[Xmca-l] Fwd: Invitation to the Call for Papers: Reconstructing the Social Sciences and Humanities: Antenor Firmin, Western Intellectual Tradition, and Black Atlantic Thought and Culture

Sat Mar 3 08:23:11 PST 2018

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-------- Original message --------From: Celucien Joseph <celucienjoseph@gmail.com> Date: 3/2/18  9:12 PM  (GMT-05:00) To: glodel mezilas <glodelmezilas@hotmail.com>, "Louis, Bertin Magloire" <blouis2@utk.edu>, Nixon Cleophat <proudblack25@yahoo.com>, tammie jenkins <tjenki6@gmail.com>, Moussa Traore <camillio73@gmail.com>, Patrick Delices <pdelices@gmail.com>, "Dr. Paul C. Mocombe" <pmocombe@mocombeian.com>, Jean Poincy <caineve@yahoo.fr>, Jhon Picard Byron <jpicard.byron@gmail.com>, Brandon Byrd <bronbyrd@gmail.com>, Leslie Alexander <alexander.282@gmail.com>, gina ulysse <gulysse@gmail.com>, Dr Judite BLANC <juditeblanc@yahoo.fr>, Asselin Charles <asselinc@hotmail.com>, "Hebblethwaite,Benjamin John" <hebble@ufl.edu>, Wideline Seraphin <wseraphin@gmail.com>, Charlene Desir <cdesir13@gmail.com>, "Kaiama L. Glover" <kglover@barnard.edu>, Lewis Ampidu CLORMEUS <lewis.clormeus@ueh.edu.ht>, Lewis <lclormeus@yahoo.fr>, bennuinstitute@yahoo.com, nboaduo@wsu.ac.za, nanaadupipimboaduo@gmail.com, car318@psu.edu, asselinch@yahoo.com, Myriam Mompoint <Myriam.Mompoint@fsw.edu>, "Esther I. Rodriguez Miranda" <chezeparis@gmail.com>, "Alexander, William H." <whalexander@nsu.edu>, Rob Taber <robtaber@gmail.com>, eddy <dejapsa@gmail.com>, Joshua Clough <joshua.clough@duke.edu>, Charlotte Hammond <cahammond@hotmail.co.uk>, Kantara Souffrant <kantara.souffrant@gmail.com>, "Souffrant, Kantara" <kantara.souffrant@mam.org>, Crystal Felima <crystalfelima@gmail.com>, Barbara Lewis <Barbara.Lewis@umb.edu>, "Pereira, Emmanuel" <ep03e@my.fsu.edu>, Schallum Pierre <schallumpierre@gmail.com>, Wiebke Beushausen <Beushausen@uni-heidelberg.de>, Patricia Donatien-Yssa <patricia.donatien-yssa@martinique.univ-ag.fr>, Wilson Décembre <wdecembre@yahoo.fr> Subject: Invitation to the Call for Papers: Reconstructing the Social Sciences and Humanities: Antenor Firmin, Western Intellectual Tradition, and Black Atlantic Thought and Culture 
Dear Friends, 
I hope this message finds you well. I'm sending a special invitation to you because we have previously collaborated in a book project. I value your scholarship and the rigor of your research. 

Dr. Paul Mocombe and I will be coediting an important on Joseph Antenor Firmin; hence, I would like to invite you to contribute a book chapter to this important project. Below, you will find the content of the Call for Papers:

Call for Papers

Reconstructing the
Social Sciences and Humanities: Antenor Firmin, Western Intellectual Tradition,
and Black Atlantic Thought and Culture

Editors:
Celucien L. Joseph, PhD, Paul Mocombe, PhD

Description:

