Racist Variations of Bad Faith: A Critical Study of Lewis Gordon's Phenomenology of Racism (Critical Essay‪)‬

1. Introduction Within the relatively specialized field of philosophy of racism--a field that is particularly well developed in the Anglo-American world--the work of the African-American philosopher Lewis Gordon is well known. This is especially the case for his work on the interpretation of the existential structures of racism on the basis of the early Jean-Paul Sartre. (1) He is not the first, however, to find in Sartre's existential phenomenology a fertile ground for discussing themes concerning oppression, racism, and human conflict. Yet what makes his contribution unique is that he focuses on a particular brand of racism, namely "antiblack racism," and that he explores the meaning of racism as bad faith not so much from the receiving side (the oppressed)--as for instance Franz Fanon and to a lesser extent Albert Memmi have done--but mainly from the perspective of the racist worldview itself (the oppressors). Especially in his earlier book Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism (1995), Gordon sets himself the goal of phenomenologically analyzing what it means to look through the eyes of hatred.