Lewis Gordon

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Lewis Gordon

Born

1962

Era

Contemporary philosophy

Region

Western Philosophy

School

Continental philosophy

Main interests Africana philosophy, black existentialism, phenomenology

Influenced by[show]

Lewis Ricardo Gordon (born 1962) is an American philosopher who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, philosophy of human and life sciences, phenomenology, philosophy of existence, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. He has written particularly extensively on race and racism, postcolonial phenomenology, Africana and black existentialism, and on the works and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon.
Contents
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1 Biography 2 Philosophy and work in theory

o o o o

2.1 Black existentialism 2.2 The question of racism 2.3 Theology and historio-ethics 2.4 Phenomenology and colonialism

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2.5 Essentialism and race 2.6 Reason and rationality

3 Classification of Gordon's contributions to sociology and philosophy 4 External links 5 See also 6 Published works 7 Online Articles by Lewis Gordon 8 References

Biography[edit]
Gordon graduated in 1984 from Lehman College, CUNY, through the Lehman Scholars Program, with a B.A., magna cum laude and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He completed his MA and M. Phil. in philosophy in 1991 at Yale University, and received his Ph.D. with distinction from the same university in 1993. Following the completion of his doctoral studies, Gordon taught at Brown University, Yale, and Purdue University. He is currently the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University in the Department of Philosophy with affiliations in Religious and Judaic Studies, and an Ongoing Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. At Temple, he is Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought, which is devoted to research on the complexity and social dimensions of race and racism. The ISRST's many projects include developing a consortium on Afro-Latin American Studies, a Philadelphia Blues People Project, semiological studies of indigeneity, a Black Civil Society project, symposia on race, sexuality, and sexual health, and ongoing work in Africana philosophy. Gordon was Executive Editor of volumes I-V of Radical Philosophy Review: Journal of the Radical Philosophy Associationand co-editor of the Routledge book series on Africana philosophy. Additionally, Gordon is also President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Gordon is the founder of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies, the only such research center, which focuses on developing and providing reliable sources of information on African and African Diasporic Jewish or Hebrew-descended populations. Dr. Gordon states: "In actuality, there is no such thing as pure Jewish blood. Jews are a creolized [mixed-race] people. It's been that way since at least the time we left Egypt as a [culturally] mixed Egyptian and African [i.e., from other parts of Africa] people." Gordon founded the Second Chance Program at Lehman High School in the Bronx, New York. He is married to Dr. Jane Anna Gordon.

Philosophy and work in theory[edit]

Black existentialism[edit]
Gordon is considered[by whom?] as the leading scholar in several areas of thought. He first came to prominence in the area of black existentialism because of his first book, Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (1995), which was an existential phenomenological study of antiblack racism, and his anthology Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy (1997). The book is written in four parts, with a series of short chapters that at times take the form of phenomenological vignettes. Bad faith, as Gordon reads it, is a coextensive phenomenon reflective of the metastability of the human condition. It is a denial of human reality, an effort to evade freedom, a flight from responsibility, a choice against choice, an assertion of being the only point of view on the world, an assertion of being the world, an effort to deny having a point of view, a flight from displeasing truths to pleasing falsehoods, a form of misanthropy, an act of believing what one does not believe, a form of spirit of seriousness, sincerity, an effort to disarm evidence, (a Gordon innovation) a form of sedimented or institutional version of all of these, and (another Gordon innovation) a flight from and war against social reality. Gordon rejects notions of disembodied consciousness (which he argues are forms of bad faith) and articulates a theory of the body-in-bad-faith. Gordon also rejects authenticity discourses. He sees them as trapped in expectations of sincerity, which also is a form of bad faith. He proposes, instead, critical good faith, which he argues requires a respect for evidence and accountability in the social world, a world of intersubjective relations.

