The Re-Enchantment of Humanism: An Interview with Sylvia Wynter

Sylvia Wynter
Sylvia Wynter

Sylvia Wynter interviewed by David Scott. First published in Small Axe in 2000.

Submitted by red jack on January 13, 2017

Sylvia Wynter is a radical Jamaican theorist influenced, among others, by Frantz Fanon. This well known interview is often considered to be the best introduction to her thinking about the question of human in the aftermath of 1492 and the consequent racialisation of humanity.

Wynter rethinks dominant concepts of being human, arguing that they are based on a colonial and racialized model that divides the world into asymmetric categories such as "the selected and the dysselected", center and periphery, or colonizers and colonized. Against this Wynter proposes a new humanism. According to Katherine McKittrick Wynter develops a "counterhumanism", that breaks from the classification of humans in static, asymmetric categories.

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