Philosophy Today

Volume 67, Issue 4, Fall 2023

The Intersection of Black Studies and Continental Philosophy

An Old Materialism for a New Ground

This article is an investigation into the concept of “ground” in modern Western philosophy. I begin with a rehearsal of Fanon’s critique of Hegel’s Lord-Bondsman dialectic (that there is no common ground for white and black) as the starting point for this investigation. Despite its best efforts, the Western canon is shown to have a commitment to its transcendental turn and cannot rid itself of its idealist impulse insofar as it must establish a ground from which to begin. In so doing, Western theory cannot reckon with those historical processes that institute modern thought (i.e., primitive accumulation, slavery, colonialism, etc.), precisely because of its reliance on them. As such, it fails to privilege a historical materialist turn that would situate both the self-determined subject and the affectable “others” on a common ground, as insisted on by Denise Ferreira da Silva. By arguing for a materialist conception of an ontoepistemological ground based on necessity rather than freedom, I make a case for a politics of non-participation and revolutionary action as modes of political practice that make possible a dialectical and historical intervention into the structure of the global modern.