Description: From the 1830s to the present, black intellectuals have almost necessarily identified with the subjugated and demanded that every person's inherent dignity be recognized. Despite the fact that this tradition has lasted nearly two centuries, political philosophers have mostly ignored it as an inspiration for reconstructing democracy on more egalitarian grounds. Nick Bromell argues in The Time is Always Now that blacks' reflections on their painful experience and their ability to advocate for people 'both black and more than black' (an Obama quote) provides us with the foundation for constructing a democracy that is less angry and more welcoming of a cosmopolitan polity. Concise yet sweeping in scope, Black and More than Black will force people who think hard about democracy to incorporate the insights of black Americans over time, from James McCune Smith to W.E.B. DuBois to Barack Obama.
Review Quotes: "In this fine book, Nick Bromell's aim is to think through the ontological, epistemological, ethical and political registers of racial inequality, prejudice, and domination and to unleash the powers of imagination and vision on behalf of a new, more just social order and a transformed public philosophy. In the process, he enacts the 'now' on behalf of which he writes, with empathic and imaginative readings of major texts of political theory and literature, oriented by the worlds of African American letters and critical race theory. Synthetic and innovative, political, historical and literary, The Time Is Always Now will interest anyone who cares about US racial politics, 19th- and 20th-century American literature, democratic theory and black political thought." --Bonnie Honig, Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Modern Culture and Media, and Political Science, Brown University
"Nick Bromell's The Time is Always Now raises questions that will have a profound impact on political theory, literary studies, African American studies, and American Studies. Mining the words of African American thinkers, activists, and artists from David Walker to Barack Obama, Bromell offers a unique account of a body of political thought defined by both indignation and care. A body of thought, in other words, that is both critical and reconstructive. Bromell's approach, synthetic and thematically organized rather than figure-centered, and his sensitivity to the entanglement of philosophy and artistic form, open up new avenues for democratic thinking." --Lawrie Balfour, Professor of Politics, University of Virginia