U.S. Churches – Say It! U.S. and Israel Together Are In the Wrong

SPECIAL NOTE: August 3, 2014. As I combine an intense leave for writing with family vacation, Israel’s brutal and unjustified attack on the people and families of Gaza continues. (photo, left, from APA at the Electronic Intifada) I cannot now write on this latest Israel outrage, called “Operation Protective Edge.” But I find that my […]

Remembering My Grandfather Today/100 Years after World War I

By Mark Lewis Taylor My grandfather showed me the bullet hole in his knee from his soldier days of battle in World War I. That was back in the late 1950s when I was 6 years old. When he died, I was gifted with the ceremonial flag that draped his coffin. I used it for  .  […]

She “Has Become an Ancestor” – Yuri Kochiyama’s Legacy: I Remember

by Mark Lewis Taylor “Yuri Kochiyama has become an ancestor.” That is how Mumia Abu-Jamal commemorates Yuri Kochiyama in his audio recording this week, “Yuri Kochiyma: A Life in Struggle,” thus giving voice and remembrance to Kochiyama, the Asian-American participant in Afro-Asian and many other U.S. and global movements. Small of stature though she was, […]

Mumia and Martin – What I Actually Told FOX News

by Mark Lewis Taylor As I was preparing for classes yesterday, I quickly squeezed out a reply to FOX News reporter, Joshua Rhett Miller, and his inquiry to me about the possible comparisons of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Martin Luther King, Jr.  The reporter was preparing what proved to be a FOX News attack essay on […]

Crucified

Historical studies of the practice of crucifixion show it to be a torture practice intrinsic to the politics of state violence (for one such study, Martin Hengel’s Crucifixion remains essential). In light of this, frequent talk by Christians of Jesus’ action on the cross as a necessary “saving action” is highly problematic, at best. At […]

DERRIDA’S DEATH PENALTY REFERENCES – From Mumia Abu-Jamal to ‘Mary’s Tears’

 © Mark Lewis Taylor (The following short paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Comparative Literature, at a session on “Deconstructing Capital Punishment: Analyzing Derrida’s Death Penalty Seminars, vol. 1, University of Chicago Press, 2013). Photo above right: Derrida on the death penalty at Robert Cardozo Law School.         David Long, two […]

AAR Response to Judith Butler’s book, _Parting Ways_.

ON DISPOSSESSION AND DEPARTURE A Response to Judith Butler’s Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of  Zionism by Mark Lewis Taylor A condensed version of the review printed below was presented on a panel treating Judith Butler’s book, Parting Ways, at the American Academy of Religion, Annual Meeting, November 25, 2013, in Baltimore, MD. The […]

New Review Essay: “The Cry of Victims and Dussel’s Philosophy – Liberation Beyond Habermas and Levinas”

The Radical Philosophy Review (RPR),  the journal of the Radical Philosophy Association, has just published my article-length review essay of Dussel’s recently translated book, Ethics of Liberation in the Age of Globalization and Exclusion. The published essay can be purchased at Radical Philosophy Review, Volume 17, Number 1 (2014): 307-312. RPR has kindly consented to my maintaining […]