In a collection of fifteen essays, Robert Bernasconi argues for a holistic approach to race that integrates the concrete experience of racism faced by individuals into the study of institutional, structural, and systemic racism. Drawing on the work of Frantz Fanon, the late Sartre, and Michel Foucault, and studying such figures like Ottobah Cugoano, Anténor Firmin, and W. E. B. Du Bois, Bernasconi's volume challenges the philosophical canon and will serve as a valuable resource for scholars and students.

Robert Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of two books on Heidegger and one on Sartre, as well as numerous articles in continental philosophy and the history of philosophy, especially as it relates to the history of racism. He has edited a number of volumes of primary source material and he is the editor of three journals: Critical Philosophy of Race, Levinas Studies, and Eco-Ethica.

• Foreword by Linda Martin Alcoff


• Introduction by Robert Bernasconi


• Acknowledgments


• Note on Sources


• I. What Is Critical Philosophy of Race in the Continental Tradition?


• Chapter 1. Critical Philosophy of Race


• II. The Construction of Race


• Chapter 2. Racialization and the Construction of Religions


• Chapter 3. The Philosophy of Race in the Nineteenth Century


• Chapter 4. Racial Science in the Nineteenth Century


• Chapter 5. The Policing of Race Mixing: The Place of Biopower within the History of Racisms


• Chapter 6. Crossed Lines in the Racialization Process: Race as a Border Concept


• III. Black Philosophers Speak Out


• Chapter 7. Ottobah Cugoano's Place in the History of Political Philosophy: Slavery and the Philosophical Canon


• Chapter 8. A Haitian in Paris: Anténor Firmin as a Philosopher Against Racism


• Chapter 9. "Our Duty to Conserve": W. E. B. Du Bois's Philosophy of History in Context


• Chapter 10. Frantz Fanon and Psychopathology: The Progressive Infrastructure of Black Skin, White Masks


• Chapter 11. Frantz Fanon's Engagement with Phenomenology: Unlocking the Temporal Architecture of Black Skin, White Masks


• IV. The Construction of the Concept of Racism


• Chapter 12. Nature, Culture, and Race


• Chapter 13. A Most Dangerous Error: The Boasian Myth of a Knock-Down Argument against Racism


• Chapter 14. Making Nietzsche's Thought Groan: The History of Racisms and Foucault's Genealogy of Nietzschean Genealogy in "Society Must Be Defended"


• Chapter 15. Existentialism Against Colonialism: Sartre, Fanon, and the Place of Lived Experience


• Bibliography


• Index