Paraontology: Oskar Becker’s Philosophy of Race and the Ironies of Ahistorical Phenomenology

Abstract

This paper reconstructs Oskar Becker’s phenomenology of race, a project he called “paraontology.” For Becker, a fervent National So-cialist, paraontology provided a phenomenological account of “na-ture”—a realm of ahistorical essences encompassing both the “su-per-historical” truths of mathematics and metaphysics and the “sub-historical” forces of “blood and soil.” The impetus for this reconstruc-tion is the re-emergence of this term in contemporary Black studies, where it is used to problematize ontology’s usefulness for thinking black life. This paper asks what the possibility of such an iteration shows about Becker’s project and its investment in non-historical repetition, arguing it reveals a profound disavowal of the historical at the heart of Becker’s project rather than a phenomenological dis-closure of the natural.