Review Essay: Breaking Ground: The Legacy of Michael Dawson’s Black Visions in Black Political Thought

• Author: Elizabeth Jordie Davies
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221131327
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Political Theory

2023, Vol. 51(1) 287 –293

© The Author(s) 2022

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Book Review

Book Review

Abstract

While most of Political Theory’s 50th anniversary issue looks forward to

imagining political theory in the future, the Book Review section looks

backward to consider those books and schools of political theory not

reviewed on the pages of the journal—but which went on to shape the field

nonetheless. The aim of this section is not to constitute a new and newly

virtuous canon, but rather to goad readers to reflect anew on knowledge

production and the institutional and circulatory practices that compose it,

reaching from journal readers, to classrooms and conferences, and on to

late night conversations and confabulations.

Breaking Ground: The Legacy of Michael Dawson’s Black Visions in Black

Political Thought

Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies, by

Michael C. Dawson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. xvii + 410 pp.

Reviewed by: Elizabeth Jordie Davies, SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University,

Baltimore, MD, USA

DOI: 10.1177/00905917221131327

What is Black politics? What is Black political thought? Michael Dawson’s

Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African American Political

Ideologies shows that there are many answers. Visions describes the contours

of Black political thought and asks how intramural ideological differences

come to bear on Black political behavior. A key implication of Black Visions

is that Black political thought and Black political ideology are observable phe-

nomena that are formed and performed at the grassroots. As such, those who

study Black political thought and Black political behavior turn to Black Visions

as a guide when explaining the intellectual influence and expansive nature of

Black thought.

Although Black political thought recognizes a range of streams of Black

political ideology, to the untrained eye, the persistence of a nearly uniformly

1131327PTXXXX10.1177/00905917221131327Political TheoryBook Review

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