In Black Enlightenment Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works of such Black writers as the free Jamaican Francis Williams (1697–1762), Afro-British thinker Ignatius Sancho (1729?–1780), and Afro-American poet Phillis Wheatley (1753?–1784), placing them alongside those of their white European contemporaries David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). By rethinking the Enlightenment and its canons, Parekh complicates common understandings of the Enlightenment wherein Black subjects could exist only in negation to white subjects. Black Enlightenment points to the anxiety of race in Hume, Kant, and others while showing the importance of Black Enlightenment thought. Parekh prompts us to consider the timeliness of reading Black Enlightenment authors who become “free” in a society hostile to that freedom.

Surya Parekh is Assistant Professor of English, General Literature, and Rhetoric at Binghamton University and coeditor of Living Translation.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. Black Enlightenment  23
2. (Dis)Figuring Kant  50
3. The Changing Rhetoric of Race  74
4. The Character of Ignatius Sancho  106
5. Phillis Wheatley’s Providence  131
Notes  153
Bibliography  177
Index  195