Death Before Sentencing
Making a case for substantial prison reform, this week's review examines the lack of accountability American county and local jail systems take for the avoidable deaths of detainees.
Posted on in Review of the Week
Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
To close out Black History Month, this week's review unpacks Black feminist philosophy to conceptualize Black aliveness, which opposes the emphasis of "social death" often found in current Black studies
Posted on February 28, 2022 in Review of the Week
Black Aliveness, or A Poetics of Being
Quashie, Kevin Everod. Duke, 2021
248p bibl index, 9781478011873 $99.95, 9781478014010 $25.95, 9781478021322
Quashie (English, Brown Univ.) decenters the focus on “social death” in current Black studies by a new emphasis on Black aliveness. Through a close reading of writings of Black women—Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Morrison, and Evie Shockley, among others—Quashie shows how their philosophical and creative thinking constitutes “worldmaking,” a generative source through which one can affirm a Black aliveness. In this worldmaking, blackness is capacious and relational. Black aliveness is asserted in the face of the persistence of death and violence in Black life—“antiblackness is part of blackness but not all of how or what blackness is” (p. 5). Being, for Quashie, is always a verb and always relational. It is about becoming; it is not founded in the concepts of possession or dominance; selfhood is not produced through a binary and antagonistic dialectic. Further, one does not subsume one’s own first personness. Quashie stresses “oneness,” which he insists is “not akin to individualism” (p. 53). He refuses to consider self, interiority, and volition in terms of the liberal humanist tenets of possessive individualism. This deeply poetic, rich book may be paradigm shifting.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.
Reviewer: J. A. Kegley, California State University, Bakersfield
Interdisciplinary Subjects: African and African American Studies
Subject: Humanities – Philosophy
Choice Issue: Feb 2022
Enjoy this week’s review? Check out more reviews of related titles:
- Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die
- The Meaning of Life and Death: Ten Classic Thinkers on the Ultimate Question
- Idleness: A Philosophical Essay
Related Posts
-
-
Making the MexiRican City
To commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month, this week's review analyzes the community-building and activist practices Mexican and Puerto Rican migrants employed in 20th-century Michigan.
Posted on in Review of the Week
-
Understanding and Teaching Contemporary US History Since Reagan
This week's review offers a roadmap for teaching contemporary US history, providing instructors with tips to tackle recent divisive topics and engage students with primary sources.
Posted on in Review of the Week
-
Laboring for Justice
Researching the experiences of day laborers in Denver, Colorado, this week's review examines wage theft and nefarious labor practices that reflect broader systemic labor issues in the US.
Posted on in Review of the Week