LEWIS R . GORDON

University of Connecticut, Philosophy, Faculty Member

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Lewis R. Gordon is a philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician (drums, other percussive instruments, and piano) who achieved his Ph.D. in philosophy with distinction from Yale university and his undergraduate degrees in philosophy and political science with honors, which included phi beta kappa and pi sigma alpha, through the Lehman Scholars Program at Lehman College of the City University of New York. Gordon’s research in philosophy is in Africana philosophy, philosophy of existence, phenomenology, social and political philosophy, philosophy of culture, race, and racism, aesthetics, philosophy of education, philosophy of science and technology, philosophy of human sciences, philosophy of psychiatry, philosophy of medicine, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis, teleological suspension of disciplinary studies, and multidimensional theory. Gordon is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Global Affairs and Head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Connecticut, where he also has affiliations in Global Studies, Judaic Studies, Caribbean and Latinx Studies, and Social and Critical Inquiry. He was previously the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University (2004–2013), where he also founded and directed the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought. His books are Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (Humanities, 1995), which will appear in a 30th Anniversary edition in the Rowman & Littlefield’s/Bloomsbury’s Humanity Books Classics series; Fanon and the Crisis of European Man (Routledge, 1995), whose 30th Anniversary edition will appear in 2025; Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age (Rowman & Littlefield/Bloomsbury, 1997), which won the Gustavus Myer Award for Outstanding work on Human Rights in North America; with T. D. Sharpley-Whiting and R. T. White, Fanon: A Critical Reader (Blackwell, 1996); Existence in Black (Routledge, 1997); Existentia Africana (Routledge, 2000); Disciplinary Decadence (Routledge, 2006), with Spanish trans., Decadencia disciplinaria (Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2013; San Cristóbal de Las Casas, 2014); with Jane Anna Gordon, A Companion to African-American Studies (Blackwell, 2006) and Not Only the Master’s Tools: African-American Studies in Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2006); An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (Cambridge UP, 2008); with Jane Anna Gordon, Of Divine Warning (Routledge, 2009); What Fanon Said (Fordham UP; Hurst Publishers; and Wits UP, 2015), with Swedish trans., Vad Fanon Sa. (Stockholm: TankeKraft förlag, 2016), Spanish trans. forthcoming; La sud prin nord-vest: Reflecţii existenţiale afrodiasporice ( Cluj, Romania, by IDEA Design & Print, 2016); with Jane Anna Gordon, Aaron Kamugisha, and Neil Roberts, Journeys in Caribbean Thought: The Paget Henry Reader (Rowman & Littlefield International/Bloomsbury, 2016); with Fernanda Bragato Frizzo, Geopolitics and Decolonization: Perspectives from the Global South (Rowman & Littlefield International/Bloomsbury, 2017); Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021); Fear of Black Consciousness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Penguin Books, 2022), German trans., Angst vor Schwarzem Bewusstsein (Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 2022) and Portuguese trans. Medo da Consciência Negra (Lisbon: Penguin-Portugal, 2022); Brazilian Portuguese trans., São Paulo: Todavia, 2023; Black Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge: Writings of Lewis R. Gordon, eds. Rozena Maart and Sayan Dey (London: Bloomsbury, 2023); “Not Bad for an N—, No?”/ «Pas mal pour un N—, n'est-ce pas? » (Daraja Press, 2023), with translations also in Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), Portuguese, and Spanish (by December 2023); and 论哲学、去殖民化与种族 (“On Philosophy, Decolonization, and Race”), trans. Li Beilei (Wuhan, China: Wuhan University Press). He co-edits, with Jane Anna Gordon and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, the Rowman & Littlefield International/Bloomsbury book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and, with Rozena Maart, Epifania Amoo-Adare, and Sayan Dey, the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World (Routledge-India). He also edits, with Jane Anna Gordon, the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs. He is Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Study; Distinguished Scholar at The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica; and a former president of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, for which he now serves as its chairperson of awards and global collaborations. In 2022, he received the Eminent Scholar Award from the Global Development Studies division of the International Studies Association, and in 2024 he was elected to the Royal Society of the Arts in the UK.

His public Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/LewisGordonPhilosopher/ and he is on Twitter @lewgord.
Supervisors: Maurice Alexander Natanson (main advisor, mentor), John E. Smith, and M. Shawn Copeland
Phone: (860) 486-9118
Address: Philosophy Department
205 Manchester Hall, 344 Mansfield Road
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT 06269-1054

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Papers by LEWIS R . GORDON

Jewish Diversity

Bloomsbury Religion in North America, 2021

Of Divine Warning

Race and Racism: A Symposium

Social Text, 1995

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Not only the master's tools: African-American studies in theory and practice

