On Constructions of Subject–Other

The first section of this chapter addresses problematic, dominant conceptions of historical subjects and the production of knowledge as a kind of perpetuation of colonialism or, more specifically in this case, “coloniality.” Coloniality is a term introduced by Aníbal Quijano in “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality” (2007). Quijano proposes that coloniality is a correlate to, and an extension of, colonialism and modernity. In short, if one were to conclude that European colonialism no longer exists in a particular place, the effects of colonialism, through the dependency relation between colonialism and modernity, would continue to exist. For example, such continuations of coloniality/modernity exist in contemporary societies through racialized oppression and Eurocentric structures of knowledge. This continuation of colonialism and its support for European modernity is what Quijano names “coloniality.” Coloniality refers to a framework of power created by European groups over “racially” and “ethnically” marginalized communities. Specifically, coloniality refers to the exploitation and domination of cultures and the imagination of marginalized groups (Quijano 2007, 168–69). In naming coloniality, and through his critical interrogation of it, Quijano proposes a decolonial project.

Similar to Quijano, Wynter offers a decolonial project that critiques coloniality; however, she uses the term “enchantment” in several essays to describe her approach to coloniality. She portrays enchantment as a state of existence that is undergirded with colonial histories and yet wholly unreflective of the various implications of coloniality. Enchantment is also meant to express a social condition and a collective state of mind (or social imaginary) that might accompany the lack of reflexivity within a given worldview. As a result, enchantment is a term she uses that has political and colonial implications, as well as psychological and cognitive ones. The manner in which she is able to interweave such seemingly disparate systems of thought is developed throughout this chapter. For the time being, we can think of enchantment as a kind of lack of reflexivity about (colonial) realities.

The aim of her decolonial project is a process of “disenchantment”—that is, to throw off the blinders of enchantment and engage in critical projects. Additionally, one must also guard against what she calls the “re-enchantment,” whereby the social imagination falls back into an unreflexive and uncritical position supported by coloniality. What follows is a development of various historical moments that exemplify modes of enchantment.

The geopolitical context that Wynter is concerned with begins with Europe. Specifically, she is concerned with what led to European expansion in the “New World.”1 The manner in which I provide an account for this European expansionism (or more specifically, European colonialism) is via differing conceptions of dominant European subjects (i.e., of the human, or of Man). In other words, we can better understand how European colonialism was possible and conditioned through dominant conceptions of what was meant by “human” at various points in history. According to Wynter:

Whether religious or secular, all such schemas/programs and their formulations of a “general order of existence” also function to inscribe the specific “descriptive statement” of the human that is enacting of the ontogeny/sociogeny, nature-culture mode of being human, for whom the specific ensemble of motivated behaviors will be adaptively advantageous. (2003, 280)

In other words, the conception of what it means to be human that dominates any particular world reflects, or more specifically, is the inscription of a kind of ordering that dominates that world. Three distinct conceptions of the subject are discussed below: (1) the Judeo-Christian conception of the subject (i.e., the Human, or the True Christian Self), (2) the rational self as a political subject of the state (i.e., Man 1), and (3) the economic and biological man (i.e., Man 2).2 It is important to understand these conceptions of subjecthood because we can draw various correlations between them and because the economic and biological man (Man 2) continues to influence present-day Western social and political relations. In addition, in each case we can locate the correlation between the descriptive statement of what it means to be human and the general order of existence that it perpetuates. This conception of the human thus serves as an analogue to Badiou’s conception of the transcendental operator that will be discussed in further detail below.

On Liminality and Négritude

In “The Ceremony Must Be Found,” Wynter defines liminality as follows:

[It is the] experience [of] a structural contradiction between [one’s] lived experience and the grammar of representation which generate the mode of reality by prescribing the parameters of collective behaviors that dynamically bring that “reality” into being. The liminal frame of reference therefore, unlike the normative, can provide . . . the outer view from which perspective the grammars of regularities of boundary and structure-maintaining discourses are perceivable. (1984, 39)

