter is genius.
Her basic argument that 1) Western thought hugely over privileges biological factors and believes itself to be purely scientific because it is the first tradition to be partically scientific (in the modern sense) and that 2) consciousness is (probably, she wagers) composed of how language interacts with our bodies and has the ability to selectively override biological / genetic factors [which no other species can do] , especially through epistemes and group narratives. She's basically arguing that Fanon's school of thought has been hugely neglected in terms of what it's potential implications are, and this is where 'being human as praxis' comes from - that Fanonian concept of sociogeny means that different modes (genres Wynter calls them) of being human are always praxis, they are always the physical acting out of language based instructions.
This has intersections with economics - (and how homo economicus has become one of the dominant frameworks of understanding the human mind) - biology - (and how social Darwinism and other forms of eugenics show that the story of evolution in modern terms functions as a kind of origin myth which can be selectively applied to justify hierarchy) - philosophy, history, Marxism, and pretty much anything you can think of. She takes a lot from Fanon and Cesaire. Good stuff. the other essays were a bit boring but I think I lack the background in critical theory that I need to understand them. There's definitely some big gaps in her theory (as I currently understand it) but in terms of being groundbreaking she's in the highest tier of philosophers in my book. The book gets a five stars despite these flaws because genius always deserves five stars, and Sylvia Wynter is genius.
September 11, 2023
Básicamente la Wynter desafía la idea tradicional del "hombre", se cuestiona qué es realmente ser humano y argumenta que la definición del mismo necesita ser actualizada porque vivimos con la misma que se utilizaba para justificar el colonialismo, la esclavitud etc etc. so it's only fair (según ella). Entiendo (y estoy de acuerdo con ella) en que el humano es más q un organismo biológico pero creo que esta idea ya vive en el inconsciente colectivo desde hace como dos siglos así q no sé hija...
Me ha parecido un libro super difícil de leer y no he entendido muchas cosas aunque también me parece que a veces la intención que tenía era precisamente esta y escondía un mensaje bastante sencillo detrás de mucha palabrería y un estilo super pretencioso (típica profesora d uni vaya lol)
Me ha parecido un libro super difícil de leer y no he entendido muchas cosas aunque también me parece que a veces la intención que tenía era precisamente esta y escondía un mensaje bastante sencillo detrás de mucha palabrería y un estilo super pretencioso (típica profesora d uni vaya lol)
March 7, 2025
4.5 ! so good but quite hard to understand the academic language sometimes
June 23, 2019
👤🧑🏿💭🗯⛪️🏝🧬🗝 [collection was a bit uneven]
August 5, 2020
Some of these essays were incredible, and the work of Sylvia Wynter in general is extraordinarily rich, complex, revealing, and thorough. I especially enjoyed the conversations between McKittrick and Wynter at the beginning. I’m knocking off a star because a few of the essays were underdeveloped and didn’t seem to touch much on Wynter’s work.
March 28, 2020
The knowledge given, questions asked, and analytical frameworks articulated in this book are simply astonishing. Sylvia Wynter brilliantly ties together many strains of thought (neuroscience, psychology, sociology, natural science, philosophy, art/culture, anti-colonialism, etc.) into a profound vision, mission, and challenge for achieving human liberation. For those who have the patience and desire, I feel this is a necessary text for anyone committed to transformative justice. Fair warning -Wynter, McKittrick and the other writers included in this collection of essays exist in and write from the purview of academia - so, regrettably, language is dense and concepts are complex. But even seeing this sort of writing and thinking happening gives me enormous hope because if such radical, liberatory practices can be conceptualized, they are already being put into practice. This book reinvigorated many of my dreams for our species and our world - I am excited to see how more writers, thinkers, activists, artists, creatives, and dreamers will express and live the contents of this book, simply in their being human.
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February 11, 2021Scholarly. Focused on the work of radical Jamaican intellectual Sylvia Wynter. Includes a lengthy dialogue between the editor and Wynter that explores key elements of her work and thought, and then a series of essays which do a mix of laying out the basics, applying her work in specific areas, and extending it in various ways. I read this to get an introduction to Wynter's ideas, which I had encountered in passing in a number of things I've read in the last few years but wanted to understand better because I may want to take up aspects of what she says in the chapter I'm writing at the moment.
