Apartheid, ironically, provided Grant Farred with the optimal conditions for thinking. He describes South Africa’s apartheid regime as an intellectual force that, “Made thinking apartheid, more than anything else, an absolute necessity.�  The Perversity of Gratitude is a provocative book in which Farred reflects on an upbringing resisting apartheid. Although he is still inclined to struggle viscerally against apartheid, he acknowledges, “It is me.� Unsentimental about his education, Farred’s critique recognizes the impact of four exceptional teachers—all engaging pedagogical figures who cultivated a great sense of possibility in how thinking could be learned through a disenfranchised South African education. The Perversity of Gratitude brings to bear the work of influential philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. The book tackles broad philosophical concepts—transgression, withdrawal, and the dialectic. This leads to the creation of a new concept, “the diaspora-in-place,� which Farred explains, “is having left a place before one physically removes oneself from this place.� Farred’s apartheid education in South Africa instilled in him a lifelong commitment to learning thinking. “And for that I am grateful,� Farred writes in The Perversity of Gratitude. His autopoiesis is sure to provoke and inspire readers.

Derrida and Africa takes up Jacques Derrida as a figure of thought in relation to Africa, with a focus on Derrida's writings specifically on Africa, which were influenced in part by his childhood in El Biar. From chapters that take up Derrida as Mother to contemplations on how to situate Derrida in relation to other African philosophers, from essays that connect deconstruction and diaspora to a chapter that engages the ways in which Derrida-especially in a text such as Monolingualism of the Other: or, the Prosthesis of Origin-is haunted by place to a chapter that locates Derrida firmly in postapartheid South Africa, Derrida in/and Africa is the insistent line of inquiry. Edited by Grant Farred, this collection asks: What is Derrida to Africa?, What is Africa to Derrida?, and What is this specter called Africa that haunts Derrida?

Derrida and Africa: Jacques Derrida as a Figure for African Thought takes up Jacques Derrida as a thought in relation to Africa, with a focus on Derrida’s writings specifically on Africa, influenced in part by his childhood in El Biar. From chapters that take up Derrida as Mother to contemplations on how to situate Derrida in relation to other African philosophers, from essays that connect deconstruction and diaspora to a chapter that engages the ways in which Derrida—especially in a text such as Monolingualism of the Other Or the Prosthesis of Origin—is haunted by place to a chapter that locates Derrida firmly in postapartheid South Africa, Derrida in/and Africa is the insistent line of inquiry. Edited by Grant Farred, this collection asks: What is Derrida to Africa?, What is Africa to Derrida?, and What is this specter called Africa that haunts Derrida?

Opposing all claims that theory has come to an end, this book presents a fresh perspective on our reading, understanding, and application of theory and its affect on our interpretation of texts. (In)fusion theory challenges efforts to see theory as inhibiting by presenting an approach that is innovative, eclectic, and subtle in order to draw out competing and constellating ideas and opinions. This collected volume of essays examines (In)fusion theory and demonstrates how the theory can be applied to the reading of various works of Indian English novelists such as Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Anita Desai, and Vikram Seth.

This book attempts to address crucial political and cultural issues in contemporary South Africa: the experience of being coloured, the occupation of the racial interstices, and the condition of hybridity in a society marked by a penchant for polarity.

A timely exploration of and intervention into the South African ideological landscape from the perspective of the colored community. In Midfielders Moment, Grant Farred explores the ways in which political fissures are being articulated in the new South Africa. By examining the politics, literature, and culture of an historically disenfranchised c

Violence in/and the Great Lakes: The Thought of V.Y. Mudimbe and Beyond is, in the best sense of the term, a homage to Valentin Mudimbe. This collection of essays honours the intellectual legacy of Mudimbe, for decades now one of Africa and the diaspora's most significant minds, by taking up the challenges - ethical, political, philosophical, literary, sociological, anthropological, psychological - his work poses. This book gathers a group of US- and Africa-based scholars, many of whom are long-time Mudimbe collaborators and colleagues, who use the questions posed, the critiques and insights offered and the paradigms constructed by Mudimbe's oeuvre to understand the implication - and, in some instances, the application - of Mudimbe's work in our moment. In this way, the project is true to Mudimbe's deepest commitment because the collection, for all the range of its contributions, for all the variegated and often dissonant - yet resonant - ways in which the authors take up Mudimbe's thinking, never strays too far from the historic question of violence and the effects of that violence in the Great Lakes region of Africa; and, indeed, of violence in Africa itself. This is, in every important way, the founding inquiry of Mudimbe's work, and it is sustained in this collection; and, as importantly, it is given new life, new philosophical shape, new political impetus, because it is a question that continues to haunt Mudimbe's writing and, of course, the continent itself. In so honouring Mudimbe, this book is grounded in a key contribution by Mudimbe himself. Mudimbe is thus, as has long been his wont, reflecting upon his work in the company of those scholars whose work he has influenced and whom, it is clear, have been important interlocutors for Mudimbe. Contributors: Justin K. Bisanswa, Ngwarsungu Chiwengo, Grant Farred, Olga Hel-Bongo, Kasereka Kavwahirehi, Laura Kerr, V-Y Mudimbe, Leonhard Praeg and Zubairu Wai.

