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Afropessimism
Combining trenchant philosophy with lyrical memoir, Afropessimism is an unparalleled account of Blackness.
Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery—in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms—continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world? These are just some of the compelling questions that animate Afropessimism, Frank B. Wilderson III’s seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness.
Combining precise philosophy with a torrent of memories, Wilderson presents the tenets of an increasingly prominent intellectual movement that sees Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Drawing on works of philosophy, literature, film, and critical theory, he shows that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive anti-Black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but the very engine that powers our civilization, and that without this master-slave dynamic, the calculus bolstering world civilization would collapse. Unlike any other disenfranchised group, Wilderson argues, Blacks alone will remain essentially slaves in the larger Human world, where they can never be truly regarded as Human beings, where, “at every scale of abstraction, violence saturates Black life.”
And while Afropessimism delivers a formidable philosophical account of being Black, it is also interwoven with dramatic set pieces, autobiographical stories that juxtapose Wilderson’s seemingly idyllic upbringing in mid-century Minneapolis with the abject racism he later encounters—whether in late 1960s Berkeley or in apartheid South Africa, where he joins forces with the African National Congress. Afropessimism provides no restorative solution to the hatred that abounds; rather, Wilderson believes that acknowledging these historical and social conditions will result in personal enlightenment about the reality of our inherently racialized existence.
Radical in conception, remarkably poignant, and with soaring flights of lyrical prose, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity in the fractured world we inhabit. It positions Wilderson as a paradigmatic thinker and as a twenty-first-century inheritor of many of the African American literary traditions established in centuries past.
Why does race seem to color almost every feature of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery—in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms—continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world? These are just some of the compelling questions that animate Afropessimism, Frank B. Wilderson III’s seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness.
Combining precise philosophy with a torrent of memories, Wilderson presents the tenets of an increasingly prominent intellectual movement that sees Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Drawing on works of philosophy, literature, film, and critical theory, he shows that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive anti-Black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but the very engine that powers our civilization, and that without this master-slave dynamic, the calculus bolstering world civilization would collapse. Unlike any other disenfranchised group, Wilderson argues, Blacks alone will remain essentially slaves in the larger Human world, where they can never be truly regarded as Human beings, where, “at every scale of abstraction, violence saturates Black life.”
And while Afropessimism delivers a formidable philosophical account of being Black, it is also interwoven with dramatic set pieces, autobiographical stories that juxtapose Wilderson’s seemingly idyllic upbringing in mid-century Minneapolis with the abject racism he later encounters—whether in late 1960s Berkeley or in apartheid South Africa, where he joins forces with the African National Congress. Afropessimism provides no restorative solution to the hatred that abounds; rather, Wilderson believes that acknowledging these historical and social conditions will result in personal enlightenment about the reality of our inherently racialized existence.
Radical in conception, remarkably poignant, and with soaring flights of lyrical prose, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity in the fractured world we inhabit. It positions Wilderson as a paradigmatic thinker and as a twenty-first-century inheritor of many of the African American literary traditions established in centuries past.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2020
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6630 people want to read
About the author
Frank B. Wilderson III
12 books166 followersFrank B Wilderson III is an American writer, dramatist, filmmaker and critic. He is a full professor of drama and African American studies at the University of California, Irvine.
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June 15, 2020
Wilderson narrates scenes of dispossession from his own life as a point from which he can illustrate his theory of afropessimism. Here, autobiographical narrative is, paradoxically, deployed to elucidate the incapacity of black bodies to participate in autobiographical narration--for, in the terms of Wilderson's afropessimism, black bodies are *essentially* ontologically equivalent to slaves. The ontological implications of the historical event of black slavery are the relegation of black bodies to a Fanonian "zone of non-being." Black bodies are *non*-persons, *non*-subjects, who are denied participation in the category of "humanity," "civil society," and "narration" by virtue of being marked as black. Hence, he understands subjectivity to be an exclusive property of whites and their "junior members" (i.e., all non-black people). While whites and their junior members can experience dispossession as a matter of contingency, blacks experience dispossession as a universal and necessary condition of existence. There is no possible narrative arc or redemption story for black bodies--they are, always and forever, consigned to the ontological status of objecthood. The ontological dispossession which slavery has wrought has even destroyed any recourse to black history or prehistory by which black bodies could redeem themselves. For Wilderson, the advent of slavery means that black bodies were never subjects in the first place, and never will be.