The question of racism[edit]

Racism, Gordon argues[citation needed], requires the rejection of another human beings humanity. Since the other human being is a human being, such a rejection is a contradiction of reality. A racist must, then, deny reality, and since communication is possible between a racist and the people who are the object of racial hatred, then social reality is also what is denied in racist assertions. A racist, then, attempts to avoid social reality. Gordon also argues that since people could only appear if embodied, then racism is also an attack on embodied realities. It is an effort to make embodied realities bodies without points of view or make points of views without bodies. Racism is also a form of the spirit of seriousness, by which Gordon means the treatment of values as material features of the world instead of expressions of human freedom and responsibility. Racism ascribes to so-called racially inferior people intrinsic values that emanate from their flesh. A result of the spirit of seriousness is racist rationality. Here, Gordon, in agreement with Frantz Fanon, argues that racists are not irrational people but instead hyper-rational expressions of racist rationality. He rejects, in other words, theories that regard racism as a function of bad emotions or passions. Such phenomena, he suggests, emerge as a consequence of racist thinking, not its cause. Affect emerges, in other words, to affect how one negotiates reality. If one is not willing to deal with time, a highly emotional response squeezes all time into a single moment, which leads to the overflow of what one prefers to believe over what one is afraid of facing.

Gordon also analyzes a variety of issues in the study of antiblack racism, such as black antiblack racists, exoticism, racial qualities, and theological-ethical dimensions of racism. Gordon prefers to focus on antiblack racism instead of white supremacy because, he points out, that antiblack racism could exist without white supremacy. There are many people who reject white supremacy but affirm notions of black inferiority. A prime example is that there are black antiblack racists. Gordon analyzes this phenomenon through a discussion of black use of the word nigger, which he argues is bad faith effort at black self exceptionalismof, in the case of the user of the term, not being its object. Exoticism is the other extreme. It is a rejection of the humanity of black people under the pretense of loving black people. The exoticist valorizes black people because he or she regards black people as, like animals, incapable of valid judgment.

Theology and historio-ethics[edit]

Gordon argues[citation needed] that in theological form, studies of antiblack racism reveal that a particular assumption of Western ethical thought must be rejected the notion of similarity as a condition of ethical obligation. That black women could worship a god with whom they are neither similar nor could ever be identical demonstrates that love does not require similarity. Gordon argues that the ethical issue against antiblack racism is not one of seeing the similarity between blacks and whites but of being able, simply, to respect and see the ethical importance of blacks as blacks. The fight against racism, in other words, does not require the elimination of race or noticing racial difference but instead demands respecting the humanity of the people who exemplify racial difference. In Existence in Black, Gordon outlines themes of black existentialism in the texts introduction. He argues that black existentialism addresses many of the same themes of European existentialism but with some key differences. For instance, although both sets argue that notion of a human being makes no sense outside of human communities and that individuals make no sense without society and societies make no sense without individuals, European existentialists had to defend individuality more because they were normative in their societies, whereas black existentialists had to focus on community more in order to demonstrate their membership in the human community. The question of individuality for black existentialists becomes one of showing that not all black people are the same. Themes of anguish, dread, freedom, absurdity, and death are examined, as well, through the historical reality of antiblack racism and colonialismand, along with it, the meaning of black suffering and the legitimacy of black existence. The logic of antiblack racism demands blacks offering justifications for their existence that are not posed for whites. Gordon points[citation needed] these dynamics out through discussions of W. E. B. Du Boiss observation that black people often treated as problems instead of people who face problems in the world and Frantz Fanons call for black people to become actional through transcending the dialectics of seeking white recognition. Gordon also argues that black existential philosophy is an area of thought, which means that contributions to its development can come from anyone who understands its problematics. In other

words, one does not have to be black to contribute to this area of thought. Existence in Black reflects his point since it has articles by other authors from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds discussing themes ranging from African and Afro-Caribbeanexistential struggles with beliefs in predestination to black feminist struggles with postmodern anti-essentialist thought. Gordons chapter in the book focuses on the problem of black invisibility, which he points out is paradoxical since it is a function of black people being hyper-visible. Gordons place in this area of thought was solidified in 2000 with the publication of his book Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought. That book explores themes of existencewhich he points out, from its Latin etymology, means to stand out or to appearover the course of examining a set of new philosophical themes that emerge from their convergence with realities faced by African diasporic peoples. Gordon argues that traditional philosophical questions are not the only ones that philosophers should look at. Gordon examines, as a matter of philosophical interest, topics ranging from the stratification of blacks in biographical discourses to the difficulty of studying black people as human beings. Gordon also rejects the notion that existential philosophy is incompatible with religious thought. To support his position, he examines how religion poses not only unique questions of paths to be taken in struggles for liberation, but also of the conditions that make religious practices such as worship possible. He ends that work with a reflection on writing, in which he advances his own commitment to transcendental philosophical approaches, those, in other words, that explore the conditions by which and through which certain phenomena are able to manifest themselves or become possible. Crucial here is that Gordon does not pit existential philosophy against transcendental philosophy but, instead, argues for both.