Joseph Antenor Firmin (1850-1911) was the reigning public
intellectual and political critic in Haiti in the nineteenth-century. Firmin
was the first “Black anthropologist” and “Black Egyptologist” to deconstruct
Western interpretation of global history and challenge the ideological
construction of human nature and theories of knowledge in Western social
sciences and the humanities—through his interdisciplinary tour-de-force De l’égalité des races humaines
(anthropologie positive) (1885), translated in the English language as The Equality of the
Human Races: Positivist Anthropology (2002)
by Asselin Charles. In this seminal
monograph, Firmin interrogated the conventional boundaries of research methods
in the social sciences and humanities in the eighteenth-century and
nineteenth-century, respectively—although the social sciences came to be recognized
as distinct disciplines of thought until the nineteenth-century. His research was
influenced by the philosophy of positivism, grounded in the ideas of the French
philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857), to critique the traditional approaches
to and the contemporary theories of human origin, civilization, history,
culture, and research representation. As the 18th-century
Scottish empiricist David Hume, Firmin was correspondingly concerned about the “relations
of ideas” in the scientific inquiry and the underlying fundamental notions and
objectives of various fields or disciplines of knowledge of that era. His
political theory about the constitution of the nation-states and the formation
of modern societies were equally driven by the political and sociological methods
and theories of that period; yet, Firmin was discontent about the ideological
impulses and epistemological presuppositions of these cultural-political
phenomena and dynamics.

Through his other
intellectual, political, and diplomatic writings and commentaries—such as Haïti au point de vue politique,
administratif et économique : conférence faite au Grand cercle de Paris
(1891), Haïti et la France (1891), Une défense (1892), Diplomate et diplomatie : lettre ouverte à M. Solon Ménos (1899), M. Roosevelt, président des États-Unis et la
République d’Haïti (1905), Lettres de Saint Thomas. Études sociologiques, historiques
et littéraires (1910), and L’effort dans le mal (1911) — Firmin’s intellectual motif was animated by a spirit of dispassionate and
rational inquiry. He
articulated an alternative way
to study global historical trajectories, the political life, human societies
and interactions, and the diplomatic relations and dynamics between the nations
and the races. The sociological dimension of Firmin’s thought not only
reassesses the history of the social thought of his period, but stresses the
complex factors and forces that contributed to the (economic) development of
human societies and cultures, and the concept of advanced and less-advanced
civilizations in the modern world. For example, Firmin’s revisionist history makes
a clarion call to acknowledge the “Black Genesis” of human origin and the
manifold contribution of pre-colonial Africa to universal civilization and
human flourishing, in both ancient history and modern history. The Firminian
turn in social sciences and the humanities, and in anthropology in particular
was a discursive discourse that questioned the ideological premises of theories
of knowledge and the myth of a “superior race,” and the logic of Western
interpretation of global history and the historical narrative about ancient African
history and culture.

This Call for Papers is an attempt to
meditate intellectually on the intellectual life, writings, and the legacy of
Joseph Antenor Firmin. This project not only presents Firmin as a
deconstructionist of the social sciences and humanities and theories of knowledge
articulated in Western history of ideas and social thought of his era; it also
accentuates his manifold contribution to these distinct fields of thought. As
an anti-racist intellectual and cosmopolitan thinker, Firmin challenges Western
idea of the colonial subject, race achievement, and modernity’s imagination of
a linear narrative of progress and reason based on the false premises of social
evolution and development, colonial history and epistemology, and the intellectual
evolution of the Aryan-White race. For Firmin, these Western-European fault-lines
and intellectual transgressions had deferred the work of universal progress,
the international alliance between the nations, peoples, and the races of the
world, and the cosmopolitan orientation toward phileo love and mutual respect. Firmin
anticipates the de-colonial option as a potential remedy to cure the shortcomings
of (Western) modernity and the intellectual decadence in Western interpretation
of human nature and society, history, and development.

For Firmin, the remapping of the geography
of reason and the intellectual reconfigurations of epistemology could be the veritable
solution to the problems of social sciences and the humanities, and to the race
question in the modern world—leading to an ethics of cosmopolitan humanism and the
possibility of living together as members of one human race. Subsequently, in
his work, Firmin projects a two-fold objective presented as a concurrent
intellectual event: (1) to deconstruct the conventional contours of social
sciences and the humanities and the theories of knowledge about the races and
peoples in the modern world for the advancement of the human race, and (2) to
reconstruct race and articulate a more accurate narrative of societal
development and human evolution, from a post-colonial imagination resulting
into a new positive narrative of human societies, global history, and human
understanding—toward  the common good.

