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Dana Miranda

University of Massachusetts, Boston, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Dr. Dana Francisco Miranda is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Faculty Fellow for the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston, as well as a Research Associate for the Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Connecticut in 2019 and his bachelor's in philosophy at Bard College in 2014. His research is in political philosophy, Africana philosophy, and psychosocial studies.

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Papers by Dana Miranda

Hierarchies of Foreignness: The Writing of Man in the New World

Journal of World Philosophies, 2021

Through transatlantic contact and subsequent debates, the "humanity" of Amerindians was first est... more Through transatlantic contact and subsequent debates, the "humanity" of Amerindians was first established for Europeans according to the dictates of philosophical anthropology and theology. This hierarchical and colonial anthropology is problematic precisely because it normalizes a singular, indigenous way of "being human" as the only correct and universal formulation of the "human being," i.e., Man. Consequently, people that live outside this constructed definition are exposed to dispossession, dehumanization, and genocide because they are deemed outside the bounds of Mankind. Through a three-part analysis, this work will examine Bartolomé de Las Casas' categorization of Amerindians though his formulation of "barbarianism," compare this taxonomy with Orson Scott Card's "Hierarchy of Foreignness," and finally argue that Indigenous traditions of thought-as seen in "grounded normativity" and "place-thought"-allow not only for the dissolution of colonial anthropologies but also permit for a teleological suspension of Man.

Signals Crossed: White Double Consciousness and the Role of the Critic

Philosophy of Education, 2021

Criticizing whites that seek to appear good allows dominated groups the ability to identify threa... more Criticizing whites that seek to appear good allows dominated groups the ability to identify threats while having the secondary effect of letting whites know that their self-perception is flawed. In this way, criticism acts as a warning sign, a designation of cave canem. Utilizing the works of Paget Henry, Jane Anna Gordon, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, this response paper will argue for the recentering of dominated people and their epistemes in challenging whiteness.

Book Review: Race and the Making of American Political Science

The Journal of African American History 106:2, 2021

Race and the Making of American Political Science is not only a historical work that traces the f... more

Review of Black Madness :: Mad Blackness.

Philosophy and Global Affairs, 2021

Speculative fiction has a nasty habit of composing futures in which Black and mad people are none... more Speculative fiction has a nasty habit of composing futures in which Black and mad people are nonexistent. These imagined futures are miraculously devoid of such “problematic” people. But what if we read or imagined otherwise? Black Madness :: Mad Blackness is situated in this otherwise. As a theoretical intervention, Pickens weaves between the intersections of Blackness and madness to open a much-needed conversation.

Critical Commemorations

Journal of Global Ethics, 2020

Drawing on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, this contribution will examine commemorative practic... more Drawing on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, this contribution will examine commemorative practices alongside critical modes of historical engagement. In Untimely Meditations, Friedrich Nietzsche documents three historical methodologies—the monumental, antiquarian and critical—which purposely use history in non-objective ways. In particular, critical history desires to judge and reject historical figures rather than repeat the past or venerate the dead. For instance, in recent protests against racism there have also been calls to decolonize public space through the defacement, destruction, and removal of monuments. There is thus much potential in critical history being used to address ongoing harms.

Fluid Memories, Static Monuments

Disegno: The Quarterly Journal of Design 27, 2020

It is a long, hot summer night in June. A red night that recalls the racial violence of 1919 and ... more It is a long, hot summer night in June. A red night that recalls the racial violence of 1919 and the uprisings of 1967, except this night is now. In the North End of Boston, protesters who have taken to the street to proclaim that Black Lives Matter also decapitate a statue of Christopher Columbus in the city’s Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park. This headless figure joins the many other statues that have been toppled or defaced across the globe. Yet, why did Columbus find himself the victim of such a public beheading?

For citations, please use the official version in Disegno: The Quarterly Journal of Design 27, p. 20-24.

The Future of Alienation and the Possibilities of Fanonian Sociodiagnostics

EntreLetras, 2020

The work of the Afro-Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon is crucial to understan... more The work of the Afro-Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon is crucial to understanding the psychological and socio-political causes of disorder. Drawing upon his corpus, this article details the radical potential for disalienation located within his sociodiagnostic method and argues that personal and structural well-being can only be achieved together. This article will also analyze both psychiatric and phenomenological models of depression as experienced by Africana people in order to better illuminate the usefulness of sociodiagnostics.

