Books & Spoken Word
Kwame Anthony Appiah – The Lies That Bind
- Artists
- Kwame Anthony Appiah
Kwame Anthony Appiah introduces his book The Lies that Bind.
How do we craft identities? Is identity personal? Or are the identities that shape the world, our struggles and our hopes actually social ones, shared with countless others? What roles do family, nationality, culture, class, race and religion play in the shaping of our sense of self?
Kwame Anthony Appiah challenges our assumptions about how identity works, weaving personal anecdotes with historical, cultural and literary examples to explore the entanglements within the stories we tell ourselves. He examines how identities are created by conflict, questioning misleading myths and offering a new way to for us to think about ourselves and our communities.
Louise Erdrich says of Appiah’s The Lies That Bind: ‘Understanding what draws us together and what tears us apart lies at the core of democracy. This is a vital book, an antidote to violent nativism, and a key to success in the human experiment.’
This event is an opportunity to listen as Appiah – in the words of Zadie Smith – ‘dismantles the humbug, dogma, pseudo-science and propaganda that have long dogged our attempts to discuss “identity” and offers in their place a practical and philosophical tool kit, as subtly radical in its aims as it is humane in application.’
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