Existentia Africana

An introduction to Africana existential thought, subtitled Understanding Africana Existential Thought, by a Jamaican-born American philosopher. Gordon argues that the philosophy of existence in the African diaspora grows from concrete questions forced on people by slavery, colonialism and racism: what it means to be human, what freedom is, and how to live when one's humanity is denied. Africana thought, he holds, is not merely borrowed from European existentialism but has its own sources. Early chapters examine the problem of writing biography of Black thinkers, whose ideas are often reduced to their lives, and read Frederick Douglass as an existentialist who seized his freedom. A chapter takes up W. E. B. Du Bois's question of what it means to be a problem. Later chapters treat mixed-race identity, Africana religious thought and theology, and the anonymity and invisibility imposed on Black people in an antiblack world. Fanon is a constant reference.

It is a compact, readable entry into Africana philosophy that shows why questions of freedom, identity and humanity look different from the standpoint of those whose humanity is denied.