Unlike the normative/dominant position, the liminal position is thus situated such that it marks the lives of those whose experiences are in contradiction with that dominant position. Recall, for instance, the discussion above of Du Bois’s conception of double consciousness, whereby an African American experiences the contradiction between being American and being Black. Such a contradiction is experienced because their lived reality is imposed upon by dominant positions that exclude them. At the same time, however, because of the experiences of the liminal position, marginalized persons are well situated to see the contradictions inherent to the normative view. There are a number of ways in which one can be marginalized and, as a result, a plethora of liminal positions that one could occupy. For this reason, I will not attempt to name them here. However, a significant amount of work on the experiences of marginalization and the kind of knowledge that is produced out of this marginalization has been done. Most notably, Du Bois wrote on the topic most explicitly in The Souls of Black Folks. One could also consider Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) as providing an account of the epistemic situatedness of (white) women in a male-centered society.9 Similarly, Monique Wittig’s The Straight Mind (1980) offers a conception of “the lesbian” as epistemically situated differently within a heterosexual social reality. It is important to note, however, that one’s identity as Black, gendered, and gay, for instance, does not mean that one inherently has conscious awareness of the epistemic situatedness of their liminal positions. Rather, as stated above, they are better situated to gain this epistemic position.

Similarly, in “Beyond Liberal and Marxist Feminisms,” Wynter draws on the work of Asmaran Legesse, stating that “it is the liminal category who ‘generates conscious change by exposing all the injustices inherent in structure’” (Wynter 1982, 36). Thus, for Wynter, liminality can provide a view from which to understand a dominant/normative structure and ordering of the dominant referent through which the subordinate being and the dominant referent are both constituted. In this sense it is very important to provide space for a discursive intervention from the liminal frame of reference.

According the Wynter, “The category minority is always already a subordinated category within the organizing principle of difference/deference of our present ‘symbolic contract’ and of the mode of particular ‘nature’ to which its specific secular ontology ‘tied us down’ metaphysically” (1987, 233). However, “in order to call in question this ontologically subordinated function, ‘minority discourse’ can not be merely another voice in the present ongoing conversation or order of discourse” (233). In other words, the significance of the liminal over the dominant referent is that the liminal provides a point of view that can shift/disenchant the dominant referent; it is to disenchant, to make unstable, the structure that seeks its own stability. The liminal can provide the conditions for a critique of the dominant worldview, according to Wynter. However, the manner in which the liminal becomes manifest for Wynter is such that it is firmly entrenched in particularity and difference.

In many of Wynter’s essays, she notes the prevalence of a conception of Being formed on the basis of a lack-of-Being (Wynter 1976, 1987, 2003)—for example, the rational–irrational or subrational binary and the True Christian Self–pagan idolater binary, both of which emulate the Being–lack-of-Being binary. Noting the problems of this binary above, the central aim of this section is to determine how it is possible to move beyond this binary logic. Or, alternatively, I am going to consider the ways it is possible to conceive of the emancipation of those who are allocated to the position of lack-of-Being. For Wynter the creation of the liminal, or “minority,” category alone is insufficient to transcend the binary, as noted in the previous paragraph. As such, she provides an alternative to a conception of lack-of-Being that is juxtaposed to Being, or a “we” juxtaposed against a “they.” According to Wynter, the juxtaposition of these two locations is one of codependence, or, more specifically, each position is constructed for the benefit of the dominant location. An attempt to rethink and unravel this system requires a different positionality, one that exists outside the binary logic. This third position that exists outside of the binary is akin to Du Bois’s description of double consciousness. Namely, it is a marginalized position, but one that is also epistemically situated and conscious of the manner in which the binary operates. It is thus important to note a difference between those who are relegated to the position of other within the self–other binary and those who are marginalized in society and have gained double consciousness. While the former can be construed as a product of the binary, the latter should be thought of as existing outside the determination of the binary, or at least not wholly determined by it. For Wynter, Négritude is an example of a position that exists outside an oppressive binary logic and is helpful in shedding light on the importance of the liminal position and its role for a theory of emancipation.

