Divided into four sections, this exploration of critical methods and critical religious thought by a professor of Christian ethics at Vanderbilt Divinity School is very thorough. Section One: The Religious Functions of Cultural Criticism attempts to define and explicate contemporary criticism in terms of religion and race. Section Two: Categorical Racism and Racial Apologetics begins with "Aesthetics and White Racial Ideology" and goes on to the apologetics. Anderson draws heavily on philosophical and critical molds with statements like "European philosophers developed a philosophy of difference in terms of rationality, aesthetics, morals, and race. In their discourse, racial consciousness became a defining category in the politics of European difference." (52)He then mines the works of European philosophers including Hume, Kant, Herder, Schiller, Fichte, and Hegel, just to begin with the most famous names. Section Three:Ontological Blackness in Theology is divided into two chapters: "the Black Theology Project" and "The Challenge of Womanist Theology" which "attempts to negotiate the legitimation crisis of black theology both in its classical and Afrocentric variety. When it makes gender along with race and class a constitutive category of criticism, womanist theology makes regulative a womanist consciousness that includes within itself the privilege of difference" (104). Section Four: Explicating and Displacing Ontological Blackness: The Heroic and the Grotesque in African American Cultural and Religious Criticism includes "grotesque genius", "expressive culture", and public life. Interesting. Will read it again. ( )

This is a fascinating book, an important contribution to both cultural studies and theology. Anderson articulates six themes. First is an account of the reification of race in contemporary African American cultural and religious thinkers, designated "ontological blackness." Second is a problematization of the historic representational functions of race language. Third is an account of the determinative role of the cult of European genius associated with the "Enlightenment." Fourth is a problematization of racial discourses that derive their legitimacy from ontological blackness. Fifth is an account of Nietzsche's "grotesque aesthetic," which undergirds new literary critiques of ontological blackness. Sixth is a plea that the legitimacy of African American cultural criticism be grounded on cultural fulfillment rather than resistance. The rhythm of description and problematization that permeates the book makes it a good pointer for historical (or, more properly, genealogical) research as well as contemporary cultural and political thought. Most notably, Anderson engages in an extended critique of James Cone's black theology; womanist theologies articulated by Katie Cannon, Jacquelyn Grant, and Delores Williams; Molefi Asante's afrocentrism; and Shelby Steele's neoconservatism. That should generate controversy from all directions. As a contribution to critical cultural studies, it should also stimulate reflection on the construction of all sorts of categories, including not only "race" but also Anderson's genealogical taxonomy of contemporary African American cultural critics from James Cone and Katie Cannon to Cornell West, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker.