Biko Lives!

ANDILE MNGXITAMA is a PhD student at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.  AMANDA ALEXANDER is a PhD student in African history at Columbia University and a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. NIGEL C. GIBSON is director of the Honors Program at Emerson College, USA.

• PART 1: PHILOSOPHIC DIALOGUES * Biko: African Existentialist Philosophy / Mabogo P. More * Self-Consciousness as Force and Reason of Revolution in the Thought of Steve Biko / Lou Turner * A Phenomenology of Biko's Black Consciousness / Lewis R. Gordon * Biko and the Problematic of Presence / Frank Wilderson * May the Black God Stand Please!: Biko's Challenge to Religion / Tinyiko Sam Maluleke * PART 2: CONTESTED HISTORIES AND INTELLECTUAL TRAJECTORIES * Black Consciousness after Biko: The Dialectics of Liberation in South Africa, 1977-1987 / Nigel C. Gibson * An Illuminating Moment: Background to the Azanian Manifesto / Neville Alexander * Critical Intellectualism: The Role of Black Consciousness in Reconfiguring the Race-Class Problematic in South Africa / Nurina Ally and Shireen Ally * PART 3: CULTURAL CRITIQUE AND THE POLITICS OF GENDER * The Influences and Representations of Biko and Black Consciousness in Poetry in Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa/Azania / Mphutlane wa Bofelo * A Human Face: Biko's Conceptions of African Culture and Huamism / Andries Oliphant * Re-membering Biko For The Here And Now / Ahmed Veriava and Prishani Naidoo * Contradictory Locations: Blackwomen and the Discourse of the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) in South Africa / Pumla Dineo Gqola * The Black Consciousness Philosophy and the Woman's Question in South Africa: 1970-1980 / M. J. Oshadi Mangena * PART 4: MEMORY AND COUNTER-MEMORY * Interview with Strini Moodley / Naomi Klein, Ashwin Desai, and Avi Lewis * Interview with Lybon Mabasa / Andile Mngxitama and Amanda Alexander * Interview with Deborah Matshoba / Amanda Alexander and Andile Mngxitama

"This welcome collection of essays about Biko's existentialism, self-consciousness, place of phenomenology in his philosophy, and contribution to the dialectics of liberation, as well as the meaning of race and class problematic in Biko's work, African culture and humanism in his thinking, attitude toward the rights and roles of women, and much more examines his legacy and the meaning that his preachings, writings, and life's example gave to the development of black consciousness in South Africa. But, by far, the most important chapters in the book are Gail Gerhart's hitherto unpublished 1972 interview with Biko and Neville Alexander's recollection of Biko and the Azanian Manifesto." - R. I. Rotberg, Choice"Taken as a whole, this collection of essays is an important addition to the scholarship on Steve Biko. It contributes not only to a deeper understanding of what philosophy is, but also how Biko's writing can be considered philosophical." - Martin Murray, Professor of Sociology, SUNY Binghamton"I never thought I would read anything like this that reminded me of the 'good old days' when we were giddy with hopes and enthusiasm for recreating our own world! Biko Lives! will ruffle many feathers. People who have been trying to 'program' the forward movement of history and human development are going to have to think again." - Bokwe Mafuna, former journalist, founding organizer of the Black Workers' Project, and friend of Steve Biko's