Black Posthumanism: A New Pan-Africanism

• In Event: Pan-Africanism and Afrofuturism(s)

Abstract

As a framework for Afro-diasporic unity and solidarity, Pan-Africanism has seen many shifts since its inception. From the formation of the Sons of Africa, an affinity for the continent has been the running thread of Pan-Africanism’s instantiation and maintenance. However, underneath Pan-Africanism’s fight for liberation has been a desire for an acceptance of Black humanity and the subsequent rights/equality for all. However, over time we have witnessed that humanity, as a term, can be expanded and constricted. Yet very seldom has it been stretched to make room for Black people(s).

Black posthumanism stands as an ante-/anti-humanism that explores Black self-referential modes of existence. Ante, because Black people(s) predate any prescriptive notion of humanity in the west. Additionally, Black posthumanism is antihumanist as it lives into the ways Blackness is situated as diametrically opposed to humanity and vice versa—in anti-Black settings. Black posthumanism begins within the space often labeled by Afro-pessimists as social death or by what Marquis Bey refers to as appositionality—a/the place that does not exist. However, Black people are not bound to conform to ontologies which refuse the realit(ies) of their existence. Anti-Black world(s) are incapable of imaging the innumerable plane(s), dimension(s), world(s), universe(s), etc., that stem from Black ways of knowing, existing and being. Black posthumanism does not hinge on a particular archetype. In contrast, it relies on a conceptual framework of embodiment that takes seriously the near infinite ways Black people show up in the world(s) the inhabit. It invites a new way to come together.

This paper engages Pan-Africanism through the framework of Black posthumanism. It does so, through a comparison of the ways Pan-Africanism has worked to serve as a unifying framework while simultaneously engaging the reverberating impacts and theoretical growing edges that stem from focusing on the intersection of human rights and Blackness. Ultimately, it offers a futurist framework for protecting Black people—regardless of their physical position on the globe.

Author

• Philip Butler, Iliff School of Theology