In “Ethno or Socio Poetics,” Wynter makes reference to Césaire’s famous poem “Notebook of a Return to the Native Land.” She states the following:

[This poem] comes from the fact that in creating the concept of Negritude, he was contesting an implicit Western assumption of Blanchitude (the term is Jacques Leenhardt’s) that created characteristics of its own negation in the Negro; so that Negritude took as much issue with this implicit concept of the negro as it did with the assumptions of blanchitude. (1976, 92)

One of the central features of the Négritude movement for Wynter is evident in the delineation between blanchitude/Negro and Négritude. Similar to previous discussions of the problem of enchantment, the correlation between blanchitude and “Negro” is one of negation. In this example, blanchitude presupposes the position of the dominant or normative position (or Being) and Negro is the negation of this position (or lack-of-Being). This is akin to Badiou’s conception of (negative) identity discussed in chapter 3. However, what distinguishes Wynter from Badiou is evident in her articulation of the different roles of Negro and Négritude. As previously noted, the category of Negro is produced for the purpose of the creation of the dominant position—blanchitude in this instance. Negro is dependent upon blanchitude. Recalling chapter 3 and my discussion of negative identity, Negro can be thought of as constituted through the white gaze. Négritude, however, is not constituted through the white gaze, nor was it created for the purpose of maintaining the dominant position. Rather, as noted above, for Wynter, it serves to demarcate a position that is critical of both blanchitude (Being) and Negro (lack-of-Being). In this sense it would be problematic for Wynter to equate Negro and Négritude because doing so would erase the source from which Négritude gains its meaning, and it would erase the existence of those who named it. Given that Négritude offers a critique of both the conception of Negro and blanchitude from a marginalized position, Négritude exists outside of the self–other binary. Thus she maintains a conception of identity that is not merely negative, but alongside Belle, she affirms that such conceptions can also be construed as positive.

Wynter provides us with a second example that utilizes her analysis of the Négritude movement in an alternative way. She states:

The black experience in the New World . . . constituted an existence which daily criticized the abstract consciousness of humanism; that the popular oral culture which the black created in response to an initial negation of this humanness, constitutes as culture, the heresy of humanism; and that is why black popular culture—spirituals, blues, jazz, Reggae, Afro-Cuban music—and its manifold variants have constituted an underground cultural experience as subversive of the status quo Western culture as was Christianity in the catacombs of the Roman Empire. For it was in this culture that the blacks reinvented themselves as a WE that needed no OTHER to constitute their Being; that laid down the cultural parameters of a concretely universal ethnos. (92)

Similar to her description of Négritude above, she provides an example of identity that is not premised upon a binary system. For instance, when she states that the reinvention of Blackness is a we that needed no other, she is proposing that it is possible to create an identity that is produced outside a dominant binary and not merely a negation. Importantly, she also describes this movement as both cultural and universal, the implications of which are developed below. The concept of Négritude simultaneously creates a new concept (sign) and exists outside the negative dialectic of blanchitude and Negro.

In a similar manner, Wynter describes Black aesthetics more generally as “the transformation of consciousness from being ‘Negro,’ in the negative sense defined by the dominant society, to being self-defined positively as ‘Black,’ with the suffering of a Negro-Black conversion experience” (1998, 273). A reordering of Western aesthetics, like Western politics (as one that “saw the exclusion and denigration of the black historical experience and the ‘white orientedness’ of the universality as a whole” [273]), requires that Black people and Black artists “define the ‘world in their own terms’” (274). The importance of the Négritude movement is in part because it provides the conditions to get outside the normative binary (of positive and negative identities, in this case blanchitude and Negro). At the same time, the liminal position is important because it provides the conditions for the creation of new objects of knowledge as evidenced by the Négritude movement. Wynter’s articulation of the role of the creation of new objects of knowledge from the liminal position is evidenced in her conception of epistemic disobedience, the focus of the next section.

Before I delve into epistemic disobedience, it is important to note the differences between Wynter’s and Badiou’s respective conceptions of Négritude. Recall that, for Badiou, Négritude is neither political nor progressive. Instead, Négritude is categorized as cultural; it is cultural because it is mired in identity—that is, identity that is also subsequently determined by the oppressive structure that it seeks to upend. Contra Badiou, for Wynter, Négritude is not determined by the oppressive structure that it seeks to upend. Rather, Négritude exists outside of the self–other binary that orders a particular world. Thus, contra Badiou, Wynter claims that Négritude produces itself outside the self–other, or subject–other, binary and therefore can be progressive and political.