Phenomenology and colonialism[edit]

Gordon is also known[by whom?] as the founder of postcolonial phenomenology and the leading proponent of Africana phenomenology which has enabled him to make a mark in Fanon Studies. Gordon was able to develop postcolonial phenomenology, which he sometimes refers to as Africana phenomenology or de-colonial phenomenology, through making a series of important innovations to Husserlian and Sartrian phenomenologies. The first, and perhaps most important, is his transformation of parenthesizing and bracketing of the natural attitude into what he calls ontological suspension. Although Husserl called for a suspension of the natural attitude, his goal was primarily epistemological. Gordons interest is, however, primarily concerned with errors that occur from inappropriate ontological assertions. Gordon is also concerned with metaphysics, which he, unlike many contemporary thinkers, does not reject. Instead, Gordon sees the continuation of Aristotelian metaphysics, which advances a notion of substance that is governed by essence that leads to definition in the form of essential being, as a problem. Gordon wants to talk about the social world and the meanings constructed by it without reducing it to a physicalist ontology. The notion of ontological suspension, which he claims is compatible with Husserlian phenomenology, advances this

effort. Gordon also advances phenomenology as a form of radically self-reflective thought, which means that it must question even its methodological assumptions. Because of this, it must resist epistemological colonization, and it is in this sense that phenomenology is itself postcolonial or decolonizing. Because of this, Gordon refused for some time in his career to refer to his work as philosophy, for that would mean colonizing it with a disciplinary set of assumptions. He preferred to call his work radical thought, which for him meant being willing to go to the roots of reality in a critical way. From these moves, Gordon was able to generate a set of theoretical concepts that have become useful to those who have adopted his theoretical lexicon: his unique formulation of crisis; his theory of epistemic closure; his theory of disciplinary decadence and teleological suspension of disciplinarity; and his analysis of maturation and tragedy. Most of these ideas first emerged in the work that also gave Gordon a reputation in Fanon studies namely, Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (1995). Gordon introduced a new stage in Fanon studies by announcing that he was not interested in writing on Fanon but instead working with Fanon on the advancement of his (Gordons) own intellectual project. Fanon was thus an occasion or point of departure but not the main object of the study. The work is, then, a statement more of Gordons philosophy than that of Fanon, who, in this text, is more a major influence. The book offers several innovations to the question of colonialism and the human sciences. First, Gordon argues that crises are really human communities refusing to make the choices necessary for the transformation of realities created by human agency. In short, they are forms of choices against choice or choosing not to choose, which amounts to bad faith. History, he argued, must transcend the imposition of world history (and thus become structured as a crisis) and move toward an existential-historical understanding of human communities on the basis of critical good faith. Phenomena such as racism and colonialism, because they attempt to erase the humanity of the colonized and object of racism, place challenges on whether it is possible to study human communities without collapsing into acts of discursive, imperial practices. Dr. Gordon has also made an important contribution to the understanding around the work of Steve Biko by way of a new introduction to Biko's classic text I Write What I Like.[1]

Essentialism and race[edit]

For some scholars[who?], essentialism means that one cannot study race and racism and colonialism properly because they, in effect, lack essences. Gordon argues that although human beings are incomplete, are without laws of nature, it does not follow that they cannot be studied and understood with reasonable accuracy. Drawing upon the thought of Max Weber, Edmund Husserl,Alfred Schutz, and Frantz Fanon, Gordon argued that the task is to develop accurate portrayals or to thematize everyday life. He argues that racism and colonialism are everyday phenomena and, as such, are lived as

