Full Description
In Black Enlightenment Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works of such Black writers as the free Jamaican Francis Williams (1697-1762), Afro-British thinker Ignatius Sancho (1729?-1780), and Afro-American poet Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784), placing them alongside those of their white European contemporaries David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). By rethinking the Enlightenment and its canons, Parekh complicates common understandings of the Enlightenment wherein Black subjects could exist only in negation to white subjects. Black Enlightenment points to the anxiety of race in Hume, Kant, and others while showing the importance of Black Enlightenment thought. Parekh prompts us to consider the timeliness of reading Black Enlightenment authors who become "free" in a society hostile to that freedom.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Black Enlightenment 23
2. (Dis)Figuring Kant 50
3. The Changing Rhetoric of Race 74
4. The Character of Ignatius Sancho 106
5. Phillis Wheatley's Providence 131
Notes 153
Bibliography 177
Index 195
