The primal scene of domination and slavery inevitably produces struggle. It must. Because domination is the idolatrous effort of one to exert control over the will of the other, and we are compelled as free beings to realize and always live that freedom. So the struggle produces dignity, and that dignity, declared and acted and performed and practiced and sung and chanted and screamed and whispered—when enacted by all human beings against various and sundry forms of domination, it leads to joy and love. Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University) joins Evan Rosa to discuss his book Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination. We start with what struggle against domination is, especially how it’s expressed in Black life. We entertain the feeling of struggle psychologically and culturally; the ugly and vicious temptation to idolatry that seeking domination and mastery over others entails; how the humanity of both the master and the slave are lost or found; how struggle produces dignity; and an understanding of the debate between seeing dignity as purely intrinsic as opposed to performative. We close by thinking about how the Black struggle for dignity can inform all of us about what it means to actualize our humanity, embrace the power our freedom entails, culminating in joy and love.
The primal scene of domination and slavery inevitably produces struggle. It must. Because domination is the idolatrous effort of one to exert control over the will of the other, and we are compelled as free beings to realize and always live that freedom. So the struggle produces dignity, and that dignity, declared and acted and performed and practiced and sung and chanted and screamed and whispered—when enacted by all human beings against various and sundry forms of domination, it leads to joy and love.
Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University) joins Evan Rosa to discuss his book Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination. We start with what struggle against domination is, especially how it’s expressed in Black life. We entertain the feeling of struggle psychologically and culturally; the ugly and vicious temptation to idolatry that seeking domination and mastery over others entails; how the humanity of both the master and the slave are lost or found; how struggle produces dignity; and an understanding of the debate between seeing dignity as purely intrinsic as opposed to performative. We close by thinking about how the Black struggle for dignity can inform all of us about what it means to actualize our humanity, embrace the power our freedom entails, culminating in joy and love.
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.
Vincent Lloyd is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies and Director of the Center for Political Theology at Villanova University. He is the author of Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination (Yale University Press, 2022), Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons, with Joshua Dubler (Oxford University Press, 2019), In Defense of Charisma (Columbia University Press, 2018), Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology (Fordham University Press, 2017), Black Natural Law (Oxford University Press, 2016), The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology (Stanford University Press, 2011), and Law and Transcendence: On the Unfinished Project of Gillian Rose (Palgrave, 2009). Visit his personal website here.