Sentient Flesh
Thinking in Disorder, Poiesis in Black
R. A. Judy
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Sentient Flesh
Thinking in Disorder, Poiesis in Black
R. A. Judy
About This Book
In Sentient Flesh R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham's 1937 remark "we should have our liberty 'cause... us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-worldâwhich he theorizes as "thinking in disorder, " or "poi?sis in black"âforeground the irreducible concomitance offlesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, Sentient Flesh offers a major intervention in the black study of life.