Lewis R Gordon
Biographic Data
| ID | 413665 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lewis R Gordon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lewis R |
| FAMILY NAME | Gordon |
| SIGNATURE | GORDON L R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Connecticut |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4124-1340 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 69 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 67 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Race
This entry focuses on race as discourse and its relation to culture, which, too, is discourse driven.
A Phenomenology of Human Science, Metaphysics, and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence in advance
Presented in Baroda, Gujarat, India, at the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences as the 2025 Balvant Parekh Memorial Lecture, this paper first articulates the author’s phenomenological philosophy of human science, which addresses human reality as lived meaning and its symbiotic relationship with technology. The second part examines unique challenges posed to human science and phenomenological science by learning ma…
Afterword
This afterword to the symposium, Concepts of the Human from the Global South, offers a reflection on the context of the July 2022 workshop in Berlin, Germany, organized by Mahmoud Al-Zayed followed by the inclusion of an interview Al-Zayed conducted with Lewis R. Gordon on both the June 2022 conference on Hijacking Holocaust memory, organized by Susan Neiman on behalf of the Einstein Forum, and the July 2022 workshop at the Freie Universität Berl…
Psychoanalysis as a decolonial practice
A Short Update
Living Phenomenology as a Decolonial Practice
This paper examines phenomenology as a living form of thought with significance for decolonial epistemic practice. After discussing how phenomenology addresses concerns of living thought, the author outlines disciplinary decadence as a form of colonial epistemic practice and offers his theory of teleological suspensions of disciplinarity among the decolonial epistemic practices that could be devoted not only to the decolonization of thought but a…
Fanon's approach to phenomenology and psychoanalysis
This article distinguishes thought on phenomenology and psychoanalysis versus doing phenomenology and psychoanalysis and argues that while Fanon was primarily concerned with the latter, his thought also offers contributions to the former. They include methodological critique and an interrogation into the human sciences that includes a psychoanalytical decolonial critical reflection on science linked to open possibilities of human conditions
Anti-Blackness and Other Fears of Black Consciousness
This response essay addresses anti-Blackness and other fears of Black consciousness through discussing analyses and critiques of the author's Fear of Black Consciousness (2022) offered by Nathalie Etoke, Terrence L. Johnson, and André Brock. Concepts under discussion include bad faith, b/Black consciousness, the blues and hip-hop, bridging the aesthetic and the ethical, colonization, decolonization, double-consciousness, embodied consciousness, e…
Remembering George Lamming (1927–2022), with Thoughts on In the Castle of My Skin
The first part of this memoriam essay focuses on the author’s relationship with the famed Bajan intellectual George Lamming during his years at Brown University. The second part explores Lamming’s most famous work, In the Castle of My Skin (1953), which offers important tropes in Black existential thought that are synchronous with Frantz Fanon’s Peau noir, masques blancs (1952), but with a more detailed exploration of the concept of political com…
A Girl in Black, a Woman in the African Diaspora
This memoriam essay begins with a reflection on the author’s relationship to Drucilla Cornell, the famed activist, revolutionary legal theorist, social and political philosopher, playwright, and biographer. It then proceeds to examine her contributions to Africana existential revolutionary thought and the Caribbean-inspired project of shifting the geography of reason
What Does It Mean to Colonise and Decolonise Philosophy
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 phil…
Fanon on cadavers, madness, and the damned
To Undiscipline Knowledge
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 const…
A Forum on Creolizing Social and Political Theory
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
Shifting the Geography of Reason in Black and Africana Studies
“Shifting the geography of reason” is the motto of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA). It was the theme of the first international meeting of the organization, which took place in May 20
Problematic People and Epistemic Decolonization
The relationship between the West and the rest in political thought has been one of the constructions of the world in which the latter have been located outside and thus, literally, without a place on which to stand. Hidden parenthetical adjectives of “European,” “Western,” and “white” have been the hallmarks of such reflection on political reality and the anthropology that informs it. Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk, posed this insight into …
Decolonizing Philosophy
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.
