Introduction
Philosophy has long centered the perspective and contributions of white male thinkers, especially from Europe and the U.S. In recognition of Black History Month, we have compiled a guide highlighting just a few of the influential Black thinkers in order to expand the horizons of philosophy as it is currently understood and learn about the history and achievements of Black and African philosophers. Their works span the areas of Black feminism, colonial studies, and critical race theory, among others, and challenge us to think outside of dominant viewpoints. These thinkers represent only a handful of the many important Black philosophers of history and today, and we hope you'll continue to learn and explore beyond the scholars and lineages of thought we've highlighted here.
Click through the tabs below to read about each area and thinker.
Further Reading & Exploration
- Africana Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- African American Philosophy: A General Outline (Oxford Handbooks Online)
- "The Reality of Black Philosophy" (The Black Scholar)
- Committee on the Status of Black Philosophers (American Philosophical Association)
- Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience (American Philosophical Association)
Next Steps
As with many of these national commemorations, one month is never enough time to fully honor and celebrate the history and culture of marginalized communities, let alone heal the legacies (and ongoing reality) of harm they've experienced. We recognize that there is much more to be done, that racism and anti-blackness can't be eliminated simply through the creation of resource guides, and that the work of realizing justice won't soon be over. But nevertheless, we keep trying, contributing how we can and building upon the efforts of those who came before us, and we continue to learn from and with one another.
If you'd like to engage more deeply with Black History Month, the IU Libraries Arts & Humanities department has created a number of interrelated resources and features to provide more holistic coverage of this remembering. You'll find those, below:
- Black Histories & Futures Month (Media Studies)
- The Sounds of Black History Month (Media Studies)
- Black LGBTQ+ Poetry (Gender Studies)
- Local Black History (Race, Migration, & Indigeneity)
- Black American Poets and Poetry, 1770-Present (Literature)
- Black Freedom Movements in American History (History)
- Contemporary Black Playwrights You Should Know (Theatre & Drama)
- Performance and Protest: Theatre, Politics, and Activism in America (Theatre & Drama)
- Black Artists & Designers (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Pan-Africanism in Art and Literature (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Afrocentric Architecture (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
- Black History Month Streaming and DVD Resources (Media Services)
- Youth Materials on Africa & African Identity (Education Library)
- Youth Materials on African American Identity (Education Library)
And for all things Black culture, you can never go wrong with the resources, services, and collections of the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Library.
Prominent Black Philosophers
A selection of Black philosophers, along with a summary of their research areas and interests
- Cornel West (Union Theological Seminary) Classics, politics, cultural theory, literature, music, class, gender, race
- Naomi Zack (University of Oregon) Philosophy of Race (philosophy of science and political philosophy), Feminist Theory, Justice/Injustice Theory, Disaster Ethics, History of Philosophy (17th c., early 20th c. analytic).
- Adrian Piper Kantian philosophy, professional ostracism, otherness, racial passing, racism, conceptual art, performance art, non-traditional media.
- Molefi Kete Asante (Temple University) Afrocentricity, Intercultural Communication, Westernity, Location Theory, Critique of Domination, African American Experiences, Ancient Africa.
- Laurence Thomas (Syracuse University) Moral Thoery, Kantian philosophy, Human Sexuality, Social Philosophy, American Blacks, American Jews, autonomy.
- Kenneth Allen Taylor (American Philosophical Association) Philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, semantics, reference, naturalism, relativism.
- Michele Moody-Adams (Columbia University) Equality and social justice, moral psychology and the virtues, philosophical implications of gender and race, academic freedom, equal educational opportunity, democratic disagreement.
- John H. McClendon (Michigan State University) African American philosophers and philosophical traditions, African philosophy, Marxism, philosophy of sports and the African American experience, philosophy of religion and African Americans.
- Anita L. Allen (University of Pennsylvania) Privacy, privacy law and society, ethics, feminist theory, accountability.
- Kathryn Sophia Belle (Penn State University) Continental Philosophy, Africana Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, Black Feminist Philosophy
- Jan Willis (Agnes Scott College) Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist saints’ lives, Women and Buddhism, Buddhism and Race.
Black Thinkers Across Time
A Companion to African-American Philosophy by ISBN: 9781405145688Publication Date: 2006-01-23This wide-ranging, multidisciplinary collection of newly commissioned articles brings together distinguished voices in the field of Africana philosophy and African-American social and political thought. Provides a comprehensive critical survey of African-American philosophical thought. Collects wide-ranging, multidisciplinary, newly commissioned articles in one authoritative volume. Serves as a benchmark work of reference for courses in philosophy, social and political thought, cultural studies, and African-American studies.
African-American Philosophers by ISBN: 041592099XPublication Date: 1998-10-06African-American Philosophers brings into conversation seventeen of the foremost thinkers of color to discuss issues such as Black existentialism, racism, Black women philosophers within the academy, affirmative action and the conceptual parameters of African-American philosophy.
African American Philosophers and Philosophy by ISBN: 9781350057951Publication Date: 2019-06-13This book presents the first introduction to African American academic philosophers, exploring their concepts and ideas and revealing the critical part they have played in the formation of philosophy in the USA. The book begins with the early years of educational attainment by African American philosophers in the 1860s. To demonstrate the impact of their philosophical work on general problems in the discipline, chapters are broken down into four major areas of study- Axiology, Social Science, Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy of Science. Providing personal narratives on individual philosophers and examining the work of figures such as H. T. Johnson, William D. Johnson, Joyce Mitchell Cooke, Adrian Piper, William R. Jones, Roy D. Morrison, Eugene C. Holmes, and William A. Banner, the book challenges the myth that philosophy is exclusively a white academic discipline. Packed with examples of struggles and triumphs, this engaging introduction is a much-needed approach to studying philosophy today.
African Philosophy by ISBN: 0023841818Publication Date: 1995-03-10This anthology attempts to provide key documents chronicling the debate about the nature of the African, and the nature of African philosophy.
African Philosophy by ISBN: 082041770XPublication Date: 1992-04-01The question whether or not there is African philosophy has, for too long, dominated the philosophical scene in Africa, to the neglect of substantive issues generated by the very fact of human existence. This has unfortunately led to an impasse in the development of a distinctive African philosophical tradition. In this path-breaking book, Segun Gbadegesin offers a new and promising approach which recognizes the traditional and contemporary facets of African philosophy by exploring the issues they raise. In Part I, the author examines, with refreshing insights, the philosophical concepts of the person, individuality, community and morality, religiosity and causality, focusing on the Yoruba of Nigeria. Part II discusses, in an original way, contemporary African social, political and economic realities from a philosophical perspective.
Critical Race Theory (Third Edition) by ISBN: 9781479846368Publication Date: 2017-03-07Updated to include the Black Lives Matter movement, the presidency of Barack Obama, the rise of hate speech on the Internet, and more. Since the publication of the first edition of Critical Race Theory in 2001, the United States has lived through two economic downturns, an outbreak of terrorism, and the onset of an epidemic of hate directed against immigrants, especially undocumented Latinos and Middle Eastern people. On a more hopeful note, the country elected and re-elected its first black president and has witnessed the impressive advance of gay rights. As a field, critical race theory has taken note of all these developments, and this primer does so as well. It not only covers a range of emerging new topics and events, it also addresses the rise of a fierce wave of criticism from right-wing websites, think tanks, and foundations, some of which insist that America is now colorblind and has little use for racial analysis and study. Critical Race Theory is essential for understanding developments in this burgeoning field, which has spread to other disciplines and countries. The new edition also covers the ways in which other societies and disciplines adapt its teachings and, for readers wanting to advance a progressive race agenda, includes new questions for discussion, aimed at outlining practical steps to achieve this objective.
Phenomenal Blackness by ISBN: 9780226816425Publication Date: 2022-01-21This unorthodox account of 1960s Black thought rigorously details the field's debts to German critical theory and explores a forgotten tradition of Black singularity. Phenomenal Blackness examines the changing interdisciplinary investments of key mid-century Black writers and thinkers, including the growing interest in German philosophy and critical theory. Mark Christian Thompson analyzes this shift in intellectual focus across the post-war decades, placing Black Power thought in a philosophical context. Prior to the 1960s, sociologically oriented thinkers such as W. E. B. Du Bois had understood Blackness as a singular set of socio-historical characteristics. In contrast, writers such as Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, Angela Y. Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, and Malcolm X were drawn to notions of an African essence, an ontology of Black being. With these perspectives, literary language came to be seen as the primary social expression of Blackness. For this new way of thinking, the works of philosophers such as Adorno, Habermas, and Marcuse were a vital resource, allowing for continued cultural-materialist analysis while accommodating the hermeneutical aspects of Black religious thought. Thompson argues that these efforts to reimagine Black singularity led to a phenomenological understanding of Blackness—a "Black aesthetic dimension" wherein aspirational models for Black liberation might emerge.
Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745-1797) was a writer whose autobiography illustrated the horrors of slavery. Born in the Kingdom of Benin, Equiano was taken to America as a slave but managed to purchase his freedom in 1766. He moved to London and became involved in the abolitionist movement.
Further Resources
Selected Works
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by ISBN: 0312122438Publication Date: 1995-05-01More than just a fascinating story, Olaudah Equiano's autobiography - the first slave narrative to be widely read - reveals many aspects of the eighteenth-century Western world through the experiences of one individual. This edition is the first in more than twenty-five years to offer the complete text of the Life together with a comprehensive twenty-page introduction and useful editorial apparatus designed to help students get the most out of this important work. Also included are illustrations, a chronology, questions for consideration, a bibliography, and an index.
The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings by ISBN: 0142437166Publication Date: 2003-05-27An exciting and often terrifying adventure story, as well as an important precursor to such famous nineteenth-century slave narratives as Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative recounts his kidnapping in Africa at the age of ten, his service as the slave of an officer in the British Navy, his ten years of labor on slave ships until he was able to purchase his freedom in 1766, and his life afterward as a leading and respected figure in the antislavery movement in England. A spirited autobiography, a tale of spiritual quest and fulfillment, and a sophisticated treatise on religion, politics, and economics, The Interesting Narrative is a work of enduring literary and historical value.
