Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt

by Benjamin P. Davis

Overview

Is there a way of being human that could invite people away from today’s models of violence and consumerism? Looking forward to a new, increasingly creolized century, in 1997 the Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant asked, ‘Do we have the right and the means to live another dimension of humanity? But how?’

Building on the defense of human rights he outlined in Choose Your Bearing, Benjamin P. Davis traces figures of 'the human' and ‘humanity' in W. E. B. Du Bois, Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter and Edward Said. He concludes with a reflection on Hannah Arendt’s post-war correspondence with Karl Jaspers, which offers lessons for a new humanism as we witness ongoing wars today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399548588
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/31/2025
Series:	Contemporary Continental Ethics
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Benjamin P. Davis is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy as well as Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics, also by Edinburgh UniversityPress.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface

Introduction: Thinking Race and Humanity Together (An Attempt)
Critiques of ‘The Human’
Defenses of ‘The Human’
Conceptual Sufficiency and Stuart Hall’s Politics without Guarantees
Chapter Outline

Part I: Detour through Theory

Chapter One: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Anti-War Humanism
Du Bois’s Use of ‘Humanity’ in Black Reconstruction and John Brown
Du Bois’s Use of Human Rights in the 1940s
Notes toward a Du Boisian Politics

Chapter Two: Édouard Glissant’s Relational Humanism
The Importance of Poetry
‘The Human’ across Glissant’s Theoretical Work
Returning to the Ancestors

Part II: Risking the Personal

Chapter Three: Sylvia Wynter’s Ceremonial Humanism
‘The Human’ in Wynter
Secular Criticism
Natural Law and Humanism
Returning to Ceremony

Chapter Four: Edward Said’s Post-colonial Humanism
Representations
Style
Positionality
Coda

Chapter Five: Hannah Arendt’s Ordinary Humanism
Caught in Categories
Contradictions
Giving an Account
An Ethics of Correspondence

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

...its willingness to extend its argument beyond the ivory towers of academic debate lends it additional value; specifically, it offers relevant, practical commentary that connects the thoughts of 20th-century luminaries to contemporary 21st-century geopolitics, particularly on issues affecting the Middle East[.]

Kirkus Reviews

In a concentrated attitude of modesty, reflexiveness, and provocation, Another Humanity offers a searching practice of redressive criticism animated by the historical wrong of colonial dispossession. Reading the 'human' through Du Bois, Glissant, Wynter, Said, and Arendt, Benjamin Davis encourages us to see the problem of 'humanity' as the inescapable core of an alternative contemporary politics.

David Scott

In Another Humanity, Benjamin P. Davis unpacks the outline of an unfolding crescendo of critical thinking to locate our fragile humanity on a more leveled ground. Like a defiant Sisyphus, at a time when Americans have elected a president who defies every single sense of human decency, Davis insists on righting the wrong, rolling the boulder up the hill.

Hamid Dabashi

This provocative book suggests that the tide has turned against sophistry and fatalism. Benjamin Davis has joyfully demonstrated that they are not the most sophisticated kinds of 'theory' after all.

Paul Gilroy

Another Humanity is a brilliant book—its brilliance lies in its humility. Rather than creating new concepts out of thin air, it engages with existing ideas, traces their entanglement in histories of asymmetrical power, and revitalizes them as tools and lenses for imagining and realizing a decolonial future. Davis’s book successfully experiments with a different political and ethical attitude toward theory and the world—and it invites us to do the same.

Massimiliano Tomba

2025-06-25
An assistant professor of Africana studies and Hispanic studies at Texas A&M University explores theoretical notions of humanity in this exploration of decolonial literature.

This is a sequel to Davis’ 2023 book,Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics, which studied ideas surrounding human rights, and it takes an admittedly “esoteric” delve into critical theories on the concept of humanity. It primarily uses decolonial classics—the literature and public remarks of such 20th-century critics of colonialism as W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Edward Said, and Hannah Arendt—as the basis of its analysis. Some of the underlying research is well-covered terrain, such as Du Bois’ consistent use of the terms “human” and “humanity,” dating back toBlack Reconstruction (1935), but it also makes use of archival materials from private collections, which provide revelatory insights. Indeed, one of the book’s most engaging chapters draws on Said’s archival collection at Columbia University to explore ethical questions of how Western libraries amass and store materials related to colonialism. Although Davis’ volume is clearly intended for scholarly audiences, its willingness to extend its argument beyond the ivory towers of academic debate lends it additional value; specifically, it offers relevant, practical commentary that connects the thoughts of 20th-century luminaries to contemporary 21st-century geopolitics, particularly on issues affecting the Middle East: “Talking about Palestine,” Davis passionately asserts at one point, “wakes us from our respectable scholarly slumber,” as it forces one not only to analyze, but also to apply the theories of Du Bois, Said, and others. The author is a learned scholar who effectively supports his arguments with an array of scholarly footnotes in each chapter and a 19-page bibliography, resulting in a rare combination of academic heft and impassioned prose.

A well-researched study of concepts of humanity, as advanced by decolonial thinkers.

Kirkus Reviews