Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiesis in Black

In Sentient Flesh R. A. Judy takes up freedman Tom Windham's 1937 remark "we should have our liberty 'cause . . . us is human flesh" as a point of departure for an extended meditation on questions of the human, epistemology, and the historical ways in which the black being is understood. Drawing on numerous fields, from literary theory and musicology, to political theory and phenomenology, as well as Greek and Arabic philosophy, Judy engages literary texts and performative practices such as music and dance that express knowledge and conceptions of humanity appositional to those grounding modern racialized capitalism. Operating as critiques of Western humanism, these practices and modes of being-in-the-world-which he theorizes as "thinking in disorder," or "poiēsis in black"-foreground the irreducible concomitance of flesh, thinking, and personhood. As Judy demonstrates, recognizing this concomitance is central to finding a way past the destructive force of ontology that still holds us in thrall. Erudite and capacious, Sentient Flesh offers a major intervention in the black study of life.

Author: R. A. Judy
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 10/23/2020
Pages: 624
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 2.33lbs
Size: 10.00h x 7.00w x 1.25d
ISBN13: 9781478011026
ISBN10: 1478011025
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Black Studies (Global)
- Philosophy | General
- Literary Criticism | Semiotics & Theory

About the Author
R. A. Judy is Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of (Dis)forming the American Canon: African-Arabic Slave Narratives and the Vernacular.