In this book, philosopher and social critic Lewis Gordon explores the ossification of disciplines, which he calls "disciplinary decadence." In response, he offers a theory of what he calls a "teleological suspension of disciplinarity," in which he encourages scholars and lay intellectuals to pay attention to the openness of ideas and purposes on which their disciplines were born. Gordon builds his case through discussions of philosophy of education, problems of secularization in religious thought, obligations across generations, notions of invention in the study of ideas, decadence in development, colonial epistemologies, and the quest for a genuine postcolonial language. These topics are examined with the underlying diagnosis of the present political and academic environment as one in which it is indecent to think.

Not Only the Master's Tools: African American Studies in Theory and Practice brings together new essays on the ongoing value of black thought. In the service of what the editors call epistemological decolonization of African American studies, the first part examines the grounding of theoretical reason from various perspectives such as Africana philosophy, philosophical anthropology, and black literary theory. The second part offers theoretical explorations of practical reason as it unfolds in the study of slavery, education, queerness, politics, and ethics. Responding to Audre Lorde's famous dictum that "The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house," the editors and these internationally renowned scholars ask: "Why not instead devote attention to using those and other tools to build new, more open houses?"Important for anyone interested in the ongoing importance of ideas, the book is well suited for students and scholars of Africana studies, philosophy, literary theory, educational theory, social and political thought, and postcolonial studies.

This book offers a theory of disaster in modern and contemporary society and its impact on the construction of social and political life. The theory is premised upon what the authors call "the sign continuum," where disaster spreads across society through efforts to evade social responsibility for its causes and consequences. Phenomena generated by such efforts include the social manifestation of monstrosity (disastrous people and other forms of living things) and an emerging antipolitics in an effort to assert rule and order. A crucial development is the attack on speech, a fundamental feature of political life, as manifested by the increased expectations of categories of people whose containment calls for shunning and silence.

This book offers a theory of disaster in modern and contemporary society and its impact on the construction of social and political life. The theory is premised upon what the authors call "the sign continuum," where disaster spreads across society through efforts to evade social responsibility for its causes and consequences. Phenomena generated by such efforts include the social manifestation of monstrosity (disastrous people and other forms of living things) and an emerging antipolitics in an effort to assert rule and order. A crucial development is the attack on speech, a fundamental feature of political life, as manifested by the increased expectations of categories of people whose containment calls for shunning and silence. The book closes with an exploration of the significance of the mythic motif of eliminating monsters before dawn and its collapse in nihilistic times, where such conflicts now continue beyond dawn.

The intellectual history of the last quarter of the 20th century has been marked by the growing influence of Africana thought - an area of philosophy that focuses on issues raised by the struggle over ideas in African cultures and their hybrid forms in Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean. This book presents an introduction to the field of Africana philosophy and aims to help define this rapidly growing field. Lewis R. Gordon introduces and discusses Africana existential thought for a general audience, covering a range of both classic and contemporary thinkers - from Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois to Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis and Naomi Zack.

Antiblack racism avows reason is white while emotion, and thus supposedly unreason, is black. Challenging academic adherence to this notion, Lewis R. Gordon offers a portrait of Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an exemplar of "living thought" against forms of reason marked by colonialism and racism. Working from his own translations of the original French texts, Gordon critically engages everything in Fanon from dialectics, ethics, existentialism, and humanism to philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and political theory as well as psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Gordon takes into account scholars from across the Global South to address controversies around Fanon's writings on gender and sexuality as well as political violence and the social underclass. In doing so, he confronts the replication of a colonial and racist geography of reason, allowing theorists from the Global South to emerge as interlocutors alongside northern ones in a move that exemplifies what, Gordon argues, Fanon represented in his plea to establish newer and healthier human relationships beyond colonial paradigms.

