Lewis Gordon on Race and Gender from the Standpoint of Sartre’s Philosophical Anthropology.

Lewis Gordon: Keynote address, Diverse Lineages of Existentialism, June 19-21 2014, St. Louis Missouri.

Lewis Gordon - "Living Thought, Living Freedom: A Lecture in Black Existential Philosophy"

Shifting the Geography of Reason XI: Diverse Lineages of Existentialism—Africana, Feminist, and Decolonial

Caribbean Philosophical Association

2014 ANNUAL MEETING

Shifting the Geography of Reason XI: 

Diverse Lineages of Existentialism—Africana, Feminist, and Decolonial

June 19–21, 2014, Hyatt Regency, St. Louis, Missouri

Call for Papers

Submission Deadline:

February 1, 2014

Abstracts should be submitted to: caribphil@gmail.com

In recent years, existential thought has been revitalized by a new generation of theorists investigating questions of gender, race, and sexual orientation. They have brought to light numerous ways in which existentialism has contributed to, and been shaped by, Africana philosophy, Latin American philosophy, feminism, and the work of literary writers and performing artists.

Racism as a Form of Bad Faith

Lewis Gordon: Racism as a Form of Bad Faith by TigersEye99

Biko: Africana Existentialist Philosopher

by Mabogo More, Alternation, 2004

This paper, following Lewis Gordon's extensive phenomenological work on Frantz Fanon, seeks to locate Bantu Steve biko within the philosophical terrain, more pointedly the Africana existentialist tradition.

Being & Nothingness

Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre

Sartre by Neil Levy

The Black Soul of Jean-Paul Sartre

by Pravasan Pillay, Black Radical Congress, 2001

Just over twenty years ago fifty thousand men and women crowded the Champs-Elysees to mourn the death of Jean-Paul Sartre. Many of the ordinary people present in the crowd that day loudly proclaimed the dead philosopher as France's greatest intellectual of the 20th century. Others, perhaps acquaintances from the many Left Bank cafes he frequented, unashamedly extended the scope of his influence to encompass the entire Western world. Still others, perhaps ardent followers of the then popular post-structuralist movement, begrudgingly paid their respect only to follow it up with some derisive salvo or the other. Whatever else was said of Jean-Paul Sartre on that cold Paris day no-one present dared to deny his incredible gift to arouse the passions, of admiration or of anger, of all who encountered him or his monumental body of work. This would have been the way Sartre, ever the egoist, would have wanted it. A reaction of any sort was infinitely more desirable than apathy.

Race after Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism

Race After Sartre

edited by Jonathan Judaken, SUNY Press, 2008

Examines Jean-Paul Sartre’s antiracist politics and his contributions to critical race theories, postcolonialism, and Africana existentialism. Race after Sartre is the first book to systematically interrogate Jean-Paul Sartre’s antiracist politics and his largely unrecognized contributions to critical race theories, postcolonialism, and Africana existentialism. The contributors offer an overview of Sartre’s positions on racism as they changed throughout the course of his life, providing a coherent account of the various ways in which he understood how racism could be articulated and opposed.

Oppression and the Human Condition: An Introduction to Sartrean Existentialism

Thomas Martin applies Sartre's philosophy to contemporary issues and concerns, and draws on two case studies to make his point. The cases examine modern-day oppressors--in one case an anti-semite, in the other a sexist who objectifies women--in the context of Sartre's "bad faith." The case studies also reinforce Martin's argument that Sartre's early philosophy, especially his concept of "bad faith," provides a framework for discussions of oppressions such as racism and sexism.

"Tom Martin, writing in contexts marked by colonial legacies of racism and economic dependence, offers here one of the clearest statements on Sartre's philosophy and its importance for our continued efforts to forge a humane world. This is, indeed, one of the very best books on the subject for both scholars and lay readers."—Lewis R. Gordon, Brown University

Itinerary of a Thought

Jean-Paul Sartre, New Left Review, 1969

How do you envisage the relationship between your early philosophical writings, above all L’Etre et Le Néant, and your present theoretical work, from the Critique de la Raison Dialectique onwards? In the Critique, the typical concepts of L’Etre et Le Néant have disappeared, and a completely new vocabulary has taken their place. Yet when reading the passages of your forthcoming study of Flaubert published in Les Temps Modernes one is struck by the sudden re-emergence of the characteristic idiom of the early work—thetic consciousness, ego, nihilation, being, nothingness. These notions are now juxtaposed in the text with the distinct set of concepts which derive from the Critique—serialization, totalization, practico-inert, collectives. What is the precise relationship between the two in your current thought?

Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943) is the most comprehensive and far-reaching statement of Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. It is subtitled: “An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.”

Phenomenology is the study of how phenomena present or appear in consciousness. Ontology is the study of being. Thus, phenomenological ontology can be defined as the study of the nature of being of phenomena as they present in consciousness.

Between Existentialism and Marxism

This book presents a full decade of Sartre’s work, from the publication of the Critique of Dialectical Reason in 1960, the basic philosophical turning-point in his postwar development, to the inception of his major study on Flaubert, the first volumes of which appeared in 1971. The essays and interviews collected here form a vivid panorama of the range and unity of Sartre’s interests, since his deliberate attempt to wed his original existentialism to a rethought Marxism.

Simone de Beauvoir

Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate

Sartre constructs his landmark postwar analysis of anti-Semitism around four feature characters: the anti-Semite, the democrat, the authentic Jew, and the inauthentic Jew. He presents their interactions as a kind of hypothetical drama. Sartre examines how the four actors in the “drama” create the others, or more precisely, how each character both defines the others and is defined by them.

Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism

by Lewis Gordon

a major contribution to Sartre studies, to the analysis of antiblack racism, to the very meaning of color itself in human terms."
-Maurice Natanson, Yale University

"This is a remarkable work . . . Unusual are the freshness and freedom from fashionable political cant of Gordon's work."
-Robert V. Stone, Long Island University

Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir

Existentialism Is a Humanism

by Jean-Paul Sartre, Marxist Internet Archive

My purpose here is to offer a defence of existentialism against several reproaches that have been laid against it.

First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely ineffective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists.

Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought

by Lewis Gordon

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.