Epistemic Disobedience

What, then, is the correlation between the liminal position, Négritude, and the ability to constitute new worlds? The answer is located in a conception of epistemic disobedience. There are various ways in which Wynter performs epistemic disobedience. In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being” and “1492: A New World View” (1995), two of her most foundational essays, she investigates specific representations of what it means to be human and the structure that gives rise to, or produces, such representations. For instance, the production of Man 1 (the rational subject) discussed above already presupposes what counts as knowledge. In a circular fashion, Man 1 presupposes that knowledge can only be produced by rational subjects, yet rationality is attributed only to select groups of persons. Accordingly, groups of people who are not considered rational are thereby excluded from humanity, and are thus considered incapable of producing knowledge. As a result, knowledge has a very specific function that Wynter claims is bound up with colonial conquest (see Wynter 2003, 1995). Walter Mignolo describes epistemic disobedience in the following manner:

Under the rules of the epistemic canon, and according to its racial mandates, if you have been classified in/as difference, then you are required to submit and to assimilate to the canon or remain outside. Wynter does not follow either of these pathways. She instead engages what I call the decolonial option, a practice of rethinking and unraveling dominant worldviews that have been opened up by Indigenous and black and Caribbean thinkers since the sixteenth century in América (with accent) and the Caribbean. The decolonial option does not simply protest the contents of imperial Coloniality; it demands a delinking of oneself from the knowledge systems we take for granted (and can profit from) and practicing epistemic disobedience. (2015, 106–7)

The practices of epistemic disobedience that Mignolo attributes to Wynter are not reactionary positions against dominant systems of knowledge. Rather, epistemic disobedience is an interrogation of the manner in which knowledge production transpires. The act of “delinking” that he makes reference to as an important aspect of epistemic disobedience denotes a specific location from which practices of epistemic disobedience can be enacted. From such a location, an interrogation of dominant knowledge systems can take place outside the dominant system of knowledge itself. For her, however, this “outside” does not reify the binary logic discussed above, whereby the dominant system of knowledge exemplifies the “One” and practices of epistemic disobedience represent what is “Other.” Rather, dominant systems of knowledge are founded on a binary logic, whereby what is (e.g., the rational subject, the counted) always already presupposes what is not (i.e., its negation). The act of delinking and practices of epistemic disobedience necessitate a location outside this binary logic, a kind of third position. It is this position of radical differentiation from the structure of knowledge production itself that makes possible a “rethinking and unraveling of [a] dominant worldview.”

As noted by Mignolo above, “Indigenous and black and Caribbean thinkers since the sixteenth century” have been engaging in decolonial practices of epistemic disobedience. Jane Gordon’s practice of creolization enacts similar decolonial practices, whereby it is imperative to engage with theorists outside of the dominant system of knowledge production (Frantz Fanon in her case) in order to reconceive of figures in the philosophical canon (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for instance) (Gordon 2014; Gordon and Roberts 2015). The manner in which this engagement is enacted, however, is equally important. For instance, Gordon is careful not to appropriate Fanon for the purpose of developing a theory based on Rousseau. Rather, as she states explicitly, Fanon and Rousseau must equally be imposing on the other. Through this method of creolization, she is not enacting the rejection of the Western European philosophical canon; instead, she is providing the conditions for a new structure of knowledge by meaningfully introducing thinkers that have been delegitimated and marginalized within philosophy. One might also consider Sean Glen Coulthard’s (Yellowknives Dene) Red Skin, White Masks (2014). In this book he discusses the importance of the reintroduction of Indigenous values, politics, and practices for decolonization.

Within practices of epistemic disobedience, Wynter’s goal is “to introduce and integrate . . . several ‘new objects of knowledge’ which cannot meaningfully exist within the discursive vrai (truth) of our present ‘fundamental arrangements of knowledge’ nor within the analogic of its ‘(ethic-) theoretical foundations’” (Wynter 1987, 207). In addition, what becomes possible is the establishment of new ground, upon which “new objects of knowledge can find their efficient criterion/condition of truth” (207–8). According to Mignolo, Wynter is not attempting to overturn existing systems of knowledge. Rather, through her critique, she is attempting to change the way in which knowledge is produced and through which knowing itself is constituted. At the same time, however, he claims that “Wynter is not proposing to contribute to and comfortably participate in a system of knowledge that left her out of humanity (as a black/Caribbean woman), but rather delink herself from this very system of knowledge in order to engage in epistemic disobedience” (Mignolo 2015, 106). Thus it would seem that, for Wynter, in addition to offering a critique of how knowledge is produced, she is attentive to her own positionality (as an academic) in relation to systems of knowledge production. While epistemic disobedience is not a concept Wynter herself employs, it nonetheless provides a manner through which one can understand her methodology.

