Ontological terror : Blackness, nihilism, and emancipation / Calvin L. Warren.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Warren, Calvin L., 1980- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race--Political aspects.

Race.

Racism.

Race awareness.

Black people--Race identity.

Black people.

Nihilism (Philosophy).

Ontology.

Physical Description:

xi, 220 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2018.

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.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

The free Black is nothing

The question of Black being

Outlawing

Scientific horror

Catachrestic fantasies

Adieu to the human

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [201]-210) and index (pages [211]-220).

Other Format:

Online version: Warren, Calvin L., 1980- Ontological terror.

ISBN:

9780822370727

0822370727

9780822370871

0822370875

OCLC:

985682018