Philosophy After Racism

Tommy Curry in conversation with David Livingstone Smith

Philosophy as created by Europe and transported to the United States has always constructed itself as opposed to an other. Race became the dominant language of modernity and the foundation of various colonial endeavours throughout the 20th century. Would those who aim to end oppression, racism, and other forms of dehumanization also be willing to surrender the apparatus of Western thought, or the production of its systems of knowledge that we call philosophy?​

This conversation will explore the provocative thesis that a true decolonial paradigm would require the dissolution of many of the cherished categories of Western systems of knowledge: Europe, the human, gender, feminism, reason, or even democracy. Would such thinking even be possible given the disciplinary constraints on our activity of thought?

Tommy J. Curry is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He holds a Personal Chair in Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies. His research interests are 19th-century ethnology, Critical Race Theory & Black Male Studies. He is the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood which won the 2018 American Book Award. @DrTJC​

David Livingstone Smith is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England. His current research is focused on dehumanisation, race, and propaganda, and his latest book On Inhmanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist. It was published this year. davidlivingstonesmith.com  / @DavidLSmith_Iam