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Ontological Terror

Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation

Calvin L. Warren

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English
Duke University Press
18 May 2018
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.
By:  
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   340g
ISBN:   9780822370871
ISBN 10:   0822370875
Pages:   277
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
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

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

Reviews for Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation

In this careful and cogent account of the metaphysical structures of anti-black violence, Calvin L. Warren introduces a much-needed philosophical intervention in the claims and propositions of Afro-pessimism. His superb intellectual skills and beautiful philosophizing make this magnificent work important to a whole generation of scholars. -- Denise Ferreira Da Silva, author of * Toward a Global Idea of Race * Calvin L. Warren recalibrates afro-pessimism in new directions while he seriously deepens, extends, and requires that we pay closer and better attention to the claims made by afro-pessimist thinkers. He turns toward a new philosophy of the Americas that requires a re-reading of philosophy insofar as it is founded in producing the absence of blackness and black people as the foundation of its very possibilities. Poised to re-animate Black studies in an important way, Ontological Terror will be a foundational text of afro-pessimist thought, even as it exceeds the term. This is a work of accomplishment. -- Rinaldo Walcott, author of * Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies *


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