RITA DI SANTO assesses the winners of the most politically charged festival to date
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‘Challenges posed by a world in which race matters’
GORDON PARSONS recommends a book that will keep the reader, black or white, fully engaged and, as importantly, self-questioning
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES: 'Being black connotes a lack of a right to anything'
KATARZYNA KOSMALA introduces a retrospective by one of the most significant figures in contemporary US photography
MAYER WAKEFIELD is entertained but let down by an audacious production that, sadly, doesn't ring true
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by drama that, despite accomplished performances, cannot overcome an unfocused script
New releases from Sam Carter, Spell Songs and Les Thomas
Fear of Black Consciousness
Lewis R Gordon
Allen Lane, £20
“I CAN’T breathe.” George Floyd’s dying words have established an iconic meme resounding throughout the world.
Just as the asphyxiating coronavirus “sees” no boundaries, responding most effectively to pre-existing conditions, Lewis Gordon, a leading Afro-Jewish existentialist philosopher, recognises that “our pre-existing pandemics of neoliberalism, neoconservatism, fascism, and their accompanying racism” provided vulnerable social sites for the virus to spread more efficiently.
Gordon quotes WEB Du Bois, the famous social scientist, educationist and socialist, founder of the NAACP: “Being born black does not entail in social scientific terms what it means to be black.”
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GORDON PARSONS enjoys Kant’s ‘mind-boggling’ theory of human reality: that we create the reality we experience
SETH SANDRONSKY recommends a Marxist critique of the ‘race-first’ views of the influential black US theorist Cedric Robinson
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a biography of the Marxist intellectual and author, made from the point of view of his son