Alain Locke
Alain Locke (1885-1954), sometimes called the “Dean” of the Harlem Renaissance, was a philosopher known for his theory of the New Negro built on the concept of race-building. He was the first African-American Rhodes Scholar. He is often included on lists of the most important or influential African-Americans.
Further Resources
- Alain Locke (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
- Alaine Locke Nomination Page (The Legacy Project)
Selected Works
The New Negro by ISBN: 0405018266Publication Date: 1968-11-01A highly educated man and the first African to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, Locke served as the bridge between a burgeoning literary expression centered in Harlem and the mainstay literary world. Published in 1925, the "New Negro" is combines an anthology of poems, stories and essays by black luminaries of the period, along with new essays by prominent scholars and specialists. "The New Negro" was a symbol of the literary fruit of the great migration of blacks from the rural south to the urban North. Locke was certain that Harlem was fast becoming a new mecca of black artistry and one of the world's cultural capitals
The Works of Alain Locke by ISBN: 9780199795048Publication Date: 2012-07-10With the publication of The New Negro in 1925, Alain Locke introduced readers all over the U.S. to the vibrant world of African American thought. As an author, editor, and patron, Locke rightly earned the appellation "Godfather of the Harlem Renaissance." Yet, his intellectual contributions extend far beyond that single period of cultural history. Throughout his life he penned essays, on topics ranging from John Keats to Sigmund Freud, in addition to his trenchant social commentary on race and society.The Works of Alain Locke provides the largest collection available of his brilliant essays, gathered from a career that spanned forty years. They cover an impressively broad field of subjects: philosophy, literature, the visual arts, music, the theory of value, race, politics, and multiculturalism.Alongside seminal works such as "The New Negro" the volume features essays like "The Ethics of Culture," "Apropos of Africa," and "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy." Together, these writings demonstrate Locke's standing as the leading African American thinker between W. E. B. Du Bois and MartinLuther King, Jr.The foreword is by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Kwame Anthony Appiah (1954-) is a scholar whose wide-ranging interests include political theory, philosophy of language, and African intellectual history. He is currently a professor at New York University. He has written about growing up as a gay man in Ghana and has also published several novels.
Further Resources
- Kwame Appiah Biography & Personal Website
- Kwame Appiah - National Humanities Medal (National Endowment for the Humanities)
Selected Works
In My Father's House by ISBN: 9780199874354Publication Date: 1992-01-01Africa's intellectuals have long been engaged in a conversation with each other, and with Europeans and Americans about what it means to be African. At the heart of these debates on African identity are the seminal works of politicians, creative writers and philosophers from Africa and its diaspora. In this book, Appiah draws on his experiences as a Ghanaian in the New World to explore the writings of these African and African-American thinkers and to contribute his own vision of the possibilities and pitfalls of an African identity in the late twentieth century. Appiah sets out to dismantle the specious oppositions between "us" and "them," the West and the Rest, that have governed so much of the cultural debate about Africa in the modern world. All of us, he maintains, wherever we live on the planet, must explore together the relations between our local cultures and an increasingly global civilization. Combining philosophical analysis with more personal reflections, Appiah addresses the major issues in the philosophy of culture through an exploration of the contemporary African predicament.
Color Conscious by ISBN: 0691026610Publication Date: 1996-10-07In America today, the problem of achieving racial justice--whether through "color-blind" policies or through affirmative action--provokes more noisy name-calling than fruitful deliberation. In Color Conscious, K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, two eminent moral and political philosophers, seek to clear the ground for a discussion of the place of race in politics and in our moral lives. Provocative and insightful, their essays tackle different aspects of the question of racial justice; together they provide a compelling response to our nation's most vexing problem. Appiah begins by establishing the problematic nature of the idea of race. He draws on the scholarly consensus that "race" has no legitimate biological basis, exploring the history of its invention as a social category and showing how the concept has been used to explain differences among groups of people by mistakenly attributing various "essences" to them. Appiah argues that, while people of color may still need to gather together, in the face of racism, under the banner of race, they need also to balance carefully the calls of race against the many other dimensions of individual identity; and he suggests, finally, what this might mean for our political life. Appiah and Gutmann write candidly and carefully, presenting many-faceted interpretations of a host of controversial issues. Rather than supplying simple answers to complex questions, they offer to citizens of every color principled starting points for the ongoing national discussions about race.
Tommie Shelby
Tommie Shelby (1967-) is a professor of philosophy and African-American studies at Harvard University. He is known for his work in Africana philosophy, Marxist theory, and the philosophy of social science.
