The War Against Us in Our Names - Of Black Study With Joshua Myers

This is part one of a two part conversation with Joshua Myers on his latest book Of Black Study. 

In Of Black Study Joshua Myers examines the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson as well as June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, and what each contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge. 

In this part of our two conversation on this book, Professor Myers talks about the selection of the six thinkers he centers the book around, and the type of project he is engaged in with the text. We also spend about an hour talking about two of the books chapters, the one centered around the interventions of W.E.B. Du Bois and Sylvia Wynter, as well as looking at each of their relationships to Marxist thought and analytical approaches, and their relationships to science, the humanities and academic disciplinary traditions. As well as what each of them finds among the Black masses and how what they finds there influences their work.

Of Black Study is a new release from the Black Critique series on Pluto Press. This is our third conversation with Joshua Myers, both of our previous two have been discussions centered around Cedric Robinson. We have also done a number of discussions with authors and editors of the Black Critique series over the years, including discussions with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, Bedour Alagraa, David Austin, and Michael Sawyer (links below).

We strongly recommend this book, for anyone interested in Black Study and/or the critical interventions of the thinkers the book focuses on. It is an indispensable resource. it officially comes out later this week, but you can pre-order your copy now through Pluto Press or through our comrades over at Massive Bookshop. If you pre-order from Massive, 20% of the proceeds go to fund the abolitionist organization Project NIA. We’ve received word that Pluto Press will also be donating copies of this book to all the participants in the incarcerated study group that we support in partnership with Massive Bookshop and Prisons Kill. So we want to send a big shout-out to Pluto Press and Joshua Myers for that as well. 

Part two - which focuses primarily on Myers’ chapters on Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson - will come out in the next couple of days. 

As always if you like what we do, and want to support our ability to do it, you can become a patron of the show for as little as $1 a month at patreon.com/millennialsarekillingcapitalism. We have a goal of adding 31 patrons this month and currently we’re at 13, so we’re still working towards that goal. 

Our first interview with Joshua Myers (on Cedric Robinson)

Our second interview with Joshua Myers (on his biography of Cedric Robinson)

Greg Thomas’s interview of Sylvia Wynter from Proud Flesh 

From Cooperation to Black Operation (Transversal Texts conversation with Harney & Moten) 

Bedour Alagraa's Interview with Sylvia Wynter “What Will Be The Cure?” 

Our interviews with authors and editors of the Black Critique series 

Beyond Prisons interviews with Dr. Anthony Monteiro (first interview, second interview)