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32What Does It Mean to Colonise and Decolonise Philosophy?Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 93 117-135. 2023.What does it mean for philosophy to be ‘colonised’ and what are some of the challenges involved in ‘decolonising’ it in philosophical and political terms? After distinguishing between philosophy and its practice as a professional enterprise, I explore six ways in which philosophy, at least as understood in its Euromodern form, could be interpreted as colonised: (1) Eurocentrism and its asserted racial and ethnic origins/misrepresentations of philosophy's history, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3…Read more
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Justice otherwise: thoughts on UbuntuIn Leonhard Praeg & Siphokazi Magadla (eds.), Ubuntu: curating the archive, University of Kwazulu-natal Press. 2014.
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38Fanon on cadavers, madness, and the damnedEuropean Journal of Philosophy 30 (4): 1577-1582. 2022.European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.
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12Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism From a Neocolonial AgeRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1997.Her Majesty's Children reveals not only a deeply personal account of the experience of racism but is also a revolutionary work that asks us to reconsider our ordinary practices and lives to recognize and resist the traces of a colonial age of racism that so many claim is only part of our past
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30Freedom, Justice, and DecolonizationRoutledge. 2020.The eminent scholar Lewis R. Gordon offers a probing meditation on freedom, justice, and decolonization. What is there to be understood and done when it is evident that the search for justice, which dominates social and political philosophy of the North, is an insufficient approach for the achievements of dignity, freedom, liberation, and revolution? Gordon takes the reader on a journey as he interrogates a trail from colonized philosophy to re-imagining liberation and revolution to critical cha…Read more
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9L'existence noire dans la philosophie de la cultureDiogène 236 (3): 130-144. 2012.This article examines an Africana philosophy of culture of black existence through, after offering a critique of a theodicy of textuality and social reality, exploration of the construction of “problem people,” of people whose existence, marked by blackness, has been treated as a challenge to reason and the search for knowledge in the modern world. As Africana philosophy raises concerns of philosophical anthropology, philosophy of freedom, and a metacritique of reason, it offers, as well, a case…Read more
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11A Forum on Creolizing Social and Political TheoryPhilosophy and Global Affairs 1 (2): 267-275. 2021.The author discusses Jane Anna Gordon’s proposal, in the 2006 international meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, of creolizing theory. He summarizes the research it generated, including Gordon’s monograph on creolizing political theory, and the set of articles in this forum on creolizing social and political identities and theory.
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18To Undiscipline KnowledgePhilosophy and Global Affairs 1 (1): 5-21. 2021.The social sciences were founded at the height of the Euromodern era when the belief in infinite expansion coexisted with the willingness to enclose, categorize, and lock up a large part of humanity. The invention of the social sciences was closely linked to this enterprise of disciplinarization of spaces and of populations which accompanied the expansion of capitalism and colonial conquest. Stigmatized, dominated, and colonized groups were constituted as objects by social scientists who conside…Read more
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Tragic Dimensions of Our Neocolonial ‘Postcolonial’ WorldIn Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (ed.), Postcolonial African Philosophy: A Critical Reader, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 241251. 1997.
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8Revolutionary Hope: Essays in Honor of William L. Mcbride (edited book)Lexington Books. 2013.Over the course of the last four decades, William Leon McBride has distinguished himself as one of the most esteemed and accomplished philosophers of his generation. This volume—which celebrates the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday—includes contributions from colleagues, friends, and formers students and pays tribute to McBride’s considerable achievements as a teacher, mentor, and scholar
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21What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to His Life and ThoughtFordham University Press. 2015.Challenging the notion of theory as white and experience as black, Lewis Gordon here offers a philosophical portrait of the thought and life of the Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an example of "living thought" against the legacies of colonialism and racism, and thereby shows the continued relevance and importance of his ideas.
