ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Before Columbus Foundation 2018 Winner of the AMERICAN BOOK AWARD

Tommy J. Curry’s provocative book The Man-Not is a justification for Black Male Studies. He posits that we should conceptualize the Black male as a victim, oppressed by his sex. The Man-Not, therefore,is a corrective of sorts, offering a concept of Black males that could challenge the existing accounts of Black men and boys desiring the power of white men who oppress them that has been proliferated throughout academic research across disciplines.

Curry argues that Black men struggle with death and suicide, as well as abuse and rape, and their genred existence deserves study and theorization. This book offers intellectual, historical, sociological, and psychological evidence that the analysis of patriarchy offered by mainstream feminism (including Black feminism) does not yet fully understand the role that homoeroticism, sexual violence, and vulnerability play in the deaths and lives of Black males. Curry challenges how we think of and perceive the conditions that actually affect all Black males.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Tommy J. Curry is a Professor of Philosophy and holds a Personal Chair (Distinguished Professorship) of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is the past president of Philosophy Born of Struggle, and the recipient of the USC Shoah Foundation 2016–2017 A.I. and Manet Schepps Foundation Teaching Fellowship. He is the author of Another White Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of Racial Empire and the editor of The Philosophical Treatise of William H. Ferris: Selected Readings from The African Abroad or, His Evolution in Western Civilization.

REVIEWS

"Tommy Curry has written a cool, brilliant defense of the men who are the pariahs of American society: the ones who, regardless of class, find themselves at the bottom of every hierarchy; the ones whose demographics and statistics in terms of the criminal justice, health care, and other systems are abysmal. Countless billions have been made from the portrayal of Black males as Boogeymen. The Man-Not is heavy work, but the general reader will find its arguments well worth the time and effort. This book is controversial. Those who've dogged and stalked Black men in the academy and popular culture for the past few decades are sure to have their critical knives out. I know. But it's rare for an American intellectual to step up, regardless of the fallout. This book is the one that I've been waiting for. Curry has taken a bullet for the brothers."—Ishmael Reed, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Visiting Scholar at the California College of the Arts

"In a bold—indeed, fearless—intervention in the ongoing race/gender/sexual orientation debates, Tommy Curry challenges the cozy consensus among self-conceived progressives in the humanities. The oppression of black men has been conceptually erased, he argues, by theoretical frameworks indifferent to the social science data that refute them. Sure to ignite a firestorm of controversy, The Man-Not is an impassioned protest against orthodoxies, both mainstream and radical, white and black. It is required reading for anyone interested in understanding oppression or having unquestioned assumptions put to the test."
—Charles W. Mills, Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center

"The Man-Not introduces a progressive black male studies that is decidedly nonfeminist, and the book demands a radical rethinking of the category of 'gender' itself.... It is impressive to watch Curry build arguments and the seamless manner in which the philosopher moves between sources across disciplines.... (It is) refreshing to read a book that has little time for academic pleasantries and is so eager to transcend the boundaries of traditional gender theorizing.... (R)eaders from diverse academic backgrounds can still learn much in its pages." —Men and Masculinities

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

Introduction. Toward a Genre Study of Black Male Death and Dying: Addressing the Caricatures that Serve as Theory in the Study of Black Males

1. On Mimesis and Men: Toward a Historiography of the Man-Not; or, the Ethnological Origins of the Primal Rapist

2. Lost in a Kiss?: The Sexual Victimization of the Black Male during Jim Crow Read through Eldridge Cleaver’s The Book of Lives and Soul on Ice

3. The Political Economy of Niggerdom: Racist Misandry, Class Warfare, and the Disciplinary Propagation of the Super-predator Mythology

4. Eschatological Dilemmas: Anti-Black Male Death, Rape, and the Inability to Perceive Black Males’ Sexual Vulnerability under Racism

5. In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope and the Reality of Anti-Black (Male) Death that Demands Our Theorization of the Anti-ethical

Conclusion. Not MAN but Not Some Nothing: Affirming Who I Cannot Be through a Genre Study of Black Male Death and Dying

Epilogue. Black, Male, and (Forced to Remain) Silent: Censorship and the Subject/Subject Dilemma in Disciplinary Conceptualizations of the Black Male

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

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