Black Consciousness with Lewis Gordon

11/19/24 • 60 min

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Do you need black skin to be Black? How might concepts such as white privilege be limiting our understanding of how racism works? In Episode 117 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with philosopher Lewis Gordon about his book, Fear of Black Consciousness. They talk through the history of anti-Black racism, the existential concept of bad faith, why Rachel Dolezal might have Black consciousness, and Frantz Fanon’s experience of being called a racial slur by a white child on a train. From the American Blues to the Caribbean movement of Negritude, this episode is full of insight into Black liberation and White centeredness. In the bonus, Ellie and David go into greater detail about how Black liberation is connected to love.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed:
Steve Bantu Biko, I Write What I Like
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Edouard Glissant, Introduction à une Poétique du Divers
Jane Anna Gordon, “Legitimacy from Modernity’s Underside: Potentiated Double Consciousness”
Lewis Gordon, Bad Faith and Antiblack racism
Lewis Gordon, Fear of Black Consciousness
Rebecca Tuvel, “In Defense of Transracialism”

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Previous Episode

Extinction

Dinosaurs, mammoths, ibexes, frogs: a great deal of animals have gone the way of the dodo. Are we next? And would the world be better off without us? In Episode 116 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about extinction, from Christian eschatology, to the perils of Anthropocene, to cutting-edge de-extinction technology. They turn to animal ethics and scientific dilemmas in search of the ethical approaches that might equip us to think about the extinction of animals, and perhaps even our own. Plus, in the bonus, they talk love, cyborgs, tech bros, and the ethics of the future.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Thom Van Dooren, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Todd May, Should We Go Extinct?
Jacob Sherkow and Henry Greely, “What if Extinction is not Forever?”
Émile Torres, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation
Children of Men (2006) dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Episode 46. Anti-Natalism

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Next Episode

Comfort

Get comfy as you listen to this episode! In episode 118 of Overthink, Ellie and David discuss all things comfortable...and uncomfortable. They talk through the conflation of comfort and luxury, modern architecture’s prioritization of comfort, and whether our need for comfort is the reason for our burning planet. With everything from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to “the comfort-industrial complex,” this episode will have you questioning what it takes for us to lead a full and happy life. Plus, in the bonus they get into the meaning of the phrase ‘too close for comfort’, alcohol as a destructive form of comfort, and the importance of attachment theory.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
Daniel Barber, “After Comfort”
J L Bottorff et al., “The phenomenology of comfort”
Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
Ryan Heavy Head, “Blackfoot Influence on Abraham Maslow, Presented by Narcisse Kainai and Ryan Heavy Head at the University of Montana”
Lynnette Leeseberg Stamler and Ann Malinowski, “Comfort: exploration of the concept in nursing.”
A. H. Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation
Teju Ravilochan, “The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow’s Hierarchy”.
Peter Sloterdijk, Spheres trilogy
Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

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Overthink - Black Consciousness with Lewis Gordon

Transcript

00:00:14.839

Hello and welcome to Overthink. The podcast where two friends, who are also philosophy professors, put ideas in dialogue with the everyday. I'm Dr. Ellie Anderson. And I'm Dr. David Peña Guzman. I want to remind you here at the beginning of the episode that Overthink is free for you to listen to but it is not free for us to make and there are two ways to support us if you would like. The first is to join our Patreon where you can get access to extended episodes. Ever