Description
Book SynopsisExamining the work of Black Enlightenment authors, Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject.
Trade Review“
Black Enlightenment does not excuse or accuse a monolithized ‘West,’ but rather shows how European theory could not acknowledge its transformation by Africa rising. Unusual and meticulous documentation, brilliant textual readings. Highly relevant to our annihilation of white supremacy.” -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of * A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present *
“Offering careful and close readings of key texts written by eighteenth-century Black thinkers, Surya Parekh decenters Kant and Hume from the Enlightenment to emphasize questions around enslavement, freedom, and subjecthood. This strong and important book will touch and inform many fields in current scholarship around the Black Atlantic and the intellectual history of the Enlightenment and beyond.” -- Laurent Dubois, coauthor of * Freedom Roots: Histories from the Caribbean *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Black Enlightenment 23
2. (Dis)Figuring Kant 50
3. The Changing Rhetoric of Race 74
4. The Character of Ignatius Sancho 106
5. Phillis Wheatley’s Providence 131
Notes 153
Bibliography 177
Index 195
