Ruminations on Discourse, Concepts, Terms & Definitions by A. Shahid Stover

 THE BROTHERWISE DISPATCH, VOL.3, ISSUE#12, JUNE-AUG/2021

The following working concepts, discursive terms and unfixed definitions are mined and selected from my most recent book entitled Being and Insurrection, where they are found in philosophical context with extensive footnotes and references.  However, since insurgent philosophy by definition seeks to generate ruptures against the normative gaze and sustain openings against established structures of meaning, any epistemic framing that follows is not meant to be exhaustive or absolute. 

As such, these concepts, terms and definitions are not only responsive to history and lived experience, but in constant development through ongoing dialogue with numerous thinkers both past and present, with the effect of provocatively unsettling previously fixed understandings towards satisfying the insurgent trajectory of my own philosophical endeavors and discursive imperatives. 

To reiterate, although plenty of neologisms follow, some of the terms might also be very familiar.  The point of this glossary is to communicate what is meant by these terms within the specific context of existential liberation critique.  An example would be the notion of ‘the Real’, which means something quite different in the work of Hegel, than it does for Lacan or even Baudrillard for that matter.  And now, it means something altogether distinctive when reading Being and Insurrection.  Still, none of these understandings exclude the possibility of dialogue with each other.  As such, there is no substitute for deliberately reading, critically engaging and carefully studying the book itself.  However, as an assistance I’ve also included a selective bibliography following the glossary.

A review by Sartre Studies International had this to say – “Stover is an inventive philosopher and writer, and this work is animated by a number of original concepts that refashion ideas worked out by Sartre, Fanon, and Gordon: ‘structural-inert,’ ‘ascendant humanity,’ ‘insurrection-in-itself,’ and ‘coercive anonymity,’ to name a few, and, although ‘normative gaze’ is rightly attributed to West, Stover’s analysis really makes the term his own.”  As it stands, those terms and quite a few more are included in this expository effort. 

Indeed, the very act of sharing this compilation of conceptual vocabulary in this somewhat rugged manner, admits to finally taking into consideration numerous requests from a variety of readers comprised overwhelmingly of academics, artists and activists.  In particular, with the aim of providing an insurgent philosophical compass for readers as they attempt to navigate an expansive sea of theory, and offer some overall assistance to college professors who have reached out and expressed a growing interest in Being and Insurrection towards disclosing new horizons of the Black radical imagination. 

Academics, specifically, have expressed a need for some brief reference notes towards better conveying the theoretical edge of existential liberation critique to their students, as a relevant way of thinking through these trying times without having to prioritize explanatory power over emancipatory imperatives as is suggested by some of my more pessimistically oriented contemporaries whose work should no doubt be taken seriously and thoroughly engaged however, rather than summarily dismissed.

Ultimately then, the plan is to include these concepts, terms and definitions as a glossary for future editions of Being and Insurrection.  As such, let us now dispense with any further ruminations . . .

Working Concepts, Discursive Terms & Unfixed Definitions

Alienation – process or condition of estrangement from the radical ontological freedom that characterizes human ‘being’.  Not to be confused with the more severe condition of dehumanization.  Confronting alienation can lead to a lived experience of anguish.  See anguish, dehumanization.

Alterity – condition of otherness as the refusal of recognition or relation of separation as the absence of reciprocity.

Anguish – lived apprehension of human ‘being’ as irreducible agency that is irreconcilable with the Real of any given situation.  Anguish arises from the recognition that there is no substantive ‘empirical self’ that predetermines our actions or natural essence that justifies our behavior.  Rather, there is a radical ontological freedom experienced as a kinetic distance of interiority or ‘presence-to-self’ that makes us not only responsible for our actions, but also responsible for the possibility of bringing meaning to the world through our actions.  Whereas dread is associated with dehumanization and the underground of modernity, anguish is associated with alienation and the imperial mainstream.  See alienation, dread, imperial mainstream.  

Anthropology – refers to an underlying theoretical framework and guiding discursive conception of what it means to be human.

Anti-slavery dialectic – dialectic movement of Revolt against the enslavement of human ‘being’ as call and response to the disaster of history.

Ascendant humanity – communities of people awakening to the emancipatory universality of their particular socio-historical struggle for liberation.