normal aspects of modern life. Even under severe conditions, human beings find ways to live as though under ordinary conditions. This ordinariness can get to a point of distorting reality. In the case of racism, one group of people are allowed to live an ordinary life under ordinary conditions while another group or other groups are expected to do so under extraordinary conditions. Institutional bad faith renders those extraordinary conditions invisible and advances as a norm the false notion a shared ordinary set of conditions. This is the meaning behind the colloquial notion of double standards. Gordon here also advances a theory that provides an answer to social constructivists in the study of race. What they fail to understand, Gordon agues, is that sociality is also constructed, which makes social constructivism redundant. Many social constructivists[who?] also treat the identification of constructivity as the conclusion of the argument instead of its beginning. For Gordon, identifying that something is constructed does not mean showing that the phenomenon is false or fictional. Human beings construct many real things, such as language and meaning and the forms of life generated by such activities and concepts. Many people are able, for instance, to act on race concepts (not racist ones) with a fair degree of accuracy. What this means is simply that they know how to read the social world and the bodies through which that world is manifested. The error that many critics make is that they demand the false criterion of universality and infallibility to the practice of racial identification. Gordon argues that such a demand would not work for identification of most social phenomena. What is required is not universality nor infallibility but generality. Gordon defends this claim through making the distinction between a law and a principle. A law is absolute, without exceptions, categorical. A principle is general and has exceptions. For things human, principles are more appropriate ascriptions than laws. Gordon argues that these ideas emerged through his reading of Fanons notions of sociogenesis. Other ideas he borrows from Fanon are his rejection of the dialectics of recognition and his unique view on racisms impact on ethics and the concept of the Other. Like Fanon, Gordon argues that to seek white recognition leads to dependency on whites. It also means to make whites the standard of value. Yet Gordon rejects the thesis that racism is about a Self Other dialectic. Antiblack racists do not see blacks as the Other or others, in Gordons view. Such relations only exist between whites and whomever else they see as human beings or genuine others. Thus, the struggle against antiblack racism is ironically for blacks to become others. This displacement of otherness means that the fight against racism is governed not by moral laws but by tragic ones in which innocence becomes irrelevant. Gordon concludes the work with a look at how two scholars read Fanons importance: Henry Louis Gates, Jr., argued that only Fanons biography is of any contemporary interest, and that is as good literature. Cedric Robinson argued that Gates failed to see the political dimensions of Fanons thought and that he should be read as a Marxist-oriented revolutionary. Gordon points out that both scholars were committing acts of disciplinary decadence by, in effect, condemning other disciplines for not being theirs. It was at the end

of that book that the concept of disciplinary decadence was introduced. He returned to the concept most recently in his book Disciplinary Decadence (2006). Gordons reputation in Fanon Studies grew through his co-edited anthology, Fanon: A Critical Reader (1996) and his many articles over the past decade on various dimensions of Fanons thought. In those works, he introduced what he calls five stages of Fanons studies, and he offers a variety of unique readings of Fanons work. He has shown connections between Du Bois and Fanon on double consciousness; he has written on how Fanons critique of white normativity leads to the question of whether modern society has any notion of a normal black person; Fanon, he argues, seeks a coherent notion of how it is possible. Gordons writings have continued an expansion of his and related philosophical ap proaches and lexicon. In his book of social criticism, Her Majestys Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (1997), he explored problems in critical race theory and philosophy and introduced one of his most famous thought experiments. In the chapter Sex, Race, and Matrices of Desire, Gordon purports to have created a racial-gender-sex-sexuality matrix and used it to challenge our assumptions of mixture. A white woman in that matrix, for instance, is mixed because her whiteness makes her masculine but her womanness makes her black. Or certain relationships are transformed, where same-sex interracial relationships are not necessarily homosexual or lesbian ones. What is striking about the book is a theme that some of his critics noticed in his earlier books, and that is the role of music in his prose and analysis. Gordon here builds on his argument about the everyday in his earlier work to argue that a danger of most theories of social transformation is that they fail to take seriously the aesthetic dimensions of everyday life. Moral and political thought and economy are good at constructing contexts in which people could sustain biological and social life, but they are terrible at articulating what it means to live in a livable world. Gordon argues that a genuinely emancipatory society creates spaces for the ordinary celebration of everyday pleasure. In his more recent work, Gordon has been arguing about the geography of reason and the importance of contingency in social life. However, it needs to be noted that the legitimacy of his "mixture-matrix" is largely dependent upon his controversial applications of semiotics to race and gender.

Reason and rationality[edit]

A problem of Western thought, Gordon argues, is that it has yoked reason to instrumental rationality and created an antiblack notion of reasons geographical landscape. Shifting the geography of reason, he argues, would entail a war on the kinds of decadence that treat any human community as incapable of manifesting reason. But more, Gordon argues that reason is broader than rationality since it must be used to assess rationality. Rationality could only attempt to impose consistency on reason, but reason could point out that maximum consistency, although rational, may be unreasonable. Gordons recent work has been a development of these issues. His co-edited books with Jane Anna Gordon, Not Only the Masters Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (2005) and A Companion to AfricanAmerican Studies (2006) offer some important new concepts in the ongoing development of his thought.

