Wide-ranging examination of American philosophy's ties to settler colonialism and its role as both an object and a force of decolonization.
In Decolonizing American Philosophy, Corey McCall and Phillip McReynolds bring together leading scholars at the forefront of the field to ask: Can American philosophy, as the product of a colonial enterprise, be decolonized? Does American philosophy offer tools for decolonial projects? What might it mean to decolonize American philosophy and, at the same time, is it possible to consider American philosophy, broadly construed, as a part of a decolonizing project? The various perspectives included here contribute to long-simmering conversations about the scope, purpose, and future of American philosophy, while also demonstrating that it is far from a unified, homogeneous field. In drawing connections among various philosophical traditions in and of the Americas, they collectively propose that the process of decolonization is not only something that needs to be done to American philosophy but also that it is something American philosophy already does, or at least can do, as a resource for resisting colonial and racist oppression.
Corey McCall taught philosophy at Elmira College. He is the coeditor (with Nathan Ross) of Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature and (with Tom Nurmi) of Melville among the Philosophers. Phillip McReynolds taught philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and is the author of The American Philosopher: Interviews on the Meaning of Life and Truth.
Table of Contents
Introduction Corey McCall and Phillip McReynolds
Part I: The Terms of Decolonization
1. Culture, Acquisitiveness, and Decolonial Philosophy Lee A. McBride III
2. Without Land, Decolonizing American Philosophy Is Impossible Kyle Whyte and Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner
3. Decolonizing the West John E. Drabinski
Part II: Decolonizing the American Canon
4. Enlightened Readers: Thomas Jefferson, Immanuel Kant, Jorge Juan, and Antonio de Ulloa Eduardo Mendieta
5. Writing Loss: On Emerson, Du Bois, and America Corey McCall
6. Latina Feminist Engagements with US Pragmatism: Interrogating Identity, Realism, and Representation Andrea J. Pitts
7. Dewey, Wynter, and Césaire: Race, Colonialism, and “The Science of the Word” Phillip McReynolds
Part III: Expanding the American Canon
8. The Social Ontology of Care among Filipina Dependency Workers: Kittay, Addams, and a Transnational Doulia Ethics of Care Celia T. Bardwell-Jones
9. Creolization and Playful Sabotage at the Brink of Politics in Earl Lovelace’s The Dragon Can’t Dance Kris Sealey
10. Decolonizing Mariátegui as a Prelude to Decolonizing Latin American Philosophy Sergio Armando Gallegos-Ordorica
11. Distal versus Proximal: Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited as a Proximal Epistemology Anthony Sean Neal
