Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Africana Thought) [Paperback]

Lewis R. Gordon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0415926440 | ISBN-13: 978-0415926447 | Edition: 1

The intellectual history of the last quarter of the 20th 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. This book presents an introduction to the field of Africana philosophy and aims to help define this rapidly growing field. Lewis R. Gordon introduces and discusses Africana existential thought for a general audience, covering a range of both classic and contemporary thinkers - from Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois to Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis and Naomi Zack.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Strongly recommended for all library collections....
–Choice

'What does it mean to be a problem?' In the innovative essays of Existentia Africana, Lewis Gordon returns to the exploration both of W.E.B. Dubois' question, as well as of the emancipatory tradition of Black existential thought....It is an immense and profoundly original undertaking.
–Sylvia Wynter, author of Do Not Call Us Negroes: How Multicultural Textbooks Perpetuate Racism and Professor Emerita, Stanford University

In Existentia Africana, Lewis Gordon is once again at his philosophical best. Continuing from where he left off in Existence in Black, Gordon develops Africana philosophy and critical race theory to a higher level of sophistication and originality that will certainly make him a forceful voice of the next millennium. Indeed, a much needed and truly liberating contribution.
–Mabogo P. More, University of Durban-Westville, South Africa

Gordon once again brings his mastery of existentialist writers such as Frantz Fanon and Sartre to bear on issues confronting black intellectuals..
–M. Stewart, Austin College

This study gives Africana existential philosophy perhaps its most exhaustive analysis... The author discerns a dominant and pervasive race consciousness in Africana existential thought... Gordon has made a definitive statement of the wealth, validity, and historicity of Africana existential thought.
–Tunde Adeleke, University of Montana

About the Author

Lewis R. Gordon is Professor of Afro-American Studies, Modern Culture and Media, and Contemporary Religious Thought at Brown University. He is author of Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (1995) and editor of Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (1996), both published by Routledge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (April 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415926440
• ISBN-13: 978-0415926447
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #196,341 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 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Political Philosophy and the question of black existence, June 23, 2000

By 

Neil Roberts (Williamstown, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Africana Thought) (Paperback)

Sylvia Wynter has said that it is the challenge of the writer to create new "forms of life." Lewis R. Gordon has done just that with "Existentia Africana." With chapters such as "Can Men Worship?", "'What Does It Mean to be a Problem'?", and one of the most moving sections, "Writing: Words and Incantation", Gordon pours out his soul in trying to explain to the reader why in the year 2000 black people in Africa and the African Diaspora are still regarded as problem people. The author is a writer, philosopher par excellance, a jazz musician, a product of both Jamaica and black America, the academy and the realm of grassroots political activity. Discussing persons such as Frantz Fanon to Angela Davis to Jean-Paul Sartre to W.E.B.Du Bois to Naomi Zack to Josiah Young to Abbey Lincoln and to others, Gordon's words and incantation force the reader to confront the meaning of black existence from Jamaica to the United States to the UK to Africa to aboriginal Australia. Gordon differentiates between the European movement of thought "Existentialism", versus what he terms a "Philosophy of Existence/Existential Philosophy." A Philosophy of Existence addresses issues of freedom, anguish, dread, and responsibility in a way that does not limit discourse to European thought and thikers such as Sartre, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Simone de Beauvoir. Dear reader, please read on if you are willing to confront these serious and pressing issues of our times.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarship as its best..., July 4, 2000

By 

"moredean" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Africana Thought) (Hardcover)

If you are at the least familiar with Prof. Gordon's work, then you should need no prompting in purchasing this text. If not, then I wholeheartedly recommened "Existentia Africana" for anyone with an interest in race theorizing along existential lines. Gordon draws influences from such existential theorists as Frantz Fanon, W.E.B. DuBois, Jean-Paul Sartre, and bell hooks to paint a very coherent and useful picture of modern Africana existential thought. Buy it, and read it, you won't be dissappointed.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MAJOR WORK BY A PROMINENT BLACK EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHER, December 10, 2010

By 

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

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This review is from: Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Africana Thought) (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), Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (The Radical Imagination Series),
Black Texts and Textuality: Constructing and De-Constructing Blackness, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism, and Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy.

Here are some quotations from the book:

"Africana existential philosophy is a branch of Africana philosophy and black philosophies of existence. By 'black philosophy' what is meant is the philosophical currents that emerged from the question of blackness. I distinguish Africana philosophy and black philosophies because the latter relate to a terrain that is broader than Africana communities." (Pg. 5-6)
"Sartre stands as an unusual catalyst in the history of black existential philosophy. He serves as a link between Richard Wright and Frantz Fanon ... and the historical forces that came into play for the ascendance of European philosophy of existence in the American academy." (Pg. 9)
"This is not to say that Africana philosophy is existential in the sense of reducing it to a philosophy of existence. It is, instead, to say that the impetus of Africana philosophy, when the question of the black or the situation of black people is raised, has an existential impetus." (Pg. 11)
"Our first observation is that racism is a form of dehumanization, and that dehumanization is a form of bad faith---for to deny the humanity of a human being requires lying to ourselves about something of which we are aware." (Pg. 85)