Lewis Ricardo Gordon (born May 12, 1962) is an American
philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
at the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...
who works in the areas of
Africana philosophy
Africana philosophy is the work of philosophers of African descent and others whose work deals with the subject matter of the African diaspora. The name does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system, method, or tradition. Rather ...
,
existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
,
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
,
social and political theory,
postcolonial
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
thought, theories of race and racism,
philosophies of liberation,
aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed thr ...
,
philosophy of education
The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that investigates the nature of education as well as its aims and problems. It includes the examination of educational theories, the presuppositions present in them, and the arguments ...
, and
philosophy of religion
Philosophy of religion is "the philosophical examination of the central themes and concepts involved in religious traditions". Philosophical discussions on such topics date from ancient times, and appear in the earliest known texts concerning ph ...
. He has written particularly extensively on Africana and
black existentialism Black existentialism or Africana critical theory is a school of thought that "critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world".Magnus O. Bassey"What Is Africana Critical Theory or Black Existential Philosophy?" in: ''Jo ...
, postcolonial phenomenology, race and racism, and on the works and thought of
W. E. B. Du Bois and
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have be ...
. His most recent book is titled: ''Fear of Black Consciousness.''
Biography
Gordon graduated in 1984 from
Lehman College
Lehman College is a public college in the Bronx borough of New York City. Founded in 1931 as the Bronx campus of Hunter College, the school became an independent college within CUNY in September 1967. The college is named after Herbert H. Lehma ...
,
CUNY
, mottoeng = The education of free people is the hope of Mankind
, budget = $3.6 billion
, established =
, type = Public university system
, chancellor = Fél ...
, through the Lehman Scholars Program, with a
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
degree, magna cum laude and as a member of
Phi Beta Kappa
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...
. He completed his
Master of Arts
A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...
and
Master of Philosophy
The Master of Philosophy (MPhil; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. In the United States, an MPhil typically includes a taught portion and a significant research portion, during which a thesis project is conducted under supervision. An MPhil m ...
degrees in philosophy in 1991 at
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, and received his
Doctor of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...
degree with distinction from the same university in 1993. Following the completion of his doctoral studies, Gordon taught at
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
, Yale,
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...
, and
Temple University
Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...
, where he was the
Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy with affiliations in Religious and Judaic Studies. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies, with affiliations in Judaic Studies and the Caribbean, Latino/a, and Latin American Studies, at the
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...
at
Storrs. He also is Visiting Euro philosophy Professor at
Toulouse University
The University of Toulouse (french: Université de Toulouse) was a university in the French city of Toulouse that was established by papal bull in 1229, making it one of the earliest universities to emerge in Europe. Suppressed during the Frenc ...
, France, and Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor in Political and International Studies at
Rhodes University
Rhodes University is a public university, public research university located in Makhanda, Eastern Cape, Makhanda (Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. It is one of four universities in the province. Established in 1904, ...
in South Africa (2014–2016).
At Temple, he was Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought (ISRST), which is devoted to research on the complexity and social dimensions of race and racism. The ISRST's many projects include developing a consortium on Afro-Latin American Studies, a Philadelphia Blues People Project, semiological studies of indigeneity, a Black Civil Society project, symposia on race, sexuality, and sexual health, and ongoing work in Africana philosophy. Gordon was Executive Editor of volumes I-V of ''
Radical Philosophy Review
The ''Radical Philosophy Review'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal sponsored by the Radical Philosophy Association. It was established in 1998 and all issues are available online. The journal is published by the Philosophy Documentation Center. ...
: Journal of the Radical Philosophy Association'' and co-editor of the
Routledge
Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and ...
book series on
Africana philosophy
Africana philosophy is the work of philosophers of African descent and others whose work deals with the subject matter of the African diaspora. The name does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system, method, or tradition. Rather ...
. Additionally, he is President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association.
Gordon is the founder of the Center for
Afro-Jewish Studies, the only such research center, which focuses on developing and providing reliable sources of information on
African
African or Africans may refer to:
* Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa:
** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa
*** Ethn ...
and African Diasporic Jewish or
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
-descended populations. Gordon states: "In actuality, there is no such thing as pure Jewish blood. Jews are a creolized
ixed-racepeople. It's been that way since at least the time we left
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
as a
ulturallymixed Egyptian and African
.e., from other parts of Africapeople."
Gordon founded the Second Chance Program at
Lehman High School in the
Bronx, New York
The Bronx () is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state, state of New York (state), New York. It is south of Westchester County, New York, Westchester County; north and east of the ...
