Sylvia Wynter’s New Science of the Word and the Autopoetics of the Flesh

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay proposes that the work of Sylvia Wynter, a canonical figure in Afro-Caribbean philosophy, demonstrates other ways of doing philosophy, a comparative philosophy carried out as a cross-cultural exercise. Sylvia Wynter has argued for a “New Science of the Word” by drawing from the contributions of Frantz Fanon (sociogeny), Aimé Césaire (poetic knowledge), and the field of cybernetics, among other sources. This essay aims to explain the framework and methodology of the New Science and the original transdisciplinary engagement that such a framework facilitates. It argues that, by appropriating the concept of “autopoiesis” beyond the natural sciences, Wynter refashions autopoiesis as autopoetics to answer the age-old question of what it means to be human. Comparative philosophy, the essay concludes, can be fertile ground for Wynter’s project and epistemic decolonization.