Sharpening Decolonial Options in the Present Moment

2018 ◽  
pp. 159-162
Author(s):  
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
Keyword(s):  
James Baldwin ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Theological Language ◽  
Theological Pedagogy ◽  
Ways Of Being

The conclusion draws attention to the intellective praxes of Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin, and liberation theologians within the context of asking the question of what it means to do theology in the present context of global coloniality. It argues that the theological pedagogy of decolonial love offers a particular orientation to theologians as they struggle to apprehend reality: when decolonial love informs a theological image of salvation, it implies a commitment to opposing Western modernity and its ways of delineating ways of being, knowledge, and eschatology, and to living into an alternative eschatological commitment. The theological pedagogy of decolonial love requires investing in new forms of analysis and requires struggling to ground theological language more strongly in historical realities, while doing so in light of the imagination of and commitment to the sacred.

Decolonial Love

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
Keyword(s):  
James Baldwin ◽  
Theological Reflection ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Theoretical Possibility ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Historical Structures ◽  
Present Context ◽  
Jon Sobrino

This book raises the question of what it means to engage in theological reflection in an authentic way in the present context of global coloniality. In response to the historical manifestations of the coloniality of power on the levels of being, knowledge, and eschatology, it searches for a decolonized image of salvation that can unsettle historical structures of coloniality. The book starts by analyzing modern/colonial structures that shape the present context and the ways Christian theology is entangled in these structures. I then argues that the theological work of Ignacio Ellacuría and Jon Sobrino points to the theoretical possibility of a theology that contests the patterns of domination that continue after political decolonization. Using the work of Ellacuría and Sobrino, it turns to the ways Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin responded to colonial modernity by exposing idols and revealing illusionary notions of stasis in light of alternative commitments to orientations of decolonial love. This decolonial love, and the ways it is historicized in praxis, is perceived as violent from the perspective of Western modernity. This book argues that the orientations of decolonial from which Fanon and Baldwin operate break open cracks in Western modernity and make salvation present in history. Decolonial love thus becomes theologically pedagogic—that is, it provides a source from which to make theological claims. Decolonial love offers one way of doing theology and one way of shaping the content of a decolonized image of salvation.

The Theological Pedagogy of Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin

2018 ◽  
pp. 119-134
Author(s):  
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
Keyword(s):  
James Baldwin ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
The World ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Theological Pedagogy

The ways Fanon and Baldwin live out orientations of decolonial provides an intellective praxis, epistemic framework, and content that can be “theologically pedagogic,” to use a term from Marcella Althaus-Reid. Decolonial love, as an orientation by which to make sense of one’s place in the world and face up to reality, offers a way of understanding an encounter with a divine reality. As such, decolonial love provides a basis from which to expose idolatry and construct theological knowledge and images. This chapter first considers how decolonial love can inform a way of thinking theologically. Understanding decolonial love as a theologically pedagogic site that exceeds modern rationalities establishes the possibility to, in a second section of the chapter, situate a decolonized theological image of salvation within understandings of revelation and history shaped by decolonial love.

Ways of Being and Time

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kris McDaniel
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mode Of Being ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Better Than

This chapter develops a version of ontological pluralism that respects two common intuitions about time: that the present moment is metaphysically distinguished but not in such a way that the past is unreal. The version of ontological pluralism developed—presentist existential pluralism (PEP)—embraces two modes of being, the mode of being that present objects enjoy and the mode of being that past objects enjoy. The author argues that this view fares at least as well, and probably better, than other views in which the present is metaphysically distinguished. The chapter also introduces another form of ontological superiority called “levels of being.”

James Baldwin’s Decolonial Love: Uncovering the Revelation of the Beat

2018 ◽  
pp. 100-116
Author(s):  
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic World ◽  
World System ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Theological Perspective ◽  
The Way

James Baldwin worked out what decolonial love might mean from the experience of living within the center of the modern world-system as a result of colonialism in the Atlantic world. Within an orientation of decolonial love, Baldwin connects the categories of salvation and revelation. The task of revealing the reality that exists underneath the way Western modernity configures reality is itself an actualization of salvation. While Baldwin doesn’t use terms such as revelation and salvation in ways that are tied to religious discourse in the sense of being controlled by doctrines, creedal statements, or dogmatic theology, they do have religious—and this chapter argues theological—significance. Connecting Baldwin’s terms to a theological perspective demonstrates a connection between decolonial love and theology, and opens up decolonial love as a theologically pedagogic site.

