Reaching Backwards in Time: The Feltness of Unfreedom in an Antiblack World

This paper adds an analysis of social and political constructions of time to Afro-pessimism’s critique, in order to address Kenan Ferguson’s question about the feltness of (un)freedom—what he describes as “debt”—and its relationship to the “less-than-human.” Malaklou argues that this less-than-human, caricatured as the “Black African,” lives in the primordial time of the bush. Her essay thus asks us to reach backwards in time in order to imagine and employ debt as Ferguson wants us to: as an/Other, non-humanist model for being and doing and knowing (and feeling).