Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge

Writings of Lewis R. Gordon

Lewis R. Gordon, Rozena Maart, Sayan Dey

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781350343771
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350343788
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface: Why Yes, Why Now, to This Project?
• A Poetic Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge in the works of Lewis R. Gordon
• Part I. Black Existentialism and Africana Philosophy
• 1 A Recent Reflection on Africana Philosophy
• 2 Reasoning in Black: Africana Philosophy Under the Weight of Misguided Reason
• 3 Race in the Dialectics of Culture
• 4 Racism as a Form of Bad Faith
• 5 Critical Reflections on Three Popular Tropes in the Study of Whiteness
• 6 A Phenomenology of Biko’s Black Consciousness
• 7 Theory in Black: Teleological Suspensions in Philosophy of Culture
• 8 Sex, Race, and Matrices of Desire in an Antiblack World
• 9 Racialization and Human Reality
• 10 Letter to a Grieving Student
• 11 Rockin’ It in Blue: A Black Existential Essay on Jimi Hendrix
• Part II. Decolonizing Knowledge
• 12 Disciplinary Decadence and the Decolonization of Knowledge
• 13 Disciplining as a Human Science
• 14 The Problem of History in African American Theology
• 15 Rarely Kosher: Studying Jews of Color in North America
• 16 Jews Against Liberation: An Afro-Jewish Critique
• 17 Lewis Gordon’s Statement for Jacqueline Walker’s Dossier, 2018
• 18 Shifting the Geography of Reason in an Age of Disciplinary Decadence
• 19 Decolonizing Philosophy
• 20 A Pedagogical Imperative of Pedagogical Imperatives
• 21 Justice Otherwise: Thoughts on Ubuntu
• 22 Teleological Suspensions for the Sake of Political Life
• 23 Labor, Migration, and Race: Toward a Secular Model of Citizenship
• Part III. Interviews
• 24 Are Reparations Possible? Lessons to the United States from South Africa
• 25 Histories of Violence: Thinking Art in a Decolonial Way
• 26 Black Issues in Philosophy: Gordon and Da Silva on Brazil and Africana Philosophy
• 27 Dougla: Intersections between Dalitness and Afro-Blackness
• 28 Freedom, Oppression, and Black Consciousness in Get Out
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright