Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation

by Calvin L. Warren

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.

Genres: Philosophy, Race, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics, Education, Research

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

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

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A difficult text in multiple senses. It is extremely demanding and theoretically dense. Some familiarity with Heidegger, Spillers, Wynter, and Fanon is helpful. Yet I am sure there were points I did not fully grasp. It is also difficult in that its argument and conclusions are hard to encounter, absorb, and take on, despite my agreement with them.

Warren writes from a Black nihilist perspective, one that echoes many of the claims of Afro-pessimism. His foundational question, riffing on Heidegger, is "How's it going with black being?" The answer is not well. Or perhaps not at all. Not at all because we exist in an anti-Black world that subjects black being to an endless "metaphysical holocaust," beginning with the transatlantic slave trade and continuing to this day. As such, black being is stripped of Being, subjected to onticide (ontological murder), is nothing, and is the opposite of Being (or the human). The human is consistently attempting to annihilate the nothing that is black being, yet the human's ontometaphysical existence as a knowable subject and Being is contingent on the nothingness of black being. Thus black existence is one of ongoing ontological terror, of placelessness, timelessness, formlessness, nothingness, of availability to all forms of violence in the name of maintaining the human.

To support this argument, the four chapters in the book look at ontological terror through philosophy and theory, the law, science and mathematics, and the image. He draws upon the antebellum "free black" to illustrate in each section the realities of this "metaphysical holocaust" and the inhabiting of nothingness, effectively demonstrating how emancipation is not freedom and that freedom is not an available option to black being. The conclusion Warren comes to is that the only escape from an anti-Black world is, echoing Fanon and the Afro-pessimists, its destruction and the destruction of the human. Until then, he says, the only available option for black being is endurance.

While the text is bleak, I believe that it is justifiably so, and overall, I would recommend this book. It forces us to consider compelling questions about what "change" means in an anti-Black world. It forces us to forego hope in the face of a stark, sobering reality. Ultimately it is a pathway into thinking through something perhaps even beyond revolutionary change in the form of ontological destruction. My only critiques are that at times the text was repetitive and as a result perhaps longer than necessary to make its point. My other concern is that Warren writes from a US-centric lens while asserting the global nature of anti-Blackness. It would have strengthened his argument to move beyond the US and US history.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed the book. The pessimism of the author's perspective is a pleasant response to (what can be experienced as) a naive optimism concerning the waning significance of race and racist ideas in our social and political realities. Rather than life without hope for a desirable future, Warren promotes an orientation to life which suggests that our humanity is filled with possibility should we accept our limitations.

[Nicholas Grammer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredible and yet I cannot bring myself to recommended it to anyone. It is deeply sad. The book makes the distinction between emancipation and freedom with the argument that emancipation did not free Black people, but puts Black people in this state of “ontological terror,” or existing as an embodiment of nothing in the mind of the (white) human. This is existence outside of any realm of metaphysical conception. If the “free black” is not a slave, but they are also still not human, what is black being? This is the central question of the book.

As blackness is born out of capitalism and slavery, and enslaved Black people are not defined as human nor as animal, the author argues that black being exists as the physical embodiment of nothing. Through this nothing, our antiblack white society is able to project whatever it wants onto Black bodies, and exploit them as equipment for labor, science, and the development of our own understandings of Being. Furthermore, the author believes there is no solution to anti-blackness because all solutions themselves will also be born within anti-blackness (this is what Afro pessimism posits).

The author emphasizes the example of the historical “free black” to better understand this. The free black was a Black person who was released from slavery and had freedom papers proving their freedom, signed by their white enslaver. But when one’s freedom is dependent upon something material (the physical paper that is destructable) and not on something ontological/internal (their Being and humanness) they are inherently, not free. Furthermore, freedom papers actually reify white masters domination over Black people. They show that white masters alone have the power and ability to liberate Black people. These papers also depend on those viewing the papers, the police aka the slave catchers. If the police decide that the papers are forged (even if they are not), they can capture and enslave them again. In one example, an officer took the Black person’s papers and ate them, removing all proof of their “freedom.” The free black was never free. In fact, the papers are not even for the free black themselves, they are for the white police to make a judgement about the black being in front of them. The fact that “Black freedom” is only a result of its legal emancipation means that it can just as easily be taken away again. This is what we mean when we say antiblackness is part of the system.