Marx: The Historical Necessity of Slavery & Agriculture

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2017

According to a Marxist code of evaluation, slavery seems to be an institution existing as an outd... more According to a Marxist code of evaluation, slavery seems to be an institution existing as an outdated anachronism, an economic remnant from a past phase in the historical development of man, as yet still present in modern economics as a defect. Upon further readings, Karl Marx clearly articulates that slavery is an integral part of the existent economic model, i.e. capitalism, both in industry and in agriculture. The separation of town and country according to a Marxist conception of history however leads to two distinct types of labor being present in capitalism; in agriculture slavery is blatant and honest in appearance, while in industry slavery is now disguised as 'free' labor. More importantly, by looking at Marx's criticism of direct slavery we are better able to understand his criticisms of free labor, indirect slavery. The primary question of Marxism then becomes: What material condition precipitates the transition of direct slavery to that of indirect 'metaphorical' slavery or free labor? Why did chattel slavery as an economic institution end, and what were the material historical conditions that necessitated the transition from Wall Street to Wall Street? I want to know the fundamental relationship between slavery and capital. This paper then is more fundamentally an exploratory examination of whether or not Marx gives a compelling account for the material end of slavery as well as slavery's relation to capital. I thus examined how and why the division of town/country and industry/agriculture marked the differences between these kinds of slavery, and how this material condition then led to direct slavery's ending as an economic model in agriculture. By navigating the implications of slavery upon agriculture and the development of capital a much deeper analysis begins with questioning the 'necessity' of historical developments and the creation of 'historical necessity'. In the interstices of history, cause and effect, agricultural slavery and capitalism, are much cloudier then Marx would have us believe.

The Nation-State as Historian: A Philosophical Reading of Monumentalization

My project works with the philosophical concepts of history, memory, and narrative to approach mo... more My project works with the philosophical concepts of history, memory, and narrative to approach monuments. I seek to show how monuments can be understood within the framework of Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire—constructions that function to keep alive the past by protecting against the erasure of history. In drawing this comparison, I aim to reveal how tragedies demand the construction of a narrative and that monuments, as sites of memory (lieux de memoire), articulate this narrative. It is the very impossibility of a linear, historical narrative, which induces a collective memory-fiction; collective myth making is substituted in the place of history. These narratives that we find articulated by monuments—often of survival, overcoming, and patriotism—are not, however, fixed or permanent; rather they are, and must necessarily be, constantly re-written. Monuments, therefore, do not petrify or close thinking about tragic events but rather leave open and call for future interpretations of the past by the nation-state.

Drafts by Dana Miranda

The Palgrave Handbook on Frantz Fanon: Call For Proposals

Hierarchies of Foreignness: The Writing of Man in the New World

Journal of World Philosophies, 2021

Through transatlantic contact and subsequent debates, the "humanity" of Amerindians was first est... more Through transatlantic contact and subsequent debates, the "humanity" of Amerindians was first established for Europeans according to the dictates of philosophical anthropology and theology. This hierarchical and colonial anthropology is problematic precisely because it normalizes a singular, indigenous way of "being human" as the only correct and universal formulation of the "human being," i.e., Man. Consequently, people that live outside this constructed definition are exposed to dispossession, dehumanization, and genocide because they are deemed outside the bounds of Mankind. Through a three-part analysis, this work will examine Bartolomé de Las Casas' categorization of Amerindians though his formulation of "barbarianism," compare this taxonomy with Orson Scott Card's "Hierarchy of Foreignness," and finally argue that Indigenous traditions of thought-as seen in "grounded normativity" and "place-thought"-allow not only for the dissolution of colonial anthropologies but also permit for a teleological suspension of Man.

Signals Crossed: White Double Consciousness and the Role of the Critic

Philosophy of Education, 2021

Criticizing whites that seek to appear good allows dominated groups the ability to identify threa... more Criticizing whites that seek to appear good allows dominated groups the ability to identify threats while having the secondary effect of letting whites know that their self-perception is flawed. In this way, criticism acts as a warning sign, a designation of cave canem. Utilizing the works of Paget Henry, Jane Anna Gordon, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, this response paper will argue for the recentering of dominated people and their epistemes in challenging whiteness.

Book Review: Race and the Making of American Political Science

The Journal of African American History 106:2, 2021

Race and the Making of American Political Science is not only a historical work that traces the f... more

Review of Black Madness :: Mad Blackness.

Philosophy and Global Affairs, 2021

Speculative fiction has a nasty habit of composing futures in which Black and mad people are none... more Speculative fiction has a nasty habit of composing futures in which Black and mad people are nonexistent. These imagined futures are miraculously devoid of such “problematic” people. But what if we read or imagined otherwise? Black Madness :: Mad Blackness is situated in this otherwise. As a theoretical intervention, Pickens weaves between the intersections of Blackness and madness to open a much-needed conversation.

