Podcast Summary: Mark Christian Thompson – "Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory"

Podcast: New Books Network: African American Studies
Host: Brittany Edmonds
Guest: Dr. Mark Christian Thompson
Date: January 17, 2026
Book: "Phenomenal Blackness: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory" (University of Chicago Press, 2022)

Episode Overview

This episode explores Dr. Mark Christian Thompson's book "Phenomenal Blackness," a philosophical investigation into Black Power-era thinkers and their conceptions of blackness. The discussion traverses shifts from sociological and anthropological models in African American thought to more ontological, aesthetic, and phenomenological understandings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dr. Thompson dissects the work and intellectual legacies of pivotal figures including James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, examining how their approaches to blackness, language, and theory inform current academic and cultural debates.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Premise of "Phenomenal Blackness"

(02:15 – 04:47)

• Thompson’s title refers to using phenomenology to understand blackness, not just as a social construct but as it was wrestled with by 1960s and 70s Black Power thinkers: something spiritual, bearing an essence—what at the time was a controversial but not wholly rejected essentialism.
• The book interrogates what racial essentialism meant to Black Power intellectuals and examines whether remnants of that essentialism persist in contemporary discourse on "black being."
• Thompson clarifies he personally rejects the idea that blackness shapes being outside of social conditions, in contrast to many figures he studies.

Thompson (03:18):
"...to look at how they inform themselves and what it means not just to be black from a social perspective, but from a philosophical perspective. What is race and what is its claim to shaping human beings outside of their social conditions?... My own opinion is, no, there isn’t."

2. Methodological Decisions: Avoiding "Genealogy" and "Intellectual History"

(06:47 – 09:03)

• Thompson intentionally avoids framing his work strictly as "genealogy" in the Foucauldian or Nietzschean sense, believing these categories limit the scope and vibrancy of the histories in play.
• He feels more affinity for a dynamic, historically-conscious approach that retains radical edge, even as he admits he may, in practice, be writing intellectual history.

Thompson (08:08):
"The idea is that one can do intellectual history or a form of historicism that still has this sort of edge to it, that...theoretical interventions in African American studies make."

3. Literary Language as Social Expression of Blackness

(09:23 – 11:44)

• From the late 1960s, Black writers shifted from music/jazz as the primary cultural vehicle to literary language, not just as art but as a means of building community and countering dominant discourse.
• Amiri Baraka, in particular, is credited with foregrounding "literary negroness," capturing the expressiveness across media but emphasizing the unique potential of language for intervention.

Thompson (10:34):
"...language is essential in pushing back against a type of discursive public sphere in which African American intellectuals are weighing into..."

4. Variety in Approaches: Social, Political, and Aesthetic Shifts

(12:47 – 15:24)

• Thinkers like Baldwin, Baraka, Malcolm X, Cleaver, and Davis represent a developmental trajectory: starting with a move from sociological perspectives, through aesthetic modes, to critical and philosophical expressions of blackness.
• The search became about articulating blackness away from biology/essentialism, yet some forms of essential difference re-emerge through culture and aesthetics.

Thompson (13:57):
"...in the search for a mode of articulation for speaking a type of blackness that...couldn’t have been articulated...we start to see this movement into the aesthetic..."

5. James Baldwin as Transitional Figure

(16:06 – 19:16)

• Baldwin occupies a distinctive place: widely quotable yet, on closer reading, deeply complex and sometimes at odds with the uses his name is put to today.
• Thompson connects Baldwin’s work to philosophical (Gadamer) and religious frames, showing its central concern with language, community, and belonging—laying groundwork for a philosophy of blackness.

Thompson (18:17):
"...we had a type of phenomenology that was starting to take shape...an actual philosophy of blackness taking shape that had to do with language and the positionality of language as it shapes a community..."

6. Malcolm X: Rejecting Essentialism, Weaponizing Language

(20:23 – 23:44)

• Malcolm X, though well versed in Western philosophy, dismissed its value; he saw language and race as constructs weaponized by white supremacy.
• His rhetorical brilliance lay in acknowledging the essentialist thinking of adversaries and repurposing their logic to undermine them, making him a practical (if unwitting) deconstructionist.

Thompson (22:24):
"...he rejected essentialism but understood that his opponents didn’t. And so...he understood that he had to accept certain arguments...in order to destroy them. He was in this sense a deconstructionist without really caring at all for whatever may have been going on in French theory..."

7. Amiri Baraka: Inaugurating African American Critical Theory

(25:01 – 29:56)

• Baraka marks a decisive move away from empirical, biological, sociological criticism to a new Black aesthetic theory focused on untouchable, autonomous core in Black art.
• The critical function is not just the creation of art but the work of critics who translate the "untouchable" nature of blackness from aesthetic into theoretical language.

Thompson (27:36):
"...what he then needed to do was...talk about how that [Black art] hasn’t been corrupted or co-opted or commodified...there has to be something there that can’t be touched, that survives this process and can be communicated to the world..."

8. The Role of the Critic and Tensions of Mediation

(29:56 – 33:46)

• Only critics who share the "life world" (a phenomenological term) of the artist can truly mediate the untouchable core of black aesthetic production—raising challenging questions of authenticity, access, and political purpose.
• Thompson draws out tensions between immediacy and mediation; the critic’s job is to render the unspeakable inarticulate without succumbing to commodification or instrumentalization.

Thompson (31:12):
"...it couldn’t be just any critic. It would have to be one who shares the same life world as the artist in some way...there is an immediacy to it, an unmediated aspect to it..."