The Coda is exceptional. Although it’s still not entirely pragmatic, after the entire book proves the inescapability of anti-blackness, it does provide a conceptual framework to handle that anti-blackness. That framework is endurance through connection to the spirit (that does not require Being) but it also is through the disruption of our concept of the Human.

This is huge and I believe could be an answer. Humanity’s toxic anthropocentrism is what has ruined our relationship with the Earth, and has caused us to believe that we are set apart from nature itself, when in fact we are indistinguishable part of it. So since black being sits in this liminal space between Human and animal, if we can manage to remove the distinction between the Human and the animal, we can in turn flatten these hierarchies and bring everything and everyone into nothingness (as animals cannot have Dasein). This ontological revolution (technically) does not require “the death of all life” and “the end of the world,” but would require an incredible amount of revolution in philosophy and human thought globally.

[aerialxav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intro, chapter 1, coda

[Trinity J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thick in the material but still very important foundation of afro pessimism. Learned hella new words.

[John Gillespie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is good, but there are some moments where I wish he would have dug deeper into why he believed what he believed rather than just combining a bunch of theory terminology into one sentence and then, requiring us to just take his word for it that it must be true. I also wish he relied more on black thought to ground his conceptual understanding. The use of Heidegger proves to be not as convincing when the case and point to be made is about the nature of black being as nothingness. Especially since using a Nazi to conclude that Black being is Nothingness appears to be neither radical nor shocking. I could understand utilizing Heidegger as a way to describe the way Western metaphysics has been constructed or construed, but Western metaphysics has had a consistent problem in leaving blackness un-thought which, of course, has ontological consequences, but these ontological consequences have history in being written about/on via the thought and theory of black theorist since the beginning and these critiques of Western metaphysics seem to take on less authoritative weight than Heidegger in this book. However, when Warren goes into his case study-like analysis of the archival material, it is hard to disagree with his philosophical position. Overall though, the book was dope and I look forward to continuing to engage with his work and his thought and the issues that he's trying to work through.

[Nat Baldino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thought-provoking, lacked clarity in certain ways. Ultimately the low star rating is from disagreement and a siding with Spillers and Wynter on the matter, as well as ambivalence toward Afropessimism as an all-or-nothing framework rather than a useful lens to call into question dominant paradigms and assumptions (i.e., theories of vitality, assumptions of "the Good" as "the Living" and what Living means)

[Tapji Garba · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book felt unfinished. Chapter one was strong, and I thought some brilliant ideas were sprinkled throughout. I find Warren’s strongest contributions to the growing body of literature under the broad heading of ‘Afropessimism’ have been his works on Gender. I’m not sure Ontological Terror says much that hasn’t already been said in the works of Frank B. Wilderson III or Jared Sexton. Nonetheless, this is an important book to have in your collection.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A challenging book (on numerous levels) that must be wrestled with. Worth its difficulty.

[caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

The central thesis and the author’s closing observations are perceptive and provocative, and the book is well written, but it became extremely repetitive at times. I felt like the crux of the argument could have easily been contained in an essay rather than a full-length book. Also...Heidegger joins Lacan on the list of People I Really Don’t Want to Read but Have To In Order to Understand This Theory. I’ll probably come back to this.

[Simmer Minhas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptional work of literary prowess that is unique, poignant, and expansive. Definitely a dense read and for anyone without a good handle on Black American literature or political history of the US, it could be more difficult; however, I was fortunate to be reading amongst scholars and was thoroughly lapping up the immense skill and nuance in my reading of this masterful work.

[Joe Natali · Rating 2 out of 5]

Warren builds his argument upon a deeply troubling yet mostly unsubstantiated premise that itself says a great deal about the horrors of racism in America and the world. Unfortunately the nihilistic direction that Warren takes the argument undercuts the efficacy of the book as an educational tool.

[Noah Christiansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read:
- Part One
- Part Two
- Part Three

[dkp]

DNF (Feb 2022)