Creolizing Sartre 1538162598, 9781538162590

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface
Notes
Chapter 1: Sartre’s Existentialism and the Communitarian Thesis in Afro-Caribbean Existential Philosophy
Existentialism as a Philosophical Position
Existentialism and Existential Philosophy
Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism
Sartre’s Ontology of Being
The Question of Dualism in Sartre’s Ontology
Sartre’s Idea of Human Relationship
Afro-Caribbean Communitarianism
Afro-Caribbean Communitarianism through the Prism of Rastafari
Sartre’s Existentialism and Afro-Caribbean Communitarianism: A Synthesis
The Dialectics of Freedom and Structure
God (Divine) in Sartre’s and Rastafari’s Thought
Sartre and Rastafari Dialectism
Humanism in Sartre and Rastafari
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 2: Miles’s Smiles: Mid-Century Portraits of Fugitive Improvisation
The Juliette Situation
Miles the Elusive
The Phenomenology of Cool
Coda
Notes
References
Chapter 3: The Being of Becoming, the Becoming of Being: Sartre and Jazz Improvisation: Some Preliminary Thoughts
Notes
References
Chapter 4: Wilson Harris, Existential Philosophy, and the Creolizing of Jean-Paul Sartre
The Ontology of Self in Sartre
Prioritizing and Centering Consciousness: Sartre’s Onto-Metaphysical Discourse
Prioritizing and Centering Spirit: Harris’s Onto-Metaphysical Discourse
Between Harris and Sartre: The Creolizing Factor
Phenomenology and Pre-Reflective Intuitions of Consciousness
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 5: The Global South and Sartre: Echoes of Existential Thought
Why Creolize? Why Sartre?
Why Creolization?
Challenging Eurocentrism
Resisting the Politics of Purity
Rethinking Sartre by Adopting Glissant’s “Poetics of Relation”
Rethink Sartre by Resisting Finished Products in Culture
Thinking “with” Fanon and Beauvoir
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 6: Creolized Reflection
Pure Reflection and Impure Reflection
Shame
Creolized Reflection
Notes
References
Chapter 7: Racial Praxis: Black Liberation and the Movement from Series to Group
Notes
References
Chapter 8: Race and Functional Ultimacy: Choosing Freedom: An Exposition of the Humanocentric Existentialism of William R. Jones
The Concept of Functional Ultimacy
Notes
References
Chapter 9: Reversing the Gaze, Sartre’s Preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth
First Generation
Second Generation
Third Generation
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 10: Ōe Kenzaburō and Pursuit of Authenticity through the Imagination: Creolizing Sartre in Japan?
Bad Faith, Authenticity, and Imagination:The Influence of Sartre on Ōe
Dream of an Authentic Life
Escapist Imagination, Participatory Imagination
The Cry
Notes
References
Chapter 11: Transcendental Phenomenology Meets Negritude Poetry
Sartre’s Initial Distinction between Poetry and Prose
What Negritude Poetry Taught Sartre about Writing
Sartre’s Transcendental Phenomenology
What Negritude Poetry Taught Sartre about Phenomenology
What Negritude Poetry Taught Sartre about Ontology
How Negritude Poetry Taught Sartre about Phenomenology and Ontology
Listening as a Philosophical Technique
Notes
References
Index
About the Contributors

Citation preview

Creolizing Sartre

Creolizing the Canon Series Editors: Jane Anna Gordon (University of Connecticut) and Neil Roberts (Williams College) This series, published in partnership with the Caribbean Philosophical Association, revisits canonical theorists in the humanities and social sciences through the lens of creolization. It offers fresh readings of familiar figures and presents the case for the study of formerly excluded ones. Creolizing Rousseau, edited by Jane Anna Gordon and Drucilla Cornell Hegel, Freud and Fanon, by Stefan Bird-Pollan Theorizing Glissant, edited by John E. Drabinski and Marisa Parham Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader, edited by Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis R. Gordon, Aaron Kamugisha, and Neil Roberts, with Paget Henry The Philosophical Treatise of William H. Ferris: Selected Readings from The African Abroad or, His Evolution in Western Civilization, by Tommy J. Curry Creolizing Hegel, edited by Michael J. Monahan Frantz Fanon, Psychiatry and Politics, by Nigel C. Gibson and Roberto Beneduce Melancholia Africana: The Indispensable Overcoming of the Black Condition, by Nathalie Etoke, translated by Bill Hamlett Afrocubanas: History, Thought, and Cultural Practices, edited by Devyn Spence Benson, Daisy Rubiero Castillo, and Inés María Martiatu Terry, translated by Karina Alma Creolizing Rosa Luxemburg, edited by Jane Anna Gordon and Drucilla Cornell Mabogo P. More: Philosophical Anthropology in Azania, by Tendayi Sithole Creolizing Practices of Freedom: Recognition and Dissonance, by Michael J. Monahan Creolizing Sartre, edited by T Storm Heter and Kris F. Sealey

Creolizing Sartre Edited by T Storm Heter and Kris F. Sealey

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-5381-6258-3 (cloth) | ISBN 978-1-5381-6259-0 (ebook) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Prefacevii T Storm Heter and Kris F. Sealey 1 Sartre’s Existentialism and the Communitarian Thesis in Afro-Caribbean Existential Philosophy Lawrence O. Bamikole 2 Miles’s Smiles: Mid-Century Portraits of Fugitive Improvisation Sybil Newton Cooksey

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3 The Being of Becoming, the Becoming of Being: Sartre and Jazz Improvisation: Some Preliminary Thoughts James B. Haile III

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4 Wilson Harris, Existential Philosophy, and the Creolizing of Jean-Paul Sartre Paget Henry

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5 The Global South and Sartre: Echoes of Existential Thought Kris F. Sealey and T Storm Heter

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6 Creolized Reflection Thomas Meagher

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7 Racial Praxis: Black Liberation and the Movement from Series to Group Michael J. Monahan

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8 Race and Functional Ultimacy: Choosing Freedom: An Exposition of the Humanocentric Existentialism of William R. Jones Anthony Sean Neal

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Contents

9 Reversing the Gaze, Sartre’s Preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth Nathalie Nya 10 Ōe Kenzaburō and Pursuit of Authenticity through the Imagination: Creolizing Sartre in Japan? Seki Hiroaki 11 Transcendental Phenomenology Meets Negritude Poetry Jonathan Webber

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Index 233 About the Contributors

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Preface T Storm Heter and Kris F. Sealey

In Search for a Method, Sartre describes human freedom using a particularly Caribbean metaphor: the spiral. He writes, “A life develops in spirals: It always passes through the same points, but at different levels of integration and complexity.”1 In our framing of this collection of chapters, we draw on the imagery of the spiral—imagery that brings to mind the conch shell’s anatomy and its Caribbean shoreline home. We also draw on the movement the spiral invites—repetition but not quite, relational detour and return, much like the throughway of peoples across the “New” world and the “Old.” There is a strong cross-Atlantic current of influence upon Sartre from the direction of the Francophone Caribbean, most powerfully exemplified by Sartre’s relationship with the Martinican writer, philosopher, activist, and revolutionary Frantz Fanon. As Lewis R. Gordon notes in a recent interview, perhaps the biggest change in Sartre Studies over the past thirty years has come via the tempest of excellent work in Fanon Studies.2 The same might be said about Beauvoir Studies, which has pushed Sartrean existentialists in important directions. It would appear as though there are grounds to say that the future of Sartrean existentialism is decolonial and feminist. If human lives develop in spirals, so too do the lives of social groups. Sartre Studies is spiralic, returning again and again to the fundamental ontological fact of freedom-in-situation, but from different geographies and sites of embodiment. As such, our understanding of a Sartrean conception of freedomin-situation has as much to do with the relationship between the concept and material sites of history as it does with Sartre’s work itself. One pass of the spiral is the Eurocentric readings of Sartre’s major works such as Nausea, Being and Nothingness and the Critique. In these readings, the enemy of freedom is not economic, racial, or gender oppression but alienation and serialization writ large. Another pass of the spiral acknowledges that Sartre’s texts—even vii

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the early, so-called “non-political” works—were never treated as “just for Europeans” by thinkers in the Global South. On that spiral node, the Global South, as a unique site of material history, foregrounded stakes in these texts that could only arise as a consequence of the texts’ relationship to that site. One shining example of how Sartre’s early works are read by thinkers from the Global South is Mabogo P. More’s recent book Sartre on Contingency: Antiblack Racism and Embodiment. Now it is possible in PhD granting institutions in the US American and European metropoles to get a doctoral degree in Philosophy that cites Fanon and not Sartre. And yet, as this volume attests, there remain important reasons for reading Sartre in the twenty-first century. This volume brings together a wide variety of thinkers, which is a reflection of the breadth of Sartre Studies today. The original chapters here were all written with the goal of creolizing the Sartrean canon. Creolization, as we use it in this work, refers to an intellectual, political, and moral strategy emerging from the Caribbean and other spaces in the Global South where European thought has been re-thought in light of colonialism, genocide, slavery, and Euromodernity. Through creolization as a method, what has typically been taken up as “of and/or for Europe” emerges differently, in light of its relationship to the historical urgencies of colonialism, genocide, and slavery. Jean-Paul Sartre has always been a global thinker—he thought globally, and, more importantly, philosophers, activists, writers, and artists from all continents have used Sartrean existentialism as a launching point for their own situational analyses of freedom. We say freedom here, since becoming free remains the root issue for so many marginalized individual and collective subjects (people and groups), from France to South Africa, from Jamaica to Japan, and from the United States to the United Kingdom. The common chord among the chapters collected here is the creativity of human freedom and the ethical impulse of engagement. These chapters take their inspiration from Sartre’s engagement with thinkers of his era, especially, Black thinkers. The impulse of creolized thinking is to acknowledge cultural and conceptual hybridity, while always aiming at the ethics of liberation. With practice, and a dose of humility, philosophers in the metropole can learn to think with those of the Global South. The philosophical projects that emerge from this thinking with—in other words, across relation—will emphasize community, aesthetics, Black liberation, and collective (not individual) freedom. The ethics of fiction, storytelling, and poetry are alive with existential possibility. Phenomenology—philosophy from the first person—is as alive as ever. Creolizing thinkers acknowledge what Sartre called the “concrete universal,” by pointing to the fact that geographically and historically specific phenomenologies of freedom are not mere “case studies” or “applications” of existentialism. Rather, they pursue urgencies that have fundamental implications for the human condition.

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Creolizing Sartre is one moment in the spiral of Sartre Studies; a moment for rethinking core philosophical ideas (being, reflection, self and other relations, reason) without reducing them to a fleshless false universal. Creolization is a return with a difference. To creolize Sartre neither places him on a pedestal nor seeks to pull him down, as if he were one of those statues of white Europeans who have been wrestled from their plinth.3 This volume is about listening better—listening to the voices of the philosophers of the twenty-first century who emphasize their embodiment, their geography, their place, or what Sartre would call their situation. Lawrence O. Bamikole distinguishes African existentialism from European existentialism, arguing for a notion of communitarianism much different than that arising from the liberalism-communitarianism debate of the 1990s. Since liberalism is as alive as ever, we can learn from Bamikole’s Sartreaninspired challenge to liberalism and neo-liberalism. His chapter is an important contrast to those readings of Sartre that turn him into an individualist by emphasizing his early thinking at the expense of his later thinking. Expanding the discussion of communitarianism outside of Europe and the United States, Bamikole roots his rejection of liberal individualism in practices of Rastafarinism. In Rastafarian ways of being, the self is part of the whole, as is shown in the relationship of “I and I.” Bamikole reveals how the grammar of Afro-Caribbean communitarianism can expand the anti-capitalist thinking of Sartre. In “Miles’s Smiles: Mid-Century Portraits of Fugitive Improvisation,” Sybil Newton Cooksey explores how existentialism plays out in the lived experience of Black artists. Focusing on the 1949 meeting of Sartre and jazz musician Miles Davis, Cooksey challenges the tendency on the part of French intellectuals to associate jazz—and the Black men who played it—with ideals of freedom and authenticity. Cooksey argues for an existentialism that is rooted in Davis’s own comments on his experiences as a jazz musician, and in particular his experiences as a Black American musician in France. The existentialism of Davis, and his phenomenology of jazz improvisation, upend the common claim that Black jazz artists were freer in France than in the United States. Drawing on the notion of fugitivity, Cooksey offers a fresh interpretation of the experiences of Davis and his relationship to Sartre. James B. Haile III’s analysis of jazz reveals that improvisation is a key concept for much of Sartrean thinking, not just aesthetics or music. Improvisation is central to Sartre’s notion of human consciousness. Haile has a unique approach to Nausea; he studies the structure of the novel, rather than the conclusion of the book, which has received so much attention, with its invocation of “Some of These Days.” The architecture of Nausea incarnates human consciousness. Haile shows how human freedom is improvisational, illustrating how improvisation is part of Sartre’s notion of “play” and authentic existence.

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In his analysis of the Caribbean writer Wilson Harris, Paget Henry turns to a fundamental philosophical question: that of the self. A key theme in Henry’s work is the contrast of the European self with the Caribbean self. Henry asks how divergent thinkers, Sartre and Harris, arrived at their notion of freedom and anguish. The European self and the accompanying notion of alienation are linked to rationalism and the internal failures of Capitalism. European philosophers such as Sartre are anguished even as they are materially rich, having benefitted from colonization. In the Global South, alienation takes on a different form, rooted in “the ontology of the anguished Caribbean self.” In the case of Harris, the ontology of the anguished Caribbean self was accompanied by a metaphysics of creative realism. In the case of Sartre, his metaphysics was one of a creative nothingness. In their chapter, T Storm Heter and Kris F. Sealey delineate what it means to do creolizing philosophical work. They study the notion of creolization, tracing its origin in the Caribbean and the Global South, arguing for the importance of rethinking existentialism’s relationship to colonialism and European modernity. Sartrean existentialism is a philosophy of engagement, which connects it to the liberatory task of creolization. Why has Sartre, more than any other white writer, been taken up by intellectuals outside of France and Europe? The lasting appeal of Sartrean existentialism is its insistence, above all, on the creative agency of humans. Thomas Meagher demonstrates a novel approach to the notion of purified reflection in the work of Sartre. Drawing on the Africana phenomenology of Paget Henry and W. E. B. DuBois, Meagher develops the notion of creolized reflection. Meagher’s contribution is an intervention in ontology; like others in this volume, especially Henry, he studies the foundational question of existence of the self in relation to others. The upshot of Meagher’s thesis is that ontology cannot be disconnected from history, geography, politics, or ethics. Michael J. Monahan has written widely on Sartre and on creolization. In his contribution to this volume, Monahan returns Sartre’s text the Critique of Dialectical Reason to borrow the distinction between “series” and “group” life. Monahan uses this distinction to articulate a model for Black liberation that avoids reductive individualism as well as obsessive holism. Monahan asks: Who is the “we” of the plural subject that struggles against racism? Building on the celebrated work of Iris Young, Monahan invokes the Sartrean “series” to explain the being of racial groups. With Sartre’s help, Monahan builds a framework for group life, revealing that “struggles against oppression are thus always social and collective struggles.” Anthony Sean Neal focuses on the important relationship between the thought of Sartre and the thought of the philosopher William R. Jones. Sartrean existentialism turns out to be an important resource for unpacking the

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ontology of “Blackness” in Jones’s notion of Black philosophy. Like a number of leading Black thinkers, Jones wrote his PhD thesis on Sartre, using Sartrean themes to develop a highly original and personal vocabulary. Jones would go on to author a seminal work of Black philosophy, Is God a White Racist? (1973). Neal breaks down Jones’s notion of “functional ultimacy,” which is a humanistic notion of freedom. For Jones, as for Sartre, the humanism of freedom is revealed best in the face of oppression. Neal’s work substantiates why Sartre continues to be a reference point for Black philosophers in the United States, the Caribbean, and the America. Nathalie Nya outlines a crucial element of Sartre’s anticolonial philosophy: the question of audience. As Sartre put the question, “For whom does one write?” Reading Sartre’s preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Nya explains the freedom-enhancing sense of authorship that arises from colonized subjects when they turn away from European humanistic discourses. Nya challenges those who favor a humanistic discourse that arises from the Global South; for Nya, all humanistic discourse retains an element of Eurocentrism. Following Sartre, Nya argues that colonized and formerly colonized authors ought to become indifferent to European audiences. The important question of the text is in its relation to its audience. The liberating effects of colonized and formerly colonized people writing is in the reversal of the white gaze. Raising the question of creolization in Japan, Seki Hiroaki compares Sartrean literature to that of the Japanese existentialist Ōe Kenzaburō (1935– 2023). Ōe was a Sartrean in Japan who wrote about marginalized existences. Like Sartre, Ōe won a Nobel Prize in literature. Seki takes up the question of the imagination, distinguishing two variants: the participatory notion of imagination and that of the escapist imagination, which is in bad faith. Reading Ōe’s novel The Cry, Seki shows how Ōe’s encounter with Sartre transformed his thought. How did Ōe move from being “in the shadow of Sartre” to being authentically himself? Such a question of authenticity is common among Sartreans across the globe who take inspiration from a European thinker, but whose thought cannot be reduced to a shadow of Europe. Seki reinfuses the need for European existentialism to outlive itself, through its transformation from a discourse that scholars use to attempt to legitimize their claims to a discourse that is original precisely because it has been transcended. Jonathan Webber takes up the essay “Black Orpheus,” showing how Sartre’s thought was not just moved in a new political direction by the encounter with otherness, but that his ontology and phenomenological method shifted as well. Webber specifies the new vision of reality Sartre embraced after reading the Negritude poets. As Webber argues, the Negritude poets taught Sartre a new philosophy. Through a reexamination of Sartre’s distinction between

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prose and poetry, Webber reveals that the impact the Negritude poets had on Sartre was not limited to politics but was felt all the way down, into his epistemology and ontology. As editors, our hope is that each of these chapters will not only allow us to rethink the past, but to propel us toward new questions in Sartre’s scholarship. Creolizing Sartre is but one moment in the spiral. NOTES 1. Search for a Method (New York: Vintage, 1968), 106. It is provocative to imagine Sartre reading the work of the Haitian sprialists such as Frankétienne. 2. “Existential Philosophy and Anriracism: An Interview with Lewis R. Gordon by T Storm Heter,” Sartre Studies International 28, issue 2 (2022), 1–16. 3. See Jonathan Webber’s piece “Bristol’s Innovative Sculpture: Plinth, Statue, Water and Space,” The Quietus, June 13, 2020. https://thequietus​.com​/articles​/28402​ -colston​-statue​-bristol​-essay (accessed April 16, 2023).

Chapter 1

Sartre’s Existentialism and the Communitarian Thesis in AfroCaribbean Existential Philosophy Lawrence O. Bamikole

EXISTENTIALISM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION Modern existentialism is a product of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment period in Western Europe was the period in which explanations about nature and social life were grounded on human reason in contrast to the pre-Enlightenment period in which such explanations were derived from divine arrangements. The Enlightenment accords recognition to the power of individual reason to be able to grasp reality based on his/her own conviction about natural and social matters. It was from this view that existentialism derived its impetus. However, the recognition of the power of human reason pushes forward the problem which the Enlightenment was trying to address—giving an account of the place of the human individual in nature and social life. The Enlightenment, which is also referred to as Modernity, replaced divine agency with secular institutions, a position which still places the human individual at the service of natural, social, and political phenomena. Existentialism therefore wants to free the human individual from the constraints, shackles, and obstacles generated by holistic abstraction in the name of natural and social institutions. This was how the forerunners of existentialism, namely, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, viewed the existentialist project. Lavine puts the existentialist concern in a sharp perspective: “Existentialism maintains that in philosophies such as those of Hegel and Marx, with their exclusive sociological concern with social groups, social institutions, and the social system, the individual human self disappears, it is swallowed up by these social collectivities.”1 1

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This might sound as an exaggeration (or distortion) of the philosophical systems of Hegel and Marx. However, the point being made by existentialism is clear: that there is a problem between individual as a subjectively conscious being and institutions as external and objective existent structures, and if the problem is to be resolved, it must be done in favor of the human individual. Hence the definition of existentialism is “the philosophic standpoint which gives priority to existence over essence.”2 What is meant by this general definition is that existentialism accords priority to existence, in the sense of an individual existence as a conscious subject, rather than to any essential property/attribute that individuals share with others as belonging to the same homo sapiens. Sartre is noted for making this doctrine a cornerstone of his existentialism. For Sartre, to say that existence precedes essence means that “people exist, confront themselves, emerge in world, and define themselves afterward. First, we simply are, and then we are simply that which we make of ourselves.”3 There are several terms that constitute the central themes of existentialism. Such terms, in ordinary language, sound like pessimistic expressions, but which existentialism has turned to positive terms because of its observations about human life and the challenges faced by human beings as they navigate their existence in the world of nature and social life. These terms include anxiety, dread, anguish, absurdity, nothingness, alienation, and nausea. The general message here is that human beings live in a world in which their existence is threatened by the vagaries of nature and social life, and there is no need to run away from such facts. What is necessary is for human beings, as it were, to realize this morbid situation and to do everything in their power to confront it. No one does this for them except themselves. However, given the position that existentialism is a theory about human life, one must ask the question of how human beings are expected to cope with such lifedenying situations. Individual existentialists might respond to this in different ways. We shall discuss Sartre’s responses to this in the appropriate section of this chapter. For now, we want to examine the distinction between existentialism and existential philosophy. EXISTENTIALISM AND EXISTENTIAL PHILOSOPHY Existentialism as a philosophical position is as old as human history even when persons who tend to hold views like existentialism do not explicitly call themselves existentialists. For instance, Igbafen observed that Existentialism can be argued to be as old as philosophy itself. Some of the views or trends (such as individualism, subjectivity, freedom, relativism and

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autonomy) expressed in modern existentialism are also found in the writings of earlier philosophers such as the Sophists, Socrates, Epicurus, Descartes and others.4

As a school in philosophical scholarship, existentialism could be dated to when persons became aware that they are in the world in which nature and the social environments must be manipulated to their advantage. This awareness cuts across cultures and different civilizations and therefore one can say, in difference to Western philosophy, which identifies existentialism with a particular culture and period in human history while not recognizing such issues in relation to non-Western cultures. Thus, it is a sad observation of human history that there are certain human beings who have denied others about this awareness based on the false belief that some human beings are more human than others. The above observation is buttressed by Gordon’s analysis of the distinction between “existential philosophy” and “existentialism.”5 While reacting to the critics who have claimed that there is no Black existential philosophy given the fact that existentialism is a European phenomenon addressing European experience, Gordon remarked that The body of literature that constitutes European existentialism is but one continent’s response to a set of problems that date from the moment human beings faced problems of anguish and despair. That conflicts over responsibility and anxiety, over life affirmation and suicidal nihilism, precede Kierkegaardian formulations of fear and trembling raised questions beyond Eurocentric attachment to a narrow body of literature.6

Gordon sees existential philosophy as addressing the problems of freedom, anguish, responsibility, embodied agency, sociality, and liberation. Existential philosophy addresses these problems through a focus on the human condition. According to him, the human condition occasions at least two recurring questions: What are we? And what shall we do? These are questions of identity and moral action on one hand, and questions of ontology and teleology on the other. To respond to the skeptics that deny existential thought to the Black and those who deny selfhood to the persons of color in general, Gordon queries whether slaves did not wonder about freedom; suffer anguish; notice paradoxes of responsibility; have concerns of agency, tremors of broken sociality, or a burning desire for liberation. For Gordon, the struggles with these matters in the traditional West African proverbs and folklores which the slaves brought with them to the new world were evidence that they were aware of existential challenges to their existence. The plausibility of this position is implicated by the idea of agency—the view that human beings are masters

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over their destinies even when they are faced with certain natural, social, and spiritual inhibitions. The only snag in the argument might be the skeptic and the racialist retort that slaves were not persons and as such it might be an illusion that slaves can ever be conscious of existential challenges. The answer to that question, however, is that it is not within the purview of any human being to define a person in an exclusive manner that compartmentalizes persons into different categories of existence. Slaves are not natural categories. It was human beings who contrived the social order to designate other human beings as slaves. In this regard, Césaire observed, “the colonial encounter requires a reinvention of the colonized, the deliberate destruction of the past.” Césaire called this process “thingification.”7 McKenzie observes the recurrent theme in all forms of existentialist thought centers around freedom and responsibility.8 However, the notions of freedom and responsibility are essentially contestable given the fact that, like existential thought, the meaning contexts of these notions are ideologically, culturally, and historically situated. Therefore, existential philosophy is a respectable field within existentialism because it represents a discourse where the challenges of human existence facing a group of people can be explored and interrogated. In this connection, Gordon observed that Sartre stands as an unusual catalyst in the history of Black existential philosophy.9 JEAN-PAUL SARTRE’S EXISTENTIALISM Jean-Paul Sartre was a French existentialist who reshaped the standpoint of European existentialism. There are different sources of Sartre’s existentialism. One of the sources is Descartes’s philosophical system in which he regarded consciousness as the basic concept of understanding human existence. For Descartes, philosophy begins with the absolute certainty of individual consciousness of himself/herself as a thinking being. Two other sources of Sartre’s existentialism are Husserl and Heidegger. Husserl agreed with Descartes that certainty can be found in human consciousness. But he denies that Descartes’s Cogito established the certainty of a thinking substance, but only the certainty of consciousness. Husserl claims that consciousness cannot exist on its own, it must have an object. Intentionality is the object of consciousness. Another source of Sartre’s existentialism is Heidegger. For Heidegger, conscious existence means being in the world; the basic distinction between the world of conscious being and the world of things. From Heidegger, Sartre derived such pessimistic terms like nothingness, nausea, absurdity, and anguish. Sartre also finds valuable philosophical materials in the dialectical philosophers Hegel and Marx. Furthermore, Sartre takes from Nietzsche the concept of the death of God. However, as Lavine

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(1984, 341) pointed out, “Sartre’s originality lies in his reinterpreting, revising, and reworking these materials into a bold new integration which become the centre of French existentialism, in the form of philosophical treatises, novels, plays, and literary and political essays.”10 SARTRE’S ONTOLOGY OF BEING In Being and Nothingness, Sartre claimed that there are two regions of being, which appear within consciousness. There is the being of myself as consciousness and the being of that which is other than myself separate from myself, the object of which I am conscious. This is his famous distinction between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Being-in-itself are bodies— physical objects. They do not possess consciousness. On the other hand, being-for-itself stands for human beings who possess consciousness—about consciousness. This is the notion of intentionality. For Sartre, to be a conscious being is to be free. The being of a human being is coterminous with freedom. Sartre claimed that my past no longer exists; it does not determine what am I now. Neither what am I now determines my future. Sartre argued that my “facticity” by which he means the contingent circumstances or facts of my life may be biologically, psychologically, socially, and economically determined, but as a conscious being, I choose the meaning they have for me As a free, active consciousness, I transform this facticity by my choice of meanings and possibilities, by my project, into my situation.11 By situation, Sartre means an organization of the world into a meaningful totality from the viewpoint of a free individual. For Sartre, determinism belongs to the world of being-in-itself, the world of facts and things. In complete distinction from the causally determined world of facts, I am free as a conscious being, choosing the meaning I will give the facts in my situation.12 The central theme of Sartre’s existentialist phenomenology is the notion of absurdity. As pointed out earlier, it is a notion derived from Heidegger. Macintyre (1964) observed that the notion of absurdity entails two theses: (i) that things have no sufficient reason for being as they are and not otherwise; (ii) things are contingent and not necessary.13 The first replicates a denial of the doctrine of causality—the view that events and actions have antecedent causes that are necessary and sufficient for them to occur. The second thesis relates to the fact that individual existence precedes essence and that actions and events are chance occurrences; they are products of human decision without any principle to be appealed to in order to justify them. These two theses point to the view expressed by Sartre that human beings are free and that they are responsible for who they are, what they do, and their overall

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situation in the world. The combination of these views is contrary to the doctrine of determinism in all its dimensions (metaphysical, social, biological, and scientific determinism). In Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946), Sartre denied moral principles as the basis of individual’s action. He argued that moral principles rested upon the individual’s choice. For him, there are no objective grounds for morality. Believing in moral principles is an instance of bad faith; it is an occasion to shift the responsibility for decisions that are in fact mine to someone or to something else. His position foreshadowed ethical thinkers, such as Prichard, who believed that moral philosophy rests on a mistake and Rorty who averred that it is a mistake to turn to moral theories for the justification of our moral indignation because existing moral theories are often contradictory and they are, in most cases, irreconcilable.14 It is also a reflection of Hare15—that when we have specified the consequences of acting upon the principles we have chosen, when we have specified the way of life of which this principle is a part, the justification for such principles is at an end. Macintyre noted the similarity in Hare’s and Sartre’s positions in relation to the denial of moral principles: “as for Hare and Sartre alike, where there is no further room for deliberation, choice is in place. This choice is necessarily criterionless.”16 Theoretically, moral skepticism in all its different forms might be responded to, and as a matter of fact it has been responded to by moral theorists. However, the reasonableness of Sartre’s position can be seen in relation to real-life situations, when, as individuals, we are expected to make a choice out of alternative actions that are presented to us. As human beings, we like to plan for important events in our lives; depending on the extent to which such event is significant to us, it might take time for us to reach a decision about which action to take. But no matter how long we plan, one day, we are going to make a choice. Even when eventually, we have not made any choice, we have chosen! But what is important at the point in which we make a choice is that all the principles we relied upon are no longer relevant, they recede to the background. I think this is what is relevant in Hare’s and the existentialist position as exemplified in Sartre’s view. In this, moral principle could be likened to a scaffold that enables us to reach a point and after reaching it is discarded, although we may need it when coming down. This is perhaps true in Hume’s view that reason is a slave to the passion. Reason does not enable us to decide on a plan of action, it only enables us to work through our decisions. However, as plausible as this view is, it does not totally absolve Sartre’s view from conceptual difficulties. Thus, it could still be argued that the choices that human individuals make are preceded by certain events or actions. It can be argued that these antecedent events and actions can determine the choices we make, and, if this is the case, our choices are not absolutely free, especially when individuals and their behaviors and actions

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are products of natural and social circumstances. To be fair to Sartre, he recognized the position that social conditioning exists every minute of human lives; he nevertheless held the belief that human beings are free. I shall have occasion to revisit this argument in a subsequent section of the chapter.

THE QUESTION OF DUALISM IN SARTRE’S ONTOLOGY MacIntyre observed that Sartre took seriously Hegel’s remarks in Phenomenology of Mind that “self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in so far as and by virtue of the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is, it is only by being acknowledged or recognised.”17 For MacIntyre, Sartre’s recognition of this view is an indication of Sartre’s departure from the solitariness of Kierkegaardian man/woman. This remark can be given different interpretations which can shed light on the debate whether Sartre’s ontology involves dualism—the dualism between being-in-itself and being-for-itself, which is reflective of the Cartesian dualism between mind and body. According to Sass, the view that Sartre’s ontology is dualistic has been attributed to certain authors, especially Merleau-Ponty.18 However, it is Sass’s view that on a further reading of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, no dualism is found in Sartre’s ontology. Her evidence pertains to Sartre’s views expressed in both the Introduction to and Conclusion of Being and Nothingness. In the introduction, Sartre repudiates the idealist and materialist explanation of the relationship between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. The reason why their explanation is repudiated is because they constitute dualism, which, according to Sartre, their radically different natures cannot unite the two forms of being which may result in a lack of communication between them. On the other hand, Sartre’s concluding remarks in Being and Nothingness were a clear indication that dualism does not exist in Sartre’s ontology. Sass quoted the relevant page that supports his view: We have just shown in fact that the in-itself and the for-itself are not juxtaposed. Quite the contrary, the for-itself without the in-itself is a kind of abstraction; it could not exist any more than a color could exist without form or a sound without pitch and without timbre. A consciousness which would be consciousness of nothing would be an absolute nothing. But if consciousness is bound to the in-itself by an internal relation, doesn’t this mean that it is articulated with the in-itself so as to constitute a totality, and is it not this totality which would be given the name being or reality? Doubtless the for-itself is a nihilation, but as a nihilation it is; and it is in a priori unity with the in-itself.19

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In supporting a non-dualistic interpretation of Sartre’s ontology, Sass made us pay attention to certain terms in the quotation, namely; “the in-itself and the for-itself are not juxtaposed”; “the for-itself without the in-itself is a kind of abstraction”; “a consciousness which would be consciousness of nothing would be an absolute nothing”; “it is in a priori unity with the in-itself.”20 According to Sass, these expressions mean that Sartre does not indicate that there is total isolation between these two beings. Consequently, Sass holds that dualism does not exist in his ontology. I agree with this view. The very idea that Sartre departs from the solitariness of Kierkegaard in which subjectivism is the only reality cannot explain the relationship between the self and others. We pay attention to the attributes of being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Let us pay attention to what Sartre said about being-in-itself and being-for-itself. According to Sartre, being-in-itself is exemplified in physical bodies. Physical objects are beings in the world whose attributes are defined by the laws of nature. They are causally determined, and they cannot be otherwise than how nature (God) has created them. This is the principle of sufficient reason. The implication of this view is that all bodies cannot be credited with freedom. On the other hand, being-for-itself is exemplified in consciousness, especially subjective consciousness. This means that the body is eliminated from consciousness. How can this be? If being-in-itself is a body and being-for-itself is consciousness, there should be a kind of relationship between the two; after all, consciousness must have an object that possesses/ houses it. This object cannot be consciousness. So, the question that could be put to Sartre is what is the nature of a being that possesses consciousness? This view is not dualistic, in the Cartesian sense; rather, it represents the view that bodies and consciousness are aspects of beings that are called individuals. This is what has been regarded as the “double aspect view” which was advocated by Baruch Spinoza. Even when bodies are distinct aspects, the relationship between them should not be seen as dualistic, but dialectical. Another explanation that can support this view is the one deployed by Addis that dualism gives rise to the philosophical problem of reductionism. An example of this reductionism is that physical states can be reduced to mental states and vice versa.21 This will give rise to the problem of monism, the view that there is only one reality, which is philosophically problematic. This position squares well with Marx’s view which Sartre embraces in his later writings. As Sass remarked, Marx holds a social interactionist view about the relationship between individual actions and social processes. None is reducible to the other—both interact dialectically. When examined critically, there could be at least two implications of the denial that Sartre’s ontology does constitute a dualism. The first is that Sartre’s denial of the existence of God becomes incoherent. This is because he referred to God as being-in-itself, a body; but a body is capable of being

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conceived by a conscious subject; and if psychism is true, then bodies are conscious as do human beings. The only difference is that there are different levels of consciousness between the former and the latter. In other words, both beings possess consciousness, but it is only human beings who possess consciousness as intentionality—bodies do not possess intentionality. But given the fact that God is body—a special body—then his existence can no longer be denied. This is one of the premises of the ontological argument—that God can be conceived as a being greater than none other can be conceived. The consequence of this line of reasoning for Sartre’s ontology is that it brings him to the level of Kierkegaard, in which the idea of God is brought to the existentialist program as a deux ex machina, an idea used to fill up a lacuna in existentialism’s structure of reasoning. This will resonate perfectly with spiritualistic determinism in existentialism, a position that calls for the explanation of freedom within this spiritualistic determining world. Another implication of a non-dualistic interpretation of Sartre’s ontology is that it changes the narrative of the notions of freedom and the human individual. Here, freedom is stripped of its metaphysical connotation as exemplified by Sartre’s aphorism that human beings are condemned to freedom. On the other hand, Sartre’s individual as remarked earlier on is no longer the solitary being of Kierkegaard; s/he must be a man and woman of society, of community, and culture. This might look like a dualism, but it is not dualism in the metaphysical sense in which freedom is contrasted with determinism (being-for-itself versus being-in-itself); rather, the relation becomes a dialectical one. This is at a point in which a connection can be established between Sartre’s ontology and Afro-Caribbean communitarianism. To establish this connection, there is a need to examine the notions of freedom and the human individual. The type of freedom which establishes a dialectical relationship between the individual and society/community/culture is freedom of choice. This is compatible with existentialism’s take on the idea of freedom. Freedom of choice is based on the belief that an individual can do one or the other thing at his/her discretion. This is where freedom can be equated with autonomy. Freedom of the will (metaphysical freedom) on the other hand would mean that my actions are not only independent of external compulsion but also of the internal structure of myself in addition, and that means my action would be, so to speak, independent of myself, and this is paradoxical. What is at the base of this paradox is existentialism’s view that consciousness and freedom are symmetrical notions. This means that freedom does not have any source, and this is confirmed by existentialism’s belief that human beings are thrown into the world, as it were. This is a view that requires an explanation, which is lacking in existentialism as a philosophical position. One possible explanation is to link freedom with the self, the individual as

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a determining source, and this is compatible with interpreting freedom as autonomy. Interpreted in this way, freedom will no longer be seen only as freedom from external constraint, which is the liberal idea of freedom and which is also, in a sense, at the base of the existentialist philosophy. In this view, the individual is not an atomic individual who does not bear any relationship with others in the society/community. This position can be supported when we reconstruct Sartre’s idea of human relationship. SARTRE’S IDEA OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIP There are two phases in Sartre’s view of the way conscious beings relate to one another. The first, derived from Hegel’s remark in the Phenomenology of Mind, is that “self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in so far as and by virtue of the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized.”22 This phase manifests Sartre’s view which describes all human relations as conflict relations in which individuals seek to enslave and possess one another’s freedom. This is illustrated by the notions of sadism and masochism, predicated on the belief that there is an ultimate distinction between my being a subject and my being an object. Sartre’s phenomenological account of this distinction is mediated by the notion of being looked at. Thus, if I make someone else an object of my perception, I necessarily treat him/her as something that is now an object for me; in so doing, I impose myself on him/her. Here I do not manifest love but sadism. If, to correct this, I try to make myself an object of the other’s perception, I equally destroy the possibility of love, for now, I substitute sadism for masochism. This pessimistic idea of human relation was captured by Gordon when he observes: We shall regard both sadism and masochism as forms of misanthropy since both involve forms of evading human being in the flesh. From the standpoint of bad faith, the sadist regards himself on the level of “subject” before whom all others are “objects.”23

The question arises: What then is the exit for the Sartrean pessimistic idea of human relations? The exit is provided for in the second phase, where Sartre was converted to Marxism. The second phase of Sartre’s view of human relationship coincides with his conversion to Marxism. As observed by Lavine in The Critique of Dialectical Reason, Free independent conscious being, being-for-itself in its concrete existence disappears into Sartrean version of Marx’s proletariat, and existentialism, the

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subjectivist philosophy of conscious being of the solitary, defiantly free-foritself disappears into a Sartrean version of the objectivist, materialist philosophy of mature Marxism, into a scientific scenario of the dialectic of history as the struggle of social groupings to overcome scarcity.24

The same view is echoed by McIntyre in the same work that Sartre presents a view of human relation in which bad faith and bad human relationship in general belong to the life of class-divided, and especially of capitalist society.25 Sartre’s conversion to Marxism enables his view of human relation that is predicated on mutual antagonism to be mediated by revolutionary struggle by the proletariat to overcome a class-divided society and transcended into a communist society in which human relations is transformed to radical equality in which human beings treat themselves as being-for-itself and beingfor-others rather than being-it-itself. And if we are to continue with Sartre’s psycho-phenomenological analysis in his early works, human relationship will now take the form of imaginative perception in which human beings perceive themselves as subjects rather than objects. Thus, sadism and masochism are replaced by love, empathy, and sympathy. As observed by Raybon (2021), “As friends smiled back when I greeted them, I learned that to be seen was as great a gift as the blessing of seeing.”26 This is an exemplification of mutual recognition among human beings, of which according to Podoksik, our relation to others is a human instinct. For him, “a living creature wants not only to be independent and unconstrained, but also to be dependent on and connected to someone or something else.”27 This reconstruction of the Sartrean idea of human relationship has something to share with Afro-Caribbean communal thesis. AFRO-CARIBBEAN COMMUNITARIANISM Henry and Headley observed that Afro-Caribbean existential discourse takes its foundation from African traditional thought.28 One of the dimensions of African traditional thought is its communalistic orientation, where human relationship is seen in an organic and wholesome way. This means that individuals within the community are first regarded as individuals if they are organically related to the community. The community here includes human and non-human beings. The problem that is generated by this communitarian view pertains to the freedom of the individual within such a structural system of relationship. The dualism of individualism and communitarianism is a central theme in both Western and African existentialist thought. This dualism borders on the question of the freedom of the individual in relation to the presence of natural,

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social, and spiritual phenomena, all of which together constitute the elements of a communal universe. Western existentialism holds the view that individuals are free in relation to their existence and the choices they make pertaining to how they live their lives. On the other hand, African existentialism sees the individual as dependent on the activities, values projects, and norms of the community. Western existentialism is individualistic, while African existentialism is communalistic. The communitarian thesis is well expressed by Leopold Senghor, the first president of Senegal. According to him: “African society puts more stress on the group than on the individual, more on solidarity than on the activity and needs of the individual, more on the communion of persons than on their autonomy. Ours is a community society.”29 This statement may be given two interpretations, depending on the emphasis placed on the relationship between the freedom of the individual and the norms of the community. The first is referred to as radical and unrestricted communitarianism, and the second is moderate and restricted communitarianism. The radical and unrestricted communitarianism totally subjects individual freedom to the whims of the community, while the moderate version allows some room for the freedom of the individual within a communal regulatory roles and institutions. The radical version of communitarianism was supported by first-­generation African leaders who, in the effort to put their countries on the path of development after the colonial experience, gave priority to social development over individual freedom and rights.30 On the other hand, the moderate version is supported by recent scholars of African philosophy.31 According to moderate communitarianism, the individual is a product of the community. This suggests that the individual is a social being whose existence depends on others in the community. This is the origin of the assertion that “I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am” which is the direct opposite of Descartes’s “I think therefore I am.”32 To claim that an individual is a product of the community does not mean that an individual is crushed under the influence of the community. What it means is that the individual is in a dialectical relationship with the community in the sense that community makes individuals what they are and consequently they should contribute to the growth and development of the community. This brief introduction to communitarianism serves as a prelude to understanding Afro-Caribbean communitarianism; after all, it is from the African communitarianism that Afro-Caribbean communitarianism is expected to derive its source and soul, on the basis of historical and cultural retention, midwifed by the phenomenon of slavery.

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AFRO-CARIBBEAN COMMUNITARIANISM THROUGH THE PRISM OF RASTAFARI Rastafari has become a rallying point for the construction of an alternative conception of reality that challenges the predominantly liberal and neo-liberal capitalist ideology espoused within the Anglo-Saxon worldview.33 The term “Rastafari” has been used in the literature to denote both a form of agency and a sociocultural movement. Thus, a person could be a Rastafari, and Rastafari could, as well, be a body of beliefs, attitudes, and practices embraced by a Rastafari man or woman. As a sociocultural movement, Rastafari concerns itself with the issue of identity. This issue relates to the communitarian philosophy. According to Baron et al., the issue of identity in social psychology is concerned with how we think of ourselves primarily as individuals and how we see ourselves as members of specific groups.34 In the same vein, in philosophy, the problem of identity features in the debate concerning the relationship between the individual or groups of individuals and the basic norms of their community.35 Alternatively, Boedeker put the issue as a question: Must someone be in some sense a member of a human community, trained in its practices and adapted to its norms in order to have a “self”? As was remarked earlier, the responses to this question have divided scholars into the individualist and collectivist (communitarian) schools. While the individualist school claims that the “self” is robbed of its identity by embracing and participating in the norms and practices of the community, the collectivist school posits that the “self” rather realizes its identity by doing so. How does the Rastafari fare in this debate? According to Barnett (2002, 54), Rastafari as a movement is characterized by a strong regard for individuality, by virtue of its emphasis on the radical freedom and liberty of the individual; on the other, it is characterized by a strong sense of collectivism, communalism and community as a result of its anti-capitalist, anti-materialist ethos.36

The Rastafari position is ironical in the sense that the movement has often criticized capitalism based on the latter’s doctrine of individualism; but individualism is the heart and kernel of capitalism. The question then is what kind of individualism does Rastafari embrace and what type of it that it rejects. According to Henry, Rastafari can resolve the paradox of individualism and collectivism through the Rastafari belief in Haile Selassie as a divine being.37 Henry observes that Rastafari have a direct, mystical, and spiritual relationship with Haile Selassie. This is exemplified in the use of “I” and “I” language. Henry observes that among Jamaicans, Rastafari is unique in their use of the pronoun “I,” which has been substituted for the “me” and

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“my,” which represents the old self before awakening to the divinity of Haile Selassie. In other words, the kind of identity involved in the Rastafari belief system is not the atomic individualist one that has been embraced by capitalism and, by extension, Western philosophy.38 But what is the kind of individualism embraced by Rastafari, which is in sync with their collectivism and communitarianism philosophy? The dialectism of the Rastafari movement could present a response to this question. According to Barnet the “I” pronoun, which is an important concept in Rastafari operates on two levels.39 The small “I” stands for the ego, a mark of individuation of Rastafari person. This is also a mark of agency in the sense that the individual is free to make choices from different alternatives that present themselves to the individual Rastafari. On the other hand, the capital “I” represents the divine essence that lies in all Rastafari adherents. This means that all Rastafari are the sons and daughters of the Most High, that is, Haile Selassie. The agential dimension of the “I” philosophy suggests that individual Rastafari does not need to rely on any external agent to enable him/her to communicate with the divine. Barnett pointed out that the Rastafari movement does not put much emphasis on hierarchical structures. This is a mark of egalitarianism, which the communitarian thesis is noted for. On the other hand, the “I” that is embedded in all individual Rastafari connects them together, and this connection is mediated by different events such as the process of reasoning. The process of reasoning as a mark of dialectical relation between the individual and collective in Rastafari is well captured by Homiak.40 According to him, The Rastafari are men of words who address themselves passionately not only to concerns of identity and ideology, but to concerns of communal morality and responsibility. The process of reasoning is an occasion for Rastafari to communicate together to praise the divine and receive inspiration and reproduce ideology.41

The occasion of reasoning enables individual Rastafari to speak to, with, and about one another and their experiences in the world. Just as the resolution of agency and community is navigated in African communitarianism through a process of decision-making that recognizes the rights of individual to have a say on issues that border on the collective welfare of the community, the Rastafari abhors hierarchical structures where decisions that affect the community are only made by the elite few; rather, Rastafari embraces a process of decision-making via a collective consensus where everybody has a say. Rastafari’s conception of individualism is different from how individualism operates within African communitarianism. The historical situation

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of the Rastafari individual presents a two-stage idea of freedom. First, the individual must free himself/herself from slavery. After s/he is free, s/he is now a lower “I” and s/he becomes a big “I” in the process of re-awakening to Haile Selassie. This position echoes Jean-Paul Sartre’s view in the preface to the Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth: “We only become what we are by radically negating deep down what others have done to us.”42 This is one instance in which Sartre’s philosophy relates to Afro-Caribbean communitarianism. The next section of the chapter presents a synthesis of Sartre’s existentialism and Afro-Caribbean communitarianism as exemplified in Rastafari philosophy. SARTRE’S EXISTENTIALISM AND AFRO-CARIBBEAN COMMUNITARIANISM: A SYNTHESIS To fully understand the synthetical relationship between Sartre’s existentialism and Afro-Caribbean communal thesis, I shall pay attention to four issues, among others. (i) The dialectics of freedom and structure; (ii) God in Sartre’s and Rastafari’s ontologies; (iii) Sartre and Rastafari dialectism; and (iv) Sartre and Rastafari humanism. The Dialectics of Freedom and Structure The problem of freedom and structure relates to the place of the individual amid certain natural, social, and spiritual entities that tend to inhibit the ability of human beings to act in the way they deem fit. When such conditions present themselves, would it be an illusion to believe that human beings are free to choose their path and walk it? We noted earlier that even when Sartre believed that human beings are condemned to freedom, he held the belief just like a typical Marxist that social conditioning exists every minute of our lives (community, culture). He however suggested that nevertheless he still committed to freedom. This is in consonance with the Afro-Caribbean that recognizes the influence of culture and community norms on the lives of individuals. The ego in Sartre is not the solitary individual as observed by McIntyre, and this is the same for Afro-Caribbean—the “I and I” philosophy of the Rastafari. The idea of freedom should not be confused with free will/ freedom of the will. The existentialists speak about freedom in relation to the ability to make choices that are unconstrained by any external being or circumstances. Thus, for Raphael (1976), the notion of freedom can refer to three things: freedom of inner harmony, freedom of choice, and freedom to give effect to our choice.43 It might be suggested that Sartre’s view that human beings are condemned to freedom captures only freedom of inner harmony.

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Thus, the good man or woman who necessarily performs the right actions possesses the freedom of inner harmony. This suggests that this person can hardly be said to have freedom of choice because the moment when freedom is equated with consciousness as Sartre did, a free individual can never be a person of choice because no matter what happens s/he will always perform good acts. This is metaphysical freedom which can also be said to be deterministic. This is the paradox in Sartre’s view of freedom. However, when this view is reconstructed to identify freedom with freedom of choice, a good man or woman has the option to make use of such freedom either for good or for bad or both. If he s/he also possesses the social freedom of not being able to be restrained from giving effect to his/her choice, then this social freedom may be bad in the sense that s/he may make use of it to harm the interests of others. However, it may also be good in the sense that it is beneficial to the interests of others. In so far as Sartre’s view that human beings are condemned to freedom can be identified with freedom of inner harmony, then we cannot avoid the conclusion that freedom is always a perfect situation, no matter what. This is the kind of freedom that can be likened to Kant’s Categorical Imperative, which is an unconditional duty. This is not the kind of freedom that is relevant in social and political affairs where individuals are amid others in the natural and social environments. This reconstruction of Sartre’s view of freedom makes freedom to stand in a dialectical relation with structure. This means that the free individual can make use of freedom to make choices within a structure that defines his/her identity and how s/he is related to others within a given structure, whether it is natural, social, or spiritual. This is in conformity with the Rastafari view that the low “I” stands for individual freedom, but the freedom of choice possessed by the individual can make him/her aligned with the big “I,” exemplified by Haile Selassie. God (Divine) in Sartre’s and Rastafari’s Thought The consequence of a non-dualistic interpretation of Sartre’s ontology is that God or the divine can be accommodated within the Sartrean’s ontology, just as Kierkegaard’s notion of the “leap of faith” establishes the existence of God. Sartre’s being-in-itself and being-for-itself, which are body and consciousness respectively, accommodate the existence of God as argued by the ontological argument that God exists both in consciousness and in reality. In the same vein, the Rastafari God (Black God/Haile Selassie) is both transcendent and immanent. The transcendent attribute is linked with His being divine, while the immanent attribute is His being within the consciousness of the individual Rastafari as well as physical exemplification in Hailie Selassie. With this dual attribute of God, the Rastafari can relate with the

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divine in different experiential and existential situations, thus giving sense to the Rastafari’s understanding of themselves and their natural and social environments. Sartre and Rastafari Dialectism When Sartre’s ontology is reconstructed as has been done in this chapter, it has some similarities with Rastafari’s ontology. It was argued that Sartre’s notion of being-in-itself and being-for-itself does not constitute a dualism; rather they stand in a dialectical relation with one another. There is beingin-itself in being-for-itself and vice versa. This means that the body and consciousness are two aspects of the same underlying being, which is the individual. In this view, the individual is not a solitary individual. It is an individual with double but connected identities. Thus, according to Okolo, a person has double status: “one as being-in-relation-to others and the other as unique and unduplicable.”44 The “other” here might stand for both human and non-human entities. By the same token, the “I” ideology in Rastafari is dialectical in theory and practice. The lower “I” is not an egoistic “I,” rather it is an “I” because it participates in the divine. The dialectics of the lower and the big “I” is mediated, according to Rastafari in the movement’s practices of reasoning, chanting, and drumming, through which intersubjectivity is mediated. This intersubjectivity stands as a replacement for the notions of sadism and masochism which result from the bifurcation of the being-in-itself and being-for-itself advocated by Sartre’s initial conception of human relationship. As it was suggested in an earlier section of the chapter, the reconstruction of human relationship is exemplified in the notions of sympathy and empathy, which are arguably virtues that bind humanity together.45 Humanism in Sartre and Rastafari Both Sartre and Rastafari are critics of European oppression and exploitation through slavery and colonialism. Sartre in his later life and writings embraced Marxist philosophy, which is a social and political philosophy that aimed at transcending capitalism. Rastafari also criticized capitalism through its philosophy of Babylon/Zion distinction. For the Rastafari, Babylon represents oppression, deprivation, exploitation, racism, and other social ills brought upon society by capitalism, while Zion represents freedom and the realization of humanity when capitalism is transcended. The new humanism as espoused by Rastafari is exemplified in the lyrics of Bob Marley, an outstanding member of the Rastafari movement. In Exodus, Bob Marley was not only speaking about oppression and liberation from a local or national perspective;

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he situated his message to humanity in general. According to him, freedom is a universal virtue that should be recognized and granted to people who are under the yoke of oppression and who are willing to be liberated. Thus, according to Dawes (2002, 190), “Marley’s images of exodus, resistance and paradise on earth aren’t just Jamaica confined to undeveloped parts of the world; they can speak to everyone through the power of his music as a modern-day Utopian.”46 Marley advocates a situation where all persons of all races and creeds will live peacefully and equally with one another. By the same token, Fanon, whose work The Wretched of the Earth was prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, observed in the closing paragraph of the book: “For Europe, for ourselves and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start, develop a new way of thinking, and endeavour to create a new man.”47 CONCLUSION What this chapter has shown is that even when there are different philosophical traditions in which conceptual frameworks reflect different theoretical and practical assumptions, there are nevertheless connections among them. Such connections might not be immediately apparent, but on critical examination connections become intellectually recognizable. This was done in this chapter, especially in relation to Sartre’s ontology, which the chapter argued that it deviates from the dualistic conception of reality in Western philosophy. It was shown in the chapter that even when Sartre’s ontology is expressed in dualistic language, its form and content are not dualistic as that term is understood in Western philosophy, where terms are used in opposition to one another. It was suggested that the elements of Satre’s ontology are dialectical rather than dualistic. It must be noted that the relationship between Sartre and Afro-Caribbean communitarianism as exemplified in Rastafari is not coincidental. Sartre, in his later life, was an advocate of intellectual activism, just as the Rastafari is down to earth about its teaching within the group and the larger society. As observed by Gordon (1997, 2), Sartre stands as unusual catalyst in the history of black existential philosophy, for he serves as a link between Richard Wright and Frantz Fanon on the one hand, and the historical forces that came into play for the ascendance of European Philosophy of Existence in the American academy on the other hand.48

The lesson that could be learned from the synthesis of Sartre and Rastafari is that the concepts of individual freedom and communal life are not necessarily antithetical to one another. Individual freedom requires community for self-realization, while community needs the individual freedom to flourish.

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However, in the main, in a globalized world in which there is shrinking of place and space, community values become important, as Gbadegesin observes, “without community, the self is a loner at the mercy of worldly wolves.”49 NOTES 1. T. Z. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 326. 2. Ibid., 328. 3. Samuel Enoch Stumpf and James Fieser, Philosophy: History and Readings (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012), 434. 4. Monday Lewis Igbafen, “Existentialism: Its Precursors in the History of Philosophy,” The Nigerian Journal of Philosophy 22, no. 1 (2006), 41. 5. Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Abington: Routledge, 2000), 4. 6. Ibid., 2–3. 7. Aime Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (New York: Monthly Review Press Césaire, 2000), 9. 8. Earl McKenzie, Philosophy in the West Indian Novel (Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2009), 45. 9. See Lewis Gordon, “Existential Dynamics of Theorizing Black Invisibility,” in Lewis R. Gordon (ed.) Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1997), 69–79. 10. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre, 341. 11. Ibid., 358. 12. Ibid., 359. 13. Alasdair MacIntyre, “Existentialism,” in D. J. O’Connor (ed.) A Critical History of Western Philosophy (New York: The Free Press, 1964), 509. 14. See H. A. Prichard, “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind 21, no. 18 (1912), 21–37. See also: Amelie Rorty, “Questioning Moral Theories,” Philosophy 85, no. 331 (2010), 29–46. 15. R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 68–69. 16. MacIntyre, “Existentialism,” 528. 17. Ibid., 250. 18. Simeão Donizeti Sass, “The Ontology of Sartre: Dualism and Being as a Whole,” Phenomenology, Humanities and Sciences 1–2 (2020), 287–95. 19. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. (New York: Vintage, 1956), 621. 20. Sass, “The Ontology of Sartre,” 291. 21. See Liard Addies, “Freedom and the Marxist Philosophy of History,” Philosophy of Science 33, no. 2 (1966), 101–17. 22. MacIntyre, “Existentialism,” 520.

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23. Gordon, “Existential Dynamics of Theorizing Black Invisibility,” 72. 24. Lavine, From Socrates to Sartre, 356–57. 25. MacIntyre, “Existentialism,” 521. 26. Patricia Raybon, “Seen by God,” Our Daily Bread, 2021. https://ourdailybread​ .ca​/author​/patriciaraybon. 27. Efraim Podoksik, “One Concept of Liberty: Towards Writing the History of a Political Concept,” Journal of the History of Ideas 21, no. 2 (2010), 234. 28. See Paget Henry, Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2000). See also: Clevis Headley, “Egological Investigations: A Comparative Study of African Existentialism and Western Existentialism,” CLR James Journal 10, no. 1 (2004), 73–105. 29. Leopold Senghor, On African Socialism (New York: Praeger, 1964), 93–94. 30. Lawrence Bamikole, “Rastafari as Philosophy and Praxis,” in Michael Barnett (ed.) Rastafari in the New Millennium (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2020), 125–41. 31. See Segun Gbadegesin, “Individuality, Community, and the Moral Order,” in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.) African Philosophy: An Anthology (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers, 1998), 130–41. See also: Kwame Gyekye, “Person and Community in African Thought,” in P. H. Coetzee and A. P. J. (eds.) African Philosophy Reader (London: Routledge, 1998), 297–312. 32. John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinmann, 1977), 108. 33. Lawrence Bamikole, “Livity as a Dimension of Identity in Rastafari Thought: Implications for Development in Africana Societies,” Caribbean Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2017), 451–66. 34. Robert A. Baron, Donn Bryne, Nyla Branscombe, and Gopa Bhardwaj, Social Psychology (New York: Pearson, 2006), 171. 35. See Edgar Boedeker, “Individual and Community in Early Heidegger: Situating das Man, the Man-Self, and Self Ownership in Dasein’s Ontological Structure,” Inquiry 44, no. 1 (2001), 63–99. 36. Michael Barnett, “Rastafari Dialectism: The Epistemological Individualism and Connectivism of Rastafari,” Caribbean Quarterly 48, no. 4 (2002), 54–61. 37. See Paget Henry, “Rastafarianism and the Reality of Dread,” in Lewis Gordon (ed.) Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1997), 157. 38. See Lawrence O. Bamikole, “The Concept of Dread in the Psycho-Philosophical Systems of Kierkegaard and Rastafari,” Journal of Philosophy and Related Disciplines 3, nos. 1 and 2 (2008), 144–58. See also Bamikole, “Livity as a Dimension of Identity in Rastafari Thought,” 2017. 39. Barnett, “Rastafari Dialectism,” 54. 40. John P. Homiak, “Dub History: Soundings on Rastafari Livity Language,” in Barry Chavannes (ed.) Rastafari and Other African Caribbean Worldviews (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), 30. 41. Homiak, “Dub History,” 30.

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42. See Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (New York, Grove Press, 2004), li. 43. See D. D. Raphael, Problems of Political Philosophy (London: The Macmillan Press, 1976). 44. C. B. Okolo, “Self as a Problem in African Philosophy,” International Philosophical Quarterly xxxii (1992), 477–85, 480. 45. See Lawrence Bamikole, “David Hume’s Notion of Personal Identity: Implications for Identity Construction and Affective Communal Living in Africana Societies,” Philosophy Study 4, no. 4 (2014), 266–76. 46. Kwame Dawes, Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius (London: Sanctuary Publishing, 2002), 190. 47. Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 239. 48. Gordon, “Existential Dynamics of Theorizing Black Invisibility,” 2. 49. Gbadegesin, “Individuality, Community, and the Moral Order,” 354.

REFERENCES Addies, Laird. “Freedom and the Marxist Philosophy of History.” Philosophy of Science 33, no. 2 (1966): 101–17. Bamikole, O. Lawrence. “The Concept of Dread in the Psycho-Philosophical Systems of Kierkegaard and Rastafari.” Journal of Philosophy and Related Disciplines 3, nos. 1 and 2 (2008):144–58. ———. “Rastafari as Philosophy and Praxis,” in Michael Barnett (ed.) Rastafari in the New Millennium, 125–41. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2012. ———. “David Hume’s Notion of Personal Identity: Implications for Identity Construction and Affective Communal Living in Africana Societies.” Philosophy Study 4, no. 4 (2014): 266–76. ———. “Bob Marley’s Music and Liberation Theology.” Caribbean Journal of Education 38, no. 2 (2016): 43–67. ———. “Livity as a Dimension of Identity in Rastafari Thought: Implications for Development in Africana Societies.” Caribbean Quarterly 63, no. 4 (2017): 451–66. Barnett, Michael. “Rastafari Dialectism: The Epistemological Individualism and Connectivism of Rastafari.” Caribbean Quarterly 48, no. 4 (2002): 54–61. Boedeker, Edgar. “Individual and Community in Early Heidegger: Situating das Man, the Man-Self, and Self Ownership in Dasein’s Ontological Structure.” Inquiry 44, no. 1 (2001): 63–99. ———. The Rastafari Movement: A North American and Caribbean Perspective. New York: Routledge, 2018. Baron, A. Roberts, Donn Bryne, and Nyla A. Branscombe. Social Psychology. New York: Pearson Education, Inc, 2006. Césaire, Aime. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. Dawes, Kwame. Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius. London: Sanctuary Publishing, 2002. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1952, 2004.

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Gbadegesin, Segun. “Individuality, Community, and the Moral Order,” in Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.) African Philosophy: An Anthology, 130–41. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. Gordon, Lewis. “Existential Dynamics of Theorizing Black Invisibility,” in Lewis R. Gordon (ed.) Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, 69–79. New York: Routledge, 1996. Gyekye, Kwame. “Person and Community in African Thought,” in P. H. Coetzee and A. P. J. (eds.) African Philosophy Reader, 297–312. London: Routledge, 1998. Hare, R. M. The Language of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952. Headley, Clevis. “Egological Investigations: A Comparative Study of African Existentialism and Western Existentialism.” CLR James Journal 10, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 73–105. Henry, Paget. “Rastafarianism and the Reality of Dread,” in Lewis Gordon (ed.) Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy, 157–164. New York: Routledge, 1997. ———. Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy. New York and London: Routledge, 2000. Homiak, John P. “Dub History: Soundings on Rastafari Livity Language,” in Barry Chavannes (ed.) Rastafari and Other African Caribbean Worldviews, 127–81. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Igbafen, Monday Lewis. “Existentialism: Its Precursors in the History of Philosophy.” The Nigerian Journal of Philosophy 22, no. 1 (2006): 41–65. Lavine, T. Z. From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest. New York: Bantam Books, 1984. MacIntyre, Alasdair. “Existentialism,” in D. J. O’Connor (ed.) A Critical History of Western Philosophy, 509–29. New York: The Free Press, 1964. Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. London: Heinmann, 1977. McKenzie, Earl. Philosophy in the West Indian Novel. Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2009. Okolo, C. B. “Self as a Problem in African Philosophy.” International Philosophical Quarterly xxxii (1992): 477–85. Podoksik, Efraim. “One Concept of Liberty: Towards Writing the History of a Political Concept.” Journal of the History of Ideas 21, no. 2 (2010): 219–40. Prichard, H. A. “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” Mind 21, no. 18 (1912): 21–37. Raphael, D. D. Problems of Political Philosophy. London: The Macmillan Press, 1976. Raybon, Patricia. “Seen by God.” Our Daily Bread. February 12, 2011. https://ourdailybread​.ca​/author​/patriciaraybon. Rorty, Amelie. “Questioning Moral Theories.” Philosophy 85, no. 331 (2010): 29–46. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Trans. H. Barnes. New York: Vintage, 1956. ———. “Existentialism is a Humanism,” (1946) in Wade Baskin (ed.) The Philosophy of Existentialism. New York: Philosophical Library, 1965.

