This edition of the Recently Published Book Spotlight features George Yancy: A Critical Introduction (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), publishing November 15, 2021. Edited by Kimberley Ducey (Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Winnipeg), Clevis Headley (Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University), and Joe R. Feagin (Distinguished Professor and the Ella C. McFadden Professor in Sociology at Texas A&M), this collection features perspectives from a wide range of disciplines, from philosophy, education, and psychology to communication, peace and conflict studies, and religion. This book highlights the extensive contributions George Yancy has made to philosophy and the transformative power of his work. Copies are available for preorder now.
About this collection, George Yancy said: “It was 20 years ago, 2001, when I edited Cornel West: A Critical Reader as a philosophy graduate student at Duquesne University. To my knowledge, this was the first time in the American philosophical context that a book was dedicated and published on the critical work of a major living Black American philosopher by his philosophical colleagues. For that reason alone, the text was groundbreaking. Given the paucity of Black Americans within the predominantly white and male professional field of philosophy, the selection of a single living Black American philosopher for this dedication was rarer. Cornel West wrote an extensive and engaging response to his interlocutors, which included such philosophical thinkers as Hilary W. Putnam, James H. Cone, Iris Marion Young, Charles Mills, Lewis R. Gordon, Clevis Headley, Eduardo Mendieta, Nada Elia, and others.
Needless to say, I had no idea that 20 years later, I would become the subject of a book dedicated to examining, exploring, and extending my philosophical corpus within such areas as critical philosophy of race, critical whiteness studies, critical phenomenology (especially within the context of embodied lived experience), my work within critical pedagogy, and my contributions to Africana philosophy.
George Yancy: A Critical Introduction, consists of contributions from a critical cadre of scholars both young and senior. I am honored by the generational appeal, conceptual nuance, and affective weight, that my philosophical work has sustained. The editors, Kimberley Ducey, Clevis Headley, and Joe R. Feagin, are brilliant scholars who have published incredible work within the context of white supremacy through the lens of both philosophy and sociology. Who could ask for better editors? It is to the three of them, and to the passionately engaged contributors, that I give thanks for discerning something of importance in my philosophical work that was worth their precious time and fecund thoughtfulness. I am especially thankful that the editors and each of the contributors are aware of the importance that I give to the immediacy of suffering and how it plays a key and indispensable role in how I think about what motivates the practice of philosophizing for me. In their exegetical mapping of my work, I am especially grateful to Judith Butler for writing the Foreword to the book. If I had an ethical motif that captured the core of what I am about philosophically, Judith’s line says it all: “He is called upon to call upon us.” Thanks for being my witness, Judith.”
The following is an interview with editors Kimberley Ducey and Clevis Headley.
Why did you feel the need to put together this work?
We feel the need to put together this work because the volume is evidence that Professor Yancy produces scholarly work of major importance and significance, particularly work of major interdisciplinary relevance. Additionally, he is deserving of credit and recognition for institutionalizing a theoretical framework that supports the creation of new questions, new research objects, new styles of thinking and theoretical structures that permit the framing of new truths. Finally, nowadays white racism includes pronounced white racist illiteracy, as shown in the many attacks on Professor Yancy and his work, including following the publication of “Dear White America” in the New York Times philosophy column, “The Stone.” It was the backlash he received in response to “Dear White America” that sparked the idea for this tribute. This volume is an act of solidarity and of great admiration for the man and his work.
What topics are discussed in the work, and why are they important to discuss?
Contributors apply perspectives from disciplines including philosophy, sociology, education, communication, peace and conflict studies, religion, and psychology. Their work deals with topics such as race, racism, whiteness, race and pedagogy, the white imaginary, Black bodies, anti-black world, tarrying, the gift, the sutured (white) self, wounding the self, collective responsibility, collective guilt, etc. These topics are important because they emerge from persistent and deep structural challenges and problems that continue to haunt U.S. society. As the renowned U.S. philosopher Judith Butler writes in the Foreword:
“Throughout Yancy’s work, we find less a philosophy of emotions than a passionate form of philosophizing. Lives are at stake in this form of thinking, and one is made to feel this existential urgency.”
In sum, this collection gives Professor Yancy’s transformative work in critical philosophy of race, critical whiteness studies, critical phenomenology of race, especially racial embodiment, and Africana philosophy the critical attention it has long deserved. As the renowned U.S. philosopher Judith Butler also writes in the Foreword:
“This volume honors one of the most important and powerful philosophers of our time, singular in his vision and tenacity.”
