1 hr
Kwame Anthony Appiah Discusses 'The Lies That Bind' The Seattle Public Library - Author Readings and Library Events
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- Arts
Though a world-renowned philosopher familiar to New York Times readers for his “Ethicist” column, Kwame Anthony Appiah is more commonly confronted in person by a seemingly superficial question: where are you really from? “In Sao Paolo, I’ve been taken for a Brazilian and addressed in Portuguese; in Cape Town, I’ve been taken for a ‘Colored’ person; in Rome, for an Ethiopian; and one London cabbie refused to believe I didn’t speak Hindi.” In "The Lies That Bind" he delves beneath the surface of our multitudinous obsession with identity: whether by creed, country, color, class, or culture.When Appiah was born in 1954 his birth announcement made world news. NOT because his parents were royalty, but because of the gap in their respective backgrounds: a mother whose British lineage could be traced back to Norman times, and a father from Ghana, whose family were respected descendants from the Asante Empire. As he skillfully explores in this work, that cross-cultural marriage—and the outrage it and Appiah’s birth invited—has given him a unique perspective on the topic ever since. Arguing for a new theory of identity, The Lies That Bind sets out to persuade the reader that contemporary thinking is unfairly shaped by dangerous and false images which pigeonhole individuals based on arbitrary matrices, say, as a woman, a person of color, a foreign national, a particular rung on the social ladder. While identity gives you reason to do things, it can also, says Appiah give others reasons to do things to you—pay you lower wages, place your child in a remedial class, or, at its worst, launch ethnic war or cleansing. Taking a tour of the various loci of “mistaken identity,” Appiah looks at historical examples where artificial, if not fake, geographical borders led countries to war with each other; how 19th century ways of thinking regarding biology and anthropology still influence 21st century classifications for race, religion, and sexuality; how higher education only reinforces class stratification in the pursuit of “meritocracy”; and how culture, or those “civilizing” values that we wield to distinguish ourselves from the less privileged, are not in fact a birthright.Kwame Anthony Appiah pens the Ethicist column for the New York Times, and is the author of the prize-winning Cosmopolitanism, among many other works. A professor of philosophy and law at New York University, Appiah lives in New York.Praise for The Lies That Bind:Appiah—who could variously be described as biracial, Ghanaian British, an Asante, a Londoner, and a gay cis man—is perfectly positioned to explore the various meanings and missteps involved in charting human identity...His discussions of religion and nationality are particularly apt...Perhaps the most startling of Appiah’s claims is that cultural differences are a response to the need for a distinguishing identity. Herein lies the paradox of cultural identity: the human need to belong will always require an outsider group to reject.—Booklist“The author has a penetrating grasp of the complexities of identity, and he wields history like a scalpel, extracting the cancerous myths, poisonous prejudices, and foolish antagonisms that divide us…A well-informed philosophical investigation into methods for breaking through ‘walls that will not let in fresh and enlivening air.’”—Kirkus Reviews
Though a world-renowned philosopher familiar to New York Times readers for his “Ethicist” column, Kwame Anthony Appiah is more commonly confronted in person by a seemingly superficial question: where are you really from? “In Sao Paolo, I’ve been taken for a Brazilian and addressed in Portuguese; in Cape Town, I’ve been taken for a ‘Colored’ person; in Rome, for an Ethiopian; and one London cabbie refused to believe I didn’t speak Hindi.” In "The Lies That Bind" he delves beneath the surface of our multitudinous obsession with identity: whether by creed, country, color, class, or culture.When Appiah was born in 1954 his birth announcement made world news. NOT because his parents were royalty, but because of the gap in their respective backgrounds: a mother whose British lineage could be traced back to Norman times, and a father from Ghana, whose family were respected descendants from the Asante Empire. As he skillfully explores in this work, that cross-cultural marriage—and the outrage it and Appiah’s birth invited—has given him a unique perspective on the topic ever since. Arguing for a new theory of identity, The Lies That Bind sets out to persuade the reader that contemporary thinking is unfairly shaped by dangerous and false images which pigeonhole individuals based on arbitrary matrices, say, as a woman, a person of color, a foreign national, a particular rung on the social ladder. While identity gives you reason to do things, it can also, says Appiah give others reasons to do things to you—pay you lower wages, place your child in a remedial class, or, at its worst, launch ethnic war or cleansing. Taking a tour of the various loci of “mistaken identity,” Appiah looks at historical examples where artificial, if not fake, geographical borders led countries to war with each other; how 19th century ways of thinking regarding biology and anthropology still influence 21st century classifications for race, religion, and sexuality; how higher education only reinforces class stratification in the pursuit of “meritocracy”; and how culture, or those “civilizing” values that we wield to distinguish ourselves from the less privileged, are not in fact a birthright.Kwame Anthony Appiah pens the Ethicist column for the New York Times, and is the author of the prize-winning Cosmopolitanism, among many other works. A professor of philosophy and law at New York University, Appiah lives in New York.Praise for The Lies That Bind:Appiah—who could variously be described as biracial, Ghanaian British, an Asante, a Londoner, and a gay cis man—is perfectly positioned to explore the various meanings and missteps involved in charting human identity...His discussions of religion and nationality are particularly apt...Perhaps the most startling of Appiah’s claims is that cultural differences are a response to the need for a distinguishing identity. Herein lies the paradox of cultural identity: the human need to belong will always require an outsider group to reject.—Booklist“The author has a penetrating grasp of the complexities of identity, and he wields history like a scalpel, extracting the cancerous myths, poisonous prejudices, and foolish antagonisms that divide us…A well-informed philosophical investigation into methods for breaking through ‘walls that will not let in fresh and enlivening air.’”—Kirkus Reviews
1 hr