Books by Grant Farred

Grant Farred examines the careers of international soccer stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, along with his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa, to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging.

"This book probes the cultural forces and legacies at play in three events in sports history, exploring how racial, national, sporting, and personal identities overlap and conflict. The author taps into a deep well of Western philosophy and literature to read the resonances in these three moments"--

Grant Farred takes up the event as a philosophical problem from a novel perspective, examining infamous events in sport and arguing that theorizing the event through sport makes possible an entirely original way of thinking about it. He shows how what was inherent in the event is opened to new possibilities for understanding ontological being by thinking about sport philosophically.

After a playoff loss, Houston head coach, Jeff Van Gundy alleged that Yao Ming, his Chinese star center, was the victim of phantom calls. This book shows how this incident can be seen as a pivotal moment in the globalization of the NBA. It also explains how allegations of phantom calls challenge the fiction that America is a post-racial society.

Moving among Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean, this title demonstrates the vibrancy and historical roots of Africana thought and philosophy. It includes an essay that reveals the intricate richness of Africana thought, moving through psychoanalysis, folktales, Western metaphysics, and a critique of the political.

Features a scholar and a soccer fan telling us what the game meant for him.

Offers an appraisal of what South African democracy has yielded and has failed to yield in the era following the heady expectations of liberation from apartheid's multiple repressions. This title presents a look at the realities of black majority governance, at the African National Congress, and at the costs of ANC rule to the populace.