“A Greater Truth than Any Other Truth You Know”: A Conversation with Professor Sylvia Wynter on Origin Stories

Sylvia Wynter is an emeritus professor from Stanford University. She is also an essayist and creative writer whose work is deeply informed by the twentieth century Anti-Colonial Movement and the U.S. Civil Rights and Black Power Movement leading up to the establishment of Black Studies. Professor Wynter’s work proposes a new definition of the human as a hybrid being, clarifying that we are more than physical and purely biological beings. In calling for a science of origin stories, she asserts that we must seriously consider the reality that we are composed of both story and flesh, and thus re-imagine the relationship between the narratives we craft about who we are, as well as what we are for, and the structure of the material world.