. He is married to Jane Anna Gordon.
Philosophy and work in theory
Black existentialism
Gordon is considered among the leading scholars in
black existentialism Black existentialism or Africana critical theory is a school of thought that "critiques domination and affirms the empowerment of Black people in the world".Magnus O. Bassey"What Is Africana Critical Theory or Black Existential Philosophy?" in: ''Jo ...
. He first came to prominence in this subject because of his first book, ''Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism'' (1995), which was an
existential
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value ...
phenomenological
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
study of anti-black racism, and his anthology ''Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy'' (1997). The book is written in four parts, with a series of short chapters that at times take the form of phenomenological vignettes. Bad faith, as Gordon reads it, is a coextensive phenomenon reflective of the metastability of the human condition. It is a denial of human reality, an effort to evade freedom, a flight from responsibility, a choice against choice, an assertion of being the only point of view on the world, an assertion of being the world, an effort to deny having a point of view, a flight from displeasing truths to pleasing falsehoods, a form of misanthropy, an act of believing what one does not believe, a form of spirit of seriousness, sincerity, an effort to disarm evidence (a Gordon innovation), a form of sedimented or institutional version of all of these, and (another Gordon innovation) a flight from and war against social reality. Gordon rejects notions of disembodied
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
(which he argues are forms of bad faith) and articulates a theory of the body-in-bad-faith. Gordon also rejects authenticity discourses. He sees them as trapped in expectations of sincerity, which also is a form of bad faith. He proposes, instead, critical good faith, which he argues requires respect for evidence and accountability in the social world, a world of intersubjective relations.
The question of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism ...
, Gordon argues, requires the rejection of another human being's humanity. Since the other human being is a human being, such a rejection is a contradiction of reality. A racist must, then, deny reality, and since communication is possible between a racist and the people who are the object of racial hatred, then social reality is also what is denied in racist assertions. A racist, then, attempts to avoid social reality. Gordon argues that since people could only "appear" if embodied, then racism is an attack on embodied realities. It is an effort to make embodied realities bodies without points of view or make points of views without bodies. Racism is also a form of the spirit of seriousness, by which Gordon means the treatment of values as material features of the world instead of expressions of human freedom and responsibility. Racism ascribes to so-called racially inferior people intrinsic values that emanate from their flesh. A result of the spirit of seriousness is racist rationality. Here, Gordon, in agreement with
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have be ...
, argues that racists are not irrational people but instead hyper-rational expressions of racist rationality. He rejects, in other words, theories that regard racism as a function of bad emotions or passions. Such phenomena, he suggests, emerge as a consequence of racist thinking, not its cause. Effect emerges, in other words, to affect how one negotiates reality. If one is not willing to deal with time, a highly emotional response squeezes all time into a single moment, which leads to the overflow of what one prefers to believe over what one is afraid of facing.
Gordon analyzes a variety of issues in the study of anti-black racism, such as black antiblack racists, exoticism, racial “qualities,” and theological-ethical dimensions of racism. He prefers to focus on anti-black racism instead of “
white supremacy
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White su ...
” because, he points out, that anti-black racism could exist without white supremacy. There are many people who reject white supremacy but affirm notions of black inferiority. A prime example is that there are black antiblack racists. Gordon analyzes this phenomenon through a discussion of black use of the word “
nigger
In the English language, the word ''nigger'' is an ethnic slur used against black people, especially African Americans. Starting in the late 1990s, references to ''nigger'' have been progressively replaced by the euphemism , notably in cases ...
,” which he argues is bad faith effort at black self-exceptionalism—of, in the case of the user of the term, not being its object. Exoticism is the other extreme. It is a rejection of the humanity of black people under the pretense of loving black people. The exoticist valorizes black people because he or she regards black people as, like animals, incapable of valid judgment.
Theology and history-ethics
Gordon argues that in theological form, studies of anti-black racism reveal that a particular assumption of
Western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
ethical
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns ma ...
