School of Thought: Part 3: Lewis R. Gordon – What Fanon Said. Wednesday 7th October at 10.30am

Lewis R. Gordon returns as the next in our remarkable series of radical padkos visitors for CLP’s 2015 “School of Thought”. We’re so grateful and humbled to have had Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar address and engage us in the previous session. It was profoundly insightful, and very productive in relation to our own thinking of emancipatory struggle here. The “School of Thought” continues to be a brilliant space of critical engagement for CLP’s padkos comrades and colleagues. In our ongoing work at CLP, the critical thinking of grassroots militants remains our principal point of entry and departure for emancipatory politics and thought. And there’s no question that this work benefits, and benefits from, mutual dialogue with other emancipatory thinkers and theorists who also take the real thought and practice of liberatory praxis in other places around the world seriously.

Many of us were blown away by Lewis R. Gordon’s last visit with us, and we are thrilled to host him once again. Lewis has a great new book out called What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction to his Life and Thought. Raúl Zibechi, the Urugyan-born Latin-American militant, theorist and writer, wrote just this week that “Frantz Fanon’s thinking has returned. Five decades after his death … the renewed interest in Fanon goes way beyond his books and writings. I believe we’re dealing with an epochal interest, in the double sense of the current period that our societies are crossing through and the birth of powerful anti-systemic movements championed by diverse peoples from below. I want to say that we are seeing a political interest more than academic or literary curiosity”.

Gordon is an Afro-Jewish philosopher, political thinker, educator, and musician, who was born on the island of Jamaica and grew up in the Bronx, New York. Once again, Lewis is in South Africa as the current “Nelson Mandela Distinguished Visiting Professor” at the university currently called Rhodes. In addition to his new book on Fanon, he wrote the Cambridge University Press’ An Introduction to Africana Philosophy (2008), as well as the Introduction for the new edition of Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like.

DO NOT MISS THIS ONE! Get to the CLP office in Burger St on Wednesday 7^thOctober at 10.30. Please let us know if you are coming – email:padkos@churchland.org.za or call the office at (033) 2644 380.

Please note that Lewis R. Gordon will also conduct a seminar entitled “Race, Racism and Higher Education” for the Paulo Freire Institute on the ‘Maritzburg UKZN campus on the same day from 2-3:30pm in the Commerce Building, room C3.

Heads up for the final class of the “School of Thought”: the dates for Firoze Manji are now confirmed for November! He’ll do a seminar on the ‘Maritzburg campus of UKZN on Thursday 5^th, and a CLP Padkos session on Friday the 6^th November. Block that Friday afternoon off now! With the year-end approaching and the 2015 “School of Thought” closing, we’ll follow Firoze’s class with an end-of-term bash.