Screen LibraryOntological terror : blackness, nihilism, and emancipation /
The author intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. The author uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Duke University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Durham : |
| Publication Dates: | 2018. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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| Summary: |
The author intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. The author 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 non-Being - a logic which reproduces anti-black violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks - the author urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of way of existing that are not predicated on grounding in Being. |
| Carrier Form: | xi, 220 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [201]-210) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780822370871 (paperback) : 0822370875 (paperback) |
| Index Number: | HT1523 |
| CLC: | D066 |
| Call Number: | D066/W287 |
| Contents: | Acknowledgments -- The free Black is nothing -- The question of Black being -- Outlawing -- Scientific horror -- Catachrestic fantasies -- Adieu to the human -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index. |