Introduction Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon Acknowledgments PART I: The Geopoliticality of ... more Introduction Lewis R. Gordon and Jane Anna Gordon Acknowledgments PART I: The Geopoliticality of African-American Epistemic Struggles Chapter 1: African-American Philosophy, Race, and teh Geography of Reason Lewis R. Gordon Chapter 2: Toward a Critique of Continental Reason: Africana Studies and the Decolonization of Imperial Cartographies in the Americas Nelson Maldonado-Torres Chapter 3: The Idea of Post-European Science: An Essay on Phenomenology and Africana Studies Kenneth Danziger Knies Chapter 4: On How We Mistook the Map for the Territory, and Re-Imprisoned Ourselves in Our Unbearable Wrongness of Being, of Desetre: Black Studies Toward the Human Project Sylvia Wynter PART II: Transfigurations of African-American Being and Doing Chapter 5: Pedagogy and the Philosophical Anthropology of African-American Slave Culture Stephen Nathan Haymes Chapter 6: Double Consciousness and the Problem of Political Legitimacy Jane Anna Gordon Chapter 7: On the Possibilities of Posthumanism, or How to Think Queerly in an Antiblack World David Ross Fryer Chapter 8: Philosophy in the African Tradition of Resistance: Issues of Human Freedom and Human Flourishing Maulana Karenga References Index About the Editors and Contributors

Race and ethics in International Relations

What Fanon Said

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Afro-Jewish ethics?

Jewish Religious and Philosophical Ethics, 2017

Elected Neofascism

The Philosophers' Magazine, 2017

Fanonian Concept of Violence

Encyclopedia of Black Studies, Oct 5, 2012

Not Only the Master's Tools

Routledge eBooks, Nov 17, 2015

Thinking Art in a Decolonial Way

Pluto Press eBooks, Mar 20, 2021

Existential Borders of Anonymity and Superfluous Invisibility

Invocations and Evocations of a Wayward Traveler Notes Works Consulted 187 Index 217 i I Contents... more Invocations and Evocations of a Wayward Traveler Notes Works Consulted 187 Index 217 i I Contents i I Jones is the living embodiment of the convergence of effective radical politics with existential humanistic commitments. Liberation, he argues, makes no sense without the understanding and recognition of the humanity in those who are to be liberated. As well, we should recognize the failure of such realization in ourselves and others. I came across Jones's work when I was a graduate student at Yale University in the early 1990s. In his work, I found a kindred spirit. Some years later, when I had organized a conference in honor of Frantz Fanon, perhaps the greatest Africana existential thinker, Jones contacted me to see if he could participate. The modesty of this giant is an aspect of the man that never ceases to surprise his admirers. I had not realized how much I admired the man until I found myself talking to him on the phone and clearly overwhelmed with joy at his request. Jones came to the conference as the keynote speaker, and Purdue University awarded this great man the African American Studies and Research Center Award for Outstanding Contribution to Philosophy and the African American Community. I have been fortunate enough to see Bill on several occasions since then, including his retirement celebration, which went from seven in the evening till one the next morning. So many people came to celebrate this wonderful man-including state, municipal, and federal officials, by way of declaring a William Jones Day and a William Jones Week-that it was clear to me that the love and respect I have for Bill was shared, indeed, by a large community of people in and out of the academy. Bill always had faith in the importance of Africana thought. It is with that continued love and respect in mind that this volume is dedicated to him. Several of the essays in this volume are expansions of essays that have previously appeared elsewhere. Chapter 1 is based on the introduction to Existence in Black (1997). Chapter 2 is based on an article I wrote for Small Axe (1998). Chapter 3 is based on my contribution to Frederick Douglass: A Critical Reader, edited by Frank Kirkland and Bill Lawson (1999). Chapter 4, is an expansion of an article on Du Bois that appeared in The Annals of the American Academy of Preface, with Acknowledgments r xi Social and Political Science (2000) and chapter 5 is an expansion of an article that appeared in Sophia: A Journal of Philosophy (1996), which is published in the Philippines. Chapter 6 appeared in Men's Bodies, Men's Gods: Images of Masculinity in a (Post-) Christian Culture, edited by Björn Krondorfer (1995) and chapter 7 is based on an article that appeared in the Journal of Religious Ethics (1999), entitled "Pan-Africanism and African-American Liberation in a Postmodern World." That said, I would like to thank Paget Henry for his encouragement and friendship over the years, and I would like to thank my wonderful graduate students for reading through various stages of this project:

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Chapter 2. Franz Boas in Africana Philosophy

Yale University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018

White Privilege and the Problem with Affirmative Action

Polycarp A. Ikuenobe, Philosophical Perspectives on Communalism and Morality in African Traditions

Philosophy in review, 2007

7 - The Market Colonization of Intellectuals

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ELEVEN. Can Men Worship?Reflections on Male Bodies in Bad Faith and a Theology of Authenticity

New York University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2020

Race in the Dialectics of Culture

A Political Companion to W. E. B. Du Bois

Sartre and Fanon on Embodied Bad Faith

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2010

In April 1961, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon met in a cafe in Rome. The m... more In April 1961, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon met in a cafe 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 advantage of that golden opportunity of talking to Sartre for weeks without rest if necessary. Yet, exhaustion prevailed, although the legendary meeting consisted of non-stop conversation for nearly three days. Sartre, impressed by the young revolutionary, had agreed to write the preface for The Wretched of the Earth, a work reputedly composed over ten strained weeks, and he and the editorial collective also agreed to publish the first chapter in the June issue of Les Temps modernes. Fanon’s health worsened as the year went on. He eventually went to Bethesda, Maryland, for treatment in late November, where he was detained by the CIA and denied treatment. He died on 6 December from pneumonia.