9. Comparison with the Harlem Renaissance (e.g. Zora Neale Hurston)

(33:46 – 39:05)

• Hurston’s anthropological framing (e.g., "How It Feels to Be Colored Me") is still primitivist, while Baraka’s moment is decisively philosophical and critical—the life world is not pre-scripted or reducible to instrumental images.
• Phenomenology now defines blackness positively through inarticulable feeling and shared exclusion.

Thompson (37:40):
"...Hurston's description, the spear, the jungle and so on, would be removed entirely. What you would then get instead would be a philosophical criticism about the work that was just listened to..."

10. Tradition, Essentialism, and the Critique's Limits

(39:05 – 42:20)

• Baraka’s model risks falling back on tradition as ultimate authority, paralleling Habermas’s critique of Gadamer: the communal fallback borders on essentialism and unspoken tradition.
• Later thinkers, especially Davis, develop new means of critique that avoid this fallback and interrogate both Black and white essentialist ideologies.

Thompson (40:32):
"That changes, though, as we start to move into the more Marxist and critical theoretical...where this idea of...we share this tradition, so we understand it...That itself is seen as a form of ideology..."

11. Eldridge Cleaver: Postmodern Wandering

(42:20 – 47:38)

• Cleaver, unlike Baraka, represents a "protean self"—flexible, postmodern, constantly self-fashioning, and less invested in stable essentialist or separatist definitions.
• His approach is less about subversion and more about adaptation and appropriation, reflecting a new turn in Black radical thought.

Thompson (46:14):
"...Cleaver has no concern about [art/criticism]...it's just a category difference...blackness starts to take the form of something that can be anything at any given time if it is effective..."

12. Angela Davis: The Most Complete Black Critical Theory

(47:38 – 51:00)

• Davis’s early work, influenced by Frankfurt School critical theory and Western philosophical tradition, offers the clearest vision of "black hermeneutic reading."
• Davis connects criticism and activism, insisting criticism must result in tangible social change; she explicitly confronts the essentialism/constructivism tension in blackness via a dialectical, often negational, approach.

Thompson (49:41):
"...what it's saying is...whereas we've been thinking about how to subvert or to deploy a counter discourse in Western philosophy...we haven't actually been able to come out and say how...Here Davis is actually saying, this is how we do it..."

13. Commodification of Black Criticism and the Present Moment

(51:00 – 57:00)

• Baraka worried about art being commodified; Davis brings criticism into the aesthetic dimension, blurring boundaries between theoretical and poetic work.
• Thompson voices concern that today’s theory can become inaccessible or insular, questioning whether the field’s work leads to action or simply circulates within academic discourse.

Thompson (54:33):
"...what we start to find is a much...higher degree of poeticization of criticism...There seems to be a union...between the critical object and the aesthetic object. The question is, whom does it serve? And is it...already commodified...?"

14. The Fate of Essentialism in Black Theory

(57:00 – 58:57)

• Does Davis resolve the tension of essentialism? Thompson tentatively argues that in her early work, Davis negates essentialism, positing blackness as a gravitational, but constructed, center in white supremacy’s discourse; but later works may tip back toward a kind of aesthetic essentialism.

Thompson (57:34):
"...she resolves it by evacuating that question and putting it into the negative or negation and say, well, it's always a construct anyway. And blackness is...a type of black hole at the center of white supremacist discourse..."

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Thompson on Malcolm X’s deconstructive strategy:
  "He was in this sense a deconstructionist without really caring at all for whatever may have been going on in French theory in the 60s." [22:40]

• Thompson on the role of criticism:
  "There is an immediacy to it, an unmediated aspect to it, a type of phenomenological understanding of it that attracts, that allows for entry or a type of intersubjectivity between work and critic." [31:12]

• Thompson’s guiding question:
  "They each and everyone believe that what they were doing would lead to a change not within theory itself, but in the world. And that's maybe naive and silly of them and of me for caring in that way. But when I write now, I think of, well, this has to be able to extend outside of just this closed world." [56:45]

• Thompson on Davis’s position:
  "Philosophy must lead to action. If the work that is written, be it theory, philosophy, whatever, does not lead to that or precludes that final outcome. It is not necessarily productive in that sense, and therefore it serves a different purpose." [54:43]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:25] — Introduction to the book’s title and scope
• [06:47] — Avoidance of "genealogy" & "intellectual history" as frames
• [09:23] — Literary language as primary mode of Black expression
• [16:06] — Baldwin as philosophical transition between the social and ontological
• [20:23] — Theorizing Malcolm X and the function of language
• [25:01] — Baraka and the rise of African American theory
• [31:05] — The critic’s role, authenticity, and phenomenology
• [33:46] — Harlem Renaissance comparisons: Hurston, primitivism, and critique
• [42:20] — Cleaver: Postmodern self-fashioning, Black Marxism
• [47:38] — Angela Davis: tradition, action, and the purpose of criticism
• [51:00] — Criticism, commodification, and the current moment
• [57:00] — Essentialism unresolved? Davis’s shifting strategy

Tone & Style

The conversation is richly intellectual, critically engaged, and occasionally playful—marked by both probing philosophical inquiry and mutual respect between host and guest. Thompson is reflective, careful with nuance, and honest about his sympathies and reservations, while Edmonds brings incisive questions and makes thoughtful connections to broader traditions and contemporary concerns.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in Black Studies, critical theory, philosophy of race, and the deep workings of Black Power-era intellectual life.