This study creates and develops a concept called the untimely-image including two sub-concepts called contours of the new and the untimely-site. The untimely-image concerns the clearing for and the expression of figures of “potential” in thought in the form of moving-images. The aim of these concepts is to form a critical framework for evaluating and conceptualizing political film as expressive, not of the new itself but of its “untimely” contours. The untimely-image, and its many implications, is developed over the course (...) of six chapters. Chapter 1 extensively defines “contours” and “new” as operative in this study, and also introduces a theme that runs through all the chapters: how to think the contours of the new in relation to the cult of the new in consumer culture and in relation to the larger mechanisms of advanced capitalism. Chapter 2 defines the parameters of the untimely-image as specifically regarding moving images, and continues the development of this concept. In Chapters 3 to 6, The Wire serves the double function of complicating and giving specification to the elaboration of the untimely-image as well as a case in which the untimely-image is used as a critical framework. The Wire and the untimely-image relate in processes of juxtaposition, wherein they meet, cross over, separate, and reproblematize each other. An untimely-image is fully defined in relation to concrete political issues. The untimely-image is therefore advanced by articulating the components and characteristics that, independently of the concrete issue, remain in every case, as well as by putting the concept to work regarding two specific problems in The Wire: its expression of blackness and its mapping of advanced capitalism. (shrink)

This article examines the role of social theory in Cornel West's account of radical democracy. I explicate and extend the critical implications of Richard Rorty's views for the revolutionary impulses in West's project, and then I examine West's use of Sheldon Wolin's notion of "fugitive democracy" as a potential instance of the "theoretical resentment" against which Rorty cautions. Drawing from John Howard Yoder and Karl Barth, I conclude by demonstrating how West's account of the Black Church contains resources to chasten (...) the detrimental excesses in Wolin's account, while maintaining a robust sense of radical democracy. (shrink)

Part of Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism purpose is to link ethics and politics to art. In this approach, ethics becomes the basis of aesthetics and politics. He presents a picture of moral life that emphasizes the uniqueness of human characteristics. His goal of prophetic pragmatism is not to answer the questions of Western philosophy. West sees the root of these problems in Western philosophy in the epistemology of Descartes and Kant and believes that it must be overcome. The purpose of (...) prophetic pragmatism is to provide answers to short-term problems and ongoing cultural interpretations in a specific historical period. West sees nihilism as evil, as opposed to democracy, and turns to art to combat this nihilism. He believes that original art has a common concern with the oppressed and can fight nihilism. He considers this original art to have anti-nihilistic properties. Artists in this approach are struggling to achieve democracy and must follow ethics based on religious love. In this article, after examining the relationship between politics and ethics in art, we critique West's views. (shrink)

As a means to challenge and diminish the hold of mainstream curriculum's claim of being a colorblind, politically neutral text, we will address two particular features that partially, though significantly, constitute the hidden curriculum in the United States—race and class—historically studied as separate social issues. Race and class have been embedded within the institutional curriculum from the beginning in the US; though rarely acknowledged as intertwined issues. We illustrate how the theoretical and interpretive structure of French philosopher and sociologist Pierre (...) Bourdieu can productively subsume the insights of critical race theory into its framework in a way that provides a more robust understanding of how race and class continue to be socially reproduced in schools. To perform this task we examine, through Bourdieu's constructs of habitus, field, capital, symbolic violence and misrecognition, the ways in which race, in general, and whiteness, specifically, influences pedagogical and curricular existence within the institutional superstructure of school. (shrink)

This paper advances the concept of transversality by drawing philosophical insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Calvin O. Schrag, and the Martinicuan francophone Edouard Glissant. By so doing, it attempts to deconstruct the notion of universality in modern Western philosophy. It begins with a critique of the notion of Eurocentric universality which is founded on the fallacious premise that what is particular in the West is made universal, whereas whereas what is particular in the non-West remains particular forever. Eurocentric Universality has no (...) place in the globalization of the multicultural world. It simply ignores the reality of interlacing of multiple life-worlds. The concept of transversality, whose icon is the Maitreyan Middle Way, is proposed to replace universality. It not only reduced ethnocentric particularism but also fosters a hybridity that in fact dissolves the binary opposition between particularism and universalism. In short, transversality is conceived of as a radically new paradigm in philosophical conceptualization or world philosophy. (shrink)