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———. No Exit and Three Other Plays. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Sass, Simeão Donizeti. “The Ontology of Sartre: Dualism and Being as a Whole.” Phenomenology, Humanities and Sciences 1–2 (2020): 287–95. Senghor, Leopold. On African Socialism. Trans. Mercer Cook. New York: Praeger, 1964. Stumpf, Samuel Enoch, and James Fieser. Philosophy: History and Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012.

Chapter 2

Miles’s Smiles Mid-Century Portraits of Fugitive Improvisation Sybil Newton Cooksey

In May 1949, Paris hosted its first International Festival de Jazz since the onset of WWII. A twenty-two-year-old Miles Davis takes his first trip to Paris, his first trip anywhere, actually, to play the festival as part of the Tadd Dameron Quintet. After long years of wartime calamity and gloom, the festival generated a great deal of excitement and a wealth of iconic photographs. Davis figures in many of them. In one of these, he is pictured on the tarmac at Idlewild Airport in New York with a lineup of his travel companions, including Sidney Bechet, Hot Lips Page, Max Roach, and Charlie Parker, whose band Davis has just left to go out on his own, and Kenny Dorham, who replaced him at trumpet in Parker’s band. In the photo, Davis strikes a romantic pose among the musicians arrayed in front of the waiting plane, looking away from the camera while his conk blows in the wind. Subsequent portraits track the young trumpeter’s French initiation—romancing existentialist it-girl Juliette Greco, joking with Boris Vian, lounging in a cave in St. Germain. Whatever expectations the young trumpeter might have had before coming to Paris, he quickly found himself caught up in music and in love. In his later reflections, he muses that the trip brought him to the cusp of something life-changing. Early in 1949, Tadd and I took a group to Paris, France and played opposite Bird, just like we had done at the Royal Roost. This was my first trip out of the country and it changed the way I looked at things forever. I loved being in Paris and loved the way I was treated. I had bought me some new suits that I had made, so I know I was together, man. The band was me, Tadd, Kenny Clarke, James Moody and a French bass player named Pierre Michelot. Our band was the hit of the Paris Jazz Festival, along with Sidney Bechet. That’s where I met 25

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Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso and Juliette Greco. I have never felt like that in my life since.1

Armed with a new musical (and sartorial) confidence, Davis made a splash at the festival, which ran from May 8 to May 15 at the Salle Pleyel in the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré. The night concerts of the Quintet were recorded by Radio France, and although the sound quality of the extant recordings is really very bad, it’s worth a listen just to hear the manic commentary of the radio hosts talking about the music—“Be-bop! The new modern style!” The excitement in the room is quite palpable. The feeling was obviously mutual. Davis would later write in his autobiography that he loved getting that kind of response from the crowd, and he sensed that “the band and the music we played sounded better over there.”2 “Everything seemed to change for me while I was in Paris,” he wrote. “I even found myself announcing the songs in French.”3 Now, Davis’s love for Paris, and its love for him, was the explicit motive for “We Want Miles,” an exhibition that ran from the October 16, 2009, to January 17, 2010, at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of this visit. The curator of that exhibit and editor of its catalogue, Vincent Bessières, is a French jazz expert who also contributed the essay “Miles in Paris” to the volume Miles Davis: A Complete Illustrated History (2012).4 In it Bessières asserts, Paris made Miles a different man. In 1949, he was constantly smiling. Photographers caught him in the cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés hanging out with Bird and French writer Boris Vian, joking at the bar of the Salle Pleyel concert hall with trumpet buddies Kenny Dorham and Oran “Hot Lips” Page, playing around with Juliette Greco. Miles is all smiles, showing a face that had rarely been seen elsewhere. And would rarely be seen again.5

Further along, Bessières writes, France could make Miles smile, allowing him to experience love, friendship, freedom, and pleasure—and to find the energy to go back to where he believed he had to live and create, home. To Miles, France was a shelter, a place he could expect a lot, where things would be different. Here, only music mattered, not race.6

For the record, I absolutely disagree with this assertion. I also recognize the degree to which the narrative is fed by a popular and persistent perception of Paris as a place of refuge against racism, and it’s a particularly seductive one for a reader like Bessières, who is eager to incorporate Davis into the meaning and mystique associated with Paris’s Left Bank in the postwar years. For Bessières,

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Miles became part of the myth of the Left Bank spirit, a crowd in which artists of all kinds, intellectuals and merrymakers, were willing to fulfill their life with a complete freedom of thought and action after suffering from the deprivation of the war years. He was the Black, the American, the Jazz Musician, and his love story with Juliette Greco provided the idealized picture of a love in black and white to those who were expecting new times.7

To my mind, the tendency on the part of French intellectuals, Sartre among them, to associate jazz—and the Black men who played it—with ideals of freedom and authenticity is at once too easy and an intriguing proposition. In what follows I contemplate the existentialist implications of Miles Davis’s situation—the Black, the American, the jazz musician, abroad in a postwar Paris—through images documenting his 1949 trip. Offering an alternate reading of these photos within the context of his budding relationships with Greco, Vian, and Sartre, I suggest that Miles’s smiles are hardly plain proofs of his feeling of freedom, and the symbolic marriage of jazz and existentialism is more fraught and complicated than is imagined by those who make the association. I think it interesting, for example, that Bessières talks of cameras “capturing”—and that’s a telling word in this context—Davis smiling in photos. One, because what strikes me is that in most of the photos mentioned, he is in fact not smiling. In others, he might be smiling if he weren’t so purposefully looking away. Just at the moment of the snapshot, everyone is ready and Miles Davis turns his head. Or perhaps he was always already looking elsewhere. My point here is that the gesture is not easy to interpret, but it’s certainly not an accident. To conclude that Davis is smiling all over Paris because he’s feeling a freedom denied him in the United States doesn’t quite square with the ambiguity that’s happening in these photographs. This chapter takes the 1949 meeting of Sartre and Davis as the starting point for an extended consideration of this moment in both their careers and what each might have impressed upon the other in the course of their long conversations in cafes, clubs, and parties. Despite his indifference to existentialism per se, Davis was at the time thinking in his own way about many of its themes, including authenticity and the role of the artist. Sartre, for his part, was an avid instrumentalist and jazz enthusiast who’d recently penned essays on jazz and undertaken serious projects engaging the question of race in the United States.8 How does this encounter, however brief, shape our understanding of Sartre’s work on race and his relationships with African American artists and intellectuals of his time? While Sartre’s friendship with Richard Wright is well documented and their mutual admiration and influence are better known, how might careful study of the interactions with Davis add to our understanding of how Sartre’s notions were improvised, extended, and remixed by Black existentialists? Does this brief stint with the Left Bank crowd shape Davis’s

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future endeavor? How does his lived experience and artistic practice challenge or extend what Sartre claims to know about music, being, and Blackness? This inquiry is clearly lighthearted and quite speculative but does attempt a semi-serious answer to the popular assertion that Miles Davis is, as jazz historian Eric Nisenson says, “the ultimate existentialist artist.”9 In what follows, I indicate the ways in which Davis’s experience at the precarious edge of the existentialist crowd makes manifest the limits of Sartre’s concepts of freedom and bad faith and highlight Sartre’s deafness to jazz’s intellectual and artistic projects. I also argue, though, that their brief friendship and mutual respect give life to Nisenson’s assertion by challenging us to rethink the situation and to recognize a fugitive phenomenology latent in Davis’s performance of cool reserve. THE JULIETTE SITUATION By all accounts, including his own, Juliette Greco is a significant thing that happens to Miles Davis on this trip, and much is made of their affair. There is an interesting discrepancy in the story of how they met that I don’t have space to describe in full, but must gloss here. Her version is that she was hanging out in the wings at Salle Pleyel because she couldn’t afford a ticket and was struck by the beauty of Davis’s face in profile—“a real Giacometti,” she called it.10 Michèle, the wife of Boris Vian, introduced them, and their connection was immediate, a “coup de foudre.” Love at first sight. Davis’s version of the meeting goes something like: He noticed this fine woman hanging out at the band’s rehearsals and asked who she was. When he is told “she’s one of those existentialists,” his response is “fuck all that shit”—and I’m paraphrasing here, but those are exact words—and motions for her to come over. She does, and from that moment on they are inseparable, indeed the portrait of postwar Parisian idle, idyll, and ideal love.11 In a famous photograph of the couple, perhaps taken in a dressing room at the Salle Pleyel, for there is a mirror in the background, Davis looks away from the camera and shyly up at Greco; she is smiling sweetly with her gaze lowered. It is a portrait shot through with young love. In another fan-favorite photo, they are pictured in an intimate huddle as he plays his trumpet while she fingers the valves. Both are intently focused on the instrument; she is facing the camera, while he is shot in profile. Their fervid romance proves short-lived, however, and this picture of black-and-white perfection is shattered by Davis’s leaving. He would later recall that the separation was a particularly painful one, perhaps exacerbated by a bandmate who jumped ship to stay on in Paris. Kenny Clarke decided right then and there he was staying, told me I was a fool to go back to the United States, I was sad, too, because every night I would go

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out to the clubs with Sartre and Juliette and we would just sit in the outside cafes and drink wine and eat and talk. Juliette asked me to stay. Even Sartre said, “Why don’t you and Juliette get married?” But I didn’t. I stayed a week or two, fell in love with Juliette and with Paris and then left. When I got ready to leave, there were a lot of sad faces at the airport, including mine. Kenny was there waving goodbye. Man, I was so depressed coming back to this country on the airplane that I couldn’t say anything all the way back. I didn’t know that shit was going to hit me like that. I was so depressed when I got back that before I knew it, I had a heroin habit that took me four years to kick and I found myself for the first time out of control and sinking faster than a motherfucker toward death.12

And so, despite the blessing of his high holiness Jean-Paul Sartre, Miles Davis does not get married to Juliette Greco. He gets on a plane. This image of Davis, mute and miserable on the way back home, is the bookend to the one of his departure from Idlewild. The fact that, in the face of all of this freedom, Miles Davis decides to return to the United States (and immediately pick up a heroin habit) becomes, then, the sad postscript to his fleeting affair not only with Juliette but also with Paris, and perhaps, with authenticity—for isn’t it the definition of bad faith to flee one’s freedom? Sartre seemingly plays a bit part in this story. I think it worth noting, though, that it is technically Sartre who proposes marriage to Miles Davis. He pops the question in the most Parisian of settings, and, according to a recreation of the scene by Agnès Poirier, with his whole St. Germain crowd in attendance. Boris and Michèle Vian, Simone de Beauvoir and her lover Nelson Algren—who’d arrived in Paris just as the jazz festival got underway to spend a holiday with his “French wife”—as well as Pablo Picasso, who “was back from Antibes for a few days,” witness the proposal. “One evening,” Poirier writes, “as they were all having dinner in a bistro on the boulevard Saint-Germain, Sartre said to Miles: ‘Why don’t you and Juliette get married?’ Miles replied matter-of-factly, ‘Because I love her too much to make her unhappy.’”13 Although many questions come immediately to mind—Why is Sartre, so famously unmarried and in fact dining with his lover’s lover, proposing marriage to (for) Davis?—I am far more interested in Davis’s lightning-fast reply. For me this scene of the proposal makes manifest the complicated terms of a possible marriage not only with Juliette but also with Sartre’s whole crowd, and distills Davis’s fraught situation as a Black jazzman abroad in Paris, eagerly courted by the famed existentialist. What does his turning down, or more accurately, his sidestepping of Sartre’s proposal suggest regarding the ways and whys the jazzman and the existentialist are drawn to, yet ultimately wary of each other? Sartre seems not to have registered any public comment on Davis’s ambivalent response or subsequent decision to leave Paris, but we can imagine a fair

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amount of clucking went on in his circles after the plane takes off with Davis on it. On the face of it, Davis’s situation rhymes with that of Lulu in Sartre’s short story “Intimacy” (1939), which had recently been translated and published in English in 1949. In this story, one of the nine in Le Mur (The Wall) wherein Sartre explores varying degrees of bad faith, the protagonist Lulu refuses to choose to leave her impotent husband Henri to run away with her lover Pierre. Urged on by her girlfriend Rirette who admonishes, in a hauntingly Sartrean refrain, “you have no right to forsake your happiness,” Lulu does pack a bag and leaves Henri. The desertion is hasty though and turns out to be brief, for after one night in a miserable hotel room, Lulu makes her way home to her manchild of a husband. Notably, her reasons for doing so are ultimately opaque to us.14 That is, we get the news in a letter delivered to Pierre explaining that she can’t leave Henri because the neighbors report that he is in a bad way. We are led to believe that Lulu has caved to bourgeois conformity, societal conventions, and the needs of others, but there are numerous indications, including the horror of sex with Pierre, to establish that her leaving and her happiness are not one and the same. Sartre writes the story with enough ambiguity—and the character with so little interiority—that in the end, we don’t know how she came to the decision to return. So, although framed as a bad-faith flight from her freedom, there remains the possibility that Lulu has indeed authentically chosen the “acceptable” choice. In “Sartre’s body parts: ‘Intimité’ as existential angst,” French literature scholar Lawrence Schehr reads “Intimacy” as Sartre’s attempt, albeit halfhearted, to write the situation of women. The attempt ultimately fails in Schehr’s estimation because there “seems to be an implicit phallocentrism, misogyny, and heteronormativity that run throughout his [Sartre’s] work.”15 Schehr wonders whether there is any way that Lulu (and many of the other female protagonists of the stories in Le Mur) can avoid being in bad faith, in part because they never fully emerge as real people. His reading highlights Sartre’s tendency to put himself into the situation, often substituting a protagonist’s subjectivity with his own. In this case, he projects his own misogyny and bodily obsessions—which are also strangely racial, although this particular aspect remains unaddressed in extant scholarship—into his perverse writing of Lulu’s self-consciousness and perception. She is less a female protagonist than Sartre stepped into a different skin. For me, Schehr’s critique points to a false universalism—or worse yet, a Sartre-centrism—that haunts Sartre’s early notion of bad faith, in that it proceeds from an undeclared assumption that there is always a white male “universal” subject underneath formulations of human consciousness. I parallel these stories here not to suggest that Davis has seemingly returned to the United States (and to his partner and two young children) out of fidelity to his troubled relationship and to bourgeois ideals or societal

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pressure, although that reason is perhaps too easily dismissed by those caught up in the romance of the Davis-Greco affair.16 My interest is in the opacity at the heart of both situations; like Lulu’s, Davis’s motives, his inner thought and decision process are not narrated to us. In his own telling, Davis doesn’t provide any reason for getting on the plane; the story of the departure is narrated as a rather terse sequence of events—he fell in love with Paris, and with Juliette, then left. The opacity of the statement leaves us to wonder in its wake. The absence not only frames the subsequent incomprehension that he shouldn’t choose to stay in Paris, but also feeds all manner of (contemporary and current) speculations, and fuels others’ tendency to fill in this outline with their wishful or willful thinking about his feelings and motives. My point here is that Davis’s unavailable interiority means his Juliette situation is not straightforward, nor easy to read, and rather than fill the gaps with what we or “any person” or generic human would do in such a situation, we must carefully consider how his limited narrative upends some facile humanist notions of bad faith.17 Davis’s own statements encourage us to challenge the assumption that for him marriage with Juliette was synonymous with freedom and reject the framing of his departure from Paris as a defeat, or evidence of his “selfhatred.”18The way he himself describes his return to the United States, for example, begs the question of whether it is actually freedom that he is fleeing. I find it significant that Davis often refers to the “illusion” that he lived while in Paris, his making frequent mention of his being “hypnotized,” or “in a trance” when describing how it felt to be there. It is an illusion from which he rudely awoke when back in the United States.19 Davis’s framing of his time in France as an illusion rather than a freedom he has left behind scrambles Sartre’s notions of bad faith and self-deception. The decision to leave Paris can then be understood not as a bad-faith rejection of a freedom offered but as the inevitable, and perhaps more authentic acceptance that a momentary something-else has ended. At the risk of punning, I want to add that there is an element of elusion that subtends Davis’s awareness of the illusion that Paris presents. From the narrative sidestep of the question of why he left Paris, to the quick and savvy deferral of the question of marriage, to the turning of his head in nearly every photograph, Davis’s attempt not to get caught (up) is a central aspect of this story. We must find a new philosophical vocabulary to account for this elusion and think existentialist understandings of the situation beyond its humanist limits in order to better theorize this Black artist’s lived experience. Even the most famous Black American exile, Richard Wright, expressed his irritation with the idea held by so many French in his time that the only logical choice for any Black man who found himself “free” in Paris would be to remain there. He once wrote a friend, “And,

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of course, when a Frenchman sees an American Negro, he is self-centered enough to feel he has come to stay, to escape.”20 What I find intriguing here is the way that Wright frames the Black experience abroad as inhabiting a condition, not of freedom but of “escape.” Though it may seem mere semantics, I emphasize the terminology in order to contend that escape and freedom are hardly the same; to my mind, escape connotes a far more precarious, momentary, and furtive experience. Davis, I argue, absolutely sensed this difference. Revisiting the photographs, I want to suggest that Davis’s experience in Paris is more fugitive than free and consider the consequence of this reframing. This focus on fugitivity is suggested by terms that Greco herself uses to describe the romance, which lasted only a couple of weeks. “C’était court. Fugitivement court,” she says of her relationship with Davis.21 The formulation also references the work of Tina Campt, a visual studies scholar who writes about photography and the African diaspora in Europe. Her work focuses on tiny and neglected archives—family photos, small studio portraits, unclaimed passport photos—because, she says, she’s interested in creating an “alternative visual archive” of Black subjectivity.22 She wants to explore how these photos document a “subjecthood under constraint,” that is, however, not passive. Campt’s work is about photography and fugitivity, and in it she demonstrates her indebtedness to ways of thinking about Black subjectivity and fugitivity that emerge out of performance studies. She cites, in particular, work by Fred Moten that characterizes fugitivity as the “gift of constantly escaping,” and an irreducible property of life, persisting in and against every disciplinary technique while constituting and instantiating not just the thought but that actuality of the outside that is what/where Blackness is—as space or spacing of the imagination, as condition of possibility and constant troubling of critique.23

It is this kind of fugitivity that I believe surfaces in Miles Davis’s Paris photos. So I’m thinking with Campt, not only about alternative visual archives of Black subjectivity, but visual archives of alternative Black subjectivity. That is, photos of “subjecthood under constraint.” And I’m thinking with Moten about this idea that fugitivity is a being-in-motion, a tendency to steal away, to elude capture—to “slide away from the proposed.” For me, this work on Black fugitivity sharpens our awareness of just what kind of subject, photographic, and otherwise, Miles Davis is. I think it possible to dovetail these insights with what we know about the situation in order to get a fuller portrait of a Davis in Paris—a young Black artist caught up in the postwar spirit, being in love, and just beginning to feel himself, and at the same time wary of being captured, by cameras, convention, and comprehension.

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MILES THE ELUSIVE Although it isn’t until Frantz Fanon’s 1952 account of the lived experience of the Black (man) that we get a formal demand for new thinking on the existentialist notion of facticity and a consideration of the situation outside the universal, Davis’s 1949 experience can also be said to problematize Sartre’s philosophical formulae. For Davis, no less than Fanon, experiences the fraught consciousness of his walking into a room, sitting around a dinner table in St. Germain, and performing on stage—more about which later—and grapples with questions of bad faith, freedom, and the seeming (im)possibility of making “the” authentic choice. While he would never speak in these terms, Davis does act (and I mean this in both senses of the word) with a keen awareness of the white gazes trained upon him, the limits of his access to freedom as Sartre would have it, and other fact(icitie)s that attended his Blackness. On the eve of his appearance at the festival Miles Davis was something of an enigma for the French jazz critics. A long article by French critic and composer André Hodeir in the April 1949 issue of Jazz Hot is entitled “Miles Davis, l’insaisissable.” The frequency with which that word recurs here betrays the critic’s difficulty in getting a handle on Davis’s personality and style. Although the translated title of the article is “Miles Davis, the elusive,” the etymology that links insaisissable and unseizable (difficult to handle or to grasp) speaks to the connection between comprehend and apprehend that emerges in these early attempts to figure Davis out. The persistence of metaphors of capture and consumption in these sources also point to particular precarities attendant to Davis’s navigating postwar Paris at the edges of the existentialist crowd, with all eyes upon him. Boris Vian spends a whole lot of his essay, “Quelques notes sur Miles Davis,” published in Jazz News in May 1949, staring at Davis’s picture. Given the publication lag time, this was most likely written before they met, and Vian is musing over an early publicity photo. “And if you believe the pictures,” he says, Davis has “elfish ears.” Although Vian insists that’s a good thing, the observation is offered without context or explanation, and its meaning is unclear to me, as it undoubtedly was to contemporary readers. We are left to think that the non sequitur must represent some signal to those in the know, perhaps a bit of hep chat to underline Vian’s status as an insider to the scene. Eventually, Vian decides that Davis is handsome. He’s been told that Miles is a little short, but he, Vian, is struck by his sensuality, which seems to him “perfectly balanced by intelligence.” When they meet in person, Vian and Davis quickly become running buddies, as the bon vivant brings the newly arrived musician into the St. Germain crowd, introducing him to Sartre and Juliette, and hosting him at numerous dinners and parties around town. In an oft-reproduced chummy photo, the

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large Frenchman awkwardly hoists a long arm over the smaller jazzman’s shoulder. The body language here is interesting, for while both men’s bodies are turned toward the photographer, Davis is (again!) captured only in profile. Cradled in the crook of Vian’s armpit, Davis’s gaze upon his host is intent and fixed upon his mouth, as if trying hard to digest the words that are coming out. Vian appears to be mid-blink, mid-hand gesture, and so perhaps mid-story or mid-joke, and Davis appears to crack a rare, albeit tight, smile. We also see the set jaw and a vein bulging in his temple that might betray a trace of uneasiness, but because his face is turned away from us we cannot know the entirety of this expression. Oddly, although both are aware of the presence of the camera that is documenting their budding friendship, neither man is looking at it. In a later reflection on his brief sojourn with the St. Germain crowd, Davis recalls, “There was Boris Vian, who played trumpet like a madman. And Sartre, you know, ‘Red Hands,’—no, ‘Dirty Hands.’ I didn’t understand anything they were saying, but they were so attentive.”24 For me, the statement raises the specter of what it was like for Davis to be a Black artist visiting Paris at the time when its inhabitants were so hungry for the lively and so hopeful about the new. In these photos I see Davis negotiate language and cultural barriers, but also his hosts’ intense interest in knowing him. In another photo from a cave, an underground jazz club, Davis is pictured lounging on a couch, flanked by Juliette Greco and Michelle Vian. Tommy Potter, Boris Vian, Kenny Dorham, and Charlie Parker are arrayed in a tight semicircle around. The rumpledness of the men’s suits and the degree to which everyone is sunken into their seats with their drinks and cigarettes suggest that it’s late in the evening. Davis’s hands are folded over a crossed leg; he is seemingly relaxed but not quite. His head is turned just slightly this time, toward Dorham, and again, there’s the tight smile. This recurrent gesture underlines my point about the necessity of seeing Davis’s smiles as other than plain proofs of free and contented subjecthood. They speak instead to a fugitive “outside” to this frame and to the new possibilities and precarities that attended Black subjectivity in the postwar Paris that Davis moved through. My persistent emphasis on gesture, body position, and motility as important aspects of Davis’s being with these French philosophers and fans is meant to track his own understanding that they are paying close attention to his movements and inform his subsequent attempts to manage how he enters a room, sits in a cave, steps on stage, or reacts to a bad joke. Despite signs of a lingering awkwardness, some of the stiffness that marked earlier photos—or earlier-in-the-evening photos?—has begun to wear off. The nighttime snapshots underscore the fact of these jazz scenes as vital to postwar Parisian culture and point to Black American musicians as important interlocutors who shaped French intellectuals’ thinking on race. Given the

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degree to which Vian’s relationship with Black musicians directly influenced his writing, how might we understand what kind of thinking is going on in this shot? There are several conversations happening inside and outside of the frame, for in addition to the central cluster, Porter and Parker seem to be addressing people just off camera. If we can see the cave as a site for socializing but also thinking, how does this photo dislodge the café as the site par excellence of existentialist thinking? Does this possible widening of the circle challenge what Lauren Du Graf calls “existentialism’s white problem”? The tendency to reproduce the image of Beauvoir Sartre, Albert Camus, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty around a table in St. Germain as illustrative of philosophy in action reinforces, in her words, “the idea that existentialism is a white club—the Parisian café its clubhouse.”25 By shifting this geography from the café to the cave, I mean to reorient our sense of where existentialist thinking happens, to take seriously Black musicians’ theorizing of their own situations, and to radically open the question of who is influencing whom. Notably, Sartre is not pictured as part of the group hanging out in these photos. He did, however, profess a great love for—and understanding of— jazz. In fact, the music plays a pivotal role in Nausea (1938), and Sartre most famously tries his hand at jazz writing with the essay, “I Discovered Jazz in America,” published in 1947. In it, he recounts his experience of a show at Nick’s café, a popular Greenwich Village spot that he visited during one of his two trips to the United States in 1945 and 1946—probably at the recommendation of Richard Wright.26 The first line of the essay is its most famous: “Jazz is like a banana. It must be consumed on the spot.”27 The strange analogy has generated much speculation as to its meaning; some interpreters offer that it indicates Sartre’s belief that authentic jazz existed only in its native US (as opposed to in France). Eschewing for the moment a more penetrating analysis, I want to suggest that the pronouncement might be purposely inscrutable and multivalent. In the essay “Jazz Is Like a Banana,” Craig Matarrese writes, He apparently also tried out this analogy on Charlie Parker, when he met him in 1949 at a gig, but instead of offering any analysis of the claim, Bird rather just complimented Sartre on his playing. Of course, Parker may have been teasing with that compliment, or may have thought he was speaking to someone else, but it is at least possible that he knew that Sartre played piano, so the comment may have been straightforward. In any case, Sartre’s enthusiasm for jazz was robust, and his engagement with improvisatory music was not superficial.28

Here Parker is in the rather weird position of being put on the spot; his ambivalent response makes it hard to discern whether he is humoring Sartre or having a laugh, and he could be doing both at the same time. What I note is the date, which suggests that this encounter occurred during the

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festival—where else would Sartre and Parker have occasion to meet in 1949? It is reasonable to assume, then, that Sartre also tried the line on Davis when they met for the first time. If the phrase was one that Sartre was rehearsing and repeating for various jazzmen two years after the publication of the essay, he was clearly still convinced of its charm. Or, more charitably, still eager to field the reactions of each new hearer. Even if the phrase is Sartre engaging in some hipster aphorism, its valences are worth noting. What does consommer sur place mean in this context, anyway? The phrase is generally employed in a fast food context, in answer to the question, “For here or to go?” Certainly, one possible interpretation of Il faut consommer sur place is you have to be there; that is, jazz must be experienced in situ—live. Other readings suggest that Sartre is asserting a snobbish preference for “real” jazz as experienced in an underground club in the States as opposed to other places to which the music has traveled.29 But frankly, likening anything to a banana involves some pretty weighty overtones of consumption and coloniality—one can only imagine what Fanon might’ve had to say about this work—and it must be noted that although the title of this essay is sometimes reproduced as “Jazz in America,” the full title of Sartre’s article is “I discovered jazz in America.” The simple addition of two words makes all the difference, as I demonstrate in the following. Indeed, Sartre’s jazz chronicle is animated by an undercurrent of discovery. He writes as one who has taken a journey to the other side, barely survived, and come back to tell the tale. I will cite the essay at length here in order to parse some of the nuances unleashed in Sartre’s answer to the perennial question, What is jazz? “It is not the century-old chant of Negro slaves,” Sartre knowingly confides, Nor the sad little dream of Yankees crushed by the machine. Nothing of the sort: there IS a fat man who blows his lungs out in the weaving motion of his trombone, there is a pianist without mercy, a bass player who tortures the strings without listening to the others. They are speaking to the best part of you, to the toughest, to the freest, to the part which wants neither melody nor refrain, but the deafening climax of the moment. They take hold of you, they do not lull you. Connecting rod, horizontal shaft, spinning top. They beat, they turn, they crash, the rhythm surges forward. If you are hard, young, and fresh, the rhythm grips you and shakes you. You bounce in your seat, faster and faster, and your girl with you, in a hell-like round.30

Practically pulsating with clamor and pace, jazz fans, critics, and historians will recognize the characteristics that mark Sartre’s representation of jazz as “hot.” With his emphasis on a loud and sweaty atmosphere, the lasting impression is of music that “takes hold” of the listener and handles him roughly, exacting “a torture without mercy.” All of this jostle clearly titillates

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what Sartre calls the “freest part of you,” before ramping up to a “deafening climax.” I want to hold on to this formulation, as it aptly embodies the sexual metaphors that multiply as Sartre continues his description, and marries them with the equally palpable sense of a noisy medium in which no one can hear and even the players aren’t listening to each other. In the subsequent phase of this jazz encounter, The trombone sweats, you sweat, the trumpet sweats, you sweat more, and then you feel that something has happened on the bandstand; the musicians don’t look the same: they speed ahead, they infect each other with this haste, they look mad, taut, they seem to be searching for something. Something like sexual pleasure. And you too begin to look for something. You begin to shout; you have to shout; the orchestra has become an immense spinning top: if you stop, the top stops and falls over. You shout, they shriek, they whistle, they are possessed, you are possessed, you cry out like a woman in childbirth. The trumpet player touches the pianist and transmits his obsession in a kind of Mesmerism. You go on shouting. The whole crowd shouts in time, you can’t even hear the jazz, you watch some men on a bandstand sweating in time, you’d like to spin around, to howl at death, to slap the face of the girl next to you.31

Sartre’s phenomenology of jazz experience is all shouting, possession, and mesmerizing obsession—exercise, exorcise, and ecstasy. This scene is shot through with sexual energy and increasingly sadistic as well, for the hapless girl who accompanies the Sartre seems to exist solely as a sop for the eruption of the listener’s violent emotions. The preponderance of the “you”—that really means him—in Sartre’s account also recalls an earlier point in this chapter about his tendency to slip himself into others’ skins and purport to speak from a universalized consciousness. Notably, amidst all the slapping and howling, “you can’t even hear the jazz.” And then, suddenly, the Jazz stops, the bull has received the sword thrust, the oldest of the fighting cocks is dead. It’s all over. But you have drunk your whiskey, while shouting, without even knowing it. An impassive waiter has brought you another. For a moment, you are in a stupor, you shake yourself, you say to your girl: Not bad! She doesn’t answer you, and it begins all over again. You will not make love tonight, you will not be sorry for yourself, you won’t get really drunk, you won’t even shed blood, and you will have undergone a fit of frenzy without issue, a convulsionary crescendo resembling a choleric and vain search for pleasure. You will leave a little worn out, a little drunk, but with a kind of dejected calm, like the aftermath of a great nervous exhaustion.32

And so once the music reaches its “convulsionary crescendo,” it’s all over. The experience is something akin to death, or perhaps a “little death” (petit mort), the French idiom that refers to orgasm. The spectator is shaken up by

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the music, has experienced a delightful excitement, and relaxes into “dejected calm.” Jazz is portrayed as the vehicle for this catharsis, a facilitator of sexual excitement and release. This is conspicuously safe sex; the emphasis on its non-reproductive nature—its “frenzy without issue”—affirms that the listener can walk away from the experience without having been impregnated by something of lasting or serious consequence. Many readers feel that Sartre’s jazz writings capture the ambiance of a jazz club in 1946. I have real concerns, though, about whether Sartre is actually listening.33 While there is much to appreciate about Sartre’s attention to the ambient details—the sound and sweat establish a sort of phenomenology of the club—the what-it-is and who-it-is-for of Sartre’s jazz skews toward spectacle for titillated listeners. In his account, jazz performance is primarily about providing pleasure, sexual or otherwise, to crowds keen for (erotic) discovery and excitement. The jazz players seem to be doing everything but thinking up there. My question here is, How does Sartre ultimately miss what’s happening in this space, particularly on the bandstand? In a 1946 reflection on his travels through the United States, Sartre posits jazz as a passing fad whose time has passed, revealing an attitude that has perhaps shaped his approach to this experience with jazz. Once upon a time, he argues, jazz was the music of the future. “Today we know all about jazz. It is a popular Black music, capable of limited development, but in gentle decline. It has had its day.”34 The smugness with which these pronouncements set forth how much we “know all about jazz,” about what jazz is “capable of,” is not insignificant. If Sartre cannot see jazz as more than mere style or fad, he cannot account for its evolution, its improvisatory orientation toward the what-is-to-come. To my mind, what Sartre cannot see is the way in which the phenomenon—and the phenomenology—of cool might embody all that he seeks in the hypothesized and sought-after marriage of jazz and existentialism. In 1949, cool and jazz, and Miles Davis, come up squarely in Sartre’s blind spot—or perhaps it is his deaf spot. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF COOL Davis’s trip to France coincided with an intense period of artistic development in which he was working out how to be in and through performance. As noted above, what was exciting about his experience of Paris was not just Juliette, but a musical shift. There he began to practice a way of playing, even moving or standing onstage that would become a signature in later years. Davis expressed great enthusiasm about co-leading the Tadd Dameron Quintet, which he considered an opportunity to experiment with those he admired. Since September 1948 Davis had begun to take more confident

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steps toward becoming his own bandleader, putting together groups of like-minded musicians to work out the problems he was interested in. After years of immersion in the high theory of the bebop era, Davis saw in these ensembles an opportunity to “put conversation to action.”35 Chief among these groups was the nonet he formed at Royal Roost, whose new modes of creative being-together raised some eyebrows on the New York club scene but landed a deal with Capitol Records. In fact, Davis had recorded the second of the three sessions that would become The Birth of the Cool just weeks before the Paris trip. Although the album, as well as the “cool” label, would come years later, four tracks from the January 1949 session, “Move”/“Budo” and “Jeru”/“Godchild” were released as 78s in March 1949. Two more sides, “Boplicity”/“Israel” would drop in July 1949. We have some reason to believe, therefore, that French jazz critics might’ve heard some of Davis’s new music before he arrived, or shortly after he left. Vian’s early writing on Davis displayed great interest in his style, and highlights some of the aspects that would later define the young trumpeter. (Clearly he was paying at least some attention to music, in addition to his ears.) Vian remarks that Davis’s solo on Charlie Parker’s 1945 composition “Now’s the Time,” demonstrates “une relaxation parfaite. Je crois qu’il est impossible de jouer plus détendu que Davis.” Vian goes on to marvel at Davis’s sound, “Une sonorité curieuse, assez nue et dépouillée, presque sans vibrato, absolument calme,” and phrasing: “un phrasé ahurissant. Un phrasé sinueux, coupé de repos qui ne vous surprennent que pour vous détendre plus (physiquement) et vous exciter du même coup (intellectuellement).”36 What I would add to these observations is that under what looks like relaxation, Davis is always workin’, and the result is, in Vian’s estimation, intellectually as well as physically exciting. This split between surface calm and restive interior thought would become part of the deep structure of cool. Although the French pianist Henri Renaud would write a short piece “Qu’est-Ce Que Le Jazz Cool?” for the April 1952 Jazz Hot, a more thorough treatment of the new style and its chief innovators wouldn’t appear in France until André Hodeir’s 1954 book, Hommes et problèmes du jazz. (An updated English version was published as Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence in 1956.) Hodeir’s approach to jazz appreciation couldn’t be more different than Sartre’s, for what he lauds about the new style is its return to “une sorte de pudeur de l’expression musicale” that rejects the hot ethos of what came before.37 In a chapter dedicated to “Miles Davis and the Cool Tendency,” Hodeir posits the defining characteristic of cool as “a sort of reserve”: Even when the performer seems to be letting himself go most completely (and cool musicians, as we shall see, cultivate relaxation), a sort of reserve, by which

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we do not mean constraint, marks his creative flight, channeling it within certain limits that constitute its charm.38

It is this sense of reserve that interests me, for it dovetails with my interest in cool as a problem for existentialist thinking as it relates to Black subjectivity and consciousness. In French, the word “reserve” means reticence, discretion, hesitation, and silence. It is also translated as an adjective, guarded or cautious. To “se réserver” is to keep something for yourself or to save yourself. The other term Hodeir invokes, “pudeur,” is generally translated as modesty but can also mean reserve, reticence, or coyness. How do these translations enable us to rethink philosophically the lived experience of Miles Davis sojourning through Paris? Each of these terms in its own way draws attention to a gap between the world and me that we should not rush to interpret as inauthenticity. The phenomenology—and aesthetics—of “seeming to let oneself go,” as Hodeir observes, while keeping something to or for yourself can be aptly described as central tenets of the Black cultural notion of cool. There are so many definitions of cool. Nonchalance. Detachment. Discretion. The Black Arts poet and cultural critic Amiri Baraka says it’s to be “silent, yet knowing.” In a passage from his autobiography, he describes how his adolescent crowd looked to jazzmen as models for how to be in the turbulent worlds they inhabited. [Cool] meant being smart. Intelligent too . . . So we hooked up the weirdness and the intelligence. Dizzy’s hornrim bebop glasses, the artist’s tam, these spelled some inner deepness to us. It was a way into ourselves further, and because we went into ourselves, we seemed quiet on the street.39

Cool is a type of retreat into self, but it is also an intelligence projected outward. Robert Farris Thompson, an art historian who devoted much of his career to the study of arts in African diasporic cultures, insists that cool is a kind of capacity. In a definitive essay “An Aesthetic of the Cool,” Thompson names cool the ability to be nonchalant at the right moment . . . to reveal no emotion in situations where excitement and sentimentality are acceptable-in other words, to act as though one’s mind were in another world. It is particularly admirable to do difficult tasks with an air of ease and silent disdain. Women are admired for a surly detached expression, and somnambulistic movement and attitude during the dance or other performance is considered very attractive.40 The telling point is that the “mask” of coolness is worn not only in time of stress but also of pleasure, in fields of expressive performance and the dance. Control, stability, and composure under the African rubric of the cool seem to constitute elements of an all-embracing aesthetic attitude. Struck by the re-occurrence of

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this vital notion elsewhere in tropical Africa and in the Black Americas, I have come to term the attitude “an aesthetic of the cool” in the sense of a deeply and complexly motivated, consciously artistic, interweaving of elements serious and pleasurable, of responsibility and of play.41

What I take from Thompson’s exposition are the ways in which cool is an aesthetic attitude that manifests bodily as pose and performance. I am thinking specifically about how Davis embodies these attributes of cool in his performances and his pictures—and even his sartorial choices—during his Parisian period and after. In an essay on Miles Davis’s aesthetic, Robin D. G. Kelley celebrates Davis as an icon of cool. “Practically every photograph of him is iconic,” he writes. “Miles was constantly posing; he knew how to stand, how to move, how to compose himself in space so that the world revolved around him . . . Even in crisis, Miles was camera-ready.”42 This cool that Kelley invokes was carefully cultivated, even curated by Davis himself. The remarks underscore the importance of photography in establishing the Miles mystique and suggest the ways in which Davis can be considered a kind of co-author of the photos taken of him. Culminating a series of earlier observations about Davis’s sidelong poses in the Paris photos and extending Kelley’s celebration of Davis as a composer of his body in space, I submit, What does it mean to be camera-ready? Not necessarily smiling and looking into the lens, but aware of its presence and what you are or aren’t going to give it. And, put another way, how do we approach the theorization of a subjectivity that is “captured” only in profile? Davis himself says that, beginning around the time that he returned from Paris, he began to devote a lot of attention to his being-in-performance. In the following passage from his autobiography, Davis describes a subtle and shrewd consciousness about his body capacity and a wily willingness to deploy it as a shield. It is a rare glimpse into what’s happening beneath the surface of the performance as a thinking artist plays with gesture. By this time I was getting really famous and a whole lot of musicians were starting to kiss my ass like I was somebody important. I was into whether I should stand like this or that, should I hold my trumpet this way or that way when I played. Should I do this or that, speak to the audience, tap my right foot or left foot. Should I tap my foot inside of my shoe so nobody would see me doing it?

In the context of his growing fame, Davis displays an acute awareness of others’ intense scrutiny and designs an elaborate evasion as a response. I mean, how do you claim to capture someone’s tapping a foot inside his shoe? Davis’s comments draw our focus to his use of space, his body, and gestures to create effects—and affects—both visible and invisible to those who are

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paying close attention. This practice fortifies my sense that portraits do not “capture” him as much as they document the performance of cool that Kelley and so many others cite as quintessentially Miles. I close this study with an assertion of the degree to which Davis demonstrates—contra Sartre—that jazz performance is indeed all about listening to others, and an insistence that Davis’s ample repertoire of gestures suggests that he tended to listen with all of his body. Over time, Davis acquired a reputation for a famously controversial performance pose. Much was made, for instance, of his tendency to turn his back to the audience while playing. Critics offended by the gesture often decried his arrogance. Their ire might’ve been misplaced, however; Davis once explained that he liked to face the band while onstage, to better listen to the sound they were all creating together. Even from his earliest days as composer, he was known for highly collaborative work, and for his habit of feeling for and feeling out fellow musicians. In “A Sense of the Possible: Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised Performance,” musicologist Christopher Smith amplifies our sense of this aspect of Davis’s art, writing that his tremendous contributions to jazz performance, practice, and process are rooted in his ability to construct new social realities for his collaborators through an inimitable approach to improvisation. Peppered with testimony from a number of musicians influenced by Davis, Smith’s careful exposition lays out the myriad ways in which jazz improvisation is thinking with other people. “Miles Davis’s particular genius,” he asserts, “was centered in an ability to construct and manipulate improvisational possibilities, selecting and combining compositions, players, musical styles, and other performance parameters.” Smith then goes on to examine the techniques Davis relied on to create a “sense of the possible” that emerges in the ritual space of collaborative, improvised performance.43 “Miles’ technical vocabularies were not arbitrary or sadistic, but they were subtle and complex,” he asserts. For this reason they have been difficult to identify, articulate, or analyze. In fact the subtlety and ambiguity were intentional, Miles’ preferred mode of musical interaction being dependent upon the invocation of a very particular kind of attention from the players.44

Because Davis believed that the best musical experiences—especially performances and improvisations—were born of a “richly ambiguous symbolic experience,” he often “supplied, withheld, and distorted performance information [in order to exact] a quality of attention that such ambiguity evoked from his players.”45 That is, Davis required collaborators to always be paying attention, and would often hit them with the unfamiliar or unexpected. Young musicians who worked with him describe their having to be perpetually alert.

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As one player testifies, “He doesn’t want you to think you know what’s going to happen.”46 I consider this tendency of Davis’s to upset expectations of ease an important part of his approach to being and creating with others, an exigency that demanded that all parties enter into the collaborative process attentively and ethically. If authentic improvisation required this thrown-ness into an unknown situation, Davis’s ever-changing theoretical ideas, methods, and moods forced collaborators to cultivate a fugitive’s flexibility—to always be ready to “move.” In fact, Davis often purposely brought ambiguity into the situation—Smith describes him as a master “manipulator of ambiguity”—and if you wanted to keep up, you had to learn his many visual and physical cues, for he eschewed lengthy conversations about expectations or instructions. “Ambiguous, nonverbal communication meant that Miles’ players were forced to engage with him by interpreting what they thought such communication demanded,” Smith tells us, before going on to cite one of Davis’s longtime collaborators, the keyboardist Chick Corea, who describes this work process. With Miles, there was never any sitting down and discussing the music: “Hey, I’d like you to play a little more of this or that.” No instructions, no analytical conversation. There were grunts, glances, smiles, and no smiles. Miles communicated, but not on a logical or analytical level.47

Here, Corea’s consciousness of Miles’s “smiles and no smiles” as freighted with meaning that isn’t always logical or easy to access, has brought us full circle. The description heightens my sense that Davis’s strange and strained “smiles” in the Paris portraits are sideways, slant communication that his collaborators (and I mean that in both senses of the word) have to look-listen to, and learn to read on the run. Drawing on Davis’s own phenomenological awareness of what’s going on in jazz performance to read these photos, my study has twinned Miles’s methods and manners in order to suggest an aesthetic kinship in his techniques of composition and (self) composure. Throughout this chapter, I’ve emphasized those aspects of Davis’s performance repertoire that tend toward elusion, offering up the thought that his gestures—the “smiles,” the poses, the embraces— aren’t necessarily straightforward and available for analysis. Again, all we are given is the subject in profile, and I want to say that this significantly shapes how we should approach any Black-existential study of the situation. Through this research, I’ve become attuned to the idea that we must be alive to ambiguity, on the alert for covert communication, learn to cultivate flexibility, and be prepared to move from one place to another if we want to play with Miles Davis.

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What I’ve suggested here is how rethinking Davis’s situation forces us to abandon fixed concepts of existentialist freedom in favor of a more ambiguous and improvised “sense of the possible.” To my mind, the ways in which the phenomenology of fugitive (fleeing, fleeting) improvisation manifests in his art—the art that he makes and the art that he makes of himself—warrant further consideration. In thinking so deliberately about how Davis melds existential phenomenology and Black cultural cool I hope to disrupt the taken-for-granted notion that jazz and existentialism simply “go together,” and indicate some of the lines along which we might think more thoroughly and theoretically about overlaps and divergences. Davis’s respect for and dialogue with Sartre is here a mere starting point for a speculation about how their intellectual and artistic projects might be put into relation, even if a grouchy one, with each other. I am convinced that their arguably brief but somewhat sustained relationship has something to teach us about how existentialism plays out in the lived experience of Black artists who find themselves in postwar Paris. In that Davis’s situation differs in some marked ways from Sartre’s (“properly” literary and philosophical) interlocutors whose existentialist tendencies may be more familiar to us, the potential contribution of this work is exciting. With these initial thoughts on how a phenomenology of cool might manifest in Davis’s photos and performance, I am indicating how we might flesh out a popular claim about his art as an ultimate embodiment of existentialist ideals and ethos. Although he would undoubtedly reject the label, perhaps with an irreverent, “Fuck all that shit” for good measure, there is plenty of extant material to indicate trajectories for further study that will take seriously the contribution of Davis and other jazz musicians to existentialist meditations on the topics of embodied consciousness, motility, listening, and thinking in groups. CODA By the time Birth of the Cool was released as an album, Davis had made two more trips to Paris. In the fall of 1956, he rekindled his love affair with Juliette, though not without an initial hitch, and reconnects with Sartre. “In Paris I hooked up again with Juliette Greco, who was a real big cabaret and movie star by now,” he recounts. At first she was a little apprehensive about seeing me—because of the way I had acted when I saw her the last time in New York—but when I explained why I did that, she forgave me and we got along real well, just like the first time. And of course, I also got together with Jean-Paul Sartre and we had a great time just sitting around talking in their homes or at an outside café. We’d use a combination of broken French, broken English and sign language.48

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Davis makes his third trip to Paris the following year to play some gigs in the local clubs. During this sojourn Greco introduces him to Louis Malle, who asks him to do the soundtrack for his first feature film.49 The score for L’ascenseur pour l’échafaud, which is still widely considered a masterpiece of improvisation, was recorded entirely in one night as the band watched the film. In Davis’s gloss on the 1957 trip, we learn that the groundbreaking success of the score didn’t necessarily free him from the racialized expectations of certain French critics. While I was in Paris writing the music for Malle’s film, I was playing at the Club St. Germain, with Kenny Clarke on drums, Pierre Michelot on bass, Barney Wilen on saxophone, and René Urtreger on piano. I remember this gig because a lot of French critics got mad when I wouldn’t talk from the bandstand and introduce tunes like everyone else did, because I thought the music spoke for itself. They thought I was arrogant and snubbing them. They were used to all those black musicians who came over there grinning and scratching up on stage. There was only one critic who understood what I was doing and didn’t come down hard on me and that was André Hodeir. Anyway, none of that shit bothered me, and I just kept on doing what I was doing. It didn’t seem to disturb the people who came to listen because the club was jam-packed every night.50

What I want to emphasize here is that in the years since Davis first loved and left Paris (and Juliette), he developed the confidence and clarity to articulate what he perhaps felt but could not say before. He never intended to live there. I saw a lot of Juliette and I think it was on this trip that we decided we were always going to be just lovers and great friends. Her career was in France, and she loved being there, while my shit was happening in the States. And while I didn’t love being in America all the time, I never thought about moving over to Paris. I really loved Paris, but I loved it to visit, because I didn’t think the music could or would happen for me over there. Plus, the musicians who moved over there seemed to me to lose something, an energy, an edge, that living in the States gave them . . . And although there were good, classically trained musicians in Paris, they still didn’t hear the music like an American musician did. I couldn’t live in Paris for all those reasons, and Juliette understood.51

NOTES 1. Davis, Miles: the Autobiography, 125–6. 2. Ibid., 126. 3. Ibid., 127. 4. Vincent Bessières, the Chief Curator of the exhibition, is the former assistant editor of the magazine Jazzman, a commentator on France Musique and the television channel France 5, the creator of jazz-related content for the Media Centre at the Cité

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de la musique, Paris, and the author of many jazz-record liner notes. He authored a chapter of the collective work On Jazz (Créaphis, 2007) and has been working for the past few years on a biography of trumpeter Lee Morgan. He is a member of the French Académie du jazz. 5. Bessières, “Miles in Paris,” 82. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. Davis’s and Greco’s brief affair has a cultural life of its own in France, where it is the subject of a graphic novel; a film is reportedly in the works. 8. For more on Sartre’s engagements with race, see More, chapter 6. 9. See Nisenson, 281. 10. Juliette Greco, in an interview with Philippe Carles, translated by Richard Williams, and printed in The Guardian, May 25, 2006. https://www​.theguardian​.com​ /music​/2006​/may​/25​/jazz. 11. Reflecting on that period, Davis writes, Juliette and I used to walk down by the Seine River together, holding hands and kissing, looking into each other’s eyes, and kissing some more, and squeezing each other’s hands. It was like magic, almost like I had been hypnotized, was in some kind of trance. I had never done this before. I was always so into the music I never had time for any kind of romance. Music had been my total like until I met Juliette Greco and she taught me what it was to love someone other than music . . . Juliette was probably the first woman that I loved as an equal human being. She was a beautiful person. We had to communicate with each other through expressions and body language. She didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak French. We talked through our eyes, fingers, stuff like that. When you communicate like that, you know the person is not bullshitting. You have to go on feelings. It was April in Paris. Yeah, and I was in love. Davis, 125.

12. Ibid. 13. Poirier, 275. Note that this source for this account of the proposal is Juliette Greco. 14. We are, in fact, presented with many possible reasons that Lulu wouldn’t want to run off with Pierre, including his dependence on his mother, his vanity, the horror of his body, and his macho possessiveness. 15. Schehr, “Sartre’s Bodies,” 187. 16. See Poirier, 275. Notably, Greco rejects this interpretation, saying in interviews that Davis didn’t marry her because he didn’t want her to be viewed as a Black man’s whore in the United States. See also Dicale. 17. The years between the French and English publications of “Intimacy” saw Sartre wrestling with and refining what biographer Thomas Flynn would call “vintage existentialism.” Over the course of the 1940s, he proposes, Sartre was moving away from the rigid positions of Being and Nothingness and thinking about the situation’s embeddedness in time and place and social structures. Sartre’s writings during this period are marked by a postwar shift on politics and ethics and his championing of the socially engaged writer. His postwar philosophy obsessively examines the human condition—how men(!) might choose to authentically define themselves rather than be carried by the tide of history or caught up in the forces of convention. Insofar as

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Sartre’s notion of the human condition still clings to a sort of universal—the idea of the human, with himself implicitly at the center—it must be deemed problematic. 18. The “self hatred” I mention here refers to the heading for the part of the We Want Miles exhibit that deals with this part of Davis’s life, titled “Out of the Cool: invention et haine de soi (1949–1954).” 19. “When I got back to this country in the summer of 1949 it was just like Kenny Clarke had told me—nothing had changed. I don’t know why I thought it would be any different than it was; I think I thought it would be different because of the way things had happened for me in Paris. I was still up into the illusion of what had happened to me there. But I knew deep down things hadn’t changed in the United States. It had only been a couple of weeks. But I was living an illusion of possibility, maybe a miracle had happened.” Davis, 126. 20. Richard Wright to Dorothy Norman in the fall of 1946. Cited in Du Graf, 150 n42. 21. See Dicale. See also Greco. 22. See Campt, particularly introduction and chapter 1. 23. Moten, 3. 24. Jean-Pierre Farkas, « Séquence rétro: ma rencontre avec Miles à New York. » This interview from the summer of 1973 was reproduced in Franck Médioni’s edited volume, Lettres à Miles (Editions Alter Ego. 2016). Some excerpts also appear in the blog dernières nouvelles du jazz blog on 6 avril 2019. http://lesdnj​.over​-blog​.com​ /2019​/04​/sequence​-retro​-ma​-rencontre​-avec​-miles​-a​-new​-york​.html. Here I’ve cited Davis’s response to Farkas’s question about the respect he received during this first trip to Paris. JPF: « Le respect, tu me l’as dit, tu l’as rencontré à Paris. Dès ta première venue en 1949. MDD: « C’était à St. Germain, il y avait Boris Vian qui jouait de la trompette comme un fou. Il y avait aussi Sartre, tu sais bien « les mains rouges ou non, les mains sales ». Je ne comprenais rien à ce qu’ils disaient, mais ils étaient tous si attentifs. » 25. Du Graf, 135. 26. Wright steered Sartre in the direction of must-see Black culture during his visit to the states, and chaperoned Beauvoir when she came to the United States in 1947. 27. Sartre, “I Discovered Jazz,” 48. 28. Matarrese, 56. 29. See Ibid. 30. Sartre, “I Discovered Jazz,”48. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 48–49. 33. For an expansive discussion of Sartre as a “bad faith listener,” see Heter. 34. Sartre, “New York, Colonial City,” 132. 35. Tercinet, 48. 36. Vian, 8. (Also reprinted in Tercinet, 47.) “Davis plays with ‘a perfect relaxation. I think it’s impossible to play more relaxed than Davis does.’ The music possesses a curious sound, rather naked and stripped, almost without vibrato, absolutely calm.” Vian goes on to marvel at Davis’s phrasing. It is “amazing phrasing. A sinuous

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phrasing, interspersed with rest that surprises you only to relax you more (physically) and excite you at the same time (intellectually).” 37. Hodeir, Hommes et problèmes, 111. 38. Hodeir, Jazz, 118. 39. Baraka, 93. 40. Thompson, 41. 41. Ibid. 42. Kelley, 1. 43. Smith, 42. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 43. 47. Ibid. 48. Davis, 207. 49. Ibid., 217. 50. Ibid., 218. 51. Ibid. If Davis also meets up with Sartre on this trip, he doesn’t mention it, leaving us to wonder whether his relationship to Sartre had changed as both navigated their careers and this moment.

REFERENCES Bakewell, Sarah. At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2017. Baraka, Amiri. The Autobiography of Leroi Jones. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1997. Bessières, Vincent and Franck Bergerot, et al. We Want Miles. New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2010. ———. “Miles in Paris,” in Ron Carter, Clark Terry, and Lenny White, eds., Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History. Minneapolis: Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2012, 82–85. Campt, Tina. Listening to Images. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. Davis, Miles and Quincy Troupe. Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. Dicale, Bertrand. Juliette Gréco: les vies d’une chanteuse. Paris: JC Lattès, 2001. Dinerstein, Joel. The Origins of Cool in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017. Du Graf, Lauren. “Existentialism’s ‘White Problem’: Richard Wright and Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Respectful Prostitute.” Yale French Studies 135/136: 135–50. Fanon, Frantz. Peau noire, masques blancs. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2015 [1952]. Flynn, Thomas R. Sartre: A Philosophical Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Greco, Juliette. Jujube. Paris: Stock, 1993.

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Heter, T Storm. The Sonic Gaze: Jazz, Whiteness, and Racialized Listening. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2022. Hodeir, André. Hommes et problèmes du jazz. Paris: Flammarion, 1954. ———. Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence. New York: Grove Press, 1956. Kelley, Robin D. G. “Miles Davis: The Chameleon of Cool; A Jazz Genius in the Guise Of a Hustler.” The New York Times, May 13, 2001, Section 2, Page 1. Matarrese, Craig. “Jazz is Like a Banana,” in Benedict O’Donohoe, ed., Severally Seeking Sartre. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. 56–71. More, Magobo Percy. Sartre on Contingency: Antiblack Racism and Embodiment. Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021. Moten, Fred. “Black Optimism/Black Operation,” October 19, 2007. https://doubleoperative​.files​.wordpress​.com​/2009​/12​/moten​-black​-optimism​_black​-operation​ .pdf Nisenson, Eric. Round About Midnight: A Portrait of Miles Davis. New York: Da Capo, 1996. Poirier, Agnès. Left Bank: Art, Passion, and the Rebirth of Paris 1940–1950. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2018. Sartre, Jean Paul. “I Discovered Jazz in America.” The Saturday Review, Nov. 29, 1947: 48–49, trans. Ralph de Toledano. ———. “L’Intimité,” in Le mur. Paris: Gallimard, 2000 [1939]. ———. “New York, Colonial City,” Town and Country May 1946, 121–33, reprinted in The Aftermath of War, Situations III, trans. Chris Turner. Oxford and New York and Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2008. Schehr, Lawrence. Subversions of Verisimilitude: Reading Narrative from Balzac to Sartre. New York: Fordham University Press, 2009. ———. “Sartre’s Body Parts: ‘Intimité’ as Existential Angst.” Journal of Romance Studies 6, no. 1–2 (2006). Smith, Christopher. “A Sense of the Possible: Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised Performance.” TDR 39, no. 3 (Autumn 1995): 41–55. Tercinet, Alain. “Miles Davis au Capitol,” in West Coast Jazz. Marseille: Éditions Parenthèses, 1986, 43–53. Thompson, Robert Farris. “An Aesthetic of the Cool.” African Arts 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1973): 40–43, 64–67, 89–91. Vian, Boris. “Quelques notes sur Miles Davis.” Jazz News (Paris) no. 5 (mai 1949): 8–9.

