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To find out more go to Amazon.com

In My Father's House

"A wonderfully crafted collection of essays."--In My Father's House

"Appiah's book on the place of Africa in contemporary philosophy powerfully exposes the dangers of any simplistic notion of African identity in the contemporary world....Tellingly, his reflections upon the calling of philosophy and the relation between post-traditional and not-yet-modern African culture(s) offer a welcome perspective on the increasingly shrill debates over "multiculturalism" that rend the academy. The epilogue on his father's funeral alone more than justifies the whole book."--Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Common Knowledge

"Interesting and thought-provoking."--Safro Kwame, Lincoln University
"Montaigne invented the modern essay;...Appiah has the brilliance to extend it."--The Village Voice

"A groundbreaking--as well as ground-clearing--analysis of absurdities and damaging presuppositions that have clouded our discussions of race, Africa and nationalism since the 19th century....Mr. Appiah delivers what may very well be one of the handful of theoretical works on race that will help preserve our humanity and guide us gracefully into the next century."--Charles Johnson, The New York Times Book
Review

"Appiah's essays are exquisitely and painstakingly argued."--Washington Post Book World

"An exceptional work, whose contextual sweep and lucidity provide a refreshing intellectual tone away from yahoo populism. In many profound ways, Kwame Appiah's In My Father's House ushers in a new level of discourse on race and culture, placing it within a universal narrative--and where else should it belong?...Without question, a first of its kind."--Wole Soyinka, from Race and the Rout of Reason

"In My Father's House is a remarkable book that brings previously invisible cultural assumptions to the surface and obliges us to rethink our conceptions about African identity. Drawing upon a variety of elegantly analyzed historical examples and relating them to his own personal experiences of the African world, Anthony Appiah convincingly demonstrates the need to go beyond stereotyped notions of race and futile laments about past injustices. His observations about authenticity movements, the persistence of Western constructions of African realities, and the emergence of new syntheses of knowledge among African peoples represent a major breakthrough in the ongoing debate over the future of African culture."--Richard Bjornson, Ohio State University

"This is an absorbing and path-breaking book by a gifted philosopher. Appiah rescues the philosophy of culture from Herder by insisting that we drop notions like 'authentic negritude' and that 'African culture' is the name of an important project rather than of an available datum. The book's range of reference and the vigor of its argumentation are equally impressive."--Richard Rorty, University of Virginia

"Appiah's concern is, he modestly states, 'with the situation of African intellectuals.' In the growing literature on the subject, nobody has defined that situation, as it exists now, more sharply; nobody has built so many bridges to a discourse that might be shared universally. Learned yet unpretentious, serious and witty, critical and kind--this book is bound to infuse debates among African intellectuals with new vigor and to engage philosophers, literary critics, anthropologists and others everywhere. One also wishesit would be read by politicians for its lucid analyses of racism as well as its demonstration of intellectual independence tempered by colonial and post-colonial experience."--Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam


"A wonderfully crafted collection of essays."--In My Father's House
"Appiah's book on the place of Africa in contemporary philosophy powerfully exposes the dangers of any simplistic notion of African identity in the contemporary world....Tellingly, his reflections upon the calling of philosophy and the relation between post-traditional and not-yet-modern African culture(s) offer a welcome perspective on the increasingly shrill debates over "multiculturalism" that rend the academy. The epilogue on his father's funeral alone more than justifies the whole book."--Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Common Knowledge

"Interesting and thought-provoking."--Safro Kwame, Lincoln University
"Montaigne invented the modern essay;...Appiah has the brilliance to extend it."--The Village Voice

"A groundbreaking--as well as ground-clearing--analysis of absurdities and damaging presuppositions that have clouded our discussions of race, Africa and nationalism since the 19th century....Mr. Appiah delivers what may very well be one of the handful of theoretical works on race that will help preserve our humanity and guide us gracefully into the next century."--Charles Johnson, The New York Times Book Review

"Appiah's essays are exquisitely and painstakingly argued."--Washington Post Book World

"An exceptional work, whose contextual sweep and lucidity provide a refreshing intellectual tone away from yahoo populism. In many profound ways, Kwame Appiah's In My Father's House ushers in a new level of discourse on race and culture, placing it within a universal narrative--and where else should it belong?...Without question, a first of its kind."--Wole Soyinka, from Race and the Rout of Reason
"In My Father's House is a remarkable book that brings previously invisible cultural assumptions to the surface and obliges us to rethink our conceptions about African identity. Drawing upon a variety of elegantly analyzed historical examples and relating them to his own personal experiences of the African world, Anthony Appiah convincingly demonstrates the need to go beyond stereotyped notions of race and futile laments about past injustices. His observations about authenticity movements, the persistence of Western constructions of African realities, and the emergence of new syntheses of knowledge among African peoples represent a major breakthrough in the ongoing debate over the future of African culture."--Richard Bjornson, Ohio State University

