Dissertation: "Homo Narrans: Reconstructing Sylvia Wynter's Theory of the Human"

Co-Advisors: ProfessorJeffrey J. Kripal | Professor Niki C. Clements

John Allison, a PhD candidate in Philosophy of Religion, is writing the first systematic reconstruction of Sylvia Wynter’s theory of the human. Wynter argues that human nature emerges through performative, autopoietic feedback loops by which aesthetic forms and socially acquired, semio-linguistic relations govern perception, affect, and inference. These shape one’s lived experience and practices, grounding institutions of power. Such structures divide populations into those granted “symbolic life” and those consigned to “symbolic death,” with the latter positioned as bearers of revolutionary insight. This system forms an episteme—historically situated yet governed by universal cognitive laws that enforce a “closed” meta-logic. Allison’s dissertation situates this theory within religious studies, exploring what Wynter offers to the discipline and how religious studies can clarify the epistemic and ethical stakes of her concept of “cognitive autonomy.”