Hegel and Sylvia Wynter on the Problem of Human Self-Interpretation
In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom,” Sylvia Wynter argues that Western Europe’s human self-cognition has adaptively served what she calls “Man1” (the free, rational, political subject) and “Man2” (the bioeconomic subject). What is needed, on Wynter’s interpretation, is a for...
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| Formáid: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Teanga: | Français |
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2024
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| Rochtain ar líne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Achoimre: | In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom,” Sylvia Wynter argues that Western Europe’s human self-cognition has adaptively served what she calls “Man1” (the free, rational, political subject) and “Man2” (the bioeconomic subject). What is needed, on Wynter’s interpretation, is a form of non-adaptive, universal human self-cognition that would not exclude most of humanity, a form that she claims is homo narrans. I argue that the distinction that Wynter draws between the adaptive and the non-adaptive is crucial, as is the need to focus on the oppressive consequences, for intercultural contact, of the adaptive. I show that her arguments resonate significantly with the central ideas of ethical life and absolute spirit in Hegel, and mobilize these key ideas to bolster her critical purposes, while suggesting a revision to her account of how these modes of knowing operate in human culture. I argue that the practices of homo narrans, as practices of absolute spirit, are always immanent to the concrete specificity of the domains we experience as home, which encourage adaptiveness in knowing. Further, I argue that we support practices of transcendence precisely by attending to their corruptible character and by supporting the flourishing of the concrete contexts in which they are housed. Finally, I fill out the conception of homo narrans by analyzing Hegel’s account of ancient and modern tragedy, showing how expressive activity is a capacity for telling new stories that resituate the human’s relations to the world and to itself and thereby continually transform it. |
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