Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 6, Page 833-859, July 2022. Two decades ago, Tarana Burke started using the phrase ‘me too’ to release victims of sexual abuse and rape from their shame and to empower girls from minority communities. In 2017, actress Alyssa Milano made the hashtag #MeToo go viral. This article’s concern is with the role of testimonial practices in the context of sexual violence. While many feminists have claimed that the word of those who claim to (...) being sexually violated by others have political and/or epistemic priority, others have failed to recognize the harm and injury of instances of sexual violence that are not yet acknowledged as such and failed to listen to victims from marginalized social groups. In fact, some feminists have attacked #MeToo for mingling accounts of ‘proper’ sexual violence and accounts that are not ‘proper’ experiences of sexual violence. My aim in this article is to show why this critique is problematic and find a philosophically fruitful way to understand the #MeToo-movement as a movement that strives for moral and conceptual progress. (shrink)

Resignifying the Universal: Critical Commentary on the Postcolonial African Identity and Development The dimension of the debate on the relation between the universal and the particular in African philosophy has been skewed in favour of the universalists who argued that the condition for the possibility of an African conception of philosophy cannot be achieved outside the "universal' idea of the philosophical enterprise. In this sense, the ethno-philosophical project and its attempt to rescue the idea of an African past necessary for (...) the reconstruction of an African postcolonial identity and development becomes a futile one. A recent commentator even argues that works concerning African identity are now totally irrelevant and misguided. In this essay, I will be arguing, on the contrary, that the universalist's argument, much like its critique of ethno-philosophical reason, mistakes the nature, significance and necessity of such a resistance (rather than original) identity that the ethno-philosophical project promises. I will also argue that the fabrication of such an identity facilitates the avoidance of an uncritical submersion in the universal as well as a proper conception of an African development. This, furthermore, is the only avenue by which the imperialistic ontological space of universal humanism, in which most universalistic claims are rooted, can be made more polygonal and mutually beneficial for alternative cultural particulars. (shrink)

This essay considers the recuperation of beauty as a productive critical strategy in discussions of African American dance. I argue that black performance in general, and African American concert dance in particular, seeks to create aesthetic sites that allow black Americans to participate in discourses of recognition and appreciation to include concepts of beauty. In this, I suggest that beauty may indeed produce social change for its attendant audiences. I also propose that interrogating the notion of beauty may allow for (...) social change among audiences that include dance theorists and philosophers. Through a case-study consideration of work by three African American choreographers, Donald Byrd (b. 1949), Ulysses Dove (1947 – 1996), and Abdel Salaam (b. 1949), I ultimately hope to suggest critical possibilities aligning dance performance with particular aesthetic theory relevant to its documentation and interpretation. (shrink)

Part of Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism purpose is to link ethics and politics to art. In this approach, ethics becomes the basis of aesthetics and politics. He presents a picture of moral life that emphasizes the uniqueness of human characteristics. His goal of prophetic pragmatism is not to answer the questions of Western philosophy. West sees the root of these problems in Western philosophy in the epistemology of Descartes and Kant and believes that it must be overcome. The purpose of (...) prophetic pragmatism is to provide answers to short-term problems and ongoing cultural interpretations in a specific historical period. West sees nihilism as evil, as opposed to democracy, and turns to art to combat this nihilism. He believes that original art has a common concern with the oppressed and can fight nihilism. He considers this original art to have anti-nihilistic properties. Artists in this approach are struggling to achieve democracy and must follow ethics based on religious love. In this article, after examining the relationship between politics and ethics in art, we critique West's views. (shrink)