New objects of knowledge exceed and cannot be constrained or understood within the production of knowledge already operating. In so doing, epistemic disobedience can serve to disrupt the “episteme or fundamental arrangements of knowledge,” insofar as knowledge practices perpetuate a specific worldview (Wynter 1987, 208). In addition, “for fundamental change to take place, it must take place both in the conception and in the pattern of relations” (Wynter 1992, 67).

A Pluri-conceptual Framework: Multiplicity and Difference

Wynter’s conception of the liminal exemplified by the Négritude movement and the function of epistemic disobedience provides the conditions for her theory of emancipation. That said, in order to further develop her theory of emancipation, we must develop what she calls a “pluri-conceptual framework.” This framework is of particular importance to her theory of emancipation because it both demonstrates the importance of identities such as race for a theory of emancipation, and, in line with the role of the liminal articulated above, it also describes a component of her theory that is universal. Central to this framework is, thus, an articulation of emancipation that is dependent upon particularity and universality. Her conception of universality is developed in her discussion of what she calls “Jamesian poiesis.”

In her essay titled “Beyond the Categories of the Master Conception: The Counterdoctrine of the Jamesian Poiesis” (1992), Wynter provides an analysis of the “deconstructive thrusts in [C. L. R.] James’s works and the counterdoctrine that they produced” (63). Of interest to this project is her description of James’s “pieza framework” that she describes as “pluri-conceptual” (63): “The pieza was the name given by the Portuguese, during the slave trade, to the African who functioned as the standard measure or the equivalent of physical labor against which all the others could be measured” (81). The pieza was determined on the basis of the amount of labor an approximately twenty-five-year-old male in good health could produce. The values of slaves were thus determined on the basis of a pieza.

For Wynter, by way of James, the pieza can become a more general standard of measure “establishing equivalences between a wider variety of oppressed labor power” (81). In other words, the standard of slave labor is used to conceptualize oppressed labor power in general. The initial goal of the pieza framework is to displace normative Western conceptual frames, repositioning a labor conceptual framework such that it can incorporate the trade in African slaves (81). The starting point for this analysis of oppressed labor is the slave trade, thus emphasizing the importance of understanding the slave trade as foundational to a conception of labor. In addition, the pieza framework requires an analysis of the relation between modes of production and modes of domination (81). More specifically, “economic exploitation only follows on, and does not precede, the mode of domination set in motion by the imaginaire social of the bourgeoisie” (81, emphasis in original). Domination is thus not a product of economic exploitation, domination can be conceptually prior to economic exploitation, and a theory of labor must be able to account for this priority. James provides a theory of labor oppression that utilizes liminal positionalities and enacts epistemic disobedience.

Wynter’s use of liminality for her theory of emancipation and her discussion of James’s pieza framework also demonstrate the importance of identity for her theory of emancipation. Specifically, she states that “James was aided in the task of deconstructing these [master] conceptions by his identity as Negro. . . . It is because of the multiplicity of his consciousness” (68). Wynter’s use of “Negro” in this instance is not merely an invocation of negative identity, whereby James’s identity and existence are entirely constituted through the dominant (white supremacist) order. Rather, her description of James’s deconstructing of master conceptions is meant to imply the critical capacity of the liminal position. James’s marginalization and his critical interrogation of oppressive logics indicate that there is thus some knowledge or perspective that James has access to that aids in his ability to offer a critique of Western conceptions of labor.

It is important to note here that Wynter’s reference to James’s Black identity aiding in the development of his theory of emancipation is explicitly distinct from Badiou’s theory of emancipation. Recall that Badiou considers minoritarian and identitarian logics that do “not hesitate to posit that this culture’s constitutive elements are only fully comprehensible on the condition that one belongs to the subset in question” to be “genuinely barbaric” (2003, 12). By extension, as discussed in chapter 1, politics cannot adhere to identities if a politics is to be emancipatory. Instead, identities must be subtracted from the truth of politics. Badiou might then consider it “barbaric” or apolitical for James to utilize his Black identity for the purpose of augmenting his theory of emancipation. However, as should be evident at this point, it is indeed Badiou’s project that is problematic and limited because of his failure to account for the role the liminal position can play in emancipatory movements. Furthermore, it is worth stating that the invocation of barbarity for prioritizing one’s own experience of marginalization perpetuates harmful presuppositions of what counts and reinforces the supposed need for Eurocentric structures.