Critical Commemorations

Journal of Global Ethics, 2020

Drawing on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, this contribution will examine commemorative practic... more Drawing on the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, this contribution will examine commemorative practices alongside critical modes of historical engagement. In Untimely Meditations, Friedrich Nietzsche documents three historical methodologies—the monumental, antiquarian and critical—which purposely use history in non-objective ways. In particular, critical history desires to judge and reject historical figures rather than repeat the past or venerate the dead. For instance, in recent protests against racism there have also been calls to decolonize public space through the defacement, destruction, and removal of monuments. There is thus much potential in critical history being used to address ongoing harms.

Fluid Memories, Static Monuments

Disegno: The Quarterly Journal of Design 27, 2020

It is a long, hot summer night in June. A red night that recalls the racial violence of 1919 and ... more It is a long, hot summer night in June. A red night that recalls the racial violence of 1919 and the uprisings of 1967, except this night is now. In the North End of Boston, protesters who have taken to the street to proclaim that Black Lives Matter also decapitate a statue of Christopher Columbus in the city’s Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park. This headless figure joins the many other statues that have been toppled or defaced across the globe. Yet, why did Columbus find himself the victim of such a public beheading?

For citations, please use the official version in Disegno: The Quarterly Journal of Design 27, p. 20-24.

The Future of Alienation and the Possibilities of Fanonian Sociodiagnostics

EntreLetras, 2020

The work of the Afro-Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon is crucial to understan... more The work of the Afro-Martinican psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon is crucial to understanding the psychological and socio-political causes of disorder. Drawing upon his corpus, this article details the radical potential for disalienation located within his sociodiagnostic method and argues that personal and structural well-being can only be achieved together. This article will also analyze both psychiatric and phenomenological models of depression as experienced by Africana people in order to better illuminate the usefulness of sociodiagnostics.

Marx: The Historical Necessity of Slavery & Agriculture

Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2017

According to a Marxist code of evaluation, slavery seems to be an institution existing as an outd... more According to a Marxist code of evaluation, slavery seems to be an institution existing as an outdated anachronism, an economic remnant from a past phase in the historical development of man, as yet still present in modern economics as a defect. Upon further readings, Karl Marx clearly articulates that slavery is an integral part of the existent economic model, i.e. capitalism, both in industry and in agriculture. The separation of town and country according to a Marxist conception of history however leads to two distinct types of labor being present in capitalism; in agriculture slavery is blatant and honest in appearance, while in industry slavery is now disguised as 'free' labor. More importantly, by looking at Marx's criticism of direct slavery we are better able to understand his criticisms of free labor, indirect slavery. The primary question of Marxism then becomes: What material condition precipitates the transition of direct slavery to that of indirect 'metaphorical' slavery or free labor? Why did chattel slavery as an economic institution end, and what were the material historical conditions that necessitated the transition from Wall Street to Wall Street? I want to know the fundamental relationship between slavery and capital. This paper then is more fundamentally an exploratory examination of whether or not Marx gives a compelling account for the material end of slavery as well as slavery's relation to capital. I thus examined how and why the division of town/country and industry/agriculture marked the differences between these kinds of slavery, and how this material condition then led to direct slavery's ending as an economic model in agriculture. By navigating the implications of slavery upon agriculture and the development of capital a much deeper analysis begins with questioning the 'necessity' of historical developments and the creation of 'historical necessity'. In the interstices of history, cause and effect, agricultural slavery and capitalism, are much cloudier then Marx would have us believe.

The Nation-State as Historian: A Philosophical Reading of Monumentalization

My project works with the philosophical concepts of history, memory, and narrative to approach mo... more My project works with the philosophical concepts of history, memory, and narrative to approach monuments. I seek to show how monuments can be understood within the framework of Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire—constructions that function to keep alive the past by protecting against the erasure of history. In drawing this comparison, I aim to reveal how tragedies demand the construction of a narrative and that monuments, as sites of memory (lieux de memoire), articulate this narrative. It is the very impossibility of a linear, historical narrative, which induces a collective memory-fiction; collective myth making is substituted in the place of history. These narratives that we find articulated by monuments—often of survival, overcoming, and patriotism—are not, however, fixed or permanent; rather they are, and must necessarily be, constantly re-written. Monuments, therefore, do not petrify or close thinking about tragic events but rather leave open and call for future interpretations of the past by the nation-state.

The Palgrave Handbook on Frantz Fanon: Call For Proposals