Wilderson is situated within a long line of decolonial theorists who utilize Hegel's dialectics of the master and slave to examine intersubjective relationships which are defined by conflict, inequality, and dispossession. He most frequently cites James Baldwin, Franz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, Orlando Paterson, and Jared Sexton as his intellectual forebears, and conscripts them to the cause of afropessimism. What sets Wilderson apart from all of his other intellectual forebearers is his refusal of a dialectical relationship between subjects and objects. For Wilderson's afropessimism, there is no possible mediation between the two terms. Neither term can be inflected by the other, and therefore neither term can transform into its opposite. Blackness and humanity stand as immovable oppositional forces facing each other. Insofar as humanity continues to exist, black bodies are relegated to slavery. Insofar as there are black bodies, they can never be human. In order to assert something like a black subjectivity, Wilderson insists that it is necessary to "destroy the world."
While certainly provocative, I just don't buy it. Wilderson highlights the moment of the dialectic whereby, in Fanon's words, "I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed." But literally every other author within the tradition of black existentialism and decolonial phenomenology is interested in articulating the ways in which black subjectivity manages to persist, resist and transcend the inhuman reduction which civil society imposes upon it. Blackness may be relegated to a zone of non-being within an ontological framework that centers whiteness as a transcendental norm, but the entire thrust of black narrative is elaboration of a phenomenological account that expresses what it is like to be nothing and no one, and thereby to assert oneself *as* someone who exceeds one's being-for-others. Wilderson claims that he is adopting the ontological framework "white=human, black=slave" in order to break out of the terms by dialectically working through them, but insofar as his theory insists on the impossibility of modifying the terms, he runs headfirst into contradiction--for, insofar as he is the one narrating his own autobiography, he is no longer black, and insofar as he is black, he cannot narrate his autobiography. The theory of afropessimism seems to conclude by *embracing* the contradiction as constitutive of black (non)being.
So the two parts of the book, autobiography and theory, work against each other. The book is at its strongest when it remains autobiographical, since Wilderson is a great narrator. The theory, however, *by its own admission,* cannot account for the autobiographical parts of the book, and thereby proves itself to be inadequate for expressing the totality of black being.
If we return to the dialectical tradition from which Wilderson emerges, we find numerous ways in which black bodies transcend their reductive existence for civil society. This has already been expressed by various other authors in concepts like, for example, the abyss, fugitivity, the undercommons, etc. Clearly, there are counter-worlds existing alongside, beneath, and within civil societies, with corresponding counter-subjectivities. Even within civil society, one can only experience dispossession from the ground of an initial possession which is violently torn away, stolen, or denied--but never completely. When Wilderson identifies the central question of afropessimism to be, "What is it like to be a problem?" he is asking a phenomenological question, a question posed to a divided subject, who can be simultaneously a non-subject, a counter-subject, a pre-subject, and a full subject, due to their inherence in multiple forms of life. If we return to Wilderson's call to "destroy the world," we might read it as a call to change the ontological framework from within which blackness is relegated to objective slavery and whiteness is relegated to subjective humanity by elaborating a phenomenology of black existence...which, necessarily, recognizes the existence of an already-existing potential for some kind of dialectical mediation that is incipient in both "humanity" and "blackness."
Wilderson's book can be equally situated within the much more contemporary turn towards cynicism, nihilism, or pessimism about progressive narratives that paint the future as a horizonal site of messianic reconciliation or redemption which always recedes as one approaches it, and is therefore continually deferred, and never actually realized in the living present except as the lure which drives us ever forward and taunts us by slipping out of our immediate grasp. Such "anti-social" readings (and here I am thinking of the work of Lee Edelman, Lauren Berlant, Baedan, and others) emphasize the experiences of frustration, hopelessness, failure, and the creeping insinuation that by consigning oneself to "progress" one has consigned themselves to endless exploitation in the name of a future which will never arrive. I think it's possible to simultaneously endorse pessimism, cynicism, and nihilism while refusing to install them as guiding ideologies. Nihilism poses a *problem* for life because it can neither be fully rejected nor fully accepted without contradiction.
