Actions for Ontological Terror : Blackness, Nihilism and Emancipation

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Ontological Terror : Blackness, Nihilism and Emancipation

Author
L. Warren, Calvin
Published
Durham : Duke University Press, 2018.
Physical Description
1 electronic resource (233 pages)
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Language Note
English
Restrictions on Access
Open Access Unrestricted online access
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.
Subject(s)
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ISBN
9780822370727;9780822370871
9780822371847
Collection
OAPEN Library.
Terms of Use and Reproduction
Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Creative Commons
View MARC record | catkey: 31193908