Book Review: Existence in Black

The immediate perplexing question that arose for me on first encountering this book was: How could there be such a thing as 'black Existential Philosophy'? Rooted in my belief that existential philosophy is concerned with exploring the 'human condition' regardless of race or culture, I initially found it difficult to appreciate the socio-political discourse presented in this book.

'What is to be done in a world of nearly universal sense of superiority to, if not hatred of, black folk?' is the question, according to the book's editor, Lewis R. Gordon, that animates a great deal of the theoretical dimensions of black intellectual productions. It is what signals the question of liberation on the one level and the critique of traditional, read 'European', ontological claims on another.

Black intellectual philosophy is therefore concerned with questioning or inquiring into the 'situation' or lived experience" of black people living, as they do, in a world dominated and controlled by white people. In so doing it is a demand for recognition of black people's values; a demand to be listened to.

It would be fair to say from my personal experience of providing therapy for black people that most of my clients have been the recipients of racism and institutionalised racism and do suffer from derogatory beliefs about themselves as a consequence. I would agree with Grier and Cobbs, two black psychiatrists and authors of the book Black Rage, that most black people have developed a kind of 'social paranoia' in which every white person is considered a potential enemy unless proved otherwise and that every social system is considered to be set against them. The fact that this is the context within which most black people live does not deny that they may also suffer from mental and emotional distress which is not related to the socio-political situation.

All but one of the contributors to the book are African-American academics. The exception is an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre entitled Return from the US in which he sarcastically criticises the anti-black racism of the United States from the concept of bad faith. All the papers theorise anti-black racism, in varying degrees, from an existential phenomenological standpoint. Apart from informing the reader of the black situation the main purpose of the book appears to be to liberate the mind-sets of black people conditioned by slavery and colonialism, a purpose I fully endorse.

Every essay in this book provides valuable insight into the world of black people which would greatly facilitate the process of understanding black clients and also assist in bracketing the non-black therapist's own assumption, values and beliefs. The papers entitled 'Existence, Identity and Liberation' by Robert Birt, 'Existential Dynamics of Theorising Black Invisibility' by Lewis R. Gordon and Naomi Zack's paper 'Race, Life, Death, Identity, Tragedy' are particularly interesting from an existential Psychotherapeutic perspective.

Bin argues that black people can invent themselves and create autonomous identities since there is no such thing as a fixed nature or predetermined essence. His message to black people is to decolonise their minds and to affirm their blackness without glorifying blackness.

Gordon focuses on the black experience of 'invisibility' whereby a black presence is a form of an absence - white absence. This phenomenon was identified by Fanon and Sartre as 'overdetermination' which, in effect, transform consciousness into a thing. Gordon explores the relationship between black and anti-black from a Sartrean perspective of sado-masochism and concludes that both are rooted 'in the evasion of human beings qua consciousness' and in both instances human beings are objectified into a form of being-in-itself. Following Merleau-Ponty, Gordon asserts that human beings are not subject alone nor object alone but are 'ambiguous'. In other words human beings are multifaceted, meaningful and paradoxical and should be recognised as such.

Zack, on the other hand, questions whether there is such a thing as 'racial essence' In the first place. She claims that there are no genes, no chromosomal markers, no biological foundation to designate racial groups. In her view race' is the 'result of complex myths and social fictions; a web of lies told about the oppressed by the oppressors to justify oppression'. Zack urges black people not to identify themselves in terms of race for one's view of oneself is based on one's individual decisions, choices, will and action'. She argues that death comes to us all regardless of race and to identify oneself in terms of race would be to choose oppression. However she concedes that some people may prefer to be identified with a racial group. This would be their choice but it cannot be assumed to be natural or inevitable.

This is a book rich in its varied perspectives on the question of anti-black racism. A critical analysis on the Bosnian Double Consciousness' is one such paper. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois examined the identity crisis faced by black people who have internalised mutually incompatible ideals from the black and white worlds leaving them believing that they themselves are the problem. Another paper denounces Nietzsche as a racist whilst yet another examines the experience of being propertied as a slave. There is also a paper on the way modern technology exploits black people and how it may be utilised to benefit black people. Patricia Huntington's contribution challenges white feminists to recognise and to contend with the exclusionary racial bias that their theories and practices often exhibit' whilst Roy D. Morrison claims that self transformation of American Blacks is only possible if black folk save themselves from the debilitating effects of their inherited Christian religions. There is also an excellent existential analysis of Richard Wright's book The Outsider.

In this review I have commented on only a few selected essays in order to provide a sense of what this book has to offer. All who read it will most certainly gain a deeper understanding of the black worldview. I especially recommend it to those therapists counselling black clients and to black people in general for it suggests many possible ways out of internalised racism.

Ismail Asmall