In this book, philosopher and social critic Lewis Gordon explores the ossification of disciplines, which he calls "disciplinary decadence." In response, he offers a theory of what he calls a "teleological suspension of disciplinarity," in which he encourages scholars and lay intellectuals to pay attention to the openness of ideas and purposes on which their disciplines were born. Gordon builds his case through discussions of philosophy of education, problems of secularization in religious thought, obligations across generations, notions of invention in the study of ideas, decadence in development, colonial epistemologies, and the quest for a genuine postcolonial language. These topics are examined with the underlying diagnosis of the present political and academic environment as one in which it is indecent to think.

Not Only the Master's Tools: African American Studies in Theory and Practice brings together new essays on the ongoing value of black thought. Important for anyone interested in the ongoing importance of ideas, the book is well suited for students and scholars of Africana studies, philosophy, literary theory, educational theory, social and political thought, and postcolonial studies.

Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge collects key philosophical writings of Lewis R. Gordon, a globally renowned scholar whose writings cover liberation struggles across the globe and make field-defining contributions to the philosophy of existence, philosophy of race, Africana philosophy, philosophy of human sciences, aesthetics, and decolonization. Gordon’s expansive output ranges across phenomenology, anti-Blackness, activist thinkers, sexuality, Fanon, Jimi Hendrix, Black Jewish struggles, critical pedagogy, psychoanalysis, and Ubuntu philosophy. Edited by Rozena Maart and Sayan Dey, two decolonial thinkers from South Africa and India, this reader shifts attention away from colonial centres of power, encouraging global dialogue across students, scholars, and activists. Featuring a foreword by the celebrated novelist and postcolonial thinker, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, this reader includes a mixture of research articles, short critical essays, reflections, interviews, poems, and photographs in the creative pursuit of liberation.

The intellectual history of the last quarter of this century has been marked by the growing influence of Africana thought - an area of philosophy that focuses on issues raised by the struggle over ideas in African cultures and their hybrid forms in Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean.
Existentia Africana is an engaging and highly- readable introduction to the field of Africana philosophy and will help to define this rapidly growing field. Lewis R. Gordon introduces and discusses Africana existential thought for a general audience, covering a wide range of both classic and contemporary thinkers - from Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois to Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis and Naomi Zack.

'Expansive . . . reminds us that the ultimate aim of Black freedom quests is, indeed, universal liberation' Angela Y. Davis 'There is a movement from a suffering black consciousness to a liberatory Black consciousness in which revelation of the dirty laundry and fraud of white supremacy and black inferiority is a dreaded truth' Lewis Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black Existentialism, has spent decades putting philosophical thought at the heart of activism for racial justice around the world. In this boldly original book, he delves into history, art, politics and popular culture to show how the process of racialization - and its absence - affects not only how individuals and society perceive black people but also how black people perceive themselves. Fear of Black Consciousness traces the ways in which the lived experience of black people has been rendered invisible in the Western world and the breadth of rich cultural expression that encapsulates the truth nonetheless - from ancient African languages to films such as Get Out and Black Panther. Gordon offers a stunning philosophical and social critique while highlighting the fundamental role of Black people as agents of history and of the social change required to build a humane world of dignity, freedom and respect.

Antiblack racism avows reason is white while emotion, and thus supposedly unreason, is black. Challenging academic adherence to this notion, Lewis R. Gordon offers a portrait of Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an exemplar of "living thought" against forms of reason marked by colonialism and racism. Working from his own translations of the original French texts, Gordon critically engages everything in Fanon from dialectics, ethics, existentialism, and humanism to philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and political theory as well as psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Gordon takes into account scholars from across the Global South to address controversies around Fanon's writings on gender and sexuality as well as political violence and the social underclass. In doing so, he confronts the replication of a colonial and racist geography of reason, allowing theorists from the Global South to emerge as interlocutors alongside northern ones in a move that exemplifies what, Gordon argues, Fanon represented in his plea to establish newer and healthier human relationships beyond colonial paradigms.

