Sylvia Wynter's Essay: Towards The Human, After Man

In Sylvia Wynter’s essay, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, and Its Overrepresentation”, she speaks about western modernity that begins with the experience of western modernity as Coloniality. Wynter is responding to western modernity from a Caribbean aspect solely focusing on Jamaica. Throughout Wynter’s essay, there seemed to be an underlining question that occurred, which was “How were they able to gain world dominance and raise population?” In this essay, Wynter tells her readers explicitly what her argument is which is my quote above. She states, “Our present struggles with respect to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, struggles over the environmental, global warming, severe climate change, the sharply unequal distribution of the earth resources – these are all differing facets of the central ethnoclass Man vs. Human struggle.” I found her argument very intriguing because there were several of layers to her work. I wish we were all seen as one and not by the color of our skin nor or sexual orientation.
3. Question:

When reading Wynter’s essay, she speaks about Frantz Fanon and he says, “must put an end to the narcissism on which relies in order to imagine that he is different from the other ‘animals.” The category “human” is premised on the exclusion of Black people, Natives, disabled persons, poor folks, trans identified people whose being compromises their ability to attain the status “human.” (Wynter Territory) The questions what were pounding while reading was, “What do Black people (people of color in general) have to do to be seen as humans?

What does it take for Black people to be recognized as such and be treated

equal?”

4. Connection:
The connection I had while reading Sylvia Wynter was “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. The reason why “The New Jim Crow”, came into mind while reading Sylvia Wynter’s essays was because Michelle Alexander speaks about the difficulties that Black bodies have to endure primary focusing on mass incarceration and how it not only affects the Black bodies that are incarcerated by the Black bodies that are connected to the ones incarcerated.
Wynter questions the relation between people because of Frantz Fanon theory of the “Zone of non- being”. Wynter wonders how does an empowered subject oppress an object. There are limits to guilt and gestures of sympathy. Even performances of solidarity often entail a brutal erasure and decentering, as illustrated by the increased media coverage of the Ferguson protests when white protestors showed up. It was as if, with the arrival of white protestors, the mainstream had found a reason for Ferguson to matter: the Real Humans had taken the stage. “The New Jim Crow” and Sylvia Wynter’s essays they show how Black bodies aren’t seen as humans and how are constantly being reminded of that from society mainstreams.