Chapter 3

The Being of Becoming, the Becoming of Being Sartre and Jazz Improvisation: Some Preliminary Thoughts James B. Haile III

Originally titled Melancholia and originally rejected for publication, Sartre’s first formal book-length foray into academic philosophy was not his treatise, Being and Nothingness; it was not even a treatise at all, but a novel, one in the form of a diary—published as Nausea.1 The significance of Nausea cannot be overlooked or overstated—not merely as a first work, but as the central intellectual work of Sartre’s philosophical career. Sartre, himself, went as far as to categorize Nausea as “the best of what I’ve done.”2 What did Sartre mean when he claimed Nausea to be the best of his career? In what ways can we make sense of Richard Howard’s additional claim that Sartre’s “factum of contingency,”3 an “experimental metaphysical novel” was, indeed, the “‘founding’ work on which all subsequent texts may be said to rest”?4 These are, indeed, companion thoughts and questions, and decoding them is at the center of this chapter. Many books, book chapters, and journal essays have been written about what is taken to be Sartre’s larger philosophical project, ranging from existential phenomenology, phenomenological ontology, existential accounts of subjectivity, inter-subjectivity, and freedom; his writings on world politics (Marxism, colonialism, neo-colonialism) and aesthetics (literature and poetry). By comparison, the amount written about Nausea—a seemingly confusing, navel-gazing memoir of a singular individual, Antoine Roquentin—is surprisingly sparse. The puzzles, then, are interrelated: how and in what way did Sartre understand Nausea to be his great philosophical achievement; how, and in what way, can Nausea be said to be critical to understanding—that is, adequately interpreting—Sartre’s larger philosophical project as a whole; 51

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and, how, in what way, would reading Sartre’s larger philosophical project through Nausea change our understanding of both Nausea and his larger philosophical project? The answers to these puzzles lie in how Nausea has been read. Rather than reading Nausea as a psychological profile of a singular consciousness “going through midlife crisis,”5 the narrative of a disillusioned, disaffected “generation of ‘alienated’ young people just before the Second World War,”6 or an individual disgusted with the seeming inconsistencies and contradictions in his life, in his relationship with others and the world at large, I am arguing that we read Nausea as a subtle and nuanced text about form and structure, in the form and structure of a diary/memoir. This reading allows not only for the form itself to be a central argument, but it also reveals Nausea as gesturing to itself a way beyond itself to a larger philosophical claim. What often goes underdeveloped and overlooked in the novel is that Nausea is an account—that is, a philosophical meditation on and expression of what Sartre refers to as a happening. In the opening line, first diary entry Roquentin writes, “[s]omething has happened to me. I can’t doubt it any more .  .  . It came cunningly, little by little . . . Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet.”7 And, it is with these first lines that Sartre establishes Nausea not as an ordinary memoir/diary but also as an argument in the form of a diary/ memoir—that is, as a narrative accounting of a happening, of changes. But, what kind of changes? As a novel, Nausea is problematic in that it challenges the reader to read obliquely—that is, both with and against itself. It does not easily offer a framework for how to read its meaning. As it presents itself, Nausea is relatively uneventful—it offers itself as a novel about the quotidian details of Rocquentin’s daily life. Much of the novel seems to be about the banal, the mundane—for example, the color of the street at night, after the rain and the fog descending on the town, or the sound of empty conversation and spoons, saucers, and glasses at the local cafe. What is unclear is how these daily experiences and his personal reflections of them undergird Sartre’s larger philosophical project, in particular, his existential phenomenology of human consciousness, freedom, and political liberation. What the reader must work through are philosophical and aesthetic puzzles: how, and in what way are these details significant for the novel as a whole; and, how can mundane, seemingly unimportant details, of which the novel is filled, carry the philosophical weight of the work—thematically and structurally? For example, when Roquentin offers the quotidian details of his pipe, “daubed with golden varnish which first catches your eye by its bright appearance,”8 the reader asks themselves how and in what ways is this relevant or related to the opening line, and to the “happening” at the center of the novel

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as that which descends upon Roquentin, in which he “subject to . . . sudden transformations”?9 Yet, when Sartre finishes the description of the pipe, “you look at it and the varnish melts, nothing is left but a great streak on a piece of wood,” the reader realizes that something else is going on more than a description of a pipe, and more is happening with the melting of its varnish than the mere revelation that underneath it was but a brute thing, a piece of wood.10 This transformation at the heart of the novel was not in the wood or in Roquentin himself but was “an abstract change without object.”11 And, this is the central point, connecting Sartre’s larger existential phenomenological project of human consciousness, freedom, and political liberation to this novel seemingly about quotidian detail and subtle changes. It is not the change in either Roquentin or the world around him that causes the nausea, not in any of the details he can recall, “this table, this street, the people, my packet of tobacco”12 but in the principle of the change itself which demands that “Everything is like that, everything, even my hands.”13 In other words, everything—every being in existence—shares this quality: everything is as it is presented while simultaneously the case that everything is not as it appears. This, for Sartre, is the fundamental reality of being—being is becoming; and becoming is being. This is the fundamental source of nausea: how to deal with the incongruities of this reality. It is along these detailed small changes that Sartre reveals their underlying philosophical principle. As a novel concerned with documenting details as a way of marking their dissolution and with it, the dissolution of form and structure itself, Nausea is also revealed as a novel about the changes between states of existence and about the nature of these changes between states; but it is also revealed to be a novel of changes. It is a novel concerned with the principle which regulates the transformation between being and becoming, between form and formlessness, that which rises as given experience and its dissolution. In the quotidian, Sartre reveals that even the choices we make in the present, which, the moment they are made become both the past (as what has happened) and the future (as what will affect what may happen next), carry within themselves this principle. This principle, then, is one of betweenness, one that both marks the change and regulates its necessity. In this way, it can be understood to be a novel about being unsettled with incongruities but also about how to steady oneself to be “in the groove,” as it were, with existence. The question of Nausea, then, is what the kind of phenomenology can both understand these incongruities within existence and also put forward a consciousness that does attempt to subsume them under theory but makes peace with them instead? What kind of phenomenology is necessary to hold the form of a particular existent thing without placing it under the auspice of

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that particular form? What kind of phenomenology can both hold a form and also give way to its dismemberment? In short, it would have to be the sort of phenomenology that can hold infinite becoming without fully succumbing to the maelstrom of a plenum. It would have to be the kind of phenomenology that can hold being and becoming together, form to formlessness in productive tension, without producing the nausea inherent to a consciousness that demands structure and order. A phenomenology that can understand the essential shifts inherent in Sartre’s phenomenological ontology and ride these shifts to disclose an existential phenomenology that, too, is shifting is what is called for, and what is inherent within Nausea. In other words, Nausea introduces us to a consciousness that is in motion—in a state of constant becoming—with the material and natural world, and, in doing so introduces us to a phenomenological ontology of improvisation. Sartre’s improvised phenomenological ontology serves as both a mode of engagement and as a critique of traditional phenomenology, giving way to a concept central to Sartre’s philosophical project: freedom. In this interpretation, freedom is not merely that which adheres to and emerges from human consciousness (as traditionally thought of Sartre’s oeuvre) but is an extension of this radical instability inherent in all reality. Freedom is the ways in which we notate—that is, documents with detail—the meaning of coming to be and going out of existence, and the ways in which we ride this groove to, as Sartre describes, not only “accept their death,”—the ceasing to be—but to “even will it.”14 What Sartre’s Nausea reveals is not so much Sartre’s disavowal of the phenomenological method, per se or a departure from it, but a meta reflection on the nature of being. What it does, then, is offer a new way of thinking about social and political organization and also a new phenomenological method of improvisation.15 As a text that notates these shifts, these grooves Nausea is revealed as a novel about improvisation and an improvised novel. For Sartre, this particular improvisation is captured, in both the beginning and in the end, not just through jazz music, but through jazz improvisation—a distinction which will be important later. But, what would it mean to read and to understand Sartre’s Nausea, a novel concerned with jazz at its end, not only as an example of jazz writing but as an improvised novel? What would it mean to write a novel about being taken under, into the maelstrom, into the “whirlpool” in a specific form of being, to be taken under by the veneer of existence?16 And, how would this be central to understanding Sartre’s larger philosophical project? In shifting perspective, the question to address at the heart of Sartre’s oeuvre is no longer the role being and becoming—that is, change—plays in Sartre’s existential phenomenology, but how jazz and jazz improvisation actually helps us to understand what Sartre had in mind with this interrogation of the

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human existence—the philosophical, literary, aesthetic, social and political project of human freedom. As a way of exploring Nausea as an improvised novel, and the role of jazz and improvisation in Sartre’s philosophical project, I want to discuss a few aspects of what I have in mind for the scope and method of Sartre’s project. Firstly, I want to distance myself from the question of whether Sartre correctly understood jazz or jazz improvisation. The central question here, is, how did Sartre understand and utilize both in the exploration of his philosophical ideas? Whether Sartre got right or correctly understood the nuances of jazz music, improvisation in jazz music is a markedly different project with markedly different aims than the one at present. Rather than placing emphasis on what Sartre ought to have said, I want to focus on what I think he is already saying, even when he is not being consistent in his messaging. Nevertheless, there is something critical, something pivotal, something unique, and something vitally important about jazz improvisation in Nausea that requires and justifies a deep reading of the novel—especially in its reconstruction.17 I am less concerned about a biographical sketch of Sartre the man, his experiences with jazz music, live and recorded, or his interpretation and vision of “America” and how any or all of them influence his philosophical works.18 As part of this biographical distancing, I will not worry over the particular song choice in Nausea, “One of These Days,” the author of the song, the singer, and the particular version of it in my analysis of Nausea, and Sartre’s larger project. This is for the general claim that the song itself does not matter in my analysis.19 As such, I will not be concerned with whether “the song was originally recorded in 1910 and Sophie Tucker sang it for the first time in 1911,”20 as a way of confirming anything philosophical about the novel—in terms of its structure and content. Rather, I argue as Hayden Carruth does that it “is unfortunate that Sartre chose to call by the name of ‘jazz’ a recording that, from Roquentin’s description of it, most musically minded Americans will recognize as commercial pseudo-jazz.”21 That is, “jazz at its most formulaic.”22 Rather than attempting to decode the history of the song itself or the exact version Sartre referenced in Nausea, I will concern myself with decoding Sartre’s description of the music itself—how it not only spurted and seized, but how it beckoned, called on and called forth a kind of sublime and creative or productive negativity; of how the music called forth the realization that “time is too large, it can’t be filled up” and that “Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.”23 This is what seems to matter about Sartre’s philosophical project,

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its uniqueness, and situating it within the history of Western and Black philosophical systems. One of the reasons to move away from a biographical reading of Nausea is similar to moving away from a purely philosophical reading as well. That is, while philosophical frameworks can be imported to a text that does not present itself as a traditional argument—for example, the form of literature itself, it is important to keep in mind to not impose the structure and argument on the text—that is, reducing a text to a set of theoretical propositions or concepts that may strip away important textual elements. In this case, reading Nausea through Being and Nothingness or “Existentialism is a Humanism” may in fact prevent us from disclosing Nausea’s other important elements, in particular, its form as critical to its content. Instead, I propose that we read Nausea as presenting its own argument—or mode of analysis—within the structure. In this way, Nausea presents what Andrew Inkin refers to as Sartre’s “literary phenomenology.”24 In re-thinking Sartre’s phenomenology ontology in terms of jazz improvisation, and distancing myself from whether he got jazz correct, but rather what he saw and utilized in jazz improvisation, I am also distancing myself from a reading of Nausea in which jazz music—and by extension, Blackness—has some capacity to cure or save modern man (i.e., Euromodernity) from nausea—Sartre, rather argues that there is no saving, and what has been interpreted as Roquentin being “saved,” I will argue is a misidentification of his philosophical commitments.25 What Lee B. Brown says of Andre Hodeir’s interpretation and usage of jazz can equally be said of my reading of the function and role of jazz improvisation in Sartre’s Nausea, namely that his “exposition is complicated—and sometimes confused. He does not always cling to his own best insights. Further, his theory is indecisive on one rather fundamental point. For these reasons, I shall have to reconstruct what his argument ought to say.”26 This is in no way an apology or exoneration of Sartre from his problematic descriptions of jazz music in places outside of Nausea. Rather, it is an investigation into the philosophical foundations for his difficulties with jazz music and Black culture. It is, so to speak, taking Fanon’s well-known critique that, “Sartre forgets that the black man suffers in his body quite different than the white man,”27 as not just about the endemic structures of inequality—situating Sartre as merely an intellectual elitist who did not understand the empirical world—but also about how people live, thus, improvise, in and through, their bodies—marking Sartre’s critique of negritude poetry in “Black Orpheus”28 and his description of jazz music in “I Discovered Jazz in America”29 a phenomenological and ontological issue, one that, ironically, refused to acknowledge negritude poetry and jazz improvisation to be an

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improvisation of European language and logic, all-the-while utilizing each as the structure and content of Nausea. John Ireland seems to be right in this assessment of Sartre’s description of jazz music when he writes, Jazz seems to function in Sartre’s work as a primary ingredient and catalyst of a certain type of mood, a backdrop for a kind of sensuality, the promise of erotic adventure in locales where respectability is shed, where men and women are freed from restrictive social convention by jazz’s syncopated rhythms and raucous sound and persuaded to acknowledge their physical desires.30

In multiple places in Sartre’s writing, especially in “I Discovered Jazz in America,” Sartre seems to only embody jazz improvisation in the players themselves rather than in the world, or the principle of their action, relating their expression not only to birds of prey but to “a woman in childbirth.”31 In reading through his essay, one must account for—that is, notate—these comments to figure out how or where they might figure into his usage of jazz music in Nausea, and to see how and in what way Sartre’s claim, that [T]hey [musicians] speed ahead, they infect each other with this haste, they look mad, taut, they seem to be searching for something. Something like sexual pleasure. And you too begin to look for something. You begin to shout; you have to shout; the orchestra has become an immense spinning top: if you stop, the top stops and falls over. You shout, they shriek, they whistle, they are possessed, you are possessed .  .  .32 affects his overall argument in Nausea.33 But, if all we had of Sartre’s understanding of jazz music was this essay, it would be sufficient to note that his views on jazz “are built on rather brusque generalizations,”34 but we have Nausea, which complicates matters in that it does not so much clarify or defend these other claims or even offer the same glib understanding of jazz or jazz improvisation, but is itself a thoroughgoing and robust philosophical theory of improvisation. What I want to suggest here is that Nausea does not allow us to dismiss this chapter as inaccurate, racist, or primitivist and bracket it from his overall philosophical project, or to condemn his philosophical project as inherently racist. Instead, I want to argue that Nausea forces us to grapple with not so much what is missing in Sartre’s understanding of jazz music, but with what is actually present in Sartre’s utilization and understanding of jazz improvisation in his writing of Nausea.35 Secondly, I want to clarify that what I mean by “jazz music,” herein, is strictly in terms of “jazz improvisation.” Along the way, I will distinguish between jazz improvisation and other forms of improvisation36 as well as between jazz improvisation and jazz composition.

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It is important to note that though Sartre uses the term “jazz” to describe a wide range of music (ragtime to jazz improvisation), what I am interested in is not so much the accuracy of his categorization—as noted in the section above—or the categories themselves, but how jazz improvisation functions within his work, even when it is not explicitly stated—as with his famous description of slime as the “agony of water.”37 Central to understanding a “jazz improvisational” reading of Sartre’s Nausea is understanding what is meant by “jazz” itself. In this chapter, “jazz” will be understood in terms of the temporality and embodiment of improvisation. That is to say, while there are many complex definitions and histories of the term, I am interested in the ways jazz is influenced by improvisation, and thus shaped by temporal and embodied gestures and experiences, but also the ways in which time and embodied consciousness are shaped by improvisation. It must also be noted that an improvisational understanding of temporality and embodiment is not centrally concerned with human consciousness, but with being in general. In particular, it is concerned with the becoming of being and the being of becoming. When I use this phrase, it is in terms of things coming to be and things ceasing to be. One could, and others have argued38 that Nausea is principally about consciousness grappling with this fact of coming to be and ceasing to be, and that this is what Sartre attempted to capture with the idea of the happening, what he meant when he wrote, “Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.” As one reads Nausea one also gets a sense of the text itself disintegrating along with being in general, and you ride along with Roquentin’s consciousness and his own embodied experience with space and time as he attempts to make sense of it. Inevitably, Roquentin fails to reconcile the changes or the happening within his own consciousness and realizes—along with the reader—that although human embodied consciousness comes to represent spatiality and temporality, and, generally, the idea of freedom, each is an act of improvised and through jazz music that being itself is improvisational. This is how Sartre ends Nausea, not with a resolution, but a realization that being as a mode of becoming must of its own accord will its negation to give rise to further modes of being, just as with jazz improvisation, each note must will its own cessation to give to rise to another, yet to be known sound. This Sartre has Roquentin, and his reader, recognize is outside and independent of human consciousness—all-the-while still recognizing that human consciousness is a part of this. That is to say, what we take to be given, stable forms—of our own self, the selves of others, our own consciousness and the consciousness of others, as well as the material world, the nonmaterial world—are actually unstable becomings, which, at any particular time-moment only appear stable. This is the insight that Nausea offers to

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Sartre’s existential phenomenology, an insight that is critical to the rest of his philosophical projects. Before we go any further in our discussion on how improvisation (and jazz improvisation) is used by Sartre and how it will be used here, I want to first note what I do not mean by the term and how it is often used by philosophers, especially with reference to Sartre. First, it must be noted that it will not be understood as an aesthetics or a theory of committed art, but as fundamentally concerned with phenomenological ontology with regard to time and space, consciousness, materiality, the possibility of freedom, and the possibility of social, political, and ethical action.39 If we cease thinking of jazz improvisation as anesthetics of creating “onthe-fly artistic innovation”40 and rather as the phenomenological project of being and becoming—the being of becoming, and the becoming of being— then we not only challenge traditional modes of understanding “art,” but also situating jazz improvisation through an aesthetic reading.41 But, this is dependent on how we understand improvisation in jazz. If we are understanding jazz improvisation only as creation, then a traditional reading falls short. That is to say, if improvisation is understood to “focus on performance and on the spontaneous making of a new composition of event,” it is evident that “improvisation is not well-described by traditional notions of art that assume that art objects and structures are made in a pre-planned way by a composer or artist.”42 Sartre’s usage of jazz improvisation, though, not as art or art-object, but as phenomenological ontology challenges this ontological problem at the heart of improvisation. But, it also works to forward phenomenological ontology not as an aesthetic gesture, but as an existential project. And, secondly, jazz improvisation will not be understood as “life-­enhancing model of creative engagement . . . with sound, materials, time, the movement of the body, a free flow of ideas or communication with other people in an atmosphere of shared communality,”43 or as “creating non-predetermined results”44 as with the free improvisation of avant-garde experimentalism, or improvisation writ large in other aesthetic practices. Rather, jazz improvisation will be understood as the violent encounter of being and becoming, of form and formlessness in which the former (being or form) emerges in constrained rejection against the latter (becoming or formlessness) as the latter reemerges from the former as the agony of its condition. In this way, being and becoming and form and formlessness exist in a strained but necessary encounter. As David Troop argues, “[I]mprovisation,” and I would add, phenomenologically, like being, “is born out of mystery, exists in wonder, and returns to mystery.”45 Just what causes this encounter, what force necessitates their relation—these are things we cannot know but can feel and in feeling navigate with meaning and with what seems to be regularity. Improvisation,

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like consciousness, is a descent into this mystery at the heart of existence, a mystery, really, at the heart of Sartre’s existential and phenomenological project of Being and Nothingness. Improvisation, as understood and utilized here is marked by the movement from one state to another, rather than the outcome of the movement. That is, it is marked not by any particular modulation of form or any particular mode of being or existence, but everything as its possible form, its possible new direction, as what is always present in each and every particular moment. In other words, improvisation cannot determine the form that it takes—any and every note or sound is always possible and only becomes what it is once it is played. It is this process of becoming or infinite possibility of form that sits at the heart of improvisation, but also existence.46 Improvisation, then, as Roquentin describes it, unlike other forms of music or other forms of art is both itself and beyond itself simultaneously—this is why jazz improvisation is not beside or an adornment to material existence but is its fundamental nature. This is why it cannot be superfluous; if everything is possible, then, every possible is, thus, necessary. So when Sartre writes that to exist in the world (as embodied consciousness), is “to play with the absurdity of the world”47 I read this as an improvised statement, and a statement about improvisation, one that is centrally concerned not so much with playing a musical instrument or even to playing notes on a compositional score sheet. Rather, “playing” signifies the stepping in-between being and becoming, modulating between these different modes and articulating this reality and this relationship—it is to literally play with the absurdity, or the failure of form, in reality. For Sartre, freedom is not the creation of instability within the world but recognizing this instability in the form and structure of being (existence), and playing this instability into meaningful expression in the choices we make.48 Read through jazz improvisation, authenticity, then, comes about in recognizing the inherent instability in our choices, and taking responsibility for this instability—in the sense, that one could have chosen differently, yet is responsible for the outcome, no matter its inherent unknowability. Like a musician playing with the instability in rhythm and tone, Sartre’s notion of existential freedom plays with the instability of freedom itself, of consciousness itself, and reveals to itself its melodic structure “as a starting point.” Improvisation, in this sense, is centrally concerned with contingency as the possibility of impossibility in which whatever choice is made appears to be given and, thus, unchangeable but is inherently malleable. And, rather than reading Sartre’s existential project as formulating a “subject” as one’s ownmost totalizing project of meaning and value—that is, the construction of the “self” as the project of freedom—one can and must read and understand freedom as the dissolution of what appears to be a subject. This idea is critical

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for understanding the ending of Nausea and the pivotal role jazz music plays. At the end of Nausea, Sartre writes of Roquentin’s revelation, That’s the way it happened. That way or another way, it makes little difference. That is how it was born. It is the worn-out body of this Jew with black eyebrows which it chose to create it. He held the pencil limply, and the drops of sweat fell from his ringed fingers on to the paper. . . . I think of this man out there who wrote this tune, one day in July, in the black heat of his room. I try to think of him through [sic] the melody, through the white, acidulated sounds of the saxophone. He made it. He had troubles, everything didn’t work out for him the way it should have: bills to pay—and then there surely must have been a woman somewhere who wasn’t thinking about him the way he would have liked her to—and then there was the terrible heat wave which turned men into pools of melted fat. But when I hear that sound and I think that that man made it, I find this suffering and sweat . . . moving.49

Roquentin thinks of this “old Jew” sitting alone in his hot apartment when “it” descends upon him and makes necessary the song. Before this, “the voice is silent.” He is silent. And then, the song. “He is sitting, in shirtsleeves, in front of his piano; he has a taste of smoke in his mouth and, vaguely, a ghost of a tune in his head. ‘Some of these days.’”50 That is how Roquentin imagines “it” happens, imagines “it” coming into this world. The “it’ referred to here is not the song itself—the song is incidental. The “it” that comes to the “old Jew” seizes upon his hand to produce the song, to improvise his feeling, to riff on the fact the troubles are still there, this is how he made it, through the melody. At this moment, “it” is akin to the happening Roquentin describes at the outset of Nausea, something that can no longer be doubted, the only difference being that the “old Jew” found his song, found his melody where, for Roquentin, until this moment, “it” had simply “stayed quiet.” It was not until the end of Nausea, at this final moment, that Roquentin realizes that the “it” that has haunted him throughout is not the condemnation of being to nothingness or meaninglessness (i.e., becoming or formlessness). Rather, “it” is a moment of liberation in which Roquentin exclaims, reflecting on the “old Jew,” that “he made it” and because of this “he was lucky.”51 The “old Jew” made it to the other side of being—that is, was able to face nihilation inherent in being and pull from it a principle that could be articulated in a melody. This is what saved him, for Roquentin: the other side of certainty is the jazz improvisation principle which recognizes and embraces contingency as the foundation for the dissolution of the self and the consciousness awareness of it as a moment of joy. In the midst of his life of uncertainty, of his consciousness trapped in a body ensnared in the world, Roquentin thinks of the “old Jew” and feels him in his own flesh and is reminded that he is embodied, that he is of this world

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of contingency, and in finding himself in another discovered a method, a mode of address to the phenomenon of existence, a mode and a method that could teach him, intuitively how to feel this contingency beyond the nausea and how not to be “lost irrevocably, drowned in existence.”52 It is in this moment that Roquentin “feel[s] something brush” against him, something “light” that he cannot directly look at, for he is “afraid it will go away. Something [he] didn’t know any more: a sort of joy.”53 Similarly, jazz musician Ornette Coleman, in an interview with Jacques Derrida in a discussion about the “subject” of a jazz improvisational session notes that the jazz musician is probably the only person for whom the composer is not a very interesting individual, in the sense that he prefers to destroy what the composer writes or says.54

On first glance, it appears that the jazz musician as an improvisor juxtaposes their activity with the composer. But, read through jazz improvisation, it is not so much that they are juxtaposed rather, the jazz improvisor brings to light and notes what is inherently present in the composition itself—jazz improvisation is an extension and in-depth rendering of compositional form. That is, the jazz improvisor recognizes that improvisation is the foundation for composition—that composition is just a resting point in the process of being and becoming, a minor moment taken to be a snapshot of the whole. And, rather than being in competition, Coleman is telling us that the jazz improvisor and the composer are related. What unites Sartre’s rendering of the “old Jew” with Coleman’s description of the jazz improvisor is the revelation of this very fact: in the process of improvising, in the reality inherent in a life of embodiment, one must find the melody and in playing the melody recognize existence as that which negates itself in order to give rise to itself. Sartre references this, when at the beginning of Nausea, he writes, I like that part especially and the abrupt manner in which it throws itself forward, like a cliff against the sea. For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. They know no rest; an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves. They race, they press forward, they strike me a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I would like to hold them back, but I know if I succeed in stopping one it would remain between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I will even will it. I know few impressions stronger or more harsh.55

One can hear in Sartre’s description what connects his understanding of jazz improvisation as a sort of happening with the very notion that what underlies improvisation itself is a kind of ontological violence. That is, at the heart of

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improvisation is a rupture—that the happening itself is a kind of disruption of being with becoming and becoming with being. That existence is the dissolution of form, and the imposition of form into or onto formlessness. This is the violence that was referenced earlier: the coming to be and passing away are united only when “they [the notes in this case but being in general] race, the press forward . . . strike [a blow] . . . and are obliterated.” The ontological violence of jazz improvisation, as Sartre utilized it in Nausea, reflects the inherent compositional quality of improvisation in that it is self-willed. For Sartre, this self-willed nihilation at the heart of creative expression is what causes the eruption to “burst forth” from itself, as itself its own self-identification. This is what David Toop means when he argues that jazz improvisation is the kind of upheaval in which “the world has become an intestinal vortex, a pit reaching down into the earth’s unknowable heart.”56 More than a formalized aesthetic or an art-object, jazz improvisation, at least as Sartre understood it, was like a sea on which “boats, yachts and ships, trees, even whales” things and beings of given form ride on its surface only to be dragged down “into its immeasurable depths, their ‘howlings and bellowings’ an anguished symptom of the vortical implacability of this phenomenon”57 only to give rise to the melody. One can hear Thelonious Monk or Charles Mingus yelling out during a performance, standing up from their piano and dancing, extolling their bandmates to keep it going, extolling with their music and their body. What Vijay Iyer writes about jazz improvisation, [T]ell a story. This oft-repeated directive for an improvised solo has become a cliché of jazz musicology . . . But we seem to lack the analytic tools to describe in detail how, under what circumstances, or indeed whether this wordless spinning of yarns even could happen, let alone what the content might be.58

We can say of Nausea: jazz improvisation is almost an inexplicable novel itself, one where Roquentin struggles to account for himself, for his story, and for any narrative amid the decay of life. And, yet we have a story, a completed novel from an incomplete life, to account for an existence as much as anyone can, and pull from disorder, order; from contingency something that would look like coherency. Thirdly, the conflation of jazz with jazz improvisation and jazz improvisation with music, writ large has led to some confusion in terms of its role not only in Nausea, but in Sartre’s philosophy generally. Paul E. Robinson argues that there are three essential elements to Sartre’s writing about music: 1. Music expresses emotion and evokes it. ‘If so many people find consolation in music, it seems to be that it is because it speaks to them of their sorrows . . .

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2. Music expresses the emotions of an age . . . 3. Music might express the rage of the oppressed and its hopes for the future.59

Boiled down, it seems Robinson suggests that Sartre’s understanding of music has three interrelated elements: one, music provides relief from life; two, music taps into and expresses the emotion of a generation or an age engaged within the world; and, three, music offers expression to those who feel disenfranchised.60 Jazz, understood as African-American music, can be thought of in these three ways—as expressing the social and political frustrations of the post-1930s America, and, in doing so, offers hope for the future. But, in all of these claims, music itself does not speak or really emote; rather, it is that through which feeling or an unspoken emotion emerges. This is because, as Robinson additionally notes, “Sartre long ago accepted the prevailing view that notes ‘refer to nothing exterior to themselves,’ and so exempted music from the necessity of being committed or engaged in a moral and political way.”61 In this reading, jazz improvisation could not be the foundation for a philosophical praxis, and could not explain—or even carry the weight—of a robust theory. Jazz improvisation in Nausea, though, is exempt from the above descriptions. On the one hand, jazz improvisation does not seem to be concerned with “notes” as such and is, therefore, not insular; on the other hand, as a grounding element for speech and politically engaged action, jazz improvisation is fundamentally concerned with both what is outside of itself, and with politics—perhaps, not in the engaged political sense of a Marxian literature, but in the phenomenological sense of meta-theory.62 If we remember Sartre’s description of jazz improvisation in the previous section, namely, “the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts,” and what he writes of them, that “they know no rest; an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves,” it becomes clear that Sartre is not talking about music in terms of a notes on a page, or even holistically in terms of composition. Rather, like that of the existential individual, the notes represent moments of the process of being and becoming. This is why Sartre writes that “there is no melody”—as there is no subjectivity identity in the existential sense—and why he writes, “order gives birth to them [notes] and destroys them.” The moment they are born in the chaos of existence, they have to be surpassed. Roquentin first encounters this dissolution, not in musical notes, but in the presence of a park. The scene begins with a kind of revelation that descends upon Roquentin while in a park—the park is a similar metaphor for Sartre, something that he returns to in Being and Nothingness while trying to

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discover the relation between the two terms, and argues, at least early, the belief that human consciousness is the foundation for being and for nothingness, through his description of a park. Sartre writes, I am in a public park. Not far away there is a lawn and along the edge of the lawn there are benches. A man passes by those benches. I see this man . . . What do I mean when I assert that this object is a man? If I were to think of him as being only a puppet, I should apply to him the categories which I ordinarily use to group temporal-spatial “things.” That is, I should apprehend him as being “beside” the benches, two yard and twenty inches from the lawn . . . His relation with other objects would be of the purely additive type .  .  . In short, no new relation would appear through him . . . . . . Perceiving him as a man, on the other hand . . . is to register an organization without distance of the things in my universe around that privileged object.63

In other words, the “park” is not a naturally existing thing but is time and space organized into sets of relation by consciousness—by a will—and exists for that consciousness as its own reflection of the meaning of the world. The park is like a music composition, holding together disparate—that is, contingent—elements into a coherent whole. But, of course, this is for consciousness, not for existence itself. While Being and Nothingness gives us a snapshot of the phenomenological experience of being and nothingness for consciousness, Nausea provides a meta or surveyor’s view of being itself. Rather than the park being there for consciousness as an arrangement and proof of human existence—allowing Sartre to distinguish the for-itself from the in-itself in the organization of the park—the “park” as organized matter disintegrates for Roquentin and reveals that the chaos underlying the material order. Sartre writes, But existence is a deflection. Trees, night-blue pillars, the happy bubbling of a fountain, vital smells, little heat-mists floating in the cold air, a red-haired man digesting on a bench: all this somnolence, all these meals digested together, had its comic side. . . . Comic . . . no: it didn’t go as far as that, nothing that exists can be comic; it was like a floating analogy, almost entirely elusive, with certain aspects of vaudeville. We were a heap of living creatures, irritated, embarrassed at ourselves, we hadn’t the slightest reason to be there, none of us, each one, confused, vaguely alarmed, felt in the way in relation to the others.64

Like melodies, stationary, seemingly permanent forms of being were “in the way” of the process itself. The melody obstructed the coming to be and

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cessation of notes by wanting to hold onto the notes, to keep them in order to define and ground itself. Sartre continues: In the way: it was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these gates, these stones. In vain I tried to count the chestnut trees, to locate them by their relationship to the Velleda, to compare their height with the height of the plane trees: each of them escaped the relationship in which I tried to enclose it, isolated itself, and overflowed.65

Jazz improvisation simply points out that beneath the order of the composition, below the melody was not simply a collection of notes waiting to be selected and permanently placed in the score. Rather, beneath the composition, below the melody were notes speeding to and fro, coming into and out of existence only to be picked up for a brief moment and placed within an order, before disappearing and being replaced by another. As such, like the “park,” the composition, the melody is only for consciousness but does not quite get at being or existence itself, instead it is in the way. Rather than referencing itself, or as a vehicle for emotive expression, jazz improvisation is concerned with the exploration and rupture of given structure; it is not concerned about any particular form, but the possibility inherent in form—the becoming of a given existence as its mode of being. In other words, jazz improvisation in Nausea is not about music or even about art— politically engaged or not—but about the condition of existence at the heart of Sartre’s phenomenological ontology. Jazz improvisation, then, marks— really is—the conditions for the possibility of any such articulation. As such, when Roquentin writes about his experience with jazz improvisation that one cannot reach the notes,66 it is not because “the music by itself could never express the text,”67 but because what he is reaching for is so fundamental that it can only be veiled in “a voice, a violin note,” or even in any particular existent, even in language itself.68 This, Sartre leaves as his parting words for Roquentin: It does not exist. It is even an annoyance; if I were to get up and rip this record from the table which holds it, if I were to break it in two, I wouldn’t reach it. It is beyond—always beyond something, a voice, a violin note. Through layers and layers of existence, it veils itself, thin and firm, and when you want to seize it, you only find existants . . .69

Here is where Sartre leaves us: the happening, the contingency, what lurks behind the veil of existence, on whose back form and composition, melody and quality ride deceiving and alienating consciousness with the possibility of order and structure; jazz improvisation has finally broken the curse of human existence.

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Lastly, I want to avoid utilizing jazz as merely a metaphor for what is synonymous with creativity and inspiration recognizing that “jazz is not always appropriate to ascribe the initiative for shaping new principles of creation, or abandoning old ones, to an individual or a small circle of innovators.”70 Thinking of “jazz” only metaphorically simplifies the idea of creation as a mere play with structure and form, and, hence, meaning and existence as merely a critique of consciousness or subjectivity, or the maligned idea of “freedom.” The relationship between structure and form, consciousness, materiality, and freedom, though, for Sartre, is not merely one of metaphor, as in, “jazz is the language of freedom” or the idea that music shares with language performative dimensions, “like gestural moments exhibited in acts of speaking and the unity and flow or the missing unity or stalling of acts of speaking.”71 Rather, jazz improvisation, if understood as Sartre utilized it, underscores the seriousness of the relationship—that is, its weddedness to concrete material life, not as tangential to/for other forms or modes of existence, but as their foundation. In their essay, “Sartre’s Conception of Art Grounded on Humanist Existentialism and Phenomenological Ontology,” Metin Bal and Sema Sokkmen pose a fundamental question about the relationship between philosophy and art central to the issue of freedom, asking, “how can a conception of art grounded on humanistic existentialism and phenomenological ontology be possible?”72 Inherent in the question itself, of the possibility of an art borne of humanistic existential phenomenology, is the question of freedom—or, more aptly, the difficulty of freedom itself. That is, art, as generally understood through an art-object manifests itself as a given form, as the expression of the imagination. As such, the issue concerning art and the art-object is one of relation—between the art/object, consciousness and/or the material world.73 While some scholars did and still do worry “that the increased autonomy of avant-garde art [in the post-war moment, jazz included] had, in some ways, undermined its broader social relevance,” framed in terms of the question, “how, or indeed whether, avant-garde music could engage with pressing socio-political issues of the day,”74 this is less of a concern with how it is possible. Instead of asking how abstract aesthetic production relates to concrete material life and, most pressingly, to political action, jazz improvisation in Nausea is itself a political action, one that is centered on freedom, not just human freedom, but freedom writ large. This is what Sartre means when Roquentin, at the end of Nausea, comes to his final concluding remark, “But no necessity can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, a probability which can be dissipated: it is the absolute, consequently, the perfect free gift. All is free, this park, this city and myself.”75

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If we think of freedom generally and particularly human freedom in selfcreation as improvisation, we are brought full circle to the opening portions of this chapter as to why jazz improvisation and Nausea are central for understanding Sartre’s phenomenological ontology as an existential phenomenology. The image of man, what we will be, is an act of improvisation. As Hayden notes in the introduction to Nausea, man, beginning in the loathsome emptiness of his existence, creates his essence—his self, his being —through the choices that he freely makes. Hence his being is never fixed. He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death he would never end.76

As such, everything we do is improvised, life itself is improvised. As David Toop argues, Sit, do nothing: this improvisation . . . To listen is to improvise: sifting, filtering, prioritizing, placing, resisting, comparing, evaluating, rejecting and taking pleasure in sounds and absences of sounds and absences of sounds; making immediate and predictive assessments of multilayered signals, both specific and amorphous; balancing these against the internal static of thought.77

Echoing Sartre’s argument in “Existentialism is a Humanism,” Sartre writes, “In one sense choice is possible, but what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice.”78 Choose or not choose, these are acts of freedom. This is the improvised aspect of Sartre’s notion of the human and of human freedom: “You are free, therefore choose, that is to say, invent.”79 A jazz improvisation reading of Sartre’s basic existential claim gets us to understand that (1) freedom is embodied consciousness; (2) freedom is an embodied conscious expression of will; (3) “man” as form is neither given nor necessary, which means it is always becoming—that is, always in the process of being made by conscious will; and (4) as neither given nor necessary, the form of “man” derived in embodied consciousness is an act of freedom that is itself improvised. This is the critical element of understanding Sartre’s existentialism through jazz improvisation. But, what is more, to remember this fact of our improvised existence also draws us closer into the material world, and into the world of others, who like ourselves are always becoming themselves, always improvising their existence. NOTES 1. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (New York: New Directions Publishing, 2007).

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2. Ibid., vii. 3. Ibid., v. 4. Ibid., vii; emphasis in original. 5. Bettina L. Knapp, “Sartre’s Nausee: Archetypical Jazz.” Dalhousie French Studies 10 (Spring–Summer 1986): 44. 6. Robert C. Solomon, Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflections in Camus and Sartre (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 61. 7. Sartre, Nausea, 4; emphasis added. 8. Ibid., 14. 9. Ibid., 5. 10. Ibid., 14. 11. Ibid., 4. 12. Ibid., 14. 13. Ibid.; emphasis added. 14. Sartre, Nausea, 21. 15. A critical element in Sartre’s improvisational phenomenological method involves taking parts of different methodological frameworks while abandoning the underlying ontology. For example, taking Husserl’s notating mode of engaging the mundane as a way of illuminating the sublimity of human existence, all-the-while abandoning Husserl’s underlying ontological assumptions of the already constituted and given subject from his specific reading of Descartes’s philosophy; adopting Hegel’s notion of conflict between consciousness and the material world, consciousness and itself as the grounding element in freedom, all-the-while abandoning the underlying ontological structure of synthesis in which difference is fixed by an end, though not premeditated, nonetheless ameliorative; or, the adoption of Heidegger’s attempt to theorize phenomenon in terms of its concrete existence within human life, all-the-while abandoning the possibility of meaning and value held within a temporal structure. What these examples are meant to display is the idea that the very ontological framework of improvisation involves both putting together and taking apart without a teleology or entelechy to either guide or make sense of the movement after the fact. This chaos will be termed the “descent” into maelstrom, which Sartre termed “whirlpool,” is inherent in improvisation itself. 16. Ibid., 127. 17. Much of the scholarship on Sartre and jazz do not fully engage Nausea as critical for both his existential phenomenology and for his aesthetic theory. There are some notable exceptions, for example, see, Colin W. Nettelbeck, “Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and the Paris Jazz Scene.” Modern & Contemporary France 9, no. 2 (2001): 171–81. In this essay, Nettelbeck argues that in “La Nausée that Sartre tried to come to terms with jazz as an active principle in his writing and thought,” and asks how “the jazz motif in this novel interact with his emerging philosophy” (173). Although jazz as an aesthetic motif factors into Nettlebeck’s reading of Nausea, Nettlebeck does not link the argument back to Sartre’s larger phenomenological ontology in terms of jazz improvisation. 18. For examples of works that focus on the biographical influences over Sartre’s work, see John Ireland, “Sartre’s America.” Sartre Studies International 20, no. 2

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(2014): 76–89; Jonathan Judaken, Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: AntiSemitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2009); Mark Carroll, “‘It Is’: Reflections on the Role of Music in Sartre’s ‘La Nausee’.” Music & Letters 87, no. 3 (2006): 398–407; Colin W. Nettlebeck, “Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and the Paris Jazz Scene.” Modern & Contemporary France 9, no. 2 (2001): 171–81. 19. Much of the analysis of Sartre’s Nausea in terms of jazz has little to do with Sartre’s interpretation of the music, and more to do with the specificity of the song itself. For more on this, see Deborah Evans, “‘Some of These Days’: Roquentin’s ‘American’ Adventure.” Sartre Studies International 8, no. 1 (2002): 58–72; A. Van Den Hoven, “Some of the Days.” Sartre Studies International 6, no. 2 (2000): 1–11. 20. Evans, “‘Some of These Days’: Roquentin’s ‘American’ Adventure,” 58. 21. Hayden Carruth, “Introduction.” Nausea. Lloyd Alexander, Trans. (New York: New Direction, 1963), xii. 22. Carroll, “‘It Is,’” 401. 23. Sartre, Nausea, 21. 24. Andrew Inkpin, “Sartre’s Literary Phenomenology.” Sartre Studies International 23, no. 1 (2017): 1. For Inkpin, rather than Sartre emptying out the phenomenological method until it is no more than a form of creative intuition, as Deront Moran suggests, especially with respect to the utilization of the novel form as phenomenological method, Inkpin argues that Sartre, following Husserl, utilized the ‘equivalence of fact and fiction, or perceptual and imaginary experience,’ to situate literature as not just political expression, but as way to situate ‘free variation” [as] the ability to imagine any and all features of intentional objects and acts being modified in all possible ways (4–5).

For more on literary phenomenology, see, Jean-Paul Sartre, “What is Literature?” in What is Literature and other Writings. Also, see Amir Jaima, “Literature Is Philosophy: On the Literary Methodological Considerations That Would Improve the Practice and Culture of Philosophy.” The Pluralist 14, no. 2 (2019): 13–29. 25. When Sartre writes of Roquentin being “saved” (177–78) at the end of the novel, I read this, not as a moment of closure—in which the nausea is removed, and Roquentin can re-inhabit a normal life—I read this as a moment of disclosure—a moment of opening for new possibilities of living. For essays on how Sartre utilized jazz to “save” his main character, see Sara Ann Ruge, “Artistic Creation as an Act in Sartre’s Nausea.” Chimères: A Journal of Fenech and Italian Literature 14, no. 1 (1980): 41–56; Artur Ricardo de Aguiar Weidmann, “The Effect of Jazz on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea.” Arquivos 11, no. 21 (2016): 145–59. Carroll, “It Is,” 398–407; Ted Gioia, “When JeanPaul Sartre Cured Existential Angst with a Jazz Record.” Fractious Fiction, http://www​ .fractiousfiction​.com​/nausea​.html. Accessed August 22, 2022. 26. Lee B. Brown, “The Theory of Jazz Music “It Don’t Mean a Thing . . . ” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 115. 27. Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 117. 28. Jean-Paul Sartre, Black Orpheus. In this reading, negritude poetry is akin to jazz improvisation and should be understood as one of originators of black serial

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poetics, an offshoot of black improvisational aesthetics. More will be said of this relationship in chapter 6. 29. Jean-Paul Sartre, “I Discovered Jazz in America.” Riffs & Choruses: A New Jazz Anthology, edited by Andrew Clark (London: Continuum, 2001), 52. 30. John Ireland, “Sartre’s America.” Sartre Studies International 20, no. 2 (2014): 79. 31. Sartre, “I Discovered Jazz in America,” 52. 32. Ibid., 53. Similarly, Simone de Beauvoir, while traveling throughout the United States of America with Richard Wright, as Sartre himself had to done to write his essay, published her findings in America Day By Day where she writes, The Savoy is a large American dance hall, nothing exotic. On one side, the dance floor is bounded by a wall where the orchestra sits . . . We sit in one of the boxes, and [Richard] Wright puts a bottle of whiskey on the table. They don’t sell whiskey here, but the customer has the right to bring his own. We order sodas; we drink and look around. Not a white face . . . Most of the women are young . . . Many are pretty, but they all seem especially lively. What a difference from the strained coldness of white American women. And when you see these men dance, their sensual life unrestrained by an armor of Puritan virtue, you understand how much sexual jealousy can enter into the white Americans’ hatred of these quick bodies. (37–38)

Notice in Beauvoir’s description the highlight of the sexuality and sexual prowess of the players and the audience. For Beauvoir, this was a critical element of jazz—it was the opposite of white or European norms of organized civility that negated the baser, purer human instincts. In this way, both Beauvoir and Sartre were arguing that jazz could free white or Euromodernity from its logic prison. But, looking another way, there is something phenomenological here about ontology generally and not just the ontic. If ontology is taken for the ontic, then Fanon is correct when he writes “the black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man” (Black Skin, White Masks, 90), but read another way, one that separates ontology and the ontical, we see emerging a kind of clumsy statement about the nature of being itself—that jazz itself reveals something fundamental about existence and not just human existence critical to doing phenomenological inquiry. 33. What is interesting about Sartre’s experience of jazz music and his writing on it—at least in this chapter—is that his writing, in a sense, betrays his description of the experience of the music itself. Sartre’s description of his experience with the music, though, is much more in line with his depiction of jazz in Nausea and better captures the saving grace of jazz improvisation for Rocquetine’s nausea. In his essay, Sartre writes of jazz, that it “is speaking to the best part of you, to the toughest, to the freest, to the part which wants neither melody nor refrain, but the deafening climax of the moment” (127). The last part of this phrase, “neither melody or refrain,” but rather “deafening climax of the moment,” is the best description of the dissolution of Rocquetine’s world throughout Nausea, where the matter of the world merged and all that was left was neither past nor present, but the material experience of the moment, of the now, which, Rocquetine found overwhelming and was only comforted by jazz music and improvisation which revealed not only the liminal quality of existence, but

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that this liminality is itself willed by being—human consciousness being one small part of being in general. For a fuller conversation on this element of Sartre’s philosophy as more central to his understanding of jazz than the racialist aspect, see Mabogo P. More’s Looking through Philosophy in Black: Memoirs (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), chapter seven, “Philosophy and Jazz.” 34. Marithe Van der Aa, “Swinging with Sartre: Jazz is Like Bananas.” All About Jazz, 29 May 2017, https://www​.allaboutjazz​.com​/swinging​-with​-sartre​-jazz​-is​-like​ -bananas​-by​-marithe​-van​-der​-aa​.php. 35. Part of what troubles Sartre’s analysis of jazz music—aside from the spectator racialist view of blackness as evocative or in the body rendering whiteness as cognitive or in the mind—is the fact that Sartre did not possess the cultural language to explain African American aesthetic expression—that is, the cultural language of African American life. As Robert O’Meally remarks, In many traditional African culture forms, for example, a single word means both music and dance: “to music,” so to speak, is also literally to dance. Likewise, in many oral cultures, the historian is also the poet, the poet also the singer (and thus the musician and the dancer) of the words and attitudes of a people’s story and history. (x)

That is, rather than speaking glibly about jazz—as in, jazz is everywhere to “explain away almost any unique or complex issue” (ix)—O’Meally does not mean that white or European cultural forms—and, thus, logic—are mathematical, while African American cultural forms are spontaneous—thus, improvisational. Rather, it is to argue, as Sartre attempted to do in Nausea that the impulse in Western intellectual traditions is to attempt to capture all that is incongruous into thought-structure—be it deconstruction, postmodernism, and dialectics, to name a few—that function as explanators of phenomenon rather than an understanding of it (an example of this is Sartre’s portrayal of the Self-Taught Man in Nausea, a man who explains all phenomena in terms of encyclopedic knowledge, as a critique to Western epistemology). As O’Meally suggests and as Sartre himself alludes to at the end of Nausea with the healing presence of jazz music, other cultural forms—in this case, African American—do not share this epistemic impulse, and thus, the incongruities rather than being reduced to logical thought-structures instead become a fundamental organizing principle—or logic—of the cultural expression—as phenomena to be engaged with rather than phenomena that require explanation. For more on “jazz” as a cultural form of logic, see Robert O’Meally, The Jazz Cadence of American Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Paget Henry, “Africana Phenomenology: Its Philosophical Implications.” CLR James Journal 11, no. 1 (July 2005); Lewis Gordon, “Is Philosophy Blue?” Rue Descartes 78, no. 2 (2013): 48–58. 36. A good article distinguishing improvisation in the arts and jazz improvisation, see Aili Bresnahan, “Improvisation in the Arts.” Philosophy Compass 10, no. 9 (2015): 573–82. 37. I point to this example because it comes to define or at least suggest that Sartre’s phenomenology in Being and Nothingness is influenced by Nausea and by jazz improvisation. Theorizing or improvising on Sartre’s famous statement, “slime is the agony of water,” Gordon argues that as water is often thought of as “the fluid so

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free that it is a metaphor of freedom, and as such, it brings forth other metaphors in its constant flow that ushers in its paradoxical roles of life and spirit.” The problem of modernity (that is, Euromodernity) for Gordon is what Sartre terms bad faith. It is the belief that the uncertainty of life—what we have referred to herein as ‘contingency’—causes a problem within modern consciousness. For modern consciousness, social and technological innovation is believed to have erased doubt and the mystery of the unknown from the human and natural worlds, and, as such uncertainty produces anxiety—or what Sartre terms nausea. Gordon writes, Sartre has written of the bourgeois consciousness, a consciousness so caught in its own desire to be unbound that it lives itself, literally, as if it has no flesh. Such a consciousness convinces itself of radical freedom, where it becomes “complete” transcendence. Yet, such a notion is a delusional existence, and like all delusions, it requires much to maintain itself.

For Gordon, the cost of modernity and Euromodern thinking is anti-Black racism (Sartre would agree and add anti-Semitism as well): the belief that there is a stagnant category of being (blackness) that allows for another category (whiteness) to experience transcendence. Circling back, if we take the core issue of modern or Euromodern consciousness to be the contingent—what Camus calls the absurd—then, Sartre seems to be suggesting that improvisation—jazz improvisation—is a kind of resolution for the contingency of existence. For more on this, see Lewis Gordon, “George Lamming the Existentialist.” Working Paper 006 (Johns Hopkins University), 2008 http://www​.jhu​ .edu​/africana​/news​/working​_papers​/index​.html 38. For example, James Gibbs in his essay, “Reading and Be-ing: Finding Meaning in Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausee” argues that the text functions on two levels: as a straightforward memoir, it functions as a “move beyond the metaphysical constraints that are implicit when specifically focusing on either the work’s literary or philosophical qualities” (61); but, one another level, it also functions as a “metafiction”—that is, as a critique of metaphysics and in its “self-referentiality, its awareness of its accordance to narrative technique” (61) it also functions as a critique of itself. This becomes important for the distinctions that Sartre uses between being in-itself (en soi) and being for-itself (por soi) through which we are to understand both space and time. In Gibbs reading, as a metafiction critique of metaphysics, La Nausee provides us with an insight of an ontology not dependent on resemblance, an idea that will become pivotal to mid and late twentieth-century phenomenology. And, yet Gibbs does not situate this insight offered in La Nausee in terms of jazz or jazz improvisation, which is offered in this chapter. For more on this, see Gibbs, “Reading and Being: Finding Meaning in Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausee.” Sartre Studies International 17, no. 1 (2011): 61–74. 39. For an example of the argument for Sartre’s reading of jazz and jazz improvisation as committed art, see Mark Carroll’s essay, “Commitment or Abrogation? Avant-Garde Music and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Idea of Committed Art.” Music & Letters 83, no. 4 (November 2002): 590–606. 40. Bresnahan, “Improvisation in the Arts,” 577.

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41. Much of the confusion in the scholarship over the status of jazz in Nausea turns on the fact that the novel does not, for the most part, make explicit reference to improvisation. Improvisation, though, is largely throughout the novel, but without specific reference, lending to a rather indirect reading. For example, Richard Howard notes in the Foreword that the name of central character, Roquentin is music in nature. Howard points out that, “roquentin” in the Larousse Dictionary of the Nineteenth Century is defined as “A name formerly given to songs composed of fragments of other songs and linked together as in a cento, so as to produce bizarre affects by changes in rhythm and abrupt breaks in the succession of thoughts.” (vii) A straightforward reading of this might suggest that the name itself is a metaphor for the text as a series of thoughts, with abrupt breaks and that even the style of writing itself, as a diary format, suggests a “change” in the writerly and scholarly rhythm itself. But, what is more, Howard’s insight might also suggest that music is a metaphor or an analogy for this philosophical thematic. Yet, read in another way, the name might not suggest music at all, but something else—a phenomenological ontology of change. The notion of a composition by way of fragmentation may not signify a composition at all, but the negation of a compositional form—what we’ve been referring to as jazz improvisation. In this reading, if we were to take “roquentin” to at all suggest something more about the novel—about its content and style, it would be in terms of an improvised ontology. An additional confusion as to the nature of jazz in Nausea turns on a misunderstanding of the function of jazz in the novel itself in which jazz is largely understood in one of three ways, as pointed out by Colin Nettlebeck, namely, the ability of the music to escape the temporal contingencies of existence and hence to serve as a haven against nausea; the analogy between the music as art and Roquentin’s own ambitions as a writer . . . ; [and,] the particularity of jazz as a form of popular music, and thus a repudiation of the bourgeois world confronting Roquentin in Bouville.

(For more on this theme, see Martina Stratilkova, “Music in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophy.” Musicologica Olomucensia 13 (June 2011): 93–106.) 42. Bresnahan, “Improvisation in the Arts,” 577. 43. David Toop, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation, and the Dream of Freedom Before 1970 (New York: Bloomsbury Academy, 2016), 17. 44. Bresnahan, “Improvisation in the Arts,” 575. 45. Toop, Into the Maelstrom, 17. 46. For more on time and consciousness, see Eric James Morelli, “Pure Reflection and Intentional Process: The Foundations of Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology” Sartre Studies International 14, no. 1 (2008): 61–77. 47. Sartre, Nausea, 130; emphasis in original. 48. This is why, for Sartre, freedom produces anxiety and forlornness—that is, nausea—once consciousness really understands its radical nature. For more on this, see Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 49. Sartre, Nausea, 176–277.

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50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. “Philosopher Jacques Derrida Interviews Jazz Legend Ornette Coleman: Talk Improvisation, Language & Racism.” Open Culture, September 26, 2014, http://www​ .openculture​.com​/2014​/09​/jacques​-derrida​-interviews​-ornette​-coleman​.html 55. Sartre, Nausea, 21. 56. Toop, Into the Maelstrom, 9. 57. Ibid. 58. Vijay Iyer, “Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation.” Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, edited by Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 393. 59. Paul E. Robinson, “Sartre on Music.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 31, no. 4 (Summer 1973): 452. 60. Similarly, Stephen Priest argues that “Sartre thinks music does not take on meaning by referring to non-musical reality. The ‘significance’ of a melody is nothing outside of the melody itself.” Taken together with Robinson’s comments, these ideas (as examples of the scholarship surrounding Sartre’s theory of music), are taken to represent Sartre’s theory of music. But, jazz improvisation, as notated in Nausea does refer to what is directly outside of itself, for it is not centrally concerned about a melody or with notes (as noted above). For more on this, see Stephen Priest, “The Work of Art.” Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, edited by Stephen Priest (New York: Routledge, 2001), 289. 61. Robinson, “Sartre on Music,” 452. 62. While I will not go into detail here, it is sufficient to note that the difficulty with the position that music does or does not express a certain meaning is inherent in the understanding of what “expression” itself means. Rather than looking for specificity in meaning—as with a language that signifies a particular thought, as in “the sky is blue”—jazz improvisation is a meta-linguistic in that it refers to both a process as well as an artifact. For examples of discussion on meta-language and jazz improvisation, see Matthew J. Sansom, “Understanding Musical Meaning: Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis and Improvisation” British Forum for Ethnomusicology (2005 Annual Conference); Jerrold Levinson, “Jazz Vocal Interpretation: A Philosophical Analysis.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 35–43. 63. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Washington Square Press, 1984), 341. 64. Sartre, Nausea, 128. 65. Ibid. Right after, Sartre makes an incredible comment: Each of its qualities escaped it a little, flowed out of it, half solidified, almost became a thing; each one was in the way in the root and the whole stump now gave me the impression of unwinding itself a little, denying its existence to lose itself in a frenzied excess. I scraped my heel against this black claw: I wanted to peel off some of the bark . . . For no

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James B. Haile III reason at all, out of defiance, to make the bare pink appear absurd on the tanned leather: to play with the absurdity of the world. But, when I drew my heel back, I saw that the bark was still black. Black? I felt the word deflating, emptied of meaning with extraordinary rapidity. Black? The root was not black, there was no black on this piece of wood—there was . . . something else: black, like the circle, did not exist. I looked at the root: was it more than black or almost black? (129–30)

Roquentin realized that being could not hold a quality—that if being was becoming, each moment coming into existence and ceasing existence, that nothing, no quality (color, shape, etc.) could adhere, really adhere to things. Things just appeared as they were, but when you peeled them back, you realized that they were nothing, and that these qualities were in the way of what the thing itself really was— being as becoming. 66. Sartre, Nausea, 175. 67. Robinson, “Sartre on Music,” 452. 68. Sartre, Nausea, 175. 69. Ibid. 70. Ekkehard Jost, Free Jazz (New York: De Capo Press, 1994), 10. 71. Daniel Martin Feige, “Retroactive Temporality: The Logic of Jazz Improvisation read through Zizek’s Hegel.” International Journal of Zizek Studies 11, no. 3 (2017): 192. 72. Metin Bal, “Sartre’s Conception of Art Grounded on Humanistic Existentialism and Phenomenological Ontology.” International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Studies 4, no. 1 (2012): 249. 73. In distancing myself from the argument that “jazz” is a stand-in for “art” or traditional “art” practice or “music” writ large. In doing so, I am distancing myself from a purely aesthetic reading of Sartre’s Nausea. Rather, I want to argue that while “jazz” writ large may refer to a musical art-form, jazz improvisation refers neither to music nor art. Jazz improvisation will be understood as that which cannot be possessed, but is what descends upon consciousness, not as its accomplishment or even as a sustained engagement of consciousness within the material world, but as the principle of dissolution. In this way, jazz improvisation is an example of improvisation. Returning to our previous conversation, improvisation, as Sartre understood it, is that surrounds and takes possession of you, penetrates everywhere “through the eyes, the nose, the mouth,” fills your nostrils, fills the room, shrinking objects in its presence, “crushing our miserable time against the walls,” (Sartre, Nausea, 22) and when it is done, “the veil is torn away, I have understood, I have seen.” (131) This, improvisational moment, though, it may seem to be about music because it concerns jazz, it is about the phenomenological ontology of presence/existence. And, as such, a traditional phenomenology of “art” cannot quite capture what Sartre is attempting to achieve in Nausea as an improvised ontological project. 74. Mark Carroll, “Commitment or Abrogration?” Music & Letters 83, no. 4 (November 2002): 590. 75. Sartre, Nausea, 131. 76. Carruth, Nausea, xiii. 77. Toop, Into the Maelstrom, 1.

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78. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, edited by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Meridian, 1989), 363. 79. Ibid., 356; emphasis added.

REFERENCES Artur Ricardo de Aguiar Weidmann. “The Effect of Jazz on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea.” Arquivos 11, no. 21 (2016): 145–59. Bal, Metin. “Sartre’s Conception of Art Grounded on Humanistic Existentialism and Phenomenological Ontology.” International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Studies 4, no. 1 (2012): 249–58. Beauvoir, Simone de. America Day By Day. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. Bresnahan, Aili. “Improvisation in the Arts.” Philosophy Compass 10, no. 9 (2015): 573–82. Brown, Lee B. “The Theory of Jazz Music “It Don’t Mean a Thing . . .” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 115. Carroll, Mark. “Commitment or Abrogation?” Music & Letters 83, no. 4 (November 2002): 590–606. ––––––. “‘It is’: Reflections on the Role of Music in Sartre’s ‘La Nausee’.” Music & Letters 87, no. 3 (2006): 401. Carruth, Hayden. “Introduction.” In Nausea. Lloyd Alexander, Trans. New York: New Direction, 1963, Evans, Deborah. “‘Some of These Days’: Roquentin’s ‘American’ Adventure.” Sartre Studies International 6, no. 2: 58–69. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1994. Feige, Daniel Martin. “Retroactive Temporality: The Logic of Jazz Improvisation read through Zizek’s Hegel.” International Journal of Zizek Studies 11, no. 3 (2017): 189–202. Gibb, James. “Reading and Be-ing: Finding Meaning in Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausee.” Sartre Studies International 17, no. 1 (2011): 61–74. Gioia, Ted. “When Jean-Paul Sartre Cured Existential Angst with a Jazz Record.” Fractious Fiction, https://www​.modernliterature​.org​/jean​-paul​-sartre​-cured​-existential​-angst​-jazz​-record​-ted​-gioia/. Accessed August 22, 2022. Gordon, Lewis R. “George Lamming the Existentialist.” Working Paper 006 (Johns Hopkins University), 2008. http://www​.jhu​.edu​/africana​/news​/working​_papers​/ index​.html. Gordon, Lewis R. “Is Philosophy Blue?” Rue Descartes 78, no. 2 (2013): 48–58. Inkpin, Andrew. “Sartre’s Literary Phenomenology.” Sartre Studies International 23, no. 1 (2017): 1. Henry, Paget. “Africana Phenomenology: Its Philosophical Implications.” CLR James Journal 11, no. 1 (July 2005): 79–112. Ireland, John. “Sartre’s America.” Sartre Studies International 20, no. 2 (2014): 76–89.

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Iyer,Vijay. “Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation.” In Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, edited by Robert O’Meally, Brent Hayes, Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Jaima, Amir. “Literature Is Philosophy: On the Literary Methodological Considerations That Would Improve the Practice and Culture of Philosophy.” The Pluralist 14, no. 2 (Summer 2019): 13–29. Jones, Josh. “Philosopher Jacques Derrida Interviews Jazz Legend Ornette Coleman: Talk Improvisation, Language & Racism.” Open Culture, September 26, 2014, http://www​.openculture​.com​/2014​/09​/jacques​-derrida​-interviews​-ornette​-coleman​ .html. Jost, Ekkehard. Free Jazz. New York: De Capo Press, 1994. Judaken, Jonathan. Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question: Anti-Semitism and the Politics of the French Intellectual. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. Knapp, Bettina L. “Sartre’s Nausee: Archetypical Jazz.” Dalhousie French Studies 10 (Spring–Summer 1986): 44. Levinson, Jerrold. “Jazz Vocal Interpretation: A Philosophical Analysis.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 35–43. More, Mabogo Percy. Looking through Philosophy in Black: Memoirs. Lantham: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018. Morelli, Eric James. “Pure Reflection and Intentional Process: The Foundations of Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology.” Sartre Studies International 14, no. 1 (2008): 61–77. Nettlebeck, Colin W. “Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and the Paris Jazz Scene.” Modern & Contemporary France 9, no. 2 (2001): 171–81. O’Meally, Robert. The Jazz Cadence of American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Priest, Stephen. “The Work of Art.” In Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings, edited by Stephen Priest. New York: Routledge, 2001: 289–300. Robinson, Paul E. “Sartre on Music.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 31, no. 4 (Summer 1973): 591–96. Ruge, Sara Ann. “Artistic Creation as an Act in Sartre’s Nausea.” Chimères: A Journal of Fenech and Italian Literature 14, no. 1 (1980): 41–56. Sansom, J. “Understanding Musical Meaning: Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis and Improvisation.” British Forum for Ethnomusicology (2005 Annual Conference). Sartre, Jean-Paul. “What is Literature?” In What Is Literature and Other Writings. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988: 25–70. ———. “I Discovered Jazz in America.” In Riffs & Choruses: A New Jazz Anthology, edited by Andrew Clark. London: Continuum, 2001: 51–53.. ———. Existentialism is a Humanism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. ———. Nausea. New York: New Directions Publishing, 2007. Solomon, Robert C. Dark Feelings, Grim Thoughts: Experience and Reflections in Camus and Sartre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Stratilkova, Martina. “Music in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Philosophy.” Musicologica Olomucensia 13 (June 2011): 93–106.

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Toop, David. Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation, and the Dream of Freedom Before 1970. New York: Bloomsbury Academy, 2016. Van Den Hoven, Adrian. “Some of these Days.” Sartre Studies International 6, no. 2 (2000): 1–11. Van Den Hoven, Adrian. “Roquentin’s ‘American’ Adventure.” Sartre Studies International 8, no. 1 (2002): 58–72. Van der Aa, Marithe. “Swinging with Sartre: Jazz is Like Bananas.” All About Jazz, May 29, 2017, https://www​.allaboutjazz​.com​/swinging​-with​-sartre​-jazz​-is​-like​ -bananas​-by​-marithe​-van​-der​-aa​.php.