"This is an absorbing and path-breaking book by a gifted philosopher. Appiah rescues the philosophy of culture from Herder by insisting that we drop notions like 'authentic negritude' and that 'African culture' is the name of an important project rather than of an available datum. The book's range of reference and the vigor of its argumentation are equally impressive."--Richard Rorty, University of Virginia "Appiah's concern is, he modestly states, 'with the situation of African intellectuals'. In the growing literature on the subject, nobody has defined that situation, as it exists now, more sharply; nobody has built so many bridges to a discourse that might be shared universally. Learned yet unpretentious, serious and witty, critical and kind--this book is bound to infuse debates among African intellectuals with new vigor and to engage philosophers, literary critics, anthropologists and others everywhere. One also wishes it would be read by politicians for its lucid analyses of racism as well as its demonstration of intellectual independence tempered by colonial and post-colonial experience."--Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam

The beating of Rodney King and the resulting riots in South Central Los Angeles. The violent clash between Hasidim and African-Americans in Crown Heights. The boats of Haitian refugees being turned away from the Land of Opportunity. These are among the many racially-charged images that have burst across our television screens in the last year alone, images that show that for all our complacent beliefs in a melting-pot society, race is as much of a problem as ever in America.

In this vastly important, widely-acclaimed volume, Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Ghanaian philosopher who now teaches at Harvard, explores, in his words, "the possibilities and pitfalls of an African identity in the late twentieth century." In the process he sheds new light on what it means to be an African-American, on the many preconceptions that have muddled discussions of race, Africa, and Afrocentrism since the end of the nineteenth century, and, in the end, to move beyond the idea of race.

In My Father's House is especially wide-ranging, covering everything from Pan Africanism, to the works of early African-American intellectuals such as Alexander Crummell and W.E.B. Du Bois, to the ways in which African identity influences African literature. In his discussion of the latter subject, Appiah demonstrates how attempts to construct a uniquely African literature have ignored not only the inescapable influences that centuries of contact with the West have imposed, but also the multicultural nature of Africa itself. Emphasizing this last point is Appiah's eloquent title essay which offers a fitting finale to the volume. In a moving first-person account of his father's death and funeral in Ghana, Appiah offers a brilliant metaphor for the tension between Africa's aspirations to modernity and its desire to draw on its ancient cultural roots.

During the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King appeared on television to make his now famous plea: "People, can we all get along?" In this beautiful, elegantly written volume, Appiah steers us along a path toward answering a question of the utmost importance to us all.

About the Author | Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. His books include Assertion and Conditionals (1985), For Truth in Semantics (1986), Necessary Questions (1989), and the novel Avenging Angel (1991). He is currently editing the Oxford Book of African Literature.


