AFRO- PESSIMISM an INTRODUCTION Further Reading 179 ARTICLES
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O OVERCOME ANTI- “T BLACKNESS, THERE WOULD AFRO- HAVE TO BE WHAT FANON HAD PESSIMISM CALLED A ‘PROGRAM OF COM- PLETE DISORDER,’ AN EXPROPRI- ATION AND AFFIRMATION OF THE VERY VIOLENCE PERPETUATED AGAINST BLACK EXISTENCE AND A FUNDAMENTAL REORIENTATION OF THE SOCIAL COORDINATES OF THE HUMAN RELATION. IT WOULD ENTAIL A WAR AGAINST THE CONCEPT OF HUMANITY AND A WAR THAT SPLITS CIVIL SOCIETY TO ITS CORE, A CIVIL WAR THAT WOULD ELABORATE ITSELF TO THE DEATH. “SLAVERY IS THE THRESHOLD OF THE POLITICAL WORLD, ABOLITION THE INTERMINABLE RADICALIZATION OF EVERY RADICAL MOVEMENT.” AFRO- PESSIMISM AN INTRODUCTION FURTHER READING 179 ARTICLES K. Aarons, “No Selves to Abolish: Afropessimism, Anti-Politics and the End of the World” Chico, et al., cosmic hoboes: an afropessimist meditation (no)space <www.cosmichoboes.blogspot.com> Inko Day, “Being or Nothingness: Indigeneity, Antiblackness, and Settler Colonial Critique” Anthony Farley, “Perfecting Slavery” Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts” Saidiya Hartman and Frank B. Wilderson, III, “The Position of the Unthought” racked & dispatched Kara Keeling, “‘In the Interval’: Frantz Fanon and the minneapolis, september 2017 ‘Problems’ of Visual Representation” second printing R. L., “Wanderings of the Slave: Black Life and Social Death” no copyright Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics” authorization not sought or granted in the production of this edition. any part of this book may be reproduced, stored virtually, or Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness” transmitted by any means, electronic, physical, supernatural, photocopying, or otherwise, without Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Issue 29 (2016), prior permission of the publisher. “Black Holes: Afro-Pessimism, blackness and the discourses of this reader is not intended for profit. Modernity” <www.rhizomes.net/issue29> free pdf | connect: rackedanddispatched.noblogs.org Jared Sexon, “People-of-Color-Blindness: Notes on the Afterlife racked&[email protected] of Slavery” set in AVANT-GARDE and Baskerville Calvin Warren, “Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope” and 91 14 20 66 6 “Onticide: Afropessimism, Queer Theory, and Ethics” Frank B. Wilderson, III, “Gramsci’s Black Marx: Wither the Slave in Civil Society?” and “‘We’re trying to destory the world’: Anti-Blackness and Police Violence After Ferguson” CONTENTS FURTHER READING Preface v Editors’ Introduction 7 These materials cover a spectrum of theories and subjects and are I. not necessarily all within the framework of Afro-pessimism. They Blacks and the Master/Slave Relation | 2015 15 FRANK B. WILDERSON, III are, however, all relative to an understanding of anti-Blackness, whether through history, media, armed struggle, or feminism. II. The Burdened Individuality of Freedom | 1997 31 SAIDIYA HARTMAN III. 2002 49 BOOKS The Avant-Garde of White Supremacy | STEVE MARTINOT & JARED SEXTON W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 IV. The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s (Silent) 67 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth Scandal | 2003 FRANK B. WILDERSON, III Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self- Making in Nineteenth-Century America V. The Belly of the World: A Note on Black 80 Women’s Labors | 2016 LIES: A Journal of Materialist Feminism, Vol. I and II SAIDIYA HARTMAN David Marriott, Haunted Life: Visual Culture and Black Modernity VI. Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American 91 Grammar Book | 1987 Achille Mbembe, Critique of Black Reason HORTENSE J. SPILLERS Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study VII. The Vengeance of Vertigo: Aphasia and Abjection 123 Jared Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of in the Political Trials of Black Insurgents | 2011 FRANK B. WILDERSON, III Multiracialism VIII. Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography The Vel of Slavery: Tracking the Figure of 148 the Unsovereign | 2014 Hortense Spillers, Red, White, and in Color: Essays on American JARED SEXTON Literature and Culture References 170 Frank B. Wilderson, III, Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms Further Reading 178 178 REFERENCES 177 Waziyatawin (2012) The paradox of indigenous resurgence at the end of empire. Decolonization 1(1): 68-85. Wilderson FB III (2008) Biko and the problematic of presence. In: Mngxitama A, Alexander A and Gibson N (eds) Biko Lives! Contesting the Legacies of Steve Biko. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 95-114. —— (2010) Red, White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms. Durham, NC: Duke UP. Wynter S (1995) 1492: A new world view. In: Lawrence V and Nettleford R (eds) Race, Discourse, and the Origins of the Americas. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. 