7 05, 2021

African American Existentialism: DuBois, Locke, Thurman, and King

By |2021-05-07T19:34:49+00:00May 7th, 2021|Featured, Theory|0 Comments

Race today is often presented as a social construct. But social constructions, as Black people know all too well, can create real existential crises. Philosophers of the Black Experience writing during the Modern Era of the African American Freedom Struggle (1896-1975) engaged questions of freedom, existence, and the struggles associated with the experiences of being Black in America.

13 11, 2020

The Ecstatic Agony of Jeffrey Toobin

By |2020-12-11T21:12:58+00:00November 13th, 2020|Practice, Theory|0 Comments

Mr. Toobin is a celebrity.  Therefore, he has no right (as it were) to lower himself to our level or at least not in such a way that we are made aware of it. Discretion is the better part of ardor, especially for those in the public eye. Since those who wield power (control over other people’s destinies) belong to the priestly caste of society, they must relinquish the life of the peasant in exchange for their rank as sanctified members of the hierarchy. The peasant is no better than an animal; the priest must not descend to the level of the peasant, or be witnessed doing so, lest the peasantry become disillusioned, and begin to question their lack of status, let alone, rebel against priestly authority. That violates the tacit social contract (or unstated Freudian bargain) that we make with our living symbols of supernal grace.

25 07, 2019

Freud, Woodstock, and Crowd Behavior

By |2019-08-08T14:38:37+00:00July 25th, 2019|Arts & Letters, Theory|0 Comments

When you have a master or a leader, there’s always another master somewhere fighting them off or trying to contest them. The masters of other people can look pretty annoying to you, if not contemptible, irrelevant, reprehensible. I think about Beatlemania, where people were just horrified — What the hell is going on? These four guys with weird floppy haircuts. Or with Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, or any of the other rock stars. The disgust and terror that people have that others are caught up.

Go to Top