In The Weekly Read (Duke University Press News) Ryan Helsel features “The Artist-Philosopher: Sylvia Wynter’s Aesthetic Continuity and the Creative Act of Decolonial Theory,” by Manuel Arturo Abreu. The article appears in Sylvia Wynter and the Question of Technology, a special issue of Social Text (167) edited by Che Gossett and Tavia Nyong’o. [“Sylvia Wynter was a radical philosopher from the Caribbean who explored modern history from the perspective of slavery, the Middle passage and plantation economics.” For more information, see “Sylvia Wynter: Beyond man”—a documentary film by Marcela Pizarro, Stefania Sottile, and Pomona Pictures Al Jazeera.]
Helsel invites us to read this article for free through September 30, 2026, and to buy this issue (with code SAVE30 for a 30% discount). See full description and TOC at Duke University Press.
Description (abstract excerpt): This editors’ introduction to the special issue “Sylvia Wynter and the Question of Technology” situates Wynter’s revolutionary critique of the “overrepresentation of Man” within the intertwined crises of race, technics, and planetary survival. Reading Wynter alongside current formations of artificial intelligence, ecological collapse, and technofascism, the editors find that her concept of “dysselection” exposes how racial capitalism’s epistemologies persist through technological systems that automate dehumanization. The editors frame Wynter as a theorist of technogenesis and a precursor to feminist science and technology studies, whose thought unsettles Heideggerian and humanist assumptions about technology. Revisiting her Stanford years, her dialogue with Frantz Fanon, and her unpublished Black Metamorphosis, the issue reconsiders Wynter’s redefinition of the human as praxis rather than category. Bringing her into conversation with Donna Haraway, Ruha Benjamin, and Simone Browne, this issue calls for a renewed “science of the word” capable of reenchanting the human and reimagining technology as a site of struggle, invention, and decolonial possibility. For more information, see https://read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/issue/44/2%20(167)
In The Weekly Read (Duke University Press News) Ryan Helsel features “The Artist-Philosopher: Sylvia Wynter’s Aesthetic Continuity and the Creative Act of Decolonial Theory,” by Manuel Arturo Abreu. The article appears in Sylvia Wynter and the Question of Technology, a special issue of Social Text (167) edited by Che Gossett and Tavia Nyong’o. [“Sylvia Wynter was a
