The challenge to philology is an exhortation not only from a traditional discipline regarding the reformulation of the premises of interpretation, but also a corrosive critique of humanism. For Jurgen Paul Schwindt, philology reveals the "negative utopia" of a humanism after or before all humanism: a "black humanism." Black, because, after having ruled out any understanding of the human that operates with pre-established images, any enunciation in this regard is made from the elusive foundation of key linguistic performances in a field -philology, interpretation and, above all, the reading- yet to be explored. Contrary to any categorical or edifying reading, the essays in "Black Humanism" focus on the dislocating effects that reading can bring, confronting us with our preconceived ideas.