A. Todd Franklin – författare

Explores convergences between the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and African American thought.Critical Affinities is the first book to explore the multifaceted relationship between the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and various dimensions of African American thought. Exploring the connections between these two unlikely interlocutors, the contributors focus on unmasking and understanding the root causes and racially inflected symptoms of various manifestations of cultural malaise. They contemplate the operative warrant for reconstituted conceptions of racial identity and recognize the existential and social recuperative potential of the will to power. In so doing, they simultaneously foster and exemplify a nuanced understanding of what both traditions regard as "the art of the cultural physician." The contributors connote daring scholarly attempts to explicate the ways in which clarifying the critical affinities between Nietzsche and various expressions of African American thought not only enriches our understanding of each, but also enhances our ability to realize the broader ends of advancing the prospects for social and psychological flourishing.

Explores convergences between the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and African American thought.Critical Affinities is the first book to explore the multifaceted relationship between the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and various dimensions of African American thought. Exploring the connections between these two unlikely interlocutors, the contributors focus on unmasking and understanding the root causes and racially inflected symptoms of various manifestations of cultural malaise. They contemplate the operative warrant for reconstituted conceptions of racial identity and recognize the existential and social recuperative potential of the will to power. In so doing, they simultaneously foster and exemplify a nuanced understanding of what both traditions regard as "the art of the cultural physician." The contributors connote daring scholarly attempts to explicate the ways in which clarifying the critical affinities between Nietzsche and various expressions of African American thought not only enriches our understanding of each, but also enhances our ability to realize the broader ends of advancing the prospects for social and psychological flourishing.

Open Casket brings political and philosophical clarity to bear on the brutal murder of Emmitt Till and his mother’s decision to show the world her son's body.The open casket is a central motif, a political and ethical focal point, for thinking about Mamie Till-Mobley’s pain and suffering and her profound act of truth-telling as she wanted the world to bear witness to the gratuitous, despicable, and atrocious dimensions of anti-Blackness. The critical and powerful essays within this book capture both the horror of Emmett Till's murder/lynching and the powerful agency and the indomitable Black maternal love and courage that Mamie Till-Mobley demonstrated. Through the open casket, Mamie Till-Mobley reclaimed her son's body, and re-signified his dignity and familial-relational meaning to white America, Black America, and the world. It was her agency—in spite of the horror of his disfigured body and the unbearable affective weight that she experienced by such a site/sight—that forced white America to witness the terror of anti-Blackness, to tarry with its own egregious systemic racism.In solemn recognition of the 70th anniversary of Till's murder, George Yancy and A. Todd Franklin gather interdisciplinary voices to articulate the political, spiritual, and existential significance of Black hope in the face of seeming hopelessness.