Devonya N. Havis, "Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy" (Lexington Books, 2022)
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What is the central premise of Devonya Havis’s Black Vernacular Philosophy?
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Hello and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel of the New Books Network. I'm Sarah Tyson, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Denver. I'm co host of the channel along with Carrie Fictor, Robert Talise, and Malcolm Keating. Together we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books, drawing from a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Devania N. Havis, associate professor in both the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of Buffalo, the state the State University of New York. Her book, Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy is Just Out from Lexington Books.
What can philosophy do by taking up black American cultural practices? Havis suggests that academic philosophy has been too narrow in its considerations of this question. Supporting domination and oppression. In creating a black vernacular philosophy, Havis brings our focus to theoretically rich practices of African diasporic communities. Offering critical insight into how philosophy has been narrowed, Havis also offers a guide to interpreting the world otherwise, engaging stories, novels, the blues, jazz, work songs, naming and self naming and more. Havis does black vernacular philosophy in conversation with other doers, and she shows us the urgent need for such work. Divine Yeah Heavis, welcome to New Books in Philosophy.
Thank you. I'm excited to be in conversation with you. Same, same. So tell us a bit about yourself, um, your background as a philosopher and and how you got to this project on uh black vernacular phenomena.
So I grew up in the South in Jackson, Mississippi to be precise, um, which is an interesting place. Um largely because it is the seat of mu much civil rights struggle. It is the the home place of Meg Gravers and my family and friends and that community were really engaged in the black freedom struggle, which we now think about as a civil rights movement. My father, um grew up picking cotton, uh, in Arkansas and became a professor, ultimately got a PhD. Um, he was a forensic Uh Psychologist in Engoba State Prison. Uh, he went there to work on certain projects. And I say all this to say that. My encounter with philosophy was very much through my black communities and through the ways in which. living and creating meaning and joy in a world that was anti black.
involved. certain critical stances that were not just you know, you didn't just get 'em in the water, but they were actively cultivated as as modes of thinking. And maybe have the sort of I tell the story about
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the central premise of Devonya Havis’s Black Vernacular Philosophy?
0:00–14:17
2
How does Havis’s Southern upbringing shape her philosophical perspective?
14:17–26:38
3
Why does Havis argue that traditional academic philosophy reinforces oppression?
26:38–32:00
4
In what ways does Havis use music, literature, and work songs as philosophical tools?
32:00–37:40
5
How does Havis define ‘black difference’ and its relevance to contemporary theory?
37:40–42:47
6
What is the significance of ‘Redemption Songs’ in Havis’s critique of philosophy?
42:47–46:07
7
How can educators apply Black Vernacular Philosophy to foster critical consciousness?
46:07–47:16
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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