An Existential Phenomenology of Black Female Difference : Extending the Reach of Mabogo P. More's Politics of Being
My study is the first attempt in philosophy to centre and thematise the comprehensive existentialist works of Mabogo Percy More and what I claim is his transcendence framework. I interrogate a prevalent problem in the primary canon of the existential traditions within which More's work is situa...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
01.01.2023
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| ISBN: | 9798346551997 |
| Online-Zugang: | Volltext |
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| Zusammenfassung: | My study is the first attempt in philosophy to centre and thematise the comprehensive existentialist works of Mabogo Percy More and what I claim is his transcendence framework. I interrogate a prevalent problem in the primary canon of the existential traditions within which More's work is situated - the paucity of discourse on female embodiment and gendered existence, particularly black female existentialphenomenology and embodiment. Black existentialists, I find, tend to homogenise the contingencies of black existence and black embodiment, or subsume the phenomenology of blackness under, what in my view appears to be male-centred concerns. More could be said to be consistently guilty of this tendency too, and apart from some en passantremarks about the similarities between racism and sexism (race/sex or race/gender analogy), he fails to give an adequate account of the different, gendered, embodied experiences with antiblack racism.It is important to highlight that More has not been altogether silent on the woman question, within the context of the black community. In fact, early in his career, he wrote a solitary article titled “Black attitudes: A Call for Personhood” (1981), where he criticises black men for their “hypocritical” demand for freedom from white supremacy and racism, while they continue to practice male supremacy and sexism against black women. He attributes this phenomenon to the problem of the oppressed-oppressor. He argues that the foundation of such male supremacy is the questionable assumption of male biological or physical superiority, which is generalised to also include mental and emotional strength. So, the following questions in More’s article (1981), and the brief answers he offers for them, provide me with a departure for my discursive study:1. How are Black women conceived of in our culture – especially by black males? A: Black men conceive of Black women as inferior purely on biological reasons of physical strength and weakness (More 1981: 20).2. What conception do Black women in turn have of themselves? A: Black women cannot be absolved from blame because they display an attitude that denies their moral, social and intellectual equality with men (More 1981: 21).In combination, these questions deal with both the ontological and political dimensions of black female existence and lived experience. I argue that More provides an inadequate theoretical account of the origins and consequences of the problem of black male supremacy, not only in the article, but also throughout his work too. As a result, my study aims to pick up from where he left off four decades ago, by drawing from his work and supplementing it with a black feminist critique. I intend to offer a more comprehensive account of being-black-and-female-in-an-antiblack-antifemale-world. In other words, my concern may be summarised as: “An Existential Phenomenology of Black Female Difference”. Also, this is the first attempt in scholarship to bring More’s work into dialogue with black feminist scholar Pumla Dineo Gqola, black masculinities scholar Kopano Ratele, and Black Male Studies scholar Tommy J. Curry, where I will demonstrate that they work is compatible with, and can extend the reach of More’s existential-phenomenological account of being-black-in-an-antiblack-world. |
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| Bibliographie: | SourceType-Dissertations & Theses-1 ObjectType-Dissertation/Thesis-1 content type line 12 |
| ISBN: | 9798346551997 |