For more information go to Amazon.com

The Ethics of Identity

The Ethics of Identity is wonderfully straightforward. It does just what it proposes to do. It explores the demands of 'individuality,' and rejects extreme understandings of what autonomy requires. It considers the relation of personal and group identity to morals and ethics... It moves on to the links between identity and culture... Appiah has some very wise and original things to say about the inevitability of a liberal state affecting the inner life of its citizens. He ends with a defense of rooted cosmopolitanism. Not only is the argument direct; it is untechnical, transparent, and unaggressive... Appiah concentrates on a double question: how we acquire an individual identity by acquiring a social identity, and how we find--and make--an identity that is not a straitjacket. In pursuing this question, Appiah begins to explore one of the most fascinating and difficult questions in moral philosophy, the relationship between general principles and particular attachments... He shows just how to write about the intimate, formative relations that are central to a life, most strikingly in his epilogue, but as you realize when you reach that ending, he has been doing it, as well as a great deal else, throughout The Ethics of Identity. -- Alan Ryan The New York Review of Books Suave and discerning... Appiah seeks to reorient political philosophy by returning to the example set by John Stuart Mill... For all of Appiah's philosophic precision, his writing often resembles not Mill's but that of Oscar Wilde--to my mind, the finest prose stylist of the 19th century... The superb rhetorical performance of this book offers the most persuasive evidence for his case... To read The Ethics of Identity is to enter into the world it describes; it is also to imagine what it might be like to live in so urbane and expansive a place. -- Jonathan Freedman New York Times Book Review Kwame Anthony Appiah undertakes to combine a form of liberalism that aspires to universal validity with a full recognition and substantial acceptance of the important cultural and ethical diversity that characterizes our world. -- Thomas Nagel New Republic | An impressive book... A thorough exploration of moral concepts such as authenticity, tolerance, individuality, and dignity, and how they are all connected to the task of making a life... It is hard to know what to admire most about this book: the urbane elegance of Appiah's prose, the reach of his knowledge, or the sheer philosophical sharpness of his analysis. -- Carl Elliott The American Prospect This book, with its fluid, inviting phrasing, is exceptionally well written... It is effective, insightful, and thought-provoking... Appiah clears the way for a justification of a narrative, pragmatic, particular relations-based cosmopolitanism, which is universal without the necessity of theoretical agreement. Choice This new book aims to lay the groundwork for a new version of liberal theory adequate to the challenges of our time... I find Appiah's overall conception of liberalism very congenial... If Appiah succeeds in attenuating the force of such claims by undermining the theoretical conceptualizations and arguments supporting them, and integrating the valid claims of identity into liberal theory, he will have contributed very significantly to the reconstruction of liberalism. -- Leonard J. Waks Education and Culture The conclusion Appiah eloquently affirms is spot on: the key to living a moral life is clearly not to seek to forego identity. On the contrary, it is to put identity in the service of becoming ethical human beings. -- Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Tikkun Kwame Anthony Appiah, a man of multiple cultures and languages who is able to question culture itself, leaves us better able to contemplate how to lead life well and to relate ethically to others in the process. -- E. James Lieberman PsycCritiques Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Ethics of Identity is a wonderful book. It is as rigorous as one expects the best philosophy to be, yet it is whitty, humane, and engaging in ways that academic philosophy is only rarely. It is the best account of the ethics of liberal society that we possess. -- Daniel Weinstock Ethics Appiah, ... an elegant writer, observes that we are not simply members of groups or products of culture. Individuality and autonomy, he argues, are fundamental to personhood in all social and cultural contexts. -- David Moshman Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology


The Ethics of Identity is wonderfully straightforward. It does just what it proposes to do. It explores the demands of 'individuality,' and rejects extreme understandings of what autonomy requires. It considers the relation of personal and group identity to morals and ethics. . . . It moves on to the links between identity and culture. . . . Appiah has some very wise and original things to say about the inevitability of a liberal state affecting the inner life of its citizens. He ends with a defense of rooted cosmopolitanism. Not only is the argument direct; it is untechnical, transparent, and unaggressive. . . . Appiah concentrates on a double question: how we acquire an individual identity by acquiring a social identity, and how we find--and make--an identity that is not a straitjacket. In pursuing this question, Appiah begins to explore one of the most fascinating and difficult questions in moral philosophy, the relationship between general principles and particular attachments. . . . [He] shows just how to write about the intimate, formative relations that are central to a life, most strikingly in his epilogue, but as you realize when you reach that ending, he has been doing it, as well as a great deal else, throughout The Ethics of Identity.
(Alan Ryan The New York Review of Books )

Suave and discerning. . . . Appiah seeks to reorient political philosophy by returning to the example set by John Stuart Mill. . . . For all of Appiah's philosophic precision, his writing often resembles not Mill's but that of Oscar Wilde--to my mind, the finest prose stylist of the 19th century. . . . [T]he superb rhetorical performance of this book offers the most persuasive evidence for his case. . . . To read The Ethics of Identity is to enter into the world it describes; it is also to imagine what it might be like to live in so urbane and expansive a place.
(Jonathan Freedman New York Times Book Review )

Kwame Anthony Appiah undertakes to combine a form of liberalism that aspires to universal validity with a full recognition and substantial acceptance of the important cultural and ethical diversity that characterizes our world.
(Thomas Nagel New Republic )

An impressive book. . . . a thorough exploration of moral concepts such as authenticity, tolerance, individuality, and dignity, and how they are all connected to the task of making a life. . . . It is hard to know what to admire most about this book: the urbane elegance of Appiah's prose, the reach of his knowledge, or the sheer philosophical sharpness of his analysis.
(Carl Elliott The American Prospect )

This book, with its fluid, inviting phrasing, is exceptionally well written. . . . It is effective, insightful, and thought-provoking. . . . Appiah clears the way for a justification of a narrative, pragmatic, particular relations-based cosmopolitanism, which is universal without the necessity of theoretical agreement.
(Choice )

