Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences [Paperback]

Lewis Gordon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415914159 | ISBN-13: 978-0415914154 | Publication Date: August 31, 1995 | Edition: 1

As the first book to analyze the work of Fanon as an existential-phenomenological of human sciences and liberation philosopher, Gordon deploys Fanon's work to illuminate how the "bad faith" of European science and civilization have philosophically stymied the project of liberation. Fanon's body of work serves as a critique of European science and society, and shows the ways in which the project of "truth" is compromised by Eurocentric artificially narrowed scope of humanity--a circumstance to which he refers as the crisis of European Man. In his examination of the roots of this crisis, Gordon explores the problems of historical salvation and the dynamics of oppression, the motivation behind contemporary European obstruction of the advancement of a racially just world, the forms of anonymity that pervade racist theorizing and contribute to "seen invisibility," and the reasons behind the impossibility of a nonviolent transition from colonialism and neocolonialism to postcolonialism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Lewis R. Gordon's well-written and clearly organized essay focuses on racial identity...Unlike most research on race..they have asked the correct question: What is race and who benefits from it. Antonio McDaniel, University of Pennsylvania. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 31, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415914159
• ISBN-13: 978-0415914154
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #997,083 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

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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I wish I could have given this book more stars!, September 9, 2000

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M. PARADISO-MICHAU (Columbus, OH (USA)) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Paperback)

In his second, but by no means secondary, book, Gordon is at his existential-phenomenological best! The issues brought up in the Fanonian scholarly dialogue are the beginning of what Gordon attempts to accomplish -- an unrelenting critique of the ideological perpetuation of racism in all of its manifestations. This proposal is present in everything else that Gordon has blessed us with publication. I would recommend any piece of writing by Lewis R. Gordon as highly as any classic, from Plato to Marx. The reader can actually feel and experience Gordon's rigorous thought process in the writing of this, and other, books. A good published review of this book is by Marilyn Nissim-Sabat entitled "Globalization from Below: An Appreciation of the Work of Lewis Gordon," and it appears in the Spring 1997 edition of the C.L.R. James Journal.