Race After Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism

Race after Sartre is the first book to systematically interrogate Jean-Paul Sartre’s antiracist politics and his largely unrecognized contributions to critical race theories, postcolonialism, and Africana existentialism. The contributors offer an overview of Sartre’s positions on racism as they changed throughout the course of his life, providing a coherent account of the various ways in which he understood how racism could be articulated and opposed. They interrogate his numerous and influential works on the topic, and his insights are utilized to assess some of today’s racial quandaries, including the November 2005 riots in France, Hurricane Katrina, immigration, affirmative action, and reparations for slavery and apartheid. The contributors also consider Sartre’s impact upon the insurgent antiracist activists and writers who also walked the roads to freedom that Sartre helped pave.