Joseph Winters
Biographic Data
| ID | 3612993 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joseph Winters |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joseph |
| FAMILY NAME | Winters |
| SIGNATURE | WINTERS J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7699-6700 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 11 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion
The first sustained treatment of religion and religions in the scholarship of a prominent Caribbean thinker Sylvia Wynter is a profoundly transdisciplinary scholar whose works span an impressive array of theory, literature, science, anthropology, philosophy, and religious studies as well as different forms, including essays, plays, a novel, and a 935-page unpublished manuscript entitled “Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World.” Whatever…
Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent
In this rigorous, well-written book, Emily Dumler-Winckler re-introduces the reader to the theological and philosophical thought of the late 18th century British women's rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft. As Dumler-Winckler points out in the introduction, her central aim in this re-turn to Wollstonecraft is to think differently about the relationship between tradition and dissent. Instead of pitting these concepts against each other, where trad…
The Wildness of (Racialized) Experimentation
This essay engages key insights in Donovan Schaefer’s Wild Experiments . In addition to Schaefer’s claim that scientific reason is infused with feeling and passion, I sit with a moment where he alludes to Denise da Silva’s description of how Euro-American sovereignty denies its own affectivity. I simply contend that heightening our sense of this denial enables us to explore the different ways that the reason/passion couplet gets constructed by ma…
Aside from Ontology, Toward Blackness
This essay argues that Victor Anderson’s Beyond Ontological Blackness anticipates some of the key debates and concerns within contemporary black studies. Anderson’s groundbreaking text exposes tendencies within African American cultural thought to essentialise blackness, to ascribe totalising qualities to black life and limit possibilities for fulfilment and transcendence. He responds to these often-unexamined commitments to ontological blackness…
Between Ecstasy and Abjection: Black Studies and the Excessive Sacred
Recovering the Irrecoverable: Blackness, Melancholy, and Duplicities That Bind
In this article, I critically engage Stephen Best’s provocative text, None Like Us. The article agrees with Best’s general concerns regarding longings for a unified black community or a We before the collective crime of slavery. Yet I contend that melancholy, which Best associates with black studies’ desire to recover a lost object, can be read in a different direction, one that includes both attachment and wound, investment and dissolution. To t…
The Politics of Theology, Critique, and the Errant Ethics of Blackness
Alongside gratitude and anguish
In this piece, I respond to Sarah Cervenak and Molly Farneth's generous readings of Hope Draped in Black. Regarding Cervenak's moving piece, "High Under The Pew," I focus on the apposition of apparent oppositions-such as elevation and being underneath, or social life and black death. I also draw attention to the relationship between style of writing and ethics that Cervenak enacts in her comments. I then engage Farneth's reflections on the ritual…
Response To Jason Springs: On Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society
Jason Springs’s Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society is a masterful attempt to practice productive conflict and democratic dialogue in the face of static antagonisms and deep‐seated divisions. In my response, I underscore Springs’s insistence on mediating between the moral imagination of Richard Rorty and the prophetic critique of Cornel West. For the author of Healthy Conflict , any hope in the survival of democracy relies on balanc…
Toni Morrison and political theory
Forum: The Religious Situation, 1968 (Part 2)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Gift, and Death, of Blackness
In this article, I respond to the idiom of “Black people's gifts,” a term that is often associated with W. E. B. Du Bois and that was frequently invoked in the wake of the Emmanuel AME Massacre. I contend that there are at least two different ways of thinking about Black gifts, a doubleness that runs throughout Du Bois's writings. On the one hand, we can read the gift simply as Black people's positive contributions to U.S. exceptionalism—Black co…
Political Theory Between Despair and Responsibility
Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics by Josef Sorett