thought must be rejected – the notion of similarity as a condition of ethical obligation. That black woman could worship a god with whom they are neither similar nor could ever be identical demonstrates that love does not require similarity. Gordon argues that the ethical issue against anti-black racism is not one of seeing the similarity between blacks and whites but of being able, simply, to respect and see the ethical importance of blacks as blacks. The fight against racism, in other words, does not require the elimination of race or noticing the racial difference but instead demands to respect the humanity of the people who exemplify racial difference. In ''Existence in Black'', Gordon outlines themes of black existentialism in the text's introduction. He argues that black existentialism addresses many of the same themes of European existentialism but with some key differences. For instance, although both sets argue that the notion of a human being makes no sense outside of human communities and that individuals make no sense without society and societies make no sense without individuals, European existentialists had to defend individuality more because they were normative in their societies, whereas black existentialists had to focus on community more in order to demonstrate their membership in the human community. The question of individuality for black existentialists becomes one of showing that not all black people are the same. Themes of anguish, dread, freedom, absurdity, and death are examined, as well, through the historical reality of anti-black racism and
colonialism
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
and, along with it, the meaning of black suffering and the legitimacy of black existence. The logic of anti-black racism demands blacks offering justifications for their existence that are not posed for whites.
Gordon points these dynamics out through discussions of
W. E. B. Du Bois's observation that black people are often treated as problems instead of people who face problems in the world and Frantz Fanon's call for black people to become actional through transcending the dialectics of seeking white recognition. Gordon also argues that black existential philosophy is an area of thought, which means that contributions to its development can come from anyone who understands its problematics. In other words, one does not have to be black to contribute to this area of thought. ''Existence in Black'' reflects his point since it has articles by other authors from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds discussing themes ranging from African and
Afro-Caribbean
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the ...
existential struggles with beliefs in predestination to black
feminist
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...
struggles with postmodern anti-essentialist thought. Gordon's chapter in the book focuses on the problem of black invisibility, which he points out is paradoxical since it is a function of black people being hyper-visible. Gordon's place in this area of thought was solidified in 2000 with the publication of his book ''Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought''. That book explores themes of existence—which he points out, from its Latin etymology, means to stand out or to appear—over the course of examining a set of new philosophical themes that emerge from their convergence with realities faced by African diasporic peoples. Gordon argues that traditional philosophical questions are not the only ones that philosophers should look at. Gordon examines, as a matter of philosophical interest, topics ranging from the stratification of blacks in biographical discourses to the difficulty of studying black people as human beings. He rejects the notion that existential philosophy is incompatible with religious thought. To support his position, he examines how religion poses not only unique questions of paths to be taken in struggles for liberation, but also of the conditions that make religious practices such as worship possible. He ends that work with a reflection on writing, in which he advances his own commitment to transcendental philosophical approaches, those, in other words, that explore the conditions by which and through which certain phenomena are able to manifest themselves or become possible. Crucial here is that Gordon does not pit existential philosophy against transcendental philosophy but, instead, argues for both.
Phenomenology and colonialism
Gordon is also known as the founder of postcolonial
phenomenology
Phenomenology may refer to:
Art
* Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties
Philosophy
* Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...
and the leading proponent of Africana phenomenology which has enabled him to make a mark in Fanon Studies. Gordon was able to develop
postcolonial
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. More specifically, it is a ...
phenomenology, which he sometimes refers to as Africana phenomenology or de-colonial phenomenology, through making a series of important innovations to
Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
ian and
Sartrian phenomenologies. The first, and perhaps most important, is his transformation of parenthesizing and bracketing of the natural attitude into what he calls "ontological suspension". Although Husserl called for a suspension of the natural attitude, his goal was primarily
epistemological
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Episte ...
. Gordon's interest is, however, primarily concerned with errors that occur from inappropriate
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exis ...
assertions. He is also concerned with metaphysics, which he, unlike many contemporary thinkers, does not reject. Instead, he sees the continuation of
Aristotelian metaphysics, which advances a notion of substance that is governed by the essence that leads to the definition in the form of essential being, as a problem. Gordon wants to talk about the social world and the meanings constructed by it without reducing it to a
physicalist
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical. Physicalism is a form of ontological monism—a "one substance ...
ontology. The notion of ontological suspension, which he claims is compatible with
Husserlian phenomenology
Phenomenology (from Greek φαινόμενον, ''phainómenon'' "that which appears" and λόγος, ''lógos'' "study") is the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness. As a philosophical movement it was founded i ...
, advances this effort. He also advances phenomenology as a form of radically self-reflective thought, which means that it must question even its methodological assumptions. Because of this, it must resist epistemological colonization, and it is in this sense that phenomenology is itself postcolonial or decolonizing. Because of this, Gordon refused for some time in his career to refer to his work as “philosophy,” for that would mean colonizing it with a disciplinary set of assumptions. He preferred to call his work “radical thought,” which for him meant being willing to go to the roots of reality in a critical way. From these moves, Gordon was able to generate a set of theoretical concepts that have become useful to those who have adopted his theoretical lexicon: his unique formulation of crisis; his theory of
epistemic closure
Epistemic closure is a property of some belief systems. It is the principle that if a subject S knows p, and S knows that p entails q, then S can thereby come to know q. Most epistemological theories involve a closure principle and many skepti ...