Infrastructures of Decolonization: Scales of Worldmaking in the Writings of Frantz Fanon

2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172110091
Author(s):  
Begüm Adalet
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Institution Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National Scale ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Scalar Analysis ◽  
Economic Institution

Political theorists are increasingly drawn to the recovery of anticolonial thinkers as global figures. Frantz Fanon is largely excluded from these discussions because of his presumed commitment to the nation-state and its territorialist assumptions. This essay claims, by contrast, that Fanon’s writings reveal an alternative way of thinking about worldmaking, less as a question of political and economic institution-building spearheaded by leaders than as a multiscalar project that permeates the production of the built environment and the creation of selves. I show how Fanon challenges the dichotomy between the global and the national by seeking to transform not just the national scale in relation to the international, but also the corporeal, urban, rural, and regional scales of an imperially configured world. In order to read Fanon as a scalar thinker and to highlight aspects of his thought that have been relatively neglected, I draw on concepts from geography, and specifically scalar analysis, which, I demonstrate, allows political theorists to develop a richer understanding of the operations of power in colonial contexts and how they can be restructured to inaugurate more liberated ways of being human.

scholarly journals Watching Time: James Baldwin and Malcolm X

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-125
Author(s):  
Mikko Tuhkanen
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
Present Moment ◽  
Malcolm X ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Temporal Mode ◽  
The Moment

Taking its cue from recent scholarly work on the concept of time in African American literature, this essay argues that, while both James Baldwin and Malcolm X refuse gradualism and insist on “the now” as the moment of civil rights’ fulfillment, Baldwin also remains troubled by the narrowness assumed by a life, politics, or ethics limited to the present moment. In his engagement with Malcolm’s life and legacy—most notably in One Day, When I Was Lost, his screen adaptation of Malcolm’s autobiography—he works toward a temporal mode that would be both punctual and expansive. What he proposes as the operative time of chronoethics is an “untimely now”: he seeks to replace Malcolm’s unyielding punctuality with a different nowness, one that rejects both calls for “patience,” endemic to any politics that rests on the Enlightenment notion of “perfectibility,” and the breathless urgency that prevents the subject from seeing anything beyond the oppressive system he wants overthrown. Both thinkers find the promise of such untimeliness in their sojourns beyond the United States.

Theorising the neurotypical gaze: autistic love and relationships in The Bridge (Bron/Broen 2011–2018)

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-011906
Author(s):  
Catherine McDermott
Keyword(s):  
Social Communication ◽  
Popular Media ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Flexible Framework ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Insight Into

In popular media, autistic subjectivity is most often produced through the lens of the neurotypical gaze. Dominant understandings of autism therefore tend to focus on perceived deficits in social communication and relationships. Accordingly, this article has two primary concerns. First, it uses the Danish/Swedish television series The Bridge (Bron/Broen, 2011–2018) and critical responses to the series as examples of how the neurotypical gaze operates, concentrating on the pleasures derived from looking at autism, how autism is ‘fixed’ (Frantz Fanon, 1986) as a socially undesirable subject position, and the self-interested focus of the gaze. Second, it analyses key scenes from the series to expose and challenge the dominance of the neurotypical perspective in scholarly accounts of autistic sexuality and relationality. Using Lauren Berlant’s (2012) work on love, I argue that the non-normative ways of being constructed by the series do not fit easily within neuroconventional frameworks of love and desire. Consequently, autistic expressions of love are rendered both undesirable and illegible to the neurotypical gaze. The article therefore offers a flexible framework for understanding how the neurotypical gaze functions across cultural and academic spheres and gives vital insight into how autistic love and relationships are narratively constructed.

Frantz Fanon’s Decolonial Love: A New Humanism in Historical Struggle

2018 ◽  
pp. 73-99
Author(s):  
Joseph Drexler-Dreis
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Modern World ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
New Humanism ◽  
Western Modernity ◽  
Dialectical Perspective ◽  
Opening Up

This chapter reads Frantz Fanon as a dialectical thinker who concretizes his orientation of decolonial love into a historical and intellective praxis. Fanon breaks open the ways ideology is contained and hypostasized within the modern world-system, situates the human person in relation to a reality that transcends the confines of Western modernity, and catalyses a praxis of opening up ruptures in history. This historical praxis of love is perceived as violent from the side of Western modernity. The chapter begins by locating Fanon’s understanding of a new humanism within a dialectical perspective shaped by his Caribbean context, in which race functions as a medium of the universal. It then shifts to exploring how the movement of Fanon’s dialectics was shaped by his involvement in a nationalist movement while working and living in Algeria. In this context violence and national consciousness catalyse dialectical movement against ways relationships get frozen within colonial categories and structures.

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