In Entre Nous Grant Farred examines the careers of international football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, along with his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa, to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of relation and Heideggerian ontology, Farred outlines how various relationships-the significantly different relationships Messi has with his club team FC Barcelona and the Argentine national team; Farred's shifting modes of relation as he moved between his South African team and his Princeton graduate student team; and Suarez's deep bond with Uruguay's national team coach Oscar Tabarez-demonstrate the ways the politics of relation both exist within and transcend sports. Farred demonstrates that approaching sports philosophically offers particularly insightful means of understanding the nature of being in the world, thereby opening new paths for exploring how the self is constituted in its relation to the other.

An intensely personal, and philosophical, account of why white America's racial unconscious is not so unconscious An Essay for Ezra is a critique of terror that begins but by no means ends with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. A father addresses his son and a boy shares his observations in a dynamic dialogistic exchange that is a commentary of and for its time, taking the measure of racial terror and of white supremacy both in our moment and as a historical phenomenon. Framed through the experiences of the author's biracial son, An Essay for Ezra is intensely personal while also powerfully universal. Drawing on the social and political thought of James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Grant Farred examines the temptation and the perils of essentialism and the need to discriminate-to engage the black mind as much as the black body. With that dialectic as his starting point, Farred engages the ideas of Jameson, Barthes, Derrida, Adorno, Kant, and other thinkers to derive an ethics of being in our time of social peril. His antiessentialist racial analysis is salient, especially when he deploys Dave Chappelle as a counterpoint to Baldwin-and Chappelle's brilliant comic philosophic voice jabs at both racial and gender identity. Standing apart for its willingness to explore terror in all its ambivalence, this theoretical reflection on racism, knowledge, ethics, and being in our neofascist present brings to bear the full weight of philosophical inquiry and popular cultural critique on black life in the United States.

The Burden of Over-representation artfully explores three curious racial moments in sport: Jackie Robinson's expletive at a Dodgers spring training game; the transformation of a formality into an event at the end of the 1995 rugby World Cup in South Africa; and a spectral moment at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Grant Farred examines the connotations at play in these moments through the lenses of race, politics, memory, inheritance and conciliation, deploying a surprising cast of figures in Western thought, ranging from Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche to Judith Butler, William Shakespeare, and Jesus-the-Christ. Farred makes connection and creates meaning through the forces at play and the representational burdens of team, country and race. Farred considers Robinson's profane comments at black Dodgers fans, a post-match exchange of "thank yous" on the rugby pitch between white South African captain Francois Pienaar and Nelson Mandela, and being "haunted" by the ghost of Derrida on the occasion of the first FIFA World Cup on African soil. In doing so, The Burden of Over-representation provides a passionate, insightful analysis of the social, political, racial, and cultural consequences of conciliation at key sporting events.

Apartheid, ironically, provided Grant Farred with the optimal conditions for thinking. He describes South Africa’s apartheid regime as an intellectual force that, “Made thinking apartheid, more than anything else, an absolute necessity.�  The Perversity of Gratitude is a provocative book in which Farred reflects on an upbringing resisting apartheid. Although he is still inclined to struggle viscerally against apartheid, he acknowledges, “It is me.� Unsentimental about his education, Farred’s critique recognizes the impact of four exceptional teachers—all engaging pedagogical figures who cultivated a great sense of possibility in how thinking could be learned through a disenfranchised South African education. The Perversity of Gratitude brings to bear the work of influential philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. The book tackles broad philosophical concepts—transgression, withdrawal, and the dialectic. This leads to the creation of a new concept, “the diaspora-in-place,� which Farred explains, “is having left a place before one physically removes oneself from this place.� Farred’s apartheid education in South Africa instilled in him a lifelong commitment to learning thinking. “And for that I am grateful,� Farred writes in The Perversity of Gratitude. His autopoiesis is sure to provoke and inspire readers.

