LGS Blog
Listen to Howard Caygill on the Black Panthers
Listen to the first in ten lectures on Philosophy, Politics and the Arts, offered jointly by The Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) and the London Graduate School in conjunction with Central Saint Martins – click here to listen:
Howard Caygill – Philosophy and The Black Panthers
Howard Caygill reflects on the role played by philosophy in forming and articulating the political tactics and strategies of the Black Panthers (originally, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense), the revolutionary African-Amercian organization formed in California in 1966. He suggests that philosophy provided a position from which the Black Panthers developed a radical politics of race in the USA beyond the religious orientations of the Civil Rights movement and the Nation of Islam. Focusing on the work of Huey Newton, the talk emphasises the role played by Plato and Nietzsche in the formulation of a politics of visibility and a performative concept of cultural and political intervention. It also critically considers the reflections of the French writer Jean Genet on the Black Panthers practice of resistance.