Further Resources
- Tommie Shelby (Personal Website)
- "Race, Injustice, and Philosophy: An Interview with Tommie Shelby" (Black Perspectives)
Selected Works
We Who Are Dark by ISBN: 0674019369Publication Date: 2005-11-15African American history resounds with calls for black unity. From abolitionist times through the Black Power movement, it was widely seen as a means of securing a full share of America's promised freedom and equality. Yet today, many believe that black solidarity is unnecessary, irrational, rooted in the illusion of 'racial' difference, at odds with the goal of integration, and incompatible with liberal ideals and American democracy. A response to such critics, We Who Are Dark provides the first extended philosophical defence of black political solidarity. Tommie Shelby argues that we can reject a biological idea of race and agree with many criticisms of identity politics yet still view black political solidarity as a needed emancipatory tool. In developing his defence of black solidarity, he draws on the history of black political thought, focusing on the canonical figures of Martin R. Delany and W. E. B. Du Bois, and he urges us to rethink many traditional conceptions of what black unity should entail. His book articulates a new African American political philosophy - one that rests firmly on anti-essentialist foundations and, at the same time, urges a commitment to defeating racism, to eliminating racial inequality, and to improving the opportunities of those racialized as 'black.'
Dark Ghettos by ISBN: 9780674970502Publication Date: 2016-11-01Why do American ghettos persist? Decades after Moynihan's report on the black family and the Kerner Commission's investigations of urban disorders, deeply disadvantaged black communities remain a disturbing reality. Scholars and commentators today often identify some factor--such as single motherhood, joblessness, or violent street crime--as the key to solving the problem and recommend policies accordingly. But, Tommie Shelby argues, these attempts to "fix" ghettos or "help" their poor inhabitants ignore fundamental questions of justice and fail to see the urban poor as moral agents responding to injustice. Drawing on liberal-egalitarian philosophy and informed by leading social science research, Dark Ghettos examines the thorny questions of political morality raised by ghettos. Should government foster integrated neighborhoods? If a "culture of poverty" exists, what interventions are justified? Should single parenthood be avoided or deterred? Is voluntary nonwork or crime an acceptable mode of dissent? How should a criminal justice system treat the oppressed? Shelby offers practical answers, framed in terms of what justice requires of both a government and its citizens, and he views the oppressed as allies in the fight for a society that warrants everyone's allegiance. "The ghetto is not 'their' problem but ours, privileged and disadvantaged alike," Shelby writes. The existence of ghettos is evidence that our society is marred by structural injustices that demand immediate rectification. Dark Ghettos advances a social vision and political ethics that calls for putting the abolition of ghettos at the center of reform.
Anna J. Cooper
Anna J. Cooper (1858-1964), often called the “Mother of Black Feminism,” was an early contributor to the field of sociology and a prominent Black liberation activist. Born enslaved, she was a bright student who fought for the right to take courses only allowed to men at Oberlin College, and was one of the first Black women to receive a Master’s degree, in 1888. She was a founder of the Colored Women’s League in Washington DC, and lived until the age of 105.
Further Reading
- Anna Cooper (National Parks Service - Exploring the Meaning of Black Womanhood Series: Hidden Figures in NPS Places)
- Anna Julia Cooper (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Selected Works
A Voice from the South by ISBN: 0195063236Publication Date: 1990-07-12Considered one of the original texts foretelling the black feminist movement, this collection of essays, first published in 1892, offers an unparalleled view into the thought of black women writers in nineteenth-century America. A leading black spokeswoman of her time, Anna Julia Cooper came of age during a conservative wave in the black community, a time when men completely dominated African-American intellectual and political ideas. In these essays, Cooper criticizes black men for securing higher education for themselves through the ministry, while erecting roadblocks to deny women access to those same opportunities, and denounces the elitism and provinciality of the white women's movement. Passionately committed to women's independence, Cooper espoused higher education as the essential key to ending women's physical, emotional, and economic dependence on men.
Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a poet and civil rights activist who fought against issues of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Her poetry explores the Black female identity. Though Lorde was not an academic philosopher, her ideas such as the “theory of difference” and the presence of racism within feminism precipitated the theory of intersectionality and have been remarkably influential in the feminist discourse.
Further Reading
- Audre Lorde (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture)
- Audre Lorde (Poetry Foundation)
Selected Works
Sister Outsider by ISBN: 0895941414Publication Date: 1984-06-01The leader of contemporary feminist theory discusses such issues as racism, self-acceptance, and mother- and woman-hood.
Zami by ISBN: 9780241351086Publication Date: 1983-09-01A soaring, sensual coming-of-age novel, by the legendary 'Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet'. If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships -- suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone -- until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde's story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.
Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith (1946-) is a feminist activist. Along with her twin sister Beverly, also a feminist activist, she founded the Boston chapter of the National Black Feminist Organization (NFBO) in 1975, which then became the independent Combahee River Collective. Significantly, the collective recognized lesbianism as a legitimate identity. Smith coined the now widely-used term “identity politics.” Though she is not an academic philosopher, Smith’s ideas have been influential in the fields of Black feminism and LGBT activism. She also popularized many female authors of color through her publication press, Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
Further Reading
- "Barbara Smith Is Still One of Feminism's Most Essential Voices" (Shondaland)
- "How Barbara Smith Launched a Black Feminist Revolution" (them)
Selected Works
Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around by ISBN: 9781438451145Publication Date: 2014-11-01Reveals a remarkable woman's life and her contributions to social justice movements related to Civil Rights, feminism, lesbian and gay liberation, anti-racism, and Black feminism.
