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Symposium: How Was Caribbean Ethics Made Under Enslavement?

First published – Jul 22, 2024 Journal of World Philosophies9(1). Retrieved from https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jwp/article/view/7434

Vété-Congolo’s challenges us to consider alternative ways of understanding the self and the world outside of racial and other hierarchies. One such alternative she examines in this symposium is formed around the Creole term “moun” (‘human person’) and the phrase “tout moun sé moun” (“all human persons are human persons”). Developed under enslavement on Caribbean plantations, this radical epistemic resistance drove, she argues, Caribbean Pawòl or Caribbean Ethics. Vété-Congolo’s respondents José Cossa and Denise Ferreira da Silva, agree that this black resilience under enslavement needs to be acknowledged as an alternative way of understanding the self’s relation to the world. However, while Cossa clearly distinguishes ‘moun’ from its contemporary European humanistic counterparts, Ferreira da Silva argues that ‘moun’s’ ethical moment should not be considered as belonging to the post-Enlightenment political architecture of equality and freedom, but as an act of rebelry.

Symposium-How-Was-Caribbean-Ethics-Made-Under-Enslavement

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