Reviewed by: Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics by Josef Sorett Joseph Winters Josef Sorett. Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 285 pp. $34.95. There is an enduring assumption in the Western academy that modernity introduced a stable division between the religious and the secular—or, between the sacred and the profane. According to this view, secularism …
Rescue US: Birth, Django, and the Violence of Racial Redemption
In this article, I show how the relationship between race, violence, and redemption is articulated and visualized through film. By juxtaposing DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, I contend that the latter inverts the logic of the former. While Birth sacrifices black bodies and explains away anti-black violence for the sake of restoring white sovereignty (or rescuing the nation from threatening forms of bl…
Rac(e)ing from Death: Baldwin, Bataille, and the Anguish of the (Racialized) Human
In response to recent events that demonstrate the persistence of racial trauma, this essay revisits James Baldwin's claim that racism is a symptom of fundamental human tendencies and constraints. For Baldwin, we cannot understand the legacy of racism if we do not take seriously all too human attempts to evade, and deflect, death and its intimations. To flesh out this component of Baldwin's thought, I engage with the thought of Georges Bataille, a…
The Horrifying Sacred: Hip-Hop, Blackness, and the Figure of the Monster
In this article, I examine the intersection of two trajectories of thought and practice regarding the relationship between the sacred and the monstrous. One trajectory includes authors like George Bataille who, contrary to those who define the sacred in terms of purity and order, associate the sacred with those forces and energies that can be horrifying and anguish-filled. The other trajectory includes Black authors and artists like Christina Sha…
Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress
On The Wire by Linda Williams (review)
Reviewed by: On The Wire by Linda Williams Joseph Winters Linda Williams. On The Wire. Durham: Duke UP, 2014. 280pp. $23.95. According to many commentators, we have witnessed a renaissance in television series and writing during the first part of the twenty-first century. Critically acclaimed series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Breaking Bad have captivated wide audiences with complex narratives, multidimensional characters, substantive …
Contemporary Sorrow Songs: Traces of Mourning, Lament, and Vulnerability in Hip Hop
In this article, I use Du Bois's reading of the sorrow songs and adopt the trope of sorrow to trace themes of loss, suffering, and hope within hip-hop music and culture. I argue that we can find two prominent forms of mourning within hip hop-one in response to race-inflected violence and injustice and another in response to the so called death of authentic hip hop. In the concluding part of this essay, I suggest ways to transform nostalgia for th…
Unstrange Bedfellows: Hip Hop and Religion
In the past two decades, an expansive archive of hip hop scholarship has emerged. In response to reductive criticisms of hip hop culture as nihilistic, violent, and inartistic, scholars in a variety of disciplines have endeavored to show the complexities, nuances, and possibilities within hip hop culture. In this article, I trace the connections between broader trends within hip hop scholarship and recent work exploring the relationship between r…
The Distribution and Development of Fremont Maize Agriculture: Some Preliminary Interpretations
This study concentrates upon the distribution and possible developmental sequence of maize agriculture in the northern Southwest, and its significance for Fremont cultural dynamics. Attention is focused upon the corn known as Fremont Dent, which was one of the main forms of maize raised by the peoples of the Fremont culture. Of particular interest is maize material from the Evans Mound, Grantsville, and Nine Mile Canyon Fremont sites, which demon…
The Distribution and Development of Fremont Maize Agriculture: Some Preliminary Interpretations
This study concentrates upon the distribution and possible developmental sequence of maize agriculture in the northern Southwest, and its significance for Fremont cultural dynamics. Attention is focused upon the corn known as Fremont Dent, which was one of the main forms of maize raised by the peoples of the Fremont culture. Of particular interest is maize material from the Evans Mound, Grantsville, and Nine Mile Canyon Fremont sites, which demon…
The Horrifying Sacred: Hip-Hop, Blackness, and the Figure of the Monster
In this article, I examine the intersection of two trajectories of thought and practice regarding the relationship between the sacred and the monstrous. One trajectory includes authors like George Bataille who, contrary to those who define the sacred in terms of purity and order, associate the sacred with those forces and energies that can be horrifying and anguish-filled. The other trajectory includes Black authors and artists like Christina Sha…
