Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and EmancipationIn 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. |
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Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation Calvin L. Warren No preview available - 2018 |
Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation Calvin L. Warren No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
abyss Agamben antebellum antebellum free black antiblack violence antiblack world argue becomes Being’s Ben-Dor black body black death black existence black freedom black psyche black thinking Cartwright catachrestic fantasy census conceals concept condition constitutes critique Dasein death describe destruction discourse distortion Dred Scott equipment essence ethical execration existential Fanon flesh formlessness Frantz Fanon free black freedom paper function Giorgio Agamben grammar Heidegger Heidegger’s historiography Hortense Spillers human humanist insanity invention Jean-Luc Nancy lack master metaphysical holocaust metaphysical infrastructure metaphysical violence metaphysical world Nancy Negro Question nihilism non)relation numbers object obliteration ontic ontological difference ontological ground ontological terror ontometaphysical outlawing paradigm philosophical political community postmetaphysical precisely predicated present primordial relation problem of black proper metaphysical question provides Put differently question of black reading Sallo scientific slave slavery Spillers strategy structure suggest Sylvia Wynter Taney Taney’s temporal transform understand unfolding Vattimo words