Open Casket: Philosophical Meditations on the Lynching of Emmett Till

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Open Casket brings political and philosophical clarity to bear on the brutal murder of Emmitt Till and his mothers decision to show the world her son's body.


The open casket is a central motif, a political and ethical focal point, for thinking about Mamie Till-Mobleys pain and suffering and her profound act of truth-telling as she wanted the world to bear witness to the gratuitous, despicable, and atrocious dimensions of anti-Blackness. The critical and powerful essays within this book capture both the horror of Emmett Till's murder/lynching and the powerful agency and the indomitable Black maternal love and courage that Mamie Till-Mobley demonstrated. Through the open casket, Mamie Till-Mobley reclaimed her son's body, and re-signified his dignity and familial-relational meaning to white America, Black America, and the world. It was her agencyin spite of the horror of his disfigured body and the unbearable affective weight that she experienced by such a site/sightthat forced white America to witness the terror of anti-Blackness, to tarry with its own egregious systemic racism.


In solemn recognition of the 70th anniversary of Till's murder, George Yancy and A. Todd Franklin gather interdisciplinary voices to articulate the political, spiritual, and existential significance of Black hope in the face of seeming hopelessness.

Reviews

"With this most important collection, George Yancy and A. Todd Franklin demonstrate what a generative and committed philosophy looks like. The faces of anti-Blackness may have changed since the dreadful days of Jim Crow, but the constant of white hate for Black bodies remains-and this volume enjoins us to reckon with it. Returning to the horrors of Till's lynching but also to his mother's resistant insistence on an open casket compels us to linger on this primal scene of anti-Blackness without ceding to its suffocating totality. Not unlike Mamie Till-Mobley, we must respond to Emmett in critical and inventive ways that jam, unsettle, and de-complete our existing anti-Black world, and this volume is a much-needed companion in that effort." --Zahi Zalloua, Cushing Eells Professor of Philosophy and Literature, Whitman College, USA

"Emmett Till's lynching, that most grotesque and intentional form of execution, brought into sharp relief the findings and pleas of Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass: anti-Black animus is real, as are modes of resistance to Black unfreedom. Yancy, Franklin, and the volume contributors offer long overdue philosophical examinations of Till's death. They also underscore the actions of Mamie Till-Mobley, a mother whose decision to leave open her son's casket transformed America and continues to impact states experiencing late modern Reconstruction." --Neil Roberts, John B. McCoy and John T. McCoy Professor of Africana Studies, Williams College, USA

"Even though you may not feel emotionally ready to engage Open Casket, you must do so because each essay offers the gift of fresh analysis, creativity in its painful remembering, and insightful confrontations of anti-Black racism that spark the kind of political imagination most needed right now." --Traci C. West, James W. Pearsall Professor of Christian Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological School, USA, and author of Solidarity and Defiant Spirituality: Africana Lessons on Religion, Racism, and Ending Gender Violence

Author Bio

George Yancy is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College. Yancy has published over 250 combined scholarly articles, chapters, and interviews that have appeared in professional journals, books, and at various news sites. Yancy is known for his numerous essays and interviews in the New York Times' philosophy column The Stone, and Truthout. He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books, including most recently Until Our Lungs Give Out: Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future and In Sheeps Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism (coedited with philosopher Bill Bywater. Yancy is editor of the Philosophy of Race Book Series at Bloomsbury.
A. Todd Franklin is the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Africana Studies at Hamilton College. Franklins research focuses on the existential, social, and political implications of various critical and transformative discourses aimed at cultivating individual and collective self-realization. He teaches courses on existentialism, Nietzsche, and critical race theory; and he is the recipient of numerous honors and accolades for excellence in teaching. Franklins most recent work includes The Transformative Power of Community Engaged Teaching in Wiley Blackwells A Companion to Public Philosophy, and The Gospel According to Baldwin: Prophetic Genealogy as Social Praxis in Genealogy: A Genealogy.