Contemporary Sorrow Songs: Traces of Mourning, Lament, and Vulnerability in Hip Hop
In this article, I use Du Bois's reading of the sorrow songs and adopt the trope of sorrow to trace themes of loss, suffering, and hope within hip-hop music and culture. I argue that we can find two prominent forms of mourning within hip hop-one in response to race-inflected violence and injustice and another in response to the so called death of authentic hip hop. In the concluding part of this essay, I suggest ways to transform nostalgia for th…
Unstrange Bedfellows: Hip Hop and Religion
In the past two decades, an expansive archive of hip hop scholarship has emerged. In response to reductive criticisms of hip hop culture as nihilistic, violent, and inartistic, scholars in a variety of disciplines have endeavored to show the complexities, nuances, and possibilities within hip hop culture. In this article, I trace the connections between broader trends within hip hop scholarship and recent work exploring the relationship between r…
The Distribution and Development of Fremont Maize Agriculture: Some Preliminary Interpretations
This study concentrates upon the distribution and possible developmental sequence of maize agriculture in the northern Southwest, and its significance for Fremont cultural dynamics. Attention is focused upon the corn known as Fremont Dent, which was one of the main forms of maize raised by the peoples of the Fremont culture. Of particular interest is maize material from the Evans Mound, Grantsville, and Nine Mile Canyon Fremont sites, which demon…
Unstrange Bedfellows: Hip Hop and Religion
In the past two decades, an expansive archive of hip hop scholarship has emerged. In response to reductive criticisms of hip hop culture as nihilistic, violent, and inartistic, scholars in a variety of disciplines have endeavored to show the complexities, nuances, and possibilities within hip hop culture. In this article, I trace the connections between broader trends within hip hop scholarship and recent work exploring the relationship between r…
Contemporary Sorrow Songs: Traces of Mourning, Lament, and Vulnerability in Hip Hop
In this article, I use Du Bois's reading of the sorrow songs and adopt the trope of sorrow to trace themes of loss, suffering, and hope within hip-hop music and culture. I argue that we can find two prominent forms of mourning within hip hop-one in response to race-inflected violence and injustice and another in response to the so called death of authentic hip hop. In the concluding part of this essay, I suggest ways to transform nostalgia for th…
On The Wire by Linda Williams (review)
Reviewed by: On The Wire by Linda Williams Joseph Winters Linda Williams. On The Wire. Durham: Duke UP, 2014. 280pp. $23.95. According to many commentators, we have witnessed a renaissance in television series and writing during the first part of the twenty-first century. Critically acclaimed series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Breaking Bad have captivated wide audiences with complex narratives, multidimensional characters, substantive …
Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress
Rac(e)ing from Death: Baldwin, Bataille, and the Anguish of the (Racialized) Human
In response to recent events that demonstrate the persistence of racial trauma, this essay revisits James Baldwin's claim that racism is a symptom of fundamental human tendencies and constraints. For Baldwin, we cannot understand the legacy of racism if we do not take seriously all too human attempts to evade, and deflect, death and its intimations. To flesh out this component of Baldwin's thought, I engage with the thought of Georges Bataille, a…
The Horrifying Sacred: Hip-Hop, Blackness, and the Figure of the Monster
In this article, I examine the intersection of two trajectories of thought and practice regarding the relationship between the sacred and the monstrous. One trajectory includes authors like George Bataille who, contrary to those who define the sacred in terms of purity and order, associate the sacred with those forces and energies that can be horrifying and anguish-filled. The other trajectory includes Black authors and artists like Christina Sha…
The Gift, and Death, of Blackness
In this article, I respond to the idiom of “Black people's gifts,” a term that is often associated with W. E. B. Du Bois and that was frequently invoked in the wake of the Emmanuel AME Massacre. I contend that there are at least two different ways of thinking about Black gifts, a doubleness that runs throughout Du Bois's writings. On the one hand, we can read the gift simply as Black people's positive contributions to U.S. exceptionalism—Black co…
Political Theory Between Despair and Responsibility
Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics by Josef Sorett