The Truth That Never Hurts by ISBN: 081352573XPublication Date: 1998-10-01The Truth That Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom brings together more than two decades of literary criticism and political thought about gender, race, sexuality, power, and social change. As one of the first writers in the United States to claim black feminism for black women, Barbara Smith has done groundbreaking work in defining black women's literary traditions and in making connections between race, class, sexuality, and gender. Smith's essay "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism" is often cited as a major catalyst in opening the field of black women's literature. Pieces about racism in the women's movement, black and Jewish relations, and homophobia in the Black community have ignited dialogue about topics that few other writers address. The collection also brings together topical political commentaries on the 1968 Chicago convention demonstrations; attacks on the NEA; the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas Senate hearings; and police brutality against Rodney King and Abner Louima. It also includes a never-before-published personal essay on racial violence and the bonds between black women that make it possible to survive.
Angela Davis
Angela Davis (1944-) is a political activist and philosopher. Davis rose to prominence in the 1960s due to her participation in second-wave feminism and the campaign against the Vietnam War. An adherent of Marxism, Davis was a member of the American Communist Party from 1969-1991 and was twice that party’s candidate for Vice President. Davis was arrested in 1970 for capital felonies and served over a year in jail before being acquitted of all charges. In 1991 she founded the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). In 1997 she co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization dedicated to abolishing the prison-industrial complex. She has taught at several institutions including San Francisco State University, University of California Los Angeles, and University of California Santa Cruz. She has authored over ten books about feminism, race, class, and the prison system.
Further Reading
- Angela Davis (National Archives - African American Heritage)
- Interview with Angela Davis (PBS Frontline)
Selected Works
Women, Race and Class by ISBN: 0394713516Publication Date: 1983-02-12A powerful study of the women's liberation movement in the U.S., from abolitionist days to the present, that demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders. From the widely revered and legendary political activist and scholar Angela Davis.
Women, Culture, and Politics by ISBN: 0394569768Publication Date: 1989-02-04A sequel of sorts to the author's masterful Women, Race And Class, this book examines the critical issues important to women: racism, violence, health, children, education and peace.Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Patricia Hill Collins
Patricia Hill Collins (1948-) is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who studies issues of feminism and gender. She has built extensively on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality.
Further Reading
- A New Perspective with Patricia Hill Collins (American Sociological Association)
- Patricia Hill Collins: Intersecting Oppressions (Sage, .pdf file)
Selected Works
Black Feminist Thought by ISBN: 0415924839Publication Date: 1999-12-09In spite of the double burden of racial and gender discrimination, African-American women have developed a rich intellectual tradition that is not widely known. In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. She provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde. The result is a superbly crafted book that provides the first synthetic overview of Black feminist thought.
Fighting Words by ISBN: 0816623775Publication Date: 1998-09-01A professor of sociology explores how black feminist thought confronts the injustices of poverty and white supremacy, and argues that those operating outside the mainstream emphasize sociological themes based on assumptions different than those commonly accepted.
bell hooks
bell hooks (1952-) is an influential feminist and social activist. The themes of her works include the impact of sexism and racism on Black women, the concept of a white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy, and the strength of healthy communities. A “radical feminist,” hooks has advocated for a complete transformation of the patriarchal system.
Further Reading
- On bell hooks (writing on glass)
- "In Praise of bell hooks" (New York Times)
Selected Works
Feminist Theory by ISBN: 0896086143Publication Date: 2000-05-01Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center established bell hooks as one of feminism's most vital and influential voices. A new preface by the author introduces the second edition of this essential classic to a new generation of feminist readers, while reminding seasoned activists of the need for continual, critical reflection. This carefully argued and powerfully inspirational work is a comprehensive examination of the core issues of sexual politics, including political solidarity among women, men as partners in struggle, and the feminist movement to end violence. Always engaging and frequently provocative, hooks combines an accessible style with critical insight to offer a vision of feminism rooted in compassion, respect, and integrity
Talking Back by ISBN: 0896083527Publication Date: 1999-07-01Essays discuss homophobia, everyday feminism, the portrayal of women in films, autobiography, Black women writers, and white supremacy.
Kimberlé Crenshaw
Kimberlé Crenshaw (1959-) is a widely recognized expert on critical race theory. She is responsible for developing the theory of intersectionality, a concept that has entered the cultural consciousness. The executive director of the African American Policy Forum, she is a lawyer as well as a professor at UCLA and Columbia Law School.
Further Reading
- “Kimberlé Crenshaw: the woman who revolutionised feminism – and landed at the heart of the culture wars" (The Guardian)
- “The Intersectionality Wars” (Vox)
Selected Works
On Intersectionality by ISBN: 9781620972700Publication Date: 2022-12-06A major publishing event, the collected writings of the groundbreaking scholar who "first coined intersectionality as a political framework" (Salon). For more than twenty years, scholars, activists, educators, and lawyers--inside and outside of the United States--have employed the concept of intersectionality both to describe problems of inequality and to fashion concrete solutions. In particular, as the Washington Post reported recently, "the term has been used by social activists as both a rallying cry for more expansive progressive movements and a chastisement for their limitations." Drawing on black feminist and critical legal theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw developed the concept of intersectionality, a term she coined to speak to the multiple social forces, social identities, and ideological instruments through which power and disadvantage are expressed and legitimized. In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to Crenshaw's work, readers will find key essays and articles that have defined the concept of intersectionality, collected together for the first time. The book includes a sweeping new introduction by Crenshaw as well as prefaces that contextualize each of the chapters. For anyone interested in movement politics and advocacy, or in racial justice and gender equity, On Intersectionality will be compulsory reading from one of the most brilliant theorists of our time.
