Description
Book SynopsisBeyond Man reimagines the meaning and potential of a philosophy of religion that better attends to the inextricable links among religion, racism, and colonialism. An Yountae, Eleanor Craig, and the contributors reckon with the colonial and racial implications of the field''s history by staging a conversation with Black, Indigenous, and decolonial studies. In their introduction, An and Craig point out that European-descended Christianity has historically defined itself by its relation to the other while paradoxically claiming to represent and speak to humanity in its totality. The topics include secularism, the Eucharist''s relation to Blackness, and sixteenth-century Brazilian cannibalism rituals as well as an analysis of how Mircea Eliade''s conception of the sacred underwrites settler colonial projects and imaginaries. Throughout, the contributors also highlight the theorizing of Afro-Caribbean thinkers such as Sylvia Wynter, C. L. R. James, Frantz Fanon, and Aimé C&eac
Trade Review“At this historical moment, along an expansive geography marked by various forms of disregard playing out long-standing modes of violence, this volume goes a long way in helping expose and decipher key structures of power. In the process and taken as a whole, it provides an intriguing depiction of what philosophy of religion has entailed with respect to these structures, and what it can mean and accomplish when cultural assumptions around categories such as the human are interrogated. I highly recommend it.” -- Anthony B. Pinn, Rice University
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Beyond Man is an important, unique work. It transforms philosophy of religion by insisting that the field be constitutively informed by religious studies, critical race theories, and decolonial, postcolonial, and Black studies. If our discipline has any future at all, this is it.” -- Mary-Jane Rubenstein, author of * Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Challenging Modernity/Coloniality in Philosophy of Religion / Eleanor Craig and An Yountae 1
1. Decolonial Options for a Fragile Secular / Devin Singh 32
2. Embodied Counterpoetics: Syliva Wynter on Religion and Race / Mayra Rivera 57
3. We Have Never Been Human/e: The Laws of Burgos and the Philosophy of Coloniality in the Americas / Eleanor Craig 86
4. The Puritan Atheism of C.L.R. James / Vincent Lloyd 108
5. Decolonizing Spectatorship: Photography, Theology, and New Media / Ellen Armour 127
6. The Excremental Sacred: A Paraliturgy / J. Kameron Carter 151
7. On Violence and Redemption: Fanon and Colonial Theodicy / An Yountae 204
8. Alter-Carnation: Notes on Cannibalism and Coloniality in the Brazilian Context / Filipe Maia 226
9. The Sacred Gone Astray: Eliade, Fanon, Wynter, and the Terror of Colonial Settlement /Joseph R. Winters 245
10. Response—On Impassioned Claims: The Possibility of Doing Philosophy of Religion Otherwise / Amy Hollywood 269
Contributors 287
Index 291
