Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion PDF
Preview Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion
Beyond Man Black Outdoors Innovations in the Poetics of Study A series edited by J. Kameron Car ter & Sarah Jane Cervenak Beyond Man Edited by An Yountae & Eleanor Craig Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion Duke University Press D urham and London 2021 © 2021 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Cover designed by Matthew Tauch Text designed by Aimee C. Harrison Typeset in Portrait Text Regular and ITC Franklin Gothic by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: An Yountae, editor. | Craig, Eleanor, [date] editor. Title: Beyond man : race, coloniality, and philosophy of religion / edited by An Yountae and Eleanor Craig. Other titles: Black outdoors. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Series: Black outdoors | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2020040898 (print) | lccn 2020040899 (ebook) | isbn 9781478011880 (hardcover) | isbn 9781478014027 (paperback) | isbn 9781478021339 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Religion— Philosophy. | Racism— Religious aspects— Chris tian ity. | Imperialism. | Decolonization. | Eurocentrism— History. | Civilization, Western— Christian influences. | Civilization, Modern— Philosophy. Classification: lcc jv51 .b49 2021 (print) | lcc jv51 (ebook) | ddc 210— dc23 lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020040898 lc ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020040899 Cover art: Dell Hamilton, untitled. 22 in. × 30 in. Monotype, collage, colored pencil, ink, black gesso, charcoal, acrylic, and oil pastel on paper. Courtesy of the artist. CONTENTS vii ACKNOWL EDGMENTS 1 INTRODUCTION E LEANOR CRAIG & AN YOUNTAE Challenging Modernity/Coloniality in Philosophy of Religion 32 CHAPTER ONE DEVIN SINGH Decolonial Options for a Fragile Secular 57 CHAPTER TWO MAYRA RIVERA Embodied Counterpoetics: Sylvia Wynter on Religion and Race 86 CHAPTER THREE ELEANOR CRAIG We Have Never Been Human/e: The Laws of Burgos and the Philosophy of Coloniality in the Amer i cas 108 CHAPTER FOUR VINCENT LLOYD The Puritan Atheism of C. L. R. James 127 CHAPTER FIVE ELLEN ARMOUR Decolonizing Spectatorship: Photography, Theology, and New Media 151 CHAPTER SIX J. KAMERON CAR TER The Excremental Sacred: A Paraliturgy 204 CHAPTER SEVEN AN YOUNTAE On Vio lence and Redemption: Fanon and Colonial Theodicy 226 CHAPTER EIGHT FILIPE MAIA Alter- Carnation: Notes on Cannibalism and Coloniality in the Brazilian Context 245 CHAPTER NINE JOSEPH R. WINTERS The Sacred Gone Astray: Eliade, Fanon, Wynter, and the Terror of Colonial Settlement 269 CHAPTER TEN AMY HOLLYWOOD Response—On Impassioned Claims: The Possibility of Doing Philosophy of Religion Other wise 287 CONTRIBUTORS 291 INDEX ACKNOWL EDGMENTS WE THANK THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS VOLUME— those who from day one believed in the proj ect and helped it gather momentum and t hose who added their energies later in ways that kept our collective thinking fresh and flexible. We owe extra thanks to Mayra Rivera for introducing us and suggesting that we collaborate and for hosting space to deepen authors’ engagements with one another at Harvard in 2018. We are grateful to J. Kameron Car ter and Sarah Jane Cervenak for joining our efforts to the wider conversations about settler colonialism and Black studies taking place in the Black Outdoors series. Sandra Korn at Duke University Press has guided this proj ect with thoughtfulness, enthusiasm, and patience. Our anonymous reviewers provided invaluable advice, particularly on the introduction, and we are indebted to their wisdom. Participants and audience members in the American Acad emy of Reli- gion exploratory session Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion in November 2017 launched this work into a dynamic conversation. Attend- ees at the Colloquium on Coloniality, Race, and Philosophy of Religion at Harvard Divinity School in November 2018 provided valuable feedback on several chapters in pro gress. We especially wish to thank David Kim, Elaine Padilla, and Santiago Slabodsky for their contributions to this pro cess. Over the years of this proj ect, Eleanor experienced the kind of deep care that instills hope for an other wise world through the support and friendship of Leena Akhtar, Ariel Berman, Karlene Griffiths, Janhavi Madabushi, Kris Trujillo, and too many o thers who are neglected here. Toby Oldham, Dante and Rafaél Craig, and Noe Montez bring sustain- ing joy to every day. Yountae is grateful for the support of the College of Humanities and the Department of Religious Studies at California State University, Northridge. This page intentionally left blank Eleanor Craig and An Yountae Introduction Challenging Modernity/Coloniality in Philosophy of Religion DOES PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION name a genre of thought or a delimited tra- dition? Can it be more broadly conceived to encompass modes of critical theorizing that have not heretofore been considered part of the field? This volume is an intervention, but it is also an experiment. It represents our belief, for lack of a better word, that it is pos si ble and valuable to apply the categorical designation philosophy of religion to decolonial and anti- colonial proj ects that rearrange the epistemological assumptions of much of the work carried out u nder that heading. The proj ect at hand requires accounting for the dual forms of vio lence that define Euro- descended Chris tian ity by its o thers while paradoxically claiming to represent and speak to humanity in its totality. This claim, today as in centuries past, is coherent only if the non- European and non- Christian are understood as less than human. The highest and lowest levels of evaluation are thus di- rectly connected: those said to do philosophy are those who (r eally) count as human. Introductory textbooks on philosophy of religion usually introduce the field as a series of inquiries into the nature and existence of God. It is com- mon to see chapters devoted to categories of argument— cosmological, teleological, ontological— including debates over their articulation and validity. Defined as an inquiry into the rationality of theism, philosophy
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