; his theory of disciplinary decadence and teleological suspension of disciplinarity; and his analysis of maturation and tragedy.
Most of these ideas first emerged in the work that gave Gordon a reputation in Fanon studies—namely, ''Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences'' (1995). Gordon introduced a new stage in Fanon studies by announcing that he was not interested in writing on Fanon but instead working with Fanon on the advancement of his (Gordon's) own intellectual project. Fanon was thus an occasion or point of departure but not the main object of the study. The work is, then, a statement more of Gordon's philosophy than that of Fanon, who, in this text, is more a major influence. The book offers several innovations to the question of colonialism and the human sciences. First, Gordon argues that crises are really human communities refusing to make the choices necessary for the transformation of realities created by human agency. In short, they are forms of choices against choice or choosing not to choose, which amounts to bad faith. History, he argued, must transcend the imposition of world history (and thus become structured as a crisis) and move toward an existential-historical understanding of human communities on the basis of critical good faith. Phenomena such as racism and colonialism, because they attempt to erase the humanity of the colonized and object of racism, place challenges on whether it is possible to study human communities without collapsing into acts of discursive, imperial practices.
Gordon has also made an important contribution to the understanding around the work of
Steve Biko
Bantu Stephen Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known ...
by way of a new introduction to Biko's classic text ''
I Write What I Like
''I Write What I Like'' (full name ''I Write What I Like: Selected Writings by Steve Biko'') is a compilation of writings from anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.
''I Write What I Like'' contains a selection of Biko's writings from 1969, whe ...
''.
New Introduction by Lewis Gordon
to Steve Biko's ''I Write What I Like''.
Essentialism and race
For some scholars, essentialism
Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In ''Categories'', Aristotle sim ...
means that one cannot study race and racism and colonialism properly because they, in effect, lack essences. Gordon argues that although human beings are incomplete, are without laws of nature, it does not follow that they cannot be studied and understood with reasonable accuracy. Drawing upon the thought of Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist and political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of modern Western society. His ideas profo ...
, Edmund Husserl
, thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations)
, thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view
, thesis1_year = 1883
, thesis2_title ...
, Alfred Schutz
Alfred may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
*''Alfred J. Kwak'', Dutch-German-Japanese anime television series
* ''Alfred'' (Arne opera), a 1740 masque by Thomas Arne
* ''Alfred'' (Dvořák), an 1870 opera by Antonín Dvořák
*"Alfred (Interlu ...
, and Frantz Fanon
Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have be ...
, Gordon argued that the task is to develop accurate portrayals or to thematize everyday life. He argues that racism and colonialism are everyday phenomena and, as such, are lived as "normal" aspects of modern life. Even under severe conditions, human beings find ways to live as though under ordinary conditions. This ordinariness can get to a point of distorting reality. In the case of racism, one group of people are allowed to live an ordinary life under ordinary conditions while another group or other groups are expected to do so under extraordinary conditions. Institutional bad faith renders those extraordinary conditions invisible and advances as a norm the false notion a shared ordinary set of conditions. This is the meaning behind the colloquial notion of "double standards". Gordon here also advances a theory that provides an answer to social constructivists in the study of race. What they fail to understand, Gordon argues, is that sociality is also constructed, which makes social constructivism redundant.
Many social constructivists also treat the identification of constructive as the conclusion of the argument instead of its beginning. For Gordon, identifying that something is constructed does not mean showing that the phenomenon is false or fictional. Human beings construct many "real" things, such as language and meaning and the forms of life generated by such activities and concepts. Many people are able, for instance, to act on race concepts (not racist ones) with a fair degree of accuracy. What this means is simply that they know how to read the social world and the bodies through which that world is manifested. The error that many critics make is that they demand the false criterion of universality and infallibility to the practice of racial identification. Gordon argues that such a demand would not work for the identification of most social phenomena. What is required is not universality nor infallibility but generality. Gordon defends this claim by making the distinction between a law and a principle. Law is absolute, without exceptions, categorical. A principle is general and has exceptions. For things human, principles are more appropriate ascriptions than laws. Gordon argues that these ideas emerged through his reading of Fanon's notions of sociogenesis.
