Ontological Terror
Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation
Seiten
2018
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8223-7087-1 (ISBN)
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8223-7087-1 (ISBN)
Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy, illustrating how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing while showing how this nothingness destabilizes whiteness, makes blacks a target of violence, and explains why humanism has failed to achieve equality for blacks.
In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.
In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.
Calvin L. Warren is Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. The Free Black Is Nothing 1
1. The Question of Black Being 26
2. Outlawing 62
3. Scientific Horror 110
4. Catachrestic Fantasies 143
Coda. Adieu to the Human 169
Notes 173
Bibliography 201
Index 211
Erscheinungsdatum | 06.07.2018 |
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Zusatzinfo | 5 illustrations |
Verlagsort | North Carolina |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 152 x 229 mm |
Gewicht | 340 g |
Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Metaphysik / Ontologie |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie | |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
ISBN-10 | 0-8223-7087-5 / 0822370875 |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-8223-7087-1 / 9780822370871 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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