Noel Chabani Manganyi has the distinction of being South Africa’s first Black clinical psychologist. In his lecture about the book, More, an Associate Researcher at the University of Limpopo, discussed the enduring philosophical questions addressed in Manganyi’s work.

A prolific writer, Manganyi’s main concern was to use psychological discourse to contextualise his discipline, psychology, and the lived experience of Black people within the context of an antiblack racist society and the condition of alienation it produces.

The book is a philosophically critical engagement with his work, and it constitutes, as it were, part of the author’s overarching project of attempting to reclaim and retrieve hitherto overlooked, ignored and invisibilised Black thinkers of the past and present. Although Manganyi has written over 10 books, the most important and popular being Being-Black-in-the-World (1973) and Alienation and the Body in Racist Society (1977), his ideas and work have, for one reason or another, been disregarded by mainstream South African psychology, let alone philosophy. The author foregrounds philosophy as also a culprit because Manganyi himself describes his work as that of “a psychologist who thinks and conceptualises psychological reality in a phenomenological way”.

This book’s focus spans various disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, political philosophy, critical race studies and post-colonialism. It will be of interest to a broad cross-section of undergraduate and graduate students, scholars and activists.

The title can be ordered from Blueweaver at orders@blueweaver.co.za