Workshop: Humanism

"No Humans Involved" - Sylvia Wynter's (Re)invention of Humanism (Lea Hülsen)

Recent killings of unarmed blacks in the U.S. by police forces demand a debate about both how racism and anti-black violence structures society, and how it is still deeply rooted within western structures of knowledge. The Jamaican novelist, dramatist, critic and intellectual Sylvia Wynter radically approaches these questions by discussing what it means to be human and black within society. She advocates a new concept of Humanism which challenges anti-black thought and violence. She unravels the beginnings of colonialism and anti-black racism as the foundation of Humanism itself and attempts to dissolve dichotomies which divide the world between humans and non-humans, white and black etc. Her approach to Humanism and hermetic theoretical thoughts offers a unique perspective on issues of race, gender and migration. The workshop introduces the participants to Wynter’s large oeuvre by reading extracts from her work, including her letter "No Humans Involved: An Open Letter to My Colleagues" and her essay "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument."

Texts:

(extracts will be announced and circulated one week before the workshop takes place)

• Wynter, Sylvia. "No Humans Involved: An Open Letter to My Colleagues." Forum N.H.I. Knowledge for the 21st Century. 1.1 (1994): 42-71. Print.
• —, "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom. Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument." The New Centennial Review 3.3 (2003): 257-337. MUSE. Web. 03. Nov. 2011.
• Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things (1966). London and New York: Routledge, 1970. Print.