Ramnath, Leah A.2024-05-162024-05-162024-05-14vt_gsexam:40117https://hdl.handle.net/10919/118989In this dissertation, I disentangle the Cynical figure – one who is capable of confronting structures of power by speaking truth to power – within a Westernized, Euro-centric discourse that authorizes the Cynic as an exceptionally powerful political subjectivity. Heeding the words of Sylvia Wynter, "…the Jester's role in the pursuit of human knowledge alternates with the Priest's role—transforming heresies into new orthodoxies, the contingent into modes of the Absolute." I recover the Cynic, once sutured to a distinctly Foucauldian discursive tradition to argue Black and Brown women function as contemporary Cynics using largely a Black Feminist theoretical framework. Drawing on biomythographies written by Black and Brown women, I future a Cynical discursive tradition in which the cynic is known by a different name.ETDenCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 InternationalTruth-tellingParrhesiaCynicismBlack Feminist ThoughtSylvia WynterDissertation