Firmin’s revisionist approach to
anthropology, sociology, and ancient and modern history was motivated by a genuine desire to correct European
perspective on the idea of a “single modernity;” by consequence, he suggested
both parallel and alternative modernities and corresponding civilizations.  The Firminian project of creative deconstruction,
positivism, and reconstruction of human historical narrative and theories of knowledge
anticipates the renewal of humanity and the possibilities of imagining future
possibilities with an emancipative hope and intent.  Firmin’s primary argument is that the history
of the world, in the strictest sense of the term,
is not a racial accomplishment, the accomplishment of whiteness. In response,
Firmin proposed alternative modernities whose foundations and ethical
frameworks are non-European and pre-Western. 

Reconstructing the Social Sciences and Humanities is a special volume on Joseph Antenor Firmin that reexamines
the importance of his thought and legacy, and the relevance of his ideas for contemporary
social sciences and the humanities in the academia, the twenty-first century’s
culture of humanism, and the continuing challenge of race and racism. This
volume seeks to fill in the intellectual gaps of Firmin’s work in the
Anglophone world. Modern scholarship on the writings of Firmin is scarce in the
Anglophone world, and as the “first black anthropologist” in the Western world,
contemporary anthropology, both in the United States and elsewhere in the
Anglophone community, has not given serious attention to the importance and
complexity of his ideas in the discipline and its cognates. Firmin’s
contribution to the discipline of anthropology, sociology, political theory,
history, and comparative study has been overlooked by both American and
European thinkers. The reexamination of Firmin’s thought is significant for
contemporary research in both social sciences and the humanities, ancient
history, Black and Pan-African Studies, ancient African history, and
particularly, the renewed scholarly interests in Haiti and Haitian Studies in
North America. This volume explores various dimensions in Joseph Antenor
Firmin’s thought and his role as theorist, anthropologist, cultural critic,
public intellectual, diplomat, political scientist, pan-Africanist, and
humanist. 

If you would like to contribute a
book chapter to this important volume, along with your CV, please submit a 300-word
abstract by Wednesday, June 27, 2018, to Dr. Celucien Joseph @ celucienjoseph@gmail.com, and Dr. Paul Mocombe @ pmocombe@mocombeian.com

Successful applicants will be
notified of acceptance on Wednesday, July 25, 2018. The first chapter draft is
due Wednesday, November 28, 2018. The 17th edition of the Chicago
Manual of Style is required. We are looking for original and unpublished essays
for this book. Translations of Firmin’s writings in the English language are
also welcome. Potential topics to be addressed include (but are not limited to)
the following:

I.                  
The Person,
Choices, and Ideas of Joseph Antenor Firmin

·        
The
Education of Joseph Antenor Firmin

·        
The
(Scientific) Ideas of Joseph Antenor Firmin

·        
The
intellectual life of Joseph Antenor Firmin

·        
Firmin
and the Scientific Method of the nineteenth-century

·        
Firmin
as (Black) Anthropologist

·        
Firmin
as Humanist and Cosmopolitan

·        
Firmin
as Agnostic

·        
Firmin
as Theorist 

·        
Firmin
as Positivist thinker

·        
The political philosophy and
democratic ideas of Joseph  Firmin

·        
The ethical and moral worldview of
Joseph Firmin

II.               
Firmin & Haiti

·        
Firmin
in Haitian History and Politics 

·        
Firmin
in Haitian Intellectual Tradition 

·        
Firmin’s interpretation of Haitian
intellectual history 

·        
Haitian heroes and heroines in the
writings of Firmin 

·        
Haitian exceptionalism in the
writings of Firmin 

·        
The Education of the Haitian people
in the writings of Firmin 

·        
Firm and the economic development of
Haiti

·        
The Political career of Antenor
Firmin

·        
Haitian Nationalism and Patriotism
in Firmin’s thought 

·        
Firmin
and the future of Haiti in the twenty-first century

III.            
Firmin, Africa,
and the African Diaspora

·        
Firmin
in Africana and Black Intellectual Tradition

·        
Firmin
in Caribbean Politics and History 

·        
Africa
in the work of Firmin

·        
Firmin
and Pan-Africanism

·        
Firmin
and Afrocentrism

·        
Firmin
and Ancient Egyptian Civilization (Egyptology)