My inclination and my historical practice when reviewing a book like this has often been to dive in and engage with its ideas in as substantive a way as I have time for, to compensate for the fact that I do this work outside of any sort of collective setting so have no opportunity for any of the other kinds of engagement that can help cement understanding and memory. I've done that quite a bit less in recent years, and I don't think I will in this case, mostly because I'm already planning on engaging more deeply with at least some elements of it as I work through how to write my chapter. I will say that I'm very, very glad to have read this. There are quite a few of her key ideas that I find to be compelling, particularly the big picture stuff about what it means to be human, about the colonial/imperial origins of the social world and our practices of knowing, and about what that means for our violent and oppressive world today. There are some specifics in her theorization of *how* genres of the human take and maintain particular forms that I'm less convinced of, though for the most part in ways that don't intrinsically undermine the bigger picture. As well, the ways that the other contributors extend her ideas are a bit uneven – no surprise, in a collection like this – but the majority are interesting and useful. And I feel quite uncertain about the implications of Wynter's analysis for what we need to be doing here, now, together to create a world that is no longer under the dominion of Man but that fosters the flourishing of Wynter's ecumenical vision of humanity.
Anyway. This is vital, radical, fascinating work. It's a *lot* – it wasn't a particularly difficult read, but I read it relatively slowly just because there was so much to think about. And, honestly, I think I'm only at the very beginning of grappling with the implications of these ideas, and with how they might shape our practices of being in and changing the world.
My inclination and my historical practice when reviewing a book like this has often been to dive in and engage with its ideas in as substantive a way as I have time for, to compensate for the fact that I do this work outside of any sort of collective setting so have no opportunity for any of the other kinds of engagement that can help cement understanding and memory. I've done that quite a bit less in recent years, and I don't think I will in this case, mostly because I'm already planning on engaging more deeply with at least some elements of it as I work through how to write my chapter. I will say that I'm very, very glad to have read this. There are quite a few of her key ideas that I find to be compelling, particularly the big picture stuff about what it means to be human, about the colonial/imperial origins of the social world and our practices of knowing, and about what that means for our violent and oppressive world today. There are some specifics in her theorization of *how* genres of the human take and maintain particular forms that I'm less convinced of, though for the most part in ways that don't intrinsically undermine the bigger picture. As well, the ways that the other contributors extend her ideas are a bit uneven – no surprise, in a collection like this – but the majority are interesting and useful. And I feel quite uncertain about the implications of Wynter's analysis for what we need to be doing here, now, together to create a world that is no longer under the dominion of Man but that fosters the flourishing of Wynter's ecumenical vision of humanity.
Anyway. This is vital, radical, fascinating work. It's a *lot* – it wasn't a particularly difficult read, but I read it relatively slowly just because there was so much to think about. And, honestly, I think I'm only at the very beginning of grappling with the implications of these ideas, and with how they might shape our practices of being in and changing the world.
February 12, 2025
Sylvia Wynter's work has captured my mind/body/soul since the first article I read: "The Ceremony Must be Found: After Humanism." This collection of essays by scholars whose research spans years, if not decades, was incredibly insightful, challenging, and cautiously optimistic.
At the center of it all lies this question: What does it mean to be human?
Wynter suggests (in chorus with other writers, activists, and scholars) that being human is recognizing both our bios, our biology, and our mythos, our words. This turn, to see ourselves as hybridly human, is simply the beginning.
To end, I'd like to share a quote of Wynter's I have always found to be especially thought-provoking:
"Only the elaboration of a new science, beyond the limits of the natural sciences... will offer us our last chance to avoid the large-scale dilemmas that we must now confront as a species. This would be a science in which the 'study of the Word'... [a study] of the neurophysiological circuits/mechanisms of the brain that, when activated by the semantic system of each such principle/statement, lead to the specific order of consciousness or modes of mind in whose terms we then come to experience ourselves as this or that genre/mode of being human. Yet, with this process taking place hitherto outside our conscious awareness and thereby leading us to be governed by the 'imagined ends' or postulates of being, truth, freedom that we law-likely put and keep in place, without realizing that it is we ourselves, and not extrahuman entities, who proscribe them.
At the center of it all lies this question: What does it mean to be human?
Wynter suggests (in chorus with other writers, activists, and scholars) that being human is recognizing both our bios, our biology, and our mythos, our words. This turn, to see ourselves as hybridly human, is simply the beginning.
