AFR 322 - Caribbean Philosophies of Freedom

Instructor
Garcia-Rojas

This course explores the work of Caribbean philosophers who have produced some of the most influential thinking on the problem of human freedom. This owes to the fact that nearly 5 million enslaved Africans were taken to the Caribbean where they were forced into bondage, the utmost form of unfreedom. This produced an extraordinary degree of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity as well as revolt, making Haiti the first place where Black enslaved people overthrew European colonizers. The generative theories of major thinkers such as Aime Cesaire, Alejo Carpentier, Franketiene, Rene Depestre, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant, Maryse Conde, and Sylvia Wynter, both rework and disrupt the conceptual paradigms of Western philosophical thought, particularly conceptions of the human, liberty, sovereignty, and justice. These thinkers are also at the forefront of twentieth-century critical thought on abolition, race, colonialism, subjectivity, and revolution. Drawing on these thinkers, this course will seek to answer the following questions: What is freedom? Are freedom and liberty the same? How do gender and sexuality influence how Black Caribbean philosophers theorize aesthetic notions of freedom? How do these authors help us think through issues of prison and police abolition?

Satisfies Africana Studies major requirement.
Satisfies Philosophy major requirement.

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