Decolonizing Existentialism and Phenomenology

An interesting exposition of the multiple aspects of marginalization connected to colonization using existential/phenomenological (Sartre/ Hussert) interrogation and interpretation derived from the critics Beauvoir, Wright, Wynter, Kincaid, Lewis, Lorde, and others. The book provides a comprehensive understanding of the structures of meaning, identity, and consciousness that avoid bracketing or bad faith. Fast's personal, informed, authentic stories enlighten multifaceted personal, institutional, social, and political relationships embedded in lived experiences. This approach has potentially powerful transformative appeal to a colonized audience, which recognizes its own false consciousness and bad faith fixed by its lived experiences in colonized consciousness embedded in the pre-existing place where they initially find themselves in the white world. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Lucidly written, rigorously argued with nuance, and rich with scholarly evidence, Jina Fast's Decolonizing Existentialism and Phenomenology is nothing short of an extraordinary metacritique of reason in existential phenomenological contexts. Skillfully avoiding pitfalls of epistemic apartheid and reductive reasoning, Fast not only addresses lacunae but also demonstrates, through careful reading, a wonderful synthesis through which a path is offered also for philosophy to be critically true to and beyond itself. A must read not only for anyone interested in Global Southern existential thought but also the complexity of what is needed to think across non-essentialist struggles for dignity and freedom.

Why is a philosophy--a domain of inquiry quintessentially associated with critical inquiry--so amenable to colonization and so difficult to decolonize? Jina Fast's highly readable, consistently thought-provoking text engages existentialist and phenomenological writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, Audre Lorde, Lewis R. Gordon, Sylvia Wynter, and Jamaica Kincaid to clarify what it means for knowledge and consciousness to be made free.