I am reminded of a passage from Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities":
"'So why can't we call ourselves realists?' Ulrich asked himself. The two of them were not that, neither he nor she; their thoughts and actions had long since left no doubt about that; but they were nihilists and activists, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, depending on how things went."
And I think this is a much more apt description of the ambivalence of life, fraught as it is with hopes that reveal themselves to be empty, unexpected graces that lighten our brows, and an unknown future which has always yet to be made stale by either our nihilism or our activism towards it. I think that nihilism and activism are much better expressed as moods lived through than they are as coherent ideologies--sometimes the one, sometimes the other, and never realistic because always unmotivated by the current givens.
In any case, my main contention with Wilderson's work lies not with his pessimism, nor with his assertion that antiblack violence is unique among various forms of social oppression. I take issue with the fact that his conscious denial of black subjectivity is a performative contradiction--that is, it necessitates the incarnation of subjectivity in the act of pronouncing it. Wilderson explicitly addresses this contradiction multiple times throughout the book with a smile and a rhetorical question: "Yes, so, given my theory, who, I ask, is speaking?" When he hears that black high school debate teams are using his work to win debates by refusing to answer the questions on the grounds that they cannot speak on the same terms as white teams, he cracks up in joy and laughter. I am left uncertain if readers are meant to take his theory as a literal and conclusive pronouncement about black existence, or if we are meant instead to view it as a cunning dialectical gesture which beckons beyond itself by exposing the absurdity of its premises. But in either case the theory's failure would be its success...Must one say of Wilderson what Foucault says of Hegel? "We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us."
P.S. After listening to Wilderson speak about the book, it's clear to me that he *does* want us to take the theory literally, and directs readers towards "Red White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms" for a theoretical explication of his disagreements with Fanon and Lacan. In the future I will return to that book, and hopefully finish it.
P.P.S. 6/14 I cannot stop thinking about this book. Even before the uprisings, which are ongoing as I write this. Even if the theory is a non-starter *at the level of intellectual, logical theory*--and I think it is--there is a deeper level of *emotional* truth which precedes and exceeds theoretical formulation, which gnaws away at theory from the inside and demands to be heard. And I think that's where the ultimate truth of Wilderson's afropessimism lies. The desiccation of theory from the inside by a howl of rage, a pointed and sustained "fuck you," a brick through the window of a bank, a precinct burned to the ground, and the refusal of the terms of a world which is fundamentally antiblack. Which, like--fuck yeah. Afropessimism as a theory cannot be everything. But it so beautifully expresses that vital movement whereby, in the words of an interview he gave in 2014, "we're trying to destroy the world."
Wilderson is situated within a long line of decolonial theorists who utilize Hegel's dialectics of the master and slave to examine intersubjective relationships which are defined by conflict, inequality, and dispossession. He most frequently cites James Baldwin, Franz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, Orlando Paterson, and Jared Sexton as his intellectual forebears, and conscripts them to the cause of afropessimism. What sets Wilderson apart from all of his other intellectual forebearers is his refusal of a dialectical relationship between subjects and objects. For Wilderson's afropessimism, there is no possible mediation between the two terms. Neither term can be inflected by the other, and therefore neither term can transform into its opposite. Blackness and humanity stand as immovable oppositional forces facing each other. Insofar as humanity continues to exist, black bodies are relegated to slavery. Insofar as there are black bodies, they can never be human. In order to assert something like a black subjectivity, Wilderson insists that it is necessary to "destroy the world."
