Black Existentialism

By: John E. Drabinski
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  • Summary

  • Podcasted process pieces from my course Black Existentialism. The course introduces one of the most important and potent mid-century intellectual movements - the existentialist movement - through a series of black Atlantic thinkers. Our keystone will be Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, which is arguably the most important work of Black existentialism from this period. Across the semester we will see why existentialism, with its focus on the ambiguities and ambivalences of lived-experience, had such a deep impact on Black thinkers across the diaspora. We will see these existentialist insights register in literature, philosophy, and film. Old and new.
    © 2024 John E. Drabinski
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Art Literary History & Criticism
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Episodes
  • Jenkins on Masculinity, Touch, and Vulnerability

    Jenkins on Masculinity, Touch, and Vulnerability
    Apr 27 2023

    A discussion of Barry Jenkins' 2016 film Moonlight, with particular focus on the question of masculinity and race. How do touch, vulnerability, and beauty change the way we think about masculine identification? What does it mean to put this vision of masculinity in conversation with Richard Wright's rendering of re-masculation as violence, domination, and the capacity to injure and end life? What other world is possible?
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    23 mins
  • Wright on Guns, Masculinity, and Violence

    Wright on Guns, Masculinity, and Violence
    Apr 26 2023

    A treatment of Richard Wright's short story "The Man Who Was Almost A Man," which examines the place of violence, guns, and respect in radicalized formations of masculinity. How does the main character Dave Saunders reimagine his masculinity in a world of emasculation? And how does the gun function as a phallic symbol that is indispensable for imagining manhood, respect, and dignity?
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    22 mins
  • Wright on Antiblackness, Guilt, and Death in Native Son

    Wright on Antiblackness, Guilt, and Death in Native Son
    Apr 26 2023

    A discussion of the 1951 film adaptation of Richard Wright's novel Native Son. I am particularly interested in the theme of race and guilt, a theme that is consistent across Wright's work and illuminates his existential themes of condemnation to death and the sociological construction of racial identity in the social relation.
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    22 mins

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