George Yancy
George Yancy (1961-) is a professor of philosophy at Emory University, known for his work in critical whiteness studies. He has written many books and articles, as well as many influential essays in the New York Times’ “The Stone” philosophy column. In 2015, he came to national attention with his controversial article “Dear White America” published in “The Stone.”
Further Reading
- George Yancy (Personal Website)
- Interview with George Yancy (What Is It Like To Be A Philosopher?)
Selected Works
Look, a White! by ISBN: 9781439908532Publication Date: 2012-05-06From a celebrated scholar on race, a book on ways of seeing, and seeing through, whiteness.
Black Bodies, White Gazes by ISBN: 9780742552975Publication Date: 2008-09-26Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race understands Black embodiment within the context of white hegemony and within the context of a racist, anti-Black world. George Yancy examines themes such as double consciousness, invisibility, and corporeal malediction that capture the lived reality of Black bodies under tremendous existential duress. He demonstrates that the Black body is a historically lived text on which whites have inscribed their projections which speak equally forcefully to whites' own self-conceptions.
Frantz Fanon
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was a French West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher whose works are important to the fields of post-colonial studies, critical theory, and Marxism. He was a member of the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria, which led to his exile from that country; he has influenced many national-liberation movements around the world.
Further Reading
- “The Revolutionary Humanism of Frantz Fanon” (Jacobin)
- Frantz Fanon (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Selected Works
Black Skin, White Masks by ISBN: 0802143008Publication Date: 2008-09-10Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon's masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.
The Wretched of the Earth by ISBN: 0802150837Publication Date: 1988-09-01"A psychiatric and psychologic analysis of the dehumanizing effects of colonization upon the individual and the nation."
Achille Mbembe
Achille Mbembe (1957-) is a Cameroonian philosopher who studies African history and postcolonial theory. He is responsible for the theory of necropolitics, the idea that social and political power is used to decide how some people live and some people die.
Further Reading
- Achille Mbembe (European Graduate School Faculty Bio)
- "Future Knowledges and the Dilemmas of Decolonization" (John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University, video)
Selected Works
Necropolitics by ISBN: 9781478005858Publication Date: 2019-10-25In Necropolitics Achille Mbembe, a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side---what he calls its "nocturnal body"---which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism. This shift has hollowed out democracy, thereby eroding the very values, rights, and freedoms liberal democracy routinely celebrates. As a result, war has become the sacrament of our times in a conception of sovereignty that operates by annihilating all those considered enemies of the state. Despite his dire diagnosis, Mbembe draws on post-Foucauldian debates on biopolitics, war, and race as well as Fanon's notion of care as a shared vulnerability to explore how new conceptions of the human that transcend humanism might come to pass. These new conceptions would allow us to encounter the Other not as a thing to exclude but as a person with whom to build a more just world.
Critique of Black Reason by ISBN: 9780822363323Publication Date: 2017-03-10In Critique of Black Reason eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness--from the Atlantic slave trade to the present--to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world's center of gravity while mapping the relations among colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital. Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black reason as the collection of discourses and practices that equated Blackness with the nonhuman in order to uphold forms of oppression. Mbembe powerfully argues that this equation of Blackness with the nonhuman will serve as the template for all new forms of exclusion. With Critique of Black Reason, Mbembe offers nothing less than a map of the world as it has been constituted through colonialism and racial thinking while providing the first glimpses of a more just future.
Sophie Oluwole
Sophie Bosede Oluwole (1935-2018) was an adherent of Yoruba philosophy, the school of thought of the Yoruba people of Nigeria. She was the first woman in Nigeria to hold a doctorate degree.
Further Reading
- "Sophie Oluwole: Nigerian philosopher who put Yoruba thought on the map" (Independent)
- Sophie Oluwole (The Guardian, obituary)
Selected Works
Socrates and Ọ̀rúnmìlà : two patron saints of classical philosophy by Call Number: B5310 .O486 2014ISBN: 9789785295259Publication Date: 2014In this book, Oluwole compares the African and Western philosophical traditions. Orunmila was an ancient philosopher, considered in Ifá (the Yoruba religion) to be an Orisha (spirit) and a sage.
Richard A. Jones 
Richard A. Jones taught philosophy for ten years at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He is a past Co-Coordinator of the Radical Philosophy Association. Richard has published articles in Teaching Philosophy, The Journal of Black Studies, Socialism and Democracy, and the Radical Philosophy Review. His latest philosophical work is The Black Book: Wittgenstein and Race (University Press of America, 2013). He has also been publishing poetry for over 60 years. His latest volume is Footnotes for a New Universe (Atmosphere Press, 2021).