A Political Companion to W. E. B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois was not a liberal, Marxist, radical, or republican—he was all of these and none. The author of more than one hundred books, hundreds of published articles, and founding editor of the NAACP’s journal Crisis, Du Bois has been widely studied, both during his life and afterward, for his profound insights into the politics of race and class in America. Throughout his work, Du Bois insisted on the importance of the local—on individual an…
Black Aesthetics, Black Value
Introduction
Afro pessimism
Thoughts on two recent decades of studying race and racism
In 1995, my article ‘“Critical” Mixed-Race Theory?’ was published in Social Identities. That was also the year in which my monographs Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism and Fanon and the Crisis of Euro
Introduction
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 …
Rarely Kosher
Rarely Kosher: Studying Jews of Color in North America Lewis R. Gordon (bio) I offer in this article a brief exploration of some of the difficulties posed by the study of Jews of color, especially Afro-Jews, in the North American and Caribbean contexts, and I summarize the portrait of Jews today (and a little bit of yesterday) that follows from such study. There is much to support the reluctance to conjoin discussions of Jews with discussions of …
Not Only the Master's Tools
Shifting the Geography of Reason in an Age of Disciplinary Decadence
This essay addresses some recent theoretical developments that are laying an important role in the decolonization of knowledge. That knowledge has been colonized raises the question of whether it was ever free. The formulation of knowledge in the singular already situates the question in a framework that is alien to precolonial times, for the disparate modes of producing knowledge and notions of knowledge were so many that knowledges would be a m…
Critical 'Mixed Race
Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences
One of the many challenges W.E.B. Du Bois faced in the study of African Americans was the pervasive racism that affected how social scientists acquired data on people of African descent. Moreover, the historical reality in which such data were gathered was one in which there were indications of genocidal aims on the part of the dominant population. Du Bois needed to show that African Americans should receive rigorous study and that rigorous study…
Afro pessimism
Disciplinary Decadence
In this book, philosopher and social critic Lewis Gordon explores the ossification of disciplines, which he calls disciplinary decadence. In response, he offers a theory of what he calls a teleological suspension of disciplinarity, in which he encourages scholars and lay intellectuals to pay attention to the openness of ideas and purposes on which their disciplines were born. Gordon builds his case through discussions of philosophy of education, …
Thoughts on two recent decades of studying race and racism
In 1995, my article ‘“Critical” Mixed-Race Theory?’ was published in Social Identities. That was also the year in which my monographs Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism and Fanon and the Crisis of Euro
The Problem of Maturity in Hip Hop
I strive to be healthy My goal in life is not to be rich or wealthy Cause true wealth comes from good health, and wise ways We got to start taking better care of ourselves —Dead Prez
Race, Theodicy, and the Normative Emancipatory Challenges of Blackness
Drawing on Sylvia Wynter's insight that the theodicean grammar of racism is also a "biodicy," this article explores its implications for an understanding of the formation of blackness as a modern phenomenon and its significance for models of rationalization and reason, on the one hand, and conditions of normative practice, on the other
Black Existence in Philosophy of Culture
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 …
United States
Shifting the Geography of Reason in Black and Africana Studies
“Shifting the geography of reason” is the motto of the Caribbean Philosophical Association (CPA). It was the theme of the first international meeting of the organization, which took place in May 20
Introduction
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 …
Frantz Fanon, Fifty Years On
Africana Thought and African Diasporic Studies
much intellectual work with regard to black people. They are: 1) the appeal to reductionistic experience and 2) the retreat to disciplinary decadence. 1) Reductionistic experience undergirds the study of black people with the credo that black people offer experience whereas white people offer theory. The impetus for the turn to experience is not in itself insidious. After all, for a long time there was the denial of black inner life, of black sub…
On the Borders of Anonymity and Superfluous Invisibility
This article examines quantitative and temporal borders and their impact on dynamics of black invisibility and indigenous invisibility under global capitalism. The connection between invisibility and skewed anonymity in racist constructions of social reality is established through a social phenomenological portrait of the hegemony of Americanism in this stage of postmodernity and capitalism
Race and Racism
Tricia Rose, Andrew Ross, Robin D. G. Kelley, Joe Wood, Howard Winant, Jacquie Jones, Michael Eric Dyson, Phillip Brian Harper, Steven Gregory, Grant Farred, Gina Dent, David Roediger, Amiri Baraka, Stanley Aronowitz, Lewis R. Gordon, Kevin Gaines, Race and Racism: A Symposium, Social Text, No. 42 (Spring, 1995), pp. 1-52
Race & Racism in the Last Quarter of '95
(1995). Race & Racism in the Last Quarter of '95: The OJ & Post-OJ Trial & The Million Man March—A Symposium. The Black Scholar: Vol. 25, Million Man March, pp. 37-59
