Symposium: How Was Caribbean Ethics Made Under Enslavement?

Abstract

Vété-Congolo’s challenges us to consider alternative ways of understanding the self and the world outside of racial
and other hierarchies. One such alternative she examines in this symposium is formed around the Creole term
“moun” (‘human person’) and the phrase “tout moun sé moun” (“all human persons are human persons”).
Developed under enslavement on Caribbean plantations, this radical epistemic resistance drove, she argues,
Caribbean Pawòl or Caribbean Ethics. Vété-Congolo’s respondents José Cossa and Denise Ferreira da Silva,
agree that this black resilience under enslavement needs to be acknowledged as an alternative way of understanding
the self’s relation to the world. However, while Cossa clearly distinguishes ‘moun’ from its contemporary European
humanistic counterparts, Ferreira da Silva argues that ‘moun’s’ ethical moment should not be considered as
belonging to the post-Enlightenment political architecture of equality and freedom, but as an act of rebelry.