ABSTRACT
Engaging the work of Fanon alongside that of W. E. B. Dubois and Lewis Gordon, the aim is to develop an intellectual historical account of Africana phenomenology. Understanding phenomenology as “the discursive practice through which self-reflective descriptions of the constituting activities of consciousness are produced after the ‘natural attitude’ of everyday life has been bracketed by some ego-displacing technique,” an Africana phenomenology would thus be “the self-reflective descriptions of the constituting activities of the consciousness of Africana peoples, after the natural attitudes of Africana egos have been displaced by the de-centering techniques practices in these cultures.” Africana phenomenology starts with a different foil, not scientism – as might be expected for a more traditional phenomenology – but racism. We also provide a description of Fanon’s response to the problem of double consciousness (first detailed by Dubois) and highlight the relation of Fanon’s penetrating insights to his skillful use of poetic and phenomenological reductions, as well as to philosophical and psychoanalytic modes of investigation.
