Robert Bernasconi
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 371058 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Robert Bernasconi |
| NOMBRES | Robert |
| APELLIDO | Bernasconi |
| FIRMA | BERNASCONI R |
| AFILIACIONES | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9699-895X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 59 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 67 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 58 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1982 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Nietzsche como filósofo do cultivo seletivo racializado
Os nazistas ofereceram uma leitura distorcida de Nietzsche ao assimilar suas ideias raciais às suas próprias, mas a leitura dominante de Nietzsche hoje é igualmente falsa na medida em que minimiza o aspecto racial de sua filosofia. A tendência de seus apologistas tem sido focar em seu anti-antisemitismo, mas os principais problemas surgem de seu endosso à escravidão racializada e, especialmente, ao cultivo seletivo racializado ou eugenia. As idei…
Slavery's absence from histories of moral and political philosophy
At a time when many institutions of higher learning are reflecting on their past complicity with chattel slavery, either in terms of the sources of their funding or their use of slave labor, philosophy as an academic discipline has been largely silent about its own complicity. Questions surrounding the legitimacy and practice of slavery were a regular part of moral philosophy courses at universities from the sixteenth century until its abolition.…
Hegel and Egypt's African Element
Contrary to the widespread view that Hegel excluded Africa from what he called world history proper, the specifically African element of Egypt was indispensable to his account of the pivotal dialectical moment that saw spirit's release from its immersion in nature. Hegel's racist caricature of Africans in the early part of the lectures was not gratuitous, something that commentators can leave to one side. It was integral to his dialectical accoun…
Transculturation and the porosity of cultures
Fernando Ortiz introduced his account of transculturation to replace Melville Herskovits's notion of acculturation as a way of describing the historical contact between cultures. Ortiz understood the idea of acculturation to be promoting a kind of assimilationist model very different from what he witnessed in his native Cuba. Transculturation conforms neither to the model of cosmopolitanism promoted by Kant's universal history, nor to the kind of…
Critical Philosophy of Race
The fifteen essays collected here set out to demonstrate why the critical philosophy of race needs to take a historical turn. Genealogies of the concepts of both race and racism are deployed to clarify why some of the dominant strategies for combatting racism tend either to miss the target altogether or give it only a glancing blow. For example, relying on biology to reject the concept of race as a way of disarming racism misses the fact that rac…
Before Whom and for What
Sipping Whiskey in Memphis
Robert Bernasconi (RB): Jonathan, to get us started, tell me about your background and what brought you to focus on the intersections of existentialism and racism? Jonathan Judaken (JJ): Well, I grew up in a Jewish family in Johannesburg in Apartheid South Africa. And I think all of those very specific facets of my upbringing are important to the trajectory of my work. My work has been a process of unthinking and dismantling and coming to terms w…
WHO Invented the Concept of Race?
WHO Invented the Concept of Race? This question admits of a variety of answers depending on what one takes to be decisive about the concept and on whether one believes that what defines the moment in which a technical term is introduced is the first usage of the word in the required sense or the definition that secures its status and influence. The terms and basis of the definition might continue to be scrutinized, but, so long as the term was be…
Frantz Fanon’s Engagement with Phenomenology
Attention to the role of phenomenology in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks is fundamental to an appreciation of the book’s progressive structure. And it is through an appreciation of this structure that it becomes apparent that the book’s engagement with phenomenology amounts to an enrichment, not a critique, of existential phenomenology, although the latter might appear to be the case at first sight, given Fanon’s rejection of certain aspe…
The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien
The Overcoming of the Beyng of Machenschaft
In 1939 Martin Heidegger made the astonishing claim that the overcoming of the beyng of machination occurs in T. E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He arrived at this assessment in the course of his attempt to distance himself from Friedrich Nietzsche and Ernst Jünger. It is well known that Heidegger formulated his understanding of machination in part in response to Jünger's account of total mobilization, but the importance for Heidegger of J…
Dialectical Praxis and the Decolonial Struggle
Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon are the preeminent phenomenologists of racism. Combatting the conventional wisdom of their time, Sartre in Anti-Semite and Jew and Fanon in the fifth chapter of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks already recognized that racism was not reducible to beliefs or attitudes and so could not be effectively combatted by education. In subsequent works they came to focus on colonialism as a racist material system according to…
A Most Dangerous Error
