Search results for ""Author Vincent W. Lloyd""

Martin Luther King Jr. has charisma—as does Adolf Hitler. So do Brad Pitt, Mother Teresa, and many a high school teacher. Charisma marks, or masks, power; it legitimates but also attracts suspicion. Sociologists often view charisma as an irrational, unstable source of authority, superseded by the rational, bureaucratic legitimacy of modernity. Yet charisma endures in the modern world; perhaps it is reinvigorated in the postmodern, as the notoriety of celebrities, politicians, and New Age gurus attests. Is charisma a tool of oppression, or can it help the fight against oppression? Can reexamining the concept of charisma teach us anything useful about contemporary movements for social justice?In Defense of Charisma develops an account of moral charisma that weaves insights from politics, ethics, and religion together with reflections on contemporary culture. Vincent W. Lloyd distinguishes between authoritarian charisma, which furthers the interests of the powerful, naturalizing racism, patriarchy, and elitism, and democratic charisma, which prompts observers to ask new questions and discover new possibilities. At its best, charisma can challenge the way we see ourselves and our world, priming us to struggle for justice. Exploring the biblical Moses alongside Charlton Heston’s performance in The Ten Commandments, the image of Martin Luther King Jr., together with tweets from the Black Lives Matter movement, and the novels of Harper Lee and Sherman Alexie juxtaposed with the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, In Defense of Charisma challenges readers to turn away from the blinding charisma of celebrities toward the humbler moral charisma of the neighbor, colleague, or relative.

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Black theology has lost its direction. To reclaim its original power and to advance racial justice struggles today black theology must fully embrace blackness and theology. But multiculturalism and religious pluralism have boxed in black theology, forcing it to speak in terms dictated by a power structure founded on white supremacy. In Religion of the Field Negro, Vincent W. Lloyd advances and develops black theology immodestly, privileging the perspective of African Americans and employing a distinctively theological analysis. As Lloyd argues, secularism is entangled with the disciplining impulses of modernity, with neoliberal economics, and with Western imperialism – but it also contaminates and castrates black theology. Inspired by critics of secularism in other fields, Religion of the Field Negro probes the subtle ways in which religion is excluded and managed in black culture. Using Barack Obama, Huey Newton, and Steve Biko as case studies, it shows how the criticism of secularism is the prerequisite of all criticism, and it shows how criticism and grassroots organizing must go hand in hand. But scholars of secularism too often ignore race, and scholars of race too often ignore secularism. Scholars of black theology too often ignore the theoretical insights of secular black studies scholars, and race theorists too often ignore the critical insights of religious thinkers. Religion of the Field Negro brings together vibrant scholarly conversations that have remained at a distance from each other until now. Weaving theological sources, critical theory, and cultural analysis, this book offers new answers to pressing questions about race and justice, love and hope, theorizing and organizing, and the role of whites in black struggle. The insights of James Cone are developed together with those of James Baldwin, Sylvia Wynter, and Achille Mbembe, all in the service of developing a political-theological vision that motivates us to challenge the racist paradigms of white supremacy.

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Martin Luther King Jr. has charisma—as does Adolf Hitler. So do Brad Pitt, Mother Teresa, and many a high school teacher. Charisma marks, or masks, power; it legitimates but also attracts suspicion. Sociologists often view charisma as an irrational, unstable source of authority, superseded by the rational, bureaucratic legitimacy of modernity. Yet charisma endures in the modern world; perhaps it is reinvigorated in the postmodern, as the notoriety of celebrities, politicians, and New Age gurus attests. Is charisma a tool of oppression, or can it help the fight against oppression? Can reexamining the concept of charisma teach us anything useful about contemporary movements for social justice?In Defense of Charisma develops an account of moral charisma that weaves insights from politics, ethics, and religion together with reflections on contemporary culture. Vincent W. Lloyd distinguishes between authoritarian charisma, which furthers the interests of the powerful, naturalizing racism, patriarchy, and elitism, and democratic charisma, which prompts observers to ask new questions and discover new possibilities. At its best, charisma can challenge the way we see ourselves and our world, priming us to struggle for justice. Exploring the biblical Moses alongside Charlton Heston’s performance in The Ten Commandments, the image of Martin Luther King Jr., together with tweets from the Black Lives Matter movement, and the novels of Harper Lee and Sherman Alexie juxtaposed with the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, In Defense of Charisma challenges readers to turn away from the blinding charisma of celebrities toward the humbler moral charisma of the neighbor, colleague, or relative.

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Black theology has lost its direction. To reclaim its original power and to advance racial justice struggles today black theology must fully embrace blackness and theology. But multiculturalism and religious pluralism have boxed in black theology, forcing it to speak in terms dictated by a power structure founded on white supremacy. In Religion of the Field Negro, Vincent W. Lloyd advances and develops black theology immodestly, privileging the perspective of African Americans and employing a distinctively theological analysis. As Lloyd argues, secularism is entangled with the disciplining impulses of modernity, with neoliberal economics, and with Western imperialism – but it also contaminates and castrates black theology. Inspired by critics of secularism in other fields, Religion of the Field Negro probes the subtle ways in which religion is excluded and managed in black culture. Using Barack Obama, Huey Newton, and Steve Biko as case studies, it shows how the criticism of secularism is the prerequisite of all criticism, and it shows how criticism and grassroots organizing must go hand in hand. But scholars of secularism too often ignore race, and scholars of race too often ignore secularism. Scholars of black theology too often ignore the theoretical insights of secular black studies scholars, and race theorists too often ignore the critical insights of religious thinkers. Religion of the Field Negro brings together vibrant scholarly conversations that have remained at a distance from each other until now. Weaving theological sources, critical theory, and cultural analysis, this book offers new answers to pressing questions about race and justice, love and hope, theorizing and organizing, and the role of whites in black struggle. The insights of James Cone are developed together with those of James Baldwin, Sylvia Wynter, and Achille Mbembe, all in the service of developing a political-theological vision that motivates us to challenge the racist paradigms of white supremacy.

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Why Black dignity is the paradigm of all dignity and Black philosophy is the starting point of all philosophy “A bold attempt to determine the conditions of—and the means for achieving—racial justice.”—Kirkus Reviews This radical work by one of the leading young scholars of Black thought delineates a new concept of Black dignity, yet one with a long history in Black writing and action. Previously in the West, dignity has been seen in two ways: as something inherent in one’s station in life, whether acquired or conferred by birth; or more recently as an essential condition and right common to all of humanity. In what might be called a work of observational philosophy—an effort to describe the philosophy underlying the Black Lives Matter movement—Vincent W. Lloyd defines dignity as something performative, not an essential quality but an action: struggle against domination. Without struggle, there is no dignity. He defines anti-Blackness as an inescapable condition of American life, and the slave’s struggle against the master as the “primal scene” of domination and resistance. Exploring the way Black writers such as Frederick Douglass, Langston Hughes, and Audre Lorde have dealt with themes such as Black rage, Black love, and Black magic, Lloyd posits that Black dignity is the paradigm of all dignity and, more audaciously, that Black philosophy is the starting point of all philosophy.

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This anthology draws bold comparisons between secularist strategies to contain, privatize, and discipline religion and the treatment of racialized subjects by the American state. Specializing in history, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, and political theory, contributors expose secularism's prohibitive practices in all facets of American society and suggest opportunities for change.

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This anthology draws bold comparisons between secularist strategies to contain, privatize, and discipline religion and the treatment of racialized subjects by the American state. Specializing in history, literature, anthropology, theology, religious studies, and political theory, contributors expose secularism's prohibitive practices in all facets of American society and suggest opportunities for change.

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