West is the professor of religion and director of Afro-American
studies at Princeton whose short essay collection, Race Matters (p.
216), became a bestseller earlier this year. The essays in this
longer collection mostly predate those in Race Matters (seven are
from the early to mid-80's) and were written for a more academic
audience. There's more philosophy than race in this odd assortment,
which begins with a consideration of Matthew Arnold's seminal role
in defining our secular culture, moves on to assess various
philosophers (the American Josiah Royce, the Hungarian Gyorgy
Lukacs), and ends with a dull overview of the "African American
Rebellion" that began in the mid-1950's. West's own philosophical
stance is clear: His generous humanist vision has been nourished by
such various disciplines as Emersonian pragmatism (with its
emphasis on "the ethical significance of the future"), Marxism, and
the prophetic Christian tradition that enjoins us "to look at the
world through the eyes of its victims." His message is clear, too:
Although he feels that "the quality of black intellectual exchange
is at its worst since the Civil War" and that the decline of
American culture may be "irreversible," he also sees the need to
keep faith in the possibility of positive change. The challenge for
intellectuals, black and white, is to move beyond "contestation
within the academy" and to become "critical organic catalysts" in
the wider community. Given this message, it's puzzling to find
included here long essays on the American Marxist Fredric Jameson
(whose works are "confined to specialists...in the academy") and
the Critical Legal Studies movement ("an isolated...affair within
the ivy halls of elite law schools"). West's voice is an important
one, but this collection doesn't amplify it in a helpful way.
(Kirkus Reviews)
In Keeping Faith, Cornel West - author of the bestselling Race
Matters - puts forward his ideas about race and about philosophy.
West's powerful voice ranges widely across issues of race and
culture, the role of the black intellectual, politics and
philosophy in America, art and architecture, questions of legal
theory, and the future of liberal thought. In a time of decay and
discouragement in the black community and among progressive forces
at large, Keeping Faith offers new strategies to galvanize and
propel a new generation of African Americans. Yet, West argues,
racial subordination must be understood within the larger crises of
our society. Maintaining the uniqueness of black identity and
resistance, he provocatively suggests alliances with other
intellectual and community-based forms of American radicalism.
Keeping Faith offers West's distinctive mix of political passions
and careful scrutiny. Whether exploring 'the new cultural politics
of difference', American pragmatism, or race and social theory, he
sustains a difficult balance between a subtly argued critique of
the past and present, and a broadly conceived, daring vision of the
future. Both troubling and exhilarating, Keeping Faith maps not
only the concerns of one of the most significant public
intellectuals of our time, but issues crucial to Americans of all
races.
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