Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiesis in Black

Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study

by R.A. Judy

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.

Genres: Nonfiction

624 pages, Paperback

Published October 23, 2020

About the author

R. A. Judy (aka Ronald A.T. 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.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m sure there is a brilliant mind behind it but I found it simply impossible to read. If you’re going to write a massive tome using only the most high-falutin terminology and an endless stream of words that are either neologisms or that I’ve simply never encountered before, I think that also raises the bar on clarifying towards that readership what makes this investment worthwhile. I came away from it pretty much empty-handed.

[Basil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll revisit this one day when my brain is bigger

[Tapji Garba · Rating 3 out of 5]

um....so lots of thoughts in this book. Lots of interesting one's! and some of them well argued. But not really sure how it holds together as a book? The overarching argument doesn't really play a major role in the book as a whole. There are definitely sections that I wouldn't mind returning to though.

[Jessica Zu]

没看懂。不明觉历