While certainly provocative, I just don't buy it. Wilderson highlights the moment of the dialectic whereby, in Fanon's words, "I am being dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes. I am fixed." But literally every other author within the tradition of black existentialism and decolonial phenomenology is interested in articulating the ways in which black subjectivity manages to persist, resist and transcend the inhuman reduction which civil society imposes upon it. Blackness may be relegated to a zone of non-being within an ontological framework that centers whiteness as a transcendental norm, but the entire thrust of black narrative is elaboration of a phenomenological account that expresses what it is like to be nothing and no one, and thereby to assert oneself *as* someone who exceeds one's being-for-others. Wilderson claims that he is adopting the ontological framework "white=human, black=slave" in order to break out of the terms by dialectically working through them, but insofar as his theory insists on the impossibility of modifying the terms, he runs headfirst into contradiction--for, insofar as he is the one narrating his own autobiography, he is no longer black, and insofar as he is black, he cannot narrate his autobiography. The theory of afropessimism seems to conclude by *embracing* the contradiction as constitutive of black (non)being.
So the two parts of the book, autobiography and theory, work against each other. The book is at its strongest when it remains autobiographical, since Wilderson is a great narrator. The theory, however, *by its own admission,* cannot account for the autobiographical parts of the book, and thereby proves itself to be inadequate for expressing the totality of black being.
If we return to the dialectical tradition from which Wilderson emerges, we find numerous ways in which black bodies transcend their reductive existence for civil society. This has already been expressed by various other authors in concepts like, for example, the abyss, fugitivity, the undercommons, etc. Clearly, there are counter-worlds existing alongside, beneath, and within civil societies, with corresponding counter-subjectivities. Even within civil society, one can only experience dispossession from the ground of an initial possession which is violently torn away, stolen, or denied--but never completely. When Wilderson identifies the central question of afropessimism to be, "What is it like to be a problem?" he is asking a phenomenological question, a question posed to a divided subject, who can be simultaneously a non-subject, a counter-subject, a pre-subject, and a full subject, due to their inherence in multiple forms of life. If we return to Wilderson's call to "destroy the world," we might read it as a call to change the ontological framework from within which blackness is relegated to objective slavery and whiteness is relegated to subjective humanity by elaborating a phenomenology of black existence...which, necessarily, recognizes the existence of an already-existing potential for some kind of dialectical mediation that is incipient in both "humanity" and "blackness."
Wilderson's book can be equally situated within the much more contemporary turn towards cynicism, nihilism, or pessimism about progressive narratives that paint the future as a horizonal site of messianic reconciliation or redemption which always recedes as one approaches it, and is therefore continually deferred, and never actually realized in the living present except as the lure which drives us ever forward and taunts us by slipping out of our immediate grasp. Such "anti-social" readings (and here I am thinking of the work of Lee Edelman, Lauren Berlant, Baedan, and others) emphasize the experiences of frustration, hopelessness, failure, and the creeping insinuation that by consigning oneself to "progress" one has consigned themselves to endless exploitation in the name of a future which will never arrive. I think it's possible to simultaneously endorse pessimism, cynicism, and nihilism while refusing to install them as guiding ideologies. Nihilism poses a *problem* for life because it can neither be fully rejected nor fully accepted without contradiction.
I am reminded of a passage from Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities":
"'So why can't we call ourselves realists?' Ulrich asked himself. The two of them were not that, neither he nor she; their thoughts and actions had long since left no doubt about that; but they were nihilists and activists, sometimes the one, sometimes the other, depending on how things went."
And I think this is a much more apt description of the ambivalence of life, fraught as it is with hopes that reveal themselves to be empty, unexpected graces that lighten our brows, and an unknown future which has always yet to be made stale by either our nihilism or our activism towards it. I think that nihilism and activism are much better expressed as moods lived through than they are as coherent ideologies--sometimes the one, sometimes the other, and never realistic because always unmotivated by the current givens.
In any case, my main contention with Wilderson's work lies not with his pessimism, nor with his assertion that antiblack violence is unique among various forms of social oppression. I take issue with the fact that his conscious denial of black subjectivity is a performative contradiction--that is, it necessitates the incarnation of subjectivity in the act of pronouncing it. Wilderson explicitly addresses this contradiction multiple times throughout the book with a smile and a rhetorical question: "Yes, so, given my theory, who, I ask, is speaking?" When he hears that black high school debate teams are using his work to win debates by refusing to answer the questions on the grounds that they cannot speak on the same terms as white teams, he cracks up in joy and laughter. I am left uncertain if readers are meant to take his theory as a literal and conclusive pronouncement about black existence, or if we are meant instead to view it as a cunning dialectical gesture which beckons beyond itself by exposing the absurdity of its premises. But in either case the theory's failure would be its success...Must one say of Wilderson what Foucault says of Hegel? "We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us."