Further Resources
- Richard Jones on Philosophy (YouTube)
- Smadditizin' with Charles W. Mills
- Richard Jones- In the Unjust Meantime (University of Colorado Boulder)
Selected Works
African-American Sociopolitical Philosophy by ISBN: 0773465626Publication Date: 2003-01-01This study examines several conceptions of community drawn from both mainstream analytic philosophy and from the African-American philosophical tradition. It scrutinizes these in light of the need to provide models that are empirically adequate to African-American experiences of community and ideals capable of guiding African-Americans in the struggle to rebuild communities. Following an examination of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'Beloved Community, ' the study analyzes Cornel West's and Lucius Outlaw's ideals for African-American political community.
Melvin L. Rogers
Professor Rogers has wide-ranging interests in contemporary democratic theory and the history of American and African-American political thought. He is the author of The Undiscovered Dewey: Religion, Morality, and the Ethos of Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2008). His second book, The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African American Political Thought is forthcoming from Princeton University Press 2023.
In addition, he has edited John Dewey, The Public and its Problems (Ohio University Press, 2016) and African American Political Thought: A Collected History (University of Chicago Press, 2021), a collection of 30 essays on figures in the tradition of African American political thought co-edited with Jack Turner. His articles appear in major academic journals and popular venues such as Dissent, the Atlantic, Public Seminar, and Boston Review. Professor Rogers now serves as the co-editor of Oxford University Press' New Histories of Philosophy series. The series attends to the unstudied resources in the history of philosophy, and he is keen to build its list in Africana Philosophy.
Further Resources
- Dr. Melvin Rogers (Twitter)
- Melvin L. Rogers (Personal Website)
Selected Works
African American Political Thought by ISBN: 9780226725918Publication Date: 2021-02-16African American Political Thought offers an unprecedented philosophical history of thinkers from the African American community and African diaspora who have addressed the central issues of political life: democracy, race, violence, liberation, solidarity, and mass political action. Melvin L. Rogers and Jack Turner have brought together leading scholars to reflect on individual intellectuals from the past four centuries, developing their list with an expansive approach to political expression. The collected essays consider such figures as Martin Delany, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde, whose works are addressed by scholars such as Farah Jasmin Griffin, Robert Gooding-Williams, Michael Dawson, Nick Bromell, Neil Roberts, and Lawrie Balfour. While African American political thought is inextricable from the historical movement of American political thought, this volume stresses the individuality of Black thinkers, the transnational and diasporic consciousness, and how individual speakers and writers draw on various traditions simultaneously to broaden our conception of African American political ideas. This landmark volume gives us the opportunity to tap into the myriad and nuanced political theories central to Black life. In doing so, African American Political Thought: A Collected History transforms how we understand the past and future of political thinking in the West.
The Public and Its Problems by ISBN: 9780804011662Publication Date: 2016-10-15More than six decades after John Dewey's death, his political philosophy is undergoing a revival. With renewed interest in pragmatism and its implications for democracy in an age of mass communication, bureaucracy, and ever-increasing social complexities, Dewey's The Public and Its Problems, first published in 1927, remains vital to any discussion of today's political issues. This edition of The Public and Its Problems, meticulously annotated and interpreted with fresh insight by Melvin L. Rogers, radically updates the previous version published by Swallow Press. Rogers's introduction locates Dewey's work within its philosophical and historical context and explains its key ideas for a contemporary readership. Biographical information and a detailed bibliography round out this definitive edition, which will be essential to students and scholars both.
The Undiscovered Dewey by ISBN: 9780231144865Publication Date: 2008-12-30The Undiscovered Dewey explores the profound influence of evolution and its corresponding ideas of contingency and uncertainty on John Dewey's philosophy of action, particularly its argument that inquiry proceeds from the uncertainty of human activity. Dewey separated the meaningfulness of inquiry from a larger metaphysical story concerning the certainty of human progress. He then connected this thread to the way in which our reflective capacities aid us in improving our lives. Dewey therefore launched a new understanding of the modern self that encouraged intervention in social and natural environments but which nonetheless demanded courage and humility because of the intimate relationship between action and uncertainty. Melvin L. Rogers explicitly connects Dewey's theory of inquiry to his religious, moral, and political philosophy. He argues that, contrary to common belief, Dewey sought a place for religious commitment within a democratic society sensitive to modern pluralism. Against those who regard Dewey as indifferent to moral conflict, Rogers points to Dewey's appreciation for the incommensurability of our ethical commitments. His deep respect for modern pluralism, argues Rogers, led Dewey to articulate a negotiation between experts and the public so that power did not lapse into domination. Exhibiting an abiding faith in the reflective and contestable character of inquiry, Dewey strongly engaged with the complexity of our religious, moral, and political lives.
In Memoriam: bell hooks
bell hooks (born Gloria Jean Watkins) is one the most influential theorists, social activists, and feminists of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries. She was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky to a working-class African-American family in 1952. She spent the early part of her childhood under the long shadow of segregation, attending a segregated elementary school. Later, she moved on to an integrated school, graduating from Hopkinsville High School. She obtained a BA in English from Stanford University in 1973, an MA in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976, and a PhD in the same subject from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1983. She then taught at several colleges and universities including Santa Cruz, Oberlin College, and Yale. She passed away in 2021.
