Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion

309 Pages·2021·20.245 MB·English

by  An Yountae, Eleanor Craig

Beyond Man
Black Outdoors Innovations in the Poetics of Study
A series edited by J. Kameron Car ter & Sarah Jane Cervenak
Beyond
Man
Edited by
An Yountae &
Eleanor Craig
Race, Coloniality, and
Philosophy of Religion
Duke University Press D urham and London 2021
© 2021 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid- free paper ∞
Cover designed by Matthew Tauch
Text designed by Aimee C. Harrison
Typeset in Portrait Text Regular and ITC Franklin Gothic
by Westchester Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: An Yountae, editor. | Craig, Eleanor, [date] editor.
Title: Beyond man : race, coloniality, and philosophy of religion /
edited by An Yountae and Eleanor Craig.
Other titles: Black outdoors.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Series: Black outdoors |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2020040898 (print) | lccn 2020040899 (ebook) |
isbn 9781478011880 (hardcover) | isbn 9781478014027 (paperback) |
isbn 9781478021339 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Religion— Philosophy. | Racism— Religious aspects— Chris tian ity. |
Imperialism. | Decolonization. | Eurocentrism— History. | Civilization,
Western— Christian influences. | Civilization, Modern— Philosophy.
Classification: lcc jv51 .b49 2021 (print) | lcc jv51 (ebook) | ddc 210— dc23
lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020040898
lc ebook rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2020040899
Cover art: Dell Hamilton, untitled. 22 in. × 30 in. Monotype, collage, colored pencil,
ink, black gesso, charcoal, acrylic, and oil pastel on paper. Courtesy of the artist.
CONTENTS
vii ACKNOWL EDGMENTS
1 INTRODUCTION E LEANOR CRAIG & AN YOUNTAE
Challenging Modernity/Coloniality in
Philosophy of Religion
32 CHAPTER ONE DEVIN SINGH
Decolonial Options for a Fragile Secular
57 CHAPTER TWO MAYRA RIVERA
Embodied Counterpoetics:
Sylvia Wynter on Religion and Race
86 CHAPTER THREE ELEANOR CRAIG
We Have Never Been Human/e: The Laws of Burgos and
the Philosophy of Coloniality in the Amer i cas
108 CHAPTER FOUR VINCENT LLOYD
The Puritan Atheism of C. L. R. James
127 CHAPTER FIVE ELLEN ARMOUR
Decolonizing Spectatorship:
Photography, Theology, and New Media
151 CHAPTER SIX J. KAMERON CAR TER
The Excremental Sacred: A Paraliturgy
204 CHAPTER SEVEN AN YOUNTAE
On Vio lence and Redemption:
Fanon and Colonial Theodicy
226 CHAPTER EIGHT FILIPE MAIA
Alter- Carnation: Notes on Cannibalism
and Coloniality in the Brazilian Context
245 CHAPTER NINE JOSEPH R. WINTERS
The Sacred Gone Astray: Eliade, Fanon, Wynter,
and the Terror of Colonial Settlement
269 CHAPTER TEN AMY HOLLYWOOD
Response—On Impassioned Claims:
The Possibility of Doing Philosophy of Religion Other wise
287 CONTRIBUTORS
291 INDEX
ACKNOWL EDGMENTS
WE THANK THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS VOLUME— those who from day one
believed in the proj ect and helped it gather momentum and t hose who
added their energies later in ways that kept our collective thinking fresh
and flexible. We owe extra thanks to Mayra Rivera for introducing us and
suggesting that we collaborate and for hosting space to deepen authors’
engagements with one another at Harvard in 2018. We are grateful to J.
Kameron Car ter and Sarah Jane Cervenak for joining our efforts to the
wider conversations about settler colonialism and Black studies taking
place in the Black Outdoors series.
Sandra Korn at Duke University Press has guided this proj ect with
thoughtfulness, enthusiasm, and patience. Our anonymous reviewers
provided invaluable advice, particularly on the introduction, and we are
indebted to their wisdom.
Participants and audience members in the American Acad emy of Reli-
gion exploratory session Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion in
November 2017 launched this work into a dynamic conversation. Attend-
ees at the Colloquium on Coloniality, Race, and Philosophy of Religion at
Harvard Divinity School in November 2018 provided valuable feedback on
several chapters in pro gress. We especially wish to thank David Kim, Elaine
Padilla, and Santiago Slabodsky for their contributions to this pro cess.
Over the years of this proj ect, Eleanor experienced the kind of deep
care that instills hope for an other wise world through the support and
friendship of Leena Akhtar, Ariel Berman, Karlene Griffiths, Janhavi
Madabushi, Kris Trujillo, and too many o thers who are neglected here.
Toby Oldham, Dante and Rafaél Craig, and Noe Montez bring sustain-
ing joy to every day. Yountae is grateful for the support of the College of
Humanities and the Department of Religious Studies at California State
University, Northridge.
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Eleanor Craig and An Yountae
Introduction
Challenging Modernity/Coloniality
in Philosophy of Religion
DOES PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION name a genre of thought or a delimited tra-
dition? Can it be more broadly conceived to encompass modes of critical
theorizing that have not heretofore been considered part of the field? This
volume is an intervention, but it is also an experiment. It represents our
belief, for lack of a better word, that it is pos si ble and valuable to apply
the categorical designation philosophy of religion to decolonial and anti-
colonial proj ects that rearrange the epistemological assumptions of much
of the work carried out u nder that heading. The proj ect at hand requires
accounting for the dual forms of vio lence that define Euro- descended
Chris tian ity by its o thers while paradoxically claiming to represent and
speak to humanity in its totality. This claim, today as in centuries past, is
coherent only if the non- European and non- Christian are understood as
less than human. The highest and lowest levels of evaluation are thus di-
rectly connected: those said to do philosophy are those who (r eally) count
as human.
Introductory textbooks on philosophy of religion usually introduce the
field as a series of inquiries into the nature and existence of God. It is com-
mon to see chapters devoted to categories of argument— cosmological,
teleological, ontological— including debates over their articulation and
validity. Defined as an inquiry into the rationality of theism, philosophy