Bewildered Herd – dominated non-resisting masses as impotent before the normative gaze of established power.

Biopolitical – rooted in chattel slavery, the overdetermination of lived experience through the regulation of bodies towards social control of populations.

Biopolitical alterity – condition of asymmetrical otherness as the systematic refusal of recognition or relation of separation as structural absence of reciprocity predicated upon objective violence accompanying mechanisms of coercion that inscribe lived relations between populations as bodies according to logics of ‘race’, occurring so consistently that overt racism becomes an unnecessary blemish to the prestige of established power.

Biopolitical danger – resistance so corrosive to the imperial mainstream-as-civil society that it calls into question the sovereign legitimacy of western imperialist power and thereby threatens the socio-historical stability and imperial topographical coherence of modernity.  See exceptional antagonism.

Biopolitical pacification – exercise of power through mechanisms of coercion accompanied by objective violence towards promoting the abdication of human agency by materialist reduction of the human condition through comprehensive regulation and/or deregulation of populations as bodies according to logics of ‘race’, occurring so structurally consistent that overt racism becomes an unnecessary blemish to the prestige of established power.

Biopolitical persecution – regulation and/or deregulation of objective violence against bodies administered as social control and population management according to logics of ‘race’, occurring so structurally consistent that overt racism becomes an unnecessary blemish to the prestige of established power.

Black liberation discourse – insurgent philosophical orientation of emancipatory thought as initiated by the anti-slavery dialectic of Revolt against western imperialist power.  

Black Rage – unheralded lucidity of Revolt.  Piercing clarity of affective indignance as consciousness venturing towards voicing an incommunicable reckoning.

the Blues metaphysic – vast reservoir of emancipatory creativity, imagination, aesthetics and discourse that begins with the call and response of lived Black experience to the disaster of history as a constant improvisational search for provisional foundations of upheaval from which to approach questions of freedom, universality, justice and the human condition without recourse to equilibrium, guarantee of stability, necessity of resolution, completion or wholeness.

Civil society – exists within the imperial mainstream between public and private spheres as a terrain of rights, liberties, political consent, common interests, social influence and collective pursuits where hegemony is contested and produced while implicitly dependent on the ongoing socio-ontological stability of established power.  See imperial mainstream.

Coercive anonymity – structurally consistent disregard of human ‘being’ imposed by the normative gaze of established power towards rendering particular populations ‘invisible’ to human consideration, ethical treatment or legal redress.

Coloniality – deterritorialized positionality of racist dehumanization as violent structural-inert relations of power inscribed within modernity itself that sustain and define lived hierarchal intermediations between imperial mainstream and socio-ontological underground of modernity.   

Dehumanization – process or condition of reducing human ‘being’ to ‘objecthood’ as a materialist determinism that interrupts and suppresses potentialities of human agency, with the aim of establishing the foundation for a generalized withdrawal of human consideration, ethical treatment and legal redress by the normative gaze of established power.  Not to be confused with the less severe condition of alienation.  Confronting dehumanization can lead to a lived experience of dread.  See dread, alienation. 

the disaster – enslavement of human ‘being’ as the socio-ontological basis for modernity.  

the Divine – absolute transcendence of the Real as unforeseen opening, sublime possibility and/or inexhaustible horizon of meaning.

Dread – lived apprehension of the human condition as irreducible agency that is irreconcilable with the Real of any given situation in the face of inevitable socio-historical persecution.  What distinguishes dread from anguish is lived positionality to established power.  Whereas anguish is associated with alienation and the imperial mainstream, dread is associated with dehumanization and the underground of modernity.  See dehumanization, anguish, underground of modernity.

Emancipatory Aesthetics – emphasizes the creative tension between form of transcendence and intentionality of resistance as an aesthetic gravity that discloses emancipatory potentialities of Art.

Emancipatory praxis – conscious struggle and decisive engagement that unifies thought and action towards potentialities of human liberation.

Empire – deterritorialized sovereign legitimacy of ongoing asymmetrical reconfigurations of western imperialist power structures that are inscribed with racist dehumanization and coloniality towards globally consolidating the interests of concentrated capital as manifest in totalitarian security culture, indefinite expansion of military forces on the international front and hypermilitarization of police forces on the domestic front.  See western imperialist continuum, western imperialist power.

