For each episode of 5 Objects, we ask guests to choose five pieces or items that have influenced their intellectual life and work. These can be books, art, music, poetry, photographs, performances, a person, an event, or an experience. The choices then become the basis of a free-flowing conversation that discusses our guest’s life, their personal, political, and intellectual journeys and histories. Suchitra Vijayan spoke to the philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University.
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He completed his PhD at University of California, Los Angeles. Before that, he completed BAs in Philosophy and Political Science at Indiana University. His theoretical work draws liberally from German transcendental philosophy, contemporary philosophy of language, contemporary social science, histories of activism and activist thinkers, and the Black radical tradition. He is currently writing a book entitled Reconsidering Reparations that considers a novel philosophical argument for reparations and explores links with environmental justice. He also is committed to public engagement and is publishing articles in popular outlets with general readership (e.g. Slate, Pacific Standard) exploring intersections between climate justice and colonialism.
For this episode, he picked
1. Illmatic
2. Black Marxism
3. Amílcar Cabral
4. Combahee River Collective Statement
5. Ender’s Game