Beyond ontological blackness : an essay on African American religious and cultural criticism /

This provocative and densely argued study attempts to apply African American cultural criticism, ethics, and the views of European critical theorists (such as Habermas and Nietzche) to a perceived crisis of legitimation among African American religious thinkers. Anderson (Vanderbilt Divinity School argues that the paradigm of struggle and resistance and the politics of racial identity found among black liberation and womanist theologians, and throughout much of the African American religious tradition, have resulted in glorifying a "cult of black heroic genius" and an overemphasis on race in American society. Thus, black theologians and thinkers who have made the dilemmas of race a primary category of their hermeneutics have tended to reify race into a totalizing situation of "ontological blackness"; blackness is being itself. Anderson argues for a goal of "human fulfillment" where the differences among black people such as individuality, sexual orientation, gender, and class can also be emphasized and appreciated. Despite its brilliant insights into the potential for cultural criticism, the study is turgidly written and still bears the marks of a doctoral dissertation. Its author's ultimate goal of human fulfillment tends to be ahistorical, not grounded in African American history, and his assertion of transcendence tends toward reification. Above all, Anderson fails to examine his own social location as a cultural critic and his relationship to black communities. Extensive bibliography. Graduate; faculty. students and specialists. L. H. Mamiya; Vassar College

In this important contribution to both cultural studies and theology, Anderson articulates six themes: the reification of race in contemporary African American cultural and religious thinkers, designated "ontological blackness" ; the historic representational functions of race language; the determinative role of the cult of European genius associated with the Enlightenment; racial discourses that derive their legitimacy from ontological blackness; Nietzsche's "grotesque aesthetic," which undergirds new literary critiques of ontological blackness; and a plea that the legitimacy of African American cultural criticism be grounded on cultural fulfillment rather than resistance. The rhythm of description that permeates the book makes it a good pointer for historical (or, more properly, genealogical) research as well as contemporary cultural and political thought. Most notably, Anderson engages in an extended critique of James Cone's black theology; womanist theologies articulated by Katie Cannon, Jacquelyn Grant, and Delores Williams; Molefi Asante's Afrocentrism; and Shelby Steele's neoconservatism. That should generate controversy from all directions. As a contribution to critical cultural studies, it should also stimulate reflection on the construction of all sorts of categories, including not only race, but also Anderson's genealogical taxonomy of contemporary African American cultural critics, from James Cone and Katie Cannon to Cornell West, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. --Steve Schroeder