Lewis R. Gordon

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 brings together new essays on African American studies. It is ideal for students and scholars of African studies, philosophy, literary theory, educational theory, social and political thought, and postcolonial studies.

Not Only the Master's Tools brings together new essays on African American studies. It is ideal for students and scholars of African studies, philosophy, literary theory, educational theory, social and political thought, and postcolonial studies.

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 clearly explains Africana existential thought to a general audience, covering a wide range of both classic and contemporary thinkers--from Douglass and DuBois to Fanon, Davis and Zack.

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 clearly explains Africana existential thought to a general audience, covering a wide range of both classic and contemporary thinkers--from Douglass and DuBois to Fanon, Davis and Zack.

In this contemporary classic, Lewis Gordon presents his iconic, detailed existential phenomenological investigation of antiblack racism as a form of Sartrean bad faith. Bad faith, the attitude in which human beings attempt to evade freedom and responsibility, is treated as a constant possibility of human existence. Antiblack racism, the attitude and practice that involve the construction of black people as fundamentally inferior and subhuman, is examined as an effort to evade the responsibilities of a human and humane world. Gordon argues that the concept of bad faith militates against any human science that is built upon a theory of human nature and as such offers an analysis of antiblack racism that stands as a challenge to our ordinary assumptions of what it means to be human. A foundational text in black existentialism, this 30th anniversary edition includes a substantial introduction by Mabogo Moreto address the ongoing importance of Gordon’s thought in critiquing and resisting racist bad faith in our contemporary moment.