P.S. After listening to Wilderson speak about the book, it's clear to me that he *does* want us to take the theory literally, and directs readers towards "Red White & Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms" for a theoretical explication of his disagreements with Fanon and Lacan. In the future I will return to that book, and hopefully finish it.
P.P.S. 6/14 I cannot stop thinking about this book. Even before the uprisings, which are ongoing as I write this. Even if the theory is a non-starter *at the level of intellectual, logical theory*--and I think it is--there is a deeper level of *emotional* truth which precedes and exceeds theoretical formulation, which gnaws away at theory from the inside and demands to be heard. And I think that's where the ultimate truth of Wilderson's afropessimism lies. The desiccation of theory from the inside by a howl of rage, a pointed and sustained "fuck you," a brick through the window of a bank, a precinct burned to the ground, and the refusal of the terms of a world which is fundamentally antiblack. Which, like--fuck yeah. Afropessimism as a theory cannot be everything. But it so beautifully expresses that vital movement whereby, in the words of an interview he gave in 2014, "we're trying to destroy the world."
October 25, 2020
National Book Award for Nonfiction Longlist 2020. Wilderson is one of the founders of a philosophical school called Afropessimism, a body of thought that believes that the state of slavery for Black people is permanent. This theory flows from the sociologist Orlando Patterson who explains that Blacks suffer a social death—a person that is not just an exploited person but robbed of their very identity.
Wilderson uses his own life experiences to help readers understand this philosophy. He points out that he has been trained as a traditional storyteller, a critical theorist in narratology, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. That helps to explain how he takes a personal experience and spins it into an erudite discussion of how that experience represents a broad philosophical point. He ascribes motivations of others based on their body language or a ‘look in their eye’ which I found disconcerting. This type of ‘auto-theory’ is an attempt to use the ‘self’ as a means of arriving at a philosophical truth. I prefer scientific sociological evidence when making sweeping statements about society as a whole.
The author was born to middle-class intellectuals; with his father serving in faculty positions at well-regarded universities. So, it is not surprising that Wilderson was also drawn to the world of academia. He is currently a professor of African-American studies at the University of California, Irvine. Of note, he lived for several years in South Africa. The book begins with a psychotic episode he had in his 40s and ends with the death of his mother. These memoir chapters are the more interesting aspects of this book.
Wilderson uses his own life experiences to help readers understand this philosophy. He points out that he has been trained as a traditional storyteller, a critical theorist in narratology, psychoanalysis, and Marxism. That helps to explain how he takes a personal experience and spins it into an erudite discussion of how that experience represents a broad philosophical point. He ascribes motivations of others based on their body language or a ‘look in their eye’ which I found disconcerting. This type of ‘auto-theory’ is an attempt to use the ‘self’ as a means of arriving at a philosophical truth. I prefer scientific sociological evidence when making sweeping statements about society as a whole.
The author was born to middle-class intellectuals; with his father serving in faculty positions at well-regarded universities. So, it is not surprising that Wilderson was also drawn to the world of academia. He is currently a professor of African-American studies at the University of California, Irvine. Of note, he lived for several years in South Africa. The book begins with a psychotic episode he had in his 40s and ends with the death of his mother. These memoir chapters are the more interesting aspects of this book.
July 15, 2022
Again, the Slave wakes up in the morning wondering, What will these Humans do to my flesh? A hydraulics of anxiety that is very different than exploitation and alienation.
Afropessimism apparently wasn’t written for me but I’m not sure if there is an intended reader? It isn’t prescriptive, it offers no solution. Another reviewer refers to Wilderson as a second rate thinker but a strong writer. Undoubtedly the memoir aspects of the work are not simply connective tissue but a declaration of sorts away from the rhetoric that humans are only self defined in their relationship to black people and this relationship is definitively an opposition, one whose methodology is violence. This sort of opposition is a crude metaphysics but it does command attention, however fleeting. The book cites Orlando Patterson’s concept of social death and surfs along the edges of Agamben.