The question that remains, however, is as follows: In what way can Wynter offer a theory of universal emancipation that also emphasizes a role for identities? First and foremost, she stresses a multiplicity of identities in order to constitute one’s lived reality. In speaking about James, she states, “These multiple permutations [color, levels of education, levels of wealth, and levels of ‘culture’] gave rise to multiple identities: to the ‘ecumenicism’ then of being a Negro—of being Caliban” (1992, 68). The experience of “being a Negro” is not determined by any one particularity or essential characteristic. Instead there are multiplicities of identities that arise from a multiplicity of permutations. Similar to my description of race in chapter 3 through the work of Outlaw, race is conceived as “‘a cluster concept’ in which no single factor, like biological descent, is essential and thus the causal determinant of all the others” (Jeffers 2013, 406, emphasis in original).

Second, Wynter insists that “a system of color value existed side by side with capital value, education value, merit value, and labor value. To single out any of these factors was to negate the complex laws of the functioning of the social order, the multiple modes of coercion and power relations exiting at all levels of the social system” (1992, 69). It is thus imperative to provide an analysis of social systems and power relations through a pluralistic framework. In contradistinction to Sartre’s emphasis on class over race, Wynter notes that the “factory model was only one of many models” (69). Furthermore, in contradistinction to Badiou, who subtracts particularity from his conception of the political, Wynter emphasizes “the multiple modes of coercion and of exploitation” (69). The pieza framework is an attempt to contain all modes of coercion and exploitation (69)—that is, a framework that aims to “constitute the multiple identities and competing subjective entry points of struggle particular for achieving Black self-determination” (Glick 2016, 161). In other words, there is no singular mode of oppression and exploitation that provides the conditions for theorizing Black liberation or the Negro question. Neither is it possible to conceive of emancipation by subtracting particularities such as race, class, or gender from its conception. Rather, the pieza framework requires that one address multiple modes of coercion. For example, as previously noted, a conception of economic exploitation ought not conceptually and materially center classism over racism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Third, “Different Pieza groups means different sites, opportunities, and actors of resistance to domination” (161). Thus the implication is that political emancipation is a multifaceted approach. This means that there is no “mono-conceptual framework—no pure revolutionary subject, no single locus of the Great Refusal [of a social hierarchy], no single correct line” (Wynter 1992, 69). For Wynter the benefit of the pieza framework is that it names particular groups (“women, workers, dominated races, and other groups” [63]) in order to articulate a theory of emancipation that can address multiple forms of oppression. To subtract particularity and identity from a theory of emancipation would be to subsume all oppression under one general and generic framework, which would be problematic.

Wynter’s emphasis on particularity can thus be juxtaposed with Badiou’s conception of “the people.” As discussed in chapter 1, the people, for the most part, must denote a generic set from which all particularity is subtracted. In order for “the people” to be constituted politically, they must be faithful to a political truth that transcends the logic of the current state. Furthermore, all identities and particularities (such as race and gender), insofar as they are determined by the logic of the state the subject aims to upend, cannot be utilized for the purpose of universal emancipation. In other words, the people cannot seek the emancipation of Black trans women, for instance. Identities are thus negative and cannot be utilized for the purpose of emancipation. The question that I am attempting to address through the pieza framework is as follows: What kind of oppression does such a theory of emancipation seek to upend? The problem that I have been attempting to make evident throughout this project is that, for Badiou, oppression itself seems to be conceived of along a single axis. In other words, there is little to no consideration of how different structures of oppression exist and how they need to be addressed in different ways. One might ask the following: In what way is the emancipation of Black people possible without considering the knowledge of those who have been oppressed on the basis of their Blackness, without addressing the structure through which oppression of Black people takes place (racism, sexism, classism, for example), and without the affirmation of Black people in particular?