·        
Firmin
and the education and miseducation of Blacks

·        
Firmin
and the concept of “Black progress” 

·        
Firmin
and the Future of the Africa and African Diaspora in the twenty-first century

·        
The Vindication and Rehabilitation
of the Black Race 

·        
The Role and Contributions of
Pre-colonial African civilizations to world civilizations

IV.            
Firmin, Social
Sciences, and the Western World

·        
Firmin
and Western History of Ideas 

·        
Firmin,
modernity, and the European Enlightenment 

·        
Firmin
and Scientific Racism of the Nineteenth-century

·        
Firmin’s
critique of Wester Epistemology

·        
Firmin
and the discipline of Anthropology

·        
Firmin
and the discipline of History 

·        
Firmin
and the discipline of Sociology

·        
Firmin
and the discipline of Philosophy

·        
The
influence of Auguste Compte’s positivism on Firmin

·        
The
Concept of human progress in Firmin

·        
Firmin
and Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau

·        
Firmin
and European Philosophical Tradition

·        
Firmin
and European Racism

·        
Firmin
and Western Imperialism

·        
Firmin
and Revisionist History

·        
Firmin
and the Logic of human history 

·        
Firmin
and Marxism

V.               
Firmin, the
Humanities, and the World   

·        
Firmin
and theories of knowledge

·        
The
concept of human nature in Firmin

·        
The
“race question” in the work of Firmin

·        
Firmin
and the Theology of race 

·        
Firmin
and the concept of culture

·        
“Vindication”
as an intellectual method in Firmin

·        
The
religious traditions in the work of Antenor Firmin 

·        
The
concept of science in the work of Antenor Firmin 

·        
Firmin
and the equality of the human races

·        
Firmin
and American diplomatic politics and relations

·        
Firmin
and the Decolonial Method

·        
Firmin
and the Postcolonial theory

·        
Firmin
and Critical Race Theory

·        
Firmin
and the Problem of Imperialism

·        
Firmin
and the Pitfalls of Capitalism

We look forward to
receiving your abstract and collaborating with you in this important project. 

Sincerely,

Celucien L.
Joseph, PhD.

Paul Mocombe, PhD.

About the editors

Celucien L. Joseph
(PhD., University of Texas at Dallas; PhD., University of Pretoria) is
Professor of English at Indian River State College. His recent books include Thinking in Public: Faith, Secular Humanism,
and Development in Jacques Roumain (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2017), and Between Two Worlds: Jean Price-Mars, Haiti,
and Africa (Lexington Books, 2018), which he co-edited with Jean Eddy Saint
Paul and Glodel Mezilas. 

Paul
C. Mocombe (PhD., Florida Atlantic University) is
former Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at Bethune Cookman
University and Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at West Virginia
State University and the President/CEO of The Mocombeian Foundation, Inc.  A social theorist interested in the
application of social theory to contemporary issues such as race, class, and
capitalism (globalization), he is the author of, Jesus and the Streets; Race and Class Distinctions Within Black
Communities; Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies; A
labor Approach to the Development of the Self or Modern Personality: The Case
of Public Education, Education in Globalization; Mocombe’s Reading Room Series;
and The Mocombeian Strategy: The
Reason for, and Answer to Black Failure in Capitalist Education.

I look forward to hearing from you.
Celucien

Sincerely, 
Celucien L. Joseph, Ph.D. 
Assistant Professor of English
Indian River State College
772-462-7708
cjoseph@irsc.edu

"Remember the Poor"--Galatians 2:10