Critique of Black Reason (a John Hope Franklin Center Book) by Achille Mbembe (PDF)

Description

In Critique of Black Reason eminent critic Achille Mbembe offers a capacious genealogy of the category of Blackness—from the Atlantic slave trade to the present—to critically reevaluate history, racism, and the future of humanity. Mbembe teases out the intellectual consequences of the reality that Europe is no longer the world’s center of gravity while mapping the relations among colonialism, slavery, and contemporary financial and extractive capital. Tracing the conjunction of Blackness with the biological fiction of race, he theorizes Black reason as the collection of discourses and practices that equated Blackness with the nonhuman in order to uphold forms of oppression. Mbembe powerfully argues that this equation of Blackness with the nonhuman will serve as the template for all new forms of exclusion. With Critique of Black Reason, Mbembe offers nothing less than a map of the world as it has been constituted through colonialism and racial thinking while providing the first glimpses of a more just future.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I was introduced to this book from Always Already, a critical theory podcast that had an episode of Fanon. I was immediately captured by Mbembe’s claims and also to hear philosophical topics by an African philosopher. I actually got this book for a friend as a gift, then later got it as an EPUB, and surprisingly my friend returned the favor by ordering a personal copy for myself. Anyways, I have been completely enamored by Achille Mbembe’s ability to untangle the antagonisms between race and racialization. His methodological approaches are polemical but easy to read and comprehend. He offers a wide array of thought on extracting Blackness from the 1500s to our present time with the effects of surveillance by governing states. He presents not only a semiological account to the racialization of the Black body but also the optical implications of skin. It’s no wonder that much of his texts are inspired by Fanon’s theorizations of a corporeal and a racial epidermal schema. He fuses these two concepts using intricate prose that are at times overwhelming to cognitively digest. I feel that I have sought a text that speaks to the ontology and phenomenology of blackness in a concrete manner. Truly inspiring.

⭐This book gives you so much to think about what it means to be colonized and Black while trying to establish an identity. Honestly this book and Necropolitics should be standard books to read for high schoolers.

⭐The Crituque of Black Reason is a historical, comprehensive, and global analysis of how and why the “black” label was assigned by those in power to a heterogeneous gathering of Africa inhabitants. The label was, and still is, a convenient way to destroy history, lives, and pride. The task of (re)constructing identity falls in those who lost their past, not on the perpetrators. Current black movements are assessed. Different from other radical,analysis,Mabe,be is hopeful that solutions exist and can and should be achieved.

⭐My own review would not have said it as well: “…a book you want to shout about from the rooftops, so all your friends and colleagues will read it.”

⭐Mbembe is clearly one of the towering thinkers of his generation. This text is erudite, rigorous, and fascinating. It radically changed my thinking.

⭐Excellent condition.

⭐Mbembe offers an international voice to black studies. I find his work insightful, and it is good to move out of the African American frame and see the issues from a transnational angle. He is a clear writer too.

⭐Language is a medium of communication. However, if the medium becomes to complex, communication becomes useless.Too difficult to read. I don’t know why he chose to use such a high academic language. I could not complete the first chapter. I guess one will need probably two different types of dictionaries to understand a minimum of what he was trying to project. I bought the book because I am interested in the topic. But my head hurts every time I make an attempt and read a few lines. I will maybe try it in a different language ( German).

⭐One of the best books I have read this year! Mbembe gives the reader an accessible and comprehensive look into racialization in colonial history. It is very informative, and I recommend everyone read it.

⭐An important read for everyone who’s interested in the discourse around race and racism.

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