A genealogy of the English word racism shows that its dominant sense was shaped by Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Ashley Montagu around 1940 in order to establish a broad consensus against a narrow form of antisemitism found among some anthropologists in Nazi Germany. Their strategy, which was to challenge the biological concept of race on which racism, on their account, was said to be parasitic was subsequently adopted by UNESCO in 1950 and is s…
The Other Does Not Respond
Levinas's idea of substitution promotes what sounds at first sight like a full-blown notion of relationality. This is reflected, for example, in his adoption of Rimbaud's phrase "I is an other." But Levinas also insisted that the I is a term that exceeds the relation in the same way that the Other does. Maurice Blanchot questioned these implications in The Writing of the Disaster, but Levinas held fast to his conclusion that this was a "relation …
Levinas, Social Vulnerability, and the Logic of South African Racism
The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas was at the forefront of the promotion of the idea of vulnerability in philosophy. For Levinas, my primary vulnerability concerns not my pain, but my pain at the other's pain. Vulnerablity also has an ambiguous character in so far as it is not easily separated from my self-absorption in enjoyment. In this paper I show how Levinas's account can illuminate the way that the idea of vulnerability sometimes operates wit…
The Alterity of the Stranger and the Experience of the Alien
Nietzsche as a Philosopher of Racialized Breeding
When Nietzsche’s discussions of racial issues are read in historical context, many of the attempts by recent scholars to try to exonerate him of racism turn out to be less persuasive than they first appeared to be. Remarks that are often presented as transgressive can be shown to be relatively commonplace. Furthermore, his defenses of slavery and of colonialism deserve more critical attention than they have been given. Those scholars who judge th…
Facing up to the Eurocentrism and Racism of Academic Philosophy in the West
In this paper I address the questions posed to me by Bret Davis, Zeynep Direk, and Charles Mills, by focusing on, first, the eurocentrism of academic philosophy in the West and strategies to overcome it; secondly, the interface of critical philosophy of race and global politics, especially as the latter touches on Islamophobia; and, thirdly, the role of critical philosophy of race in challenging the complacency of philosophy departments in the fa…
Question of Language in Heidegger's History of Being
China on Parade
The Paradox of Liberal Politics in the South African Context
This article traces the evolution by which in the context of 1930s South Africa the liberal philosopher Alfred Hoernlé came to recognize the inability of classical liberalism to address the problems of a society in which a racial hierarchy had become deeply entrenched. Although he must be criticized for his patriarchal approach and for the pessimism that led him to take White attitudes toward Black South Africans as an unchangeable part of the si…
Silencing the Hottentots
When Police Violence Is More Than Violent Policing
Research Article| July 01 2014 When Police Violence Is More Than Violent Policing Robert Bernasconi Robert Bernasconi Pennsylvania State University, State College Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2014) 14 (2): 145–152. https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.14.2.0145 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Robert Bernasconi; When Pol…
Where Is Xenophobia in the Fight against Racism
What is at stake in identifying some actions or speech acts as racist as opposed to regarding them as "merely" xenophobic? If we understand racism as a system, how does this impact the way we address the distinction between the terms racism and xenophobia? My attempt to address these questions is guided by two observations drawn from the genealogy of the term racism. First, in the English language, the word was initially a synonym for Nazi anti-S…
Klopffechtereien - Missverständnisse - Widersprüche?
Eine der schärfsten Debatten des späten 18. Jahrhunderts war die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Immanuel Kant und Georg Forster. Gestritten wurde über die Frage, ob Menschenrassen unterschieden werden können und wie sie zu bestimmen sind. Das hochprekäre Thema wurde in der Folge bis in die Gegenwart hinein zum Streitobjekt der Wissenschaften. Am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts sollte die Kontroverse sogar die Aufklärung als Ganzes in Frage stellen. German…
On Deconstructing Nostalgia for Community within the West
The Third Party. Levinas on the Intersection of the Ethical and the Political
Dans le cadre du trentieme anniversaire de la Societe anglaise de phenomenologie celebre les 11-13 avril 1997 a Oxford dans le cadre d'un colloque consacre au theme du renouveau de la phenomenologie, l'A. analyse la conception du troisieme parti developpee par Levinas en trois moments : 1) dans l'article «Le moi et la totalite» («Revue de metaphysique et de morale», 1954, 59, pp. 353-73); 2) dans le chapitre «L'autre et les autres» dans «Totalite…
With what must the philosophy of world history begin? On the racial basis of Hegel's eurocentrism
(2000). With what must the philosophy of world history begin? On the racial basis of Hegel's eurocentrism. Nineteenth-Century Contexts: Vol. 22, Race and social theory, pp. 171-201
Where Is Xenophobia in the Fight against Racism