To end, I'd like to share a quote of Wynter's I have always found to be especially thought-provoking:
"Only the elaboration of a new science, beyond the limits of the natural sciences... will offer us our last chance to avoid the large-scale dilemmas that we must now confront as a species. This would be a science in which the 'study of the Word'... [a study] of the neurophysiological circuits/mechanisms of the brain that, when activated by the semantic system of each such principle/statement, lead to the specific order of consciousness or modes of mind in whose terms we then come to experience ourselves as this or that genre/mode of being human. Yet, with this process taking place hitherto outside our conscious awareness and thereby leading us to be governed by the 'imagined ends' or postulates of being, truth, freedom that we law-likely put and keep in place, without realizing that it is we ourselves, and not extrahuman entities, who proscribe them.
February 12, 2018
A challenging read written for an academic audience, this book engages the work of a number of Caribbean thinkers (especially Sylvia Wynter, for obvious reasons but notably Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, among others).
Making it through the second chapter (a lengthy "interview" between McKittrick and Wynter based on a series of written and spoken interactions) is a slog. Wynter's ideas there are complex and encompassing, but perseverance is rewarded in subsequent chapters written by other contributors who help to provide context and critique of Wynter's impressive and expansive canon.
A tough, although worthwhile, primer on Wynter and Caribbean post-/de-colonial thought.
Making it through the second chapter (a lengthy "interview" between McKittrick and Wynter based on a series of written and spoken interactions) is a slog. Wynter's ideas there are complex and encompassing, but perseverance is rewarded in subsequent chapters written by other contributors who help to provide context and critique of Wynter's impressive and expansive canon.
A tough, although worthwhile, primer on Wynter and Caribbean post-/de-colonial thought.
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July 8, 2022probably one of the most impactful pieces of theory i’ve ever read; approachable (in my opinion) and well written. this was my gateway into afropessimism and biopolitics, and investigating the ontological aspect of racial capitalism. was also my gateway into epistemological theory, and investigating constructed categories and how theyre used. (concepts like violence, democracy, authoritarian)
October 17, 2022
Brilliant book summarizing and engaging with Wynter's key ideas. The text was overall very, very, dense and difficult to read and understand... but I think I get the main points after re-reading and slowly digesting the words. I would highly recommend this book to others.
December 31, 2019
Sylvia Wynter is amazing, as is this book of critical scholarship about her thinking.
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November 4, 2020Read for school.
February 12, 2022
Finally finished the final essay!
One of the most complex books I've ever read and also one of the most life changing. Paradigm shifted.
One of the most complex books I've ever read and also one of the most life changing. Paradigm shifted.
April 4, 2022
loved the Wynter/McKittrick chapter
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December 3, 2022Exceptional book!
Want to read
April 7, 2023McKittrick is a good primer accordiwng to Mackenzie Smith
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 31, 2023
Real shit
May 11, 2024
only finished chapter 1 but since I did a presentation on it I'll mark as read
June 18, 2025
I think I would enjoy it more if I had someone to breakdown some of the information or talk to. overall though great book!
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August 26, 2016Reading Wynter is like listening to a griot. Her words are startling and familiar, and they weave new perspectives from very old, taken-for-granted knowledge about 'Man', biology, economy, and society. It took re-reading her a number of times to get into the rhythm of her prose and to let the displacing effects of her arguments work their power on me. I didn't read all of the commentary essays, but Mignolo's is fantastic. He ends his essay with a Wynter sentence that, he says (and I agree) sums up her intellectual and practical approach, "Towards the Human, after Man".
December 9, 2024
This broke my brain.
December 24, 2014
I need to spend some time with her original writing.
February 15, 2016
Stunning work
May 1, 2017
Katherine McKittrick’s edited volume on Sylvia Wynter is a must-read for scholars interested in philosophy, race, value-theory, and the question of the human. Prefaced by an engrossing seventy-five page “conversation” (it’s really just Sylvia Wynter responding to a series of questions by McKittrick), the book brings together establish Black studies scholars to discuss core concepts/recurring motifs in Sylvia Wynter’s work. The essays themselves are designated to help scholars studying Wynter deconstruct and understand her work. This is critical as Wynter is not a scholar in which the terms accessible or easy would be used to describe her work. Additionally, this edited volume serves a dual propose by cementing Wynter’s research as worthy of further scholarship by emerging and established scholars alike. For scholars who desire more of Wynter’s work first hand, the opening conversation between Wynter and McKittrick is particularly rich as Wynter conducts a comprehensive study of her own work and asks the critical question of where do we go from here?
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December 4, 2017300.1 S985 2015
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews