The World's Ends: Standpoint, Comportment, and Ethics in Wilderson, Edelman, and Heidegger
Restricted (Penn State Only)
Author:
Ewara, Eyo
Graduate Program:
Philosophy
Degree:
Doctor of Philosophy
Document Type:
Dissertation
Date of Defense:
April 29, 2019
Committee Members:
Nancy Tuana, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor Nancy Tuana, Committee Chair/Co-Chair Leonard Lawlor, Committee Member Amy Allen, Committee Member Clarie Colebrook, Outside Member
Keywords:
Heidegger Lee Edelman Frank Wilderson III Phenomenology Anti-social Queer Theory Afro-pessimism Ethics Feminist Standpoint Theory
Abstract:
In this dissertation I show the connection between recent work in Afro-pessimism, Queer thought, and work on metaphysics, ethics, and group identity in continental philosophy. I specifically compare and contrast the work of Frank Wilderson, Lee Edelman and Martin Heidegger insofar as they all present what I term ‘ontological standpoint theories.’ I point first to how Wilderson and Edelman conceptualize black and queer people, respectively, as being figured outside the social and political world and as having a privileged vantage point from which not to call for a reform of that world, but to critique it as structured on a logic of exchangeability and fungibility. I then draw on Heidegger to both theorize what the extra-social something that Edelman and Wilderson hope to do justice to in contrast with the world and how it relates to those particular groups. I also draw on Heidegger’s own account of the relationship between a people, a metaphysics, and an ethics in order to draw out some of the potentially problematic ways that an ontological standpoint can be theorized.
