In this Book
- Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation
- Book
- 2018
- Published by: Duke University Press
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
summary
In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren 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 nonbeing—a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks—Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xi
- Chapter 2: Outlawing
- pp. 62-109
- Chapter 3: Scientific Horror
- pp. 110-142
- Chapter 4: Catachrestic Fantasies
- pp. 143-168
- Coda: Adieu to the Human
- pp. 169-172
- Bibliography
- pp. 201-210
Additional Information
ISBN
9780822371847
Related ISBN(s)
9780822370727, 9780822370871, 9781478090335
MARC Record
OCLC
1054014050
Pages
232
Launched on MUSE
2018-09-19
Language
English
Open Access
Yes
Creative Commons
CC-BY-NC-ND
Copyright
2018