I was tempted to write a one sentence review: this shit’s crazy. Then I continued to read—much like the demons of Malcolm Little’s upbringing the suburban instances of stereotyping and dispossession lose their edge as Wilderson argues against the possibility of black narrative and constructs narrative evidence to support such. Much as Rorty found Derrida a rich author in the French comic tradition there’s certainly tools which the post structuralist critique have left for public use. Wilderson has found the utility of his nihilism. Thus this student of Edward Said who later joined the ANC in South Africa actually has the props to blow raspberries at Arafat, Mandela and Obama for betraying liberational possibilities. No Wilderson doesn’t go to Mecca and have the scales fall from his eyes. Instead he earns tenure. I’m sure there’s a relevant passage in Fanon to validate such a course.
Afropessimism apparently wasn’t written for me but I’m not sure if there is an intended reader? It isn’t prescriptive, it offers no solution. Another reviewer refers to Wilderson as a second rate thinker but a strong writer. Undoubtedly the memoir aspects of the work are not simply connective tissue but a declaration of sorts away from the rhetoric that humans are only self defined in their relationship to black people and this relationship is definitively an opposition, one whose methodology is violence. This sort of opposition is a crude metaphysics but it does command attention, however fleeting. The book cites Orlando Patterson’s concept of social death and surfs along the edges of Agamben.
I was tempted to write a one sentence review: this shit’s crazy. Then I continued to read—much like the demons of Malcolm Little’s upbringing the suburban instances of stereotyping and dispossession lose their edge as Wilderson argues against the possibility of black narrative and constructs narrative evidence to support such. Much as Rorty found Derrida a rich author in the French comic tradition there’s certainly tools which the post structuralist critique have left for public use. Wilderson has found the utility of his nihilism. Thus this student of Edward Said who later joined the ANC in South Africa actually has the props to blow raspberries at Arafat, Mandela and Obama for betraying liberational possibilities. No Wilderson doesn’t go to Mecca and have the scales fall from his eyes. Instead he earns tenure. I’m sure there’s a relevant passage in Fanon to validate such a course.
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December 24, 2024Wilderson claims that the Black is the slave, the object limit of Humanism so to speak, but I'm interested in the manner in which he, the slave, manages to double-objectify some of the figures who appear in this narrative- a narrative that supposedly cannot be told, because a slave doesn't have narrative capacity. The slave doesn't have narrative capacity, because the slave's injury can never be repaired or redeemed, but this book does have redemption. Wilderson's mother is the redeemer, and its both her love and Wilderson's necessary naming of her as Afropessimist in the closing pages, that allows such redemption. He says: "Alice (his white wife) wasn't one of the women from her (his mom) past but, structurally, she was. This made Mom an Afropessimist par excellence. But to show it, she'd have to bring it home" (330).
Wilderson's mom has to "tense and withdraw" when Alice speaks, because his mom has to center Alice's whiteness and position as the Master to mom's Slave. It might make more sense to say that Wilderson's mom was responding to the odd fact that her Afropessimist son would marry a White women who, in his eyes, would be a wife-Master- an odd relational dynamic, which Wilderson actually peripherally acknowledges if not fully reflects on- but Wilderson requires his mom to be named an Afropessimist at the book's conclusion. This would allow for his book to respond poetically to Hortense Spillers' call for Black men to regain "the heritage of the mother" (Momma’s Baby Poppa’s Maybe, 80). And so, whatever his mom's own thoughts on Afropessmism, Wilderson can comes to terms with his own declaration that "Afropessimism is Black people at their best" (40), because his mother apparently is one too.
In a chapter narrating Wilderson's evasions from surveillance with a woman named Stella, he argues that his partner's "seeming obliviousness to the irreconcilability" between herself as Slave and her white 'friend' as Master was the result of a "tactical maneuver of the mind" (86). Such maneuver is read by Wilderson to be "far more manageable for a Black person's mind than nightly ruminations" on their irreconcilable Slaveness (87), and necessarily so, because to acknowledge that other Black characters might have fully functioning non-Afropessimist brains would be to risk disavowing the claim that "Afropessimism is Black people at their best."
Wilderson is a good writer, but his often-times patronizing approach to theory reads here as the labors of a Black academic who would rather minimize the fact of his material/class difference and how that impacts racial position than acknowledge that some Black people can be open to coalition-abolitionist practices while still remaining at 'their best.' This falls in line with his development from the theoretical request to "think of incarceration as a paradigm of permanent and ongoing containment" to the more material conditioning claim that even movements like Prison Abolition foster, in terms of 'political desire,' a "life-affirming anti-Blackness; the death of Black desire" (223). I'm not sure how else one would be able to rationalize a critique on Prison Abolition as anti-Black, a movement that seeks to undo the #1 most materially conditioning continuation of slavery, while also maintaining the serious claim that Blackness is coterminous with slavery.
Of course, the problem with a text like this is that the theory is so intertwined with the author's own life experiences that its hard to separate responses to the narrative from responses to the theory. For better and worse, Wilderson has mastered the theoretical-academic pursuit to lead/develop a field that claims to account for everything without difference. The popular critique of Afropessimism is that its too totalizing. Through memoir now, readers get to see how Wilderson rationalizes the glints of difference that approach from the periphery.
Truthfully, I actually like both the theory and the book when not squinting. Especially, with regards to the theory, which is forwarded with many if statements (if we take the Black to be the Slave; if we take the White to be the Human Master; if we take the non-White non-Black to be the White Master's junior partner), I don't have many qualms when I'm in the mood to follow the many if statements. Its just that the issues, particularly with narrative coherence (oh, but the Black lacks narrative coherence so of course this text would too!), come full force when one gets into the messy details. I'm not going to account for every issue, but the objectifying of characters within the narrative to allow for spiritual confirmation (if not redemption) was one area that stood out to me. Perhaps because I'm curious how an object goes about objectifying other objects.
Wilderson's mom has to "tense and withdraw" when Alice speaks, because his mom has to center Alice's whiteness and position as the Master to mom's Slave. It might make more sense to say that Wilderson's mom was responding to the odd fact that her Afropessimist son would marry a White women who, in his eyes, would be a wife-Master- an odd relational dynamic, which Wilderson actually peripherally acknowledges if not fully reflects on- but Wilderson requires his mom to be named an Afropessimist at the book's conclusion. This would allow for his book to respond poetically to Hortense Spillers' call for Black men to regain "the heritage of the mother" (Momma’s Baby Poppa’s Maybe, 80). And so, whatever his mom's own thoughts on Afropessmism, Wilderson can comes to terms with his own declaration that "Afropessimism is Black people at their best" (40), because his mother apparently is one too.
In a chapter narrating Wilderson's evasions from surveillance with a woman named Stella, he argues that his partner's "seeming obliviousness to the irreconcilability" between herself as Slave and her white 'friend' as Master was the result of a "tactical maneuver of the mind" (86). Such maneuver is read by Wilderson to be "far more manageable for a Black person's mind than nightly ruminations" on their irreconcilable Slaveness (87), and necessarily so, because to acknowledge that other Black characters might have fully functioning non-Afropessimist brains would be to risk disavowing the claim that "Afropessimism is Black people at their best."
Wilderson is a good writer, but his often-times patronizing approach to theory reads here as the labors of a Black academic who would rather minimize the fact of his material/class difference and how that impacts racial position than acknowledge that some Black people can be open to coalition-abolitionist practices while still remaining at 'their best.' This falls in line with his development from the theoretical request to "think of incarceration as a paradigm of permanent and ongoing containment" to the more material conditioning claim that even movements like Prison Abolition foster, in terms of 'political desire,' a "life-affirming anti-Blackness; the death of Black desire" (223). I'm not sure how else one would be able to rationalize a critique on Prison Abolition as anti-Black, a movement that seeks to undo the #1 most materially conditioning continuation of slavery, while also maintaining the serious claim that Blackness is coterminous with slavery.
