The Sociology of Humanity: Benjamin P Davis and “Another Humanity”

What does it mean to imagine another humanity in a century marked by war, displacement, and deep inequality?

In this episode, we sit down with Benjamin P. Davis, author of Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt.

Davis traces shifting ideas of “the human” through the works of W. E. B. Du Bois, Édouard Glissant, Sylvia Wynter, and Edward Said—thinkers who redefined human rights and humanism in the face of empire and exclusion.

Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s post-war correspondence with Karl Jaspers, Davis invites us to reflect on what a decolonial ethics of humanity might look like today.

Together, we ask: how might we live into Glissant’s question of whether we have the right, and the means, to imagine another dimension of humanity?

About the Guest 

Benjamin Davis is a scholar of political theory, decolonial ethics, and the global histories of human rights. He previously held fellowships with the Department of African American Studies at Saint Louis University and the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto.

He is the author of three books. His first, Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy: Field Notes from the Margins, repositions the mystic Simone Weil as a major political thinker. His second book, Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights and Decolonial Ethics, interprets poet and theorist Édouard Glissant as a vital voice for contemporary human rights practice. His most recent book, Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt, offers a defense of “the human” and “humanity” amid today’s critical theoretical debates.

• Website: https://benjaminpdavis.com/

• Email: benjamin.davis [at] tamu.edu.

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Episode Credits

• Host: Bhumika Billa, Guest Host
• Producer: Bhumika Billa and Shubham Jain
• Executive Producer: Sarah Awan 
• Podcast Lead: Shubham Jain
• Show Notes: Yusan Ghebremeskel 
• Publisher and Communications Manager: Evie Nicholson 
• Editor: Max Parnell