Chapter 4

Wilson Harris, Existential Philosophy, and the Creolizing of Jean-Paul Sartre Paget Henry

Wilson Harris was a very well-known Caribbean writer—author of twentyfive novels, four books of essays, and a volume of poetry—who embodied at its best the Caribbean creole tradition of thinking and writing. This tradition of thinking is a classic example of the kind of bicultural creativity that emerged from the forced crucibles of cultural mixing and hybridization, which were integral parts of the European colonial project. This bicultural mode of thinking and writing is one that has been creative in spite of carrying within its deepest structures the violence and the anguished silences of structures of racialized dominance and cultural inequality. From a philosophical point of view, Harris falls within the school of Caribbean historicism/poeticism, a twinned philosophy that historically locates European colonization and its hybridizing impact while at the same time poetically exploring and interrogating the conditions and possibilities for both self-recovery and new modes of self-affirmation. Jean-Paul Sartre is an even more widely known French philosopher, novelist, and playwright, who embodied in a highly original manner the nature and anguish of the modern European self, which has been fragmented and uprooted by the grinding of the rationalistic and capitalist gears of modern Western societies. Sartre is best remembered for his stark portrayal of this specimen of humanity in the late phases of “the age of reason,” as reason was being mechanized, commodified, and made into an instrument of capitalist production and accumulation. Consequently, the anguish of the European subject described by Sartre in Being and Nothingness, although in important respects similar to that described by Harris, was different in its source and origin. The latter were the result of processes of internal, as opposed to external and racial, colonization in which one part of European society was subjugating others to its logic and mode of being. Habermas has described 81

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this particular type of internal colonization as the subordination of systems of hermeneutic and creative action to the logic and practices of systems of instrumental action. It has been the popular opposition to both of these types of colonial domination that has been the basis for both critical and creolizing engagements between Western scholars and artists such as Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, Marx, Hegel, Sartre, Foucault, and Derrida on the one hand, and Caribbean scholars such as Edward Blyden, CLR James, Aime Cesaire, Leon Damas, Frantz Fanon, Wilson Harris, Nicolas Guillen, George Lamming, Edouard Glissant, Rene Menil, Sylvia Wynter, Maryse Conde, Lewis Gordon, and Nelson Maldonado-Torres on the other hand. In this tradition of thought, when we think of the creolizing of Sartre, it is the responses of Fanon, Cesaire, Demas, Glissant, and Lewis Gordon that come immediately to mind. Indeed, Sartre’s classic preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and his equally classic “Black Orpheus” introduction to Leopold Senghor’s Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue francaise were major moments in the development of these critical and creolizing engagements with Sartre. In our look here at some likely exchanges between Harris and Sartre, they will be both of a critical and a creolizing nature. These exchanges between Harris and Sartre will flow from the different ontologies of the anguished self that have emerged from their analyses of it in both imperial Europe and the colonized Caribbean. In the case of Harris, the ontology of the anguished Caribbean self was accompanied by a metaphysics of creative realism. In the case of Sartre, the accompanying metaphysics was one of a creative nothingness. The Caribbean ontology of creative realism emerged from deep within the colonial violence that shattered the precolonial cultures of the colonized Native Caribbeans, Africans, and Indians of both Hindu and Islamic persuasions. For Harris in particular, these cultural implosions forced on Caribbean writers a burned-out and barren terrain from which to create, rather than one of a set of ordered cultural traditions with high levels of legitimacy and credibility. In this fragmentary environment of broken cultural traditions, the Caribbean writer encounters first the unusually exposed inherent creativity of the human self, rather than a self that is appropriately clothed culturally. Consequently, he/she experiences this creativity of the self as more fundamental than any of its specific creations in fields such as art, philosophy religion, or science. It is this centering of this unusually naked creativity of the Caribbean self that has given us the ontology of creative realism. From these critical and creolizing engagements, I hope to show three things. First, the uniqueness of the creole and cross-cultural aspects of Harris’s discourse. Second, the very different pre-reflective intuitions of consciousness that ground the discourses of Harris and Sartre. Third and

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finally, we will take up the phenomenological implications of this difference in founding intuitions. This latter analysis will lead to our call for a more comprehensive theory of the reductions that are so vital to phenomenology. THE ONTOLOGY OF SELF IN SARTRE All societies carry within them social stocks of knowledge that are linked to the epistemic demands of its major institutions and the identity needs of their different populations. These social stocks of knowledge are organized into a variety of disciplines and discourses that include philosophical and ontological ones. Irrespective of discipline or discourse, scholars and creative artists in these epistemic fields have consistently drawn on inherited a priori or pre-supposed centered and coherently organized binary or dualistic sets of categories, concepts, metaphors, narratives, theories, and other knowledge-constitutive fundamentals. Although transcendental in status, these epistemes or organized bodies of discourse-constitutive fundamentals are socio-historically shaped as they are influenced by the changing demands for knowledge and meaning in specific societies, whether in the Global North or Global South. These epistemes are extremely important for ontological and metaphysical discourses as they are foundational in the sense of describing Being and accounting for its origins and purpose. One of the central challenges confronting ontological and metaphysical discourses is the multidimensional nature of reality. This feature of reality often forces the physicist, the sociologist, or the philosopher to prioritize an aspect of this multiplicity, center it in accord with the epistemic norms of the reigning episteme, and explain the other dimensions in terms of this prioritized and centered aspect. Thus, in order to understand the originality and distinctness of Sartre’s existential approach to human reality, we will have to grasp the dimension of our subjectivity that he prioritized and centered, and the disrupting and reordering of other key discourse-constitutive fundamentals of the Western episteme that resulted from this specific prioritizing and centering. PRIORITIZING AND CENTERING CONSCIOUSNESS: SARTRE’S ONTO-METAPHYSICAL DISCOURSE New ontological and metaphysical positions often emerge when a scholar, responding to changes in his/her socio-historical milieu, shifts existing patterns of prioritizing and centering, works out systematically its consequences for previous centers and the discourse-constitutive fundamentals constellated

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around them. With an intense focus on the human self, this is exactly what Sartre did, and why he had such a sustained impact on the Western academy and its major epistemes between the 1940s and early 1980s. The human self, like other areas of the larger world, is multidimensional in nature. The fabric out of which it is woven includes threads and layers that we have colored social, psychological, economic, physiological, cultural, and other shades. The particular thread or dimension of this fabric that Sartre will prioritize and center is consciousness. However, he was not the first to confer this founding status on consciousness. Thus, it becomes necessary to specify what makes Sartre’s case different from others such as Hegel, Kant, or Husserl, who he saw as idealists. It was a particular conception of consciousness as an originary and unmediated upsurge of nothingness at the heart of beingin-itself, which sets Sartre apart. This eruption of consciousness is for Sartre “the absolute event that comes to being” and thus cannot be conceptualized and apprehended causally.1 By nothingness, Sartre means a lack of being, a hole or decompression that becomes the foundation of human freedom, which in turn founds our world. It is the prioritizing and centering of this distinct intuition of consciousness as a nothingness, as an absolute event that is without contents that becomes the basis for his differences with the idealists, which Sartre outlined so clearly in the opening chapters of Being and Nothingness. This major work was first published in 1943. Given this absolute, world and the knowledge-establishing importance of consciousness, it should come as no surprise that it is a difficult reality to conceptualize or define. However, Sartre makes several attempts in spite of the fact that its absolute nature as the founder of knowledge puts it beyond the grasp of conceptual knowledge. Following Husserl, Sartre’s most basic definition of consciousness is that it is always consciousness of something, and as such is not a substance but a “total emptiness.”2 As a result, “for consciousness there is no being except for this precise obligation to be a revealing intuition of something.”3 “As such an obligation, consciousness is the knowing being in his capacity as being, and not as being known. . . . It is in itself something other than knowledge turned back upon itself.”4 As this non-substance, consciousness is pure appearance “in the sense that it exists only to the degree that it appears.”5 Sartre further insists that “it is because of this identity of appearance and existence within it that it can be considered as the absolute.”6 As the absolute that makes reflective knowledge possible, consciousness cannot be grasped by the latter but only by a pre-reflective cogito that is the condition for the reflective philosophical cogito. To make clear the full implications of prioritizing and centering this particular intuition of consciousness as an originary upsurge of nothingness in the heart of being-in-itself, Sartre would then have to spell out its implications for the other threads in the fabric of human subjectivity, and also for other

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important discourse-constitutive fundamentals in the established epistemes of philosophers and other scholars. As the foregoing discussion of the absolute nature of consciousness was at the same time a very strong rejection of any position that gave primacy to the knowledge-producing threads in the fabric of human nature, we also got strong rejections of the claims to ontological primacy for other threads such as God, the ego, the emotions, the body, or the socioeconomic environment. In Being and Nothingness, Sartre provides us with extensive treatments of God, the ego, the emotions, and the body. In The Critique of Dialectical Reason, we are given a detailed treatment of the socioeconomic threads. Let us now take a quick look at the relation between consciousness and the ego. If consciousness is an empty appearance that is completely without substance or content, how does it relate to being-in-itself, the ego, and other threads in the fabric of our human reality? To mediate these connections, Sartre adds another set or layer of threads to the fabric of our subjective reality: the for-itself. The latter is consciousness in the mode of the human freedom that makes possible the founding of our world. In relation to being-in-itself, consciousness is the negating eruption of nothingness that disrupts the integrity, oneness, and full positivity of being-in-itself. In relation to the ego, the for-itself is the source of the anguished freedom that drives the world-creating activities of the ego. This freedom is anguished because its foundation is a nothingness or a lack of determinate being to ground and center it. In spite of lacking all contents, Sartre insists that, as the for-itself, consciousness flees its nothingness in an effort to escape the anguish inherent in its freedom as groundlessness. In fleeing its lack of substance, the for-itself goes in search of substance, quite often some form of fully determined object-like substance. In other words, on the level of the for-itself “we flee from anguish by attempting to apprehend ourselves from without as an other or as a thing,”7 and to evade the fact that our choices are contingent and wholly without grounding in necessity. This search for material substantiation constitutes the being and nature of desire, which the ego inherits as a basis for its world-creating activities. It is very important to note here that for Sartre, desire is not psychological or physiological in nature, but fundamentally ontological. In explaining why desire is not a psychic state, Sartre argues that a psychic state is one whose nature is to be what it is. But “a being which is what it is, to the degree that it is considered as being what it is, summons nothing to itself in order to complete itself.”8 A similar line of argumentation grounds Sartre’s rejection of desire as physiological in nature. These rejections led to the conclusion that desire is ontologically grounded in the flight of the for-itself from the nothingness of consciousness toward some form of substantial determination. It is also on similar grounds that Sartre objects to Heidegger’s complete

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ignoring of consciousness in his description of human reality as Dasein, and instead goes directly to its escaping from itself and its flights toward projects of selfhood. With the freedom and desire of the for-itself launching projects of selfobjectification, we are much closer to the more familiar threads and layers of the ego and the emotions. For Sartre, the self-constituting activities of the ego and the emotions move and have their being within the frameworks of the substance-seeking projects of the for-itself. Indeed, life on the planes of the ego and the emotions usually take the form of projects shaped by the nature and structure of desire arising from the for-itself. The individual self, our familiar ego-centered self is a concrete consciousness that arises in a situation. It is to this concrete consciousness, and not the originary upsurge, that our everyday ego-self is present, and all of the concrete characteristics of this consciousness have their correlates in the totality of this ego-self. Like Harris and several other theorists, the projects of Sartre’s ego-self are formed through its identification with a valued object or subject. This valued identification could be with reason, writing, soccer playing, or with one’s mother or father. Getting as close as possible to an identity with these posited identifications becomes the primary goal of the strivings of the ego. These strivings will be powered by the creative potential inherent in the concretely situated self, along with the conscious efforts of the individual to arrive at this goal. However, determining the success of such projects is not a simple judgment, as Sartre evaluates their success both concretely and ontologically. If the concrete goal was to become the best soccer player of the year, this can definitely be achieved. However, from the ontological perspective, this project is also an attempt at overcoming the anguish that haunts the freedom, desire, and creativity of the ego, which it cannot do. Thus, from this angle, the picture is a much more ambivalent one. Ego-driven projects such as being the best football player are unable to genuinely remove the anguish of the for-itself’s lack of a substantial foundation. As a result, from the ontological standpoint all such projects must be judged as failures. As one of them fails in spite of reaching its concrete goal, the ego-self launches another in a continuing attempt to eliminate the persisting hole in the being of the for-itself that grounds the ego. It is in this sense that Sartre defines human reality as “a perpetual surpassing toward a coincidence with itself which is never given.”9 This coincidence remains withheld because the only reality that will satisfy the lack of the for-itself is being-in-itself. But to be one with being-in-itself would be the extinction of the for-itself. It is this fated failure of the for-itself that leads Sartre to conclude that “man is a useless passion.”10 Confronted with this stark reality, Sartre offers us the therapeutic practice of what he calls existential psychoanalysis. At its core, it is a self-reflective

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reconstruction of the various ego-based projects that we have launched to find that missing foundation, going all the way back to our “original” or “foundational” project. At best, existential psychoanalysis will lower or lessen feelings of anguish but cannot eliminate the lack in the for-itself from which these feelings spring. Finally, in this brief review of Sartre’s theory of the human self, we must take up the place of the socioeconomic threads or layers in the multidimensional fabric from which we erupt, as this changes quite dramatically in Sartre’s second major philosophical The Critique of Dialectical Reason, which was published in 1960. A good point from which we can grasp the nature and scope of this change in the ontological importance of the socioeconomic dimension of human reality is Sartre’s conception of a concrete consciousness examined above. We saw that it was an egoized for-itself that arose in a situation. However, the role of the socioeconomic dimension in the situation of this concrete consciousness was not explicitly developed in detail. The primary goal of The Critique of Dialectical Reason is indeed the detailing of the role of socioeconomic dimension and the implications of this reassessment for the relations between existentialism and Marxism. The socioeconomic threads in the human fabric grew in importance because of their greatly expanded role in Sartre’s retheorizing of the concrete consciousness. It was no longer just the free egoized for-itself that arose in situation. The situation was now seen as determining and limiting to very significant degrees the freedom of this concrete for-itself. The relation between Marxism and existentialism became crucial as it was Marx’s theorizing of socioeconomic dimensions of the capitalist situation of the concrete foritself that Sartre found most comprehensive and convincing. This particular dimension of the capitalist situation is a class-structured one that dominates, exploits, and alienates the members of the working class from the fruits of their labor, robs them of their freedom, and cuts them off from the deeper ontological foundations of their being. In Sartre’s view, it is the concrete man whom he [Marx] puts at the center of his research, that man who is defined simultaneously by his needs, by the material conditions of his existence, and by the nature of his work—that is, by his struggle against things and against men.11

In other words, the concrete consciousness was no longer just the egoized for-itself struggling to escape the anguish inherent in its non-substantial freedom, but also a being that was in an ongoing struggle to wrest its freedom from the class dynamics of its socioeconomic situation. It was a being that was ontologically free but at the same time socioeconomically dominated. The concrete consciousness that arose in this situation now had to struggle

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with issues of anguish as well as class domination. Hence, we get his/her relocation between existentialism and Marxism. From the point of view of his onto-metaphysical discourse, Sartre had to revisit his earlier pattern of prioritizing and centering the upsurge of consciousness as a nothingness, so carefully worked out in Being and Nothingness. In The Critique of Dialectical Reason, the revisiting of that earlier pattern of prioritizing and centering resulted in a major shift at the center of Sartre’s onto-metaphysical discourse. The dynamics of class oppression decentered without eliminating the dynamics of freedom, nothingness, and anguish. In the context of these changed ontological priorities and centers, Sartre argued that existentialism was more an “ideology” living on the margin of Marxism, which it first opposed, but into which today it seeks to be integrated (1968:8). Sartre arrived at this position, in part, by historically situating his existentialism in relation to the roles played by the earlier existential philosophies of Kierkegaard, Jaspers, and Heidegger. As this “ideology” within Marxism, what exactly would be the function, role, and contributions of existentialism? In addition to keeping alive the theme of the ineliminable anguish of consciousness, existentialism would hold Marxism’s feet to the fire on the issue of the concrete consciousness that arises in situation. Here, both philosophies met on shared ground. However, in Sartre’s view, the history of Marxism showed that it has a persistent tendency to reabsorb the concrete consciousness into abstract ideas of various sorts, which would be absolutized into eternal and universal truths and mechanically imposed on objects of knowledge. This tendency is a betrayal of Marx and at the same time a loss of the concrete person that Marxism is supposed to liberate. By emphasizing the enduring importance of mediations—existential, political, sociological, or the family dynamics of childhood—between the abstractions and the concrete, existentialism can help keep Marxism more on track to realize its collective project of working-class liberation. In short, to existential psychoanalysis, we must add a revolutionary praxis. These in brief are the core themes of Sartre’s onto-metaphysical discourse. PRIORITIZING AND CENTERING SPIRIT: HARRIS’S ONTO-METAPHYSICAL DISCOURSE To begin this exchange between Harris and Sartre, we can make use of four obvious points of convergence. First, like Sartre, the point of departure of Harris’s onto-metaphysical discourse is the human self. Second, like Sartre, Harris’s focus on the human self is concerned with experiences of lack and anguish along with their overcoming. Third, like Sartre and unlike Heidegger, Harris developed a detailed account of consciousness as background and

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preface to his discourse of the human self. Fourth and finally, socio-historical themes are vital elements in both Sartre’s and Harris’s accounts of the human self. But, as we will see, when we go deeper and get more into specifics, these points of convergence will become points of major divergences. Also contributing to the pattern of divergences was the very different epistemic situations out of which Harris and Sartre were writing. The epistemes that informed Harris’s onto-metaphysical discourse were very different as they were shaped by the demands for knowledge and meaning arising in the colonized societies of the Caribbean, as opposed to an industrializing and imperial Europe. More specifically, this meant that inherited patterns of prioritizing and centering of the many threads in the fabric from which Caribbean subjectivities were cut, were also quite different. Thus, one of the more obvious differences with Sartre is the different priority given to the spiritual, socio-historical, mythic, and dream layers in the fabric of human reality. Establishing his own set of epistemic priorities, Harris centered spirit—the inner nature and life of consciousness—and the manner in which other discourse-constitutive fundamentals were constellated around it. As a pre-independence society, the pressing demands for knowledge and meaning in the 1950s and 1960s were for knowledge concerning the nature and meaning of decolonization and nation-building. Consequently, inherited hybrid epistemes were in states of ferment, as they too were being decolonized and nationalized. It was out of this context of anticolonial and nationalist ferment that Harris’s onto-metaphysical discourse was born. From the point of view of the Caribbean self, the colonial experience brought an imploding of the symbolic universes of the Amerindian, African, and Indian peoples that were enslaved, indentured, racialized and economically exploited as integral parts of the colonial projects of imperial Europe. Consequently, the modern terrain in which the Caribbean person finds him or herself is one that Harris described as being “comparatively bare” with just the broken pieces of precolonial heritages scattered over its surface.12 For Harris, what emerges clearly on this bare terrain is a defeated and diminished but still alive human self. Hence, this socially determined condition must be the starting point for the Caribbean writer or scholar. It is this colonized and socially diminished human self that is the starting point of Harris’s onto-metaphysical discourse rather than the more philosophical portrait of the self in the case of Sartre. Looking at the human self from his perspective, Harris’s initial at conceptualization is an “architectural” one. As in the case of an archeological dig, it was the layers in the fabric of the self that he saw first, and which he labeled a “multi-existential fabric.”13 These layers were all alive with distinct creative capabilities, which were able to influence each other. These were layers of creative capabilities that came together as cooperating or competing themes in the formation of the self. The next step in the development of Harris’s

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ontological discourse was the prioritizing and centering of the key layers in this architectural vision of the fabric of the self, as they appeared in the “comparatively bare world” of the Caribbean artist and scholar. As in the case of the earlier Sartre, consciousness is the foundational layer of Harris ontology, and its spiritual threads are its center. However, this convergence ends with the next intuitive/conceptual step, as Harris’s originary intuition of consciousness is very different from Sartre’s. Consciousness is not a nothingness for Harris. It is not empty and without contents, it is not cut off from the world or from what Sartre has called being-in-itself. For Harris, consciousness as being-in-itself has the power to void the codes of its being, to empty itself and assume other forms of life, or to support other forms while still being itself. This is a distinct quality of the spiritual nature of the life of consciousness. For Harris, consciousness is a universal living medium whose creative abilities and activities are absolutely necessary for the emergence and sustenance of all forms of life. It is an all-encompassing, self-existent, and self-emptying universal layer in the fabric of being that embraces all existence, but for the most part remains an absent or unconscious presence for the life forms it supports. Harris writes: When I speak of the unconscious, I am not only speaking of the human unconscious but of the unconscious that resides in objects, in trees, in rivers. I am suggesting that there is a psyche, mysterious entity that links us to the unconscious in nature.14

The primary aim of Harris’s ontology is to make explicit the active, creative, and spiritual life of this universal consciousness. In his pursuit of this goal, Harris confronts directly the refusal of consciousness to fit neatly into our artistic and intellectual categories. For him, there can be no final or total grasping of consciousness by us. We are only capable of intuiting and catching fragmentary revelations of its vastness, its infinite creativity, and its endless ability to mask and unmask itself. Given this fluidity, it is not surprising that, like Sartre, Harris has a number of word-images that he uses to represent consciousness in his works. Thus, he refers to consciousness as “a groping spirit that leaves behind a trail of archeological traces,” “a deep organism that presently moves away from and eludes our grasp,” or as “original and authentic rhythms.”15 Given this basic description of the universal consciousness, Harris’s next step is outlining the nature of its relations with the many worlds it creates and supports through the voiding or emptying of itself. These relations are imagined and theorized with the aid of concepts and images from quantum mechanics. Looked at from the perspective of its relations with the worlds it has created, consciousness takes on the form or mask of hierarchy of levels

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of creative intelligence, with each level being associated with the creation and maintenance of specific groups of material creations or life forms. This hierarchical view of consciousness from the perspective of its creations calls to mind the hierarchical aspects in Sri Aurobindo’s vision of consciousness. In the case of Harris, these hierarchical grades of creative intelligence correspond to planes of existence such as the rocks and soils and mountains of physical nature, the biosphere, and the planes of self and society. Sri Aurobindo, along with Rabindranath Tagore, Savepalli Radhakrishnan, and Jiddu Krishnamurti were among India’s leading philosophers of the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to being a major philosopher, Aurobindo was also a poet, a political activist for India’s independence, and a yogi. He was the author of many books including such major works as The Life Divine, The Integral Yoga, The Human Cycle, and Essays on the Gita.16 Like Harris, Aurobindo modernized Hindu spiritual philosophies by making them engage with Darwin’s theory of evolution. For Aurobindo, all of the major phases in our evolution from inorganic matter to organic matter, and to conscious life were made possible by the spirit appropriately restricting itself in order to support the various life forms associated with these phases of the evolutionary process. Spirit is able to do this work because it is already “involved” in matter. For Aurobindo, there is an “involution” that precedes and makes evolution possible. For him, the major phases of our evolution and their corresponding modes of the self-restriction of the “involved” spirit were the phases of matter, life, mind, illumined mind, intuitive mind, over mind, and supermind. Supermind is the phase toward which the evolutionary process is moving, and the one in which humans, and not just a few mystics, will be able to experience directly the creative and evolutionary work of the universal spirit. Although different in details both Harris and Aurobindo share an evolutionary and hierarchical view of the creative work of spirit. Returning to Harris, to further develop his spiritual discourse he borrowed the concept of a quantum layer from the field of quantum mechanics in order to further conceptualize and verbalize this hierarchical aspect of the spiritual life of consciousness. In the quantum reading of this more impersonal mask of consciousness, Harris stresses the quantum-like ability of this universal consciousness to engage with and move between these planes and thus its ability to make contact life forms on all of these planes. It is not limited by the specific rules of a quantum plane but can void and transcend them. Thus, one of the key marks of the spiritual life of consciousness is its cross-quantum and cross-cultural nature. On the quantum level of the ego, a rose is a rose is a rose. Or, as Sartre noted above, a table is a table. From the cross-quantum perspective of the universal consciousness, the table that we put books on becomes the tree, the tree becomes the forest, and the forest becomes “the lungs of the globe, and the lungs of the globe breathe on the stars.”17

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As we have noted, in spite of its elusiveness, Harris thinks that consciousness leaves behind sufficient traces to support his expansive view of this aspect of its life. With the appropriate visionary/phenomenological spectacles, these traces can be seen on all of these quantum levels. In relation to creativity on the societal level, consciousness yields its creative inputs in integrated sets of symbols, images, and ritual practices that ground and structure the cultural aspects of our social world. In other words, the distinct traditions of a people are not exclusively human creations but also mediations and manifestations of a unique relationship the universal consciousness. This in brief is Harris’s descriptive account of the spiritual being of consciousness. This spirituality reveals the contents and the world-creating activity of consciousness. For Harris, consciousness is very much a living being. Its breathing is its constant voiding, masking, and unmasking of itself. This spiritual breathing creates the wombs in which countless life forms will be given being, and also the opportunities for consciousness to intervene in the lives of its creatures. This is the active, creative, and spiritual aspect of consciousness that Harris emphasizes. Thus, in his view, consciousness is far from Sartre’s description of it as “de trop.” To adequately set up our comparative engagement between these two thinkers, we need to flesh out more fully Harris’s account of the relations between consciousness and the ego. As the “photographic” but spiritual negative that enables the ego to project itself, the most basic relationship between consciousness and our ego is the spiritual one of self-voiding and concealment. In this self-negated state, consciousness wears the quantum mask of the creative intelligence that is capable of bringing into being an embryonic ego, which it supports until this germ of self is able to survive on its own. This “mothering” work, consciousness undertakes while remaining largely unknown to the emerging ego-self. In this state of self-suspension, consciousness voids the universal creative codes of its existence and allows the intentional creativity in the ego to lead the process of creating the self. As the ego, through its binary processes of identification and non-identification, launches the projects that will enable its adaptation to the familial, social, and natural worlds, consciousness allows itself to be further eclipsed by these adaptive activities of the ego. For Harris, it is most important that these founding projects are multiple, as their intra-subjective conflicts will become key factors in his explanation of experiences of nothingness and anguish.18 As in the case of Sartre, the creative codes by which the ego launches and develops its projects of being employ not only a binary but also a centering logic. The latter results in strong tendencies to center and absolutize the idea, person, practice, or principle which ground these founding projects. The centering tendencies of these multiple projects each move insistently, but also rather blindly, toward circular closure—a condition that Sartre

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called “premature closure” and Harris an “ontic tautology.”19 These ontic tautologies often shut out and eclipse consciousness beyond the degree of its normal self-suspension. This trespassing by the ego elicits countervailing responses from consciousness, which often take the form of voiding the ego’s creative codes along with negating or limiting its abilities. The ego is now in the Harrisian “void,” which it experiences as a lack of being or nothingness. Also important for Harris’s account of experiences of nothingness are their origins in both the intra-subjective and inter-subjective conflicts in which the multiple personas of the ego-self are often caught. Between these selfcentered personas, there is often as much intra-subjective conflict as there is cooperation. These conflicts are associated with the binary logic that guides the processes of identification and non-identification. Thus, a pre-reflective founding identification is also at the same time pre-reflective non-identification with whatever is perceived as the opposite of the founding identification. Given the existence of multiple personas, the potential for inner conflict is quite significant. Imagine the case in which the pre-reflective founding identification made by one persona is at the same time a pre-­reflective non-­ identification by another, and thus must be systematically negated. This struggle could result in a negated persona being so severely crushed and prohibited that it experiences itself as powerless, as a nothing that is unable to affirm and assert itself. Equally important for Harris are the inter-subjective experiences that can leave individuals or groups feeling defeated and powerless to affirm and assert their projects of being in the world. Throughout the body of his writings, the theme of defeated or conquered civilizations is a persistent one. This concern is particularly clear in Harris’s treatment of the indigenous or Amerindian civilizations of the Caribbean and the Americas. This concern with defeated civilizations leads directly to his intense focus on the colonial experiences of Caribbean societies. This is the point at which the historic and socioeconomic threads in the fabric of the self make their entrance and take a much more prominent place than in the early Sartre’s onto-metaphysical discourse. Thus, in many of Harris’s novels the hero is not an abstract, ontologically sketched individual, but an individual in a concrete situation, a colonizing European, a conquistador, a Prospero who will colonize, enslave and racialize, out of which will come a new human type, the colonized, bicultural figure of Caliban. The latter is a product of that bare terrain of which we spoke earlier. In this emphasis on inter-subjective group relations, Harris is here joining Fanon in his now famous assertion that in the Weltanschauung of a colonized people there is an impurity, a flaw that outlaws any ontological explanation .  .  . Ontology .  .  . does not permit us to

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understand the being of the black man. For not only must the black man be black, he must be black in relation to the white man.20

In other words, it is the socioeconomically concretized relations between colonizer and colonized, between Black and white, that permits us to understand the being and non-being of the Black man or woman. It is in this context of ontological prioritizing and centering that we can grasp Fanon’s equally famous statement that “beside phylogeny and ontogeny stands sociogeny.”21 To this Fanonian correction, not only would Harris agree, but he would also make the further addition of spiritogeny to the constituting fabric of the human self. The subjective “flaw” produced by the inter-subjective relations of the colonial situation, Fanon called an “existential deviation,” which opens the Calibanized ego to experiences of what Fanon called the “zone of nonbeing.”22 This zone was an “extraordinarily sterile and arid region” within the colonized psyche, which is a source of anguish from which he/she sought to escape.23 Fanon’s zone of non-being is Harris’s “void” or “inferno,” the region in the psyche where badly defeated personas seek refuge from both intra-subjective and inter-subjective conflicts of a violent nature. The immediate response of these personas to being forced to dwell in the void is to close even more tightly Sartre’s “circuit of selfness,”24 or Harris’s ontic tautology. However, Harris advises against this very strongly as these closures are for him “inauthentic.” He also advises against this response of tightening because this is the time when the universal consciousness is most likely to reassert itself not just by voiding personas of the ego, but also by showing and guiding these personas paths and ways out of their dilemmas, which they were unable to see. This point brings into the open the differences between Harris’s and Sartre’s approaches to history. In spite of this strong focus on Caliban’s dilemma, Harris’s view of history is definitely not Marxist to the degree of Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason. This element of spiritual guidance brings it closer to Hegel’s, while its absence calls to mind the approaches of Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee. With Harris’s suggestions for ways to get out of these difficulties in the life of the ego, we come to another significant point of divergence between Harris and Sartre. Harris’s way is best described as a series of apprenticeships with the gods or archetypes of the deeper levels of the human psyche, rather than a straight existential psychoanalysis. Although initially the universal consciousness cooperates in its exclusion from the world of the ego, it actively resists its complete exclusion. This resistance increases the closer the ego gets to completing its “circuit of selfness.” Throughout his works, Harris provides us with many instances of consciousness breaking through these circular walls of the ego and its personas in the manner of dreams, visions, states of

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possession, the eruption of a negated and repressed persona from the void, or a moment of ego collapse. These are all ways in which consciousness interrupts the premature closings or ontic tautologies of the ego and invites it to a period of archetypal apprenticeship. The foundation of these archetypal apprenticeships is the spiritual education of the personas of the ego, their initiation into the spiritual language and lifestyle of the universal consciousness. For this education to take place, the ego and its personas must stop resisting and accept their voiding along with recognizing that dread and anguish are not its primary meaning. In this new phase of its relationship with consciousness, the ego must learn the selfeffacing and masking logics of the spiritual life which are very different from its binary and self-centering logics. This is important because learning these aspects of the spiritual life of consciousness will enable the ego to dwell in the void “with hope.” In particular, the hope that while being still in the void new and less ego-centric intentional registers of creativity will become accessible, which will enable the ego and its personas to transform and spiritualize their pre-reflective tendencies toward ontic closure. Such reductions in levels of pre-reflective egocentrism is the real goal of the voidings by and apprenticeships with consciousness. The more profoundly these spiritual lessons are learned the more readily the ego and its personas will find themselves on the road to what Harris calls “fulfillment.” Between these archetypal apprenticeships and existential psychoanalysis, there is a very noteworthy point of convergence. Both come together around the notion of an original project and its special importance. However, this notion of an original project is at the same time a site of significance divergence. The importance of the original project for both Sartre and Harris is that it brings to the self-in-formation unique and distinct intuitions regarding its origins. As we have seen, for Sartre the original project is the carrier of the founding pre-reflective intuition that the self is always separated by a nothingness from its essence. For Harris, the original project carries within it the pre-reflective intuitions of its origins in the womb of eternity. More often than not, the ego will center and identify with this image of itself in eternity, which becomes at the same time a non-identification with earthy life. This quite often becomes one of the basic conflicts that many egos will experience, leading them, like Icarus, into dramas of falling from the eternal skies. These anxieties and instabilities of the original project get passed on to subsequent ones and can only be relieved through an apprenticeship of that original persona in which it can become conscious of its pre-reflective project of premature closure around its identification with eternity. The above is a brief account of Harris’s onto-metaphysical discourse, which makes the spirituality rather than the nothingness of conscious its center and ground. This centrality of spirit is also what makes Harris’s version

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of the metaphysics of creative realism different from that of his fellow historicist/poeticists. The shared starting point is the inherent creativity of the exposed and bare Caribbean self. However, the claims made by this self must remain provisional, mere rehearsals. Now that we have laid out Harris’s discourse, and have been pointing out important convergences and divergences between it and Sartre’s, and with fellow Caribbean philosophers and writers, we are now in a much better position to take up the role of the Caribbean creolizing tradition in accounting for these similarities and differences. We will turn to these next and in our final section take up the meaning of these significant divergences for the subfield of phenomenology.

BETWEEN HARRIS AND SARTRE: THE CREOLIZING FACTOR Like Shakespeare, Milton, Hegel, and Marx, Sartre is another of the Western canonical figures that Caribbean scholars have engaged in both critical and creolizing ways. Thus, CLR James’s engagements with both Hegel and Marx are good cases in point.25 So also, are the engagements of Frantz Fanon26 and Lewis Gordon with Sartre.27 However, unlike the latter two cases, there is no record of extensive commentary or exchange between Harris and Sartre. As a result, in this section I will take up some of the important differences that I think the Caribbean creolizing tradition would have made in a conversation between Sartre and Harris. Before turning directly to the impact of these creolizing factors, it is important to note that implicit in the previous section are a number of likely points of critical engagement. One of the most important of these would very likely have been over the relation between existence and essence. The claim that existence precedes essence was a basic credo of Sartre’s early existentialism. He opened Being and Nothingness with the claim that modern thought “has realized considerable progress by reducing the existent to the series of appearances which it manifests.”28 The conclusion that Sartre drew from this claim was “that the dualism of being and appearance is no longer entitled to any legal status within philosophy.”29 On the basis of this rejection of the dualism of being and appearance, he further suggested that we can equally well reject the dualism of appearance and essence. The “appearance does not hide the essence, it reveals it; it is the essence.”30 With this move, Sartre was breaking with the philosophers who “believed in noumenal realities.”31 From our analysis of Harris’s spiritual vision of the life of consciousness, it should be clear why I can see him raising his hand and saying,

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Just one minute, Sartre—what about my pre-reflective intuitions of consciousness, which suggest that it is indeed something like a noumenal and continuously creative essence? In developing your analysis of human subjectivity, you arrived at an original project undertaken in bad faith as the point beyond which we could not go. I don’t think that there is any such point.

I think that Harris would have raised these issues for two basic reasons. First, he would have objected to any human being legislating such final philosophical or other limits for the creative powers and movements of consciousness. For Harris, consciousness is first and foremost infinite creativity. Its creative capabilities are such that we cannot hope to constrain it with finality within the conclusions of philosophical arguments. It could easily do end-runs around this limit that Sartre was attempting to impose on it. Thus, Harris’s counterclaim would probably have been that the power and nature of consciousness are such that they could have easily pushed past Sartre’s limit of humans not being able to go deeper within themselves than the undertaking of projects in bad faith. Our second reason for Harris’s likely objection is Sartre’s very selfenclosed portrait of “being-in-itself as de trop for eternity.”32 Thus, the claim that being-in-itself can only be itself, a closed “synthesis of itself with itself” would have aroused Harris’s skepticism. He probably would have suspected that Sartre was here projecting one of his ontic tautologies onto being-initself.33 In Harris’s view, if there is anything that the spiritual life of consciousness can do is to be other than itself. As we have seen, it is precisely the ability of consciousness to void the universal codes of its being in order to give being to other life forms that account for the existence of the world, including Sartre and his claims about being-in-itself. In short, this possible exchange would have been driven by the significant differences in the prereflective intuitions of consciousness gleaned by these two men. This capability of the spiritual creativity of consciousness to open paths beyond human limits such as the one set by Sartre puts us in a very good position to take up the impact of the creolizing factor in Harris’s thinking. Within the Caribbean poeticist tradition of philosophy, the interaction between the pre-reflective imagistic and the reflective conceptual modes of thinking is not unique to Harris. Neither is his open embracing of practices and possibilities of cross-cultural mixing between the imploded Amerindian, African, Indian, and European heritages of the Caribbean region. This embrace can be seen in Cesaire, James, Jamaica Kincaid, Edwidge Danticat, and others in this poeticist tradition. Indeed, it is these ongoing processes of mixing that constitute the foundations of Harris’s uniquely expanded cross-cultural creole discourse. Harris’s poetics and its cross-cultural practices are distinguished by the explicit way in which spirit is incorporated into their creative

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operations along with the carefully threaded imagistic phenomenology as a method for approaching consciousness from the quantum plane of the ego. Consciousness is incorporated into Harris’s poetics as a master dissolving agent to help us get past limits that we think are impassable such as the one examined in our imaginary conversation between Harris and Sartre. This is precisely the kind of work that the spiritual creativity of consciousness does within the expanded logics of Harris’s poetics. It is incorporated as a site of creative agency that is not bound by the rules of ego existence and its patterns of textual production, and thus with the ability not only to break premature finalities but also to make connections that seem impossible within established epistemic frameworks. In short, the uniqueness of Harris’s poetics is the extremely agile manner in which it moves between “the texts of nature, spirit, and being.”34 Vital to Harris’s cross-cultural poetics is his portrait of the artist. He/she is among the intermediaries that enable the spiritual creativity of consciousness to operate effectively on the plane of the ego. Other intermediaries include dreams, visions, myths, archetypes of the psyche, and individuals who are unusually open to the presence of consciousness. To be an effective intermediary for or “surrogate” of consciousness, the artist must have done their archetypal apprenticeship or be one of those persons who are unusually open to the spiritual presence of consciousness. Further, Harris’s portrait of the artist makes him/her very much a seeker after truth, a truth that requires a continuous shedding and surpassing of our necessary but limited conceptual and existential frames, so that we can move progressively closer to the mystery of the unfathomable creator.35 This is the life of the Harrisian writer, one that brings the relentless critique of categories of thought, images, and “embalmed states of ego consciousness” into the very heart of literary production.36 Thus, in so many of Harris’s novels, the spiritual creativity of consciousness is the main character rather than any of the named ones. In short, what is unique about the creolizing factor in Harris is the special crossquantum and cross-cultural powers it derives from embracing the spiritual creativity of consciousness. Thus, to return to the imaginary conversation with which we began this section on creolization, it is quite likely that the differences over the dualism of essence and appearance would have spilled over into differences over approaches to fiction writing. No doubt the differences between character, John Donne, of Palace of the Peacock, and Roquentin of Nausea would have figured prominently in this exchange about literary production. Donne, a character with multiple personas including a conquistador and a spiritual visionary is on a very difficult journey but finally arrives outside of the palace of the mysterious creator even though he is not able to enter. Roquentin moves through the projects of his life only to discover the feelings of nausea

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that a self-enclosed, de trop being-in-itself creates in him. Once again, I think that this exchange over literary production would have taken Harris and Sartre to the differences in their pre-reflective intuitions of consciousness and the meaning of those differences: consciousness as creative nothingness or consciousness as spiritual creativity. PHENOMENOLOGY AND PRE-REFLECTIVE INTUITIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS The foregoing analyses of the onto-metaphysical discourses of Sartre and Harris have brought us to this point of their most immediate pre-reflective intuitions of consciousness. These outcomes were clearly not accidents as both were in search of a self-evident, yet ultimate foundation for both their art and their philosophy that was not dependent on logical or scientific proof. In other words, both were in search of that moment in which things gave themselves immediately to the philosopher or artist in primordial form. But, having done their best to arrive at such a foundation or starting point, they have left us with the challenges of why their foundations are so different, and how are we to account for these differences. In addressing these results, it seems obvious to turn to phenomenology given the nature of Sartre’s existentialism and Harris’s poeticism. In its early phases, phenomenology was animated by the ideal of finding just such a selfevident foundation. Indeed, one could argue that Sartre’s search for a selfevident foundation to ground his onto-metaphysical discourse was influenced by the ideal of early phenomenology. However, the realization of this ideal of a self-evident pre-reflective foundation turned out to be quite elusive. Thus, the fact that the searches of Harris and Sartre led to different outcomes was not a first in the field of phenomenology. We need only think of the different results produced by searches of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas. When we add these results of the searches of Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Wynter, Lewis Gordon,37 Nelson Maldonado-Torres,38 and other Caribbean phenomenologists, the question of what sets of factors can help us to account for these differences in the outcomes of searches for a self-evident starting point, becomes all the more intriguing and urgent. The differences in the founding intuitions of Sartre and Harris suggest that beyond the initial bracketing of the natural attitude, there are too many diverging paths on the way to the desired foundation for them to be captured by one method such as Husserl’s phenomenological reduction. As scholars and artists journey inward, they not only discover a terrain of many diverging paths and crossroads but also one with both internal and external forces pushing them toward some paths and away from others. This diversity of paths to

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a possible self-evident foundation suggests a need for the notion of a wider variety, but not an endless number of foundation-constituting reductions. If we define a reduction as a method of suspending the everyday frameworks within which objects present themselves to us by the withdrawal of the ego’s transcendental support for that particular conceptual framework, then the possibility of a variety of such methods really should not be a problem. These everyday frameworks within which objects appear are correlated with the constructive activities of a particular genre of the knowing subject, or what Harris called “embalmed states of ego consciousness.” In other words, the work of any reduction is the suspending of the a priori connections between particular constructions of the knowing subject—scientific, ideological, economic, and philosophical—and their correlated conceptual frames so that they can be surpassed, but without complete rejection, along with their modes of presenting objects. Given this view of reductions, phenomenology can be seen as the field in which scholars and artists pursue self-reflective descriptions of the constituting and de-constituting transcendental activities of embalmed states of ego consciousness after these states have been bracketed by some ego-displacing method. With this view of phenomenology, we should now be able to accommodate a variety of reductions and the differences in the foundational positions they disclose. Further, approaches to methods in phenomenology should include careful accounts of differences in patterns and techniques of de-centering particular genres of the ego-self and their correlated support for specific conceptual frameworks. Also, careful note should be taken of similarities and differences in external influences shaping the nature and horizons of reductions, which may not have been silenced by the initial acts of suspension. Between Sartre and Husserl, one such factor making for significant differences in the reductions out of which they were writing was Sartre’s greater interest in projects of self-production rather than ones of knowledge production as in the case of Husserl. This greater interest in a primordial knowing of the ego-self, rather than knowledge of more material objects in the world, is one of those choices that can be made at crucial crossroads or diverging pathways in the search for a self-evident ground for phenomenology. Indeed, Sylvia Wynter reserves the term “infrascendental” for the distinctly selfconstituting activities revealed by reductions, while retaining transcendental for the knowledge-constituting activities made visible by reductions.39 Such divergent paths can and have been inner sources of differences in the nature and disclosing capabilities of reductions. When we turn to the reduction out of which Harris’s onto-metaphysical discourse was elaborated, additional factors emerge that help us to understand variations in reductions and differences in the revelations of the

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transcendental or infrascendental ground they yield. Harris’s reduction can be described as a spiritual one. Its origins are to be found in a series of spontaneous experiences that gave Harris his initial sense that there were deeper layers of reality that were being hidden by the conceptual frameworks of science and everyday life. As a land surveyor of the lush interior of his native, Guyana, Harris often felt himself in living conversations with the surrounding landscape: “it was a dialogue in which I sensed that I was being tested very deeply about the nature of reality, how I viewed reality, not just by the people but by the landscape.”40 Out of these dialogues, Harris developed a complex spiritual discourse of “living landscapes.” Over the course of his life, these experiences became the foundation of Harris’s spiritual reduction and its capabilities for suspending and transcending the frames of the everyday life. Along with these differences in its technique or method of transcending the ego-self of the natural attitude, Harris’s reduction pointed to three additional differences capable of affecting the nature and power of a reduction. First, we have the specific effects produced by the existence of multiple personas. We learn from Harris’s reduction that because one persona may have disengaged from a particular frame, it does not mean that the others will automatically follow. There is quite often a clash of interests between personas that lead to such stalemates, which will affect how complete or effective the initial acts of suspension will be. Second, we have the differences produced by the discipline of the scholar or artist. Unlike Sartre or Husserl, Harris’s intuitive knowledge was not systematized first and foremost in the conceptual language of philosophy, but in the imagistic language of poetry and fiction. To these languages, Harris added those of dreams and myths. The latter in particular Sartre saw as an obstacle in his way. For Harris, dreams and myths were the self-writing of both psyche and consciousness, which was of a primordial and self-revealing nature. Third and finally, we have the effects of the different nature of the external crisis that motivated the occasion for this process of self-reflection in Harris—his prior involvement in the anticolonial project to liberate racialized and exploited Caliban from the conquistadorial grip of Prospero. As we have seen, the impact of this struggle determined the “diminished” and bare state of Caliban’s selfhood, which Harris had made a commitment to liberating. I am suggesting that this commitment survived the initial suspending or epoch of Harris’s spiritual reduction, and thus remained an active factor in shaping and making it different from Sartre’s existential reduction. These three are just some of the factors making for differences in the nature of reductions that have emerged from our examination of the different prereflective foundations upon which Sartre and Harris established their ontometaphysical discourses.

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CONCLUSION We began with a comparative analysis of thematic similarities and differences in the onto-metaphysical discourses of Sartre and Harris. This thematic analysis brought us to a crucial difference in their founding pre-reflective intuitions of the nature of consciousness. These differences also gave us a vital clue to the uniqueness of Harris’s creolizing discourse and its special version of the metaphysics of creative realism. To explain this divergent outcome between Harris and Sartre, we turned to Western phenomenology but did not find a ready-made answer. We found a lot that was helpful; but we also found in Harris and the Caribbean philosophical tradition a lot that was crucial for our grasping of the meaning of our results. Factors such as Husserl’s phenomenological reduction and Sartre’s reshaping of it into his existential reduction were very useful in making more explicit the claims and contents of Caribbean phenomenology. At the same time, the reshaping of Western phenomenological conception of reductions was necessary to fully represent the phenomenological aspects of Harris’s onto-metaphysical discourse. These, we suggested, constitute important contributions to the field of phenomenology as a whole. In sum, from our brief look at the outcome of this comparison between Sartre and Harris in the mirror of phenomenology, we have learned a lot about the shared characteristics of their onto-metaphysical discourses, as well as key differences in the specific reductions by which their founding intuitions were disclosed. The ego’s de-instituting act of suspending the frames of everyday life, the search for new foundations of certainty, and the engagement with themes of the self, being, anguish, the void, and nothingness, all point to the common terrain covered by both men. At the same time, differences in the structure of their reductions—spiritual, cross-quantum, and cross-cultural in the case of Harris—forced us to look more closely at the nature of reductions that fell clearly within our expanded view of phenomenology. In short, from our look at Sartre and Harris in the phenomenological mirror, the reflection coming back to us is the need for a more comprehensive theory of reductions based on a more comparative approach. NOTES 1. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), 619. 2. Ibid., lvi. 3. Ibid., 618. 4. Ibid., li.

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5. Ibid., lvi. 6. Ibid., lvi. 7. Ibid., 43. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 89. 10. Ibid., 615. 11. Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 14. 12. Wilson Harris, Tradition, the Writer and Society (London: New Beacon Books, 1973), 13. 13. Wilson Harris, Carnival in The Carnival Trilogy (London: Faber and Faber, 1993), 283. 14. Wilson Harris, “The Composition of Reality,” Callaloo 18, no. 1 (1995): 20. 15. Harris, Tradition, the Writer and Society, 15. 16. See Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1998). 17. Wilson Harris, “The Fabric of the Imagination,” Third World Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1990): 72. 18. Paget Henry, “Intra-Subjectivity in the Philosophy of Wilson Harris,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 49, no. 2, (2013): 210–15. 19. Harris, “The Fabric of the Imagination,” 17. 20. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Preface” in Frantz Fanon (ed.), The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 109. 21. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 13. 22. Ibid., 13. 23. Ibid., 10. 24. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 89. 25. See C. L. R. James, Notes on Dialectics (London: Allison & Busby, 1990). 26. See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967). 27. See Lewis R. Gordon, Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995). 28. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, xlv. 29. Ibid., xlv. 30. Ibid., xlvi. 31. Ibid., xlv. 32. Ibid., lxvi. 33. Ibid., lxvi. 34. Harris, “The Fabric of the Imagination,” 182. 35. Paget Henry, “Wilson Harris and Caribbean Philosophies of Art,” CLR James Journal 10, no. 1 (2004): 286. 36. Harris, Carnival in The Carnival Trilogy, 46. 37. Lewis Gordon, Disciplinary Decadence (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2006). 38. See Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Against War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 39. Harris, “The Composition of Reality,” 25. 40. Ibid., 17.

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REFERENCES Aurobindo, Sri. The Life Divine. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1987. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 1967. ———. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1968. Gordon, Lewis. Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995. ———. Disciplinary Decadence. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2006. Harris, Wilson. Tradition the Writer and Society. London: New Beacon Books, 1973. ———. Palace of the Peacock. London: Faber and Faber, 1977. ———. “The Fabric of the Imagination.” Third World Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1990): 175–86. ———. Carnival in The Carnival Trilogy. London: Faber and Faber, 1993. ———. “The Composition of Reality.” Callaloo 18, no. 1 (1995): 13–32. Henry, Paget. Caliban’s Reason. New York: Routledge, 2000. ———. “Wilson Harris and Caribbean Philosophies of Art.” CLR James Journal 10, no. 1 (2004): 278–91. ———. “Intra-Subjectivity in the Philosophy of Wilson Harris.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 49, no. 2 (2013): 209–21. James, C. L. R. Notes on Dialectics. London: Allison & Busby, 1980. Maldonado-Torres, Nelson. Against War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. ———. Nausea. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1964. ———. “Preface” in Frantz Fanon (ed.), The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. 1967. ———. Search for a Method. New York: Vintage Books, 1968. ———. “Black Orpheus” in Steven Ungar (ed.), “What is Literature?” and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Wynter, Sylvia. “After the New Class: James, Les Damnes, and the Autonomy of Human Cognition.” Paper presented at Wellesley College, 1991.

Chapter 5

The Global South and Sartre Echoes of Existential Thought Kris F. Sealey and T Storm Heter

Jean-Paul Sartre’s intellectual shadow is long. Philosophers, writers, artists, and activists around the globe continued to read, teach, and write about Sartrean existentialism. This volume collects some of the recent, important voices in global Sartre Studies. These Sartrean voices engage in “creolizing” work, which we define broadly as the articulation of cultural and conceptual hybridity under conditions of eurocentrism, epistemic colonialism, and the legacies of slavery. WHY CREOLIZE? WHY SARTRE? To “creolize Sartre” is to put a name to a project that is already underway: that of rethinking existentialism’s relationship to colonialism and European modernity. Sartre, as much or more than other European existentialists of his time, has been taken up by Francophone intellectuals in the Caribbean and Africa. His influence has also been felt in Anglophone communities and indeed across the globe. This volume focuses in particular on work that engages authors and concerns from the Global South, or what was called in Sartre’s time the tiers monde (the third world). We posit three main reasons that his work has already begun to be subjected to creolizing tendencies. First, Sartrean existentialism is a philosophy of engagement, which connects it to the liberatory task of creolization. The burden of an “engaged literature” (littérature engagée), as articulated by Sartre in What is Literature? (1947) is to expose and resist oppression. Existentialism is a philosophy of human freedom, and the call to resist oppression is a practical, political injunction that underlies existentialist literature, whether in the form of prose, poetry, theater, journalism, or experimental writing. As 105

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a form of humanism, existential engagement calls for aesthetic provocations as well as political ones. A second reason Sartrean existentialism has been subject to creolization is that many of its basic concepts are flexible, open-ended, and suitable for theoretical repurposing. The Sartrean vocabulary includes now familiar keywords like the gaze, being-for-itself, the situation, authenticity, the project, praxis, phenomenological ontology, purified reflection, the series, reciprocity, and bad-faith. According to the Sartrean notion of intelligibility, as laid out in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), human reality can be described phenomenologically both at the level of individual human praxis and institutionally. For existentialists, the ongoing project of making human reality intelligible is just that—an ongoing project, where incomplete descriptions of the self, other people, and one’s situation can be revisited and reclaimed from new perspectives. Sartre’s last two major philosophical undertakings, the Critique, (volumes 1 and 2), and The Idiot of the Family (1971), show the scope and style of a phenomenologically open-ended approach to human reality. We can come at human freedom from dialectically opposite starting points: the individual praxis of a particular human being and the collective praxis of institutions, organizations, and groups-in-fusion. Sartre coined the phrase “detotalized totality” to express the idea that the individual and the social are two moments of an open, unfinished whole which constitutes itself anew through the mediations of worked matter. Rather than claiming to discover a supposed human nature, Sartre sought to reveal the interplay of facticity (i.e., our past, our concrete body, our being-for-others) and transcendence (i.e., our being “condemned to be free”). The methodological openness of the basic existential vocabulary has allowed for creolizing versions of existentialism, for instance the Africana Existentialism articulated by Lewis R. Gordon in Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (2000). The sheer breadth of topics analyzed by Sartre should also be considered when assessing how and why he has been taken up by intellectuals outside of France and Europe. He wrote about existence, capitalism, colonialism, racism, liberation, group solidarity, consciousness, psychology, art, authenticity, literature, and many other topics. He resisted “disciplinary decadence,”1 having made major contributions not only through his philosophical voice, but in the genres of fiction, theater, and journalism. Though rooted in Hegelian dialectics, Husserlian phenomenology, Twentieth-century Marxism, and debates with contemporary Structuralists, Sartre’s existentialism changed over time in response to what Simone de Beauvoir called “the force of circumstance.” The conceptual creativity we are now experiencing among globally minded existentialists, often working outside European and American metropoles, can be felt as a transformative existentialist “echo” in Édouard Glissant’s sense. As Paget Henry notes in “Africana Phenomenology” (2005),

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the reception of European phenomenology, in particular by Caribbean and African intellectuals, can be understood as the advancement of “an improvisational metaphysics,” that is, a philosophical approach that responds to new situations the way jazz musicians respond to new chord changes and melodies. We hear the contributions in this volume as refigurations of standards, as echoes which might refresh, rejuvenate, and rehumanize. Sartre experimented with a variety of writing strategies throughout his life, from dense philosophical tomes, to short essays, to plays, to politically charged prefaces. Being and Nothingness (1948) would establish an existentialist vocabulary of consciousness, being, freedom, negation, the self, relations with others, reflection, and authenticity. As briefly noted, his two-volume Critique showed that phenomenology, Marxism, and historicism could complement one another. In the multi-volume The Family Idiot, a massive biography of Flaubert which Sartre called a “true novel,” he sought a dialectically complete description of human reality. Many of his shorter non-fictional writings have been collected by the French publisher Gallimard as Situations. Running over ten volumes, Situations gathers occasional writings, including pieces from the journal Les Temps Modernes that Sartre co-founded in 1945 along with Simone de Beauvoir, Raymond Aron, Michel Leiris, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Situations V, first published by Gallimard in 1964, and later translated into English as “Colonialism and Neocolonialism,” is particularly important for creolizing readings of Sartre.2 This English edition not only contains Sartre’s period writings on the decolonial thought of Patrice Lumumba, Albert Memmi, and Frantz Fanon, but also features a new introduction by the Algerian-born philosopher Azzedine Haddour, and a new preface by Robert J. C. Young provocatively titled “Sartre the ‘African Philosopher.’” While Young shows how “Sartre constituted one of the major philosophical influences on Francophone anticolonial thinkers and activists, and through them on postcolonial theory,”3 Haddour focuses on “the inextricable links between ethics and politics in his [Sartre’s] critiques of anti-Semitism, racism and colonialism.”4 Haddour also addresses the concern that Sartre’s theory is ethnocentric, a concern voiced by Fanon (and others) about the “perceived reduction of difference to a negative concept: the voided character of the Jew and the negativity of Négritude.”5 Following Haddour, we agree with that Sartrean existential-humanism is potentially a Eurocentric approach to humanity. Rather than brushing off such a question, we see the need to address the issue directly, for instance though inviting future comparative analyses of Sartrean humanism(s) and African and/or Caribbean humanisms. Experimental writing, art, and aesthetics were major sources of inspiration for Sartre. He was an artist himself, having contributed to French literature and theater with such works as Nausea (1938), Le Mots (1963) and No Exit

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(1944). The artistic impulse within existential thinking is also strongly evident in the work of Africana writers. Sartre engaged directly with the poetry of Léopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire. Today’s existentialism can continue the theme of aesthetic engagement by considering the work of Africana writers, especially Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter, and Jamaica Kincaid. Senghor and Césaire were poets, Glissant wrote novels and poetry, Wynter has written prominent plays, essays and a novel, and Kincaid writes novels, essays, and works of creative nonfiction. The existential dimension of these writers’ works consists in their phenomenologically rich descriptions of the lived experience of colonized peoples, as well as their efforts to frustrate white gazes. In this respect, Kincaid’s A Small Place (1998) is exemplary, for it employs a narrative strategy—what Rhonda D. Frederick calls the “radical use of the second person”—that connects it to Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew and Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, texts which all seek to implicate the reader in the structures of colonial power. (2003, p, 11) A Small Place uses radical second-person phenomenology to position contemporary neocolonialist readers as gazed at, rather than gazing. Kincaid’s relentless use of “you” in A Small Place puts the (white) reader under the eyes of Antiguans; this writing strategy interrupts white experience and suggests to the neo-colonial tourist that her/his being-for-others consists in being an “ugly,” “pastrylike-fleshed” “blob” (17). Kincaid also gives an existential reading of the motive for tourism in Antigua, writing that “the banality of your own life is very real to you; it drove you to this extreme, spending your days and nights in the company of people who despise you, people you do not like really, people you would not want to have as your actual neighbors” (18). She shows how a particular version of (white) angst consists in the desire of people in the overdeveloped world to “feel better about their own miserable existence, so that they could be less lonely and empty—a European disease” (80). Kincaid’s writing is an example of the experimental, genre-challenging spirit of existential thinking. One of the lasting appeals of Sartrean existentialism is its insistence, above all, on the creative agency of human freedom. “Never were we more free than under the German occupation,” he wrote in 1944. This seemingly absurd statement was meant to convey the absurdity of the human condition, not to excuse Nazi and Vichy oppression. He continued: “The frequently atrocious circumstances of our struggle made us at the same time live— without any deceit, nakedly, in this torn and untenable situation which one calls the state of man (la condition humaine)” (43). Sartre’s position that there is agency under oppression is similar to that expressed by Frederick Douglass in his 1845 Narrative. In Chapter II of the Narrative Douglass analyzes the meaning of slave songs, concluding that far from showing that slaves were singing because they were happy (a common white myth),

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these songs were evidence of creative agency which offered intellectual critiques of slavery and white supremacy. Douglass says, “To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. . . . Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness” (14–15). Artistic expression, in song (and in his own case through his writing), was Douglass’s evidence that Black diasporic peoples under slavery were capable of exhibiting imagination, creativity, intelligence, forethought, and memory. Douglass and Sartre drew on a similar existential observation: oppression robs us of our humanity, and yet oppression is a specifically human phenomenon; humans oppress other humans, not rocks or trees. From this existential position, Douglass and Sartre would both be able to point out the incoherence of laws in the Americas that prohibited slaves from reading: the need to make reading illegal was proof that white lawmakers knew slaves were human beings, capable of thought, capable of freedom. The existential notion that we can be free under oppression is based on the distinction between what we might call material freedom and transcendental freedom. Sartre scholars have used various words to distinguish these forms of freedom, sometimes appealing to simply “early,” “middle,” and “late” Sartre. In his works of the 1930s and 1940s, Sartre explored the topic of transcendental freedom by modifying Husserl’s view that consciousness constitutes the world. In the middle period, Sartre wrote frequently about oppression, calling it a “trap” and a “ruse,” but he struggled to articulate the meta-theory that would explain the connection between transcendental freedom and material freedom, as we can see from his thoughts in his Notebooks for an Ethics, which he did not publish in his lifetime. In his late period, we find Sartre employing a new term, “praxis,” as a rough equivalent of freedom. The resistance to and theoretical discussion of oppression have become synonymous with Sartrean existentialism. After World War II, and influenced by the politics of de Beauvoir, Raymond Aron, Maurice Merleau-Ponty—and later Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Léopold Senghor, and Aimé Césaire— the main concern of Sartre’s work shifted from describing transcendence to theorizing the relationship between transcendence and oppression. He defended committed literature, explored co-subjectivity through the readerwriter dialectic, described French anti-Semitism phenomenologically, articulated a new form of Marxism, theorized colonialism as a system of power, and explored the poetics and politics of Négritude for its revolutionary potential. Decolonial thinking was (and is) central to Sartrean existentialism. As we will discuss further below, existentialism is a decolonial philosophy insofar

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as it theorizes colonialism as a totalizing system which has infected the modern world culturally, psychologically, epistemologically, and ontologically. The philosophical and aesthetic movement of Négritude, and Sartre’s engagement with its key authors, marks a crucial period in the creolizing of European and Africana existentialist perspectives. Black francophone writers who came to Paris in the 1940s and 1950s, especially Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Albert Memmi, formed close relationships with Sartre; they were both influenced by him and also influence him. They challenged this white, middle class Frenchman to face the epistemic, phenomenological limits of his own (white) lived perspective. According to Young during this period, “Francophone African writing became something of a synthesis of the philosophy of Negritude with Sartrean existentialism.”6 The Senegalese writer Alioune Diop, an important spokesperson for the Negritude movement, founded the journal Présence africaine in 1947, with Sartre as a board member. Présence africaine was a pan-African journal of literature and theory, based in Paris, that drew together Black diasporic writings and existential concerns with humanity and liberation. Sartre wrote a short piece for the first volume of Présence africaine entitled “Présence noir” (“Black Presence”) as well as republishing “Black Orpheus” in the journal. He was influenced by the debates between various diasporic Black thinkers. In Black Paris: The African Writer’s Landscape (1998) Bennetta Jules-Rosette shows that Sartre participated in (and benefited from) debates over representations of Africa carried out in the pages of Présence africaine.7 But among the Négritude writers who influenced Sartre most directly, we must include Léopold Sédar Senghor, the Senegalese poet, philosopher, and political activist. Sartre would write the preface to one of Senghor’s most widely read works, the 1948 Anthology of Black Poetry (Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française). His preface, “Black Orpheus,” both popularized and distorted the philosophy of Negritude. The contemporary Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne, who has written extensively on Négritude, argues that Sartre’s preface plastered “a kiss of death on Senghor’s anthology.”8 The trouble with “Black Orpheus,” was that “Sartre transformed Négritude into an illustration of his own philosophical theses.” Diagne’s well-founded concern that “Black Orpheus” may have missed the subtleties of Senghor’s appeal to African values raises the question of whether Sartre’s engagement with Négritude was a creolizing or de-creolizing encounter. To what extent was Sartre changed by this exchange? Famously, in Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Fanon criticized Sartre’s reading of Négritude, arguing that it “relativized” Black struggles for selfaffirmation and humanity. In “Black Orpheus” Sartre drew on the race-critical phenomenology he had earlier developed to expose French anti-Semitism:

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Jews in an anti-Semitic society experience their being-for-others as the theft of freedom. Racists steal our freedom (e.g., as Jews, as Black people, as people of color) by over-determining the racialized social roles we inhabit. On this theory, racism is a hardening of social identities, and those of us subjected to white gazes are caught between two poisonous options: flight or resistance. But, does Sartre’s description of the powerful effects of the white gaze deconstruct or reinscribe the gaze? He depicted Négritude as merely (or at least mostly) a reaction to white gazes. However, we need not reduce what bell hooks (1992) has called “black looks” to the simple formula, flee or resist, which is offered by Sartre. Sartre’s phenomenology of white gazing prefigures some important work being done today in Critical Whiteness Studies, by Linda Alcoff, Michael Monahan, Sara Ahmed and others. He is among the first white, European phenomenologists to offer a race critical phenomenology of whiteness. Yet from hindsight, his work on whiteness can be considered uncritical (and hence de-creolizing) in the specific sense named above: he attempts to transform the white gaze primarily from within the white gaze. He tries, as Audre Lorde puts it in her 1984 critique of white feminist theory, to tear down the master’s house “with the master’s tools.” Interestingly, Lorde’s critique, drawn primarily from the everyday experiences of queer women of color, also draws on Beauvoir and Aimé Césaire. In the language of contemporary political activism we could say that in engaging with Négritude writers Sartre was learning to be a white ally. Sartre was a good ally to the extent that placed himself in the company of Black intellectuals from whom he would learn (Senghor, Fanon, Memmi, Diop, Richard Wright and others) but at the end of his analysis, the diversity of black looks, even in their richest, most creative, and non-reaction dimensions, would be subsumed under the dialectical struggle for socialism. Since this critique of Sartre’s philosophy—that in “Black Orpheus” he chose class over race—is now well known, a further set of questions arise for us. Among them, is this: Can there be such a thing as a modified, creolizing socialism that can be developed through a comparative analysis of existentialist socialism and African socialisms, such as those suggested by Senghor, Mamadou Dia, or Kwame Nkrumah? Commentaries on the Sartre–Fanon relationship recount Fanon’s critique of Sartre, which took the form of a personal reflection about reading “Black Orpheus.” Fanon said, “I felt that I had been robbed of my last chance. . . . Help had been sought from a friend of the colored peoples, and that friend had found no better response than to point out the relativity of what they were doing. . . . Jean-Paul Sartre, in this work, had destroyed black zeal.”9 Fanon pointed to two problematic dimensions of Sartre’s thought. First, he relegated race to a moment within the class struggle; and second he implied

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that the Black experience had no positive content and was only a reaction to whiteness. Fanon’s criticisms are useful to keep in mind as we move forward with the project of creolizing Sartre. Included in such a project is the commitment to bring to Sartre’s conceptual structures to those modes of theorizing that emerge from the concrete experiences of the Global South, where theory is often geared toward finding alternatives to the colonial order. It is to think through Sartre’s work in a way that captures what is most endemic to practices of creolization—generating novel pathways out of what is already given, for the sake of more liberatory conditions for human life. So, in creolizing Sartre, his corpus encounters the generative critique of scholars and activists who, like Fanon, used that corpus in new ways to respond to their concrete political concerns. As an example of the work of creolizing Sartre, today we find existentialist feminisms that are critical of race, and phenomenologies of race that are feminist. This, in part, is in response to what we understand as the call to creolize theory, a task that, at least in its political dimension, requires recognizing the complexity of oppression as it is historically situated, and opening up that theory anew, in light of that complexity. One source of strength in creolizing thinking is that it emphasizes the language of creolized peoples, and the “small places,” to borrow Jamaica Kincaid’s phrase, from which theories can emerge. Creolization often points to writing in, and making meaning in, languages that simultaneously emerge from the colonizer and are not for the colonizer, given the ways in which, as creolized, the linguistic orders of that colonizing language are adopted for other (often transgressive) purposes. In “Black Orpheus,” Sartre suggested that the French language was so thoroughly colonial that it constituted a “trap.”10 He believed it was paradoxical for Black poets write in French, so saturated was the language with whiteness and symbolic forms of colonial violence. What Sartre failed to grasp—and what Caribbean theorists including Édouard Glissant point out—is that the Black experience, particularly as it comes out of the experience of the Middle Passage, consists of practices that call into question such totalizing violence, that generate certain jostling effects that create spaces within what appears to be a closed-off system to support liberatory meaning-making. Hence, a creolized French language would be a language thus jostled and transformed, so as to accommodate the transgressive purpose of a poetry of Négritude. These creolizing transformations are part of a political culture that characterizes much of the Black experience in the New World, which makes newness out of totalizing and dominant structures that can support self-determination and empowerment. In Caribbean Discourse, Glissant writes: “The idea of creolization demonstrates that henceforth it is no longer valid to glorify ‘unique’ origins that the race safeguards and prolongs.”11 Creolization decenters projects that aim

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to uncover locations of origin, or “untained” sources of truth. Applied to language, we can state that a creolized linguistic order is ever void of the bricolage that emerges when multiple cultural communities find themselves in a single place, and begin to make meaning together. Applied to a theory (such as Sartre’s), it means that conceptual development is always already multi-directional, and reflective of multiple historical materialities. This volume hopes to showcase the ways in which Sartre’s work was never completely his own, given engagements between him and intellectuals from the Global South. It also hopes to offer Sartre’s work as what can continue to be creolized. The difficulty of Sartre’s friendship with the Négritude movement and its authors has implications for the project of creolizing his work. After criticizing Sartre, Fanon did not abandon existentialism or his relationship to Sartre: he transformed them. In his book, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (2014), Glen Coulthard presents a succinct account of Fanon’s complicated relationship to Sartre, particularly around the decolonial and emancipatory potential of Négritude. Coulthard shows that, though Fanon was gravely critical of the dialectical essentialism shaping Sartre’s reading of Black affirmation in the Négritude movement, he shared Sartre’s suspicion that, when it comes to the creation of alternative and decolonial futures for Black life, Négritude’s cultural revaluations were a means and not ends in themselves. Of this Fanonian critique, Coulthard writes, “When Fanon reprimands Sartre for characterizing the self-affirmative reconstruction of black subjectivity as a phase in the unfolding dialectic of anticolonial class struggle, he is challenging Sartre’s deterministic understanding of the dialectic, not his claim that [Négritude] represents “a stage” in a broader struggle for freedom and equality.”12 Hence, Fanon’s critical stance was not anti-Sartrean at all, but rather a stance to transform and creolize Sartre’s analysis to better account for the concrete needs of the colonized world (a world from which Fanon wrote). Ten years after “Black Orpheus” Sartre would engage with Fanon’s work directly, writing the preface for Wretched of the Earth (1961). Fanon’s transformation of phenomenology, aesthetics, and politics will be an important theme of the current volume. In the late 1950s, when Sartre was writing the Critique, he was primarily interested in the political struggles of anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and antiracist groups. It is significant that the writing and publication of the Critique was simultaneous with the Algerian War (1954–1962). The theoretical blend of phenomenology and sociology Sartre dubbed the “progressive-regressive method,” was developed in part to illuminate the structural violence of French colonialism in Algeria. Sartre argued that French colonialism was fundamentally racist and that both French racism and French colonialism were systematically, not idiosyncratically, violent, dehumanizing, and alienating. Sartre called

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colonial racism an “infection” that had spread and metastasized through the entire economic, social, and psychological makeup of France and its colonies.13 Sartre’s decolonial engagement with the Algerian question was, Richard Wolin writes, “The high-water mark of Sartre’s career as an intellectuel engagé.”14 In 1961, the year the first volume of the Critique was published, Sartre would sign the Manifesto of the 121, urging French colonial troops to desert.15 But beginning in 1955, when Les Temps Modernes started a campaign in support of Algerian revolutionaries, Sartre had already chosen sides.16 In 1956, Sartre would co-organize in a conference in Paris denouncing French colonialism in Algeria. His speech, “Colonialism is a System” (later published in Les Temps Modernes), argued that the economic and social crisis in Algeria could not be solved by a more benevolent French colonialism. As Azzedine Haddour has shown, Sartre’s argument about the systematicity of colonialism was a necessary dose of “de-mystification” for white French intellectuals and their public, many of whom blamed Algerians for their own suffering.17 Haddour writes of “Colonialism is a System”: “Sartre dismisses as ‘neo-colonial mystification’ the view epitomized by Camus that the ‘old Franco-Muslim fraternity’ could be rediscovered if the socio-­ economic conditions of the Algerians were improved, a view that simply ignores the politics of the colonial system in Algeria.”18 Sartre had not forgotten that Albert Camus’ piece “Crisis in Algeria,” published in Combat magazine in 1945, had buried the lead about colonial violence and barely mentioned the massacres in Guelma, Kharata, and Sétif, in which French police murdered 45,000 civilians.19 Algeria was not the only decolonial situation that transformed Sartre’s thinking. In 1960, Sartre and Beauvoir travelled to Cuba to show their support for the revolutionary praxis of Castro and Guevara. Sartre’s coverage of the Cuban revolution, published in the French daily France-Soir, was translated into English, German, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Russian, Spanish and Polish, and became an internationally important, if exaggerated, prorevolutionary piece of writing.20 In her memoir Force of Circumstance (1963) Beauvoir wrote that the trip had a deep effect on the two intellectuals, noting in particular how Sartre’s experiences in Cuba convinced him that violent praxis was a legitimate response to colonial domination. While Sartre’s most well-known advocacy of anti-colonial violence would come a year later, in his Preface to Wretched of the Earth, with a famously blunt claim—“to shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time”—according to Beauvoir, it was the Caribbean situation that was the “catalyzing moment” for his views on violence.21 The practical politics of decolonization was, we have seen, a major concern for Sartre as he wrote the Critique. In that work, Sartre describes group

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life, economic classes, social movements, colonial violence, and the rise of bureaucracy and Stalinism. With analyses of colonialism in Algeria, deforestation in China, the storming of the Bastille, waiting for a bus, top forty record collections, and boxing matches, the Critique provides an existential social ontology with a liberatory potential. The liberatory potential of this ontology turns on the distinction between two types of social collectives, the series and the group. With his attention now turned to the macro structures of power, Sartre argues that colonial racism consists not primarily in overdetermined social roles, but in the serializing, alienating effects of colonial reasoning and colonial bureaucracy. A more recent rendering of the notion of existential seriality can be found in Iris M. Young’s “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective.”22 Throughout his life Sartre surrounded himself with young activists who he hoped would keep him on his political toes. This was part of a lifelong pattern of his relationship with intellectuals, artists, and activists who might push him to be more observant and engaged. As his health and eyesight declined in his last years, he enlisted as his personal secretary the Jewish Maoist activist and philosopher Benny Levy. The Hope Now interviews of 1980 show Sartre struggling to grow politically, right up to his last minute. Into the twenty-first century, philosophers, writers, artists, and political activists continue to draw on Sartre’s writings in an effort to open them up in ways that make the theoretical foundations of these writings accountable to current political and social urgencies. Sartrean Robert Bernasconi notes that in the Global South Sartre is read as a “champion of the oppressed.”23 We would add that Sartre is very important for the Left, for Caribbean, Africana and African thought, for feminism, anti-racism, and for decolonial thinking. In writing against class oppression, racism and colonialism, and in writing about queerness, Jewishness, poverty, and Blackness, these intellectual communities have turned to Sartre for conceptual tools from which to work. But in so doing, these tools have become creolized. They have not remained unchanged through such exchanges, but rather transformed so that they are both recognizably Sartrean and novel in their deployment in such critical projects. Using Sartre to articulate a creolizing perspective is not always a straightforward process, since, as Sara Ahmed notes in On Being Included (2012), philosophers from majority backgrounds (e.g., white, male, straight, cis-­gendered) continue to dominate philosophy. In predominantly white institutions, whites writing about their whiteness receive more philosophical attention and are considered more philosophically legitimate than non-whites writing about whiteness. Sartre may have understood the dynamic of systemically rewarded white mediocrity,24 but the danger persists in the kinds of exchanges between Sartre’s theory and subaltern scholarship that this volume lays out.