Did you encounter any problems getting this work published?
We encountered no problems getting the work published as the publisher of the volume was wholeheartedly committed to bringing the volume to press.
Which of your insights or conclusions do you find the most meaningful or the most exciting?
The insight that we find most meaningful is the extent to which mainstream liberal discourse is not readily effective in facilitating the critical working through of the constellations of problems surrounding race and racism. The analytical and theoretical thrust of Professor Yancy’s work, while being cognizant of not being able to completely displace liberalism, is to think about race and racism through the prism of other concepts and metaphors.
Second, we do not think that it is hyperbolic to claim that instead of searching for a semantics of race, Professor Yancy thinks that more can be gained from pursuing a hermeneutics of race or an existential phenomenological perspective on race that is committed to revealing the calcified strata of race as a socio-cultural phenomenon. He reaches this conclusion because he realizes that the chameleonic features of race preclude it from possessing sharp edges and boundaries.
What effect do you hope this work will have? How does it contribute to existing literature?
We hope that this work will have the effect of underscoring the importance and significance of philosophical work done by Africana philosophers. Among other things, we hope the work will confirm the importance of epistemic pluralism, of why it is necessary to have the blooming of alternative counter-frames. Specifically, we hope this work will influence analytic philosophers to appreciate the valuable contributions that alternative approaches to philosophy can make with regard to issues of race and racism and why there are serious limits to abstract, formal analysis.
The volume contributes to existing literature by providing not only critical philosophical readings of Professor Yancy’s work but also bringing crucial interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on his work. The volume also confirms the kind of valuable contributions philosophers working with the tradition of existential phenomenology can make to the debates about race, racism, whiteness, etc.
How did your past work influence your work on this project?
It is not so much the question of how our past work directly influenced our work with this project, but the fact that working on this volume confirmed our convictions concerning the relevance and significance of Professor ‘s Yancy work. As we collected and read through the various contributions to this volume, we were constantly exposed to other scholars validating many of our insights about Professor Yancy’s work.
As Professor Yancy writes in the Afterword: “Each of the contributors within this book attempts to “think with me, come closer.””
How have readers responded? (Or how do you hope they will respond?)
Anita Allen, the Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, has called the book
an “essential collection” that “pays tribute to the most prolific, contemporary philosopher of race, culture and public values in the United States.”
The public intellectual, philosopher, political activist, and social critic, Cornel West had this to say:
“George Yancy is a towering figure on the contemporary philosophical landscape. His piercing intellect, moral courage and sensitive soul lead him and us to forms of analysis, zones of compassion and options for praxis in an unprecedented manner. George Yancy is what philosophy should embody and enact in our dim and grim 21st century!”
The British-Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has said:
“George Yancy has been a vital voice in philosophy for many a long year. A diverse group of scholars working in many disciplines explore for us what they have learned from him, inviting us into the world of his insights.”
We are inclined to believe that other readers will also respond positively and affirmatively to this volume. Both its interdisciplinary trajectory and its philosophical depth will prove to be palatable and complementary to readers already familiar with Professor Yancy’s work and to new readers.
How is this work relevant to the contemporary world, historical ideas, or everyday life?
The volume is relevant to the contemporary world, historical ideas, and everyday life because race and racism infused these various sites. Despite the misleading metaphor of “colorblindness” and other such ill-advised notions, we need to be able to sensibly, imaginatively, and reasonably talk and think about race and racism and not engage in bad faith acts similar to a child believing that an object ceases to exist because he/she closes his/her eyes.
What about Professor Yancy’s work have you found the most inspiring?
In the Foreword, the renowned U.S. philosopher Judith Butler writes about Professor Yancy’s classroom. “He describes his classroom as full of “dangerous spaces” where, if one were to take up the challenge of thought, one would be undone by what one comes to know,” writes Butler. “What astonishes this reader,” continues Butler, “is that he did not give up on philosophy but endeavored to make it anew, responsive to the suffering of our times. What moves me time and again is that Yancy still reaches for those who mindlessly or avidly reproduce white supremacy at the expense of Black lives and all those who suffer from racism, have died from its lethal effect, or bear witness to those enormous losses. He will let no one take from him the danger and the gift of loving wisdom, the wisdom of love. The only question is whether those who continue the destructive life of racism will dismantle the world of their supremacy, for knowing thyself means knowing, and taking apart, that violence in the name another, one that Yancy holds out for us in his passionate and daring pages.”