Antiblack racism avows reason is white while emotion, and thus supposedly unreason, is black. Challenging academic adherence to this notion, Lewis R. Gordon offers a portrait of Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an exemplar of “living thought” against forms of reason marked by colonialism and racism. Working from his own translations of the original French texts, Gordon critically engages everything in Fanon from dialectics, ethics, existentialism, and humanism to philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and political theory as well as psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Gordon takes into account scholars from across the Global South to address controversies around Fanon’s writings on gender and sexuality as well as political violence and the social underclass. In doing so, he confronts the replication of a colonial and racist geography of reason, allowing theorists from the Global South to emerge as interlocutors alongside northern ones in a move that exemplifies what, Gordon argues, Fanon represented in his plea to establish newer and healthier human relationships beyond colonial paradigms.

Women of color remain arguably the most economically, politically, and socially marginalized group in the United States and the Third World. In Spoils of War, a diverse group of distinguished contributors suggest that acts of aggression resulting from the racism and sexism inherent in social institutions can be viewed as a sort of 'war, ' experienced daily by women of color.

Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge collects key philosophical writings of Lewis R. Gordon, a globally renowned scholar whose writings cover liberation struggles across the globe and make field-defining contributions to the philosophy of existence, philosophy of race, Africana philosophy, philosophy of human sciences, aesthetics, and decolonization. Gordon’s expansive output ranges across phenomenology, anti-Blackness, activist thinkers, sexuality, Fanon, Jimi Hendrix, Black Jewish struggles, critical pedagogy, psychoanalysis, and Ubuntu philosophy. Edited by Rozena Maart and Sayan Dey, two decolonial thinkers from South Africa and India, this reader shifts attention away from colonial centres of power, encouraging global dialogue across students, scholars, and activists. Featuring a foreword by the celebrated novelist and postcolonial thinker, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, this reader includes a mixture of research articles, short critical essays, reflections, interviews, poems, and photographs in the creative pursuit of liberation.

'Important . . . powerful . . . . an explanation of why Black protest is such a dangerous prospect to the white power structure' Kehinde Andrews, Guardian Where is the path to racial justice? In this ground-breaking book, philosopher Lewis R. Gordon ranges over history, art and pop culture - from ancient African languages to the film Get Out - to show why the answer lies not just in freeing Black bodies from the fraud of white supremacy, but in freeing all of our minds. Building on the influential work of Frantz Fanon and W. E. B. Du Bois, Fear of Black Consciousness is a vital contribution to our conversations on racial politics, identity and culture. 'Expansive . . . reminds us that the ultimate aim of Black freedom quests is, indeed, universal liberation' Angela Y. Davis

A pillar of African American literature, Richard Wright is one of the most celebrated and controversial authors in American history. His work championed intellectual freedom amid social and political chaos. Despite the popular and critical success of books such as Uncle Tom's Children (1938), Black Boy (1945), and Native Son (1941), Wright faced staunch criticism and even censorship throughout his career for the graphic sexuality, intense violence, and communist themes in his work. Yet, many political theorists have ignored his radical ideas. In The Politics of Richard Wright, an interdisciplinary group of scholars embraces the controversies surrounding Wright as a public intellectual and author. Several contributors explore how the writer mixed fact and fiction to capture the empirical and emotional reality of living as a black person in a racist world. Others examine the role of gender in Wright's canonical and lesser-known writing and the implications of black male vulnerability. They also discuss the topics of black subjectivity, internationalism and diaspora, and the legacy of and responses to slavery in America. Wright's contributions to American political thought remain vital and relevant today. The Politics of Richard Wright is an indispensable resource for students of American literature, culture, and politics who strive to interpret this influential writer's life and legacy.

