Ontological Terror

Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation

Calvin L. Warren (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

232 Seiten

2018
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8223-7072-7 (ISBN)

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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.

Calvin L. Warren is Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. The Free Black Is Nothing 1
1. The Question of Black Being 26
2. Outlawing 62
3. Scientific Horror 110
4. Catachrestic Fantasies 143
Coda. Adieu to the Human 169
Notes 173
Bibliography 201
Index 211

Erscheinungsdatum	12.06.2018
Zusatzinfo	5 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Metaphysik / Ontologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-8223-7072-7 / 0822370727
ISBN-13	978-0-8223-7072-7 / 9780822370727
Zustand	Neuware