Black Existential Freedom

Black Existential Freedom
Author: Nathalie Etoke
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2022-11-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 153815708X

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The history of slavery, colonization, subjugation, gratuitous violence, and the denial of basic human rights to people of African descent has led Afro-Pessimists to look at black existence through the lens of white supremacy and anti-blackness. Against this trend, Black Existential Freedom argues that Blackness is not inherently synonymous with victimhood. Rather, it is inextricable from existential freedom and the struggle for political liberation. This book presents an existential analysis of continental and diasporic African experiences through critical interpretations of music, film, and fiction that portray what it means to be human— to persevere in the tension between life and physical, psychological, and social death—for the sake of freedom. With its transdisciplinary perspective and convergence of Africana existential philosophy, African-American Studies, Afro-French Studies, Diaspora Studies, and African studies, this book is not concerned with disciplinary boundaries or certain appropriations of European metaphysics that are committed to a reading of black “non-being.” Black Existential Freedom explores the continuities and discontinuities of black existence and the manifestations and the meanings of blackness within different countries, time periods, and social and political contexts. Etoke's book empowers the reader to understand and process the complexities of racialized identity in a globalized contemporary society. Ultimately, it is an ode to human survival and freedom.

Existence in Black

Existence in Black
Author: Lewis Ricardo Gordon
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 1997
Genre: African American philosophy
ISBN: 9780415914512

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This collection of essays and reviews represents the most significant and comprehensive writing on Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors. Miola's edited work also features a comprehensive critical history, coupled with a full bibliography and photographs of major productions of the play from around the world. In the collection, there are five previously unpublished essays. The topics covered in these new essays are women in the play, the play's debt to contemporary theater, its critical and performance histories in Germany and Japan, the metrical variety of the play, and the distinctly modern perspective on the play as containing dark and disturbing elements. To compliment these new essays, the collection features significant scholarship and commentary on The Comedy of Errors that is published in obscure and difficulty accessible journals, newspapers, and other sources. This collection brings together these essays for the first time.

Melancholia Africana

Melancholia Africana
Author: Nathalie Etoke
Publisher: Creolizing the Canon
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019
Genre: Africa
ISBN: 9781786613028

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Melancholia Africana argues that in the African and Afro-diasporic context, melancholy is rooted in collective experiences such as slavery, colonization, and the post-colony. From these experiences a theme of loss resonates--loss of land, of freedom, of language, of culture, of self, and of ideals born from independence. Nathalie Etoke demonstrates that, beyond territorial expropriation and the pain inflicted upon the body and the soul, the violence that seals the encounter with the 'other' annihilates an age-old cycle of life. In the wake of this annihilation, continental and diasporic Africans strive to reconcile that which has been destroyed with what has been newly introduced. Their survival depends on their capacity to negotiate the inherent tension of their historical becoming. The book develops a transdisciplinary method encompassing historicism, critical theory, Africana existential thought, and poetics.

Black Existentialism

Black Existentialism
Author: danielle davis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2019-02-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1786611481

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Few contemporary intellectuals have attempted to inform theory, the academy and social change as does Lewis Gordon. Following his own path of Fanon, Cesaire and Said, Gordon’s work is an urgent call to action that is critical ‘in the trying times’ in which we find ourselves. In this important book, international scholars from many disciplines and areas of life engage in Gordon’s work to prod, rattle and rethink our thinking to inform and change our practices as humans in institutions, politics, and the personal, legal and social paradigms. The book focuses on the importance of radical theory and thinkers to push for projects of change in the area of Black Existentialism. Gordon’s now extensive oeuvre personifies this. The essays use the work of Lewis Gordon to demonstrate how theory and thought be can used for transformation of existence, antiracism and critiques of alterity, resistance, pedagogy, political action theory and disciplinary decadence in the academy and beyond.

Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization

Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization
Author: Lewis R. Gordon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2020-12-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000244733

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The eminent scholar Lewis R. Gordon offers a probing meditation on freedom, justice, and decolonization. What is there to be understood and done when it is evident that the search for justice, which dominates social and political philosophy of the North, is an insufficient approach for the achievements of dignity, freedom, liberation, and revolution? Gordon takes the reader on a journey as he interrogates a trail from colonized philosophy to re-imagining liberation and revolution to critical challenges raised by Afropessimism, theodicy, and looming catastrophe. He offers not forecast and foreclosure but instead an urgent call for dignifying and urgent acts of political commitment. Such movements take the form of examining what philosophy means in Africana philosophy, liberation in decolonial thought, and the decolonization of justice and normative life. Gordon issues a critique of the obstacles to cultivating emancipatory politics, challenging reductionist forms of thought that proffer harm and suffering as conditions of political appearance and the valorization of nonhuman being. He asserts instead emancipatory considerations for occluded forms of life and the irreplaceability of existence in the face of catastrophe and ruin, and he concludes, through a discussion with the Circassian philosopher and decolonial theorist, Madina Tlostanova, with the project of shifting the geography of reason.

