Dr. Norman Ajari
Lecturer in Francophone Black Studies

Contact details
- Email: norman.ajari@ed.ac.uk
Background
I am a French and American philosopher. Before becoming a Lecturer in Francophone Black Studies at the University of Edinburgh, I served as an Assistant Professor of philosophy at Villanova University, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I specialize in the history of Francophone and Anglophone Black thought, social and political philosophy, Critical Race Theory and Black male studies. I am also a board member of the Frantz Fanon Foundation, and an occasional art critic and political commentator.
My first book, Dignity or Death: Ethics and politics of race (Polity, 2022) developed a critique of continental philosophy from the perspective of the Black radical tradition. It is also available in French and Spanish. My second book, Noirceur: Race, genre, classe et pessimisme dans la pensée africaine-américaine au XXIe siecle (Divergences, 2022) reflects on the contemporary resurgence of a long tradition of Black radical pessimism under the guise of contemporary African-American intellectual movements such as Afropessimism and Black Male Studies.
My theoretical approach is twofold. On the one hand it deploys a theoretical actualization of the global Black Radical Tradition and, on the other, it explores the untold racial unconscious of western philosophy. This endeavor is led by the belief that the specific type of dehumanization that has plagued Black people for centuries has given rise to unique forms of Black revolutionary organizing, philosophical thinking, and artistic modes of expression. Therefore, I explore the interstice between life and death inhabited by African slaves, colonial subjects, and contemporary dehumanized Blacks.
Qualifications
Ph.D. (Philosophy): Université de Toulouse - Jean Jaures, 2015.
M.A. (Philosophy): Université de Toulouse - Jean Jaures, 2011.
B.A. (Communication studies): Université Paul Verlaine de Metz, 2009.
B.A. (Philosophy): Université du Luxembourg, 2009.
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Research activities
- York Festival of Ideas 2023
- Festival Philosophia: Festival européen de philosophie a Saint-Émilion
- Pensées critiques décoloniales en sciences humaines et sociales
- Université de Toulouse Jean Jaurès to
- Marcien Towa et la question du développement en Afrique
- Afrofuturism : Centering the African-Diasporic Imagination
- Peculiar Institutions: Negrophobia and Black Instituent Power
- Penser l’appropriation culturelle
- 2022 Philosophy Born of Struggle conference
- ‘La peau d’un Blanc pour parchemin, son crane pour écritoire’ : Revendiquer la tradition radicale noire
-
Où commence le racisme? Désaccords et arguments
Research output: › Book (Published) -
L'afropessimiste qui inventa l'arme atomique
(8 pages)
Research output: › Foreword/postscript (Published) -
Black male fungibility: Masculine homoeroticism on the slave market and the shaping of gender difference
In:
Philosophy Compass
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Accepted/In press) -
Au-dela de l’Affirmation de la Vie: De la Phénoménologie a la Tradition Radicale Noire
(35 pages)
In:
Diálogos, pp. 107-141
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Chair en miettes: Pessimisme, optimisme et tradition radicale noire
(8 pages)
In:
Multitudes, vol. 2022/4, pp. 149-157
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/mult.089.0149
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Forms of death: Necropolitics, mourning, and Black dignity
(21 pages)
In:
Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, vol. 26, pp. 167-188
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/symposium2022261/29
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Phallicisme et abolition: Repenser la justice transformatrice a partir des Black Male Studies
(7 pages)
In:
Multitudes, pp. 87-93
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Dignity or Death: Ethics and Politics of Race
(240 pages)
Research output: › Book (Published) -
En conversation avec la mort. Tommy J. Curry et les discours philosophiques de la masculinité noire
(15 pages)
In:
Itinéraires
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/itineraires.11430
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Née de la lutte: La philosophie africaine américaine face a la mort prématurée des Noirs
In:
Permanences Critiques, pp. 63-71
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Comment/debate (Published)