In early 2026, the editors of Political Theology invited Zahi Zalloua and Benjamin Davis to review each other’s books, To Exist As a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian and Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt. They also responded to each other’s reviews. What has resulted is a lively, friendly exchange, but also one that works through one of the starkest lines of disagreement in global critical theory today: whether “the human” is a useful concept to motivate solidarity, and, relatedly, whether theory should intervene at the level of ontology or praxis.
Vincent Lloyd is a professor of theology and religious studies and director of the Center for Political Theology at Villanova University. He is the author of Black Dignity (2022), co-author of What Is Political Theology? (2025), and co-editor of Political Theology Reimagined (2025). Lloyd is editor-at-large of the journal Political Theology.
Zahi Zalloua is Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature at Whitman College, USA, and Editor of The Comparatist. His recent teaching and scholarship engage Critical Black Studies, the Posthuman, and the Palestinian Question. His current book project, titled Anti-Zionism Is Not a Luxury, articulates and embraces an “affirmative anti-Zionism,” casting it as a collective, universalist response to an unjust world. His most recent publications include To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian; Fanon, Žižek and the Violence of Resistance; The Politics of the Wretched: Race, Reason, and Ressentiment; and Solidarity and the Palestinian Cause: Indigeneity, Blackness, and the Promise of Universality.
Benjamin P. Davis is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies & Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. He is the author of three books: (1) Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt; (2) Choose Your Bearing: Édouard Glissant, Human Rights, and Decolonial Ethics, and (3) Simone Weil’s Political Philosophy: Field Notes from the Margins.
Symposium Essays
Another Humanity, or a Plea for the Death Drive
Zahi Zalloua reviews Benjamin Davis’s new book, Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt (2025).
Afropessimism Meets Edward Said
Benjamin Davis reviews Zahi Zalloua’s new book, To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian (2026).
Beginning with Negation, Or Practicing Politics and Critical Theory Otherwise
Zahi Zalloua responds to Benjamin Davis’s review of his new book, To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian (2026)
Fanon beyond Negation? Psychoanalysis vis-à-vis Palestine
Benjamin Davis responds to Zahi Zalloua’s review of his new book, Another Humanity: Decolonial Ethics from Du Bois to Arendt (2025).