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Professor Yancy recalls a painful watershed teaching moment:
I wanted to model for my students what it is like to be a contemporary philosopher who remains steadfast in the face of hatred. I wanted them to internalize something of what it means to practice philosophy, to love wisdom, in the face of danger, of threats of violence and intolerance. Yet, there was a part of me that failed that day.
My composure had collapsed. I seemed to have lost my bearing, my confidence was shaken. I was pushed to rethink what I assumed was a mission of love, the kind of love that refuses to hide and requires profound forms of vulnerability. I had wanted to help heal our broken world, to exalt love in an otherwise ethically catastrophic America.
As the contributors Ryan J. Johnson and Biko Mandela Gray write in response to this moment:
“The unfortunate reality is that, despite Yancy’s love-laden calls to a kind of critical self-reflexivity, the burden fell—as these things often do—upon him. … As Yancy so poignantly shows us, to be a problem is risky business.”
Clevis Headley
Clevis Headley is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Headley has published in the areas of Critical Philosophy of Race, Africana/Afro-Caribbean philosophy, philosophy of language, and analytic philosophy. He has made considerable contributions to these fields through publications in such journals as Semiotica, Man and World: International Philosophical Journal, Diogenes, Shibboleths: A Journal of Comparative Theory, Philosophia Africana, and the Journal for Social Philosophy, in addition to contributing chapters to numerous books in his areas of specialization. Previously, Dr. Headley coedited two books, Shifting the Geography of Reason (2007) and Haiti and the Americas (2013). In addition to being an active member of many philosophical organizations, Dr. Headley was the cofounder (with Lewis Gordon and Paget Henry) of the Caribbean Philosophical Association.
Kimberley Ducey
Kimberley Ducey is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Winnipeg in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Dr. Ducey's books include Revealing Britain's Systemic Racism: The Case of Meghan Markle and the Royal Family (Routledge Press); Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (Routledge Press); Elite White Men Ruling: Who, What, When, Where, and How (Routledge Press); Systemic Racism Theory: Making Liberty, Justice, and Democracy Real (Palgrave Macmillan); and Liberation Sociology (Paradigm Publishers). Her work has appeared in such journals as Canadian Ethnic Studies; College Teaching; Critical Criminology; Genocide Studies and Prevention; and the Journal on Excellence in College Teaching.
Joe R. Feagin
Dr. Joe R. Feagin is Distinguished Professor and Ella C. McFadden Professor in Sociology at Texas A & M University in College Station, Texas. He has done much internationally recognized research on U.S. racism, sexism, and political economy issues. He has written or cowritten seventy-four scholarly books and 200-plus scholarly articles in his social science areas. His books include Systemic Racism (2006); White Party, White Government (2012); Latinos Facing Racism (2014, with J. Cobas); How Blacks Built America (2015); Elite White Men Ruling (2017, with K. Ducey); Racist America (4th ed., 2019, with K. Ducey); Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education (2020, with E. Chun); and The White Racial Frame (3rd ed., 2020). He is the recipient of a 2012 Soka Gakkai International-USA Social Justice Award, the 2013 American Association for Affirmative Action’s Arthur Fletcher Lifetime Achievement Award, and three major American Sociological Association awards: W. E. B. Du Bois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, the Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award (for research in the African American scholarly tradition), and the Public Understanding of Sociology Award.
George Yancy
George Yancy is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, one of the college's highest honors. He is also the University of Pennsylvania’s inaugural fellow in the Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Program (2019-2020 academic year). He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books, including Black Bodies, White Gazes; Look, A White; Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America; and Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. His most recent books include a collection of critical interviews entitled, Until Our Lungs Give Out: Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), and a coedited book (with philosopher Bill Bywater) entitled, In Sheep’s Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism (Roman & Littlefield, 2024).
Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen is the APA Blog's Diversity and Inclusion Editor and Research Editor. She graduated from the London School of Economics with an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy in 2023 and currently works in strategic communications. Her philosophical interests include conceptual engineering, normative ethics, philosophy of technology, and how to live a good life.