Reviewed by: Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics by Josef Sorett Joseph Winters Josef Sorett. Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial Aesthetics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 285 pp. $34.95. There is an enduring assumption in the Western academy that modernity introduced a stable division between the religious and the secular—or, between the sacred and the profane. According to this view, secularism …
Rescue US: Birth, Django, and the Violence of Racial Redemption
In this article, I show how the relationship between race, violence, and redemption is articulated and visualized through film. By juxtaposing DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation and Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained, I contend that the latter inverts the logic of the former. While Birth sacrifices black bodies and explains away anti-black violence for the sake of restoring white sovereignty (or rescuing the nation from threatening forms of bl…
Forum: The Religious Situation, 1968 (Part 2)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Response To Jason Springs: On Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society
Jason Springs’s Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society is a masterful attempt to practice productive conflict and democratic dialogue in the face of static antagonisms and deep‐seated divisions. In my response, I underscore Springs’s insistence on mediating between the moral imagination of Richard Rorty and the prophetic critique of Cornel West. For the author of Healthy Conflict , any hope in the survival of democracy relies on balanc…
Toni Morrison and political theory
Recovering the Irrecoverable: Blackness, Melancholy, and Duplicities That Bind
In this article, I critically engage Stephen Best’s provocative text, None Like Us. The article agrees with Best’s general concerns regarding longings for a unified black community or a We before the collective crime of slavery. Yet I contend that melancholy, which Best associates with black studies’ desire to recover a lost object, can be read in a different direction, one that includes both attachment and wound, investment and dissolution. To t…
The Politics of Theology, Critique, and the Errant Ethics of Blackness
Alongside gratitude and anguish
In this piece, I respond to Sarah Cervenak and Molly Farneth's generous readings of Hope Draped in Black. Regarding Cervenak's moving piece, "High Under The Pew," I focus on the apposition of apparent oppositions-such as elevation and being underneath, or social life and black death. I also draw attention to the relationship between style of writing and ethics that Cervenak enacts in her comments. I then engage Farneth's reflections on the ritual…
Between Ecstasy and Abjection: Black Studies and the Excessive Sacred
Aside from Ontology, Toward Blackness
This essay argues that Victor Anderson’s Beyond Ontological Blackness anticipates some of the key debates and concerns within contemporary black studies. Anderson’s groundbreaking text exposes tendencies within African American cultural thought to essentialise blackness, to ascribe totalising qualities to black life and limit possibilities for fulfilment and transcendence. He responds to these often-unexamined commitments to ontological blackness…
Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion
The first sustained treatment of religion and religions in the scholarship of a prominent Caribbean thinker Sylvia Wynter is a profoundly transdisciplinary scholar whose works span an impressive array of theory, literature, science, anthropology, philosophy, and religious studies as well as different forms, including essays, plays, a novel, and a 935-page unpublished manuscript entitled “Black Metamorphosis: New Natives in a New World.” Whatever…
Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent
In this rigorous, well-written book, Emily Dumler-Winckler re-introduces the reader to the theological and philosophical thought of the late 18th century British women's rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft. As Dumler-Winckler points out in the introduction, her central aim in this re-turn to Wollstonecraft is to think differently about the relationship between tradition and dissent. Instead of pitting these concepts against each other, where trad…
The Wildness of (Racialized) Experimentation
This essay engages key insights in Donovan Schaefer’s Wild Experiments . In addition to Schaefer’s claim that scientific reason is infused with feeling and passion, I sit with a moment where he alludes to Denise da Silva’s description of how Euro-American sovereignty denies its own affectivity. I simply contend that heightening our sense of this denial enables us to explore the different ways that the reason/passion couplet gets constructed by ma…
Philosophy (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Aesthetics (12 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Race, History, and American Society (10 works) · Literature (8 works) · History (7 works)