Challenging the Overrepresentation of Man: Relational Ontology in Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other

Abstract

This paper intervenes in Black Lives Matter discourse on the dehumanization of the Black subject. I explore the novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) by Bernardine Evaristo, and read it in dialogue with Sylvia Wynter’s theory on ontological hierarchy. I also consider the novel through a relational ontological lens with the work of Adriana Cavarero. The theories of Cavarero and Wynter are brought together to show their common suspicion of the concept of Man as he has been forged by Western philosophy. Through analyzing the formal qualities of the novel through this double theoretical lens, I contend that Girl, Woman, Other provides a literary model of relational ontology and depicts an alternative model of the human subject, who evades archaic forms of ontological framing. I thus argue that Girl, Woman, Other engages with and offers a response to the Black Lives Matter imperative for a new genre of the human.