Empirical self – materialist determinism as the substantive basis of human ‘being’.  See human ‘being’.

Exceptional Antagonism – breaks through the normative gaze by radically disrupting the sovereign legitimacy of western imperialist power and thus cannot be reconciled within the prescriptive boundaries of modernity.  A perpetual socio-ontological imperative towards the emancipatory possibility and universality of Revolt.

Existential liberation critique – insurgent philosophical engagement with lived Black experience that interrogates our perception of human ‘being’ in dynamic correlation towards conceptions of human liberation.  Discursively draws upon the anti-slavery dialectic of Frederick Douglass, the existential Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre and the decolonial phenomenology of Frantz Fanon.

Geonational – contemporary horizon of emancipatory praxis that introduces geohistorical potentialities of egalitarian social structures sustaining world community towards overcoming advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization by transcending nation-state boundaries of an symmetrical world ordered by a western imperialist continuum.

Hegemony – domination to the point of achieving popular legitimacy whereby even the oppressed participate through consensus in perpetuating their ongoing subjugation.  See civil society, imperial mainstream.

Human ‘being’ – temporally embodied consciousness situated in the world against the Real through a kinetic distance of interiority that introduces radical ontological freedom as irreducible agency that is not only irreconcilable with the Real, but in constant lived intermediation against culture and history.  Thus, affirmation of human ‘being’ realizes itself as renunciation of ‘objecthood’ and all attempted formulations of materialist determinism.  Human ‘being’ is the basis of human subjectivity, but not its equivalent thereof, as human subjectivity is constituted through constantly achieving and renewing praxis without resolution towards developing a temporal and distinctive rhythm of 'being-in-the-world'.  See kinetic distance of interiority, human subjectivity.

Human subjectivity – self-defining intentionality that arises from human ‘being’ as resistance against the Real and lived intermediation with temporality, culture and history.  Human subjectivity is constituted and continuously reconstituted through lived rhythm of praxis as simultaneous movement towards the world and intersubjective resonance towards one another.

Identity – locates and secures a substantive ‘empirical self’ through stable positionality to the Real and harmonious relation to the normative gaze of established power.  Identity mediates against the irreducibility of human agency and as such, is a furtive achievement of human ‘being’, not the equivalent of human subjectivity, though it shares the same basis.  See empirical self, human ‘being’, human subjectivity.

Ideology – epistemic closure and cultural reification of a particular system of thought as absolute.  Ideology is generated by the normative gaze of established power.  See normative gaze.

Imperial mainstream – globally designated cosmopolitan populations that merit human consideration, ethical treatment and legal redress according to the normative gaze of Empire based on race, class or nationality.  See civil society.  

Imperial topography – superimposed positionality of the imperial mainstream over the socio-ontological underground of modernity as a rational coherence and hierarchal arrangement of historical features and cultural consolidations of western imperialist power.  Implicitly represents the natural order of the world according to the normative gaze.  See positionality.

Insurgent philosophy – emancipatory thought that interrogates the Real and enunciates Revolt from the underground of modernity at the crossroads of Truth, meaning and power.

Insurrection-for-itself – organized intentionality and lived experience of revolutionary struggle as disciplined social movement towards reopening history to potentialities of human liberation.

Insurrection-in-itself – lived dynamic unity of protest-as-resistance and spontaneous rebellion as unregulated social movement towards reopening history to potentialities of human liberation.

Intersubjective resonance – metaphysics of heightened reciprocity generated by close proximity between one human ‘being’ and another that reverberates with constitutive significance and potentialities towards human subjectivity and community by evoking the prospect of adversity as a catalyst of movement towards unity or towards conflict.

Kinetic distance of interiority – threefold dynamic of consciousness as constitutive self-determination(consciousness introduces meaning to the world), relentless transcendence(consciousness surpasses the situated present) and spiritual upheaval(consciousness uproots the constituted past) that discloses the human condition as a continuous ‘presence-to-self’ rather than an ‘empirical self’.  see human ‘being’.

Lived rhythm of praxis – self defining intentionality and temporal movement towards the world and intersubjective resonance towards one another as the trajectory of human ‘being’ that constitutes human subjectivity.  see human subjectivity.  see praxis.

Lived universal – metaphysics of dynamic unity and universal relevance achieved through singularity of lived experience.