Other ideas he borrows from Fanon are his rejection of the dialectics of recognition and his unique view on racism's impact on ethics and the concept of the Other. Like Fanon, Gordon argues that to seek white recognition leads to dependency on whites. It also means to make whites the standard of value. Yet Gordon rejects the thesis that racism is about a Self–Other dialectic. Antiblack racists do not see blacks as the Other or others, in Gordon's view. Such relations only exist between whites and whomever else they see as human beings or genuine others. Thus, the struggle against anti-black racism is ironically for blacks to become others. This displacement of otherness means that the fight against racism is governed not by moral laws but by tragic ones in which innocence becomes irrelevant. Gordon concludes the work with a look at how two scholars read Fanon's importance: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Amer ...
, argued that only Fanon's biography is of any contemporary interest, and that is as good literature. Cedric Robinson
Cedric James Robinson (November 5, 1940 – June 5, 2016) was an American professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He headed the Department of Blac ...
argued that Gates failed to see the political dimensions of Fanon's thought and that he should be read as a Marxist-oriented revolutionary. Gordon points out that both scholars were committing acts of disciplinary decadence by, in effect, condemning other disciplines for not being theirs. It was at the end of that book that the concept of disciplinary decadence was introduced. He returned to the concept most recently in his book ''Disciplinary Decadence'' (2006). Gordon's reputation in Fanon Studies grew through his co-edited anthology, ''Fanon: A Critical Reader'' (1996), and his many articles over the past decade on various dimensions of Fanon's thought. In those works, he introduced what he calls “five stages of Fanon's studies,” and he offers a variety of unique readings of Fanon's work. He has shown connections between Du Bois and Fanon on double consciousness
Double consciousness is the internal conflict experienced by subordinated or colonized groups in an oppressive society. The term and the idea were first published in W. E. B. Du Bois's autoethnographic work, ''The Souls of Black Folk'' in 1903 ...
; he has written on how Fanon's critique of white normativity leads to the question of whether modern society has any notion of a normal black person; Fanon, he argues, seeks a coherent notion of how it is possible.
Gordon's writings have continued expansion of his and related philosophical approaches and lexicon. In his book of social criticism, ''Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age'' (1997), he explored problems in critical race theory
Critical race theory (CRT) is a cross-disciplinary examination, by social and civil-rights scholars and activists, of how laws, social and political movements, and media shape, and are shaped by, social conceptions of race and ethnicity. Goa ...
and philosophy and introduced one of his most famous thought experiments. In the chapter "Sex, Race, and Matrices of Desire", Gordon purports to have created a racial-gender-sex-sexuality matrix and used it to challenge our assumptions of the mixture. A white woman in that matrix, for instance, is mixed because her whiteness makes her masculine but her womanness makes her black. Or certain relationships are transformed, where same-sex interracial relationships are not necessarily homosexual or lesbian ones. What is striking about the book is a theme that some of his critics noticed in his earlier books, and that is the role of music in his prose and analysis. Gordon here builds on his argument about the everyday in his earlier work to argue that danger of most theories of social transformation is that they fail to take seriously the aesthetic dimensions of everyday life. Moral and political thought and economy are good at constructing contexts in which people could sustain biological and social life, but they are terrible at articulating what it means to live in a livable world. Gordon argues that a genuinely emancipatory society creates spaces for the ordinary celebration of everyday pleasure. In his more recent work, Gordon has been arguing about the geography of reason and the importance of contingency in social life. However, it needs to be noted that the legitimacy of his "mixture-matrix" is largely dependent upon his controversial applications of semiotics to race and gender.
Reason and rationality
A problem of Western thought, Gordon argues, is that it has yoked reason to instrumental rationality and created an antiblack notion of reason's geographical landscape. Shifting the geography of reason, he argues, would entail a war on the kinds of decadence that treat any human community as incapable of manifesting reason. But more, Gordon argues that reason is broader than rationality since it must be used to assess rationality. Rationality could only attempt to impose consistency on reason, but the reason could point out that maximum consistency, although rational, may be unreasonable. Gordon's recent work has been a development of these issues. His co-edited books with Jane Anna Gordon, ''Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice'' (2005) and ''A Companion to African-American Studies'' (2006), offer some important new concepts in the ongoing development of his thought. In the first, he offers a comprehensive treatment of African-American philosophy and the importance of Africana existential phenomenological thought through a critique of Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde (; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who ...