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Perhaps most notably in his writing of prefaces, especially the preface for Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Sartre encouraged younger activists and scholars to use him. He had refused the Nobel Prize on the basis that a writer is not an institution. The more famous (and hence institutional) Sartre became, the more he wanted his thoughts to be challenged by his allies outside mainstream white French culture. Sartre’s relationship with others was a way for him to resist serialization. He puts himself in the company of artists, anti-racists, feminists, leftists, and radicals in order that existentialism could, just perhaps, outlast itself and become the “living philosophy” he imagined in Search for a Method (1957). We believe that creolizing approaches to Sartre will steer away from the hagiographic tendency to enshrine him as a “Subject.” Sartre could be labeled a literary and philosophical genius in the literal sense, but our approach emphasizes the relational aspect of Sartrean existentialism. We think existentialism is a group effort. Other scholars who take this approach include Kathryn Sophia Belle, whose work shows how Richard Wright “helped Sartre recognize and try to transcend the implicitly white scope of his philosophy.”25 Margaret Simons and other existentialist feminists have challenged the narrative that Beauvoir was a follower of Sartre, showing how he absorbed a great many ideas from his lifelong intellectual partner, and focusing on the exchange between the two. Lewis Gordon has demonstrated how Sartre took seriously Fanon’s critique of the politics of recognition in “Black Orpheus.” Gordon describes Sartre’s preface to Wretched as a subversion of the “presumption of authoritative perspective.”26 In short, approaching Sartre relationally, and using his theories to promote freedom, has become an important dimension of the ongoing creolization of existential philosophy. To return to the opening question of “Why Sartre,” we can state that the relational dimension of Sartrean existentialism makes his work a significant touchpoint for engaging with the question of how Africana and Global Southern thinking relates to Euro-modernity. Sartre’s interdisciplinarity and methodological creativity give his work contemporary relevance. Existentialism has, for instance, an aesthetics that is political and a politics that is aesthetic. The existential phenomenological method is fundamentally open-ended, making it useful for intersectional approaches to oppression, and to projects invested in theorizing about alternative futures. WHY CREOLIZATION? There are compelling reasons to engage with the question of what it means to creolize Sartre. Indeed, Sartre’s own commitments to his work being repurposed by his intellectual community, to respond to urgencies he would not

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have anticipated, is precisely how creolizing processes work to re-imagine human practices, modes of knowledge-production, and ways of relating to the world. Paget Henry’s “improvisational metaphysics” seems apt for describing the creolizing potential of Sartrean existentialism. When reading him relationally, we notice a deployment of his conceptions of freedom, materiality, and oppression in ways that are novel while consistently Sartrean. That is, his continues to be a philosophy that can be made to respond to new situations the way jazz musicians respond to new musical provocations. We suggest that creolizing involves five interrelated tasks. Hence, in creolizing Sartre, this volume: • Challenges Eurocentrism by shifting the geography of (existentialist) reason from Europe to the Black Atlantic, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Global South; • Resists the politics of purity; • Adopts a Glissantian poetics of relation; • Resists finished products in culture; and • Invites “thinking with.” CHALLENGING EUROCENTRISM The task of creolizing reason was first articulated by Caribbean intellectuals who took inspiration from hybrid, Creole languages and cultural practices emerging out of the oppressive conditions of slavery and colonialism in places like Martinique, Jamaica, Antigua, Trinidad, and Haiti. According to Paget Henry, the theme of creative agency under domination is central in Caribbean thought. He notes how “Creolization raises explicitly the issue of power relations in determining the ways in which African, Indian, and European philosophies come together to constitute a regional philosophy.”27 In their work on creolization, Jane Anna Gordon and Michael Monahan remind us to distinguish between creolization as an aim of contemporary theory and creolization as the name of a historical process of cultural mixture under duress imposed by colonial domination, racism, and slavery. Understood as an aim of contemporary theory and practice, creolization involves the “repositing of ideas . . . to think through and make sense of the political situation in the Caribbean and then North Africa in a blend that produces something simultaneously recognizable and wholly new.”28 We suggest that rethinking Sartre from the perspective of the Caribbean, Africa, and the Global South means acknowledging and moving past Sartre’s desire to engage philosophically with those of the tiers monde as a way to transform himself and remain relevant. A non-Eurocentric version of Sartrean

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existentialism will take seriously the Fanonian critique of the white ally. Fanon’s critique of the white ally is echoed variously in the work of bell hooks, Sara Ahmed, Gayatri Spivak, and Souleymane Diagne, who caution against the thought that European philosophical systems can transform themselves through the “inclusion” of otherness. “The man who adores the negro is as ‘sick’ as the man who abonates him,” Fanon reminds us in Black Skin p.2. Ziauddin Sardar writes in the 2008 foreward to Black Skin that “the idealized Negro is equally a construction of the white man. He represents the flip side of the Enlightenment. . . . This Negro was born out of the need of European humanism to rescue itself from its moral purgatory and project itself, and displace, the original inhabitants of Latin American and the Caribbean.”29 Sartre desired to have his white, European subjectivity transformed by the other. But following Diagne’s thoughts about the relationship of existentialism to African Philosophy, we can identify the creolizing moment in contemporary thought as that which comes after the effects of the Sartrean “kiss of death.” The prefaces were Sartre’s way of lending his voice to the oppressed. We are now in a phase where the voices of ‘“wretched” and “subaltern” do not need to measure their philosophical validity through the systems of Hegel, Kant, Marx, Heidegger, or Sartre. The voices of the wretched are not mere correctives to European theory, nor novel case studies, nor applications of already established principles of reason, justice, or beauty. As creolizing theorists have shown, in prioritizing voices of the wretched, we do not find a rejection of European theory, but rather it’s transformation. Creolizing Sartre means asking the question of what comes after the phase of the white ally, after “loving the Negro,” after European humanism’s attempt to “rescue itself” through the logic of inclusion. It also means that a Sartrean philosophy should no longer be considered an exclusively European philosophy, given the ways in which critical voices from the Global South have always been part of its structure. And at an institutional level, creolizing Sartrean existentialism today should work against the tendency Ahmed calls “inclusion,” which re-centers whiteness and asks non-white voices to function as institutional correctives. Lewis R. Gordon is an absolutely crucial voice in the creolization of Sartre. He can be credited with being the central figure in two aspects of the creolization of Sartre. First, he has transformed Sartre Studies by developing confluences of Africana Philosophy and Sartrean existentialism. Second, Gordon has, along with others who founded the Caribbean Philosophy Association, put the notion of creolization on the map of mainstream academic thinking. Gordon, more than any other thinker, has paved the way for non-Eurocentric forms of existential thinking. Gordon should be credited with bringing the concept of “Africana Existentialism” to the forefront of investigations in and beyond the academic field of philosophy. The very term “Africana

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existentialism” expresses a creolizing spirit. Gordon’s work Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought,30 first published in 2000, has served as a textbook for countless courses, and has made it possible for young scholars seeking doctorates to be taken seriously for projects that would have been dismissed in the academy only thirty years ago. In the opening chapter, “Africana Philosophy of Existence,” Gordon marks a crucial distinction: “I regard existentialism—the popularly name ideological movement—as a fundamentally European historical phenomenon. . . . On the other hand, we can regard philosophies of existence—as philosophical questions premised upon concerns of freedom, anguish, responsibility, embodied agency, sociality, and liberation.”31 Existential Africana is a key work of creolizing existentialism, though Gordon’s creolizing of Sartre dates back to his first book, Bad Faith and Anti-Black Racism (1995), which transformed Sartre Studies by showing how “Sartre stands as an unusual catalyst in the history of Black existential philosophy.32 Recently, Gordon has contributed an important interview to Sartre Studies International on the topic of “Existential Philosophy and Antiracism.”33 He has also published two recent books which analyze what Sartre would call our collective situation: Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization34 and Fear of Black Consciousness.35 In sum, the project of Creolizing Sartre would be unthinkable without the extensive work done by Lewis R. Gordon in connecting and reconnecting Sartre to his trans-Atlantic interlocutors. The South African, Black existential philosopher Mabogo P. More is another paramount thinker in the tradition of creolized Sartrean thinking. His most recent book, Sartre on Contingency: Antiblack Racism and Embodiment36 is a radical reconsideration of the early works of Sartre. More’s take is unique because he utilizes the early Sartre—the ontological Sartre—and shows how his notions of contingency can be used to diagnoses global antiblack racism. More argues that the source of racism is the attempt at self-justification in the face of contingency and meaninglessness. Sartre on Contingency is only the most recent of More’s creolized existentialist writings. In 2018, More published Looking Through Philosophy in Black,37 a philosophical reflection on what he calls being-black-in-the-world. More’s Biko: Philosophy, Identity and Liberation38 is another work of creolized thinking, in the direct sense that he analyzes how anti-Apartheid activist and thinker Steve Biko is an existentialist. Like Sartre, More is dedicated to clarifying the situations we find ourselves in, in particular the ethical situations that require resisting and dismantling oppression. Like few other thinkers, More is able to synthesize African, American, Caribbean, and European traditions of philosophy. Paget Henry has also published foundational work in Africana Philosophy and Afro-Caribbean thought. Henry’s work on Africana phenomenology

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offers several key insights.39 Most basically, the geographic and historical space of the Caribbean demands attention to “the forces of an imperial history, and by its intertextual relations with neighboring discourses.” Henry suggests that phenomenology in Caribbean context differs from its European cousin because it is politicized and not just ontological, and it focuses on the “production of worlds,” not just epistemology. Henry’s work gives the tools for reflection under conditions of racism and colonialism. It also shows that Africana phenomenology has an institutional dimension that requires demographic diversity, since, at its core, creolizing is an “open-ended collective project,” not something that one person can complete.40 Another important existential challenge to Eurocentrism is found in the work of Carlos Alberto Sánchez, who has written two important books on Mexican existentialism that embody creolizing reading strategies. In his Contingency and Commitment: Mexican Existentialism and the Place of Philosophy (2016), Sánchez articulates a phenomenology of reading based on “the Mexican existentialist confrontation with French existentialism.”41 Sánchez argues that his reading of the Mexican existentialists who formed the Hyperion group in the 1940s (Emilio Uranga, Jorge Portilla, Joaquín Sánchez Macgrégor, Luis Villoro, and Ricardo Guerra) is a form of creative “appropriation.” “My reading of Emilio Uranga’s reading of Jean-Paul Sartre or Maurice-Merleau Ponty, for instance, will involve a degree of violence as I force myself onto his reading with the full weight of mestizaje, demanding a strategy for coping with and overcoming those forms of thought that encroach upon my human potential.”42 The key to such creative appropriation is to enter fully into the intellectual space of the Franco-Mexican exchange “without losing what is truly one’s own, namely, one’s history and one’s identity—Mexican thinkers will not lose their memory, nor will I.”43 Sánchez shows how Emilio Uranga developed an existential philosophy of contingency through his analysis of “‘zozobra’ defined as a state of incessant swinging to-and-fro.”44 About his existentialism and its Euro-influence, Uranga would write, “We want to go to France to study her, no so that she may teach us, but as a motive for reflection and consideration.”45 Sánchez also shows how the Mexican existentialist Jorge Portilla appropriated the Sartrean notion of contingency, developing his own version of phenomenology and offering a critique of Existentialism is a Humanism in his lecture “La nausea y el humanismo” (Nausea and Humanism).46 In the last chapter of Contingency and Commitment, titled “Philosophy Sin más? Notes on the value of Mexican philosophy for Latino/a Life,” Sánchez brings his creolizing readings of French and Mexican existentialism to a close by offering five “lessons.” While each of these lessons is relevant for creolizing thinking, here we draw our own discussion of challenging Eurocentrism to a close with just one of those lessons: “American philosophy, understood broadly to

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include the entirety of the American experience, challenges the Eurocentrism and Logocentrism of philosophy as traditionally understood. In the case of Dewey, Uranga, Zea and los hiperiones, it takes the form of a ‘philosophy of contingency.’”47 RESISTING THE POLITICS OF PURITY A further dimension of creolizing is resisting the “politics of purity.” The politics of purity is a phrase used by Michael Monahan to refer to strategies of reading and reasoning that favor “rigid and static borders across a variety of domains, including the biological, geographic, cultural, and . . . conceptual/ logical.”48 For Monahan, creolizing is a verb. Thus he titled his 2011 book The Creolizing Subject, rather than the creolized subject. Monahan insists on process thinking, open methodologies, and intertextuality. This insistence makes sense given his existentialist roots. His 2003 work “A Theory of Racial Oppression and Liberation” (2003, PhD Dissertation, UIUC) creatively appropriated the existentialism of Fanon, Beauvoir, and Sartre to develop a critical theory of whiteness. In Creolizing Hegel (2017), Monahan uses existential language when he describes creolization as “a manifestation of ambiguity in the face of an always-mythical purity.”49 As laid out by Monahan, there are three tasks constitutive of creolizing, and we apply these three tasks to this project of creolizing Sartre. The first task is to reassess and “decenter” the philosophical canon, which “has never been a pure, self-contained, and discrete entity.” (Monahan) In bringing this to a reading of Sartrean existentialism and phenomenology, reassessing the center challenges the “normative hegemony” of Sartre, and moves us away from the tendency to treat him as an “author” (in Foucault’s sense). Creolizing Sartre in this way also deploys Sartre’s own notion of a detotalized totality, so as to transform his work anew. Overall, this gives us a more deeply comparative philosophy. Monahan’s latest book is Creolizing Practices of Freedom: Recognition and Dissonance, part of the Creolizing the Canon book series.50 The second task is to seek methodological openness and dynamism. For Monahan, creolization is not itself a method but “a call for a kind of openness in relation to practices and methods.”51 His own work on creolizing Hegel foregrounds dynamism, change, activity, and process over stasis and rigidity, so that more generative ground can be achieved for better knowledge production. This brings us to the third task of a creolizing process. It is the normative proposal, which demands of theory that, instead of being for its own sake, pursues possibilities of liberation, better knowledge, and better futures. This third task necessarily calls for the previous two, since it is only on the grounds

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of a methodological openness and a decentered hegemony that theory is no longer deployed for its own sake, but for the sake of creating a more humane (anti-racist and anti-oppressive) world. Here we find an overlapping concern between creolizing work and the existentialist work of engagement. The engaged, creolizing philosopher is concerned with the political economy of philosophy, and seeks to articulate a hybrid, non-Eurocentric concept of humanity. Hence, as a project of creolizing Sartre, the scholarship in this volume is opposed to intellectual decadence. Instead, it is open to the plurality of conceptual tools that emerges when one no longer restricts knowledge production to the geography of Europe. Creolizing Sartre is about tending less to the purity of the Sartrean corpus, and more to the intellectual bricolage, out of which Sartre was able to develop his own set of ideas, and to the contemporary intellectual hybridity without which Sartre would lose his relevance. If Sartrean theory is about the concreteness of human freedom, about the dialectical relationship between freedom and its material situation, and about determining alternative world formations that might better condition the enactments of human freedom, then it must remain open to being transformed by synergies that not only decenter its Eurocentricity but also undo “purity” readings that aim to rigidly dichotomize Sartre from his others. RETHINKING SARTRE BY ADOPTING GLISSANT’S “POETICS OF RELATION” The creolizing conception of Relation offered by Édouard Glissant is central to a project such as ours. Glissant’s intertextual, fluid reading of William Faulkner in Faulkner, Mississippi (1996) models what creolizing the canon looks like. The root question of his relational reading of Faulkner is: “What is changed by the exchange” between Africana and European sensibilities? Cultural exchanges under and after slavery have led to an American culture whose “mores, art, music, religion, craft, work and leisure” are deeply Africana.52 Yet, we find within Faulkner (and America) a de-creolizing attempt to order and separate Africana and European influences in Manichean terms, and to revert to a white, rather than hybrid conception of humanity. Glissant also argues that the relational, creolizing approach to culture is an ongoing process. The poetics of relation imagines an open future where scholars of the Global South “vitalize” the canon through creative textual work. In the case of Faulkner, his “oeuvre will be complete when it is revisited and made vital by African-Americans” (55). Like Henry, Glissant shows that creolizing is an intellectual project that must be taken up by a community of diverse scholars.

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Glissant theorizes the Caribbean archipelago within the framework of “relation” or contact among cultures. Out of his poetics of relation he conceptualizes the meaning of such contact, which problematizes easy separation between identity and difference, and between the One and the Many. Out of the frame of a poetics of relation, we are able to foreground difference and variation within certain “wholes”—cultural, textual, and theoretical—thus understanding them in terms of dynamic relation instead of static products. The Caribbean archipelago, about which Glissant theorizes, presents itself as archetypal of this formulation, given the ways in which its histories of transplantation generates ever-changing, unstable cultural products. In bringing a poetics of relation to Sartre, this volume treats his work as “a product that in turn produces.”53 By foregrounding contact with and among other geographies of reason, creolizing Sartre means that, instead of closing in on itself to become a finished product, Sartre’s work is opened up anew, produces anew, and asks to be read out of a logic of becoming and movement. Creolizing Sartre means that we cannot know, in advance of this relational encounter, where his work will take us, or what his work will tell us. But that shows the work to be far from sterile, producing new political, cultural, and social knowledge through contact and as contact with new (and non-European) sensibilities. In the idea of the écho-monde, Glissant resorts to metaphors of sound and echo to capture this kind of textual othering and dynamic intertextuality. By the time the echo is a phenomenon with which one can reckon, it has lost its loyalty to the original sound, becoming “other” in relation not only to that original sound, but to the many others shaping it through its movement. But at the same time, we encounter the echo as both part of and dependently implicated in this birthing (original) sound. We might think of the ways in which Sartre’s theory has always been creolized (and the creolizing of his work in the present, which this volume will platform), in terms of this écho-monde. By the time Sartre “returns to himself,” we are able to recognize him as such only in relational contact with those “others” who make his work generative. RETHINK SARTRE BY RESISTING FINISHED PRODUCTS IN CULTURE Glissant’s poetics of relation prepares for an engagement with theory that resists conceptualizing it as a finished product. Robert Baron and Ana Cara suggest that “Creolization can . . . liberate us conceptually from a notion of fixed of ‘finished’ products in culture.”54 This volume of work proposes the theme of resisting a finished corpus as that which converges Sartreanism and creolization. Creolizing practices are about movements in response to

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the intimacy of culture and history, movements that position these practices against essentialist conceptions of life. Sartre’s brand of existentialism is attuned to the problems of assuming fixed identities. Existentialism has been called a “conjunctive” philosophy, insofar as there are existentialist approaches to art and literature, social and political theory, metaphysics, ethics, and so on. There are “black existential Jews, Christians and Muslims, black existential Marxists and nationalists.”55 This conjunctive nature of Sartre’s philosophy positions it to be taken up in new and creative ways by a multiplicity of thought traditions within and beyond existentialism. Creolization is a process, not a product, as reflected in the verb form “to creolize” rather than the adjectival form “creolized.” Such theorizing aspires to “cultural creativity”56 as one is “galvanized by problems and questions that are envisaged as necessitating drawing from what have historically become discrete disciplines to create fresh ways of addressing urgent political debates.”57 Sartre Studies is already a multidisciplinary field that draws from philosophy, literature, theater, postcolonial studies, French studies, and other disciplines. By naming creolization as a thread of future Sartre Studies, we are inviting existential reflections on “urgent political debates,” especially those that have emerged from Africana philosophy and Caribbean studies. Cultural creativity is not new to Sartre scholarship. Since its founding in 1995, the journal Sartre Studies International has published papers on a large variety of topics from aesthetics to politics to psychology. The North American Sartre Society (NASS) and the Sartre Society of the United Kingdom (UKSS) have been spaces that encourage interdisciplinarity. The Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA) has more explicitly taken up the project of creolization and has been home to creative Sartrean and global existentialist thinking. Many of the authors in this volume represent cross currents between NASS, UKSS, and the CPA. The Diverse Lineages of Existentialism conference, now in its second year (2019), has also been an important institutional space for creolizing scholarship. Why does Sartre in particular inspire culturally creative thinking? The answer in part lies in his situational view of human freedom. The existential notion of “situation” is a linking concept between existing scholarship and future creolizing engagements with Sartre. Creolizing requires “paying due attention to the geographies within which we situate our subjects.”58 Creolizing thinking and existentially situated thinking are similar. These similarities include: the rejection of false universals and the search for concrete universals; methodological flexibility (for instance combining phenomenology and sociology); defining freedom (whether consciousness or praxis) as constituted by its relationship with material conditions; sensitivity to history; and offering theories of reason that acknowledge how colonialism is an epistemic system. “Applied Sartreanism” is a redundancy.59

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Creolizing Sartre has already begun, though not always under the banner of creolization. Creolization involves cultural mixture, although it is not a celebration of multiculturalism simpliciter.60 Creole languages and Creole cultures are results of colonial violence; such creolizing mixture has not been on equal, open terms. Acknowledging the historical dimension of creolization means explicitly addressing the confrontation of European modernity and non-European modernities. The Caribbean archipelago stands as a central location for the production of Creole cultures insofar as it is also the site of brutal dislocations and loss. The violence of the slave trade and of the plantation economy serve as the grounding conditions for the sycretisms and translations that shape Creole Caribbean identity. Cohen and Cara’s description of creolization as “cultural creativity in process” is existentialist at its heart, insofar as it relies on the power of human freedom and human imagination. Sartrean existentialism inspires interdisciplinary thinking, made possible by the open quality of Sartre’s basic concepts including the situation, freedom, and dialectics. THINKING “WITH” FANON AND BEAUVOIR The imperative to “think with” is both a description of how Sartre thought (he though along with Fanon, Beauvoir, Senghor, etc.), and a description of how we, as members of a diverse philosophical community, might think with Sartre, Fanon, Beauvoir, Senghor, and so on. In proposing that “thinking with” is a form of creolizing reasoning, we are drawing out implications of relational and situated thinking. As Jane Gordon, notes in the subtitle of her book, Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon, the creolizing task often involves reading “through” a theory’s encounter with otherness.61 The historical syncretism of creolization through colonization is reflected directly in the Fanon–Sartre relationship and its transformative effects on European existentialism and phenomenology. Beauvoir’s relationship to Sartre has some, but not all, of the creolizing elements discussed above. Her phenomenology of gender was groundbreaking and contained lessons for Sartrean and Fanonian philosophy. An important body of feminist scholarship has analyzed Beauvoir’s influence on Sartre and also shown the pragmatic potential of blending the insights of different existential thinkers, especially to address racism, sexism, and colonialism. Black feminists have also raised the issue of whether Beauvoir’s theory speaks to the experiences of non-white woman across the globe. We begin with a discussion of Fanon’s creolizing influence, and then turn to Beauvoir. Fanon was a creolizing influence on Sartre’s thinking about the look, racism, freedom, and colonialism, as has been pointed out by Kathryn Sophia

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Bell,62 Neil Roberts,63 and Lewis Gordon.64 These existing creolizing readings of the Sartre–Fanon relationship have asked the Glissantian question of “what was changed in the exchange?” and challenged the portrait of what Gordon calls the “white-centered and Eurocentric Sartre.”65 Fanon challenged and altered European phenomenology by creolizing the look. He revealed the limits of white phenomenologies of whiteness. Fanon showed how the look can be creolized by attending to racial double consciousness, a central theme of Black Skin, White Masks. In writing that “the black man has two dimensions” and by linking this double consciousness to “colonialist subjugation,” he showed the one-sidedness of Sartre’s racecritical phenomenology, which left out the lifeworlds of the marginalized. Fanon argued that the search for recognition failed because like the Hegelian master, the “structural white man” wanted “bodies that work, not those that look back.”66 Sartre’s phenomenology of gender and race sometimes drifts into literary caricature, for example when he describes a person he calls “the homosexual” in the section on bad faith in Being and Nothingness, or when he writes about “the negro” in “Black Orpheus.” Scholars engaged in creolizing work today write about the multiplicity of white gaze(s), while also emphasizing their ambiguity, mixture, and instability. A creolizing notion of the gaze is important in the contemporary writing of Bernabé, Chamoiseau, Confiant, and Khyar. In their work In Praise of Creoleness, they advocate a Caribbean “inner vision” that would transform classic existentialism.67 Other examples of creolizing the look include Paget Henry’s work on potentiated double consciousness as a tool of Africana phenomenology, George Yancy’s work such as Look, a White!68 and Black Bodies, White Gazes,69 and Coulthard’s Red Skin, White Masks. Robin James’ Resilience and Melancholy surveys how the look has been used in feminism, cinema studies and queer theory, and offers an “upgraded” version based on her analysis of resiliency.70 Creolizing approaches to the look are also found in recent work in the field of whiteness studies such as that of Linda Alcoff, Sara Ahmed, and Michael Monahan. We now turn to Beauvoirian feminism, which we read as a creolizing corrective to male-centered theories of subjectivity. Through her own creative appropriation of Husserlian phenomenology, Beauvoir revealed in the Second Sex (1949) that “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.” In the Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), she developed an existentialist conception of humanity and ethics based on the phenomenology of ambiguity. Where Sartre wrote about the gaze as an either/or, Beauvoir emphasized interconnection, relatedness, and mixture. To Sartre’s disembodied gaze, Beauvoir provided a phenomenology of the body and a theory of reason conditioned by history. And while Sartre theorized oppression using class structure as his default, Beauvoir thought intersectionality about patriarchy, capitalism and to a lesser

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degree, race. She made the phenomenology of patriarchy her starting point, and showed how mutual recognition is distorted by sexism, “with male representing both the positive and the neutral.” Existential feminism is an important field of philosophy today. Among those whose work is creolizing in the sense of reading Sartre relationally are: Kate Kirkpatrick, Debra Bergoffen, Sonia Kruks, Linda A. Bell, Margaret Simons, Sarah Hoagland, Gail Weiss, Kathryn Sophia Belle, Anika Simpson, Christine Daigle, Constance L. Mui. These thinkers offer diverse, creative phenomenologies of race and gender that incorporate insights from across the existentialist tradition. Existentialist feminism creolizes by theorizing the lived experience of gendered, raced subjects. Examples of creolizing work include Belle’s and Simpson’s work showing how Black feminist concerns can be conjoined to an expanded Sartreanism; both thinkers draw on the existentialism of Anna Julia Cooper as a missing puzzle piece for understanding the embodiment of women of color.71 Kruks and Linda Bell turn to Sartre’s notion of praxis and his critical phenomenology of whiteness in order to theorize the intersections of racism, sexism, and heterosexism.72 Intersectionality is a main theme in existentialist feminism as a whole, as Hoagland’s recent work shows.73 Weiss has developed an existentialphenomenological approach to feminism and critical race theory, incorporating Beauvoir, Fanon, and Sartre. Simons’ work lays out the interconnections of existentialist themes across various figures. In a recent work, Linda Bell relates how these existentialist arguments helped her theorize the harassment she experienced personally and bodily throughout her career in academic philosophy.74 If “thinking with” is to be a form of creolizing reasoning, then we must not forget the ambivalence that some thinkers have expressed in being “claimed” by Sartre and Sartreans. Lewis Gordon notes in “Sartre and Black Existentialism”75 that many scholars who study (and genuinely think “with”) Sartre develop their own voices, and hence no longer identify as particularly Sartrean. The list of thinkers who fit this description is humbling: from William R. Jones to Iris Marion Young to Angela Davis. Gordon himself, while deeply Sartrean, and while having written his PhD thesis and first book on Sartre, suggests how labeling a creolizing thinker as “Sartrean” can risk diminishing her or his personal creative identity. Being called a “Sartrean” can be a blessing or a curse. Creolizing thinkers resist the finality of being locked into systems, and resist, in particular, the hegemonic tendency to have one’s thoughts reduced to a reflection of a canonical white European figure. By noting the ambivalence of being “claimed” by existentialism, we are drawing on Diagne’s diagnosis of the Sartrean “kiss of death,” which rendered Négritude authors Senghor and Césaire less, not more, visible to Europeans.76 We are also drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s criticism of metropolitan intellectuals who claim to give voice to the oppressed. Spivak specifically points out

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the bad-faith of intellectuals who think they are lending their ears and pens to those who speak from the margin. If “the first-world intellectual masquerades as the absent nonrepresenter who lets the oppressed speak for themselves,” then in creolizing Sartre we must stay alert to the possibility of a “benevolent firstworld appropriation and reinscription of the Third World as Other.”77 On the institutional level, thinking with implies the need for a greater degree of demographic diversity than is currently found, for example, in philosophy programs in universities in the United States. Ahmed’s phenomenology of institutional whiteness, which treats whiteness as an orientation rather than a mere bodily marker, points to the kind of diversity work that is a prerequisite for the continued emergence of creolizing perspectives. It is an encouraging sign, that despite academic philosophy’s current institutional whiteness (especially in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom) we have nevertheless seen the creolizing influence on European phenomenology exerted by Beauvoir’s existential feminism and Fanon’s race-critical, decolonial theorizing. CONCLUSION In drawing to a close our discussion about the five related interrelated creolizing tasks, it would be helpful to reflect on the philosophical recommendations announced in Kwasi Wiredu’s 1998 paper “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion.” Wiredu develops the notion of “conceptual decolonization” based on the observation that colonialism “was not only a political imposition, but a cultural one.” To conceptually decolonize philosophy—in the case under discussion, African philosophy—we must “divest African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial past.”78 To perform this divestment, Wiredu argues, philosophers must attend to linguistic differences and the hegemony of colonial languages (especially English and French). We must also pursue what he calls “particularist studies” which will be based on select concepts and terms that can be offered as points of possible comparison across cultures. Wiredu’s call for particularism as a strategy for decolonization resonates with the existential concern for situated theorizing. In its European and Africana form, existentialism has operated on two levels, giving a macro analysis of social structures and a micro analysis of the particular situation of the individual, with his/her contingent body, history, identity, and consciousness. The call for particularism as a technique of conceptual decolonization means that creolizing scholarship might appear to some as a niche study, or a subfield of a subfield. Against this potential criticism, we invoke the Kincaidian project of speaking from the “small places” which

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have been, and will likely continue to be, sources of resistance in the Black Atlantic world and the Global South. In proposing to creolize Sartre, we have the ambitious hope of inviting “new power relations and aesthetic dimensions”79 in Sartre studies. To embrace the creolizing process is to underscore an ongoing resistance to domination and the calculus of purity, a resistance to which Sartre himself calls us. In bringing our racialized and colonized experiences to Sartre’s work, we are reminders to not turn Sartre into a safe figure (a closed and finished product), or venerate him as a solitary genius. Instead, we read him through the openness of cultural and intellectual creativity, and in terms of the poetics of relation. In so doing, we think through Sartre’s theory not for its own sake, but rather for the sake of more liberatory conceptions of the human. NOTES 1. See Lewis Gordon, Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007). 2. London: Routledge, 2001. 3. In Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism, vii. 4. Ibid., 8. 5. Ibid., 11. 6. Ibid., “Preface.” 7. Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Black Paris: The African Writers’ Landscape (Urbana Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 55–6. 8. Souleymane Bachir Diagne, “Négritude,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition), eds. Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, https:// plato​.stanford​.edu​/archives​/spr2023​/entries​/negritude/. 9. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 1st ed., new ed. (New York [Berkeley, CA]: Grove Press, 2008), 103. 10. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 23. 11. Caribbean Discourse (1989, 140–1). 12. Glen Couthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 144. 13. Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism, 30. 14. Richard Wolin, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 181. 15. Ibid., 181. 16. Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre: A Philosophical Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 304. 17. Azzedine Haddour, “The Camus-Sartre Debate and the Colonial Question in Algeria,” in Francophone Postcolonial Studies: A Critical Introduction, eds. Charles Forsdick and David Lee Murphy (Milton Park: Taylor and Francis, 2014), 69–70. 18. Ibid., 70.

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19. Ibid., 67. 20. Jay Murphy, “Sartre on Cuba Revisited: The ‘Unhappy Consciousness’ of the Marxist Sartre,” Sartre Studies International 2, no. 2 (1996): 27–48. 21. William Rowlandson, Sartre in Cuba—Cuba in Sartre (Camden, NJ: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 114. 22. Signs 19, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 713–38. 23. “Sartre is seen very differently in the Third World and he is still read there as the champion of the oppressed.” Robert Bernasconi, How to Read Sartre (New York: Norton, 2006), 4. 24. Lewis R. Gordon, What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015), 33. 25. Kathryn T. Gines (now Kathryn Sophia Belle), “‘The Man Who Lived Underground’: Jean-Paul Sartre and the Philosophical Legacy of Richard Wright,” Sartre Studies International 17, no. 2 (2011): 42–59. 26. See Gordon, What Fanon Said, 130–4, the section titled “Facing Sartre.” 27. Paget Henry, Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2000), XI. 28. Jane Anna Gordon, Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon (New York: Fordham Press, 2014), 163. 29. In Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, xiv. 30. Lewis R. Gordon, Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (New York: Routledge, 2000). 31. Ibid., 10. 32. Ibid., 9. 33. T Storm Heter, “Existential Philosophy and Antiracism: An Interview with Lewis R. Gordon,” Sartre Studies International 28, no. 2 (2022): 1–16. 34. New York: Routledge, 2021. 35. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. 36. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. 37. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. 38. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2017. 39. “Africana Phenomenology,” Paget Henry, Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise, Vol. 1: Dossier 3 (Fall 2006): 2. 40. Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Thought (London: Routledge, 2000), 156. 41. Carlos Alberto Sánchez, Contingency and Commitment: Mexican Existentialism and the Place of Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2016), 5. 42. Ibid., 3. 43. Ibid., 5. 44. Ibid., 366. 45. Quoted in Sánchez, Contingency and Commitment, 22. 46. Ibid., 33. 47. Ibid., 114. 48. Michael Monahan, Creolizing Hegel (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), Introduction. 49. Ibid., 161.

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50. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. 51. Monahan, Creolizing Hegel, Introduction. 52. Edouard Glissant, Faulkner, Mississippi (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 69. 53. Edouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), 160. 54. From Creolization as Cultural Creativity, eds. Robert Baron and Ana Cara (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 4. 55. Gordon, Existentia Africana, 9. 56. Creolization as Cultural Creativity, 3. 57. Gordon, Creolizing Political Theory, 163. 58. Ibid., Introduction. 59. The idea of an “applied existentialism” was an important topic of conversation at the 2018 UK Sartre Soceity. 60. Gordon, Creolizing Political Theory, 5. 61. Ibid., 6. 62. Kathryn T. Gynes (now Kathryn Sophia Belle), “Fanon and Sartre 50 Years Later: To Reject or Retain the Concept of Race,” Sartre Studies International 9, no. 2 (2003): 55–67. 63. For example, Neil Roberts, “Fanon, Sartre, Violence and Freedom,” Sartre Studies International 10, no. 2 (2004): 139–60. 64. Gordon, What Fanon Said, 2015. 65. Ibid., 133. 66. Gordon, Existentia Africana, 35. 67. Jean Bernabe, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphael Confiant, In Praise of Creoleness (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), 98. 68. George Yancy, Look, a White!: Philosophical Essays on Whiteness (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2012). 69. George Yancy, Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). 70. Robin James, Resilience and Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism and NeoLiberalism (Winchester: Zer0 Books, 2015). 71. See Annika Mann’s “Race and Feminist Standpoint Theory,” in Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy, eds. Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, Kathryn T. Gines (now Kathryn Sophia Belle) and Donna-Dale L. Marcano (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010). 72. See Sonia Kruks, “Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Privilege,” Hypatia 20, no. 1 (2005): 178–205. 73. See Sarah Lucia Hoagland, “Aspects of the Coloniality of Knowledge,” Critical Philosophy of Race 8, nos. 1–2 (2020): 48–60. 74. Linda A. Bell, Beyond the Margins: Reflections of a Feminist Philosopher (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003), 33. 75. In Jonathan Judaken’s Race After Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008). 76. Souleymane Bachir Diagne, African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of Negritude (London: Seagull Books, 2011).

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77. R. C. Morris and G. C. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 87. 78. Kwasi Wiredu, “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion,” African Studies Quarterly 1, no. 4 (1998): 17–42. 79. From Creolization as Cultural Creativity, 3.

REFERENCES Alcoff, Linda Martìn, Luvell Anderson, and Paul Taylor, eds. Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race. New York: Routledge Press, 2018. Bamikole, Lawrence O. “Agency and Afro-Caribbean Existential Discourse.” The CLR James Journal 23, nos. 1–2 (Fall 2017): 107–133. Bell, Linda A. Sartre’s Ethics of Authenticity. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1989. ———. Rethinking Ethics in the Midst of Violence: A Feminist Approach to Freedom. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993. ———. Beyond the Margins: Reflections of a Feminist Philosopher. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003. Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition, Indigenous Americas. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Daigle, Christine and Jacob Golomb, eds. Sartre and Beauvoir: The Question of Influence. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009. Flynn, Thomas R. Sartre: A Philosophical Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Frederick, Rhonda D. “What if You’re an ‘Incredibly Unattractive, Fat, PastrylikeFleshed Man’?: Teaching Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place.” College Literature 30, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 1–18. Gines, Kathryn T. “Fanon and Sartre 50 Years Later: To Retain or Reject the Concept of Race.” Sartre Studies International 9, no. 2 (2003). ———. “Sartre, Beauvoir, and the Race/Gender Analogy: A Case for Black Feminist Thought.” In Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy, edited by Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, Kathryn T. Gines, and Donna-Dale Marcano. New York: SUNY Press, 2010. ———. “‘The Man Who Lived Underground’ Jean-Paul Sartre and the Philosophical Legacy of Richard Wright.” Sartre Studies International 17, no. 2 (2011): 42–59. Gordon, Lewis R. Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences. New York: Routledge, 1995. ———. Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997. ———. Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought. Abingdon: Routledge, 2000. ———. Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization. New York: Routledge, 2021. ———. Fear of Black Consciousness. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.

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Haddour, Azzedine. “The Camus–Sartre Debate and the Colonial Question in Algeria.” In Francophone Postcolonial Studies, edited by Charles Dorsdick and David Murphy. New York: Routledge, 2003. Henry, Paget. Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy. Abingdon: Routledge, 2000. Hewitt, Nicholas. “Images of Cuba in France in the 1960s: Sartre’s ‘ouragan sur le sucre’.” Sartre Studies International 13, no. 1 (2007): 62–73. Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. “Colonial Practices/Colonial Identities: All the Women Are Still White.” In The Center Must Not Hold: White Women on the Whiteness of Philosophy, edited by George Yancy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Judaken, Jonathan, ed. Race After Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. Black Paris: The African Writers’ Landscape. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois, 2000. Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988. Kirkpatrick, Kate. Sartre on Sin: Between Being and Nothingness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. ———. Sartre and Theology. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Kruks, Sonia. Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity and Society. Abingdon: Routledge, 1990. ———. “Simone de Beauvoir: Teaching Sartre about Freedom.” In Sartre Alive, edited by Ronald Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1991. ———. “Identity Politics and Dialectical Reason: Beyond an Epistemology of Provenance.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Julien S. Murphy. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1999. ———. Retrieving Experience: Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. ———. “Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Privilege.” Hypatia 20, no. 1 (2005): 178–205. ———. Simone de Beauvoir and the Politics of Ambiguity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 110–14. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007 (1984). Maaza, Anika Mann. Ethics from the Standpoint of Race and Gender: Sartre, Fanon and Feminist Standpoint Theory. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Memphis, 2004. ———. “Sartre’s Ethics of the Oppressed.” Philosophy Today 49, no. 5 (2005 Supplement): 105–9. ———. “Black Heretics, Black Prophets and the Black Feminist Intellectual.” CLR James Journal 12, no. 1 (2006): 165–70. ———. “Race and Feminist Standpoint Theory.” In Convergences: Black Feminism and Continental Philosophy, edited by Maria del Guadalupe Davidson, Kathryn T. Gines, and Donna-Dale L. Marcano, 105–121. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010. More, Mabogo Percy. Biko: Philosophy, Identity and Liberation. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2017.

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———. Looking Through Philosophy in Black. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018. ———. Sartre on Contingency: Antiblack Racism and Embodiment. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. Mui, Constance L. “A Feminist-Sartrean Approach to Understanding Rape Trauma.” In Sartre Today: A Centenary Celebration, edited by Adrian van den Hoven and Andrew Leak. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005. Murphy, Jay. “Sartre on Cuba Revisited: The ‘Unhappy Consciousness’ of the Marxist Sartre.” Sartre Studies International 2, no. 2 (1996): 27–48. Murphy, Julien S., ed. Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1999. Olkowski, Dorthea and Gail Weiss, eds. Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2006. Rowlandson, William. Sartre in Cuba—Cuba in Sartre. Camden, NJ: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Sánchez, Carlos Alberto. The Suspension of Seriousness: On the Phenomenology of Jorge Portilla. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012. ———. Contingency and Commitment: Mexican Existentialism and the Place of Philosophy. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015. Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Paris Alive: The Republic of Silence.” In The Atlantic Monthly, December 1944. https://www​.theatlantic​.com​/international​/archive​/2014​/09​/paris​ -alive​-jean​-paul​-sartre​-on​-world​-war​-ii​/379555/ ———.“Black Orpheus,” Massachusetts Review, 6, No.1 (Autumn 1964): 13–52. ———. Sartre on Cuba. New York: Ballantine Books, 1971. ———. Colonialism and Neocolonialism. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006. Simmons, Margaret. Beauvoir and the Second Sex: Feminism, Racism, and the Origins of Existentialism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Webber, Jonathan. The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008. ———., ed. Reading Sartre: On Phenomenology and Existentialism. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010. ———. Rethinking Existentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Weiss, Gail. The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir: Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997. ———. Refiguring the Ordinary. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008. ———. “Race and Phenomenology (or Phenomenologizing Race).” In Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race, edited by Linda Martìn Alcoff, Luvell Anderson, and Paul Taylor. New York: Routledge Press, 2018. Wiredu, Kwasi. “Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion.” African Studies Quarterly 1, no. 4 (1998), 17–46. Wolin, Richard. The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Young, Iris Marion. “Gender as Seriality: Thinking about Women as a Social Collective.” Signs 19, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 713–38.

Chapter 6

Creolized Reflection Thomas Meagher

In what follows, I propose a concept inspired in part by Jean-Paul Sartre and in part by Africana phenomenology. This concept I term creolized reflection, drawing on Sartre’s formulation of “pure reflection” and “impure reflection.” I will proceed in the first section by explicating pure and impure reflection in Being and Nothingness. In the second section, I will complicate the matter by relating such reflection to being-for-others and Sartrean “shame.” In the third section, I articulate creolized reflection as a third category and work through a grounding for its conceptual necessity to be found in Africana phenomenology. Creolized reflection is unlike Sartrean impure reflection insofar as it does not take the “reflected-on” of consciousness to be a being-in-itself, but it is also unlike pure reflection because creolized reflection is not purely a non-positional consciousness. PURE REFLECTION AND IMPURE REFLECTION Though pure reflection is referenced in other works of Sartre, my focus is its articulation in Being and Nothingness, which occurs in the section “Temporality.” The requisite background for understanding pure reflection, as I interpret it, is Sartre’s articulation of the relation between being-in-itself and being-for-itself. Being-in-itself is what it is, but being-for-itself, the paradoxical “being” that consciousness “is,” is not what it is and is what it is not. Being-for-itself thus nihilates, making a “nothing” of itself such that it does not constitute a being-in-itself. The point can be made in terms of the phenomenological notions of consciousness as “here” and its objects as “there.” If all consciousness is embodied consciousness of something, then consciousness is always “here” (the site of its embodiment), encountering its 135

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objects “there.” The mode of being of objects of consciousness is being-initself: they are what they are. The chair I see over there is what it is. But the consciousness that I “am” of that chair, for Sartre, is not what it is due to its contingency, freedom, or “existence” (as opposed to “essence”). The chair could have been built differently, but it could not have built itself differently. This matter implies a problem for reflection. If “Reflection is the foritself conscious of itself,”1 it appears to imply a “here” conscious of itself as “there.” Yet such a picture does not honor the ontological character of the for-itself that Sartre’s phenomenological insights have otherwise elucidated; it implies the equivalence of the for-itself “here” and the in-itself it apprehends “there.” If we hold tightly that all consciousness is being-for-itself apprehending being-in-itself, then genuine reflection in which the for-itself apprehends itself as for-itself would be impossible. However, accepting such a position in a certain sense would refute the ontological articulation of the for-itself to begin with: the phenomenological method by which Sartre has established his conception of the for-itself would appear to rest on some mode of reflection for which the for-itself can arise as reflected-on by consciousness without thereby being rendered in-itself.2 Sartre’s solution here is rooted in temporality. Consciousness is not only always “here” but also “now.” Yet the temporal ekstases of past, present, and future “stick out” to my consciousness “now,” for which its now-ness is meaningful in relation to these other temporalities. We may speak of consciousness “here, now” that, rather than being conscious of what is “there,” is instead, conscious of what was “here, then” in the past or what will be “here, then” in the future. The for-itself of reflection nihilates its “now” such that its “here” can be intelligible beyond moment-to-moment flux. Sartre uses the Cartesian conception of doubt to make this point.3 Doubt involves a suspension of belief, but doubt itself involves more than that momentary suspension, since it is directed toward past belief and the desirability or viability of what shall be believed in the future. Moreover, doubt is conscious of itself as doubt: doubt is a “here, now” conscious of (a) that very same “here, now” as doubting and (b) its relation to beliefs “here, then” in the past and future. Insofar as what is doubted is a belief about objects “there,” though, doubt transcends mere reflection. Doubt is consciousness both of the object(s) of doubt as well as of its standing in relation to these objects as doubting. This point Sartre raises at the outset of the text. In problematizing the possibility of knowledge of consciousness, Sartre refers to “positional consciousness of consciousness,” which “would be a complete consciousness directed toward something which is not it; that is, toward consciousness as object of reflection.”4 Positional consciousness apprehends an object, so positional reflective consciousness is consciousness (being-for-itself, here) apprehending itself as in-itself, there. However, as the above treatment of doubt implies, Sartre

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contends that all consciousness at least includes non-positional consciousness; “every positional consciousness of an object is at the same time a nonpositional consciousness of itself.”5 Consciousness is conscious of itself as here as it apprehends its objects there. Sartre’s example is counting cigarettes in a case. In this activity, consciousness is conscious of an array of objects, cigarettes, but also conscious of counting. We note that this could involve a positional consciousness of itself as one who is counting, a reflective object. When I double-check my count, such positional consciousness arises from thinking of myself as a fallible counter, there as an object of reflection. And yet, it is also “very possible that I have no positional consciousness of counting them.”6 I am aware I am counting these objects, but awareness of such counting can take the form of non-positional consciousness. Zheng Yiwei discusses non-positional consciousness as “feel,” such that I can have the “feel” of counting the cigarettes.7 Hence, Sartrean consciousness is multidimensional: it is always inclusive of non-positional consciousness, and typically involves, as well, positional consciousness of an object or objects. Sartre uses the terms “thetic” and “non-thetic” interchangeably with “positional” and “non-positional.” As Zheng shows, the positional/non-positional distinction is foundational for Sartre’s articulation of pure and impure reflection. Pure reflection is nonpositional reflective consciousness. In pure reflection, I apprehend myself as being-for-itself, and not as being-in-itself. This would appear at first to indicate simply an infinite loop, a stream of consciousness of the pure stream of consciousness. However, as indicated above, Sartre finds that the matter of temporality is not alien to the for-itself. Hence, pure reflection apprehends a for-itself that lives its temporal ekstases, its relation to past, present, and future for which these temporalities do not constitute objects as such. There is a “feel” of temporality independent of a procedural consciousness that would convert them into points on a checklist. In pure reflection, I, here and now, am conscious of my consciousness here, which transcends “now-ness.” The “I” is thus “felt” across time, but without thereby becoming objectivated as a thing there. Hence, pure reflection is non-positional consciousness that reflects upon the for-itself without rendering it in-itself. Impure reflection, by contrast, involves taking the consciousness reflectedupon to be an object, to be in-itself. It may seem at first that we thus have a positional mode of reflecting, in which consciousness apprehends itself as an object, and a non-positional one in which it does not. Such a neat dichotomy does not quite work because the activity of positional reflection would nonetheless seem also to involve non-positional reflection. Hence, Sartre writes: Pure reflection, the simple presence of the reflective for-itself to the for-itself reflected on, is at once the original form of reflection and its ideal form; it is

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that on whose foundation impure reflection appears, it is that also which is never first given . . . Impure or accessory reflection . . . includes pure reflection but surpasses it and makes further claims.8

Thus, impure reflection is positional reflective consciousness, an “accessory” mode that goes beyond pure reflection to apprehend consciousness as an object. Impure or accessory reflection is the basis for psychology, which apprehends the psyche as an object, as is necessary for the proceduralist epistemologies of science. Yet even as a patient on the couch, when I speak about my feelings I am engaged in impure reflection. I am apprehending my consciousness so it can be there, intelligible positionally. I speak of states of mind, of emotions, but I have gone from the “feel” of non-positional consciousness to “feelings” as objects to be apprehended by positional consciousness. This movement from “feel” to “feelings” would seem, by necessity, to start with an element of pure reflection—my Erlebnis or lived experience of my consciousness, of being-for-itself—which is in turn denuded of its purity and mixed with these impurities, these renderings of consciousness as objectivations. Sartre’s point is not that impure reflection is epistemologically suspect, since for Sartre, any sort of “self-knowledge” would have to rest upon impure reflection, as the structure of knowledge requires objectivation. The simple ontological matter is that impure reflection apprehends being-for-itself as being-in-itself, which, Sartre endeavors to show, it is not. Human reality, Sartre contends, is irreducible to being-in-itself, but it is the reduction of human reality to being-in-itself that impure reflection occasions. Impure reflection, thus, is in bad faith. Sartre writes that “reflection is in bad faith in so far as it constitutes itself as the revelation of the object which I make-to-be-me.”9 One might thus suggest pure reflection as necessary to be in good faith. But such a formulation only repeats the problem, since as Sartre contends, “The ideal of good faith (to believe what one believes) is . . . an ideal of being-in-itself. . . . Good faith wishes to flee the ‘not-believingwhat-one-believes’ by finding refuge in being.”10 The desire to be in good faith apprehends the for-itself as if it were being-in-itself; good faith is, so to speak, “there.” If impure reflection is in bad faith, it does not follow that refusing impure reflection means achieving good faith. One can only adjudge whether one has lived up to the ethical dicta, “Never engage in impure reflection,” through an accounting by means of impure reflection, wherein I evaluate if my consciousness is impure. The “faith” of a consciousness that happens to abstain from impure reflection would thus be better characterized as “naïve faith,” since the restriction of its reflective activities to pure reflection is not already posited as a “good” by impure reflection. The more vexing matter here is authenticity, distinct in Being and Nothingness from good faith insofar as it involves “a self-recovery of being which

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was previously corrupted.”11 Authenticity is not the absence of bad faith or impure reflection altogether, but instead demands a critical project to recover the for-itself where it had previously been collapsed into being-in-itself. Hence, authenticity would appear to require purifying reflection. These matters concern Sartre at the close of Being and Nothingness, whose penultimate sentence, after a laundry list of normative questions arising from his descriptive phenomenological ontology, reads, “All these questions, which refer us to a pure and not accessory reflection, can find their reply only on the ethical plane.”12 Hence, in the later-to-be-abandoned Notebook for an Ethics, Sartre not only uses the notion of pure reflection but also expands it in such a way as to raise the matter of willing. Zheng explains the mutation of the concept of pure reflection in the Ethics excellently.13 For present purposes, the articulation in Being and Nothingness suffices. SHAME If pure reflection is simply understood in terms of my quest for authenticity through self-reflection, a fundamental aspect of Sartre’s approach is missing. “The real event” of radical nihilation, Sartre writes, “is the for-others. Impure reflection is an abortive effort on the part of the for-itself to be another while remaining itself.”14 In being-for-others, others are conscious of me; I am apprehended by another as an object. Impure reflection imitates the structure of being-for-others by making me there, but it is to myself (“here”) that I am “there” in impure reflection. While the Ethics will raise the question of pure reflection in moral reason, there is a more radical ontological implication of the pure reflection discussion to be found in Being and Nothingness. This is what Sartre terms shame. In shame, “we are dealing with a mode of consciousness which has a structure identical with all those which we have previously described. It is a non-positional self-consciousness, conscious (of) itself as shame; as such, it is an example of Erlebnis, and it is accessible to reflection.”15 Shame is thus subject to both pure reflection and impure reflection: it can be apprehended in the accessory mode when I describe my shame to a therapist or a loved one, but it can also be apprehended in the non-positional mode via pure reflection. I can “feel” my shame, “access” it non-positionally such that it does not emerge as an “object” of reflection. Yet the foundation of shame is not reflection but rather the relation of being-for-another: “By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position of passing judgment on myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to the Other. . . . I recognize that I am as the other sees me.”16 My shame can thus be apprehended through impure reflection as a psychic state

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of shame, but it is not originally this. It is non-positional self-consciousness of my being-for-another, to which such impure reflection can be appended simultaneously or retrospectively. Despite the negative connotation of its everyday usage, “shame” for Sartre is not in and of itself a problem. Sartre does not argue that shame is a mode of bad faith. Indeed, it would appear that any rejection of shame would be grounded in impure reflection, in a psychological rejection of “being” ashamed. Rather, the remark regarding impure reflection as an “abortive effort” to achieve the radical nihilation actually engendered by shame implies the superiority of shame to impure reflection. This may even suggest shame is purifying in a way (a) inaccessible to impure reflection and (b) different from pure reflection. Yet this appears paradoxical: doesn’t shame involve apprehending myself as an object—albeit as an object for another, rather than for myself—and hence in the mode of being-in-itself instead of being-for-itself? Recall, though, the earlier insight that shame can be apprehended in the mode of pure reflection. I reflect on myself as being-for-itself through nonpositional consciousness of the being-in-itself that I am for another. This is an overlooked element of Sartre’s famous example of peeping through a keyhole. Prior to being seen, “I am alone and on the level of a non-thetic self-consciousness.”17 I am positional consciousness of objects—the keyhole before me as obstacle and instrument, the spectacle that I see beyond it— which function as mere means to an end, but I am not an object to myself; the “end” I posit in my looking is not a matter for reflection. Jealousy, Sartre writes, “organizes this instrumental complex by transcending it toward itself. But I am this jealousy; I do not know it.”18 When I hear approaching footsteps, though, I am suddenly affected in my being. . . . I now exist as myself for my unreflective consciousness. . . . I do not aim at the Other as an object nor at my Ego as an object for myself. . . . Nevertheless I am that Ego . . . it is present to me as a self which I am without knowing it; for I discover it in shame and, in other instances, in pride. . . . It is the shame or pride which makes me live, not know the situation of being looked at.19

If pure reflection is non-positional consciousness of being-for-itself, shame is non-positional consciousness of being-for-others. But as my being-for-others is constituted by another’s positional consciousness of me, for which I am an object, “there,” shame is an apprehension of “myself.” Like impure reflection, “I” am “there,” but this is not so by means of my reflection making it so. Because for Sartre human reality is not limited to the for-itself—“our humanreality must of necessity be simultaneously for-itself and for-others”20—this raises the question of axiological matters irreducible to the question of the foritself’s authenticity. Bad faith would seem to arise not only in the commission

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of impure reflection but also in the nihilation of shame as shame. In short, there is the problem of bad faith arising from denial of being-for-others. To undertake a regime of infinite pure reflection, disengaging from the world of others, would be a flight from human reality. Insofar as Sartre regards bad faith as a flight from freedom, then the exclusive turn to pure reflection as a nihilation of being-for-others is in bad faith, just as is (through a different mechanism) impure reflection. Literature on Sartre often elides this matter. As William R. Jones demonstrates, Sartre is commonly read as speaking of the freedom of “man” in such a way that “man” is confused with a monotheistic God.21 This phenomenon mirrors Sylvia Wynter’s observation of the “biodicean” dimensions of Euromodern philosophical anthropology, such that “Man” is read as implicitly divine.22 However, if what Jones terms the “multi-subjectivism” of Sartre’s ontology—which describes a consciousness among other consciousnesses— is taken seriously, what is desirable in light of Sartre’s ontology is not a disengaged pure reflection, shielded from others, but rather a dialectical relation between pure reflection and shame. That is to say, if human reality is condemned to both being-for-itself and being-for-others, then the “self-recovery” at issue is not merely the recovery of the for-itself. CREOLIZED REFLECTION Pure reflection is non-positional self-consciousness of being-for-itself, and impure reflection is positional self-consciousness apprehending being-initself. Is this a proper dichotomy, such that all reflection is either pure or impure? Recall that the for-itself is a nihilation of being-in-itself. It should follow that pure reflection apprehends no “object” whatsoever, as being-in-itself has no place in pure reflection. If this is so, though, can “purifying” be its function? Purification would imply first apprehending being-in-itself, then nihilating it through reflection. Is purifying, then, still non-positional consciousness? It would appear non-positional consciousness cannot first posit, “I am x,” and then subsequently negate it. Certainly, avowal that “I am not x,” knowledge of one’s not-being-x, would be impure reflection, as this “not x” is an artifact of positional consciousness. Pure reflection as nihilation of being-in-itself is only intelligible as a negation of a proffered projection of being-in-itself (“x”) if such reflection is the negation of any such being-initself ({“x,” “y,” “z,” . . .}). Purifying pure reflection would have to be the negation of my objectivation in any form. Since I am an object for-others, a purifying pure reflection would entail wholesale repudiation of being-forothers and shame.