Miseducation of soul – epistemological indoctrination and ideological coercion towards abdicating the irreducible agency of human ‘being’ in favor of objecthood, rational animality or a fixed ‘empirical self’ as modes of materialist determinism.   Miseducation of soul works in tandem with objective violence towards constituting the normative gaze.  See normative gaze, ideology.

Modernity – contemporary post-traditional social structures accompanying the nation-state as historically imposed through an ongoing praxis of imperial conquest, genocide, colonial expansion, industrial revolution and human slavery, while ideologically proclaiming belief in evolutionary social progress, scientific rationality, democracy, technological advancement, human rights, mass production, standardization, division of labor, urbanization and economic development.  Although modernity is often associated with the decline of religion, it would be more accurate to suggest that modernity merely introduced Race, Nation and Capital as a new pantheon of gods that now easily compete with and often eclipse the Cause of God in terms of authentic religious devotion.  

Neo-colonial policing – counterinsurgent use of domestic police force as an occupying army to manage local populations and subjugate nascent potentialities of Revolt through hypermilitarization, civic initiatives and zero tolerance measures towards preserving socio-ontological boundaries between the imperial mainstream and the underground of modernity.

the normative gaze – unreflective imposition of established power upon situated consciousness that overdetermines-from-without through objective violence and miseducation of soul.  The normative gaze preempts both the enunciation of spontaneous thought in ordinary discourse and the articulation of formal rationality in academia, as epistemological self-justification and ideological frame of reference towards constituting the topographical coherence of the Real in legitimating concordance to the imperatives of established power.

Objecthood – ultimate aim or condition of dehumanization that reduces human ‘being’ to a materialist determinism that interrupts and suppresses potentialities of human agency, so as to establish a foundation for maintaining a generalized withdrawal of human consideration, ethical treatment and legal redress from the normative gaze of established power.  See dehumanization.

Objective violence – structural-inert violence sanctioned by established power that reaches such a repetitive degree of systemic frequency that it rationally escapes social notice and historical scrutiny out of sheer familiarity.  Objective violence works in tandem with miseducation of soul towards constituting the normative gaze.  See normative gaze, structural-inert.

Ontology – questions fundamental structures of being, existence and reality.  Focuses on ‘what there really is’ rather than ‘that there actually is’.

Overdetermination-from-without – coercive interventions towards supplanting human subjectivity by imposing ‘objecthood’ upon human ‘being’ as a fixed identity based on constant external reinforcement by the normative gaze of established power.  See normative gaze, identity.

Phenomenology – questions experience through the direct immediacy of that which appears before consciousness.  Focuses on ‘that there actually is’ rather than ‘what there really is’.

Positionality – lived hierarchal correlation of human ‘being’ to the topographical coherence of established power as constituted by the normative gaze, often the basis of identity.  See Identity, imperial topography.

Postmodern lumpenproletariat – emancipatory unity of race, class and international outcasts arising from both imperial mainstream and socio-ontological underground of modernity against Empire towards introducing the possibility of geonational egalitarian community.

Praxis – conscious struggle and decisive engagement that unifies thought and action towards introducing meaning into the world.  Consistent praxis develops a temporal rhythm that often serves as the initial basis for constituting human subjectivity out of the radical ontological freedom of human ‘being’.  Praxis can also refer to systematic action organized by established power towards constituting the Real.  See lived rhythm of praxis.  See human subjectivity.

Precipice of Anomie – socio-ontological crossroads of lived positionality where power exists in an ethical and legal indeterminacy.  The sovereign legitimacy of western imperialist power is constituted through the precipice of anomie as it structures existing hierarchal relations between imperial mainstream and the underground of modernity.  The imperial mainstream experiences the precipice of anomie when established power makes declarations of a ‘State of Emergency’ during which civil rights are officially suspended towards preserving the stability of established power as the condition of possibility for civil society.  However, the stability of civil society is experienced as an unrelenting socio-ontological gravity of structural-inert violence by the underground of modernity, for whom, the precipice of anomie constitutes an ongoing and undeclared ‘State of Emergency’ that distinguishes imperial mainstream from the underground of modernity in the name of law and order.  As such, for the underground of modernity, even the form of civil rights collapses as a pretense that enables the fact of civil rights to be negated as perpetually called into question by the normative gaze of established power.