's admonition of using the master's tools. The two Gordons' response is that (1) tools should not only be used to tear down houses but also to build them up; (2) the master's tools are not the only tools available; and (3) the construction of alternative houses (theoretical models, philosophies) could decenter the value of the master's house, denuding it of mastery. In his essay "African-American Philosophy, Race, and Racism", which is his main contribution in that volume, he provides a comprehensive and concise statement of his work to date. In the introduction to the ''Companion'', he and Jane Gordon formulate a theory of African-American Studies as a form of double consciousness. But the key here is the introduction of their concept "the pedagogical imperative". This imperative refers to a teacher's duty to learn and keep learning the broadest and most accurate picture of reality available to humankind. The editors also advance a theory of internationalism, localism, and market nihilism in the face of the rise of an independent managerial class to describe the dynamics of the contemporary academy.
Classification of Gordon's contributions to sociology and philosophy
Gordon considers all of his works to be part of a humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humani ...
tradition. The role of intellectuals, in his view, is to challenge the limits of human knowledge and, in so doing, achieve some advancement in what he calls "the ''Geist'' war". For him, the importance of intellectual work could be summarized by his claim that one "achieves" as a human being for humanity but one always fails alone. Gordon's work has also been characterized as a form of existential sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
. The sociological dimensions of his writings have received much attention, and the readers of his most recent book, ''Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times'' (2006), have described it as a work that is not only in philosophy (of disciplinarity) but also in education and the sociology of the formations of disciplines themselves. Gordon, however, describes what he is attempting to do as a teleological suspension of disciplinarity.
Published works
Gordon has produced approximately 400 articles, book chapters, and reviews. Books by Gordon currently in print are:
* ''Fear of Black Consciousness'' (Farrar, Straus, Giroux and Penguin Random House, 2022)
*''Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization'' (Routledge 2021)
*''Geopolitics and Decolonization: Perspectives from the Global South'' (ed. with Fernanda Frizzo Bragato) (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018)
*''La sud prin nord-vest: Reflecţii existenţiale afrodiasporice'', trans. Ovidiu Tichindeleanu (Cluj, Romania: IDEA Design & Print, 2016)
*''Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader'' (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon, Lewis R. Gordon, Aaron Kamugisha, and Neil Roberts) (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016)
*''What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to his Life and Thought'' (Fordham University Press, 2015). Selected as Book of the Week in the Financial Mail (South Africa, December 17, 2015).
*''La teoría política en la encrucijada descolonial'', with Walter Mignolo, Alejandro de Oto, and Sylvia Wynter (Del Signo ediciones, 2009)
*''Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age'', with Jane Gordon (Paradigm Publishers, 2009)
*''An Introduction to Africana Philosophy'' (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
*''Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times'' (Paradigm Publishers, 2006)
*''A Companion to African American Studies'' (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon) (Blackwell, 2006). NetLibrary’s e-book of the month for February 2007.
*''Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice'' (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon) (Paradigm Publishers, 2005)
*''Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought'' (Routledge, 2000)
*''Her Majesty's Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age'' (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). Winner of Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America.
*''Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy'', (ed.) (Routledge, 1997)
*''Fanon: A Critical Reader'' (ed. with T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Renée T. White) (Blackwell, 1996)
*''Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences'' (Routledge, 1995)
*''Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism'' (Humanity Books, 1995/1999)
Online articles by Lewis Gordon
Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of the Human Sciences
2000
A Philosophical Account of Africana Studies: An Interview with Lewis Gordon by Linda Martin Alcoff
2003
New Introduction to Steve Biko's ''I Write What I Like''
2005
Africa-America Philosophy, Race and the Geography of Reason
2006
Through the Hellish Zone of Non-Being: Thinking Through Fanon, Disaster, and the Damned of the Earth
2007
The Market Colonization of Intellectuals
''Truthout'', 2010
Of Illicit Appearance: The L.A. Riots/Rebellion as a Portent of Things to Come
''Truthout'', 12 May 2012
Manifesto of transdisciplinarity. Lewis Gordon, "To not become slaves of knowledge of others"
2011 (original title: "Manifiesto de Transdiciplinariedad. Para no volvernos esclavos del conocimiento de otros"), in the student journal Trans-pasando Fronteras (URL visited 29 August 2012)
See also
*
References
External links
Lewis Gordon interview on Counterpoint Radio
with Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities at the University of Memphis
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The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public university, public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students.
The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering ...
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, Lewis
Fanon scholars
Living people
1962 births
Yale University alumni
University of the West Indies academics
Jewish American academics
American humanists
Jewish philosophers
Jewish existentialists
Existentialists
Marxist humanists
African-American Jews
20th-century American philosophers
African-American philosophers
Lehman College alumni
University of Connecticut faculty