The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy

The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy
Author: Donna V. Jones
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0231145489


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In the early twentieth century, the life philosophy of Henri Bergson summoned the élan vital, or vital force, as the source of creative evolution. Bergson also appealed to intuition, which focused on experience rather than discursive thought and scientific cognition. Particularly influential for the literary and political Négritude movement of the 1930s, which opposed French colonialism, Bergson's life philosophy formed an appealing alternative to Western modernity, decried as "mechanical," and set the stage for later developments in postcolonial theory and vitalist discourse. Revisiting narratives on life that were produced in this age of machinery and war, Donna V. Jones shows how Bergson, Nietzsche, and the poets Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire fashioned the concept of life into a central aesthetic and metaphysical category while also implicating it in discourses on race and nation. Jones argues that twentieth-century vitalism cannot be understood separately from these racial and anti-Semitic discussions. She also shows that some dominant models of emancipation within black thought become intelligible only when in dialogue with the vitalist tradition. Jones's study strikes at the core of contemporary critical theory, which integrates these older discourses into larger critical frameworks, and she traces the ways in which vitalism continues to draw from and contribute to its making.


The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy
Language: en
Pages: 242
Authors: Donna V. Jones
Categories: Education
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010 - Publisher: Columbia University Press

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In the early twentieth century, the life philosophy of Henri Bergson summoned the élan vital, or vital force, as the source of creative evolution. Bergson also
The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy
Language: en
Pages: 0
Authors: Donna V. Jones
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012 - Publisher:

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The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy
Language: en
Pages: 240
Authors: Donna V. Jones
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-03-05 - Publisher: Columbia University Press

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In the early twentieth century, the life philosophy of Henri Bergson summoned the élan vital, or vital force, as the source of creative evolution. Bergson also
Another Mind-Body Problem
Language: en
Pages: 270
Authors: John Harfouch
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-05-22 - Publisher: State University of New York Press

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The mind-body problem in philosophy is typically understood as a discourse concerning the relation of mental states to physical states, and the experience of se
Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism
Language: en
Pages: 369
Authors: Jonathan Tran
Categories: Political Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-11-09 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

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Any serious consideration of Asian American life forces us to reframe the way we talk about racism and antiracism. The current emphasis on racial identity obscu