Presence-to-self – kinetic distance of interiority that characterizes the human condition as temporally situated consciousness.  See kinetic distance of interiority.

Protest-as-resistance – disturbing the sovereign legitimacy of the normative gaze by an ascendant humanity that confronts established power with an emancipatory gaze of Revolt.  Willing to disrespect and disregard the boundaries of civil society in the name of Justice.

Protest-as-ritual event – reduction of protest to liberal-democratic passion plays that function more as catharsis for the imperial mainstream rather than as effective resistance by the underground of modernity to established power.  Willing to respect and uphold the boundaries of civil society in the name of law and order.

Race – rational signification of subhumanity masquerading as a neutral category to classify the intrinsic diversity of humanity and stabilize it into a fixed order of hierarchal identity.

Rational animality – subordination of the irreducible agency of human ‘being’ to biological determinism.

the Raw – metaphysics of the extreme as lived intensity and/or binding proximity.

the Real – non-conscious plenitude and exhaustive materiality of existence that is drenched in culture and history and thus both situates the human condition and mediates against it.

Reciprocity – mutual recognition, dependence, action or influence.

the Return – metaphysics of consequence.  The blowback of oppression returning to source through diverse means of intermediation and/or modes of emancipatory praxis.

Revolt – phenomenon that introduces ontological significance to socio-historical rebellion.

Socio-ontological – refers to binding questions of socio-historical relevance and ontological consequence.

Structural-inert – structural embodiment of praxis as passively comprehensible.

Underground of modernity – the wretched of the earth.  Race, class and international outcasts condemned by a western imperialist continuum to suffer through coloniality as a perpetually underdeveloped, underprivileged, undereducated, underrepresented, underclass of modernity and who therefore merit no human consideration, ethical treatment or legal redress under the normative gaze of established power.

Vertigo of emancipatory praxis – consciousness realizing itself as inebriating movement of disequilibrium towards rupturing the normative gaze through engaging in emancipatory praxis.

Western imperialist continuum – socio-historical continuity of a comprehensively administered power structure of racist dehumanization and coloniality in all its varied manifestations and consistent reconfigurations spanning from European invasions of the Americas, beginning in 1492 on through today in our contemporary world of advanced neo-liberal capitalist globalization.  See Empire.

Western imperialist power – socio-historical imposition of a heavily administered power structure of racist dehumanization and coloniality permeated by imperatives of domination and exploitation through concentrated capital, indefinite expansion of military forces on the international front and hypermilitarization of police on the home front.  See Empire.

Wretched of the earth – the socio-ontological underground of modernity.  Race, class and international outcasts.  See underground of modernity.

 

Selective Bibliography

Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies, (New York: Library of America, 1994).

The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass Vols.1-5, (New York: International Publishers, 1950, 1975).  

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, (New York: Grove Press, 1952, 1967).

Toward the African Revolution, (New York: Grove Press, 1964, 1967).

The Wretched of the Earth, (New York: Grove Press, 1961, 1963).

Lewis R. Gordon, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man, (New York: Routledge, 1995).

Existentia Africana, (New York: Routledge, 2000).

Thomas R. Flynn, Sartre and Marxist Existentialism, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, (New York: Vintage Books, 1970, 1994).

The History of Sexuality Vol.1, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978, 1990).

“Society Must Be Defended”, (New York: Picador, 1997, 2003).

Mark Poster, Existential Marxism in Postwar France (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975).

Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality”, Cultural Studies, Vol.21, Nos. 2-3, March/May 2007.

“Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism and Latin America”, Coloniality At Large, edited by Mabel Morana, Enrique Dussel and Carlos A. Juaregui, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, (New York: Washington Square Press, 1943, 1956).

Critique of Dialectical Reason Vols. 1&2, (New York: Verso, 1960, 1991).

Search for a Method, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1960, 1963).

A. Shahid Stover, Being and Insurrection, (New York: Cannae Press, 2019).

Cornel West, Prophesy Deliverance!, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982).

Frank B. Wilderson III, “The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s (Silent) Scandal”, Social Justice Vol.30, No.2, 2003.

“Gramsci’s Black Marx: Whither the Slave in Civil Society?”, Social Identities, Vol.9, No.2, 2003.