Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy [Hardcover]

Lewis Gordon (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0415914507 | ISBN-13: 978-0415914505 | Edition: 1

Existence in Black is the first collective statement on the subject of Africana Philosophy of Existence. Drawing upon resources in Africana philosophy and literature, the contributors explore some of the central themes of Existentialism as posed by the context of what Frantz Fanon has identified as 'the lived-experience of the black'. Contributors are: Ernest Allen Jr., Robert Birt, Bernard Boxill, George Carew, Bobby Dixon, G.M. James Gonzales, Lewis R. Gordon, Leonard Harris, Floyd Hayes III, Paget Henry, Patricia Huntington, Joy Ann James, Clarence Shole Johnson, Bill E. Lawson, Howard McGary, Roy D. Morrison, William Preston, Jean-Paul Sartre, T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, Gary Schwartz, Robert Westley, and Naomi Zack. Ernest Allen Jr., Robert Birt, Bernard Boxill, George Carew, Bobby Dixon, G.M. James Gonzales, Lewis R. Gordon, Leonard Harris, Floyd Hayes III, Paget Henry, Patricia Huntington, Joy Ann James, Claren

Editorial Reviews

Review

... this is a useful and wide-ranging book that contributes to various aspects of the discussion of race. There is no other anthology like this... It is path-breaking in its demonstration that existentialism can be applied, historicized, concretized, and above all, that philosophy of existence is alive and well with a future as well as a past.
–Teaching Philosophy

Lewis Gordon has edited an impressive anthology within a specialized area of philosophy ... [T]his is a great resource.
–Catholic Library World

About the Author

Lewis R. Gordon teaches Africana philosophy and contemporary religious thought at Brown University. He is author of Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities), Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Routledge), and Her Majesty's Other Children: Philosophical Sketches from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman & Littlefield). He is also co-editor of Fanon: A Critical Reader (Blackwell) and Black Texts and Textuality: Constructing and De-Constructing Blackness (Rowman & Littlefield).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (October 23, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415914507
• ISBN-13: 978-0415914505
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,250,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lewis Gordon is an Afro-Jewish philosopher, political thinker,and musician. He is the founder and co-director, with his wife Jane Anna Gordon, of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University, a research center dedicated to developing reliable sources of information on Afro-Jews and Jewish diversity. He is also a research affiliate of the Institute for Jewish Research and Community in San Francisco and the Be'chol Lashon ("In Every Tongue") think tank. His formal academic appointments are as the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies, with affiliations in African American Studies and Religion at Temple University and Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He has also taught at Brown University (where he was the founding chair of the Department of Africana Studies and Professor of Modern Culture and Media and Contemporary Religious Thought), Yale University (in African American Studies and in Philosophy), and Purdue University (in Philosophy, African American Studies, and the Doctoral Program in English and Philosophy). Gordon achieved his PhD in Philosophy with distinction from Yale University and his B.A., with multiple honors, through the Lehman Scholars Program at Lehman College in the Bronx, New York. He had taught as a Social Studies teacher in the Bronx, where he was also founder of the Second Chance Program at Lehman High School. He has received many accolades for his writings and teaching, including the Gustavus Myer's award for outstanding work on human rights in North America, for Her Majesty's Other Children, the netLibrary's eBook of the month in February 2007 for his co-edited A Companion to African-American Studies, the Purdue African American Studies Book Award for Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism, and, more recently, the James and Helen Merritt Distinguished Service Award for Contributions to the Philosophy of Education. He has organized conferences worldwide on such themes as antiblack racism, anti-Semitism, and colonialism, and he lectures regularly across the globe. He is a board member of the Institute for Caribbean Thought in Jamaica, the same for the Institute for the Study of Dutch Slavery in Amsterdam, and he has worked in a variety of public media, including as one of the first news analysts for the National Public Radio Program On Point. He was executive editor of the first five volumes of the journal Radical Philosophy Review, and he was president of he Caribbean Philosophical Association from 2003 till 2008. Gordon still plays drums and piano. He could be viewed discussing philosophy of music and playing drums for the Philosophical Installations series--"Lewis R. Gordon--Philosophy at home": http://philinstall.uoregon.edu/#independent-videos.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars AN INTERESTING COLLECTION OF ESSAYS ON EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHY, December 7, 2010

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (Paperback)

Lewis Ricardo Gordon (born 1962) is Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, and an Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He has also written/edited An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy), Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Africana Thought), and Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism.

Contributors include Bernard Boxill, Naomi Zack, Howard McGary, and Joy James, as well as Gordon himself. Gordon notes in the Introduction to this 1997 collection, "I should like to stress that not all of the contributors to this volume are black existentialists in any sense. This volume raises questions of black existential philosophy, and in that regard, some of the individuals who have something to say of value on that subject are also those who are most critical of it, or at least suspicious of an existential philosophy premised on what Fanon calls ... the lived-experience of the black. Such is the case."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"On balance the African response to this existential situation was a positive one. It was able to affirm and empower agency in spite of anxieties of fate. Existence was grounded in an ordered cosmos, which had a specific niche for human beings." (Pg. 23)
"In my view, Afro-Caribbean existential philosophy will not achieve the self-consciousness it requires without a fuller coming to terms with its African roots. In doing so, it will not only creolize itself, but also the larger discourse of Caribbean philosophy." (Pg. 35)
"Stated more bluntly, this means that blacks must first save themselves from the debilitating effects of their inherited folk religion if they are to achieve liberating self-transformation." (Pg. 47)