An intensely personal, and philosophical, account of why white America's racial unconscious is not so unconscious An Essay for Ezra is a critique of terror that begins but by no means ends with the presidency of Donald J. Trump. A father addresses his son and a boy shares his observations in a dynamic dialogistic exchange that is a commentary of and for its time, taking the measure of racial terror and of white supremacy both in our moment and as a historical phenomenon. Framed through the experiences of the author's biracial son, An Essay for Ezra is intensely personal while also powerfully universal. Drawing on the social and political thought of James Baldwin and Martin Luther King, Grant Farred examines the temptation and the perils of essentialism and the need to discriminate-to engage the black mind as much as the black body. With that dialectic as his starting point, Farred engages the ideas of Jameson, Barthes, Derrida, Adorno, Kant, and other thinkers to derive an ethics of being in our time of social peril. His antiessentialist racial analysis is salient, especially when he deploys Dave Chappelle as a counterpoint to Baldwin-and Chappelle's brilliant comic philosophic voice jabs at both racial and gender identity. Standing apart for its willingness to explore terror in all its ambivalence, this theoretical reflection on racism, knowledge, ethics, and being in our neofascist present brings to bear the full weight of philosophical inquiry and popular cultural critique on black life in the United States.

As Africana Studies celebrates its fiftieth anniversary throughout the United States, this invigor ating collection presents possibilities for the future of the discipline's theoretical paths. The essays in Africana Studies focus on philosophy, science, and technology; poetry, literature, and music; the crisis of the state; issues of colonialism, globalization, and neoliberalism; and the ever-expanding diaspora. The editor and contributors to this volume open exciting avenues for new narratives, philosophies, vision, and scale in this critical field of study-formed during the 1960s around issues of racial injustice in America-to show what Africana Studies is already in the process of becoming. Africana Studies recognizes how the discipline has been shaped, changing over the decades as scholars have opened new modes of theoretical engagement such as addressing issues of gender and sexuality, politics, and cultural studies. The essays debate and (re)consider black and diasporic life to sustain, provoke, and cultivate Africana Studies as a singular yet polyvalent mode of thinking. Contributors: Akin Adesokan, John E. Drabinski, Zeyad El Nabolsy, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Kasareka Kavwahirehi, Gregory Pardlo, Radwa Saad, Sarah Then Bergh, and the editor

As Africana Studies celebrates its fiftieth anniversary throughout the United States, this invigor ating collection presents possibilities for the future of the discipline's theoretical paths. The essays in Africana Studies focus on philosophy, science, and technology; poetry, literature, and music; the crisis of the state; issues of colonialism, globalization, and neoliberalism; and the ever-expanding diaspora. The editor and contributors to this volume open exciting avenues for new narratives, philosophies, vision, and scale in this critical field of study-formed during the 1960s around issues of racial injustice in America-to show what Africana Studies is already in the process of becoming. Africana Studies recognizes how the discipline has been shaped, changing over the decades as scholars have opened new modes of theoretical engagement such as addressing issues of gender and sexuality, politics, and cultural studies. The essays debate and (re)consider black and diasporic life to sustain, provoke, and cultivate Africana Studies as a singular yet polyvalent mode of thinking. Contributors: Akin Adesokan, John E. Drabinski, Zeyad El Nabolsy, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture, Kasareka Kavwahirehi, Gregory Pardlo, Radwa Saad, Sarah Then Bergh, and the editor

In Entre Nous Grant Farred examines the careers of international football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, along with his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa, to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of relation and Heideggerian ontology, Farred outlines how various relationships-the significantly different relationships Messi has with his club team FC Barcelona and the Argentine national team; Farred's shifting modes of relation as he moved between his South African team and his Princeton graduate student team; and Suarez's deep bond with Uruguay's national team coach Oscar Tabarez-demonstrate the ways the politics of relation both exist within and transcend sports. Farred demonstrates that approaching sports philosophically offers particularly insightful means of understanding the nature of being in the world, thereby opening new paths for exploring how the self is constituted in its relation to the other.

The Burden of Over-representation artfully explores three curious racial moments in sport: Jackie Robinson's expletive at a Dodgers spring training game; the transformation of a formality into an event at the end of the 1995 rugby World Cup in South Africa; and a spectral moment at the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Grant Farred examines the connotations at play in these moments through the lenses of race, politics, memory, inheritance and conciliation, deploying a surprising cast of figures in Western thought, ranging from Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche to Judith Butler, William Shakespeare, and Jesus-the-Christ. Farred makes connection and creates meaning through the forces at play and the representational burdens of team, country and race. Farred considers Robinson's profane comments at black Dodgers fans, a post-match exchange of "thank yous" on the rugby pitch between white South African captain Francois Pienaar and Nelson Mandela, and being "haunted" by the ghost of Derrida on the occasion of the first FIFA World Cup on African soil. In doing so, The Burden of Over-representation provides a passionate, insightful analysis of the social, political, racial, and cultural consequences of conciliation at key sporting events.