Name: Under-MAN - a talk by Prof. Tommy J Curry
Start: 2026-02-18T16:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-18T18:00:00+00:00
Location: SOAS University of London

Under-MAN - a talk by Prof. Tommy J Curry

Prof. Tommy J Curry (University of Edinbrugh) wil speak on the ethnological and psycho-analytic demonization of the Black Male.
About this Event

Under-MAN: A Genre Analysis of the Ethnological and Psycho-analytic Demonization of the Black Male.

By: Prof. Tommy J. Curry

Contemporary social psychology has improved upon early 20th psychoanalytic accounts of racism and threat construction. Contrary to contemporary intersectional theory, which posits racial maleness as a prototypical and privileged social identity, numerous social psychological studies have found that maleness is the primary designator of outgroup identification among racial groups. Said differently, racial animus is generated from the construction of racialized men as biological, sexual, and cultural threats to racial groups, specifically the women of the dominant racial group. A substantial body of research suggests among social dominance theorists, social psychologists, and genocide scholars indicates that racialized maleness is necessarily tied to dehumanization and drives toward lethal extermination.

This presentation traces difference—within the register of the dehumanized—in our conceptualization of the Black male. My research indicates that the ethnological sciences was not simply rooted in phenotypical distinctions, but a sex-based demonology whereby the Black male indicated the evolutionary and cosmological basis of racial difference. This caricature structured E. Franklin Frazier’s sociological pathologization and Frantz Fanon’s phenomenological analysis of the Black male as a figure constituted through phobic projection and civilizational unfitness. The examination of late 19th and early 20th century racial science supports the idea that the Black male represented a cosmogenic kind; a demonic entity unfit for Western civilization. As such, I propose a cosmogenic model of racial dehumanization based on the role evil has in the designation of Non-Being—or how the concept of the Man-Not illuminates a genus with this register of difference.

This event will take place in the BGLT at SOAS

This event is hosted and co-sponsored by the Feminist Centre for Racial Justice, School of History, Religions and Philosophies, SOAS Centre for African Studies, SOAS Centre for Pan-African Studies, SOAS History Seminar and SOAS Centre for Global and Comparative Philosophies.