176 REFERENCES Milum K (2010) The Political Uncommons: The Cross-Cultural Logic of the Global Commons. London: Ashgate. Moten F (2013) Notes on passage: An epistemology, paraontology, insovereignty. Paper presented at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 12 April. Oakes J (1990) Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. PREFACE Prashad V (2007) The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World. New York: The New Press. Ransby B (2005) Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press. In June 2017, a Black off-duty cop was coming to assist some other officers Rifkin M (2009) Indigenizing Agamben: Rethinking sovereignty in light of but as he approached them, the other cops, who were white, just saw a Black the ‘peculiar’ status of native peoples. Cultural Critique 73: 88-124. man coming toward them and shot him. One of the cops later justified this Robinson C (2000) Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press. action by saying that he apparently “feared for his safety.” The Black cop’s Saunt C (2004) The paradox of freedom: Tribal sovereignty and lawyer said of the case that his client was “treated as an ordinary black guy emancipation during the reconstruction of Indian Territory. The on the street.” Journal of Southern History 70(1): 63-94. Shantz J (2013) Commonist Tendencies: Mutual Aid Beyond Communism. Thinking about this incident, it appears that the Black cop Brooklyn: Punctum Books. seamlessly moves from being a force of structural white Sharma N and Wright C (2008) Decolonizing resistance, challenging supremacy (as a uniformed cop) to being shot just for being Black. colonial states. Social Justice 35(3): 120-38. Simpson L (2013) I am not a nation-state. Voices Rising, 6 November. To help make sense of this, it is necessary to understand that Available (accessed 1 August 2014) at: http://nationsrising.org/i- anti-Blackness can emerge at any moment with the existence of am-not-a-nation-state/ Blackness. Anti-Blackness does not need any particular behavior Smith A (2006) Heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy. to respond to; it is not a causal reaction. All that anti-Blackness In: INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (eds) The Color needs to violently surface is the presence of Blackness; nothing of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology. Boston, MA: South End Press, needs to “happen.” 66-73. —— (2010) Indigeneity, settler colonialism, white supremacy. Global The following introduction—which is only an introduction as it Dialogue 12(2). Available (accessed 1 August 2014) at: http:// www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=488 relates to the entire book—is intended to provide a brief overview —— (2012) The moral limits of the law: Settler colonialism and the anti- and channel into the writings of the Black authors who have violence movement. Settler Colonial Studies 2(2): 69-88. come to define and fit within the framework of Afro-pessimism. —— (2013) Voting and indigenous disappearance. Settler Colonial Studies It is the essays themselves, not the Editors’ Introduction that follows, that are 3(3-4): 352-368. meant to serve as an introduction to Afro-pessimism. Solow B (ed.) (1991) Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System. New York: Cambridge UP. It should be emphasized that the intentions of this project are Spillers H (2003) Black, White and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture. Chicago: IL: U of Chicago P. strictly non-academic—even anti-academic. The writers within Trouillot M-R (2012) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Afro-pessimism all exist in academia (which is not to say the Boston, MA: Beacon. ideas of Afro-pessimism originate in academia as they certainly Veracini L (2010) Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. New York: don’t), therefore this book is intended to remove their writings Palgrave Macmillan. from behind the university paywalls so they are freely available. Veracini L (2011) Introduction. Settler Colonial Studies 1(1): 1-12. As someone who has nothing to do with academia, I wish to see v vi PREFACE REFERENCES 175 the ideas of Afro-pessimism spread more widely so they might Hartman SV and Wilderson FB III (2003) The position of the unthought. disrupt white tranquility and poison the narratives of Progress. Oui Parle 13(2): 183-201. Hixson W (2013) American Settler Colonialism: A History. New York: Palgrave It is significant to note that my engagement with Afro-pessimism Macmillan. Jafri B (2012) Privilege vs. complicity: People of color and settler is as a non-Black person—none of my words should be taken as colonialism. Equity’ Matters, 21 March. Available (accessed 1 representative of it. Being non-Black, I am structurally positioned August 2014) at: http://www.ideas-idees.ca/blog/privilege-vs- against Blackness and thus to feel a world built completely complicity-people-colour-and-settler-colonialism/ against you is something that is ultimately incomprehensible to Kelley RDG (2002) Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston, me. My interest in Afro-pessimism comes not as an empathetic MA: Beacon. ally—as that position only reinforces the racial hierarchy—but Kidwell CS and Velie A (eds) (2005) Native American Studies.