Phenomenology, the philosophical method that seeks to uncover the taken-for-granted presuppositions, habits, and norms that structure everyday experience, is increasingly framed by ethical and political concerns. Critical phenomenology foregrounds experiences of marginalization, oppression, and power in order to identify and transform common experiences of injustice that render "the familiar" a site of oppression for many. In 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, leading scholars present fresh readings of classic phenomenological topics and introduce newer concepts developed by feminist theorists, critical race theorists, disability theorists, and queer and trans theorists that capture aspects of lived experience that have traditionally been neglected. By centering historically marginalized perspectives, the chapters in this book breathe new life into the phenomenological tradition and reveal its ethical, social, and political promise. The volume will be an invaluable resource for teaching and research in continental philosophy; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; critical race theory; disability studies; cultural studies; and critical theory more generally.

Phenomenology, the philosophical method that seeks to uncover the taken-for-granted presuppositions, habits, and norms that structure everyday experience, is increasingly framed by ethical and political concerns. Critical phenomenology foregrounds experiences of marginalization, oppression, and power in order to identify and transform common experiences of injustice that render "the familiar" a site of oppression for many. In 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, leading scholars present fresh readings of classic phenomenological topics and introduce newer concepts developed by feminist theorists, critical race theorists, disability theorists, and queer and trans theorists that capture aspects of lived experience that have traditionally been neglected. By centering historically marginalized perspectives, the chapters in this book breathe new life into the phenomenological tradition and reveal its ethical, social, and political promise. The volume will be an invaluable resource for teaching and research in continental philosophy; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; critical race theory; disability studies; cultural studies; and critical theory more generally.

Philosophy in Multiple Voices invites transactional dialogue, critical imagination, and the desire to travel to enter those discursive spaces where the love of wisdom gets inflected through both lived embodiment and situational history. The text raises significant meta-philosophical questions around the issue of who constitutes the 'philosophical we' through a delineation and valorization of multiple philosophical voices-African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Asian-American, Feminist, Latin-American, Lesbian, Native-American and Queer-that set forth complex concerns around canon formation, the relationship between philosophical discursive configurations and issues of gendered, sexed, racial and ethnic identities, the dynamic of shifting philosophical historical trajectories, differential philosophical visions, sensibilities, and philosophical praxes that are still largely underrepresented within the institutional confines of 'mainstream' philosophy. The text encourages philosophical heterogeneity as a value that ought to be nurtured.

Literary scholars and historians have long considered W. E. B. Du Bois (1868--1963) an extremely influential writer and a powerful cultural critic. The author of more than one hundred books, hundreds of published articles, and founding editor of the NAACP journal The Crisis, Du Bois has been widely studied for his profound insights on the politics of race and class in America. An activist as well as a scholar, Du Bois proclaimed, "I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy." In A Political Companion to W. E. B. Du Bois, Nick Bromell assembles essays from both new and established scholars from a variety of disciplines to explore Du Bois's contributions to American political thought. The contributors establish a conceptual context within which to read the author, revealing how richly and variously he engaged with the aesthetic and theological modalities of political thinking and action. This volume further reveals how Du Bois's work challenges and revises contemporary political theory, providing commentary on the author's strengths and limitations as a theorist for the twenty-first century. In doing so, it helps readers gain an understanding of how Du Bois's work and life continue to stimulate lively and constructive debate about the theory and practice of democracy in America.

This is an innovative work in Africana philosophical thought that links the phenomenon of nihilism in black America, in particular black American youth, to modern traditions of Western philosophy. Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism engages defining themes of black existential life by offering a framework for considering the relationships between antiblack racism, pessimism, nihilism, weakness, strength, maturity, freedom, and hope in the 21st century. This book readdresses themes popularly raised by Cornel West in 1994 regarding the nature, causes, evaluations, diagnoses, and prognoses of what has been called, "nihilism in black America." Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism seeks to recontextualize discussions of nihilism and its possibilities for American cultural life. As a result, this book bears important questions, offers unique analyses, and suggests radical responses that are relevant for studies of black life and theories of justice in twenty-first century America.