This new book aims to lay the groundwork for a new version of liberal theory adequate to the challenges of our time. . . . I find Appiah's overall conception of liberalism very congenial. . . . If Appiah succeeds in attenuating the force of such claims by undermining the theoretical conceptualizations and arguments supporting them, and integrating the valid claims of identity into liberal theory, he will have contributed very significantly to the reconstruction of liberalism.
(Leonard J. Waks Education and Culture )

The conclusion Appiah eloquently affirms is spot on: the key to living a moral life is clearly not to seek to forego identity. On the contrary, it is to put identity in the service of becoming ethical human beings.
(Joshua Jelly-Schapiro Tikkun )

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a man of multiple cultures and languages who is able to question culture itself, leaves us better able to contemplate how to lead life well and to relate ethically to others in the process.
(E. James Lieberman PsycCritiques )

Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Ethics of Identity is a wonderful book. It is as rigorous as one expects the best philosophy to be, yet it is whitty, humane, and engaging in ways that academic philosophy is only rarely. It is the best account of the ethics of liberal society that we possess.
(Daniel Weinstock Ethics )

Appiah, . . . an elegant writer, observes that we are not simply members of groups or products of culture. Individuality and autonomy, he argues, are fundamental to personhood in all social and cultural contexts.
(David Moshman Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology )

Appiah has written a remarkably impressive book, one that makes a number of important advances on the existing literature and stands as an important contribution to political and moral philosophy and moral psychology. It will be very widely read.
(Jacob Levy, University of Chicago )


Race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality: in the past couple of decades, a great deal of attention has been paid to such collective identities. They clamor for recognition and respect, sometimes at the expense of other things we value. But to what extent do "identities" constrain our freedom, our ability to make an individual life, and to what extent do they enable our individuality? In this beautifully written work, renowned philosopher and African Studies scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah draws on thinkers through the ages and across the globe to explore such questions.

The Ethics of Identity takes seriously both the claims of individuality--the task of making a life---and the claims of identity, these large and often abstract social categories through which we define ourselves.

What sort of life one should lead is a subject that has preoccupied moral and political thinkers from Aristotle to Mill. Here, Appiah develops an account of ethics, in just this venerable sense--but an account that connects moral obligations with collective allegiances, our individuality with our identities. As he observes, the question who we are has always been linked to the question what we are.

Adopting a broadly interdisciplinary perspective, Appiah takes aim at the clichés and received ideas amid which talk of identity so often founders. Is "culture" a good? For that matter, does the concept of culture really explain anything? Is diversity of value in itself? Are moral obligations the only kind there are? Has the rhetoric of "human rights" been overstretched? In the end, Appiah's arguments make it harder to think of the world as divided between the West and the Rest; between locals and cosmopolitans; between Us and Them. The result is a new vision of liberal humanism--one that can accommodate the vagaries and variety that make us human.


"Appiah has written a remarkably impressive book, one that makes a number of important advances on the existing literature and stands as an important contribution to political and moral philosophy and moral psychology. It will be very widely read."--Jacob Levy, University of Chicago


"The Ethics of Identity is a major overhaul of the vocabulary of contemporary political and critical thought--the vocabulary of identity, diversity, authenticity, cosmopolitanism, and culture. The load of hidden assumptions carried by these words had become overwhelming, and someone needed to take them to the shop and give them a thorough philosophical servicing. But Anthony Appiah has done more than that. He has returned those terms to us clarified, refreshed, and ready for use in a more sophisticated and flexible philosophy of Liberalism--and, along the way, he has provided us with a new reading of liberalism's old hero, John Stuart Mill. Appiah's writing is unparalleled in its elegance, its lucidity, and its humanity. Accept no substitutes."--Louis Menand, Harvard University

"In the debates over diversity, rights, group identities or group conflict, The Ethics of Identity, is the land of lucidity. Appiah's elegant book resists the easy alternatives of universal liberalism and multiculturalism and instead defends--and illustrates on every page--a rooted cosmopolitanism. The sparkling prose, vivid examples, and probing questions navigate the choppy waters of personal and political constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexuality. This fine and wise book invites readers to remain willing to distinguish tolerance and respect--and by engaging with both the lives people make for themselves and the communities and narratives that render them meaningful."--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School and author of Identity, Politics, and the Law --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


"Appiah has written a remarkably impressive book, one that makes a number of important advances on the existing literature and stands as an important contribution to political and moral philosophy and moral psychology. It will be very widely read."--Jacob Levy, University of Chicago