Wynter’s analysis and development of the pieza framework is an attempt to address such concerns regarding single-axis approaches to theories of emancipation. Yet the framework that she provides through James is not solely focused on individual particularities. Rather, the Pieza framework is pluralistic, emphasizing a multiplicity of identities at the same time, in order to address multiple faces of oppression. Her politics of emancipation emphasizes “the mode of being together in the polis, [which] is shaped by the struggle of groups and individuals to maintain or redefine the terms of their relations” (73). Universal emancipation thus takes the form of a multifaceted approach, through various identities, to approach all forms of oppression. “A pluri-conceptual theoretics, a universal based on the particular (Cesaire) is the logical result and outcome of the Jamesian poiesis . . . [that] leads necessarily to a praxis that is correspondingly plural in nature” (84). Thus, unlike Badiou for whom universality is juxtaposed against particularity, for Wynter, universality is based upon particularity. According to Wynter, it is possible to base universality on particularity if a theory of emancipation is pluralistic and intersectional and engages in what I would call a politics of solidarity. For instance, she states, “A relation in which the solidarity of the labor code, that is, of the world proletariat, must not negate the imperative solidarity of the African people. The road to the universal passes through the realization of the particular—at least in the popular conceptual frame” (87). Contra Sartre and Badiou, particularity must not be sublated in order to attain universality, as something that needs to be overcome. Rather, for Wynter, the realization of particularity is the source of universal emancipation whereby “black particularism . . . opens up the possibility of providing a transcultural perspective” (Wynter 1998, 281). The benefit of such a framework is that it remains open to a plurality of oppressions. This theory is inclusive of, for instance, poor rural whites in the U.S. South, and is sufficiently open to address systems of oppression that might not currently be addressed. It is important to note, however, that the experiences of oppression of poor rural whites will be distinct from poor Black people in the rural U.S. South.

The general mode of resistance offered by James is dependent upon the affirmation of marginalized and oppressed communities. Furthermore, for Wynter, emancipation is motivated by the lived experiences of those who experience a tension at the heart of their lived reality and who critically interrogate this tension—that is, those who exist in what she names the liminal sphere. For a theory to properly address the emancipation of all persons, it must not presume the mere contingency of racial identity. As Nick Nesbitt states:

Césaire’s brief article “Conscience raciale et révolution sociale” concisely refutes . . . the priority of proletarian class struggle, and the corresponding precedence of the vanguard Stalinist party (PCF), over anti-imperialism and anti-racism, to assert instead the imperative of black self-consciousness: “We must not be revolutionaries who accidentally happen to be black [nègres], but truly revolutionary blacks [nègres révolutionnaires].” The lived experience of racial subjection is in this view preeminent, and the recognition and assertion of the Martinican’s negritude, the article asserts, must occur prior to any truly revolutionary politics. (2013, 104)10

In this instance it becomes apparent that race is not incidental to the revolution; rather it provides a central feature of it. As a result, the liminal is not something that is empty, nor ought we to endeavor to be indifferent to differences. Rather, the liminal is a position that, while unprivileged according to the norms and the structure of society, is privileged according to having the means to create new modes of existence. The liminal, as difference, is thus crucial for Wynter’s theory of emancipation. This move is then further evidenced by her maintenance of “cultural movements,” such as the Négritude movement, as having significant political import.

In many ways this is not only a cursory account of Wynter’s project but also a cursory analysis of the relation between Badiou and Wynter. Wynter is deserving of significantly more attention and a more in-depth analysis of what I have called her political theory of solidarity. That said, the central feature of this project in its current iteration has been to analyze the role race plays in Badiou’s and Wynter’s respective theories in order to demonstrate that there are alternative and divergent framings of emancipatory movements. The previous chapters focused on Badiou’s politics of indifference as providing the means for political universal emancipation. In this sense his position is easily juxtaposed to Wynter’s uplifting of the liminal position (as difference) for whom identity can be constituted for the purposes of emancipation, whereby new objects of knowledge can be created for the purpose of a new emancipatory episteme and new conceptions of the subject. As such, I thought it appropriate to bring Badiou and Wynter into conversation, but one could have chosen any number of other theorists who engage in a similar mode of critique. What is perhaps most important to glean following this lengthy project is that theories of universality need not be emptied of particularities; rather, it is possible to conceive universal emancipation that is filled with particularities and which indeed also benefits significantly from what particularities (such as race and gender) have to offer. That said, there is much work left to be done.