West GS ’80 critiques current state of ‘critique’

West described paideia as “this cultivation of critique, this bearing witness to love and justice and ... questing for hope, though knowing that we will need help,” in a speech Tuesday before roughly 250 students in McCosh 10. The African American studies professor’s talk, “Cultivating Critique in the Age of Obama,” inaugurated the Signature Lecture Series organized by Wilson College.

West urged audience members to commit to cultivating critique, or the practice of “self-credit, self-examination, examination of our society, critical examination of our world,” and explained that he wanted to begin the year by inspiring students to commit to loving others.

The idea that one’s own life is the only one worth living “cannot be ascribed to a human,” West said.

West said this period of cultivating critique contrasts with America’s past, citing the time when the United States simultaneously enslaved African-Americans and claimed to practice democracy.

“It is impossible to imagine cultivating critique in the age of Jim Crow,” he said. “But in the age of Obama, it is interesting to see how [he is] going to somehow keep the best of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. I never lost hope, but I am never ever optimistic.”

For John Torrey ’11, West’s speech served as inspiration to take a step back when forming his priorities.

“It was the first time in my career that someone has spoken to me that directly about the fundamental issues of organizing my life in the world of injustice,” Torrey said.

Bernice Fokum ’14 said she found solutions to her political doubts in West’s speech. Fokum called herself a “strong supporter” of President Barack Obama, but explained, “I think it is always extremely important to find the balance where you can’t completely adore something, but you have to look at both sides of the issue, and that is the only way we can progress as a country.”

“I liked [West’s] point that America could very well be on a decline, but he is not losing hope,” she added. “If we really accept the state we are in right now, than we are not able to be progressive. But if we learn to recreate our ideas, then we’ll be able to reverse the decline of America.”

Wilson College Master Eduardo Cadava said in an e-mail after the lecture that he chose West to open the series “because, from the very beginning of his career, he also has sought to articulate the conditions for a more just and less exclusionary world, and one in which difference is valued and respected.”

“I loved the way in which [West] situated the possibility of critique in our time in relation to a history of figures who have provided models for how we might live a life that cares about the most vulnerable people in our society — Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and others,” Cadava said. “But I also am grateful for the way in which his own lecture was an example of what he wanted us to understand, an example of what critique in our time might look like.”

The Signature Lecture Series was organized in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Wilcox Hall and will feature Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, Nobel Prize-winning novelist and former English professor Toni Morrison and feminist theorist Judith Butler in upcoming lectures.