What is at stake in identifying some actions or speech acts as racist as opposed to regarding them as "merely" xenophobic? If we understand racism as a system, how does this impact the way we address the distinction between the terms racism and xenophobia? My attempt to address these questions is guided by two observations drawn from the genealogy of the term racism. First, in the English language, the word was initially a synonym for Nazi anti-S…
The Assumption of Negritude
(2002). The Assumption of Negritude: Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, and the Vicious Circle of Racial Politics. Parallax: Vol. 8, Fanon & the Impasses of Modernity, pp. 69-83
Black Skin, White Skulls
Not so long ago, the question of the racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians passed beyond the narrow confines of academia onto television and into the national newspapers when, in the wake of Mar
Lévy-Bruhl among the Phenomenologists
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl's impact on continental philosophers from Edmund Hersserl, Max Scheler, and Martin Heidegger, to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida is documented with specific reference to the question of understanding other cultures. However, the fact that Lévy-Bruhl focused on understanding ‘the primitive’ infected the philosophical discussions of this topic with a certain racism and even, on occasion, a certain exot…
Sartre’s Gaze Returned
Heidegger and the Invention of the Western Philosophical Tradition
L'A. defend la these selon laquelle l'approche heideggerienne de l'histoire de la philosophie occidentale, en general, et du probleme de l'origine grecque de la philosophie, en particulier, repose sur la question de l'identite politique allemande et sur la distinction entre tradition et Uberlieferung (muthos/logos)
The Paradox of Liberal Politics in the South African Context
This article traces the evolution by which in the context of 1930s South Africa the liberal philosopher Alfred Hoernlé came to recognize the inability of classical liberalism to address the problems of a society in which a racial hierarchy had become deeply entrenched. Although he must be criticized for his patriarchal approach and for the pessimism that led him to take White attitudes toward Black South Africans as an unchangeable part of the si…
The Impossible Logic of Assimilation
In this essay I argue that Memmi’s analysis in The Colonizer and the Colonized transcends the colonial situation of the 1950s. The remorseless logic exposed by Memmi, whereby the colonizer and the colonized are locked together in mutual dependence within a polarized society, applies whenever a dominant group insists that various minorities conform to the role assigned to them. Memmi’s philosophical and literary works, read with reference to the l…
Defining Race Scientifically
A Haitian in Paris
Bernasconi's essay locates Anténor Firmin's De l'égalité des races humaines (1885) in the context of the discussions of the science of race at the time, and argues that when seen in that light the book should be considered a work of philosophy as well as a contribution to the science of its day. Particular attention is given to the debate between monogenesis and polygenesis, the impact of Charles Darwin on the discussion of the human races, parti…
A Love that is Stronger than Death
2002). A Love that is Stronger than Death: Sacrifice in the Thought of Levinas, Heidegger, and Bloch. Angelaki: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 9-16
Deconstruction and scholarship
Transculturation and the porosity of cultures
Fernando Ortiz introduced his account of transculturation to replace Melville Herskovits's notion of acculturation as a way of describing the historical contact between cultures. Ortiz understood the idea of acculturation to be promoting a kind of assimilationist model very different from what he witnessed in his native Cuba. Transculturation conforms neither to the model of cosmopolitanism promoted by Kant's universal history, nor to the kind of…
The Other Does Not Respond
Levinas's idea of substitution promotes what sounds at first sight like a full-blown notion of relationality. This is reflected, for example, in his adoption of Rimbaud's phrase "I is an other." But Levinas also insisted that the I is a term that exceeds the relation in the same way that the Other does. Maurice Blanchot questioned these implications in The Writing of the Disaster, but Levinas held fast to his conclusion that this was a "relation …
Levinas, Social Vulnerability, and the Logic of South African Racism
The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas was at the forefront of the promotion of the idea of vulnerability in philosophy. For Levinas, my primary vulnerability concerns not my pain, but my pain at the other's pain. Vulnerablity also has an ambiguous character in so far as it is not easily separated from my self-absorption in enjoyment. In this paper I show how Levinas's account can illuminate the way that the idea of vulnerability sometimes operates wit…
Silencing the Hottentots
When Police Violence Is More Than Violent Policing
Research Article| July 01 2014 When Police Violence Is More Than Violent Policing Robert Bernasconi Robert Bernasconi Pennsylvania State University, State College Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2014) 14 (2): 145–152. https://doi.org/10.14321/crnewcentrevi.14.2.0145 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Robert Bernasconi; When Pol…
Our Duty to Conserve”
When restored to its historical context, W. E. B. Du Bois's “The Conservation of Races” emerges less as a contribution to the debate about the legitimacy of the concept of race, which is how it tends to be read today, and more as an intervention in the debate about the impact of so-called miscegenation on the African American population. Du Bois's contribution is situated in relation to the positions held by Frederick Douglass, Edward Blyden, and…
The Return of Africa
Eckhart’s Anachorism
Examinant la question de l'union (exstatique et occasionnelle, ou consciente et habituelle) avec Dieu chez Maitre Eckhart, l'A. etudie la conception de la temporalite du detachement chez R. Schurmann et se propose d'etendre son argumentation a la problematique de la spatialite du detachement chez Maitre Eckhart, consideree a travers l'image du desert signifiant le non-lieu et a travers la notion d'anachorisme entendu comme spiritualisme cosmique
Levinas Face to Face—with Hegel
The Question of Language in Heidegger’s History of Being
Ereignis
Deconstruction and scholarship
Habermas and Arendt on the Philosopher’s “Error”
On Deconstructing Nostalgia for Community within the West
Sartre’s Gaze Returned
Heidegger and the Invention of the Western Philosophical Tradition
L'A. defend la these selon laquelle l'approche heideggerienne de l'histoire de la philosophie occidentale, en general, et du probleme de l'origine grecque de la philosophie, en particulier, repose sur la question de l'identite politique allemande et sur la distinction entre tradition et Uberlieferung (muthos/logos)
The violence of the face
L'A. defend la these selon laquelle la conception de la violence developpee par Levinas dans «Totalite et infinite» (1961) est plus complexe que l'interpretation courante qui en a ete donnee, d'une part, et que Derrida a percu ce niveau de complexite dans la lecture qu'il fait du texte de Levinas dans son essai intitule «Violence et metaphysique» (1964), d'autre part. L'A. examine la mise en question par Derrida de la signification de la paix que…
Eckhart’s Anachorism
Examinant la question de l'union (exstatique et occasionnelle, ou consciente et habituelle) avec Dieu chez Maitre Eckhart, l'A. etudie la conception de la temporalite du detachement chez R. Schurmann et se propose d'etendre son argumentation a la problematique de la spatialite du detachement chez Maitre Eckhart, consideree a travers l'image du desert signifiant le non-lieu et a travers la notion d'anachorisme entendu comme spiritualisme cosmique
"An Ethics of Violence Justifying Itself." Sartre's Explorations of Violence and Oppression
Richard J. Bernstein
The Third Party. Levinas on the Intersection of the Ethical and the Political
Dans le cadre du trentieme anniversaire de la Societe anglaise de phenomenologie celebre les 11-13 avril 1997 a Oxford dans le cadre d'un colloque consacre au theme du renouveau de la phenomenologie, l'A. analyse la conception du troisieme parti developpee par Levinas en trois moments : 1) dans l'article «Le moi et la totalite» («Revue de metaphysique et de morale», 1954, 59, pp. 353-73); 2) dans le chapitre «L'autre et les autres» dans «Totalite…
The Invisibility of Racial Minorities in the Public Realm of Appearances
With what must the philosophy of world history begin? On the racial basis of Hegel's eurocentrism
(2000). With what must the philosophy of world history begin? On the racial basis of Hegel's eurocentrism. Nineteenth-Century Contexts: Vol. 22, Race and social theory, pp. 171-201
Eliminating the Cycle of Violence
Phenomenology World-Wide
Phenomenology is the philosophy of our times. Through the entire twentieth century this philosophy unfolded and flourished, following stepwise the intrinsic logic and dynamism of its original project
Ethnicity, Culture and Philosophy
This chapter contains sections titled: History of the Problem in the Context of the Western Philosophical Tradition The Example of African Philosophy Interculturalism in Philosophy Re-examining the Eurocentrism of the Canon and Renewing Philosophy Concluding Remarks
Kant as an Unfamiliar Source of Racism
The Assumption of Negritude
(2002). The Assumption of Negritude: Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, and the Vicious Circle of Racial Politics. Parallax: Vol. 8, Fanon & the Impasses of Modernity, pp. 69-83
A Love that is Stronger than Death
2002). A Love that is Stronger than Death: Sacrifice in the Thought of Levinas, Heidegger, and Bloch. Angelaki: Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 9-16
With What Must the History of Philosophy Begin?
Why Do the Happy Inhabitants of Tahiti Bother to Exist at All
Philosophy's involvement in genocide can be usefully appraised by exploring the fact that neither Immanuel Kant nor G. W. F. Hegel advocated mass killing, but those magisterial figures in the tradition of Western thought unwittingly contributed to the formation of a culture of genocide. They did so by proposing philosophies of history that were designed to give meaning to humanity as a species, while nevertheless embracing an idea of progress fro…
Lévy-Bruhl among the Phenomenologists
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl's impact on continental philosophers from Edmund Hersserl, Max Scheler, and Martin Heidegger, to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida is documented with specific reference to the question of understanding other cultures. However, the fact that Lévy-Bruhl focused on understanding ‘the primitive’ infected the philosophical discussions of this topic with a certain racism and even, on occasion, a certain exot…
Black Skin, White Skulls
Not so long ago, the question of the racial identity of the Ancient Egyptians passed beyond the narrow confines of academia onto television and into the national newspapers when, in the wake of Mar
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