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45Race in FilmIn Noël Carroll, Laura T. Di Summa & Shawn Loht (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures, Springer. pp. 677-697. 2019.This chapter examines race in film through exploring what the author calls “cinema beyond the veil.” This involves addressing several themes. The first is historical—namely, the story of racial portraits in film. The second is hermeneutical—that is, interpreting the portrayal of race in film. The third is philosophical—pertaining particularly to the aesthetic quality of film where race emerges. And the fifth is political—whether race can be in film without subordinating aesthetic aims to politic…Read more
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60Decolonizing PhilosophySouthern Journal of Philosophy 57 (S1): 16-36. 2019.This article explores five ways in which philosophy could be colonized: (1) racial and ethnic origins, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification, (4) disciplinary decadence, (5) solipsism—and what the author calls a teleological suspension of philosophy as consideration among other practices of thought.
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152Thinking through Rejections and Defenses of TransracialismPhilosophy Today 62 (1): 11-19. 2018.This article explores several philosophical questions raised by Rebecca Tuvel’s controversial article, “In Defense of Transracialism.” Drawing upon work on the concept of bad faith, including its form as “disciplinary decadence,” this discussion raises concerns of constructivity and its implications and differences in intersections of race and gender.
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92Thinking through Some Themes of Race and MoreRes Philosophica 95 (2): 331-345. 2018.This article is a reflective essay, drawing upon insights on racism and related forms of oppression as expressions of bad faith, on several influential movements in contemporary philosophy of race and racism. The author pays particular attention to theories from the global south addressing contemporary debates ranging from Euromodernity, philosophical anthropology, and the racialization of First Nations or Amerindians to intersectionality theory, discourses on privilege, decolonization, and creo…Read more
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17Review of Bruce Kuklick’s Black Philosopher, White Academy (review)Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (7): 723-730. 2013.
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44Introduction: Forum on Creolizing TheoryJournal of French and Francophone Philosophy 25 (2): 1-5. 2017.This introduction outlines why the author assembled a community of scholars with the task not of commenting on Jane Anna Gordon’s work on creolizing political theory but instead placing it in dialogue with their own. The idea is that the value of theory depends also on the extent to which it could be engaged as a communicative practice with other theories dedicated to a shared concern. In this case, it is scholars committed to thought devoted to concerns of dignity, freedom, and liberation as we…Read more
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10Geopolitics and Decolonization: Perspectives From the Global South (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield International. 2017.This volume presents timely commentaries on issues relating to Africa and Latin America, demonstrating the value of intercultural dialogue amongst voices from the Global South on decoloniality, cultural rights and politics.
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17Frantz Fanon: De l’anticolonialisme à la critique postcoloniale (review)Palimpsest 4 (2): 211-213. 2015.
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2Making Science Reasonable: Peter Caws on Science both Human and “Natural”Janus Head 5 (1): 14-38. 2002.
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28On Michael Monahan’s The Creolizing Subject: Race, Reason, and the Politics of Purity (review)CLR James Journal 18 (1): 212-216. 2012.
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38Frantz Fanon, Fifty Years OnRadical Philosophy Review 16 (1): 307-324. 2013.Originally delivered to mark the fiftieth anniversary of both Frantz Fanon’s death and the publication of his seminal discourse on decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth, these remarks seek to offer a preliminary outline of Fanon’s continuing relevance to the present. Conceptually spanning such touchstone elements of Fanon’s thought as sociogeny, race, violence, the human, and the relation between decolonial ethics and decolonial politics, the authors turn our attention to diagnosing the neol…Read more
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102An Introduction to Africana PhilosophyCambridge University Press. 2008.In this undergraduate textbook Lewis R. Gordon offers the first comprehensive treatment of Africana philosophy, beginning with the emergence of an Africana consciousness in the Afro-Arabic world of the Middle Ages. He argues that much of modern thought emerged out of early conflicts between Islam and Christianity that culminated in the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula, and from the subsequent expansion of racism, enslavement, and colonialism which in their turn stimulated reflec…Read more
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9Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential ThoughtRoutledge. 2000.First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company
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University of ConnecticutDepartment of PhilosophyHead and Professor of Philosophy and Global Affairs
Areas of Specialization
Philosophical Traditions |
Value Theory |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Philosophical Traditions |
Value Theory |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |