Recapitulation: Humans as Socially Constructed and Free, an Ongoing Improvisation

Abstract

I began my first chapter with a series of Aime Cesaire-inspired staccato lines—foreboding lines pulsating with an internal dissonance and sounding a warning against, as Foucault might say, discourses of progress masking violence and operating not coercively or covertly but openly, endorsed willfully by our own collaborative actions. In an era when American exceptionalism is a constant refrain, when new wars are initiated before prior “interventions” have ceased, and when the terrorist other is the new scripted subjectivity we are told to fear and hate, perhaps we ought to pause to consider whether our so-called destiny is in fact a flawed destiny. Moreover, following the lead of Douglass and Fanon, perhaps we need to critically examine the sociopolitical and religious narratives and subnarratives of our day, asking ourselves whether they in fact promote freedom for all and the genuine flourishing of human beings.