We have curated a series of her writings, as well as a few documentaries to which she contributed, in order to provide an introduction to her work.
To learn more her work and life, please enjoy a selection of online resources we've gathered to celebrate bell:
- "bell hooks, Pathbreaking Black Feminist, Dies at 69" (The New York Times)
- "Remembering bell hooks in Her Own Words" (Bitch Media)
- "How bell hooks taught me that feminism is for everybody" (The New Statesman)
- "It Was bell hooks Who Taught Me How to ‘Talk Back’" (The New York Times)
- "Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh" (Lion's Roar)
- Interview between bell hooks & John A. Powell: "Belonging Through Connection (Othering & Belonging Institute)
- Interview with bell hooks: "This ain't no pussy shit" (The New School)
Ain't I a Woman by ISBN: 9780896081291Publication Date: 1999-07-01hooks published her first book, Ain’t I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism in 1981. The book deals with the history of sexism and oppression faced by black women from slavery to the present. It also critiques the second wave feminist movement as largely white and middle to upper class. The book critiques Black nationalism, too, for its misogyny in perpetuating gender inequity while aiming to promote racial equality.
Feminist Theory by ISBN: 0896082210Publication Date: 1984-10-01Her next work, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984) continues her critique of what she considers the overwhelmingly white and upper or middle class focus of much second wave feminism and that of Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique in particular. She goes on to critique the entire system of American capitalism and what she considers to be its racist and sexist consequences, proposing the formation of a new societal order through peaceful struggle.
Killing Rage by ISBN: 9780805050271Publication Date: 1996-10-15In her series of twenty one essays, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (1995), hooks treats a diverse range of topics from friendship between white and black women to anti-semitism. Through this work she outlines the interconnectedness of sexism and racism as forms of oppression, imagining a world entirely free of them while exulting her readers to make this conception a reality through active resistance.
Bone Black by ISBN: 9780805055122Publication Date: 1997-10-15Her memoirs Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood (1996) and Wounds of Passion: A Writer’s Life (1997) chart her upbringing in the South and her development as a writer and intellectual respectively. They offer insight into the events in her life that helped form her ideas and identity as one of the leading feminist intellectuals of our time. In the first, she sketches for her readers her difficult home life and the fraught and often oppressive world outside of it. She writes of how she sought refuge in solitude and books. In her second memoir, she traces her early formative relationships as an adult and the further education that molded her thinking.
Wounds of Passion by ISBN: 080504146XPublication Date: 1997-10-01"Wounds of Passion is a memoir about writing, love, and sexuality. With her customary boldness and insight, bell hooks critically reflects on the impact of birth control and the women's movement on our lives. She explores the way her sexuality is influenced by her radical political consciousness. Resisting the notion that love and writing don't mix, she begins a fifteen-year relationship with a gifted poet and scholar, who inspires and encourages her. Writing the acclaimed book Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism at the age of nineteen, she begins to emerge as a brilliant social critic and public intellectual. Wounds of Passion describes a woman's struggle to devote herself to writing, sharing the difficulties, the triumphs, the pleasure, and the danger. Eloquent and powerful, this book lets us see the ways one woman writer works to find her voice while creating a love relationship based on feminist thinking. With courage and wisdom she reveals intimate details and provocative ideas, offering an illuminating vision of a writer's life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The Will to Change by ISBN: 0743456076Publication Date: 2003-12-30The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004) treats the subject of toxic masculinity. In this book, hooks discusses how this phenomenon crushes mens’ capacity for full emotional self-expression under a bevy of fears over status. She proposes a path for men toward a kind of liberatory emotional openness.
Black Is...Black Ain't by
The documentary Black Is…Black Ain’t (directed by Marlon Riggs) treats a variety of topics related to African-American identity. It emphasizes the multiplicity of the black experience, eschewing blanket statements or attempts to simplify black identity. Drawing on a central metaphor between African-American identities and his grandmother’s gumbo, Riggs compares the disparate ingredients of that dish to the disparate cultural and social expressions found within African-American life. He focuses to a large degree on intersections of race, gender and sexuality. Riggs allows LGBTQ members of the black community to tell their story as well as exploring the consequences of patriarchal hegemony within that same community.
BaadAsssss cinema: a bold look at 70's blaxploitation films by hooks provides commentary for the film BaadAsssss Cinema, a film that treats the subject of blaxploitation cinema in the 1970s. The film includes interviews with stars from the era. It also focuses to a large degree on the Sweet Sweetback’s BaadAsssss Song by director Melvin Van Peebles (from which the title is adapted).
Occupy Love by The film Occupy Love features a contribution from hooks. The film seeks to draw a fundamental connection between movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. It advances that these movements are natural reactions in response to a global system of inequality and environmental destruction.Hillbilly by
The 2018 film Hillbilly features a contribution from hooks. The film discusses the interwoven misunderstandings and prejudices directed toward hooks’ native region (Appalachia). Long viewed as backward and uniformly white, Appalachia reveals itself through the lens of this film to be infinitely more complex and diverse than the false images that pervade much of cinema and television.