Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals

I bought and read this book when the softcover was first released, and had the chance to glance at it again just recently. The book has not lost any of its incisiveness and sting. James' astute and direct analysis of Black intellectual life has been long in coming. She articulates opinions that many people have probably had, but have not had the guts or gumption to put out in public. It's about time that public (and well paid) intellectuals such as hooks, Gates, West, and the others got some real criticism. I highly recommend this book, which should be required reading in introductory and advanced Black Studies programs. Its incisive and on-target critique of postmodernism alone is reason enough for it to be included in the curriculum. This feminist volume is rich in ideas, insightful in its critique, and is a refreshing antidote to most of the postmodern B.S. floating around the elite caucasian, leather-coated campuses these days.

Joy James' radical synthesis of political philosophy and African American feminist philosophy is at once provocative and intellectually explosive. Drawing from such diverse areas of intellecual inquiry as African American philosophy, Women's Studies, African American Studies, Lesbian & Gay Studies, postmodern and postcolonial theory, Critical Race Theory, and political philosophy, Professor James puts forward a relentless critique of contemporary African American intellectual life that leaves both the "conservative" and the "radical" sides of the African American intellectual arena suspect. In her employment of insights culled from the nascent Africana philosophical tradition, and both the classical and contemporary African American social and political philosophy traditions, James critiques and offers correctives to African American public and private intellectuals of no less distinction than bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West. James' books also provides a severely needed critique of W.E.B. Du Bois' much mangled feminism, Anna Julia Cooper's often overlooked contributions to Du Bois' thought, and Ida B. Wells' anti-lyching radicalism. Applying discursive formulations and practices normally reserved for the most highly revered among the Western European philosophers, Joy James utlizes her training as a political philosopher to elucidate a path of out the impasse that African American intellectuals seem to be caught in. This book is absolutely a must read for anyone interested in African American intellectual life, African American critical theory, and/or African American feminist philosophy.