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Let us, then, consider a third mode of reflection, which I term creolized reflection. As Michael Monahan contends, Euromodernity inaugurated a peculiar “politics of purity” with wide-ranging social, political, and epistemological consequences.23 Creolization emerges through “impurities” or mixtures produced out of a context of radical inequality shaped by the effort to impose purities that are, in light of the multidimensional complexity of human reality, untenable. What is creolized is, strictly speaking, impure. And yet, we note creolization produces what can, from another context, be meaningful as a purity in its own right. What in the United States is termed “soul food” is thoroughly creolized cuisine of African inheritances reconfigured in an American context shaped through and through by Euromodern domination. Yet how many restaurants advertise (and restaurant-goers seek) authentic soul food? What is creolized, then, is impure at a first order but nonetheless intelligible in terms of a second order purity. What I propose as “creolized reflection,” then, is a reflection that is not purely non-positional but which does not apprehend the reflected-on as beingin-itself. Recall that pure reflection is non-positional reflective consciousness such that the in-itself does not arise. Impure reflection is (a) positional reflective consciousness apprehending the reflected-upon as in-itself with (b) non-positional consciousness that “feels” this positional consciousness. Creolized reflection, in contradistinction, is not positional consciousness of what the reflected-on is, but it is a concrete nihilation of what the reflectedon is not. This is to say, creolized reflection negates specific profferings of being-in-itself that the for-itself could, in impure reflection, adopt as images of the object reflected-on. If pure reflection nihilates that I am anything whatsoever—an affirmation of the for-itself by radically negating all projections of being-in-itself—then creolized reflection constitutes particular nihilations rather than a generalized one. The first-order “impurity” of creolized reflection is the involvement of positional consciousness. It takes a position, indeed, a position on itself. However, it does not follow that it meets Sartre’s characterization of “impure reflection.” Impure reflection apprehends itself as object, there. Where impure reflection has already done so, there are three possible negations through reflection. The first is within impure reflection: “I said I was x, but upon reflection, I’m actually y.” The second is through pure reflection: “I said I was x, but I now feel myself as the nihilation of being, such that I could not be any x.” The third is through creolized reflection: “I said I was x, but upon reflection, I am not x.” Insofar as the third does not rule out that “I could be y,” creolized reflection is not pure reflection, though it has not posited itself as object in the mode of impure reflection as such. I find creolized reflection to be clearly at issue in the dynamic Paget Henry, invoking W. E. B. Du Bois, terms “potentiated second sight.”24 Du

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Bois formulated second sight or double consciousness as a way of seeing the world from a normative perspective for which one should figure as disvalue. A white supremacist, antiblack world produces human beings who see whiteness as value and Blackness as its lack. The institutions of such a world seek to produce taken-for-granted antiblack consciousness, such that a normal Black person will be self-averse. Second sight emerges, though, when through reflection or countervailing influences such a person senses Blackness as valuable. One “knows” the thesis of Black inferiority, but one also feels its antithesis. Hence, double consciousness is a site of perpetual conflict: “One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”25 However, as Henry observes, Du Bois’s treatment of this theme does not imply the permanence of this war of ideals. Reflection on double consciousness produces something else: potentiated second sight. For potentiated double consciousness, I become aware of having inhabited these warring ideals, but without needing to continue doing so. I am not condemned to be this tension but may instead take a position. As Lewis Gordon characterizes it, this occasions a shift from “black consciousness” to “Black consciousness.”26 If the “black” is a construction of white racism, the “Black” is a construction of a consciousness critical of its prior to subordination to white normativity. Hence, “Black consciousness” is partly positional consciousness of “white consciousness,” whereas “black consciousness” is at war precisely because of its non-positional white consciousness. If “Black consciousness” is rooted in the avowal, “I am Black,” it would appear a species of impure reflection. However, much hinges on the meaning of “Black.” Its construction is dialectically rooted in negation of “black” as an identity ascribed by white consciousness. If “the Black” is the negation of “being black,” then it is not as easy to conclude that the reflection through which one arrives at “Blackness” is impure reflection. This point is illustrated well in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, particularly the chapter “L’expérience vécue du Noir.” Fanon is naming that what is at issue is the Erlebnis of “le Noir,” which as Gordon points out, must be distinguished for Fanon from “le nègre.”27 “Le nègre” is the “negro” constructed from the white racist standpoint. “Le Noir” lives in relation to this construction. A child pointing at Fanon and exclaiming, “Look, a nègre!” raises the question of Fanon’s Erlebnis, as a “Noir,” of being a nègre for this child. The first movement would be negation: I am not a nègre/Black, in the same sense that being-for-itself is not being-in-itself. This response, though, does not contest white normativity. An antiblack world recognizes certain phenotypically Black people don’t fit its stereotypes, but does so through an honorary whiteness: “We know that you aren’t like the others.” The purifying

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reflection shows one is not Black, but it neither eradicates being-Black-forothers nor the normativity of white consciousness. The second movement is that indicated by Négritude, for which there is affirmation of one’s being-Black (and hence not-being-black). The “Black” from the standpoint of Négritude is produced once the “black” has been transvaluated and regarded as beautiful. Fanon’s reading of Sartre’s “Black Orpheus,” though, shows Négritude to be in bad faith; it is grounded in impure reflection, wherein I am this object of beauty, this Blackness. If “the Black” is a beautiful being-in-itself, Fanon is left with the tragic realization that Blackness on those terms forfeits one’s humanity, not because humanity is what white universalism avows it to be but simply because humanity is irreducible to mere being. Sartre’s analysis of Négritude, Fanon points out, errs just as poorly, since such humanity would be recovered, in effect, through the “being” of a socialist universalism after race. The third option, then, takes being “Black/Noire” as invoking existing as Black-for-others, as Black-in-the-world, without a collapse into being-Black. One is not black (in the lower case) despite one’s condemnation to confronting one’s being-black-for-others. “Black” consciousness as an avowal of existence before essence thus affirms one’s being-for-itself. Pure reflection could achieve this, but as a universal nihilation of its being-in-itself, it must stop short of the avowal of this for-itself as “Black.” “Blackness” as a product of creolized reflection rests on the nihilation of being-black, but not the nihilation of being-for-others in general. It can thus affirm being-Blackfor-others as a genuine possibility, in line with Fanon’s inclination—as a revolutionary—toward a political, rather than merely ethical, response. If “Blackness” is tied to a political subjectivity, it is related to the establishment of an “Us.” “Reflective consciousness,” Sartre writes, “can not apprehend this ‘Us.’ Its appearance coincides on the contrary with the collapse of the ‘Us’; the for-itself disengages itself and posits its selfness against Others.”28 Reflection shatters the “Us” because it cannot apprehend my being-for-others as being-for-others. Impure reflection can conflate being-for-others with its reflective object in bad faith, but it does not thereby apprehend the “Us” that the political project seeks to produce. In pure reflection, being-for-others simply cannot appear since it constitutes me as an object. The political project of Blackness, then, can in shame—non-positional consciousness of myself as being-for-others—engender my realization that I am Black for others. But such shame can in turn become at issue in reflection. Pure reflection would nihilate it, but creolized reflection need not: creolized reflection can nihilate being-black-for-others without projecting a purity disruptive of the positive meaning found in being-Black-for-others. Creolized reflection thus has a purifying function at a second order even as it does not incur the first-order purity that would unsettle any solidarity whatsoever.

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We are thus back to one of Sartre’s insights on being-for-others: “the Other does not constitute me as an object for myself but for him. In other words he does not serve as a regulative or constitutive concept for the pieces of knowledge which I may have of myself.”29 Africana phenomenology apprehends this through a negation of white consciousness as a disclosure of who the Black person (le Noir) is. In the modality of creolized reflection, Africana phenomenology offers a nihilation of “I am black/nègre,” a reflection that apprehends the for-itself but does not thereby nihilate being-for-others altogether. At its heart is an insight also gleaned by Sartre: “The value of the Other’s recognition of me depends on the value of my recognition of the Other.”30 Pure reflection involves no valuing of recognition since it nihilates the possibility of my being there to be recognized. The bad faith of impure reflection is often grounded in the opposite: it may value recognition for recognition’s sake since this evades the anguish of being-for-itself in favor of the comfort of objecthood. Creolized reflection, though, can affirm the value of being-for concrete others without such collapse, meaning I may value your freedom to adopt a perspective on what I am. Black consciousness is a choice to not value white consciousness while valuing the perspective of others who are Black. Where pure reflection nihilates this valuing, it is self-consciousness at the expense of Black consciousness. Creolized reflection, then, is necessary for an Africana phenomenology that can suspend the natural attitude otherwise governing self-reflection without thereby bracketing the value of Black consciousness altogether. An upshot, then, is that creolized reflection is a mode of attending to my freedom that can be creolizing in a way seemingly inaccessible to pure reflection. In pure reflection, I may purify myself of the impurities of projections of being-in-itself. In creolized reflection, though, this “purifying” effect is not premised on the achievement of purity as such. I remain open to the work of others to make me this and to find me to be that. Creolized reflection, thus, rather than seeking my purity, may help me realize my freedom so that, as Fanon reminded us, it is enlisted in service of building the world of the YOU. NOTES 1. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press), 212. 2. Eric James Morelli, “Pure Reflection and Intentional Process: The Foundation of Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology,” Sartre Studies International 14, no. 1 (2008): 61–77. 3. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 219. 4. Ibid., 12. 5. Ibid., 13. 6. Ibid.

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7. Yiwei Zheng, “On Pure Reflection in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness,” Sartre Studies International 7, no. 1 (2001): 19–42. 8. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 218. 9. Ibid., 226. 10. Ibid., 115. 11. Ibid., 116. 12. Ibid., 798. 13. Yiwei Zheng, “Sartre on Authenticity,” Sartre Studies International 8, no. 2 (2002): 127–40. 14. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 226. 15. Ibid., 301. 16. Ibid., 302. 17. Ibid., 347. 18. Ibid., 348. 19. Ibid., 349. 20. Ibid., 376. 21. William R. Jones, “Sartre’s Philosophical Anthropology in Relation to His Ethics: A Criticism of Selected Critics,” Unpublished dissertation (Providence, RI: Brown University, 1969). 22. Sylvia Wynter, “On How We Mistook the Map for the Territory, and ReImprisoned Ourselves in Our Unbearable Wrongness of Being, of Désêtre: Black Studies Toward the Human Project,” In Not Only the Master’s Tools: African American Studies in Theory and Practice, eds. Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon (New York: Paradigm/Routledge, 2006), 107–72. 23. Michael Monahan, The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason, and the Politics of Purity (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011). 24. Paget Henry, “Africana Phenomenology: Its Philosophical Implications,” CLR James Journal 11, no. 1 (2005): 79–112. 25. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Amherst/Boston, MA: UMass Amherst Libraries and University of Massachusetts Press, 2018), 3. 26. Lewis R. Gordon, Fear of Black Consciousness (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), 18 et passim. 27. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Mask, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967); Lewis R. Gordon, What Fordham Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015). 28. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 542. 29. Ibid., 367. 30. Ibid., 320.

REFERENCES Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, with an introduction by Shawn Leigh Alexander. Amherst/Boston, MA: UMass Amherst Libraries and University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.

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Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Gordon, Lewis R. What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and Thought. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. ———. Fear of Black Consciousness. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. Henry, Paget. “Africana Phenomenology: Its Philosophical Implications.” CLR James Journal 11, no. 1 (2005): 79–112. Jones, William R. “Sartre’s Philosophical Anthropology in Relation to His Ethics: A Criticism of Selected Critics.” Unpublished dissertation. Providence, RI: Brown University, 1969. Monahan, Michael. The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason, and the Politics of Purity. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. Morelli, Eric James. “Pure Reflection and Intentional Process: The Foundation of Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology.” Sartre Studies International 14, no. 1 (2008): 61–77. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology. Translated and with an introduction by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. Wynter, Sylvia. “On How We Mistook the Map for the Territory, and Re-Imprisoned Ourselves in Our Unbearable Wrongness of Being, of Désêtre: Black Studies Toward the Human Project.” In Not Only the Master’s Tools: African American Studies in Theory and Practice, edited by Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon, 107–72. New York: Paradigm/Routledge, 2006. Zheng, Yiwei. “On Pure Reflection in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.” Sartre Studies International 7, no. 1 (2001): 19–42. ———. “Sartre on Authenticity.” Sartre Studies International 8, no. 2 (2002): 127–40.

Chapter 7

Racial Praxis Black Liberation and the Movement from Series to Group Michael J. Monahan

Oppression, as Iris Young reminds us, is directed first and foremost toward groups, and extends to individuals only insofar as they are members of groups.1 It targets us, in other words, by virtue of our membership (or at least, assumed membership), in collectives—races, genders, sexualities, religions, ethnicities, nations, and so on. Struggles against oppression are thus always social and collective struggles, such that the subject of liberation must always be to some extent a plural subject. My liberation is thus necessarily tied to our liberation. This insight brings to the fore the fundamental question of the formation of this plural subject, and its (our) potential for collective action. How do the oppressed come to see themselves as sharing not merely a condition or status, but a purpose and practice? As Young herself recognized (1994), Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason (1976) offers resources for thinking through precisely these questions, and her essay “Gender as Seriality” makes a valiant effort to think through the collective subject of feminist liberation: “woman.” In this essay, I will follow in Young’s footsteps, though shifting the focus from gender to race, and specifically to anti-Black racism and Black liberation. I will argue that thinking of race as a kind of “series being” opens a space for understanding struggles for racial liberation as in part struggles to form a group out of that series capable of liberatory group praxis. With this insight in mind, I will turn to insights offered by the Haitian revolution and by Steve Biko’s articulation of Black consciousness, arguing that they can be fruitfully read as an effort to perform precisely this maneuver in their particular contexts. This essay will thus undertake a creolizing study of Sartre, Haiti, and Biko, using each to inform our reading of the other.2 Sartre’s larger project in the Critique is to think through theory of the intelligibility of history consistent with his Marxism and his existentialism. 149

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He aims toward an account of history that at once incorporates individual human praxis without collapsing into atomistic individualism, and that is dialectically intelligible without reducing to the mechanistic realization of larger forces completely independent of that individual praxis. He writes in the introduction: In short, if there is such a thing as the unity of History, the experimenter must see his own life as the Whole and the Part, as the bond between the Parts and the Whole, and as the relation between the Parts, in the dialectical movement of Unification; he must be able to leap from his individual life to History simply by the practical negation of the negation which defines his life.3 There is much to unpack in this admittedly obscure passage. Sartre is pointing toward the need to spell out the necessary relation between individual and collective praxis (the bond between the parts and the whole). My individual activity is enabled and constitutively conditioned by the past and present activity of others, and is in this way made possible by virtue of its relation to a larger whole.4 Yet, as an activity, it immediately moves beyond that original whole, and “brings novelty into the world.”5 At the same time, however, this novel activity stands as a contribution to the unfolding whole (dialectical movement of Unification), and thus becomes part of the ongoing movement of history. Every action is thus dialectical (negation of the negation) insofar as it is predicated upon and conditioned by that larger whole in a manner that is both diachronic and synchronic, and insofar as it immediately then confronts one as a new contribution to that larger whole, intelligible precisely by virtue of being a part of that whole.6 This means that all praxis is at once individual and collective, and thus understanding history requires attention to “practical ensembles”—the generic term Sartre uses to refer to collections of human beings as agents of history.7 According to Juliette Simont, a Sartrean practical ensemble is “a configuration of human intersubjectivity affecting materiality and vice versa”8 (2020, 402). To see what she is getting at here, some brief background on this period of Sartre’s writing is necessary. By the time Sartre was writing the Critique at the end of the 1950s, his commitment to individual freedom so prominent in his earlier work has by no means been abandoned, but his continued attachment to Marxism led him to offer a more subtle and complicated picture of human existence as free. He offers an account of individual freedom (praxis) as inevitably bound up not only with history and culture (Sartre 1976a, 54) but also with ongoing relations to and participation in practical ensembles. All of this means that individual praxis is never purely individual. Freedom thus remains at the core of his account of human existence, but for the Sartre of the Critique, freedom is always ineluctably a matter not just of individual, but also of collective praxis. As Matthew Ally reads the Sartre of the Critique, “to be maximally human is to be engaged in the free and creative work

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of history making in collaborative solidarity with singular others toward the goal of universal liberation.”9 What Ally references as “collaborative solidarity” is what Sartre refers to as common praxis, in which “the schema of intelligibility is not provided by some super-individual undertaking, but, on the contrary, by the dialectical (and perfectly comprehensible) relation between pure, simple, individual action . . . and a common aim.”10 By connecting one’s individual praxis dialectically to a common praxis, in short, one is better able to realize one’s projects, which means that individual freedom can avoid being reduced to alienated process or to helpless and empty gestures of revolt, and may instead become truly efficacious. To the extent, therefore, that this dialectical relation between individual and collective praxis is hindered or obscured, one’s freedom is impoverished. We can now see the link between freedom, oppression, and praxis (both individual and collective). Oppression is not the simple negation of freedom understood as individual praxis, but rather involves the generation of social conditions wherein that individual praxis confronts an array of options where any given choice leads only to the future impoverishment of that praxis. One’s individual freedom, in other words, comes to “consume itself in vain,” to paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir’s evocative account.11 Take, for example, a grocery store clerk during the 2020 pandemic. She may choose to quit her job to protect her health and that of her family, but in sacrificing her income, risk losing her home and finding herself unable to provide for her family. Or, she may continue to go to work, thus preserving her subsistence, but putting her and her family’s health at grave risk. Under conditions of oppression, each exercise of individual praxis is directed toward a kind of rear-guard action. Rather than generating projects that create an open future in the pursuit of flourishing, the praxis of the oppressed is engaged in a constant reactive process seeking only to stave-off disaster and survive long enough to make another self-effacing choice. And because the conditions that constitute oppression (in this particular case, capitalistic mechanisms of health care and housing, paired with, in many such cases, racist and sexist inequalities and disadvantages) are the results of the collective praxis of others (ruling elites and their cronies, for instance), overcoming oppression requires a collective counter-praxis. As a result, the individual praxis of the oppressed will continue to consume itself in the absence of a collective praxis designed to counteract the oppressive collective praxis of others. This is why “practical ensembles” are at the heart of Sartre’s effort to articulate a dialectical account of history. The historical conflicts that animate history are conflicts between practical ensembles as well as individuals, where neither ensembles nor individuals can be understood as reducible to the other. In the context that is my current focus, this means that individuals are oppressed or oppressors by virtue of their belonging to particular ensembles,

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and to resist oppression demands that we must understand how these ensembles operate—how they come to be, how they gain, lose, and exercise power, and how they condition and are conditioned by the praxis of the individuals that comprise them, even as these individuals are ineluctably shaped by these ensembles and this long history of struggle. The particular kinds of ensembles that characterize oppression, where praxis comes to “consume itself in vain,” Sartre calls a series. What characterizes a series above all is a shared external relation some object (like a factory floor, or a train), or to some established practice or norm (like the queue at a coffee shop, or the stock market). Whether these “objects” are material, or are sedimented expectations and norms, they carry in themselves a kind of inert or ossified praxis, which Sartre refers to as the practico-inert. The members of a series thus stand in a shared relation to some practico-inert object, which orients and conditions their individual praxis, though in ways that are ultimately alienating and experienced in a manner that Sartre refers to as process. Each member of the series aims to secure advantage with respect to the other members (getting a better place in line for the bus, seizing an early investment opportunity in the market, etc.), and does so by responding to the anticipated behaviors of the other members of the series. Crucially, while members of a series may stand in a unique relation to the practico-inert object that binds them together, they are otherwise interchangeable, and each acts as any other would in the same position. In a series, in other words, “everyone is identical with the Other in so far as the others make him an Other acting on the Others.”12 In a series, we may jockey for position, but the goals and the rules of this individual praxis are imposed by the “force of exteriority,” such that the “best” course of action is what any other member of the series would do in the same position and with the same information.13 This is what Sartre means when he claims that in a series we act as Other, and what it means for our praxis within a series to be alienated. “The practical consequence of this serial structure,” Simont points out, “is that it leaves its members powerless.”14 Fortunately, series are only a type of ensemble, and can be understood in contrast with “groups,” where a genuinely common praxis emerges. According to Young, whereas “a series is a social collective whose members are unified passively by the objects around which their actions are oriented or by the objectified results of the material effects of the actions of the others,” in a group there are “actively shared objectives.”15 Groups form out of series, when the passive relation mediated by the practico-inert is actively taken up by (some) members of the series, often as a response to some common threat (as a negation of a negation, in other words). Sartre uses the storming of the Bastille as an example of this process, where a subset of the series “Parisians,” under threat of violence from the forces of

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the king, undertook the common goal and praxis of seizing the arms in the Bastille. In this endeavor, other Parisians became not obstacles to be overcome or avoided, but rather reciprocal participants in a collective action. In other words, as a member of a series, my praxis is ultimately a reaction to the diffuse individual praxis of (often anonymous) others, while the emergence of a group makes possible, in Nicolas de Warren’s words, “reciprocal action that enhances individual freedom through the free praxis of others.16 This moment of the emergence of a group out of a series Sartre refers to as a “fusing group” [groupe en fusion], in which there is an “interiorization of a reciprocity” between the members, such that it becomes possible to act “not as an individual, nor as an Other, but as an individual incarnation of the common person.”17 Preserving group praxis and working to maintain the ongoing fusion within a series can lead to the “statutory” or “pledge” group, where members explicitly bind themselves (such as through a public pledge), and beyond that to the “organization,” in which the statutory group formalizes relations of reciprocity by assigning and assuming different roles and responsibilities within the group. All of these different sorts of groups are different from series in that they enable group praxis (reciprocity), yet it is important to bear in mind that they do not so much replace series, but rather, in Simont’s words, offer “a new mode of interpersonal relation inside the series.”18 One important feature of Sartre’s distinction between series and groups is that it provides a way of belonging to what our ordinary way of speaking would call a “group” that requires neither innate shared features, nor voluntary association. A series, for Sartre, is a “practical ensemble” to which individuals may belong in a way that profoundly conditions their individual praxis, but in which their membership is a result neither of internal or innate characteristics, nor explicit choice. The appeal here for thinking through race and gender (among other modes of oppression) is quite clear. A second, and related, feature of Sartre’s distinction is that it opens up an important way of thinking about oppression (and liberation). Certain series function in a way that ineluctably alienates the praxis of its members (such that it “consumes itself in vain”), and so we may say that they are oppressed as a series. Crucially, the response to this oppression is not to deny the underlying reality of the series (in favor, typically, of a liberal atomism), but rather to create the conditions in which the series can begin the process of “fusing” into a genuine “groupe en fusion” capable of collective praxis in resistance to the praxis of those seeking their oppression and alienation—they must shift from a passive collective bound together through a shared external relation to a practicoinert object to a we-subject bound together through a shared commitment to group praxis. It is this latter moment, the genesis of the we-subject, that is my principal interest here, though in the particular context of race.

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To approach race as a series is a way of accounting for the existence of races as “ensembles,” whose “series being” is generated through the “practico-inert” ideas, norms, sedimented practices, and histories. These will be context-dependent, such that the practico-inert “object” of whiteness, for example, will be particular to a given context, even as it may be related to whiteness in other contexts, and the same would hold for other races qua practico-inert objects binding together different races as series. Individual membership in races as series, therefore, is a matter of a relation to a given race as a practico-inert “object,” shared, again in context-specific ways, by other members of that racial series. As Young points out in her account of gender as seriality, this serial relation does not pick out “essential” features shared by all its members, nor does it imply anything about one’s identity. One’s relation gender, according to Young, is mediated by features, or presumed features, of one’s body, but it is the meanings and norms attached to those features that serve as the practico-inert object constituting the serial relation, not the body itself.19 In the context of race, this would mean that my membership in the series white, for example, is a function of the relation I bear to whiteness as a practico-inert object. My individual praxis will inescapably be conditioned by this relation in ways both conscious and unconscious, but because it is the dominant racial position, the impact on my praxis is typically to my advantage.20 For those in other racial series, in most contexts, membership conditions individual praxis in highly disadvantageous ways. In the Critique, Sartre explicitly discusses Jewishness as seriality,21 and addresses colonialism and racism as modes of a “serial flight of alterity”22 and “Other-Thought” [Pensée-Autre].23 One example that Sartre touches on briefly, but I will argue here can be quite instructive, is the Haitian revolution. Before turning to Sartre’s brief but suggestive discussion of Haiti, some background is necessary. Before the revolution began, the population of the French colony of Saint-Domingue was divided along several axes: poor whites (petit blanc), wealthy and landed whites (gros blanc), enslaved Africans and their descendants born on the island (subdivided into rural and urban enslaved), maroon communities (escaped formerly enslaved people), free Black people, and free people of mixed race, called “people of color” (gens de colour). As was common throughout French colonies in the Americas, people of color were granted certain privileges, such as the right to own property (including enslaved people), and even the right to bear arms,24 while remaining beneath the status of even poor whites in other ways.25 In this way, they served a key role in the “divide and rule” tactics of the colonizers, standing as a buffer between the plantocracy and the enslaved. As the revolution began, poor and wealthy whites were largely united in their struggle to suppress the revolution (though divided with respect to their royalist or republican sympathies), and the people of color at various times sought to gain political advantage

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by fighting against the revolutionaries, and at other times, especially in the later years of the war, fought alongside and as revolutionaries. I offer this very brief overview to illustrate the problem, faced at the conclusion of the revolutionary struggle, to form a unified nation. Crucially, rather than deny race altogether in favor of a new, strictly national identity,26 Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first ruler of the newly independent nation, opted to appeal directly to race in his effort to forge the new Haitian identity. Article 14 from the 1805 constitution, authored under Dessalines’ reign, read as follows: Toute acception de couleur parmi les enfants d’une seule et même famille, dont le chef de l’État est le père, devant nécessairement cesser, les Haïtiens ne seront désormais connus que sous la dénomination génériques de Noirs. [All acception of colour among the children of one and the same family, of whom the chief magistrate is the father, being necessarily to cease, the Haytians shall hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of Blacks.]27

Unity across racial divides is sought here not by denying race altogether, but by designating all Haitians “Black.” This not only includes the various nonwhite groups mentioned above, but also German and Polish soldiers who, in the course of the long struggle for independence, came eventually to side with and fight alongside the rebels against the imperial powers that had brought them to the island in the first place, as well as “naturalized” white women, white children born on the island, and any children later born to those white women. These different collections of white people are explicitly mentioned in the 13th article of the constitution as excluded from the 12th article, which forbids any white person to own property on the island. Thus, Dessalines’ constitution has at once outlawed white property ownership, and created a distinctly political category of Black that includes those pale-skinned people who had thrown in their lot with those rebels who brought into being the first nation-state founded by the formerly enslaved. As a final note here, it is worth pointing out that the very name Hayti (Haïti), which Dessalines used to describe the new nation, was an Arawak word, thus tying the new citizens of the nation to the original inhabitants of the island, rather than appealing to either European or African languages for the new appellation.28 We can see in the example of the 1805 constitution a story of practical ensembles. From alienated and oppressed serial unities of various racial categories, to the fusing struggles against enslavement and colonization (negation of a negation) that marked the origins of group praxis,29 which is gradually developed into a pledge group in an effort to solidify that group praxis and sustain the struggle for freedom, to, ultimately, the shift to an organization in the emerging nation state and its constitution. Already the Critique offers compelling insights into the Haitian revolution, and the revolutionaries’

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response to the challenges posed by the articulation of a new collective identity helps in turn to illuminate Sartre’s text. As I will argue below, the emphasis of the 1805 constitution on racial Blackness in particular offers original insights into the workings of colonialism and racial liberation well beyond Sartre’s own work on the subject. Let us first look at Sartre’s own relatively brief reference to the Haitian revolution in the Critique. In what can be interpreted as a reference to that 1805 constitution, he offers the following observation: Indeed: the colour of their skin, taken as a pure, reciprocal obligation by the black rebels of San Domingo, and, at the same time, as everyone’s material, inert guarantee against the possibility of being alienated, the colour of their skin being taken, in and by everyone, not as a universal physiological characteristic, but as a historical characteristic based on the past unity of a free promotion— this is fraternity, that is to say the fundamental, practical structure of all the reciprocal relations between the members of a group.30

What Sartre is stressing here is that Dessalines’ constitution took the practicoinert object of Blackness and transformed it from the source of their serial alienation and oppression into a source of fraternity and reciprocity within a group. This moment of pledge, the intentional binding together of a group out of a series with a shared (reciprocal) praxis directed toward the goals of the group, Sartre refers to as “the origin of humanity”31 in which “the group posits itself for itself.”32 The struggle against racial oppression, therefore, demands that one take up, from the external unity of serialized race and in fraternal reciprocity with other members of the series, the collective praxis of the liberation of the race as a group (bearing in mind that the series is not thereby eliminated, but exists simultaneously with and within the group). In this way the nascent group “posits itself for itself,” and becomes conscious of and capable of reflecting on its group praxis. Racial Blackness, a practico-inert object that had bound people together serially (that is, through a shared external relation that alienated or altered individual praxis), comes therefore to be taken up not as an external imposition, but as an internalized affirmation of a shared praxis of collective liberation. In the case of Dassalines’ constitution, this new group “Black” includes members who are not members of the series “Black.” The ensemble moves from being a passive collection of individuals bound by an imposed relation to an external object (race as series), to an active group subject (we Black people) bound together by a shared struggle and ongoing reciprocity. Of course, the collapse back into seriality, and passive alienation, is always a looming threat, which is why fusing groups enact the pledge and may even organize themselves so as to maintain their unity and reciprocity. Group praxis, in other words, though a powerful force, can be

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fragile and difficult to maintain. This adds a significant level of complexity to the analysis, in that the remaining serial differentiations within the group (those who remain part of the series “white” or “person of color,” for instance) will continue to condition the individual contributions members of those series make qua members of the group Black. Sartre’s Critique is filled with examples of ways in which groups, at various stages in their development, have collapsed back into serial inertia, either by abandoning group praxis altogether, or by becoming increasingly mechanistic in their institutional structure (which structure becomes a kind of practico-inert object binding together the former group into a series). What the example of Haiti brings to the table is not merely an illuminating example, but a revelatory enhancement of the complexity of the interplay between series and groups within the racialized/colonial context. In the case of Haiti, the revolution can be thought of as a diffuse set of different fusing moments out of various series and sub-series (the enslaved in the northern province, the people of color in Le Cap, various maroon communities, etc.), which stabilize over time by means of pledge and organization (primarily into military units). The 1805 constitution is in this way an effort to preserve the liberatory group praxis of the revolution, which is at once successfully concluded and very much ongoing. The appeal to a Black nation (one that includes pale-skinned citizens of European descent) situates this liberatory groups praxis in the larger Atlantic and even global struggle for Black humanity. Significantly, rather than deploying an ostensibly raceless appeal to universal humanistic values while in practice maintaining white supremacy (as had the French and US revolutionaries in the decades preceding the Haitian revolution), the 1805 constitution sought to more fully realize those humanistic values through an appeal to Blackness. This sheds new light on Sartre’s political thought in two ways. First, it opens a space in which it becomes possible to be an active participant in a group without being a member of the series out of which that group first emerged (and which is still present in the group in key ways). Those Polish and German soldiers mentioned in the constitution, for instance, may have been members of the group “Black” but not of the series “Black.” Second, and as a related implication, what is suggested here is that efforts toward large-scale liberation, reciprocity, and fraternity do not only involve the appeal to ideal and abstractly universal values (liberty, equality, and fraternity, for instance), but rather, or perhaps additionally, requires the shared commitment, in group praxis, to the liberation of the oppressed. In other words, liberation as an ongoing project may be better realized in the Haitian context though a shared identification on the part of Haitians of all backgrounds and complexions as (and with) Black, rather than as “Human.”33 As I will argue below, this is a function of the larger teleological whiteness of the anti-Black context.

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To best spell out this latter point, it is helpful to turn to another thinker of liberation and collective identity, whose thought is indebted to Sartre,34 but not constrained by it. Steve Biko’s writings on Black Consciousness in the context of South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s can be read as an effort to navigate racial group praxis. Biko, a founding member and principal theorist of the South African Students’ Organization (SASO), spent much of his all-too-brief life as an activist and writer articulating and defending SASO’s core philosophy: Black Consciousness.35 Black Consciousness involves two overlapping moments: a coming-to-consciousness and a political praxis.36 The first moment is influenced by Paulo Freire’s notion of “conscientization” (conscientização), and refers to an active process of deepening critical consciousness and self-awareness.37 In Biko’s own words, “The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth.”38 The second moment involves organizing and struggling politically against racism and exploitation—the rejection of the Apartheid regime and the white-supremacist political order, as well as the maldistribution of wealth.39 Crucially, these two moments must be understood as dialectically related. The “conscientization” reveals the need for political praxis and empowers the oppressed to struggle more effectively, while the praxis itself enhances and deepens the ongoing process of individual and collective consciousness raising. If, as Biko put the point, “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed,”40 then any effective political struggle must entail the freeing of those minds through a process of consciousness raising. For the purposes of this chapter, however, the crucial feature of Biko’s articulation of Black Consciousness is his articulation of Blackness as such, since he sees it not as a phenotypic descriptor, nor even as a racial category in any orthodox sense, but rather as an embodied and deliberate political commitment (to liberatory praxis within the South African context). Being Black, Biko tells us, “is a reflection of a mental attitude,” and by actively and self-consciously assuming this descriptor “you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed ourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.”41 To bear the physical features that mark one for subordination within the white-supremacist Apartheid context, yet to lack this “mental attitude” is, for Biko, to be “non-white,” but not Black.42 Part of what Biko is doing here is a response to the divide-and-rule practices of the Apartheid state (and which we observed previously in the Haitian context), which took advantage of every division and distinction among the various non-white communities to maintain white minority rule. In his essay “Black

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Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity,” Biko makes this point quite explicitly: We are oppressed not as individuals, not as Zulus, Xhosas, Vendas, or Indians. We are oppressed because we are Black. We must use that very concept to unite ourselves and to respond as a cohesive group.43 As with Dessalines before him, in other words, Biko is appealing to Blackness—to what had been the alleged marker of inferiority, subordination, and degradation—as the basis for an emerging we-subject capable to assuming active responsibility for the project of collective liberation and the manifestation of a “true humanity.”44 Biko’s account of Black Consciousness, as we can now see, may be read as the emerging of a genuine Black group out of a collection of non-white series, the goal of which is group praxis aimed at overcoming Apartheid and which sets the stage for a “true humanity.” Biko’s insight here is to emphasize the way in which white supremacy as a larger cultural, material, and political framework, profoundly conditions not only the alienated individual praxis of the members of non-white series but also must shape the emerging group praxis expressed in Black Consciousness. Those non-whites who do not take-up the call for Black Consciousness, he tells us, aspire to whiteness yet remain incapable of realizing that aspiration by virtue of the practicoinert features of their embodiment within the Apartheid context.45 Whiteness, or at least, distance from “the Black,” in other words, becomes the guiding orientation or telos of individual praxis under the alienated conditions of white-supremacist seriality (which is in part why divide-and-rule practices and policies were, and are, so effective). As Lewis Gordon puts the point in his discussion of Biko: Coloured, Asian, and brown function as degrees of whiteness and blackness. The slipperiness of these categories means a system of unceasing conflict the subtext of which is a teleological whiteness. Biko’s notion of Black Consciousness demands shifting such a telos.46

The call to assume and affirm an active Black identity, as opposed to “human” or even “South African,” as central to the group praxis of liberation thus stands as a clear refutation of that overriding teleological whiteness. Because it is so powerful and so normative within Biko’s South African context (though of course, this is hardly unique to that context), a simple rejection of racial categories or identities will not do. Color blindness cannot effectively challenge the normative force of that teleological whiteness, and so it must be met with the affirmation of Blackness. In essence, since whiteness, as a practico-inert object, is such a profound force of dehumanization (a mode of the “death project,” in the words of Julia Suarez-Krabbe47), the liberatory move is not the affirmation of “humanity,”

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but of Black group praxis as the only viable response to dehumanizing whiteness. In other words, this creolizing study of Sartre, Haiti, and Biko reveals ultimately how Black stands as the genuine negation of whiteness as the negation of humanity. Biko thus helps us to see the power of teleological whiteness beyond the analyses offered by Sartre. At the same time, Sartre’s Critique helps to reveal powerful aspects of Black Consciousness that remain more often implicit in Biko’s own writing. Recognizing the role of racial categories as modes of series being, and the shift to Black Consciousness as the self-conscious advocacy of a fusing group (indeed, we would do well, I submit, to see Black Consciousness as an effort to instill a kind of Pledge for that fusing group), sheds new and valuable light on Biko’s insights without diminishing or overshadowing them. In addition to emphasizing the teleological whiteness that informs Biko’s analysis, what this creolizing reading of Sartre, Haiti, and Biko helps to illuminate are the different kinds of threats or pitfalls that anti-racist group praxis will face (again, varying in the particulars from context to context). As we have seen, the inclusive call for Black Consciousness means that some of those affirming the emerging group praxis are doing so out of the series “Black,” while others are not. The looming threat of “alterity”—of the dissolution of the fusing group back into series being—will thus play out differently among these different constitutive series, as was the case in the Haitian context. Maintaining the group as such, therefore, requires recognizing and confronting the different ways in which the forces seeking to fracture that group will manifest themselves. The case of Black Consciousness also helps to raise important questions about the place of white people within the liberatory group praxis. While Biko is clear that Black Consciousness is really only available to those within the larger “non-white” series,48 Dessalines’ constitution explicitly included whites in national Black group. The tension between these two approaches raises profound questions that are beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is my contention that a creolizing methodology will be the only viable way to address this tension fruitfully. NOTES 1. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), 40. 2. See chapter 4 of the current volume, T Storm Heter and Kris F. Sealey, “The Global South and Sartre: Echoes of Existential Thought.” 3. Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason: Volume One (New York: Verso, 1976), 52.

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4. “In this way, I find myself dialectically conditioned by the totalized and totalizing past of the process of human development.” Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 54. 5. Ibid., 58. 6. Ibid., 55. 7. Indeed, Sartre subtitled the first volume of the Critique (the only volume published during his lifetime) “A Theory of Practical Ensembles.” 8. Juliette Simont, “Intersubjectivity Between Group and Seriality from the Early to the Later Sartre,” in The Sartrean Mind, edited by Matthew C. Eshleman and Constance L. Mui (New York: Routledge), 402–12. 9. Matthew C. Ally, “The Logics of the Critique,” in The Sartrean Mind, edited by Matthew C. Eshleman and Constance L. Mui (New York: Routledge, 2020), 367. 10. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 550–51. 11. Sartre is very much following in Beauvoir’s wake in his writings on oppression not only in the Critique but also in his unpublished Notebooks for an Ethics (1992). Her discussion of oppression in The Ethics of Ambiguity offers a succinct summary: “As we have seen, my freedom, in order to fulfill itself, requires that it emerge into an open future: it is other men who open the future to me, it is they who, setting up the world of tomorrow, define my future; but if, instead of allowing me to participate in this constructive movement they oblige me to consume my transcendence in vain, if they keep me below the level which they have conquered and on the basis of which new conquests will be achieved, then they are cutting me off from the future, they are changing me into a thing.” Simone de Beauvior, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Citadel Press, 1976), 82. She goes on: “Oppression divides the world into two clans: those who enlighten mankind by thrusting it ahead of itself and those who are condemned to mark time hopelessly in order merely to support the collectivity . . . the oppressor feeds himself on their transcendence and refuses to extend it by a free recognition.” Ibid., 83. 12. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 264. 13. Ibid., 304. 14. Simont, “Intersubjectivity Between Group and Seriality.” 15. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 724. 16. Nicolas de Warren, “Brothers in Arms: Fraternity-Terror in Sartre’s Social Ontology,” in Phenomenology of Sociality: Discovering the ‘We’, edited by Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran (New York: Routledge, 2016), 313–26, 316. 17. Alan Sheridan-Smith translates groupe en fusion as “The Fused Group,” but as Nicolas de Warren notes, this is a very problematic translation, in that the past participle “Fused” leads one to see the process as an accomplished fact. I have chosen to use the gerund “fusing group” to emphasize that this is an ongoing process that is, as Sartre is keen to stress, always under threat of collapse back into passive seriality. In Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 315. 18. Simont, “Intersubjectivity Between Group and Seriality,” 409. Sartre puts this point as follows: “A fused group is in fact still a series, negating itself in re-interiorizing exterior negations; in other words, in this moment there is no distinction between the positive itself (the group in formation) and this self-negating negation (the series

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in dissolution).” Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), 358. 19. Iris Marion Young, “Gender as Seriality: Thinking About Women as a Social Collective,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 713–38. See especially pages 728–30. 20. There are two important points to make here. First, I would again emphasize the context-specificity of racial series. “Whiteness” in the United States has particular content (though even here there are regional and generational differences), that bears important similarities to “whiteness” in South Africa or France, for instance, but they are not identical in their content, even if whiteness serves the same political function in each of these contexts (namely, domination and exploitation). The same would hold, mutatis mutandis, for other racial series. Second, while membership in the series white advantages individual praxis in significant ways, this does not mean that it is liberatory, a point that both Fanon and Biko, for instance, saw quite clearly. See Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004), 238–39; Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 2008), 41; and Steve Biko, I Write What I Like (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2012), 169–70. 21. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 267–68. This builds upon important themes from Anti-Semite and Jew (1995). Sartre’s account in the Critique is focused on Jewishness within the context of Anti-Semitism, thus, as a series, it is constituted by the practico-inert object of Jewishness. When we speak of Jewish communities determining their own rules and norms for membership, we are speaking more of groups, which groups, in an Anti-Semitic context, will always stand in that serial relationship to Jewishness, but are not reducible to it. This provides him with a potential means for avoiding the important criticism of his earlier account, in which he seemed to reduce Jewishness to the Anti-Semite’s idea of “the Jew.” This is a complicated distinction deserving a more detailed and lengthy engagement, that it is beyond the scope of this chapter. 22. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 300n. 23. Ibid., 714. He offers, in the Critique, an account of Anti-Semitism, colonialism, and racism as expressions of a serial praxis-process—the ongoing violence of oppression and exploitation experienced in the main by its beneficiaries as a process generated by and imposed from without. It is experienced by the Anti-Semite or the colonist or the racist as “an activity which realizes in alterity a practical truth inscribed in worked matter and in the system which results from it,” and is enacted “by everyday practice through serial alterity.” Ibid., 716. He thus provides very provocative material on Anti-Semitism, racism and colonialism in the context of serialized praxis-process, yet an account of races as series is only ever implied. Nevertheless, taking that implication seriously opens a space for exploring the way in which races as series serve as the possible origin point for the emergence or fusion of racial groups, which is a necessary moment for the development of group praxis aimed at resisting serial oppression and alienation, creating the conditions wherein genuine reciprocity and fraternity become a real possibility. 24. Indeed, in Saint-Domingue, militia units comprising people of color, the maréchaussée, were deployed throughout the colony to combat and capture maroons

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and enslaved escapees. See Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990), 21. See also Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 54. 25. See Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 60–65; Fick, The Making of Haiti, 18–19; and C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Overture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), 33–34. 26. As Toussaint Louverture’s earlier colonial constitution of 1801 attempted, tying the collective identity of the rebels to French citizenship. The relevant articles here are articles 3 and 5. Article 3 reads: “There can be no slaves on this territory; servitude has been forever abolished. All men are born, live and die there free and French.” And article 5 states: “No other distinctions exist than those of virtues and talents, nor any other superiority than that granted by the law in the exercise of a public charge. The law is the same for all, whether it punishes or protects.” https://www​ .marxists​.org​/history​/haiti​/1801​/constitution​.htm (accessed May 24, 2021). 27. Original from Constitution du 20 mai (1805, anonymous translation taken from the New York Evening Post, July 15, 1805. http://faculty​.webster​.edu​/corbetre​/ haiti​/history​/earlyhaiti​/1805​-const​.htm. Last accessed 22 May, 2021. 28. See Fick, The Making of Haiti, 236. See also Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 299. As Dubois points out, Dessalines had a history of favoring indigenous symbolism. For a brief period in 1802 he referred to his army as the “Army of the Incas,” for example. In Dubois’ assessment, “Dessalines’ use of symbols derived from indigenous peoples was an attempt to assert a legitimate claim to a land in which a majority of the nation’s inhabitants were exiles, having been brought there from Africa against their will.” Regarding the name, specifically, Dubois goes on to conclude that “Haiti was to be the negation not only of French colonialism, but of the whole history of European empire in the Americas.” Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 299. 29. Sartre describes this fusing moment, and its relation to series being, as follows: “Of course, the [fusing] group negates the series within itself since it dissolves it; but it also relates to it ontologically because it is its actions as a series, the activity for the whole series in a particular situation of this moving, changing, violent formation, whose future is still indeterminate, but which is the audacity of the series here the success or failure of all who reject impotence, massification, and alterity here.” Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, 686. 30. Ibid., 437–38. 31. Ibid., 436. 32. Ibid., 436n. 33. I do not mean to imply here that the 1805 constitution was perfect, or that the state it described was a bastion of human freedom and reciprocity. There is, however, something profoundly provocative and even promising in parts of the document, and my aim here is to explore that promise, not reify the document. 34. Mabogo P. More, Biko: Philosophy, Identity, and Liberation (Cape Town, South Africa: Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2017), 48.

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35. For those less familiar with Biko’s life and work, I commend: Biko’s collected writings, I Write What I Like; Xolela Mangcu’s biography Biko: A Biography (Cape Town: Tafelberg); and Mabogo Percy More’s monograph on Biko as philosopher, Biko: Philosophy, Identity, and Liberation. 36. Ibid., 240. 37. Ibid., 264–68. See also Daniel R. Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977 (Auckland Park: Jacana Media Ltd., 2012), 125. 38. Steve Biko, I Write What I Like (Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2012), 31. 39. Ibid., 169. 40. Ibid., 101–2. 41. Ibid., 52. It is worth noting here that Biko and the other original proponents of Black Consciousness were profoundly influenced by the Black Power movement in the United States. See Magaziner, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977, 47–50. 42. “If one’s aspiration is whiteness, but his pigmentation makes attainment of this impossible, then that person is a non-white,” Biko, I Write What I Like, 52. 43. Ibid., 108. 44. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter, I would suggest that we can find very similar moves in the work of Frantz Fanon. Consider his discussion of the emerging national culture of Algeria in Wretched of the Earth: “National culture is the collective thought process of a people to describe, justify, and extol the actions whereby they have joined forces and remained strong.” Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 168. Or his discussion of “Algeria’s European Minority” in A Dying Colonialism: “For the F.L.N., in the new society that is being built, there are only Algerians. From the outset, therefore, every individual living in Algeria is an Algerian. In tomorrow’s independent Algeria it will be up to every Algerian to assume [emphasis mine] Algerian citizenship or to reject it in favor of another.” Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 152. 45. Biko, I Write What I Like, 52. 46. Lewis R. Gordon, “A Phenomenology of Biko’s Black Consciousness,” in Biko Lives!: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko, edited by Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, and Nigel C. Gibson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 2008), 84–93. 47. See Julia Suárez-Krabble, “Over Our Dead Bodies: The Death Project, Egoism and the Existential Dimensions of Decolonization,” in Transdisciplinary Thinking from the Global South: Whose Problems, Whose Solutions? edited by Juan Carlos Fink Carrales (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), 130–47. 48. Biko, I Write What I Like, 71.

REFERENCES Ally, Matthew C. “The Logics of the Critique.” In The Sartrean Mind, edited by Matthew C. Eshleman and Constance L. Mui, 362–75. New York: Routledge, 2020.

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Beauvior, Simone de. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press, 1976. Biko, Steve. I Write What I Like. Johannesburg: Picador Africa, 2012. Constitution du 20 mai 1805. https://mjp​.univ​-perp​.fr​/constit​/ht1805​.htm. Accessed June 15, 2021. Constitution of 1801. https://www​.marxists​.org​/history​/haiti​/1801​/constitution​.htm. Accessed June 15, 2021. Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004. Fanon, Frantz. A Dying Colonialism. Translated by Haakon Chevalier. New York: Grove Press, 1965. ———. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2004. ———. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2008. Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below. Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Gordon, Lewis R. “A Phenomenology of Biko’s Black Consciousness.” In Biko Lives!: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko, edited by Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, and Nigel C. Gibson, 84–93. New York: Palgrave Macmillan: 2008. ———. Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization. New York: Routledge, 2021. James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Overture and the San Domingo Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1963. Mangcu, Xolela. Biko: A Biography. Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2012. Magaziner, Daniel R. The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968–1977. Auckland Park, South Africa: Jacana Media Ltd., 2012. More, Mabogo P. “Biko: Africana Existentialist Philosopher.” In Biko Lives!: Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko, edited by Andile Mngxitama, Amanda Alexander, and Nigel C. Gibson, 45–68. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ———. Biko: Philosophy, Identity, and Liberation. Cape Town: Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2017. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Critique of Dialectical Reason: Volume One. New York: Verso, 1976. ———. Anti-Semite and Jew. Translated by George J. Becker. New York: Schocken Books, 1976. ———. Notebooks for an Ethics. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Simont, Juliette. “Intersubjectivity Between Group and Seriality from the Early to the Later Sartre.” In The Sartrean Mind, edited by Matthew C. Eshleman and Constance L. Mui, 402–12. New York: Routledge, 2020. Suárez-Krabble, Julia. “Over Our Dead Bodies: The Death Project, Egoism and the Existential Dimensions of Decolonization.” In Transdisciplinary Thinking from the Global South: Whose Problems, Whose Solutions? edited by Juan Carlos Fink Carrales, 130–47. Abingdon: Routledge, 2022.

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Warren, Nicolas de. “Brothers in Arms: Fraternity-Terror in Sartre’s Social Ontology.” In Phenomenology of Sociality: Discovering the ‘We’, edited by Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran, 313–26. New York: Routledge, 2016. Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990. ———. “Gender as Seriality: Thinking About Women as a Social Collective.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 19, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 713–38.

Chapter 8

Race and Functional Ultimacy: Choosing Freedom An Exposition of the Humanocentric Existentialism of William R. Jones Anthony Sean Neal

From a brief overview of the period in which Jones formed his ideas, space is provided for the creation of a framework enabling the revelation of clarity concerning his relevance and importance in relationship to Sartre. Jones graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Howard University, a prominent HBCU, in 1955 which was the same year of the murder of Emmett Till and the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While a student at Howard University, Jones was under the tutelage of philosophy professor, Eugene C. Holmes. The significance of this relationship is that Holmes, himself a Marxist philosopher was critical of philosophers in general, and the American tradition in philosophy specifically, for not addressing minority group problems such as the race problem in America. In an article, written by Holmes in 1969, the same year that Jones completed his dissertation, Holmes wrote, American philosophy, with its interests in socially and politically useful systems of thinking, has produced as yet, no genuinely ethical approach to the complex social, economic and political problems of this culture. Rather, the mainstream of American thought, especially that of the twentieth century, has been occupied with an attempt to cut away the ethical context surrounding human behavior, in order to guarantee the efficiency of the instruments of thought and action.1

However, before this article was published, and probably more salient for the current discussion, was the fact that Holmes delivered a paper to the American Philosophical Association entitled, “A General Theory on the Freedom Cause of the Negro People.”2 Even the title of this paper and certainly the 167

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forum for its delivery are indicative of the search by Holmes for a substantive method within philosophy to address the problem Blackness or as he described it, the problem of majority and minority group relations. These were problems that were all too familiar to Jones, having come of age in segregated Kentucky. By the time, Jones had begun his doctoral studies, the assassinations of President Kennedy and Malcolm X, had already occurred. Later, Dr. King’s assassination took place just before Jones graduated. Those inclined to search were finding no relief within the American tradition of philosophy and it is understandable that Jones and others would turn to the French Existentialists for redress. Within this tradition, the problem of human existence continued to be a philosophical question. William R. Jones was intensely concerned with the problematic existence Black people had endured and continued to endure even while he was engaged in the writing of his dissertation at Brown University. Even in spite of the importance of these experiential motivations, one must consider that Jones was, in turning to the French Existentialist school, beginning to lay the groundwork for what he called Black philosophy. While I would not refer to Sartre as fundamental to Black Philosophy, I would make the claim that Jones is fundamental to Black Philosophy or Philosophy of the Black Experience. Therefore, since Jones is fundamental to this philosophical tradition, this reading of Sartre by Jones is also significant to this philosophical tradition and to readers of Sartre interested in how this work has caché within this tradition. This is how Jones qualified what he considered Black philosophy, This becomes clear once we unpack the meaning of “Black” in Black philosophy. I suggest that Black in the category black philosophy has reference to such factors as author, audience, ancestry, accent and/or antagonist. If I selfconsciously denominate a work as a black philosophy—that is “Black” is an essential part of the title or sub-title—the intent appears to be one or more of the following: to identify that the author is Black, i.e. a member of a particular ethnic community, that his primary, but not exclusive, audience is the Black community, that the point of departure for his philosophizing or the tradition from which he speaks or the world-view he seeks to articulate can be called in some sense the Black experience.3

William Ronald Jones completed his doctoral studies in 1969 at Brown University with a dissertation on the topic of Jean Paul Sartre’s philosophical anthropology. Within this well-researched document, Jones exposed Sartre’s idea of freedom while simultaneously providing the rationale for his own understanding of the meaningfulness and value he ascribed to humanity. This rationale was later used to provide the groundwork for his magnum opus, Is God a White Racist? In this work, Jones’s notion of functional ultimacy4 stimulated his non-theistic humanocentric turn, offered as a critique of previously

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written liberation philosophies and theologies held most specifically by African Americans. This article seeks to recapture and reframe Jones’s notion of functional ultimacy as a necessary characteristic of being human, showing Jones’s argument to not only have cogency for a religious critique, but to also provide a landing from which to launch a discussion concerning socio-political ideology. The value in focusing on Jones’s notion of being human is twofold. It provides a context from which to gather an understanding of personhood that places the burden of recognition on the individual and not the group. Secondly, extending from the full realization of the first, the individual is then required, in order to substantiate this assertion, to comport themselves in a manner that demonstrates their active participation and consistency in this understanding. THE CONCEPT OF FUNCTIONAL ULTIMACY A primary task in an effort such as this is usually to define substantive terms, in this case functional ultimacy, such that a proper and consistent framing of concepts can be approximated and subsequently shared by the reader and author alike. However, in this case, much of the entirety of this chapter will be dedicated to that very purpose, constantly rubbing each selection with the intent of insuring that the final result has fully explicated, or at minimum, adequately explicated the concept so that the claim I shall put forward can stand firmly within the footing I have provided. Therefore, by way of a short contextual introduction, I shall demonstrate the significance of this topic, first to further studies on the article’s principles. However, after making that connection I shall then turn my attention to the importance this chapter has for any oppressed group, particularly where the oppression is taken by the oppressor to be ordered by some greater power or superstructure, beyond the control of the of both groups. Sartre studies, particularly in connection with existentialism, both fills a void and forms a conceptual platform, from which to create humanistic proclamations of how a particular being can reclaim a fundamental ability to express the notion that the individual is free regardless of existing in an oppressed state or condition. This freedom arises from the recognition by the individual, that contained in the ability to reject or simply say no and then to act accordingly lies all possibility for freedom or the possibility of declaring oneself human, and thus, free. Recognition as such is not embedded in an exterior force from above, for if this was the case then would it truly be the individual’s self-declaration of freedom? In the sense, the individual, because of their utterly free condition, is doomed, according to Sartre, as being invested with the total responsibility for their own freedom. Jones seizes upon this very notion left to us by Sartre.

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As a reader of Sartre, William Jones is often overlooked as a philosopher focused on this specific area of philosophizing, the area of human freedom and humanocentric reasoning. Jones throws light upon the way in which oppressed individuals might think about their personal comportment in the face of oppression, regardless of where the oppression might stem. It is because his focus of critique was a volley lobbed toward Black liberation theologians, he is often pigeonholed and the greater point of his critique is lost on the pedestrian-minded individuals who did not consider his grander implications, which lies far beyond religion. The notion presented here is that being free does not begin in the moment of escape from bondage, but instead it begins in the very moment of rejecting the condition of bondage, also the possibility for this rejection is found in and is also commensurate with the very notion of being human. If one finds this point acceptable, then they should also recognize that contained within this point is the rationale for Jones’s work to rise in prominence, particularly among existentially-minded philosophers. One reason for this is that Jones, as early as his 1969 dissertation, was already thinking through how individual freedom was conceptually too important to allow principle determinations of this status to be mischaracterized as residing in the hands of the oppressor. Oppressors such as the state have not had the best responses to this question in the past. Likewise, Jones was aware that the combination of the consciousness of the individual and their ability to perceive their present situation as being one in which they should reject, a scenario that might best be described as apperception, could be rendered useless if the individual could be convinced that this responsibility was always one which had its origin exterior to their person. Therefore, Jones, through the publication of his book, Is God a White Racist?, provided a reasoned demonstration of the problems with placing the ability to determine freedom exterior to the person, even when doing so rests with the highest power. Jones, while explaining his understanding of the connection between functional ultimacy and freedom, simultaneously puts forth a novel human comportment, or way of being, for Black people and others in the face of oppression. This suggestion made by Jones, of the possibility of existing as a free being by reason of one’s assertion of their own humanity, in the face of oppression, is one that deserves the full attention of all humans! Definitions and General Framework:  What was Jones’s Sartrean-derived concept of functional ultimacy which is depicted in some of Jones’s writings?

