The following appeared in Volume 98, Number 2 (Spring, 1999) of APA Newsletters

Newsletter on Philosophy, Law, and the Black Experience

Black Modernism and Postmodernism

Lewis R. Gordon
Brown University

The relationship between blacks and modernity has been a subject of much debate in Africana philosophical, political, religious thought. What does "modernity" mean in the black context? Is the relation of blackness to modernity such that blacks have always lived a form of post-modernity? How do modernity and post-modernity jibe with the humanistic demands of black emancipatory thought and practices (for example, black philosophies and theologies of liberation and black revolutionary praxis)? And should, given one’s theoretical commitments to either the modern or the post-modern, humanistic projects be placed under the lense of suspicion? This course will examine these questions through selections from the writings on modernity and post-modernity by several influential authors.

Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness. Continuum.

David Batstone, Eduardo Mendieta, Lois Ann Lorentzen, and Dwight N. Hopkins (eds.), Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity, and the Americas.

W.E.B. Du Bois, Soliloquy on My Life at the Final Decade of Its First Century: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. International Publishers.

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. Grove Press.

Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought. Routledge.

Joy James, Transcending the Talented Tenth. Routledge.

Paul Gilroy, Black Atlantic. Harvard UP.

Lewis Gordon, Her Majesty’s Other Children. Rowman & Littlefield.

Lewis R. Gordon (ed.), Existence in Black. Routledge.

Leonard Harris, Philosophy Born of Struggle. Kendall/Hunt.

Cornel West, Prophesy, Deliverance! Westminster Press.

Requirements: (1) 1-paragraph statement each week on a passage from the week’s reading that has had the most impact on you. (2) Final term paper. Paper should be at least 10 pages and no more than 20. Abstract of final paper project should be submitted by week 11.

Sessions:

Week 1 Introduction to course. Trajectory on "modernism" and "postmodernism." Ralph Ellison, "What America Would Be Like Without Blacks," from Going to the Territory and Richard Wright, "How ‘Bigger Thomas’ Was Born," from Native Son. (handouts).

Part I: Black Modernism

Week 2 Readings: C.L.R. James, "The Property," from The Black Jacobins. W.E.B. Du Bois, "Conservation of the Races" and "The Study of the Negro Problems" (handouts). W.E.B. Du Bois, Soliloquy on My Life at the Final Decade of Its First Century: The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. Topic: The Meaning of Black Suffering and the Heroic Model of Struggle.

Week 3 Readings: Jean-Paul Sartre, "Black Orpheus." Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, especially chap. 5. Topic: Historicism and the Anxiety of Experience.

Week 4 Readings: Existence in Black, ed. by Lewis R. Gordon. Read introduction and essays in Part I and Part II.. Problem of Black Suffering and Struggle continued.

Week 5 Readings: Orlando Patterson, "Toward a Future That Has No Past: Reflections on the Fate of Blacks in the Americas," from The Public Interest, no. 27 (Spring 1972): 60–1, and Frank Kirkland, "Modernity and Intellectual Life in Black," Philosophical Forum XXIV, nos. 1–3 (Fall–Spring 1992–1993): 136–63 (both handouts). Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic (as far as you can get). Recommended: Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark. Is blackness coextensive with the "modern" ?

Week 6 Readings: Black Atlantic (continued). Philosophy Born of Struggle, ed. by Leonard Harris. Read essays by Broadus Butler, Alain Locke, Angela Davis, Mulana Karenga, and William R. Jones. The Heroic Model Returns.

Part II: Black Postmodernism

Week 7 Readings: Cornel West, Prophesy, Deliverance! (Entirety). Recommended: François Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. Topic: The postmodern as a "liberating" approach and the ascendence of the "aesthetic" as a political critique.

Week 8 Readings: Batstone et al, Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity, and the Americas, chaps. intro., Part I (skim), Part II (in detail), chap. 9, Part III (in detail) chaps. 11–15. Topic: The postmodern as critique from modernity’s "underside."

Week 9 Readings: Victor Anderson, Beyond Ontological Blackness (entirety). bell hooks, "Loving Blackness" (handout). Recommended: Bill Preston, "Nietzsche on Blacks," from Existence in Black. Topic: Critique of Being and the aesthetics of the grotesque.

Week 10 Readings: bell hooks, "Postmodern Blackness." Waneema Lubiano, "Shuckin’ off the Africa-American Native Other: What’s ‘Pomo’ Got to Do with?" Cultural Critique 18 (Spring 1991): 149–186. Patricia Hill Collins, Fighting Words. Topic: The postmodern as a feminist critique.

Part III: Critiques of Black Modernism and Postmodernism

Week 11 Reading: Joy Ann James, Transcending the Talented Tenth (entirety). Patricia Huntington, "Fragmentation, Race, and Gender: Building Solidarity in the Postmodern Era," from Existence in Black. Topic: Limitations of the "Race Man" model and limitations of the "Feminist Literati."

Week 12 Reading: Lewis Gordon, Her Majesty’s Other Children (entirety). Topic: Reason, Politics, and Aesthetics—can identity constraints on liberatory praxis viably converge?

Week 13 Concluding discussion.

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