At the Existentialist Café

At the Existentialist Café
Author: Sarah Bakewell
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2016-03-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1590514890

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Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2016 by the New York Times, a spirited account of a major intellectual movement of the twentieth century and the revolutionary thinkers who came to shape it, by the best-selling author of How to Live Sarah Bakewell. Paris, 1933: three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called Phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!" It was this simple phrase that would ignite a movement, inspiring Sartre to integrate Phenomenology into his own French, humanistic sensibility, thereby creating an entirely new philosophical approach inspired by themes of radical freedom, authentic being, and political activism. This movement would sweep through the jazz clubs and cafés of the Left Bank before making its way across the world as Existentialism. Featuring not only philosophers, but also playwrights, anthropologists, convicts, and revolutionaries, At the Existentialist Café follows the existentialists' story, from the first rebellious spark through the Second World War, to its role in postwar liberation movements such as anti-colonialism, feminism, and gay rights. Interweaving biography and philosophy, it is the epic account of passionate encounters--fights, love affairs, mentorships, rebellions, and long partnerships--and a vital investigation into what the existentialists have to offer us today, at a moment when we are once again confronting the major questions of freedom, global responsibility, and human authenticity in a fractious and technology-driven world.

Living Existentialism

Living Existentialism
Author: Gregory Hoskins
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781498249843

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Writing in the late 1990s about the tendency of encyclopedists to designate existentialism a finished project, Thomas W. Busch cautions that such hasty periodization risks distorting our understanding of the contemporary philosophical scene and of depriving ourselves of vital resources for critiquing contemporary forms of oppression, what Garbriel Marcel referred to as processes of dehumanization. We should recall that ""existentialism made possible present forms of Continental philosophy, all of which assume the existentialist critique of dualism, essentialism, and totality in modern philosophy,"" and we should acknowledge that ""existentialism remains capable of haunting today's scene as an important and relevant critic."" Offered in honor of Thomas W. Busch after his more than fifty years of work in philosophy, the essays in this volume attest to existentialism as a living project. The essays are written by scholars who championed existentialism in America and by scholars who now seek to extend existentialist insights into new territory, including into research in cognitive science. The essays range from studies of key figures and texts to explorations of urgent topics such as the nature of freedom and the possibility of what Busch calls ""incorporation,"" a sense of communicative solidarity that respects difference and disagreement. ""While each essay opens up a world of its own and invites the reader along a skillfully guided argument, the entire collection is a refreshing contribution to the existentialist scholarship. Instead of a partisan defense of the tradition's timelessness, this volume faithfully echoes Thomas W. Busch's sober approach and demonstrates the thematic timeliness of existentialism."" --Farhang Erfani, American University; author of Aesthetics of Autonomy: Sartre and Ricoeur on Emancipation, Authenticity, and Selfhood ""This collection testifies to the diverse and lasting impact of Tom Busch's thinking and teaching. Busch's interest in thinkers including Marcel, Sartre, Beauvoir, and Merleau-Ponty has translated, for his readers and students, into enduring contributions in fields as varied as feminist philosophy, political theory, cognitive science, and literary analysis. Many of these essays have inherited from Busch's teaching and writing the element of hopefulness that he himself found in existentialism and phenomenology."" --Rebecca Steiner Goldner, St. John's College, Annapolis Gregory Hoskins, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, is the Assistant Director of the Augustine and Culture Seminar Program at Villanova University. J. C. Berendzen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans.

Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge

Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge
Author: Lewis R. Gordon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2023-07-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350343781

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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.

Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism

Black Nihilism and Antiblack Racism
Author: Devon R. Johnson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2021-11-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1538153505

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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.

No Ashes in the Fire

No Ashes in the Fire
Author: Darnell L Moore
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2018-05-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1568589492

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From a leading journalist and activist comes a brave, beautifully wrought memoir. When Darnell Moore was fourteen, three boys from his neighborhood tried to set him on fire. They cornered him while he was walking home from school, harassed him because they thought he was gay, and poured a jug of gasoline on him. He escaped, but just barely. It wasn't the last time he would face death. Three decades later, Moore is an award-winning writer, a leading Black Lives Matter activist, and an advocate for justice and liberation. In No Ashes in the Fire, he shares the journey taken by that scared, bullied teenager who not only survived, but found his calling. Moore's transcendence over the myriad forces of repression that faced him is a testament to the grace and care of the people who loved him, and to his hometown, Camden, NJ, scarred and ignored but brimming with life. Moore reminds us that liberation is possible if we commit ourselves to fighting for it, and if we dream and create futures where those who survive on society's edges can thrive. No Ashes in the Fire is a story of beauty and hope-and an honest reckoning with family, with place, and with what it means to be free.