The notion of functional ultimacy spans across Jones’s work in both conspicuous and inconspicuous ways but here, in conjunction with the writings of Camus and Sartre, I will confine myself to only three written pieces of Jones’s work. To my knowledge, these writings encapsulate the full scope of

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Jones’s capitulation of the Sartrean concept to which he intended to incorporate. These works include Jones’s dissertation titled “Sartre’s Philosophical Anthropology in Relation to His Ethics: A Criticism of Selected Critics” (1969), Is God a White Racist? (1973), and “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows” (1977). Another article, “The Legitimacy and Necessity of Black Philosophy: Some Preliminary Considerations (1978),” to a lesser degree, will be used as an example of Jones’s demonstration of how this line of thought extended beyond his focus on the philosophy of religion. In focusing on these three works in such a manner, while also constructing a frame of understanding through overtures toward the additional article mentioned, the aim of providing space through which to recapture and reframe Jones’s notion of functional ultimacy, while showing Jones’s argument as being fecund for the development of a socio-political ideology should be, easily attainable. The accuracy of Jones’s interpretation of Sartre’s concept does not seem to be important in this moment, since it is in Jones’s notion of the concept, I find a salient and robust description from which to advance. However, in the case that the reader should become preoccupied on this point, I do take Jones to have approximated Sartre’s conception with a minimal amount of discrepancy.5 Functional Ultimacy6 is the verbal designate Jones uses to describe his Sartrean-derived notion of freedom pertaining to humanity as being or as an ontological category of existence. As such, to begin by first defining the concept and next by demonstrating its meaning migration from causal ultimacy, will provide a good opportunity to show the concepts as having commensurability. Defining, should here be understood to designate the activity of framing the concept, such as to distinguish it from other concepts, while at the same time relying upon other concepts to form the frame. This reliance is based upon the notion that to form separation between concepts must, on some level, involve a declaration of what the concept is, as well as what the concept is not. Once the frame is adequately formed, the exposed distinction or separation will allow for an assessment of the adequacy and sustainment of the frame throughout this chapter. Even though the framing appears as a singular commitment activity performed by the former of the frame (the framer), the basis for the assessment, is a twofold or dual commitment activity performed by the framer and the perceiver. Therefore, the frame must always be created with the realization that its utility is contingent on the perceiver’s ability to discern, limited as this may be. Jones was certainly fully aware that some concepts, particular those that spoke about the freedom of all humanity as an intrinsic notion, seem to expose more limitations than others. The meaning Jones assigns to the concept of functional ultimacy is the radical freedom and the autonomy of humankind. As it pertains to presentation, Jones is quite obvious concerning his dependence on Camus and Sartre

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for his derivation of meaning by which it is depicted in part in the following, “If one corrects the erroneous interpretations of critics, the principle is the core of Sartre’s anthropology and also Camus’s.”7 This is to say that functional ultimacy as Jones understands it is the core of Sartre’s and Camus’s thought. However, this depiction acknowledges little of where his interest in the subject matter derived. And while the point of intersection between subject, subject matter, and interest in subject is many times of little interest for philosophy, for Jones in particular, context seemed to be of central importance. This is the case for Jones because his universal assertion was, of necessity, to be applied to the totality of his oeuvre. Jones was not simply trying to demonstrate philosophically that humans were free universally, but he also wanted those who were similarly situated racially, as he was, to come to the realization of the beliefs which they held that impeded or denied freedom, at least freedom as described by his assertion. Simply put, for Jones, his assertion was as much an existential claim as it was a philosophic claim. Jones was not in any way limiting his reflections to only thought about freedom, he was intimately concerned with the experience of freedom. Therefore, Jones’s reflections on functional ultimacy are thoroughly existential in nature. Jones, as a methodological practice, consistently reviews arguments he considers relevant, particularly those of which he disagrees, constantly defending his assertion that humanism requires functional ultimacy. This is a tedious argumentative practice, in which Jones engages, and one he repeats over and over again. It would seem that his goal certainly extends beyond mere triviality couched in the desire to be correct or best his assumed opponents. If this was his only goal then the point could be made that surely by 1978, he was over-compensating. But, by all accounts, from those who knew him well,8 this was simply not his personality. So then why expend so much energy and ink confronting this one singular topic. He wrote on it in his dissertation, in his major book, and in several of his articles. The effort, if not purposeful, might seem extreme. Jones’s effort was important in this matter, because as a philosopher he was not only concerned about the object of thought (which was humanism—whether theistic or not) found in the writings of his opponents, but he was also concerned about their manner of thought.9 It was his intent to force others to be cognizant of their presuppositions about the nature of thought the commitments certain notions entailed. For example, to presuppose freedom as extending from a source exterior to the subject and without a relinquishing of the ability disavow the source extinguishes the notion of ultimacy. While presupposing that the person is the controllingagent who superimposes on humans an unlimited notion of freedom that is too easily proven to as beyond the range of human possibility. The concept of functional ultimacy was not a new creation and it was not his intent to put forth novelty in terms of this concept. Jones’s intent, in

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terms of novelty, is to be found in the connection he makes between freedom and functional ultimacy. Jones explains how his assertion of freedom is hinged to functional ultimacy through the use of heroic archetypes, such as Prometheus, Sisyphus, and Orestes.10 A formulaic expression of the concept can be restated in the following propositional form, which rephrases Jones’s notion: Given that we are faced with a cosmos of equally consistent alternatives, and that we lack self-evident principles or criteria for selection, human choice must decide what is true. This being the case, decisions concerning what is true require three additional determinations: (a) what criteria shall be used to determine the truth, (b) what standards shall be used in choosing between competing criteria, and (c) what judgments shall be employed in deciding on the standards ad infinitum.11 The importance of the preceding proposition accordingly is found in a statement Jones takes from the text of Being and Nothingness. Finally, it is because its present being itself is nihilation in the form of “reflection-reflecting.” Man is free because he is not himself but presence to himself. The being who is what he is cannot be free. Freedom, it is precisely the nothingness which has been at the heart of man and which forces humanreality to be made, instead of being. As we have seen, for human reality, to be is to choose oneself: nothing comes to it from outside, nor from within either, that it can receive or accept. She is completely abandoned, without any help of any kind, to the unbearable need to be made to be in the smallest detail. Thus, freedom is not a being: it is the being of man, that is to say his nothingness of being. If we first conceived of man as a full, it would be absurd to seek in him, afterwards, moments or psychic regions where he would be free: we might as well seek emptiness in a container that we have previously filled to the edges. Man cannot be sometimes free and sometimes a slave: it is whole and always free or it is not.12

For Sartre, and certainly as Jones understood him, humans are fully free to choose, fully free to reject, and fully free to give value. Without this ability humans are not fully free, they are slaves which must look toward exterior guidance regarding their being. And, at least from Jones’s point of view, if humans are not free in the way Sartre described them, then there should be no expectation that reality can be otherwise. This point is being amply brought into view in the question posed by Jones in the form of his title to his magnum opus, Is God a White Racist? In this text, the point is made that if humans are not fully free, then we are not free at all, and if we are not free, then we are at the mercy of an exterior force which may not have our particular best interest in mind, which simply means our desired interests, in mind. For Black people, this might mean that the presupposition of a good god who orders our footsteps in the path of righteous, coupled with an inability to be fully free

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may mean that the experience of oppression is by design, and thus the reality we have is supposed to be and is the best of all possible situations. Main Thrust:  If an African American accepts Jones’s assertion of functional ultimacy to be true what must be her logically entailed comportment to life?

Jones’s commitment to freedom in the form of functional ultimacy brings with it certain other implications such as a logically entailed relationship with the possibility of reality being different. This possibility is tethered to the very meaning of having a choice. Choice implies not only a different set of actions but that there is the possibility of different set of outcomes. If there is the possibility of having a different set of outcomes, then there is the possibility of having an outcome that is equivalent to or proximally equivalent to whatever the desired outcome might be.13 This possibility of having an outcome that might be proximally equivalent to any set of desired outcomes disrupts any notion of a necessarily pessimistic comportment toward life. The claim that reality cannot change seems indefensible in the face of Jones’s notion of freedom. Jones’s notion seems more suited to be a working formula for hope than as a defense for pessimism. In terms of other implications for how might a person comport himself or herself in light of Jones’s position, the argument could be made that although reality could be otherwise, statistically may only be an anomaly which produces a proximally desirable outcome, thus making pessimism a more feasible way of being than that of having a hopeful comportment. This position seems to discount the role of choice bound in all scenarios according to this Sartrean notion and the effect of choice on the individual. Pessimism necessarily implies negative outcomes negating the force of choice and that the major locus of concern lies with the outcome. Jones’s Sartrean notion of functional ultimacy as freedom displaces the locus of concern in a given scenario from the possible outcome to the very ability to choose. The pessimist, at least in the examples found in contemporary Africana literary motifs, labels the individual a slave who is not able to bring about their desired outcomes.14 According to Jones, this would make everyone a slave, because everyone fails at bringing about their desired outcome at some point. We are either free all the time or we are slaves. Certainly contemporary pessimists are not referring to everyone being slaves, but the locus of their concern equaling the outcome logically entails slavery as the condition of all humans. Jones’s functional ultimacy lodges his concern with the ability to choose. It is this ability that makes an individual free and not the outcomes. The outcome is restrained by one’s being in the world and not otherwise. Being in the world necessarily makes existence logically contingent. In order for outcomes to determine the individual’s freedom, the individual would have to be akin to the absolute meaning having the ability to control more than

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choice. Only then would the individual gain the type of relationship with respect to outcomes such that they might gain better statistics on the certainty scale, making their outcomes outweigh their ability to choose. However, this relationship assumes the presence of aseity which negates being in the world. The relevance of the heroic archetypes such as Prometheus and Sisyphus can be plainly seen here. Whereas they were not absolute in themselves, they did not have control over outcomes, but they were in control of their choices. It was their choice as portrayed in their actions that made them free, and not the outcomes. This type of freedom, as Jones describes throughout his works, has specific implications for all people, but Jones insists on a particular meaning for Black people, which was the audience for his book, Is God a White Racist? Their choice to be free implies the rejection of any scenario or understanding of life that obfuscates this choice.15 Beyond this rejection, an assessment of any involvement within institutions must be made in order to ensure that freedom is not hindered by the lack of choice or the abdication of choice. There is an abdication of the ability to choose that occurs when this responsibility is projected onto another entity or institution. This projection is accomplished by accepting a vision of how life should be and the concurring limits of how life could be, all based upon influence from a symbol of authority. What Jones found problematic in this type of life scheme was the acceptance of a nonflourishing life with the bad faith rationality, one that supports the notion that this is how things have to be, because we have no choice. Often when this is done, it occurs without any consideration as to the implications it has on the nature of true freedom, which accordingly is fundamental to our humanity. To put it as Sartre did, either we are free at all times or we are slaves. Jones focuses his polemic on the church because it was seen as the highest authority, one that undergirds all others. If he could show that even the control that was given to God had to be relinquished so that humans could be free, then certainly this was the case when applied to all other scenarios. It was Jones’s position that if the discussion was launched from the point of ethnic suffering, then one is forced to conclude the necessity of attempting to nullify any superhuman that controls human history. Such control, according to Jones, was the cause of the quietism so prevalent among Black theologians. The DuBoisian point reformulated is a point of view which I am certain that Jones could accept. “One could not be a calm, cool, and detached [theologian] while Negroes were lynched, murdered and starved .  .  .”16 Only if one has abdicated their freedom, can they do so! Jones states it this way, “Finally, [humanism] would argue that the Christian will be compelled to adopt the norm of functional ultimacy to avoid consideration of uninviting theological propositions; e.g., quietism in the face of suffering, or the notion that God is a white racist.”17

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NOTES 1. Eugene C. Holmes, “A Philosophical Approach to the Study of Minority Problems,” The Journal of Negro Education 38, no. 3 (Summer 1969): 196–203. 2. John H. McClendon III and Stephen C. Ferguson II, African American Philosophers and Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 32. 3. William R. Jones, “The Legitimacy and Necessity of Black Philosophy: Some Preliminary Concerns,” The Philosophical Forum 9, no. 2 (1977): 149–60. 4. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York: Gramercy, 1956), 321. Functional ultimacy is Jones’ equivalent for Jean Paul Sartre’s phrase “une liberté en situation.” 5. If the reader is interested in further evidence that Jones is correct, then the matter should be investigated further within the pages of Jones’s dissertation, which outlines an extensive argument on the manner. 6. William R. Jones, Sartre’s Philosophical Anthropology in Relation to His Ethics: A Criticism of Selected Critics (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1969), 95. “A given project functions as an end or goal only if I choose it as a goal for me . . . ,” “Accordingly, no extra-se factor alone can be the determinant of my ends or goals for my choice is a necessary condition for the occurrence of the latter . . . ,” “The person who rejects deterministic influences, by contrast, supports an entirely different position. He wishes to argue that the individual’s own choices—and not some other item—are the fundamental causal factor in human life. That is, he does not deny the presence of extra-se factors in human life; rather extra-se factors do not possess causal ultimacy.” 7. William R. Jones, “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows,” The Christian Century, May 21, 1975, 520–25. 8. Numerous conversations by this author have taken place over a number with John McClendon III and Stephen Ferguson II, who were friends of Dr. Jones. From conversations, knowledge of the disposition of Dr. Jones was made plainly available. 9. Jones, “The Legitimacy and Necessity of Black Philosophy,” 149–60. 10. Jones, “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows.” 11. Ibid. 12. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 440–41. “Finally, it is because its present being itself is nihilation in the form of ‘reflection-reflecting’. Man is free because he is not himself but presence to himself. The being who is what he is cannot be free. Freedom, it is precisely the nothingness which has been at the heart of man and which forces human-reality to be made, instead of being. As we have seen, for human reality, to be is to choose oneself: nothing comes to it from outside, nor from within either, that it can receive or accept. She is completely abandoned, without any help of any kind, to the unbearable need to be made to be in the smallest detail. Thus, freedom is not a being: it is the being of man, that is to say his nothingness of being. If we first conceived of man as a full, it would be absurd to seek in him, afterwards, moments or psychic regions where he would be free: we might as well seek emptiness in a container that we have previously filled to the edges. Man cannot be sometimes free and sometimes a slave: it is whole and always free or it is not.” “Nous l’avons vu, pour la réalité-humaine, être c’est se choisir: rien ne lui vient du dehors, ni du dedans

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non plus, qu’elle puisse recevoir ou accepter. Elle est entièrement abandonnée, sans aucune aide d’aucune sorte, à l’insoutenable nécessité de se faire être jusque dans le moindre détail. Ainsi, la liberté n’est pas un être : elle est l’être de l’homme, c’està-dire son néant d’être. Si l’on concevait d’abord l’homme comme un plein, il serait absurde de chercher en lui, par après, des moments ou des régions psychiques où il serait libre : autant chercher du vide dans un récipient qu’on a préalablement rempli jusqu’aux bords. L’homme ne saurait être tantôt libre et tantôt: il est tout entier et toujours libre ou il n’est pas.” 13. Corey McCall and Phillip McReynolds, “Distal vs. Proximal,” in Decolonizing American Philosophy, eds. Corey McCall and Phillip McReynolds (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2021), 251–67. 14. Frank Wilderson, Afropessimism (New York: Liveright, 2020), 34–43. 15. William R. Jones, Is God A White Racist? (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1973), 176–81. 16. Henry Louis Gates, “Science and Empiricism,” in DuBois, ed. Henry Louis Gates (New York: Library of America, 1986), 602–3. 17. Jones, “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows.”

REFERENCES Gates, Henry Louis. “Science and Empiricism.” In The Oxford W.E.B. DuBois. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, 602–3. New York: Library of America, 1986. Holmes, Eugene C. “A Philosophical Approach to the Study of Minority Problems.” The Journal of Negro Education 38, no. 3 (Summer, 1969): 196–203. Jones, William R. Sartre’s Philosophical Anthropology in Relation to His Ethics: A Criticism of Selected Critics. PhD thesis, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan, 1969. ———. Is God A White Racist? Boston, MA: Beacon, 1973. ———. “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows.” The Christian Century, May 21, 1975: 520–25. ———. “The Legitimacy and Necessity of Black Philosophy: Some Preliminary Considerations.” The Philosophical Forum 9, no. 2 (1977): 149–60. McCall, Corey and Phillip McReynolds. “Distal vs. Proximal.” In Decolonizing American Philosophy. Edited by Corey McCall and Phillip McReynolds, 251–67. Albany, NY: SUNY, 2021. McClendon, John H III and Stephen C. Ferguson II. African American Philosophers and Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. New York: Gramercy, 1956.

Chapter 9

Reversing the Gaze, Sartre’s Preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth Nathalie Nya

I want to note that this chapter is more of a direct reading of Sartre’s preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth after being influenced reading Judith Butler’s essay “Violence, Nonviolence: Sartre on Fanon,”1 re-published in Race After Sartre2 from which she argues that Sartre’s preface has the main goal of targeting a predominantly European audience while The Wretched of the Earth has the main goal of targeting a predominantly non-European audience. What interests me about Butler’s essay is the way she argued for the importance of Sartre’s preface to The Wretched of the Earth, a text that clearly did not need any introduction. In regard to her commentary on the preface, I as well commented on the preface, in order to mark its importance in chronicling Sartre’s views on colonialism. “The Wretched of the Earth” from Colonialism and Neocolonialism3 is the preface that Sartre writes in 1961 for Frantz Fanon’s book, The Wretched of the Earth.4 In the preface, he discusses how the audience to whom colonized subjects talk and write influences the sense of agency these colonized subjects attempt to acquire for themselves and other colonized subjects. In the preface, he examines how the relationship between authorship and audience is reflected in the words of colonized authors. Sartre begins his analysis by dividing into three generations the possible sense of authorships that arise among colonized subjects. In what follows, I explain, from generation to generation, the sense of authorship that arises among colonized subjects from Sartre’s perspective. I do this to trace the perspective on which Fanon writes his book.

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FIRST GENERATION The second French colonial empire—from the conquest of Algeria in 1830 until the beginning of World War I—marks the first generation of colonized authorship. The generation starts with the colonizers’ attempts to introduce humanist discourses to a select group of colonized subjects. To Sartre, the selected colonized are chosen to learn humanist discourses since the elite French colonizers want to fabricate an artificial class of elite among the colonized subjects.5 They are chosen to learn humanist discourses precisely because the elite French want to make this colonized group speak about humanism. The elite French colonizers do this for two reasons. First, the process of constructing this artificial class of elite is created so that the colonizers are the ones who make the chosen subjects speak about humanism (à la European) instead of letting them speak on their own terms about the ways they are human. This humanism contrary to Existential humanism is about allowing ones’ defined human essence which precedes ones’ living existence. In other words, the selected colonized subjects are made to personally assess European humanist discourses precisely because the Europeans want to control the colonized’s own assessment of the colonial situation and that is a way of essentializing the colonized so as to further confirm the negative ways Europeans define the colonized. Under humanism, Europeans allow the colonized to write as a form of confirmation bias on the intellectual inferiority of the colonized author. Second, the construction of the artificial class among the colonized subjects is based on the assumption that the knowledge and personal assessment of humanist discourses will enable at the least the chosen elite group to become human. To note the obvious, the process of constructing the artificial class of elite is ultimately based on the premise that colonized subjects are not necessarily humans. Moreover, the Europeans want to educate the chosen elite group into becoming human because they want to show to the rest of the colonized members that the colonial system is beneficial for all its compromising colonized members. The education provided to the chosen elite group then has the main objective of justifying the colonial system. What I mean is, by being able to show that a few colonized members can be educated into becoming human, the Europeans attempt to convey to the colonized in general that any colonized member can be subject to a similar fate. In other words, if the Europeans are able to prove that a handful of the colonized members can flourish within the colonial system, then the rest of the colonized members have no reason to complain about the system. In this sense, the Europeans want to educate some colonized members as a means of confronting the colonized members with one other. From this perspective then, if

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the majority of the colonized members are complaining about colonialism, it cannot be because of the presence of Europeans in the colonies. Instead, the fact that a handful of the colonized members are flourishing within the colonial system shows that the majority of the colonized are not making the most of their colonial situation. According to this perspective then, the Europeans can argue that the complaint coming from most of the colonized members is a sign that these colonized members are not fully engaged in the colonial system. Thus, given these two reasons, the praise of humanism that the elite French colonizers attempt to instill in the selected colonized subjects has the purpose of sustaining colonialism. Specifically, of these two reasons, as Sartre notices, the process of introducing these colonized subjects to humanist discourses begins by having the group mimic phrases that reflect European humanist ideologies. In so doing, the elites sound just like European citizens. From “Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we proclaimed the words ‘Parthenon! Fraternity!’ and, somewhere in Africa, in Asia, lips parted: ‘. . . thenon’, ‘. . . nity.’”6 In mimicking phrases that reflect European humanist ideologies, the chosen elites show very little sign of agency. They are being made authors of words that do not traditionally belong to them. The Europeans are using European languages (especially French), and not indigenous languages in Africa, which expresses the mimicry of French. In mimicking phrases that reflect European humanist ideologies, these colonized subjects cause minimal or no threat. At this time, the Europeans believe that it is less likely for a person to threaten the life of another whose ideologies that person wants to expound. For this reason, Sartre describes the early stage of the first generations as the golden age specifically for French colonizers.7 In this golden age, the chosen colonial elites are made to consciously attempt to become human under the sole terms of European ideologies. In this golden age, the mission of rendering at least some colonized subjects into human beings is the task that European colonizers take for themselves. The mission of rendering at least some colonized subjects into human beings becomes a form of White Man’s Burden. The attempt to educate some colonized subjects into human beings is a risk that Europeans undertake at their own peril. However, as the course of their humanist education progresses, the chosen colonized elites experience a shift in consciousness. This is the moment when, according to Sartre, the golden age ends. The first generation—composed of chosen colonized elites—begins to speak in accord with what they understand as their own terms. The golden age, Sartre says, “came to an end: the mouths opened of their own accord; the yellow and black voices still talked about our humanism, but it was to reproach us for our inhumanity.”8

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In the attempt to use humanist discourses they learned from elite French colonizers to reproach Europeans of their inhumanity in general, the elite French colonizers realized, to their surprise, that these colonized subjects could talk on their own. At “first there was a proud astonishment: What? Can they talk on their own?”9 By being able to verbally reproach Europeans for their inhumanity—despite the fact Europeans were trying to educate them— the chosen colonized elites demonstrate that they have a consciousness of their own. These colonized subjects do this by being able to express their own experiences of colonialism. It matters that exchange between the colonized and colonizer is in the French language, because colonized authors have for main audience white French citizens. In talking about the inhuman treatment they experienced from Europeans in general, the elite colonized subjects targeted Europeans as their primary audience. Rather than primarily speaking to themselves, they primarily try to speak to Europeans. They assume that, among themselves, the colonized subjects already know that they are being treated inhumanely. They see no need to prove this to themselves. However, according to them, the Europeans are unaware of their inhumanism. Therefore, the colonized subjects make the deliberate effort to let these Europeans know that even by their own standards, they are not acting humanely. About being the main audience for whom the chosen elite colonized subjects express their inhumane treatment, Sartre says, We listened without displeasure to these courteous expressions of bitterness . . . Look what we have made of them, though! We did not doubt that they accepted our ideals since they accused us of being unfaithful to them; then Europe believed in its mission: it had Hellenized the Asiatics, created that new species, Graeco-Roman negroes. And we pragmatically added, just among ourselves: anyhow, let them mouth off, it makes them feel better; their bark is worse than their bite.10

This implies that, although the colonized subjects are able to speak in accord with their own terms, they are still the objects of the European mission. The chosen colonized subjects are talking about the inhumanism they experience from Europeans precisely because they want to be humans under the terms of European ideologies. That is why they primarily speak to Europeans. The Europeans begin to realize that if all else has failed about the humanist education with which they attempted to indoctrinate the selected colonized subjects, the sense of co-dependence and de-habilitation that they hear in the colonized’s plea against European inhumanism is what give them power over the colonized. While the attempt to educate the colonized into becoming humans may appear as the colonizers’ attempt to habilitate the colonized in becoming “proper” human beings, the process of habilitating the colonized

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or the process of clothing the colonized with the colonizers’ own humanism actually has the opposite effect. In actuality, the process of habilitating the colonized is in fact de-habilitating to the colonized. By de-habilitation I mean that the humanist education provided by the colonizers becomes a process of social estrangement that does not render the colonized into independent human beings but rather render them into co-dependent subjects. This is what makes the humanist education that the colonizers provide to the colonized de-habilitating. According to Sartre, colonized people’s own words echo the reality that it is only in the hands of Europeans that they will become humans. To simply put it, the words of inhumanism echoed by the selected colonized subjects are a plea for integration. For the colonized then, speaking in terms of humanism produces a complex contradictory effect. In order to survive the system of colonialism, the colonized have to accept the social order of Europeans (e.g., European presence, European languages, and European discourses) despite the fact that they would like to separate themselves from this very social order. Furthermore, in mimicking phrases that reflect European humanist ideologies to describe the sense of anti-humanism they experience from Europeans in general, these colonized subjects remain less threatening. In other words, even in talking about their inhumane treatment, their ideas still bear a resemblance to European ideas. This makes them appear less threatening to Europeans. Despite this, the bare minimum sense of agency that these colonized subjects gain from voicing their own sense of anti-humanism is what gives them a sense of authorship. The ability to speak one’s own mind to Europeans, even in Europeans’ own terms, defines the sense of authorship that marks the first generation of authors among the elite colonized subjects. SECOND GENERATION The period between the end of World War I and the end of World War II marks the second generation of colonized authorship. In this generation, although the colonized authors still primarily speak to Europeans, they change the course of the argument that the first generation vocalized. “Another generation came,” Sartre says, “which shifted the argument. With incredible patience, its writers and poets tried to explain to us that our values were poorly suited to the reality of their lives, that they could neither entirely reject them nor assimilate them.”11 Réné Maran gives a face to the colonized writers and poets who support the argument of the second generation. Born in Martinique, Maran became the first Black writer to win the French Prix Goncourt in 1921 for his novel, Batouala. The novel is about

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the daily life of a great chief from Ubangi-Shari in the French Equatorial Africa (present-day Central African Republic), named Batouala. In the novel, Batouala describe a way of life in French Equatorial Africa to contrast it with his critical reflection about the European way of life he sees from Frenchmen and Frenchwomen living in his native land. Batouala examines what European civilization actually means to a specific tribal African life. He examines whites from the perspectives of a tribal African tradition. Since he claims that his life is inspired by the traditions of Ubangi-Shari, to Batouala, the European way of life becomes opposite to his way of life. Supporting the main argument of the second generation of colonized writers and poets, Maran argues that the living experiences of European civilization are poorly suited for the reality of native people living in Ubangi-Shari, for example. Although Batouala cannot elude the European presence in his village, he cannot also integrate his way of life with that of Europeans. Ultimately, the novel attempts to describe a tribal African way of life to make sense of why Europeans have demonized such a way of life. Maran then wants to make sense of the racist humanist discourses that make monsters of Blacks and thereby setting Blacks and whites apart.12 Despite Maran’s critical account about the sharp contrast he makes between an African way of life and, specifically, the way of life of colonizers in the French Equatorial Africa, he wins the Prix Goncourt, an important French award. In spite of the fact that writers and poets like Maran have shifted the argument of the first generation for integration to de-integration, Sartre notes that since the authors of the second generation are still primarily producing their work for a European audience, their unhappy argument for de-­ integration is, in fact, still a yearning for integration that cannot be granted.13 To Sartre, the authors of the second generation are explaining how they are consciously entangled in the contradiction of colonial life.14 Hence, the second generation is expressing its internal self-contradictory dialogues. While Europeans regard colonized subjects as objects of their humanist mission, within the context of their entangled consciousness, the writers of the generation see themselves as neither objects nor subjects. The colonized do not view themselves as objects precisely because they believe the meaning of their tribal lives under the colonial system goes beyond the very meaning of the colonial system. But they also do not regard themselves as subjects precisely because the Europeans, who have authority over them, do not grant them a basic sense of humanity. This is what their internal self-contradictory dialogues are about. In the second generation, the authors acknowledge that the bare minimum sense of agency they have acquired through first speaking about the sense of inhumane treatment they experience from Europeans and to write about our

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how the realities of their lives differ from Europeans is actually negated by the colonial system. In short, Batouala becomes a melancholic novel whose sentiments the French encourage by awarding it a prize. As for their rebellion, Sartre says, “We were quite untroubled: what sensible native would go and massacre the fine sons of Europe with the sole aim of becoming European like them?”15 Given that, like the first generation of colonized authors, the second generation of authors primarily writes to a European audience, Europeans still assume their colonized subjects want to become humanist-Europeans just like them. The problem with such an assumption is that Europeans cannot imagine that their colonized subjects are capable of engaging them in a dialogue of mutual recognition. The colonized authors primarily attempt to speak to Europeans precisely because it is Europeans with whom they fail to communicate. The Europeans make this assumption precisely because they know that upgrading the system of colonialism is up to them only. Since the colonized at this time are aware that they cannot do away with the system of colonialism, they only demand that the system is upgraded by asking for better human treatments. In the third generation, this issue comes to the surface and it is both technically and contextually addressed in the writings of the authors of the generation. THIRD GENERATION Finally, the period after World War II until the 1960s marks the third generation of colonized authorship. Sartre represents the third generation of colonized authorship with the writing of Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. Unlike in the first two generations, Fanon becomes indifferent to Europeans as an audience. Fanon is indifferent whether Europeans would read his book or argue against his views on for example the use of counter-violence and the problem with the rise of Black nationalism in the African continent. The shift in writing technics of changing the targeted audience influences the context in which the human condition is described under the system of colonialism. Sartre observes that while Fanon often talks about Europeans, he never talks to them.16 By choosing to talk about Europeans and never talking to them, Fanon shifts Europeans from subjects to objects. He then makes Europeans the object of his discourse. “What a decline:” Sartre says, “for the fathers, we were the sole interlocutors: the sons no longer even consider us as qualified interlocutors: we are the objects of their discourse.”17 By talking about the relationship between colonized authors and European colonizers in terms of father and son relationships, Sartre admits that European colonizers have been paternalistically

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patronizing colonized authors. By declining to directly address Europeans as his primary audience, Fanon deliberately chooses to not engage in the established paternalistically patronizing relationship he is supposed to have with European colonizers. Fanon acknowledges, then, that he does not need to talk to Europeans to propose his argument against the system colonialism. Of course, Fanon writes in French and not in Creole primarily because like any Black thinker of his generation, from Martinique to mainland France, he attended school in French and learned about his identity under the tutelage of France’s civilizing mission. Specifically, Sartre notices that, in talking about Europeans, Fanon actually uses Europeans as a means of getting his argument across. Of course, “Fanon mentions in passing our famous crimes—Sétif, Hanoi, Madagascar—but he doesn’t waste his effort condemning them: he uses them.”18 Fanon does not waste his effort condemning Europeans—in part because he assumes that they have their own consciousness and it is up to them to decide whether they should be condemned for being unfaithful to their own humanist ideologies. In using Europeans to get his argument across, Fanon actually offers a diagnosis of Europe based on the symptoms that have been historically accumulated.19 According to Fanon for example, given the colonial path that Europe has undertaken, it is “heading towards ruin.”20 As Sartre best puts it, Fanon “offers himself as the interpreter of the situation, nothing more.”21 By offering himself as the interpreter of the situation, Fanon presents himself as someone who has less stake on the outcome of his argument against colonialism. Given the doomed state of the colonial system (whether it prevails or gets overthrown) the outcome is not going to change the human condition of its subjects. Therefore, he offers no treatment to the situation that he diagnoses.22 Because of this, he becomes someone who is critically involved in the process of de-colonization or taking the control of African nations from the hands of the French government. Moreover, he makes the colonized people his primary audience. Sartre notes that Fanon bends the French language to “new requirements, makes use of it and address only the colonized: Natives of all underdeveloped nations unite!”23 This suggests that, to Fanon, only the colonized and not the colonizers actually have the power to eradicate the system of colonialism. He proposes the non-traditional view that colonialism is not just in the hands of European colonizers. The conclusion of Fanon’s argument against the colonial system shows that the colonized subjects have agency that is actually independent from the authority of European colonizers. It means that it is up to the colonized subjects—and not the European colonizers—to exert their agency. The colonized subjects, Fanon proposes, can apply their own authority to have an effect on the colonial situation. Fanon’s proposal urges colonized subjects to

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talk among themselves instead of strictly seeking a dialogue with European colonizers. To Sartre, Fanon’s book is not a text that plots against the colonial system or against Europeans. Instead, the text urges colonized subjects to exert their agency by beginning to talk among themselves with the goal of discovering themselves as human beings. Implicitly, Fanon acknowledges that since it is not possible to enter into a mutually fair and genuine dialogue with Europeans, the colonized subjects cannot seek recognition from Europeans as a proof of being human. Thus, European humanism is the very ideology that dehumanizes the colonized. Seeking such a recognition, Fanon notices, confirms the Europeans’ beliefs about the writings of the authors from the first two generations: that colonized subjects are actually seeking a dialogue primarily because they want to be regarded as Europeans, instead of being regarded as human beings. To Fanon, this misunderstanding cannot be easily reconciled. And so he finds it useless to seek such recognition. After “reading Fanon’s last chapter,” Sartre says, “you will be convinced that it is better to be a native at the worst hour of misery that a former colon.”24 In the end, despite the fact that Fanon does not strictly seek a dialogue with European colonizers, Sartre urges them to read Fanon’s writing precisely because he can enable Europeans to understand themselves otherwise—that is, not as subjects at the center of the colonial system but as objects of this very system. European, Sartre says, “open this book, and enter into it. . . . They will see you perhaps, but they will continue to talk among themselves without even lowering their voices. Their indifference strikes at our hearts. . . . [T]ake advantage from this to discover yourself in your true light as objects.”25 From Sartre’s perspective, the indifference of the colonized toward the colonizer implies that they are no longer seeking recognition from Europeans for the colonized to exist and live. Thus, the third generation of colonized authors creates breathing space for themselves and members of their communities. [Is it possible to summarize here your view of “humanism” and whether it’s exclusively a European construction? What sense of “being human” emerges from Fanon’s work—and how does indifference to European humanism factor in?] CONCLUSION Like I said at the beginning of this chapter, the scholarship of Butler enabled to take a closer look at the audience that both Sartre and Fanon were talking. As you can see from the progression of this chapter and as noted by Sartre, The Wretched of Earth had primary audience of Black nationalists

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during the period of decolonialization of non-Western nation from certain Western nations. Thus, the purpose of this chapter has been to elucidate on the standpoint from which anti-colonial scholars spoke to a selected audience or public. NOTES 1. Judith Butler, “Violence, Non-Violence,” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 27, no. 1 (2006): 3–24. 2. Jonathan Judaken, Race after Sartre : Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008), 211–32. 3. Colonialism and Neocolonialism by Sartre, Jean-Paul (2001) Paperback (Routledge, 1707); Jean-Paul Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism (New York: Routledge, 2006). In the spirit of this project, creolizing Sartre, I reference Sartre’s preface from The Wretched of the Earth from the collection of essays titled Colonialism and Neocolonialism, in order to claim that Sartre’s reflections on Fanon and colonialism, encompasses a comprehensive body of work that cannot allow us to read his view on colonialism in isolation of his philosophical project. Colonialism and Neocolonialism by Sartre, Jean-Paul (2001) Paperback (Routledge, 1707); Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism. 4. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, Introductions by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha (New York: Grove Press, 2004). 5. Sartre, Colonialism and Neocolonialism, 136. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 136–7. 10. Ibid., 137. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., 138. 18. Ibid., 139. 19. Ibid., 138. 20. Ibid., 136. 21. Ibid., 142. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 138. 24. Ibid., 154. 25. Ibid., 142.

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REFERENCES Butler, Judith. “Violence, Non-Violence.” Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 27, no. 1 (2006): 3–24. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2004. Judaken, Jonathan. Race after Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008. Sartre, Jean-Paul. Colonialism and Neocolonialism. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Chapter 10

Ōe Kenzaburō and Pursuit of Authenticity through the Imagination Creolizing Sartre in Japan? Seki Hiroaki

Note: On March 3, 2023, Ōe Kenzaburō passed away at the age of eightyeight. The author, in mourning this regrettable death, would like to dedicate this chapter, written while he was still alive, to him by publishing it without revision. Ōe Kenzaburō, born in 1935 in Ehime, Japan, is one of the most highly acclaimed writers of our time. In 1994, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many of his works have been translated in various languages (English, French, Germany, and others), and basic biographical facts can be easily found in many sources, including online, so I will not repeat them here. Instead, I will concentrate on my central question: Is it possible to consider Ōe’s reading of Jean-Paul Sartre as a case of the latter’s “creolization” in Japan? Ōe himself recalled: “As a student of French literature at the University, I studied the sixteenth-century French literary texts, Boileau, and Balzac in the classroom, but once I returned to my lodgings, I read only Sartre.”1 Undoubtedly, Ōe is one of the most famous Sartreans in Japan, and his writings and political positions were strongly influenced by this French philosopher. In particular, his early fiction (1957–1963) is filled with Sartrean imageries such as “the state of imprisonment” and “the Wall.” In the first half of this chapter, I will examine these imageries and will show that the principal themes Ōe owes to Sartre are authenticity, bad faith, and imagination. Is this influence, however, a case of the creolization of Sartre? One can be skeptical regarding this point: many commentators have expressed reservations as to whether any cross-cultural contact that lacks colonial processes 191

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and power relations can be considered creolization, while they acknowledge possible ways to expand upon the concept.2 To justify my approach, then, I will refer first to Ōe’s interest in the creoleness: although he did not use the term “Creole/creolization” himself,3 Ōe has always been attracted to the marginalized but relatively autonomous existences of those living on the frontiers of society. His works abound with outsiders and ethnic minorities in Japanese society.4 Furthermore, a fortunate encounter in 2012 allowed him to talk with the Martinique author Patrick Chamoiseau, to whom he explained his encounter with Creole: “he first became aware of the existence of Creole thinkers when [he] was twenty years old and a sophomore at University, so in 1955.”5 The experience of reading Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon (perhaps via Sartre) during this period gave him a picture, albeit a vague one, of what Creole was. Therefore, we may consider that Ōe’s interest in the creoleness dates back farther than we might expect. He has a careful and sympathetic gaze toward marginalized others and is sensitive to the power relations at work (whereas Ōe himself is often put on the side of the oppressor). And this interest in colonial power relations, as we will see in the second half of this chapter, should also affect in creolizing his reading of Sartre and give a significant reorientation to the understanding that he had for the themes of authenticity, bad faith, and imagination. Sartre’s influence on Ōe’s work apparently peaks in A Personal Matter (1964) and Hiroshima Notes (1965). Both of these masterpieces are worth discussing in more depth in future research,6 but here I will deal with the relationship between Ōe and Sartre through his 1963 novel, The Cry (Sakebigoe). BAD FAITH, AUTHENTICITY, AND IMAGINATION:THE INFLUENCE OF SARTRE ON ŌE Ōe himself has publicly acknowledged the influence Sartre had on him during in his student days, as well as in his works published during this period and later.7 He had allegedly planned a novel titled The Reprieve Within the Wall, as a double reference to Sartre’s novels (The Wall, The Reprieve).8 Although this attempt never came to fruition, the theme of “The Wall” remains central to Ōe’s early work. About his first collection of short stories, Lavish are the Dead (1958), the author wrote: “I wrote almost all of these works in the latter half of 1957. It has been a consistent theme of mine to consider the state of imprisonment, the state of being closed, the state of a life enclosed within the Wall.”9 Although Ōe admits that he was particularly influenced by Sartre’s 1945 novel The Age of Reason,10 the influence of The Wall on him, thematically and technically, cannot be denied. In particular, the use of irony seems to have been an important technique he got from Sartre. And it was those

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who have fallen into “bad faith,” a concept which is established in Being and Nothingness (1943), that Sartre ironically depicted in The Wall. Bad faith constitutes a dominant theme in Ōe’s fictional works. To expand upon the concept of bad faith, in Being and Nothingness, Sartre said that human beings have an ambiguous status in terms of mind and body. To put it simply, insofar as person has a body and consequently exists in the world and among others, he exists like an object, in the mode of “facticity.” At the same time, a person is transcendent insofar as he attempts to overcome such facticity through the act of consciousness. Sartre calls this ambiguity of human beings, which is both facticity and transcendence, “the paradox of freedom.” As he said: “There is freedom only in a situation, and there is a situation only through freedom.”11 All the effort to deny this ambiguity and to escape from one another is called “bad faith.” In other words, bad faith is an attempt to escape from the condition of existence itself, caused by the anxiety brought about by the paradox of freedom. It should be noted that Sartre understood bad faith, not as an ethical-normative category, but as an ontological-descriptive category. In Ōe’s early fiction, his characters often exhibit bad faith. Here are three examples among others. A protagonist in Ōe’s debut short story, “A Strange Job,” avows the fatigue of being-self: “I was either too young or too old to be enthusiastic about anything, including politics. I was twenty. I was at a peculiar age. And besides that, I was just plain tired.”12 Another protagonist, in “Lavish are the Dead,” who is fascinated by the presence of the corpses in a tank, which he was hired to replace for medical purposes, resembles little by little their “vicious” way of being.13 A protagonist in “The Bird” locks himself in his room and contemplates that “there is no one but Others outside this room.”14 Thus, all these anti-heroes, who stand before the Self, the Death, and the Others, try to escape from their very condition of existence. In addition, this “state of imprisonment” can be interpreted not only as an ontological restraint but also as a social and political one. For Sartre, in Being and Nothingness, it was the German occupation of France that confined people inside the Wall, while for Ōe it was Japan’s defeat in World War II and the subsequent American occupation of Japan. Ōe’s short story, “Sheep” can be read as an allegory for the apathetic state of Japanese youth after the American occupation.15 In any case, the aim of Ōe’s early works was not a normative critique of these escapes, for the writer’s literary ambition consisted in discovering and analyzing various aspects of bad faith among the youth of postwar Japan. However, in Ōe’s early works, there are many glimpses of the possibility of a different life, without bad faith. Among his many attempts to surpass the passive status of bad faith, what interests us here is the effort to become an “authentic” person through political engagement. Here, like many other

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existentialist works of literature of his time, the question of whether “to leap or not to leap?” is at the core of Ōe’s early novels.16 Characters ask: Should I engage myself? And if so, in what? The problem is that Ōe gives a highly critical vision against all forms of the political movement, including the student activism which was in vogue in the 1950s. For example, “A Time of Perjury” depicts violent tension between groups with different ideologies. They torture other students in order to discover a spy, and when this incident is exposed, they attempt to force others to lie about it and even perjure themselves, eventually believing their own lies. Here, the activists’ bad faith (lying to themselves) reaches its peak. However, the protagonists of Ōe’s story, while certainly furious against these political groups, also lack a clear political vision. The short story, “Leap Before You Look” is symbolic in this respect: its protagonist avows: “I am so frightened that I could never make up my mind to leap. And after all, I thought, I had never leaped in twenty-one years. And I will never leap in the future.”17 This is a curious alternative: if you don’t leap, you can do nothing but look. The authentic life of engagement is a possibility offered to escape from bad faith, but it remains an ideal. DREAM OF AN AUTHENTIC LIFE Nevertheless, Ōe’s protagonists dream of an authentic life, and the imagination at work in his stories is worth examining in detail. A fruitful encounter between two Sartrean subjects, authenticity and imagination, which are usually argued separately, will be found through this examination. The short story “Somewhere Else Than Here” presents the overall direction of such dreaming. A young man is approached by an old man on the street, who says: “I don’t want to beg money from you, but I want to get together with a man who wants to get out of here. I have a good boat. Why don’t you come with me on it and go somewhere else than here?”18 The young man, who hates his everyday life which looks like the “anti-real world” and “land of the dead,” is irresistibly attracted by the old man’s invitation, but is, at last, unable to change his life. He only dreams of “somewhere else than here” as a place where he can lead a wild life, “shooting toads in the jungle and chasing sperm whales in the sea.”19 What a romantic but poor fantasy! However, it should be noted that this fantasy of a promised land reflects the political background in the 1950s to 1960s, namely the presence of the Third World. As Devrim Çetin Güven noted, Ōe’s early works are situated among the successive wars toward decolonization, such as the Indochina War, the Vietnam War, and the Algerian War.20 At the same time, Güven rightly pointed out that the theme of “authenticity” has an important role in Ōe’s works. In “Leap Before You Look,” the non-political protagonist clashes with student activists who were gathering

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petitions in support of the anti-colonial movement, but, at the same time, he dreams of participating in the struggles of the Third World: “I’ll sleep in mud in dirt houses with the Egyptians, and I’ll fight. I’m going to shoot those bastards in Cambridge. I will lie in the muddy river in Vietnam, swooning in the heat and plotting to kill the Parisians.”21 Here, the departure for the Third World, joining the warriors for independence, is depicted as a hope for “authentic life.” Still, this hope is not a real but imagined one, projected not into here and now, but into somewhere else than here, even if, in fact, it is motivated by the situation in which he finds dissatisfaction, namely the superficial peace of postwar Japan. The protagonist says: “It is unfortunate for a young man [. . .] to grow up in a world that is so peaceful and quiet. Growing up through the violent turmoil of war will inevitably make a fine man.” He continues, “I was born too late, and it was a terrible loss.”22 The inferiority complex toward the older generation who participated in the war and became heroes-martyrs, and the misfortune of being born late, are depicted in various works, especially in The Youth Who Came Late (1962). Whether dreaming to go beyond geography or beyond time, their dreaming presents undoubtedly a romantic character.23 The failure of such fantasies, which go bankrupt according to the internal logic of each story, could also be explained in light of the Sartrean notion of authenticity. For Sartre, “authenticity [. . .] consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in assuming the responsibilities and risks that it involves, in accepting it in pride or humiliation, sometimes in horror and hate.”24 From this viewpoint, it would be contradictory to attempt to dream of an authentic life elsewhere, while losing sight of one’s situation. The imagination, then, cannot be other than an obstacle to authenticity. Should we affirm this, following the Sartrean theory of imagination? Many scholars who are interested in the notion of authenticity seem to avoid confronting the role of imagination in it. This is not the case with Ōe: recognizing the two subjects as inseparable, he reflected on the pluralistic role that imagination plays in authenticity. I will examine this point before proceeding into a discussion of The Cry. ESCAPIST IMAGINATION, PARTICIPATORY IMAGINATION When Ōe wrote his senior thesis at the University of Tokyo, he chose “On the Image in Sartre” as his subject. This was a two-part thesis, which he said, “connects in analyzing the philosophy of Sartre’s Imaginary and a set of images found in the first part of The Age of Reason.”25 The second part of this was published as “On the Images in The Age of Reason.” Examining this enables us to contrast two types of imagination: “escapist” and “participatory.”

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In this essay, Ōe called The Age of Reason “.  .  . a perfect work, where Mathieu has already lived and determined what the same protagonist will live in The Reprieve and Troubled Sleep.”26 Why does he give this book such a high evaluation, despite its sequels? According to Ōe, the protagonist of the novel, Mathieu, is an incarnation of “anti-action, anti-real.” As such, he does not need, but rather is opposed to, “unbalanced sequels that lead him to leap into action outside of life.” Although Sartre’s intention in his trilogy seems to be the exact opposite, consisting in depicting the very process through which Mathieu evolves from anti-action to action, Ōe, for his part, pins this protagonist at the very starting point of “The Road to Freedom.” In this regard, the main antagonist of Mathieu is Brunet, his comrade who has joined the Communist Party and become thus a “man of action,” so much so that Ōe sees the following stories gradually focus on Brunet’s existence. However, Ōe asserted: The novel world of The Age of Reason is an anti-Brunet world of death, and all its images present us with reality, framed in the color of death. Sartre is not Brunet. [. . .] The image of the communist or the man of action is always taken as the Other: this is Sartre’s essential tendency, and cannot change. Sartre, or the West as tragically symbolized by Sartre, can only be the dead Other to Brunet.27

This definitive tone stands out in his willingness to interpret Sartre as an anti-active man. In other words, for Ōe, Mathieu—and Sartre—cannot “leap” like Gomez, who, at the beginning of The Age of Reason, participated in the Spanish War. In the same essay, while Ōe does not define the word “image,” he uses it as undefined, directive, or obsessive notion, which frequently appears in The Age of Reason. For example, it is said in the novel that “the image of death” haunts the novel as a whole, that another protagonist Daniel suffers from a “conflict between the image of desire and the image of anti-desire,” or that each character has his own “image of freedom.” However, these loose usages of the word are not faithful to Sartre’s definition of the image, in that they treat it as an almost palpable idea in the novel, while, for Sartre, on the contrary, the image is consciousness, and without the latter, it would be incomprehensible.28 Although “imagination” is the term Ōe most frequently uses to describe his profession as a novelist, and despite his undeniable influence from Sartre in this regard, we do not know with certainty, due to the lack of the first part of his paper on The Imaginary, what kind of influence it was.29 In fact, in Ōe’s early works, the role of imagination has two contradictory directions, both of which seem to be closely related to Sartre’s idea of imagination. That is, there is an imagination that participates in reality and an imagination that escapes from reality. As one can imagine, the former is the

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one to which Ōe gives more positive value. In an essay, Ōe asserts that “the two main toxins that cause moral decadence among political bystanders are a lack of imagination and ignorance.”30 Lack of imagination is surely one of the most harmful vices for Ōe, for it prevents us from seeing the situation in all aspects, and his criticism extends to all social classes, including a prime minister who lacks it.31 Another essay attempts to ground this kind of imagination with a more explicit reference to Sartre: from the outset, in using the French Sartrean term se dépasser (to surpass), he affirms the need for imagination in overcoming situations. This is especially the task of the artists (but not exclusively): “For the artist, the exercise of imagination does not mean the creation of a fantasy. On the contrary, it is to dig into the roots of a way of life that relates to all the realities [. . .]. As such, to transcend himself in the reality.”32 In these essays, the imagination can be called “participatory” and in no way contradictory to authentic engagement. On the other hand, there is another vice, less emphasized in Ōe’s essays, but prominent in his fiction, which stems not from a lack of imagination but from an excess of it. This forms a type of “imaginary man” who, for fear of the prison of reality, flees into that of imagination. There is similarity between the depiction of the protagonist of “Somewhere Else Than Here” as an inhabitant of the “anti-real world” and of the “land of death,” that of Mathieu in The Age of Reason as an inhabitant of the “anti-action, anti-real” and of the “world of death,” as well as that of Sartre’s own nature, seen through the eyes of Ōe, as the opposite of a “man of action.” These coincidences confirm that Ōe finds this escapist tendency of imaginary man in Sartre himself. Hence, two notions coexist in Ōe: the authentic, participatory imagination, and the bad faith, escapist imagination. Moreover, it seems that they coexist also in Sartre to a certain degree. Theoretically, Sartre affirms that all acts of imagination are grounded on the situation, that “an image is not purely and simply the world denied, but is always the world denied from a certain point of view.”33 At the same time, however, he is deeply fascinated by the magical use of imagination, especially that exercised by a poet like Stéphane Mallarmé, whose pathological being-in-the-world hoped that the world itself be thoroughly denied. Even complicatedly, Sartre admires Mallarmé’s seemingly escapist imagination as “all-embracing commitment—social as much as poetic.”34 In this sense, the participatory imagination and escapist imagination form a tension, if not a contradiction, in Sartre’s theory of imagination, as is the case of Ōe’s work. But Sartre, who rarely referred to the role of imagination in philosophical works such as Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason, raised the problem but didn’t bring a satisfactory solution to Ōe. Thus, Ōe had to make his own steps into speculation through the works of fiction. His concern can be summed up in the following question: How is it possible to overcome the bad faith of the escapist imagination and move

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toward the authenticity of the participatory imagination? The Cry, Ōe’s 1963 novel, can be read as a reflection on this question. The Cry Ōe recalled that he came up with the idea for this novel on an airplane returning from a trip to Europe. The situation in which he was placed at that time was quite complicated. His two-part novels, Seventeen and Death of a Political Youth, published in January and February 1961, were based on an actual incident that had just occurred: the October 1960 assassination of the Japan Socialist Party leader by a seventeen-year-old fanatical rightist. The satiric and erotic description in the novels provoked indignation among the Japanese right-wing and led to a threat against the publisher, which decided to announce an apology, irrespective of the author’s will.35 Ōe himself was forced to leave Japan until the situation subsided. During his stay in Paris, he met Sartre at an anti-OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) meeting and arranged an interview. In a report relating to it, Ōe’s tone was not enthusiastic, and confirmed the gap that was opening between Ōe and his ancient maître à penser. Sartre seemed less interested in literature than in politics. But even when he clarified his position on political issues, his attitude was too literary. Ōe, whose “first half of the youth was spent in the shadow of Sartre36” found himself ill at ease before the dilemma of literature and politics. Despite this discomfort, he tried to interpret Sartre’s attitude as that of a humanist, and to trace its origin in the latter’s 1950 preface to “The End of Hope,” a report on the Spanish War: Sartre is the humanist who heard that midnight cry: “It was a night during the German occupation. I was gathering in a hotel room with a few friends. Suddenly, a cry, which we did not know whose voice it was, echoed through the streets, calling for help. The sound of this voice made us all run downstairs immediately. But not a soul was to be seen on the street. [. . .] In the age of fear, when we were all longing for the help that was too far away and too late, we all doubted our own ears, wondering if the cry was our own.” The age of fear is not over, and the voice that cries out in Sartre’s ear can be heard by us in the end, albeit in different ways.37

Here, Ōe saw the continuation of the “age of fear” that Sartre lived under the German occupation. Similarly, Ōe was currently living under occupation, strongly structured by the nuclear regime of the Cold War as well as by colonial violence. This ambivalent meeting with Sartre is noteworthy because the “cry” that Sartre heard on the street is the origin of the title of the novel The Cry where the first-person narrator quotes, from the outset, the same preface of Sartre’s as “a recollection of a French philosopher who lived through an

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age of fear.”38 Through the last scene where the protagonist flies to Paris and happens to be present at the anti-OAS meeting, the novel is filled with the memory of Ōe’s encounter with Sartre. The characters in the novel took an important step from bad faith to authenticity. From the beginning, it is signaled that they all feel “fear” of something and try to escape from it. The first-person narrator, like many of the protagonists in Ōe’s early works, is a twenty-year-old university student enrolled in the French literature department, presented as a somewhat intelligent but ordinary Japanese man without qualities. The fear that he feels is a phobia of syphilis, which makes it possible to regard him as one of the “Homo Sexualis,” a type of human that the author described many times in opposition to the “Homo Politicus.”39 By chance, he meets Darius Serbezov, a Bulgarian American who, after serving in the Korean War, dreams of building a yacht and going on a trip with the Japanese comrades he has recruited. One of them is a seventeen-year-old young man called “Tiger,” who is half-African and half-Asian and calls himself Tiger to refer to his black and yellow coloredness. The other is Kure Takao, eighteen and half-Korean and half-Japanese. The three of them live together in Darius Serbezov’s house and have the desire to go “somewhere else than here.” This desire, as noted, is shared by many of the characters in Ōe’s early novels, but here we see a significant difference. The reason why Tiger and Kure want to be “somewhere else than here” is that they are aware that they, as mixed-race individuals, have no place in Japan. Tiger’s desire to go to Africa is related to the fact that his father, born in San Francisco and brought to Japan before the war, one day left his family and went to Africa. In this episode, we can see the influence of the literary movement Negritude. It should be noted that, in March 1961, before his trip to Europe, Ōe participated in the Asian-African Writers Conference held in Tokyo, and that his participation in it and his subsequent interest in Asian and African literature gave him a less dreamy and more substantive interest in the colonized Third World. Furthermore, he was allegedly introduced to the term “Negritude” by Aaron Tolen, a young Cameroonian he met at this conference.40 Therefore, for these characters, “somewhere else” gains a somewhat authentic aura, especially for Tiger, who believes quite naively in his “authentic land,” saying: “If only I could go to Africa, I would be able to kick away all this crazy fog surrounding me, because I would be going to my authentic land.”41 On the other hand, Kure Takao, a more speculative figure, points out the fundamental difficulty of this quasi-escapist, quasi-participatory “return” attempt to the place they had never been: Now that I think about it, I wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere else than here, just like Tiger wants to go to Africa. Because I sometimes feel like I’m

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an exile in this world, in some strange way, from some other world. And it’s a feeling that probably would not have been relieved even if I had made it to Korea. I feel that I belong not to a country that exists on the map like Korea, but to another world, not this world, but the opposite of this world, so to speak. I feel that this world belongs to others and is not my authentic home. In fact, even now I am talking in someone else’s language, in someone else’s country, in someone else’s late at night.42

It is important to note that the character Kure Takao is modeled on a real person, Ri Chin’u, an eighteen-year-old Zainichi Korean (Korean living in Japan) who was executed for the murder of a schoolgirl. This incident, known as the Komatsugawa Incident (August 17, 1958) was widely reported in the media due to its sensational elements. Ri was also suspected in another murder that occurred some months previously. Between the two incidents, Ri wrote a short fiction about a murder, and submitted it in a contest. Finally, he called the police and newspapers, after the schoolgirl’s murder, to trick them. This incident sparked a debate as to whether discrimination against Zainichi Koreans in Japan may have led him to commit the crime, even if the cruel nature of the incident is unforgivable. Many Japanese intellectuals, including Suzuki Michihiko, a specialist in Sartre, condemned the history of discrimination against Zainichi Koreans,43 but at the same time, they were also attracted to the mysterious inner life of Ri, as if he were an ImaginaryMan. Surely, Ōe was one of these intellectuals.44 In The Cry, Kure Takao sees himself as a “monster.” Since Takao borrowed Sartre’s books from the first-person narrator, a student of the French department, and was absorbed in the lecture, it would be natural to see in this representation of the “monster” an allusion to Sartre, who, for example, used this same term to describe Jean Genet in his book Saint Genet.45 With his narcissistic and dreamy character, Kure has apparently fallen into bad faith, as a monster in the country of Others. How will he try to overcome this situation? In the fourth chapter, entitled “The Monster,” Kure Takao appears as the principal protagonist. The fact that he was writing an autobiography of a young mixed-race man, also entitled “The Monster,” leads us to consider this chapter as a kind of mise en abyme. Communal life at Darius’ house has already collapsed. Darius was deported to the United States due to his illegal acts, Tiger was tragically shot and killed by the police, and the narrator was sent to the sanatorium for pulmonary tuberculosis. Kure Takao, therefore, returned to his former solitary life, and this Korean-Japanese adolescent begins an exploration of what “authenticity” is. Returning to his former home, a Korean village in Japan, he reads Sartre and contemplates his own nature:

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In his note on the philosophical dissertation, Kure Takao added the following phrase: “Authentique: genuine, right, certain, true, definitely of the land,” and sometimes used this French word in support of his own feverish pursuit. L’homme authentique [i.e., the Authentic Man] is, according to him, a man who lives in the real world with full citizenship. A genuine man of the country, a real man of the country, a man definitely of this land. And, although he does not know from which it was caused, he is not an authentique man, and that was the fundamental source of his fever of anxiety and craving. “I must urgently consider returning to my own authentique land, urgently, urgently!”46

This “authentique land,” however, is not the Korea that exists on the map. Kure Takao is just “temporarily sojourning in the real world of Others,” and thinks that he must leave this reality and these Others to return to “his own” land, namely a land to which he only belongs. Thus, his pursuit of authenticity becomes a negation of Others. His hostile declaration as a “monster” is as follows: “When I attack the Others in this world with the weapon of rape and murder, and actively show them how different I am from them, they will recognize me as someone who belongs to another authentique life. They will recognize me as an enemy, as a monster. And I, I will realize my own country, my own world, within myself, if only I am surrounded by the eyes of such Others.”47 Kure Takao’s understanding of authenticity provides an interesting case for those who read Sartre and contemplate what authenticity is. In particular, Anglo-Saxon scholars have long asked whether Sartre’s understanding of authenticity is defined in terms of “true and lucid consciousness of the situation” and “assuming the responsibility and risks that it involves,” as noted above, and if it is therefore possible to imagine an “authentic murderer” who is lucidly conscious of his situation as a murderer and assumes responsibility for his crime.48 By demanding this, they have tried to point out the inadequacy and/or idealistic character of Sartre’s concept of authenticity. In response to these criticisms, Storm Heter attempted to update the concept of authenticity, pointing out that “in addition to having a lucid self-awareness and a disposition to accept one’s personal responsibilities, an existentially authentic person must have a basic disposition to respect and care about other people.”49 This would show clearly why Kure’s pursuit of authenticity can only lead to the opposite consequences: he commits a crime and hopes that it will be clearly reported through the press and police so that they will recognize him as “an enemy, a monster.” Such recognition is a good example of what Heter called “non-mutual recognition” in that it is unilateral recognition from others to Kure Takao and he saw them only as tools for that recognition. Moreover, by choosing murder as a means to achieve this, the fundamental denial of the Other reaches its zenith. Ironically, Kure Takao, who seeks to justify his existence through the eyes of others, is, even after the murder, anxious to know

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if he became a real “monster” for them, and this anxiety will not be relieved until the time of his execution. When he is sentenced to death, he says, “I feel for the first time that I am now recognized as a monster, that I am entitled to be a monster. I believe in my own nature as a monster, in myself.” Thus, the destination of the non-mutual recognition, infernally dramatized in the novel, is either the complete denial of the Other by murder or the complete denial of the Self by the death penalty. Where, then, was the possibility of “mutual recognition” left? Immediately after his sentence to death, Takao’s mother rushes to him and calls him by his Korean name, Ochan: “Ochan . . .” At that moment, Kure Takao felt that a clue was given to him to understand why he had become a man who could not have a sense of relief of living in this world in an authentique way, why he had become a bastard in this real world. Since his childhood, when his mother forced him to live his forged life as a fictional Kure Takao instead of living as Ochan, he began to lose the sense of being a legitimate child, the sense of being a legitimate member of this world. “Ochan . . .” his mother shouted once more.50

Kure Takao’s mother had raised him as Japanese, with his Japanese name Takao, and taught him to discriminate against Koreans. His father was Korean, but his mother had trained her son to hide this fact as much as possible. However, he was unable to identify himself as Japanese. Informed of his son’s arrest, the father, who had been leading a nomadic life, detects this quite accurately: “My son grew up to be neither Korean, nor Japanese, nor anything else, so he wanted to be someone like a criminal!”51 By losing his national identity, Kure Takao loses also sight of who he is and turns to crime to gain another form of lost recognition. Even if this logic cannot be universal—national identity is not the necessary condition for the recognition—it is clear that the recognition of others in any sense was an ideal that he had to pursue, at all costs, to attain his authenticity. Through this fictional character Kure Takao, aka Ochan, Ōe revisited the theme of the pursuit of authenticity, and deepened it by involving subjects chained to the colonial structure (Africa, Korea). This was a significant step forward on the themes of recognition and coexistence with others. These two themes have become unavoidable when one aims for authenticity. His subsequent works, especially since A Personal Matter, further deepened them. We now return to the title of the novel The Cry. From the beginning, where Sartre’s essay is quoted implicitly, through the concluding section in which the first-person protagonist arrives in Paris and hears a “cry of human

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beings” that follows the tremendous explosion caused by the plastic bomb of the OAS, the voice of a cry symbolizes the reaction from the inner depths of human beings in the face of fear. In this context, even the voice of the mother calling Kure Takao by his Korean name Ochan was described as “a hard voice with a strong tremor, like the cry of a bird of prey.”52 But a voice that was not such a cry can be heard faintly in this novel. For example, before the murder, Kure Takao had a dream of committing a crime and being chased by others, who call him by “a peculiar word, like a species name proper to him.”53 This enigmatic name would of course be Ochan, his Korean name, repressed by his mother, and whose meaning he was unable to comprehend at this time. Escaping the chase, he wonders that if he turns around to see what this appellation means, he will be caught and killed. This Orphic theme, which resonates with Sartre’s Black Orpheus, is not meant to plunge him into ruin, but rather seems a final “appeal” to rescue him from his descent into crime. The “appeal,” which is particularly important in Sartre’s Notebooks for an Ethics, is an act of mutual reciprocity, uttered from one’s own freedom for the freedom of others who are placed in the same situation. Hearing this appeal would have been, for Kure Takao, a way of rescuing himself from his bad faith. The transition from the “cry of fear” to the “appeal,” is not explicit and clear-cut in the novel but is suggested in a subtle way, as a kind of whisper, audible only to an attentive ear. This is precisely what the imagination makes possible to hear; an imagination through which one understands that we all share the same situation of fear, and, therefore, can help each other. NOTES 1. Ōe Kenzaburō, “Note for the Part III” in The Solemn Tightrope Walking (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991), 155–56. All Japanese names follow the Japanese practice of placing the surname first. And all translations from Japanese texts are my own, unless indicated otherwise. 2. Shu-mei Shih and Françoise Lionnet, “Introduction” in The Creolization of Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). 3. This contrasts with the attitude of his friend Abe Kōbō, another internationally acclaimed Japanese novelist. Abe read Derek Bickerton’s Roots of Language (original 1981, translated 1985) and Loreto Todd’s Pidgins and Creoles (original and translation 1986), as soon as they were translated into Japanese, and published a text, “The Soul of Creole” (1987), in The Complete Works of Abe Kōbō, 29 (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2000), 72–79. 4. See M. N. Wilson, The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and Techniques (New York/London: M. E. Sharpe, 1986). 5. Ōe Kenzaburō and Patrick Chamoiseau, “The Force of Literature—For A Creole Future,” Gunzo (February 2013): 197.

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6. A Personal Matter, trans. John Nathan (New York: Grove Press, 1994); Hiroshima Notes, trans. David. L. Swain and Yonezawa Toshi (New York: Grove Press, 1996). As for the influence of Sartre on Ōe’s Hiroshima Note exists an article available in English, but which, in fact, highly criticizes Ōe as well as Sartre. See J. W. Treat, “Hiroshima Nōto and Ōe Kenzaburō’s Existentialist Other,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47, no. 1 (June 1987): 97–136. 7. “These short stories [collected in Lavish are The Dead] were novelizations of a state of imprisonment that took its cue from Sartre and the concentration camps’ records,’”(“Autograph Chronology” in Collection of Young Literature 12, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1960); “For me, as a university student, the inner world was represented by Pascal and Sartre, and the outer world by the concentration camps of Nazi Germany” (“Autograph Chronology” in Complete Works of Showa Literature 9, Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1963). 8. “Note,” 155. 9. “Afterword,” in Lavish Are the Dead (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1958), 302. 10. In a conversation with Mishima Yukio and Abe Kōbō, Ōe said: “I hardly accept his short stories. I want to write novels like The Age of Reason, in which a manly intellectual between the ages of 30 and 40 appears.” See Abe Kōbō et al., “What is Litterateur?” in Complete Works of Abe Kōbō, volume 9, 1958.07–1959.04 (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1998), 263. 11. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. Sarah Richmond (London, New York: Routledge, 2018). 12. “A Strange Job,” in Complete Works of Ōe Kenzaburō, I (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2018), 10. Hereafter CW. Translated by Ruth W. Adler, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (volume 12, 1980): 68–72. 13. “Lavish are the Dead,” in CW, I. Translated by John Nathan, Japan Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1965). See also Takahashi Yuki, “The Reception of Sartre in “Lavish are the Dead”: On the Rhetoric of the Viscous Dead,” Showa Literary Studies 74 (March 2017): 102–15. 14. “The Bird,” in CW, I, 375. 15. “Sheep,” in CW, I. Translated by Frank T. Motofuji, Japan Quarterly 17, 2 (1970): 167–77. 16. This alternative can be found in H. E. Barnes, The Literature of Possibility (London: Tavistock Publications, 1961). 17. “Leap Before You Look,” in CW, I, 375. 18. “Somewhere Else Than Here,” in CW, II, 9. 19. Ibid., 17. 20. See D. Ç. Güven, Representations of “‘Third World’ and Japan’ in Ōe’s Oeuvre—with a particular focus on Our Time and Related Works Written in ‘The Time of the Algerian War’”. PhD thesis submitted to the University of Tokyo, June 2013. 21. “Leap Before You Look,” 323. 22. Ibid., 322. 23. Needless to say, the author does not unconditionally approve of this kind of political romanticism. “The reason why I depict the Japanese youth who long for the Arab national movement in a highly romantic way, he writes, is not that I am trying

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to depict the Arab Federation as an ideal form of a political movement, but only to depict the fatal inability and stagnation of sexual beings who have no choice but to be romantically excited by the revolution in a foreign country.” See “Our Sexual World,” in Collection of Contemporary Essays of Ōe Kenzaburō, vol. I (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980), 150. Hereafter CCE. 24. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), 65. 25. Ōe Kenzaburō by Himself (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2007), 34. 26. “The Images in The Age of Reasons,” in The Solemn Tightrope Walking (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991), 158–59. 27. Ibid., 170. 28. See Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary (London and New York: Routledge, 2010). 29. For the overall of this subject, see Sugiyama Wakana, “Itinerary of Imagination in Ōe Kenzaburō: Toward the ‘Prayer,’” Japanese Literature Studies 58 (February 2019): 137–51. 30. “Can a Writer Be Absolutely Anti-Political?” in CCE, VII, 69. 31. See “Imagination for a Dead Student,” in CCE, III, where he severely criticizes the PM at that time. 32. “The Political Imagination and The Imagination of the Murderer,” in CCE, III, 156. 33. Sartre, The Imaginary, 184. 34. Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Purposes of Writing,” in Between Existentialism and Marxism, trans. John Matthews (London: Verso, 2008), 13. 35. Seventeen & J: Two Novels, trans. Luk Van Haute (New York: Blue Moon Books, 1996). 36. The Voice of Europe, The Voice of Myself (Tokyo: Mainichi Shimbun Sha, 1962), 175. 37. Ibid., 187. The citation is from Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations, VI (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). 38. The Cry, in CW, III, 193. 39. To explain this distinction between Homo sexualis and Homo politics, Ōe refers to that between Hugo and Hoederer, two protagonists in the play written by Sartre, Dirty Hands. See “Our Sexual World” in CCE, I. 40. “Invisible Man and the Diversity,” in CCE, V, 268. For further information on the relationship between Ōe and Black literature, and interesting reading of The Cry in this regard, see Will Bridges, “In the Beginning: Ōe Kenzaburō and the Creative Nonfiction of Blackness.” Chap. 2 in Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2020), 66–95. 41. The Cry, 250. 42. Ibid., 204–5. 43. For further detail, see Seki Hiroaki and Kobayashi Nariaki, “The Discovery of the Other in Post-war Japan: Two Sartreans on Kyoto School and Zainichi Koreans,” in Sartre and the International Impact of Existentialism, eds. A. Betchard and J. Werner (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 285–307.

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44. See “The Political Imagination . . .,” in CCE, III, where Ōe presents Ri as an Imaginary-Man. 45. Suzuki Michihiko, whom we mentioned above, will call Ri Chin’u “Genet in Japan.” 46. The Cry, 264. 47. Ibid., 266. 48. Regarding this debate, see David Detmer, Freedom as a Value. A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre (La Salle: Open Court, 1988). 49. T Storm Heter, Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement. Authenticity and Civic Virtue (London, New York: Continuum, 2006), 84–85. 50. The Cry, 278. 51. Ibid., 276. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 265.

REFERENCES Barnes, Hazel. The Literature of Possibility. London: Tavistock Publications, 1961. Bickerton, Derek. Roots of Language. Berlin: Language Science Press, 1981. Detmer, David. Freedom as a Value: A Critique of the Ethical Theory of Jean-Paul Sartre. La Salle: Open Court, 1988. Güven, D. Ç. Representations of “‘Third World’ and Japan in Ōe’s Oeuvre—with a particular focus on Our Time and Related Works written in ‘the Time of the Algerian War.’” PhD thesis submitted to the University of Tokyo, June 2013. Heter, T Storm. Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement: Authenticity and Civic Virtue. London, New York: Continuum, 2006. Kenzaburō, Ōe. “A Strange Job.” In Complete Works of Ōe Kenzaburō, Volume I. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2018. ———. “Afterword.” In Lavish are the Dead. Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1958. ———. “Autograph Chronology.” In Complete Works of Showa Literature, Volume 9. Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1963. ———. “Our Sexual World.” In Collection of Contemporary Essays of Ōe Kenzaburō, Volume I. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980. ———. “The Images in The Age of Reasons.” In The Solemn Tightrope Walking. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991. ———. “Note for the Part III.” In The Solemn Tightrope Walking. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1991: 155–56. ———. A Personal Matter. Translated by John Nathan. New York: Grove Press, 1994. ———. Hiroshima Notes. New York: Grove Press, 1996. ———. Seventeen & J: Two Novels. Translated by Luk Van Haute. New York: Blue Moon Books, 1996. ———. The Voice of Europe, The Voice of Myself. Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbun Sha, 1962.

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———. “Lavish are the Dead.” In Complete Works of Ōe Kenzaburō, Volume 1. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2018. ———. “Sheep.” In Complete Works of Ōe Kenzaburō, Volume 1. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2018. ———. Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020. Kenzaburō, Ōe and Patrick Chamoiseau. “The Force of Literature—For a Creole Future.” Gunzo (February 2013): 197–200. Kōbō, Abe. “The Soul of Creole.” In The Complete Works of Abe Kōbō. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2000: 72–79. ———. “What is Litterateur?” In Complete Works of Abe Kōbō, Volume 9. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1998. Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness. Translated by Sarah Richmond. London, New York: Routledge, 2018. ———, Situations, VI. Paris: Gallimard, 1964. ———. Anti-Semite and Jew. New York: Schocken Books, 1995. ———. The Imaginary. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Seki, Hiroaki and Kobayashi Nariaki. “The Discovery of the Other in Post-War Japan: Two Sartreans on Kyoto School and Zainichi Koreans.” In Sartre and the International Impact of Existentialism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: 285–307. Shih, Shu-mei and Françoise Lionnet. “Introduction.” In The Creolization of Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Todd, Loreto. Pidgins and Creoles. Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 1986. Treat, J. W. “Hiroshima Nōto and Ōe Kenzaburō’s Existentialist Other.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 47, no. 1 (June 1987): 97–136. Wakana, Sugiyama. “Itinerary of Imagination in Ōe Kenzaburō: Toward the “Prayer.” Japanese Literature Studies 58 (February 2019): 137–51. Wilson, M. N. The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburō: A Study in Themes and Techniques. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1986. Yuki, Takahashi. “The Reception of Sartre in ‘Lavish are the Dead’: On the Rhetoric of the Viscous Dead.” Showa Literary Studies 74 (March 2017): 102–15.

Chapter 11

Transcendental Phenomenology Meets Negritude Poetry Jonathan Webber

“What were you hoping, when you removed the gags that stopped up these black mouths? That they would sing your praises? Did you think, when the heads our fathers had ground into the dust had raised themselves up again, you would see adoration in their eyes?”1 These arresting opening lines of Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay “Black Orpheus,” written as a preface to an anthology of poems by Black francophone poets, are clearly addressed to white readers. The poems reflect specifically Black experience. Sartre thinks Black readers need no advice from him about these poems. He wants to encourage white readers to read what he sees as “ultimately a song of all for all” and “the only great revolutionary poetry of today.”2 This revolution is fundamentally epistemic. White people have mistaken their perspective on the world for objective truth because their perspective has gone unchallenged; “the white man has, for three thousand years, enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen.”3 Sartre reads the anthology as a profound and comprehensive challenge to that white perspective. “I want you to feel, as I do, the shock of being seen.”4 Sartre’s shock is genuine, not merely feigned for literary effect. The two main themes of “Black Orpheus” contradict two of his most prominent claims from the preceding five years. He had previously argued that literary prose should be politically engaged, but that poetry could not be. Yet here he is praising the political intentions and implications of the poetry in this anthology, proclaiming that these could not be achieved through prose. His theory of radical freedom, according to which an individual’s outlook and behavior is determined entirely by the goals and values they adopt, was previously advertised as the central tenet of his existentialism. Yet here he is characterizing this poetry as an attempt to retrieve and exhibit inherited values that lie buried in the souls of Black francophone people. These changes in his 209

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philosophy result from his own epistemic revolution provoked by the shock of being seen. In this chapter, we will trace the intellectual structure of this transformation. We begin with Sartre’s theory of engaged literature and his realization that its core distinction between poetry and prose is mistaken. We will then turn to the implications of this realization for the philosophical method that Sartre had been developing for at least the previous fifteen years, the transcendental deduction of ontological conclusions from phenomenological premises. Sartre now understood that the premises of these arguments cannot be drawn solely from reflection on his own experience and that French prose might be insufficient for formulating all the relevant premises. Together, these points allow him to use the poetry in this anthology as phenomenological grounds for ontological conclusions. Through this renewed method, Sartre articulates a revised understanding of human existence, one that includes cultural inheritance as a primary feature. Negritude poetry requires this revision because it exemplifies the epistemic challenge that Sartre had already established under the name of “the look.” We will close by considering Sartre’s deployment of listening as a philosophical technique in this essay, outlining the justification for it and the extent of its power. SARTRE’S INITIAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE In 1947, Sartre published four essays arguing that literature should be politically “committed” or “engaged” (engagée). These first appeared in Les Temps modernes, the monthly journal he had founded with Simone de Beauvoir and others two years earlier. With the two longer essays each broken in half, the sequence spanned six consecutive issues from February to July 1947 and formed a kind of manifesto for the journal. The set was then published as the third volume of Sartre’s collected essays series, Situations, under the title Qu’est-ce la littérature? in 1948, which has been translated as What is Literature?. In the first of these essays, Sartre argues that prose must be politically engaged but poetry cannot be.5 He then published “Orphée noir,” which has been translated as “Black Orpheus,” later in 1948, first in abridged form in Les Temps modernes and then as a preface to the anthology of poetry it describes. In this essay, Sartre clearly praises these poems for their political engagement. Perhaps surprisingly, this reversal is not due to the anthology prompting a change in his conception of poetry. It is rather because reading negritude poetry changed his conception of prose. Sartre’s initial understanding of the difference between poetry and prose concerns how they treat words. Poetry focuses on the words themselves, he

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argued, whereas prose focuses on their meanings. This is grounded in his distinction between signs and images in his earlier book L’Imaginaire, translated as The Imaginary.6 The sign that says “Assistant Manager’s Office,” for example, is an object that directs my attention to what is behind the door, a room used for a particular function and which I should expect to contain certain types of furniture. I can treat the sign as an object in its own right, of course, and admire the calligraphy or evaluate the kerning. But the signification of those words is the assistant manager’s office itself. Physical features of the sign facilitate or obscure its signification, but they do not influence the meaning of the sign itself. Similarly, the sign that says “keep off the grass” presents me with a command. If the sign has physically deteriorated, it might no longer present that command clearly. But that would not be the presentation of an unclear command. Images of things also direct our attention toward those things, argues Sartre, but they do so in a different way. The immediate perceptible features of images are integral to how their objects are presented. A photograph of my brother, for example, presents my brother himself, but presents him at a particular moment, dressed in a particular way and with a particular expression on his face. A different photo might present a very different image of him. When the singer and impersonator Claire Franconay portrays Maurice Chevalier, she first indicates her intention by means of a few signs that refer to Chevalier, but then attempts to evoke more fully her audience’s detailed affective sense of Chavalier through the precise textures of her own movements and sounds.7 Franconay herself becomes, in Sartre’s neologism, an analogon of Chavalier, just as the photo of my brother is an analogon of him, but a sign is not an analogon of the assistant manager’s office or of the command to keep off the grass. Poetry treats words as images, argues Sartre, rather than as signs.8 The poet “dwells upon words, as does the painter with colours and the musician with sounds.”9 In the poetic attitude, a word’s meaning provides its “verbal unity,” making it more than simply a sound and an ink shape, but that meaning is not understood as something beyond the word. Rather, for the poet, the meaning has “flowed into the word” and been “absorbed by its sonority or visual aspect,” making the word’s audial, visual, and grammatical features into a “face of flesh” that embodies the meaning itself.10 Most importantly, a word’s different senses are present in each instance of this face, merged together with one another as a single “material quality.”11 This blend of the word’s meanings, grammatical functions, shapes, and sounds itself functions as an analogon for imagining some object, which might not be signified by any of the word’s meanings. In grouping words together, the poet is not writing a sentence, but creating a larger analogon composed of those items in that order with all the consonances and dissonances between them.12

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Prose, by contrast, uses words as signs, directly presenting what those words mean. It is like a window through which we see what the writer shows us.13 Style is essential to good prose, but should never itself attract the reader’s attention. “Since words are transparent” in prose, “it would be absurd to slip in among them some panes of rough glass.”14 This does not preclude signs whose meanings provoke feelings that function as analogons for images.15 These can bring an incidental beauty to prose.16 But this is not the same as using the word or phrase itself as an analogon.17 The transparency of prose is like the transparency of the body in action: in our own actions and in perceiving other people’s actions, our attention is directed toward the purposes of the bodily movements and we have only minimal awareness of those movements themselves; in reading, hearing, writing, or speaking prose we are only minimally aware of the words through which we focus on their meanings.18 We could add, by contrast, that when we dance or watch somebody dance, we focus on bodily movements themselves, which may incorporate a sense of the actions they evoke and may function as an analogon for imagination. If prose is like action, poetry is like dance. WHAT NEGRITUDE POETRY TAUGHT SARTRE ABOUT WRITING Sartre’s initial theory of literary engagement is grounded in his understanding of prose. He considers prose not merely analogous to action, but as itself a kind of action. “Prose is first of all an attitude of mind,” he tells us.19 Words as they are used in prose are “by nature significative,” they are not primarily treated as objects in themselves but “as designations for objects,” and so are selected according to “whether they correctly indicate a certain thing or a certain notion.”20 Because prose is essentially signification, the prose writer “designates, demonstrates, orders, refuses, interpolates, begs, insults, persuades, insinuates,” or in some other way communicates information.21 Prose writers use words as tools which extend their action upon the world; prose is “action by disclosure.”22 Crucially, this communication requires that each word is used in only one sense at a time, because it is that meaning rather than the word itself that the prose writer is really deploying.23 For the prose writer, the word “is a particular moment of action and has no meaning outside it.”24 For this reason, Sartre argues, all prose is necessarily politically engaged. Prose is always action and so it is always likely to have effects in the social context in which it occurs. The engaged writer is not someone using words differently from other prose writers, but someone who understands what writing prose really is.25 By contrast, the poet “sees words inside out” and treats them as wild natural objects in themselves.26 Poetry “dwells upon words, as

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does the painter with colours and the musician with sounds.”27 For this reason, Sartre argues, poetry cannot be politically engaged. “How can one hope to provoke the indignation or the political enthusiasm of the reader,” he asks, “when the very thing one does is to withdraw him from the human condition and invite him to consider with the eyes of a God a language that has been turned inside out?”28 That question was posed rhetorically. But it seems that Sartre found it to be answered by the anthology of negritude poetry for which “Black Orpheus” was written as a preface. This anthology collected works of Black poets.29 It was part of a movement that had begun in the 1930s to explore and enrich the cultural identities of Black people through art, history, literature, and music.30 Sartre understands this anthology as “a gaining of awareness” of what it means to be Black in the francophone world of the time.31 The title of his essay refers to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from the underworld.32 These poets, according to Sartre, aim to rescue their buried negritude, a culturally inherited evaluative outlook, drawing it out from the depths of their own experience and inviting their Black readers to participate in this project.33 Orpheus is permitted to lead Eurydice back to the surface on condition that if he looks at her before the journey is completed then she will disappear back into the underworld forever. Negritude is felt, according to Sartre’s reading of these poems, in the dissonance between these poets’ experience and the infrastructure, institutions, and language they now inhabit. It is disclosed in a feeling of exile among the “cold apartment blocks of white culture and technology” and in the alienation of communicating through the “gooseflesh” and “neutral” French language which “demands that all over-vivid or riotous colour be toned down,” a language that reflects white French people’s “halfbaked pallor and our verdigris vegetation.”34 French is the only common language these poets have for communicating with one another and with their widest intended readership, the literal lingua franca of peoples colonized and enslaved by France that has been inherited by their descendants.35 Yet their experience of dissonance between their perspective on the world and the structures of French culture cannot be described literally in that language, precisely because that language is one of the dissonant items. Negritude therefore cannot be described in French “with precise, effective words that always hit their target,” it cannot be disclosed in French prose.36 It is a mistake, Sartre now realises, to believe that words can simply disclose reality like “sense-organs, mouths and hands, windows opened on the world.”37 “Nowhere is this more evident,” he points out, than in “the coupled terms ‘black/white,’ which cover both the great cosmic divide between night and day and the human conflict between the native and the colonialist.”38

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These are not separate meanings, as Sartre’s earlier theory of prose requires, but deeply identify “the superiority the colonialist claims over the native” with “the adoration of daylight and our dread of the night.”39 The purportedly solar use in “black looks” or “the blackness of a soul or a crime” does not merely attribute negativity. It connects that negativity with Black people.40 This is not an isolated case, but exemplifies a pervasive phenomenon. In general, Sartre now thinks, a language codifies the worldview of the powerful people in its original culture, often in more subtle ways than in this example. This is ultimately why negritude cannot be properly disclosed in the prose of any European language.41 It also means that the profoundly political, perhaps even revolutionary, task of communicating ideas that directly challenge the worldview of the powerful, where this worldview is encoded in the only language common to the people among whom these ideas are to be communicated, can only be achieved through poetry.42 SARTRE’S TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY Sartre’s shock on reading the anthology, however, was not simply the realization that he had misunderstood prose and been mistaken about poetry’s political potential. It was the realization that the philosophical method that he had worked on since first reading the works of Edmund Husserl fifteen years earlier, the method that grounded his entire published philosophical work so far, had tacitly assumed this mistaken conception of prose. Negritude poetry presented a challenge to his philosophy at its deepest roots. What is more, that challenge exemplifies features of human experience that Sartre’s philosophy had already elucidated. It therefore demands a reconsideration of his method and the conclusions drawn from it. We can see the outline of this reconsideration in “Black Orpheus,” though its first full expression appeared four years later as Saint Genet, a psychoanalytic biography of a poet, playwright, and professional thief. Sartre’s philosophical method is a form of transcendental phenomenology. It is transcendental in the sense that it attempts to establish claims about the structures of experience and reality through transcendental arguments. A transcendental argument claims its conclusion to be a necessary condition of the truth of its premises and this necessity is not mere logical entailment. There is no contradiction in accepting the premises and rejecting the conclusion. Even so, if the premises are accepted then the conclusion must be accepted. The kind of necessity involved in Sartre’s transcendental arguments is factual necessity: as a matter of fact, if the conclusion were not true then the premises could not be true. The premises of Sartre’s transcendental arguments are phenomenological: they describe features of experiences from the

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perspective of the subject of those experiences. The overall argument structure is that specific factual claims must be true; otherwise, experience could not have the features that we know it does have. We can read the most famous argument in Western philosophy as an early form of transcendental phenomenology. The premise that I am thinking, or more simply that there is thinking, is intended to describe the experiences of doubting and inquiring from the perspective of the meditating subject. René Descartes concludes “I exist” from that premise. Cogito ergo sum. It is well known that there is no logical entailment from the statement “there is thinking” to the statement “I exist,” and that the logical entailment from “I think” to “I exist” is trivial because it relies on the premise already postulating the I that thinks. But if the premise is intended to describe the subject’s experience, then the argument can simply be that it is factually impossible to have that experience while not existing.43 Sartre deploys complicated versions of this style of argument regularly throughout his 1943 book L’Être et le néant, translated as Being and Nothingness, to establish the fundamental nature and structures of conscious experience, of the world, and of their interactions.44 Sartre formulates the premises of these transcendental arguments through his phenomenological method. This is the part of his overall philosophical strategy most seriously challenged by his reading of negritude poetry. It has four stages. First, we must suspend a prejudice that Sartre considers pervasive in our culture, the view of human beings as simply objects standing in causal relations with other objects in the world. We should not be trying to understand experience as the world’s causal impact on us. Second, we need to focus attention not on the objects we experience, but on how they seem in that experience. This allows us to attend to the features of the experience of those objects rather than the features of those objects themselves. Third, we need to describe how they seem. Being and Nothingness contains many little scenes written in novelistic and sometimes cinematic styles. These vignettes are intended to describe how the world appears to us in familiar experiences. One example is Sartre’s description of the café organizing itself around the striking absence of Pierre, whom I expected to meet there.45 The fourth stage is to abstract from these vignettes the essential structures of experience that explain why the world seems the ways that those vignettes describe.46 Although his method is primarily phenomenological rather than proceeding by linguistic analysis, Sartre’s philosophy rests on an assumption about words. The third and fourth stages of his phenomenological method attempt to capture experience in prose. The outcomes of this fourth stage are then used as premises in transcendental arguments whose conclusions attempt to describe fundamental structures of reality in prose. Sartre thus assumes that appearances themselves, their fundamental structures, and the fundamental nature of reality can be delineated in prose sufficiently to warrant the

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conclusions he draws from his premises. Negritude poetry has shown Sartre a world of experience that cannot be described “with precise, effective words that always hit their target,” that cannot be disclosed “in prose.”47 In the next section, we will consider more precisely which aspects of Sartre’s philosophical method needed to be revised in response to his renewed understanding of the powers of prose and poetry. WHAT NEGRITUDE POETRY TAUGHT SARTRE ABOUT PHENOMENOLOGY We can identify two problems that Sartre’s reading of negritude poetry might pose for his philosophical method. One is a general problem that if prose must carry unintended and unnoticed connotations, then perhaps the way the world appears in experience, the fundamental structures of experience, and the fundamental nature of reality itself cannot be described precisely. However, this problem seems easily solved. Sartre’s claims about essential structures of experience and the conclusions he derives from them by transcendental arguments are written in a technical vocabulary whose terms are progressively defined across his work. This is a prominent feature of the transcendental tradition since Immanuel Kant, intended to avoid the ambiguities of ordinary language. Sartre’s vignettes are written in ordinary language, but it does not follow that his technical analyses must be defective as a result. Any such defects in those technical analyses would need to be demonstrated individually and doing so seems likely to indicate how to rectify them. A deeper challenge to Sartre’s method is posed by the more specific problem that there are some kinds of experience that cannot be described literally in the language in which Sartre conducts his phenomenological enterprise. Sartre understands negritude to be a pervasive feature of some people’s experience of the world that will slip away from any attempt to describe it literally in French, just as Eurydice will slip away if Orpheus tries to look at her.48 This seems to indicate that the third stage of Sartre’s method is restricted to experiences consistent with the culture codified in the language used to describe them. Transcendental arguments using that phenomenological method to formulate their premises could be vulnerable to opposing conclusions being drawn from phenomenological premises formulated in other languages. Sartre’s initial understanding of writing affords a solution to this problem. The imagery of poetry, like that of painting or music, can present aspects of experience without describing them literally. “Tintoretto did not choose that yellow rift in the sky above Golgotha to signify anguish or to provoke it,” but rather that yellow paint is anguish reified, anguish itself “submerged

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and impasted.”49 A joyous or sombre melody is one whose notes incorporate a specific emotion, degraded into audial form.50 The affective textures of specific experiences can be isolated from their intentional objects and, by a kind of “transubstantiation,” merged into visual or audial material to form an analogon for an act of imagination.51 Likewise, the poet incorporates a word’s meanings and affective connotations into its visual and audial form. A poet’s phrases are larger images formed of these word-images and the consonances and dissonances between them. For the poet, words are “a trap to catch a fleeting reality”; a phrase can be an image of something that is not literally referred to or described by any of the words it includes.52 Negritude poetry breaks down the customary associations of the colonizers’ language.53 But this is not an attempt to reform the language itself, any more than the absurd juxtapositions of white surrealist poetry are an attempt to destroy the words involved. Given the continual reinforcement of associations and meanings across the wider culture, such an enterprise would take forever.54 More importantly, argues Sartre, the poetic activity of building imagery through words treated as objects could not change those words treated as signs; these are simply two distinct and parallel attitudes toward words.55 Rather, the customary associations of words mitigate against the poet using them to compose images of negritude. They must be suspended to create the “solemn and sacred super-language” required for those images.56 Aspects of experience that cannot be described in prose can then be drawn out and reified in word-images, like Eurydice being led out of the underworld without being looked at directly. Phenomenology therefore does not require the description of experience in prose. Negritude poetry attends to structural features of experiences and produces word-images of them. Because these images can be understood, this poetry discloses negritude even though it does not describe it.57 Negritude poetry is therefore a phenomenology of experience that cannot be rendered into literal prose.58 Sartre uses it to derive conclusions through transcendental reasoning, as we will see in the next section. In doing so, he departs from traditional phenomenology. Like the meditations of Descartes, phenomenology was formulated as an inherently first-person inquiry. We can read Descartes or Husserl, but we should not accept their conclusions without reaching them ourselves through the same process.59 Sartre made philosophical use of the writings of philosophers, psychologists, and novelists before “Black Orpheus,” but only as sources of ideas to be explored by reflecting on his own experience. Negritude poetry has shown him that this methodological solipsism precludes a full understanding of human experience.60 In response, he has revised his phenomenological method to include poetic imagery of experiences that are otherwise unavailable to him.

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WHAT NEGRITUDE POETRY TAUGHT SARTRE ABOUT ONTOLOGY Through this renewal and expansion of his phenomenological method, Sartre discovered that his previous approach had indeed been misleading. An ontological conclusion drawn from his parochial phenomenology by transcendental arguments was indeed vulnerable to an opposing conclusion drawn by transcendental argument from the phenomenology presented by negritude poetry. His theory of “radical freedom” arrived at in Being and Nothingness—and declared to be the first principle of his philosophy in the famous lecture L’Existentialisme est une Humanisme—denied that any person had any innate or inherited outlook that shapes their thought and behavior.61 But now he found that negritude phenomenology could only be explained by an inherited outlook that these poets have in common. Reading negritude poetry led Sartre to revise his basic ontology of human existence. Sartre describes negritude poetry as a process of discovery and becoming.62 The negritude poets find deep in themselves “a certain affective attitude to the world,” he claims, which is an attitude of protest and resentment, a way of experiencing and understanding the world, one that respects and harnesses natural rhythms and forces rather than trying to subjugate them through technologies.63 It is a way of understanding through sympathy rather than through analysis.64 Sartre maintains his view that negritude cannot be defined in literal prose. These comments are intended only to gesture toward and roughly circumscribe it, “to indicate the route by which we [white people] can gain access to this jet-black world.”65 This negritude is inherited culturally, through “the still fresh memory of a historical past,” the “enormous nightmare” of the violence of colonialism and slavery that even the youngest of these poets, born more than half a century after the abolition of that slavery, “do not know whether they have properly awoken from.”66 In short, the negritude poet “finds race at the bottom of his heart.”67 Sartre has been accused of assuming an innate essence, a fixed nature, “necessary, intrinsic features of black people” which determine attitudes and behavior.68 However, he does not think of negritude as innate or fixed. Rather, he thinks of it as “a tensing of the soul, a choice of oneself and others—in short, a project.”69 This project is formed through cultural upbringing without needing to be thought about explicitly. Negritude “is a flickering between ‘is’ and ‘ought’; it makes you and you make it: it is pledge and passion at one and the same time.”70 Sartre remains faithful to his dictum that “existence precedes essence” here: both temporally and logically, a person’s existence is prior to the evaluative outlook that shapes their thought and behavior. But he now thinks an evaluative outlook can be inherited during childhood, leaving

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one to decide whether to remain committed to it, where previously he thought that such an outlook could only be freely adopted by individual choice. Even so, Sartre can be criticized for reading this poetry as portraying the experience of Black francophone people generally, an experience unavailable to white people. Throughout the essay, he regularly writes as though people in one racial category experience the world in a profoundly different way from those in the other category. If the defining evaluative outlooks are culturally inherited, then variations between families and across communities will surely lead to differences in which aspects of this outlook are passed on. However, in more careful moments Sartre is aware of this.71 Moreover, since he does not think that an inherited outlook is immutable, since he still thinks that individuals retain the freedom to change their outlooks, it remains that two people who inherited precisely the same outlook might not have the same outlook later in life. Despite some of his comments, therefore, his overall view is not that Black and white people within the francophone world are distinguished by different evaluative outlooks. It is simply that negritude poetry discloses common aspects of the experience of these poets, which reflect their cultural background and so are likely to be shared by other people with relevantly similar cultural backgrounds. This is enough for negritude poetry to present a profound challenge to his conception of prose and thereby to his philosophical method, the reformation of which allows him to use this poetry as disclosing phenomenology that is not directly available to him. This renewed method grounds a transcendental argument for a theory of project sedimentation, which replaces his earlier theory of radical freedom. According to his earlier theory, the projects that shape our attitudes and behavior are essentially values, which have no being in themselves but are wholly dependent on consciousness. As a result, they become our projects only if we choose them and they persist only insofar as we continue to choose them.72 There can be difficulties in correctly identifying our existing projects and we might not want all the implications of changing them, but if we do identify them and genuinely want to change them then we are able to do so without resistance from those projects themselves. Through reading this poetry, Sartre has found that the phenomenology it portrays requires that projects and the values they embody can be inherited through upbringing and can increase in inertia over time, making them more influential over our outlooks and more difficult to change.73 Negritude poetry has therefore provided Sartre with reason to revise his theory of freedom. We might still ask why he did revise that theory rather than simply deny the reality of project sedimentation. One reason is that a white European man cannot occupy the epistemic position needed to evaluate the veracity of the collective phenomenology of the negritude poets. Another

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is that negritude poetry itself explains why Sartre’s own phenomenology might be incomplete: when there is no dissonance between one’s perspective and the world one inhabits, one’s experience does not indicate a culturally inherited and deeply engrained attitude toward the world; one’s outlook just seems to track the way things are.74 For three thousand years, as Sartre puts it, white Europeans have assumed that their gaze “lit up Creation like a torch,” but this assumption has been shattered by the presentation of contrary experiences that cannot be described literally in their languages.75 Sartre has good reason to believe that his own phenomenological descriptions are incomplete. He is therefore right to reject radical freedom in favor of project sedimentation as a fundamental aspect of human ontology. HOW NEGRITUDE POETRY TAUGHT SARTRE ABOUT PHENOMENOLOGY AND ONTOLOGY Sartre’s reading of negritude poetry has transformed his phenomenological method from the specific attempt to delineate the structures of his own experience in prose to a broader inquiry that encompasses experiences he cannot have. Through this expanded method, he has replaced one of the most basic claims of his ontology of human existence. The primary impetus was a challenge to his idea that the prose writer “is surrounded by a verbal body which he is hardly aware of and which extends his action upon the world.”76 Negritude poetry showed him that this transparency of language requires a consonance between words and experience that is only available to speakers whose cultural outlook has fashioned the language in the first place. His ambition to delineate the essential structures of experience and then to deduce from them the ultimate nature of reality cannot be achieved from such a restricted epistemic position. He needs to include experiences that cannot be described sharply in his language. Where ontological conclusions derived from those experiences conflict with ontological conclusions derived from the dominant culture’s experiences, this conflict should be attributed to the epistemic limitations of the dominant culture. On reading negritude poetry, Sartre discovered something that was already at least suggested by some of his most memorable phenomenological descriptions in Being and Nothingness, where he described being seen by a stranger as “a decentring of the world” and “the disintegration of my universe.”77 Sartre thinks our ordinary basic experience presents the immediate environment as a field of meanings that reflect our understanding of the world and reasons that reflect our values.78 When a stranger looks at me, my familiar world is abruptly replaced by their field of meanings and reasons, some of which I might infer from their behavior, but which will remain generally opaque to

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me because I cannot experience it directly.79 Sartre describes this experience as “original shame” and “fundamental shame.”80 It is indeed a kind of humiliation, an abrupt removal from a presumed position of epistemic privilege and authority. When I am seen by a stranger, “I am no longer master of the situation.”81 Reading negritude poetry was, for Sartre, a profound form of this experience. It challenged not merely the meanings and reasons of the world as he experiences it, but his deeper philosophical understanding of experience and reality. It abruptly removed him from his presumed position of epistemic authority as a philosopher able to ground theories of reality in carefully described phenomenology. The illusion of epistemic adequacy that is generated by the illusion of linguistic transparency had been shattered, revealing the partial and perspectival nature of his philosophy. This is what he describes as “the shock of being seen.”82 It is no exaggeration to describe this as “revolutionary.”83 It is not merely Sartre himself that has been dethroned. It is the dominant culture to which he belongs. The presumption that the experiences of white Europeans described in their own languages were sufficient to understand human existence has been exposed and demonstrated to be false. Epistemic access to the structures of experience and reality have been shown to require consideration of the experiences of people outside the dominant culture, especially experiences that cannot be described literally in the dominant culture’s languages. This helps to explain something about the transformation of Sartre’s philosophy in “Black Orpheus” that might otherwise seem puzzling. Sartre had already been presented with reasons to abandon his theory of radical freedom in favor of project sedimentation years before he read this anthology of negritude poetry. The idea is already present in Simone de Beauvoir’s Quand prime le spirituel (When Things of the Spirit Come First), written in the late 1930s, and developed in her L’Invitée (She Came To Stay), published in 1943, the same year as Being and Nothingness.84 Why did reading negritude poetry persuade Sartre to adopt the theory of project sedimentation, when Beauvoir’s phenomenological descriptions written before and during the drafting of Being and Nothingness did not? Indeed, why did reading negritude poetry persuade Sartre to abandon his methodological solipsism and start drawing upon presentations of the phenomenology of experiences that are unavailable to him, when Beauvoir’s phenomenological descriptions of women’s experiences that did not seem to fit his ontology of human existence did not? From within the confines of the philosophical method he had painstakingly developed, Sartre had no reason to accept conclusions drawn from Beauvoir’s phenomenological descriptions of women’s experience if those conclusions conflicted with his theory of radical freedom. As a systematic philosopher in the tradition of Descartes, Kant, and Husserl, Sartre should not accept the

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veracity of phenomenological descriptions or other kinds of arguments without having a reason to do so grounded, whether directly or indirectly, in his own philosophical method. Negritude poetry not only presented Sartre with phenomenology inconsistent with his own but did so also in a way that shone bright black light on his previously hidden presumption that his perspective and literal language were sufficient for uncovering fundamental truths of human existence. His own theory of the look, of original or fundamental shame, required him to recognize in response that he could not be master of the phenomenology and ontology of human existence. True to the ambition of his philosophical tradition, his response was to revise his method just enough to remove that previously hidden presumption, then accept the implications of doing so. What changed Sartre’s mind was the shock of being seen.85 LISTENING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL TECHNIQUE Daniel Maximin wrote that Sartre’s importance for the descendants of people colonized or enslaved by France “comes less from what he told us than from how he listened to us.”86 The tacit assumption that universal knowledge is produced by white European minds, argues Maximin, has led even the most anti-colonial of white European intellectuals to treat colonized people as objects of study rather than as collaborators in the pursuit of truth, and to presume that the past and future of the colonized are to be decided by their colonizers.87 Sartre was the exception. Sartre listened and learned, according to Maximin, from “Black Orpheus” until the end of his life thirty-two years later. His speeches and writings about anti-colonial struggles consistently aimed to bring white European people to listen to the voices of colonized people.88 Sartre explicitly addresses “Black Orpheus” to white readers, explaining that his purpose is to bring them to listen to the voices of these negritude poets, who themselves are writing only for Black readers.89 He does the same in his preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth published thirteen years later.90 Sartre deployed this attitude of listening as a profound philosophical technique. He took negritude poetry seriously as phenomenology. He did not first filter this writing through his own methodological solipsism, use of prose to delineate experience, ontology of human existence, and theory of literature. Rather, he allowed himself to hear these voices in full, only afterward considering the challenges they present to his philosophy.91 In doing so, he has demonstrated that listening can be a powerful philosophical process. Listening to negritude poets has led him to transform his understandings of writing and of the structures of human experience and existence. Perhaps most importantly, listening to negritude poets has broken

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open his traditional white European method of philosophy. From this point on, his philosophical inquiries cannot rely solely on the phenomenology of experiences available to the specific category of people who have dominated the European intellectual tradition. They must incorporate and indeed prioritize the voices of people marginalized in that tradition. Listening has demonstrated the need for more listening. Given these implications of Sartre’s reading of negritude poetry, it is unfortunate that the reception of “Black Orpheus” has focused on its final phase, where Sartre describes negritude as “the weaker up-beat in a dialectical progression,” the antithesis to the thesis of white supremacy, preparing the way for the synthesis of “a society without races.”92 Negritude “is transitional, not final,” Sartre concludes, “a means, not an end”; having successfully led Eurydice out of the underworld, the Black Orpheus embraces her and then feels her vanishing in his arms, not slipping back into the underworld but disappearing altogether.93 Frantz Fanon famously responded that this passage belittled the achievement of the negritude poets as a mere historical inevitability and undermined Black people’s need to affirm a distinctive identity.94 We can add that Sartre’s brief description of a society without races, where Black people “assimilate white technics,” sounds rather like one in which “the great black river” of negritude has become diluted away in “the sea into which it hurls itself,” the dominant white culture.95 It has been argued that Sartre’s mistake here was to fail to listen to Black voices, instead making negritude poetry the object of his white philosophical gaze.96 However, the text does not support this accusation. Sartre introduces the idea that negritude is a dialectical stage in history by quoting Léopold Sédar Senghor, editor of the anthology.97 He goes on to illustrate the idea by quoting two of the anthologized poets, Jacques Roumain and Aimé Césaire.98 Fanon understands negritude poetry in the same way. His criticism of “Black Orpheus” is neither that Sartre was wrong to see the abolition of racial categories as the ultimate aim nor that Sartre is wrong to see the negritude movement as a step toward that aim. It is rather that in making these statements in print Sartre has precluded the strategy of achieving that aim in this way.99 Even so, Sartre has made a methodological error here, not merely a strategic one. Although he is still listening to the negritude poets at this point in the essay, he is no longer doing so in the same way. He continues to hear their phenomenology of negritude, but no longer deploys this in his method of transcendental phenomenology. Rather, he integrates it into a dialectical theory of history to which some of these authors subscribe. This theory is not grounded in his own philosophical method. There is no argument for it in Being and Nothingness, which even seems to contradict it.100 Neither does the revised form of this method allow him to accept a theory purely because it is articulated by these authors. Sartre’s error in the final phase of “Black

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Orpheus” is not that he stops listening, but that he stops integrating what he hears into his philosophical outlook through transcendental phenomenology. His error is to abandon at this point the philosophical method that had licensed the transformative lessons he had already learned from the negritude poets and articulated across the rest of the essay.101 NOTES 1. Jean-Paul Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” in The Aftermath of War (Situations III), translated by Chris Turner, 259–29 (Oxford: Seagull Books, 2008), 259. 2. Ibid., 263–64. 3. Ibid., 259. 4. Ibid., 259. 5. Jean-Paul Sartre, What is Literature?, translated by Bernard Frechtman (London: Routledge, 1993), 10–11. 6. Jean-Paul Sartre, The Imaginary: A Phenomenological Psychology of the Imagination, translated by Jonathan Webber (London: Routledge, 2004), 21–25. 7. Ibid., 25–29. 8. Ibid., 7. 9. Ibid., 6. 10. Ibid., 6–7. 11. Ibid., 7. 12. Ibid., 9. 13. Ibid., 6. 14. Ibid., 16. 15. Ibid., 70–73. 16. Sartre, What is Literature? 16. 17. Sartre’s essay itself contains plenty of examples. At one point, for example, he describes language as “our carapace and our antennae” (Ibid., 12). At another, he claims that recent articles criticizing his idea of engaged literature “contain nothing more than a long scandalized sigh which drags on over two or three columns” (17). Further on, he describes recent dismissive analyses of great historical works of literature as designed to allow readers “to fully enjoy the well known superiority of live dogs to dead lions” (21). In all cases, he surrounds his imagery with literal descriptions of the point he is making. Given the theory articulated in this article, this embedding of imagery seems intended not merely to avoid ambiguity, but also to maintain the prose attitude in the reader. 18. Ibid., 6, 12. 19. Ibid., 12. 20. Ibid., 11. 21. Ibid., 11. 22. Ibid., 6, 14. 23. Ibid., 7. 24. Ibid., 12.

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25. Ibid., 12–15. Although he does not explicitly consider this, Sartre’s conception of prose here seems intended to cover drama as well as novels, essays, and journalism. Over the three years before he published this argument, Sartre himself was developing a critique of patriarchy through a series of plays and screenplays whose plots are driven in part by oppressive gendered structures of social interaction, features of social life that are noticeably absent from otherwise comparable literature of the time, and this project continued in his subsequent dramatic works. For a detailed explanation of this, see my “Sartre’s Critique of Patriarchy,” in French Studies. 26. Sartre, What is Literature?, 5–6. 27. Ibid., 6. 28. Ibid., 11. 29. Léopold Sédar Senghor (ed.), Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948. 30. Souleymane Bachir Diagne, “Négritude” (Revised version, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed February 28, 2023, https://plato​.stanford​.edu​/entries​ /negritude, §§ 1–2. 31. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 263. 32. Ibid., 275. 33. Ibid., 263, 270–71. 34. Ibid., 276–77. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 279. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 282. 39. Ibid., 284. 40. Ibid., 282. 41. Ibid., 297. 42. Ibid., 281. Paige Arthur is therefore mistaken to read “Black Orpheus” as applying the theory of engaged literature that Sartre published the previous year (Unfinished Projects: Decolonisation and the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre [London: Verso, 2010], 30, 38). Neither is Sartre extending to poetry the theory that he had previously reserved for prose. Rather, his reading of negritude poetry has transformed his theory of literature, by identifying an error in his original understanding of prose. 43. Mark Sacks, “The Nature of Transcendental Arguments,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 13 (2005): 446. 44. Jonathan Webber, “Sartre’s Transcendental Phenomenology,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology, ed. Dan Zahavi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 294–98; Jonathan Webber, “Sartre’s Critique of Husserl,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2020): 168–74. 45. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Sarah Richmond. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 41–43. 46. For a detailed explanation of this method and its evolution across Sartre’s works from 1936 to 1943, see Webber, “Sartre’s Critique of Husserl,” 164–68. 47. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 279.

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48. Ibid., 274, 278–9. 49. Sartre, What is Literature?, 3. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 3–4. 52. Ibid., 7. 53. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 281. 54. Sartre, What is Literature?, 5. 55. Ibid., 5–6. 56. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 297, 281. 57. Ibid., 297. 58. Ibid., 325. 59. Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijohff, 1950), 2, 7. 60. Matthew Eshleman has argued that Sartre abandoned methodological solipsism in Part Three of Being and Nothingness (“Beauvoir and Sartre on Freedom, Intersubjectivity, and Normative Justification,” Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence, eds. Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009], 68). However, the term “methodological solipsism” is ambiguous. In one sense, it means relying only on the deliverances of one’s own experience to ground one’s philosophical reasoning. Sartre’s method was solipsistic in this sense up until “Black Orpheus.” In another sense, it means analysing the structures of experience without positing a mind-independent world or other people. Sartre’s method was solipsistic in this sense in the works preceding Being and Nothingness, but that book opens with a phenomenological argument for a mind-independent world (as I argue across each of “Sartre’s Transcendental Phenomenology” and “Sartre’s Critique of Husserl”). Eshleman’s claim is that Sartre then proceeds without positing the existence of other people until Part Three, where the dimension of “being-for-others” is added to “being-for-itself” (“Beauvoir and Sartre on Freedom,” 68–69). My view is subtly different: Sartre presupposes the social dimension of human existence in Part One of Being and Nothingness, but does not consider its role in the ontology of the individual until Part Three (see my “Bad Faith and the Other,” in Reading Sartre: On Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. Jonathan Webber (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2011), 180–94). 61. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans. Carol Macomber (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 22–23. 62. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 287. 63. Ibid., 298, 294, 298, 300–7. 64. Ibid., 302. 65. Ibid., 263–64. 66. Ibid., 312. 67. Ibid., 323. 68. Lewis Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (New York: Humanity Books, 1995), 4. 69. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 298–99. 70. Ibid., 319.

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71. Ibid., 318–19. 72. On the close conceptual connection in Being and Nothingness between beingin-itself and resistance to our intentions, see: Webber, “Sartre’s Critique of Husserl,” 162–64, 170; Jonathan Webber, “Rethinking Existentialism: From Radical Freedom to Project Sedimentation,” in Freedom After Kant: From German Idealism to Ethics and the Self, ed. Joe Saunders (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), 192–93. 73. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 322–24. In the terminology of my book Rethinking Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), “Black Orpheus” is a work of classical existentialism, because it retains the idea that “existence precedes essence,” but is the first work in which Sartre understands that phrase to describe project sedimentation, so is his first work of canonical existentialism (Rethinking Existentialism, 1–6, 9–11). It is therefore mistaken to read “Black Orpheus” as consistent with the ontology of Being and Nothingness and explain away any seemingly essentialist language as merely a rhetorical device (Arthur, Unfinished Projects, 34–36). That language reflects his revised understanding of the idea that existence precedes essence. 74. Betty Jean Stoneman has suggested that white European culture’s traditional presumption of the epistemic adequacy of white European experience as a guide to universal truths is a form of Sartrean bad faith (“Sartre’s Imaginary and the Problem of Whiteness,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 49 [2023]: 11–12). Sartre’s understanding of this presumption, by contrast, holds it to be a genuine mistake, an illusion generated by the pervasive resonances between white European people’s experiences, the world they inhabit, and the languages they speak. 75. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 260. 76. Sartre, What is Literature?, 6. 77. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 351. 78. Webber, Rethinking Existentialism, 42–47. 79. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 358–63, 366. 80. Ibid., 394. 81. Ibid., 363. 82. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 259. 83. Ibid., 264. 84. Webber, Rethinking Existentialism, 57–67; Webber, “Rethinking Existentialism: From Radical Freedom to Project Sedimentation,” 193–98. 85. The same point might be made about Richard Wright’s influence. Margaret Simons has argued that reading Wright in the early 1940s and discussing ideas with him from 1946 onward significantly shaped Beauvoir’s thought in The Second Sex, especially her theory of project sedimentation (“Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir, and The Second Sex,” in Beauvoir and The Second Sex: Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism, ed. Margaret A. Simons (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 177). However, this overlooks the presence of this idea in Quand prime le spirituel. It seems rather that Beauvoir and Wright had developed similar perspectives in parallel, which might explain the deep friendship they formed on meeting. Wright’s descriptions of African American experience, like Beauvoir’s descriptions of women’s experience, do present a challenge to Sartre’s theories, but Sartre could

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not alter those theories in response without a reason to transform his underlying methodology. The methodological revision demanded by his reading of negritude poetry licensed a revision of his theory of freedom that aligned it with Beauvoir’s and Wright’s theories of character formation. 86. Daniel Maximin, “Sartre Listening to the Savages,” Telos 44 (1980): 202. 87. Ibid., 203. 88. Ibid., 204. 89. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 264. 90. Jean-Paul Sartre, “The Wretched of the Earth,” in Colonialism and Neocolonialism (Situations V), trans. Azzedine Haddour, Steve Brewer, and Terry McWilliams (London: Routledge, 2001), 141. Malesela John Lamola points out that in developing his thought through engagement with the ideas of colonized people, Sartre exemplifies his own theory of the ego as a transcendent object shaped by the individual’s projects as these are seen by other people (“On the Transcendence of Self-identity: A Philosophical Account of Sartre’s Personal Praxis,” African Identities 20 (2022): 73–88). Lamola’s analysis overlooks the development of Sartre’s theory from radical freedom to project sedimentation, but his central point is consistent with this aspect of Sartre’s philosophy. Moreover, we can extend his point to add that Sartre’s desire for his fellow white European people generally to have their outlooks transformed by listening to colonized people is grounded in that same theory. Mabogo Percy More argues that Sartre’s strategy of amplifying the voices of colonized people necessarily carried the risk of distorting those voices, but despite this it brought Sartre’s philosophy to the attention of the black intellectuals who transformed it into an instrument of black emancipation (Sartre on Contingency: Antiblack Racism and Embodiment (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), 264–65; see also 232–35). Lamola’s point can be applied here too: this incorporation of Sartre’s thought by black intellectuals exemplifies Sartre’s theory of the ego. 91. It is therefore mistaken to claim that Sartre constructed the image of negritude from the perspective of his own philosophy, which is grounded in the presumption of the universal applicability of white European experience (Stoneman, “Sartre’s Imaginary,” 9–11). Sartre does describe negritude in terms of his own philosophy, but he does so by transforming his philosophy to accommodate the poets’ own imagery of negritude. 92. Sartre, “Black Orpheus,” 320. 93. Ibid. 94. Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Mask (Grove Press: New York, 2008), 112–14. Valentin-Yves Mudimbe argues that Sartre “transformed negritude into a major political event and a philosophical criticism of colonialism” that “made the voices of negritude widely known,” but which provided this dialectical perspective for the reception of those voices (The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge [Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1988], 83–86). Souleymane Bachir Diagne agrees that “Black Orpheus” was enormously influential in popularizing negritude, establishing this anthology as its central text, and shaping its reception, adding that the subsequent history of the negritude movement is largely concerned with distancing itself from Sartre’s dialectical perspective (“Négritude,”

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§ 4). Bennetta Jules-Rosette analyses the arguments of two prominent critics of the negritude movement, Stanislas Adotevi and René Depestre, as partly motivated by this aspect of Sartre’s essay (“Jean-Paul Sartre and the Philosophy of Negritude: Race, Self, and Society,” Theory and Society 36 (2007): 274–76). 95. “Black Orpheus,” 326. See also Stoneman, “Sartre’s Imaginary,” 8. 96. Robert Bernasconi, “Existentialism Against Colonialism: Sartre, Fanon, and the Place of Lived Experience,” in Sartre and The International Impact of Existentialism, eds. Alfred Betschart and Juliane Werner (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 329–30. See also Stoneman, “Sartre’s Imaginary,” 7–8. 97. “Black Orpheus,” 319. 98. Ibid., 320–22. More points out that Césaire repudiated this interpretation of his work and that Sartre simply followed Senghor in propounding it (Sartre on Contingency, 196). 99. Webber, Rethinking Existentialism, 136–45. 100. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 557, 651–53, 750. 101. Earlier versions of this paper were given at the philosophy work-in-progress seminar at Cardiff University in March 2022 and the Sartre Now! online workshop hosted by the Royal Holloway University of London Centre for Continental Philosophy in April 2022. I am grateful to Sophie Archer, Jay Conway, Mary Edwards, Storm Heter, Paul Irikefe, Jonathan Mitchell, Henry Somers-Hall, and Alessandra Tanesini for their insightful comments and questions.

REFERENCES Arthur, Paige. Unfinished Projects: Decolonisation and the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. London: Verso, 2010. Bernasconi, Robert. “Existentialism Against Colonialism: Sartre, Fanon, and the Place of Lived Experience.” In Sartre and The International Impact of Existentialism. Edited by Alfred Betschart and Juliane Werner, 327–42. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Diagne, Souleymane Bachir. “Négritude.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Last modified January 24, 2023. https://plato​.stanford​.edu​/entries​/negritude. Eshleman, Matthew. “Beauvoir and Sartre of Freedom, Intersubjectivity, and Normative Justification.” In Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of Influence. Edited by Christine Daigle and Jacob Golomb, 65–89. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2008. First published as Peau noire, masques blancs, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952. Gordon, Lewis. Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. New York: Humanity Books, 1995. Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Translated by Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijohff, 1950. First published as Meditations Cartesiennes: Introduction à la phenomenologie, translated by Gabrielle Peiffer and Emmanuel Levinas, Paris: Armand Collin, 1931.

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———. Rethinking Existentialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ———. “Sartre’s Transcendental Phenomenology.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology. Edited by Dan Zahavi, 286–1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ———. “Sartre’s Critique of Husserl.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (2020): 155–76. ———. “Rethinking Existentialism: From Radical Freedom to Project Sedimentation.” In Freedom after Kant: From German Idealism to Ethics and the Self. Edited by Joe Saunders, 191–204. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. ———. Sartre’s Critique of Patriarchy. French Studies.

Index

Africa, 12, 14, 32, 40, 72, 82, 89, 105, 107, 108, 110–11, 115, 117, 119, 154, 163n28, 181, 184–86, 199, 202, 213; Africana existentialism, 10, 106, 108, 118–20, 122, 126, 128, 135, 145 Afro-Caribbean, 11–15, 119 Ahmed, Sara, 111, 115, 118, 126, 128 Algeria, 107, 113–15 anti-racism, 17, 26, 73, 106, 111, 113– 15, 119, 120, 125, 127, 143, 149, 154, 158, 162n23 authenticity, 27, 29, 40, 60, 106, 107, 138–40, 191–95, 199–202

Caribbean, vii, viii, ix, x, xi, 1, 9, 11–20 Colonialism and Neocolonialism, 107, 179 colonialism, vii, x, 17, 51, 105–7, 109–10, 113–15, 117, 120, 124, 125, 128, 154, 156, 162n23, 179, 181–83, 185–86, 218, 228n94 communitarianism, ix, 9, 11–18 creolization, vii, ix-xi, 98, 105–6, 112, 116–18, 121, 123–25, 142, 191–92 Critique of Dialectical Reason, x, 10, 85, 87–88, 94, 106, 149, 162n21, 163n29, 197

bad faith, 6, 10–11, 28–31, 33, 73, 97, 106, 126, 128, 138–45, 175, 191–94, 197, 199, 200, 203, 226n60 Beauvoir, Simone, vii, 29, 35, 47n26, 71n32, 71, 106, 107, 109, 111, 114, 116, 121, 125–28, 151, 210 Being and Nothingness, vii, 5, 7, 46n17, 51, 60, 64, 65, 72n37, 107, 126, 135, 138–39, 173, 176n12, 193, 197, 215, 218, 220, 221, 223, 226n60, 227n72 Belle, Kathryn Sophia, 116, 127 Biko, Steve, 119, 149, 158–60 Black Orpheus, xi, 56, 70n28, 82, 110–13, 116, 126, 144, 203, 209–10, 213–14, 217, 221–23

Davis, Miles, ix, 25–45 Descartes, Rene, 3, 4, 12, 69n15, 215, 217, 221 Ethics of Ambiguity, 126, 161n11 ethics, vii, x, 107, 124, 126 eurocentrism, xi, 105, 117, 120–21 existentialism, vii, ix, x-xi, 1–9, 12, 15, 27, 35, 38, 44, 67, 68, 87–88, 96, 99, 105–6, 108–10, 113, 116–20, 124–27, 169, 209, 227n73 Fanon, Frantz, vii, xi, 15, 18, 33, 36, 56, 71, 82, 93–94, 96, 99, 107–13, 116, 121, 125–27, 143–55, 162n20, 233

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Index

164n44, 179–80, 185–88, 192, 222, 223 feminism, 112, 115, 126–28 freedom, vii-viii, ix, 3, 5, 9–13, 15–18, 27, 31, 33, 51, 54–55, 60, 67, 68, 85–87, 108–9, 122, 125, 141, 145, 150–51, 153, 169–75, 193, 196, 219–21 functional ultimacy, xi, 168–74 gaze, the, xi, 33, 106, 108, 111, 125, 126, 179, 210, 220, 223 Glissant, Édouard, 82, 106, 108, 112, 117, 122–23, 126 Global South, vii, x, xi, 83, 105, 107, 109, 112–13, 115–22, 129 Gordon, Jane Anna, 117, 125 Gordon, Lewis R., vii, 3–4, 10, 18, 73, 82, 96, 99, 106, 116, 118, 119, 125–27, 143, 159 Haiti, 117, 149, 154–58, 160 Harris, Wilson, x, 81–102 Hegel, G. W. F., 1, 2, 4, 7, 10, 69n15, 82, 84, 94, 96, 106, 118, 121, 126 humanism, xi, 15, 17–18, 106, 107, 118, 172, 175, 180–83, 187 Husserl, Edmund, 4, 5, 69n15, 70n24, 84, 99–102, 106, 126, 214, 217, 221

Martinique, 117, 183 Nausea, vii, ix, 35, 51–68, 70n19, 71n33, 98, 107 Negritude, xi-xii, 56, 107, 109–13, 127, 144, 199, 209–25, 228n94 oppression, vii, x, 17–18, 88, 108, 109, 112, 115–17, 119, 149, 151–53, 156, 161n11, 162n23, 169–70, 174 phenomenology, vii, x, 5, 28, 37–38, 40, 44, 51–54, 56, 59, 67, 68, 69n17, 98–102, 106–8, 111, 113, 119–21, 124–28, 135, 145, 214–24 poetry, vii, 51, 56, 81, 101, 105, 108, 110, 112, 209–24 praxis, 64, 88, 106, 109, 114, 124, 127, 149–60, 162n23 Rastafarianism, ix, 13–19 recognition, 11, 113, 116, 126–27, 145, 169, 185, 187, 201–2 Roberts, Neil, 126 Sartre Studies International, 119, 124 Search for a Method, vii, 116 shame, 135, 139–44, 221–22 South Africa, 158–59, 162n20

Indigenous peoples, 93, 163 jazz, ix, 25–28, 33–42, 51, 54–59, 61–64, 66 Jones, William R., 127, 141, 167–75 Judaism, 61–62, 107, 108, 111, 115, 124, 154, 162n21

Wretched of the Earth, xi, 15, 18, 82, 113–14, 116, 179–88, 222, 228n90 Young, Iris Marion, x, 115, 127, 149–60

About the Contributors

Lawrence O. Bamikole holds a PhD in philosophy from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. He is currently a professor of philosophy at the Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. His research interests include issues related to problems of development, violence, identity, and the application of value philosophy to Africa and Caribbean social, political, and cultural affairs. James B. Haile III is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rhode Island. Haile has held a joint appointment in the Department of English and is currently jointly appointed in the Department of Women and Gender Studies. His first book, The Buck, the Black, and the Existential Hero, was published in 2020. In addition to numerous articles on Kendrick Lamar, Ralph Ellison, and Ta-Nehisi Coates (to name a few), Haile recently completed a collection of Black speculative short stories. T Storm Heter is author of The Sonic Gaze: Jazz, Whiteness, and Listening (2022), Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement: Authenticity and Civic Virtue (2006), and numerous articles on Sartre. He is executive editor of Sartre Studies International, former president of the North American Sartre Society, and co-edits Rowman & Littlefield’s Living Existentialism book series along with Devin Zane Shaw and LaRose T. Parris. He lives, teaches, and writes in Pennsylvania, in the United States, in what is the traditional homeland of the Lenape people (Lenapehoking). Paget Henry is an emeritus professor of sociology and Africana studies at Brown University. He is a founding member of the Caribbean Philosophical 235

236

About the Contributors

Association and the author of several books, including Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy, Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua, and The Art of Mali Olatunji: Painterly Photography from Antigua and Barbuda. He is also the editor of the CLR James Journal and of The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books Thomas Meagher is an assistant professor of philosophy at Sam Houston State University. He specializes in Africana philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, political thought, philosophy of science, and philosophy of race and gender. He is co-editor of Black Issues in Philosophy and his work has appeared in Contemporary Political Theory, Philosophy and Global Affairs, Sartre Studies International, Socialism and Democracy, and The Southern Journal of Philosophy. Michael J. Monahan is past vice president and current treasurer of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, and professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis. His teaching and research focus primarily on the philosophy of race and racism, political philosophy, phenomenology, and Hegel. He is the author of Creolizing Practices of Freedom: Recognition and Dissonance (2022). Anthony Sean Neal is a Beverly B. and Gordon W. Gulmon Humanities Professor and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Mississippi State University. He is also a faculty fellow in the Shackouls Honors College of Mississippi State University with an affiliation in the Department of African American Studies. He is a 2019 inductee into the Morehouse College Collegium of Scholars and the 2022–2023 American Philosophical Association Edinburgh Fellow. Dr. Neal is the author of three books. His latest book is, Philosophy and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle: A Freedom Gaze (2022). Nathalie Nya’s areas of expertise are political theory, ethics, post-colonial philosophy, philosopher of race, feminism, and womanism. She teaches at Case Western Reserve University and at John Carroll University. She is the author of Simone de Beauvoir and the Colonial Experience: Freedom, Violence, and Identity (2019). She is working on a second manuscript that attempts to put into dialogue political theory, ethics, and post-colonial philosophy. The second manuscript is scheduled to be published in 2024. She has started gaining expertise in decolonial ecology and is presently working on an article on the subject. After the article’s publication, Dr. Nya hopes to gain a contract to write a third book on “a” decolonial eco-feminism. Her role models are Fanon, Simone de Beauvoir, and Sartre.

About the Contributors

237

Kris F. Sealey is a professor of philosophy at Fairfield University at Penn State University. She graduated from Spelman College in 2001 with a BS in mathematics, and received both her MA and PhD in philosophy from the University of Memphis. Dr. Sealey served as the book review editor of the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy from 2011 to 2022. From 2018 to 2021, she also directed PIKSI-Rock (Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute), a summer immersion experience at Penn State for underrepresented undergraduate students with an interest in pursuing a doctorate in philosophy. Dr. Sealey’s areas of research include continental philosophy, critical philosophy of race, Caribbean philosophy, and decolonial theory. Her first book, Moments of Disruption: Levinas, Sartre and the Question of Transcendence, was published in December 2013. Her second book, Creolizing the Nation, published in September 2020, was awarded the Guillén Batista book award by the Caribbean Philosophical Association in 2022. Seki Hiroaki is a PhD student at the Sorbonne Université and is writing a thesis on the notion of literature in Sartre’s works. His research interests include twentieth-century French literature, with a special focus on Sartre. His principal publications are “Sartre et la figure de Cassandre” (International Sartre Studies, 2017), “Humanisme et la question du langage: Sartre lecteur de Brice Parain” (ibid., 2020), “The Discovery of the Other in Post-War Japan: Two Sartreans on Kyoto School and Zainichi Koreans” (cowritten with Kobayashi Nariaki, in Sartre and the International Impact of Existentialism, 2020), and others. Jonathan Webber is a professor of philosophy at Cardiff University and president of the UK Sartre Society. He is the author of Rethinking Existentialism (2018) and The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre (2009), editor of From Personality to Virtue: Essays on the Philosophy of Character (2016) and Reading Sartre: on Phenomenology and Existentialism (2011), and translator of Sartre’s book The Imaginary (2004). He has published numerous articles on existentialism, phenomenology, character, and virtue.