Critical 'Mixed Race
Black Skins Masked
Research Article| November 01 1996 Black Skins Masked: Finding Fanon in Isaac Julien's Frantz Fanon: “Black Skin, White Masks” Lewis R. Gordon Lewis R. Gordon lewis r. gordon is Associate Professor of Afro-American Studies and Contemporary Religious Thought at Brown University, where he is also a member of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and a Presidential Fellow of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. He is the …
Fanon and the Crisis of European Man
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 na…
Cynthia Willet, Maternal Ethics and Other Slave Moralities
United States
Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences
One of the many challenges W.E.B. Du Bois faced in the study of African Americans was the pervasive racism that affected how social scientists acquired data on people of African descent. Moreover, the historical reality in which such data were gathered was one in which there were indications of genocidal aims on the part of the dominant population. Du Bois needed to show that African Americans should receive rigorous study and that rigorous study…
Africana Thought and African Diasporic Studies
much intellectual work with regard to black people. They are: 1) the appeal to reductionistic experience and 2) the retreat to disciplinary decadence. 1) Reductionistic experience undergirds the study of black people with the credo that black people offer experience whereas white people offer theory. The impetus for the turn to experience is not in itself insidious. After all, for a long time there was the denial of black inner life, of black sub…
Existentia Africana
The intellectual history of the last quarter of this 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. "Existentia Africana" is an engaging and highly readable introduction to the field of Africana philosophy and will help to define this rapidly growing field. Lew…
On the Borders of Anonymity and Superfluous Invisibility
This article examines quantitative and temporal borders and their impact on dynamics of black invisibility and indigenous invisibility under global capitalism. The connection between invisibility and skewed anonymity in racist constructions of social reality is established through a social phenomenological portrait of the hegemony of Americanism in this stage of postmodernity and capitalism
Existentia Africana
I Write What I Like
A Questioning Body of Laughter and Tears
(2002). A Questioning Body of Laughter and Tears: Reading Black Skin, White Masks through the Cat and Mouse of Reason and a Misguided Theodicy. Parallax: Vol. 8, Fanon & the Impasses of Modernity, pp. 10-29
Fanon and Development
This article examines concepts of imitation, theodicy, and immaturity in Fanon's ideas on development and explores how his critique unfolds in the thought of two scholars influenced by his work: Sylvia Wynter and Irene Gendzier. Wynter, working from a poeticist semiotic perspective, rejects development as a much limited concept premised upon European normativity and calls for building an epistemological revolution. Gendzier, through a genealogica…
A Companion to African-American Studies
The Problem of Maturity in Hip Hop
I strive to be healthy My goal in life is not to be rich or wealthy Cause true wealth comes from good health, and wise ways We got to start taking better care of ourselves —Dead Prez
A Companion to African-American Studies
Disciplinary Decadence
Introduction: Disciplinary Decadence 1. Decadent Knowing and Learning 2. God beneath 3. Obligations across Generations 4. Inventing Africa 5. Decadent Development 6. Prospero's Words, Caliban's Reason
An Introduction to Africana Philosophy
In this undergraduate textbook Lewis R. Gordon offers the first comprehensive treatment of Africana philosophy, beginning with the emergence of an Africana (i.e. African diasporic) 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…
Race after Sartre
An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge Introductions to Philosophy)
Of divine warning
This book offers a theory of disaster in modern and contemporary society and its impact on construction of social and political life. The theory is premised upon what authors call the sign continuum, where disaster spreads across society through efforts to evade social responsibility for its causes and consequences. Phenomena generated by such efforts include social manifestation of monstrosity (disastrous people and other forms of living things)…
Sartre and Fanon on Embodied Bad Faith
In April 1961, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon met in a café in Rome. The meeting, at least as recorded by de Beauvoir, went on for hours, reportedly until two in the morning, to the point of Sartre’s 56- year-old body suffering fatigue. Sartre was in need of rest, urged de Beauvoir. Fanon, his 36-year-old body dying from leukaemia, resented her insistence: ‘I don’t like men who hoard their resources.’1 He wished to take adv…
Theory in Black
Research Article| December 01 2010 Theory in Black: Teleological Suspensions in Philosophy of Culture Lewis R. Gordon Lewis R. Gordon Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Qui Parle (2010) 18 (2): 193–214. https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.18.2.193 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Lewis R. Gordon; Theory in Black: Teleological Suspensions in Philosophy of Culture. Qui Parle 1 December 20…
Philosophy (42 works) · Sociology (40 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · Race, History, and American Society (21 works) · Political science (18 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · African cultural and philosophical studies (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Art (14 works)