Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-5wvtr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T22:26:36.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Study in Africana Existential Ontology: Rum as a Metaphor of Existence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Clevis Headley*
Affiliation:
Florida Atlantic University, USA
*
Clevis Headley, Department of Philosophy, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road – SO 283, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991, USA. Email: headley@fau.edu

Abstract

This paper investigates the idea of rum as an ontology of life. More specifically, it explores the rum as metaphor in the context of Africana existential ontology. Here it is argued that rum drinking can serve as the basis for understanding and conceptualizing certain basic structures of human existence in the Caribbean mode of existence. In pursuing these tasks, ontology is not construed as the study of the kinds of entities that exist; rather, ontology is given an existential twist in the sense of focusing on patterns of human existence, as well as practices that are indicative of human creative agency.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcoff, LM (2006) Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. New York: Oxford UP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berger, P (1967) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, K (1968) Jamaican Slave Society: A Review. Race 9: 331342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braithwaite, K (1971) The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica. Oxford: Oxford UP.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, K (1974) Contradictory Omens: Cultural Diversity and Integration in the Caribbean. Mona: Savacou Publications.Google Scholar
Braithwaite, K (1995) Jazz and the West Indian Novel. In: Ashcroft, B, Griffiths, G, Tiffin, H (eds) The Postcolonial Studies Reader, pp. 327331. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burke, K (1969) A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, J (1990) The Force of Fantasy: Feminism, Mapplethorpe, and Discursive Excess. Difference 2(2): 105125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coulombe, C (2004) Rum: The Epic Story of the Drink that Conquered the World. New York: Kensington Publishing.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G (1994) Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia UP.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G (1997) Review of Jean Hyppolite, Logic and Existence. In: Hyppolite, J, Logic and Existence, trans. Lawlor, L, Sen, A, pp. 191195. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M (1984) What is Enlightenment? In: Rainbow, P (ed.) The Foucault's Reader, pp. 3250. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Geertz, C (1973) Thick Description: Toward an Interpretation of Culture. In: The Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 330. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Harris, W (1995) History, Fable & Myth in the Caribbean and Guianas. Wellesley, MA: Calaloux Publications.Google Scholar
Heidegger, M (1962) Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Henke, H (1997) Towards an Ontology of Caribbean Existence. Social Epistemology 11(1): 3958.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, CLR (1986) Beyond a Boundary. London: Anchor Press.Google Scholar
Locke, A (1939) The Negro's Contribution to American Culture. Journal of Negro Education 8: 521529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackey, N (1993) Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Mulhall, S, Swift, A (1992) Liberals and Communitarians. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Naipaul, VS (1962) The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies. British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America. London: Macmillan Publishers.Google Scholar
Rohlehr, G (1974) ‘History as Absurdity: A Literary Critic's Approach to From Columbus to Castro and Other Miscellaneous Writings of Dr. Eric Williams’. In: Coombs, O (ed.), in Is Massa Day Dead? Black Moods in the Caribbean, pp. 6998. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Serequeberhan, T (1994) The Hermeneutics of African Philosophy: Horizon and Discourse. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Smith, F (2005) Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
von Eckartsberg, R (1979) ‘The Eco-Psychology of Personal Culture Building: An Existential Hermeneutic Approach’. In: Giorgi, A, Knowles, R, Smith, D (eds) Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psychology, III, pp. 227244. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne UP.Google Scholar
White, S (1997) Weak Ontology and Liberal Political Reflection. Political Theory 25(4): 502523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, I (2005) Rum: A Social and Sociable History of the Real Spirit of 1776. Nation Books: New York.Google Scholar