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{ ix } Acknowledgments B For the appearance of this work, I must, above all, thank my editor at Fordham University Press, Helen Tartar. And, I am most deeply thankful. For, since first speaking with me in the autumn of  about the project of which this book is an expression, she has remained steadfast—for what is now a generation of thought, at least—in her affirmation of my efforts to think the work of W. E. B. Du Bois anew and to address certain concerns in modern social thoughtfrommysomewhatpeculiarpathofthinking.Ascholar,awriter,simply could not hope for more, in a lifetime. She has, indeed, changed my world. I hope that herein she can find some sense of the measure of my gratitude and appreciation, as well as some retrospective value in seeing this discourse into a new public presentation. And for that event, such as it is, I also thank Tom Lay of Fordham Press, who with the kindest prodding has shepherded this book into its present form, and Tim Roberts, of the American Literatures Initiative. Then, this text was gifted with two anonymous readers, who were kind enough to make themselves known to me, Fred Moten and David Lloyd. It is hard to imagine any other two readers who might have engaged the study in such a fundamental manner, affirmatively critical to the limit, in such a way astonotonlypushmetorenderthisdiscourseatthehighestlevelthatIcould bring to the table, now, but by way of their own exemplary paths of inquiry and questioning, to recognize my own work as part of a renewed horizon of shared discourse and urgent concern with thinking anew today. When this study grows up, I hope that it will be like David’s own beautiful discourse under the heading Irish Times: Temporalities of Modernity (Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame, ) from which I drew inspiration in my final revisions to my own study, with which it shares much, in particular on its “lower frequencies,” as Ralph Ellison suggested in another context. And then, too, for me, Fred Moten has been from our first discussion the first voice of my generation to which I listen; AC K NOW L E D GM E N T S x to discover in the event that he had given a listen to this locution—anonymously , as it were—heartened me to try to bring to it another order of voice. I hope that he hears herein, and on every page, all that we share. Andthen,fromsomewherenearthemid-pointofthejourneyentailedinthe making of this book, Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo and Maria Phillips became essential to its realization—most fundamentally, in matters of the spirit. They have been there, always, at the other end of the line, waiting, patiently, affirmatively, ever-hopeful. A master of the graphic arts, Franc has tendered his remarkable genius for the shaping of the cover design. For their contribution to both layers ofitsform,bothits inside andits outside,this book, then, belongsalso to them. For those who know what it means to write, they will doubtless understand that I write with two hands: one is that of my wife, Ayumi, as she attends to certain practices of our shared life, in particular the close care just now of the still toddler son, Aaron Eisuke, that we share and hold together in family; the other, is mine, as I try to trace in outline the nightlines and dreams that come to me in the darkness of thought, inscribing them, attending thus to other forms of our life, sharing them with her, all the while. This book is hers too. Her dreams, at least some of them, are recorded here, just as well as mine. I hope all who read it remember this. At the outset of any textual reference, I must thank Danielle Kovacs, curator of collections in the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at the W. E. B. Du Bois Library of the University of Massachusetts Libraries, and the trustees of the David Graham Du Bois Memorial Trust, respectively, for assisting me on numerous matters over many years and for ensuringscholarlyaccesstosomuchworkbyandaboutW.E.B.DuBois,most especially that contained in the papers of W. E. B. Du Bois housed at Amherst. “Anacrusis,” the opening text for this study, was published in an earlier, slightly shorter version, without certain annotations (which, although mainly prepared in the autumn of , are presented here for the first time), under the title “Between” in Assemblage: A Critical Journal of Architecture and Design Culture  (April): –. I thank Thomas...

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