"The Ethics of Identity is a major overhaul of the vocabulary of contemporary political and critical thought--the vocabulary of identity, diversity, authenticity, cosmopolitanism, and culture. The load of hidden assumptions carried by these words had become overwhelming, and someone needed to take them to the shop and give them a thorough philosophical servicing. But Anthony Appiah has done more than that. He has returned those terms to us clarified, refreshed, and ready for use in a more sophisticated and flexible philosophy of Liberalism--and, along the way, he has provided us with a new reading of liberalism's old hero, John Stuart Mill. Appiah's writing is unparalleled in its elegance, its lucidity, and its humanity. Accept no substitutes."--Louis Menand, Harvard University

"In the debates over diversity, rights, group identities or group conflict, The Ethics of Identity, is the land of lucidity. Appiah's elegant book resists the easy alternatives of universal liberalism and multiculturalism and instead defends--and illustrates on every page--a rooted cosmopolitanism. The sparkling prose, vivid examples, and probing questions navigate the choppy waters of personal and political constructions of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexuality. This fine and wise book invites readers to remain willing to distinguish tolerance and respect--and by engaging with both the lives people make for themselves and the communities and narratives that render them meaningful."--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School and author of Identity, Politics, and the Law


About the Author | Kwame Anthony Appiah is Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the Center for Human Values at Princeton University. His books include two monographs in the philosophy of language as well as the widely acclaimed "In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture", "Cosmopolitanism" [Norton], and, with Amy Gutmann, "Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race". He has also edited or co-edited many books, including (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience". His most recent book is "Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy".


For more information see: www.amazon.com

Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers

In a world more interconnected than ever, the responsibilities and obligations we share remain matters of volatile debate. Weighing in on a discourse that includes both visions of "clashing civilizations" and often equally misguided cultural relativism, Ghana-born Princeton philosopher Appiah (In My Father's House) reclaims a tradition of creative exchange and imaginative engagement across lines of difference. This cosmopolitan ethic, which he traces from the Greek Cynics and through to the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, must inevitably balance universals with respect for particulars. This balance comes through "conversation," a term Appiah uses literally and metaphorically to signal the depth of encounters across national, religious and other forms of identity. At the same time, Appiah stresses conversation needn't involve consensus, since living together mostly entails just getting used to one another. Amid the good and bad of globalization, the author parses some basic cultural-philosophical beliefs—drawing frequent examples from his own far-flung multicultural family as well as from impersonal relationships of exchange and power—to focus due attention on widespread and unexamined assumptions about identity, difference and morality. A stimulating read, leavened by cheerful, fluid prose, the book will challenge fashionable theories of irreconcilable divides with a practical and pragmatic worldview that revels in difference and the adventure of a shared humanity. This is an excellent start to
Norton's new Issues of Our Time series.

(Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


From The New Yorker

Appiah, a Princeton philosophy professor, articulates a precise yet flexible ethical manifesto for a world characterized by heretofore unthinkable interconnection but riven by escalating fractiousness. Drawing on his Ghanaian roots and on examples from philosophy and literature, he attempts to steer a course between the extremes of liberal universalism, with its tendency to impose our values on others, and cultural relativism, with its implicit conviction that gulfs in understanding cannot be bridged. Cosmopolitanism, in Appiah's formulation, balances our "obligations to others" with the "value not just of human life but of particular human lives"—what he calls "universality plus difference." Appiah remains skeptical of simple maxims for ethical behavior—like the Golden Rule, whose failings as a moral precept he swiftly demonstrates—and argues that cosmopolitanism is the name not "of the solution but of the challenge."

Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.


"A brilliant and humane philosophy for our confused age."—Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell

Kwame Anthony Appiah's landmark new work, featured on the cover of the New York Times Magazine, challenges the separatist doctrines espoused in books like Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations. Reviving the ancient philosophy of "cosmopolitanism," a school of thought that dates to the Cynics of the fourth century BC, Appiah traces its influence on the ethical legacies of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Raised in Ghana, educated in England, and now a distinguished professor in the United States, Appiah promises to create a new era in which warring factions will finally put aside their supposed ideological differences and will recognize that the fundamental values held by all human beings will usher in a new era of global understanding.

About the Author | Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at Princeton University. His earlier books include The Ethics of Identity and Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy. He lives in Pennington, New Jersey.

