 One version of what I’m referring to as fortification or shoring up is the outcome of a heightened focus on a few high-profile icons—call this the “tentpole approach.” These are notables like Cooper, Du Bois, and Fanon, the touchstone figures—Gordon refers to them as the pillars of African American philosophy—with the clearest prima facie cases for canonical status. As more philosophers examine the work of these figures and produce more commentary on them and each other, subfields start to grow up around them. This gives Africana philosophy that familiar subdisciplinary shape, whereby anyone who knows anything about the area must have something to say about a handful of towering figures. One clear and influential example of this sort of intervention is Robert Gooding-Williams’s (2009) magisterial In the Shadow of Du Bois.