In the first, he offers a comprehensive treatment of African-American philosophy and the importance of Africana existential phenomenological thought through a critique of Audre Lordes admonition of using the masters tools. The two Gordonss response is that (1) tools should not only be used to t ear down houses but also to build them up; (2) the masters tools arent the only tools available; and (3) the construction of alternative houses (theoretical models, philosophies) could decenter the value of the masters house, denuding it of mastery. In his essay, African-American Philosophy, Race, and Racism, which is his main contribution in that volume, he provides a comprehensive and concise statement of his work to date. In the introduction to the Companion, he and Jane Gordon formulate a theory of AfricanAmerican Studies as a form of double consciousness. But key here is the introduction of their concept the pedagogical imperative. This imperative refers to a teachers duty to learn and keep learning the broadest and most accurate picture of reality available to human kind. The editors also advance a theory of internationalism, localism, and market nihilism in the face of the rise of an independent managerial class to describe the dynamics of the contemporary academy.

Classification of Gordon's contributions to sociology and philosophy[edit]

Gordon considers all of his works to be part of a humanist tradition. The role of intellectuals, in his view, is to challenge the limits of human knowledge and, in so doing, achieve some advancement in what he calls the Geist war. For him, the importance of intellectual work could be summarized by his claim that one achieves as a human being for humanity but one always fails alone. Gordons work has also been characterized as a form of existential sociology. The sociological dimensions of his writings have received much attention, and the readers of his most recent book, Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (2006) have described it as a work that is not only in philosophy (of disciplinarity) but also in education and the sociology of the formations of disciplines themselves. Gordon, however, describes what he is attempting to do as a teleological suspension of disciplinarity.

External links[edit]

Lewis Gordon interview on Counterpoint Radio with Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities at the University of Memphis.

See also[edit]

Black Existentialism Africana philosophy List of African American philosophers

Published works[edit]

Gordon has produced approximately 100 articles, book chapters, and reviews. Books by Gordon currently in print are:

with Jane Anna Gordon, Of Divine Warning: Reading Disaster in the Modern Age (Paradigm Publishers, 2009)

An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Disciplinary Decadence: Living Thought in Trying Times (Paradigm Publishers, 2006)

A Companion to African American Studies (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon) (Blackwell, 2006)

Not Only the Master's Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (ed. with Jane Anna Gordon) (Paradigm Publishers, 2005)

Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana Existential Thought (Routledge, 2000)

Her Majestys Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997). Winner of Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America.

Existence in Black: An Anthology of Black Existential Philosophy , (ed.) (Routledge, 1997)

Fanon: A Critical Reader (ed. with T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting and Rene T. White) (Blackwell, 1996)

Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Routledge, 1995)

Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanity Books, 1995/1999)

Online Articles by Lewis Gordon[edit]

Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of the Human Sciences, 2000 A Philosophical Account of Africana Studies: An Interview with Lewis Gordon by Linda Martin Alcoff, 2003

New Introduction to Steve Biko's 'I Write What I Like', 2005 Africa-America Philosophy, Race and the Geography of Reason, 2006

Through the Hellish Zone of Non-Being: Thinking Through Fanon, Disaster, and the Damned of the Earth, 2007

The Market Colonization of Intellectuals,Truthout, 2010 Of Illicit Appearance: The L.A. Riots/Rebellion as a Portent of Things to Come, Truthout, 12 May 2012

Manifiesto of transdisciplinarity. To not become slaves of knowledge of others, 2011. (Original title: Manifiesto de Transdiciplinariedad. Para no volvernos esclavos del conocimiento de otros) by Lewis Gordon published in the student journal Trans-pasando Fronteras (URL visited 29 august 2012)

References[edit]
1. ^ [1] New Introduction to Steve Biko's I Write What I Like by Lewis Gordon

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20th-century philosophers African-American philosophers Fanon scholars Living people 1962 births Yale University alumni University of the West Indies academics American humanists Existentialists Jewish existentialists Marxist humanists Temple University faculty African-American Jews

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