For more information see: www.amazon.com

Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography

This massive catalogue of the International Center of Photography's 2006 exhibition of contemporary African photography gives a thought-provoking introduction to how African artists have engaged with the international art world while sustaining their uniquely African points of view, whether they live at home or abroad. With artists hailing from South Africa to Morocco, the exhibit is a visceral reminder of the vastness and variety of a continent that colonial history has misunderstood and objectified, according to exhibit curator Enwezor. His introductory essay, although difficult reading for those unfamiliar with academic art-speak, provides an indispensable guide to this work, giving a context for what otherwise might overwhelm or mystify. He challenges assumptions of "Afro-pessimism" propounded by literature and the media that "focus on the exotic potentials of both man and animal," equating colonial photographer and African with hunter and game. In contrast, these artists wrench the image of Africa back from "the touristic gaze" to create a humanized, individualized iconography, while claiming their places within the international art community. From Randa Shaath's documentation of Cairo's precariously thriving rooftop community of artists to Kay Hassan's spooky portraits made from Polaroid negatives discarded by self-employed street photographers, this collection reveals an Africa looking with "fined-tuned alertness" at a rapidly changing world. (July)Correction: The author of Lost Cosmonaut (Reviews, May 22) is Daniel Kalder.


Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography gathers approximately 250 works by 30 artists from across the continent, an amazingly wide range of individual artistic responses to the unprecedented shifts taking place in Africa's economic, social and cultural spheres. In addition to introducing audiences to the multiple imaginations and voices of today's African artists, Snap Judgments explores the ways photo-based art has developed across the dialectic of traditional African aesthetic values and Western influences. Contemporary African photography has emerged in the post-World War II de-colonization movements, the quest for independent national identity, and the effects of globalization and modernity. Snap Judgments organizes the work that grew out of all that into four thematic groups--landscape; urban formations; the body and identity; and history and representation--groups that reflect the issues around which Africa's experimental artists have been articulating new styles and visual languages. Nigerian independent curator and art historian Okwui Enwezor, widely recognized as one of the world's foremost experts on contemporary African art, has included an essay by art historian Colin Richard, an appendix on recent exhibitions of African photography, biographical notes on the artists, and a general bibliography.


For more information see: www.amazon.com

Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace

Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace
by Olu Oguibe Editor, Okwui Enwezor Editor
Image by Yinka Shonibare OBE

About the Author | Olu Oguibe has taught at the University of London and as the Stuart Golding Professor of African Art at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West and co-editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Okwui Enwezor is Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He is the Artistic Director of Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany, 2002, and was the Artistic Director of the 1997 Johannesburg Biennial. He is the publisher and founding editor of Nka.

Book Description
In the past decade contemporary African art has been featured in major exhibtions in museums, galleries, international biennials, and other forums. African cinema has established itself on the stage of world cinema, culminating in the Ouagadougou Film Festival. While African art and visual culture have become an integral part of the art history and cultural studies curricula in universities worldwide, critical readings and interpretations have remained difficult to obtain. This pioneering anthology collects twenty key essays in which major critical thinkers, scholars, and artists explore contemporary African visual culture, locating it within current cultural debates and within the context of the continent`s history. The sections of the book are Theory and Cultural Transaction, History, Location and Practice, and Negotiated Identities. Copublished with the Institute of International Visual Arts inIVA, London

Art After Appropriation

Art after Appropriation: Essays on Art in the 1990s
Editorial Reviews

About the Author
John C. Welchman is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of California, San Diego.


Book Description
Beginning with the first comprehensive account of the discourse of appropriation that dominated the art world in the late 1970s and 1980s, Art After Appropriation suggests a matrix of inflections and refusals around the culture of taking or citation, each chapter loosely correlated with one year of the decade between 1989 and 1999. The opening chapters discuss, among other things, how the second world culture of the USSR gave rise to new visibility for photography at the Union`s dissolution in 1989, and explore how genres of ethnography, documentary and travel are crossed with fictive performance and social improvisation in the videos of Steve Fagin.



Review by Paul from New York

I can`t say I`ve been delighted about much art-writing the last 5 or 6 years. Welchman gets 5 stars for doing the foot-work while not misplacing his head. His book looks at an interesting mix of artists, takes some risks, and cobbles together an interesting theory... and, quite frankly, much of what he says is not only correct, but has really needed to be said for some time now. It seems that much writing about art has gotten so niche-oriented or arbitrary that Welchman`s approach is welcome. By rehashing the legacy of appropriation, something that we thought the art world had already figured out, Welchman springs through the unguarded front doors of mainstream discourse in an expansive manner.