Of course, the problem with a text like this is that the theory is so intertwined with the author's own life experiences that its hard to separate responses to the narrative from responses to the theory. For better and worse, Wilderson has mastered the theoretical-academic pursuit to lead/develop a field that claims to account for everything without difference. The popular critique of Afropessimism is that its too totalizing. Through memoir now, readers get to see how Wilderson rationalizes the glints of difference that approach from the periphery.
Truthfully, I actually like both the theory and the book when not squinting. Especially, with regards to the theory, which is forwarded with many if statements (if we take the Black to be the Slave; if we take the White to be the Human Master; if we take the non-White non-Black to be the White Master's junior partner), I don't have many qualms when I'm in the mood to follow the many if statements. Its just that the issues, particularly with narrative coherence (oh, but the Black lacks narrative coherence so of course this text would too!), come full force when one gets into the messy details. I'm not going to account for every issue, but the objectifying of characters within the narrative to allow for spiritual confirmation (if not redemption) was one area that stood out to me. Perhaps because I'm curious how an object goes about objectifying other objects.
January 31, 2021
The way Wilderson weaves in theory with personal narrative makes this a good read. His writing about his experiences in South Africa were especially fascinating. But there are limitations to using only his personal experiences to explain Afropessimism, and I think this book would have been a lot stronger if it better integrated an analysis of the experiences of Black people who experience intersecting oppressions. Wilderson wrote about his own life experiences - and at length about his experiences in romantic relationships - as a cis het man from what sounded like an upper class background, and although he stresses that anti-Blackness is not analogous to other forms of oppression like capitalism and patriarchy, he does seem to keep making unnecessary comparisons when he could instead lift up the experiences and analyses of Black workers, Black immigrants, and Black gender oppressed people. He also critiques “movements” for failing to integrate an analysis of Blackness and Black people's experiences, and I think those critiques would have resonated more if he were more specific. Like, there’s a lot of organizing that happens outside of white feminism and the White Left TM, and while I agree with his critiques of mainstream movements, it felt like he erased the work of smaller grassroots groups by making it seem as though white feminism and the white left is all that exists. It would have been nice to see a nod or hat tip to grassroots movements that center their analysis and work around the experiences of Black people.
Beyond that, I had serious concerns about some claims he made about sexual violence in chapter 5, that I won’t try to unpack here, but mainly I felt like he could have lifted up the work of INCITE! and Black socialist feminist theorists who have developed an analysis of structural violence without minimizing/dismissing interpersonal violence.
I actually felt like I learned more about what Wilderson describes as Afropessimism from works that don’t use that term, and offer a more comprehensive analysis, like Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake, Sylvia Wynter’s No Humans Involved, and Mariame Kaba’s zine No Selves to Defend.
This book was more about Wilderson's personal journey toward understanding/identifying/accepting Afropessimism.
Beyond that, I had serious concerns about some claims he made about sexual violence in chapter 5, that I won’t try to unpack here, but mainly I felt like he could have lifted up the work of INCITE! and Black socialist feminist theorists who have developed an analysis of structural violence without minimizing/dismissing interpersonal violence.
I actually felt like I learned more about what Wilderson describes as Afropessimism from works that don’t use that term, and offer a more comprehensive analysis, like Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake, Sylvia Wynter’s No Humans Involved, and Mariame Kaba’s zine No Selves to Defend.
This book was more about Wilderson's personal journey toward understanding/identifying/accepting Afropessimism.
June 1, 2020
“Afropessimism” was difficult, affirming, and beautifully constructed. I’m struggling to find the words to describe the feelings this book left me with. Wilderson, in his personal narrative and theoretical positioning, spoke the words I’ve always wanted to say. He spoke the pain that I’ve always felt. Truly a tremendous read that has sparked an immense desire to study more. I’ll have more to say on a second read (and after I wipe my tears away from that ending). Incredible, often disheartening, read.
September 9, 2020
A conjuring trick. This thing isn’t really what it looks like.
In the stunning first edition by Liveright, it looks like an upmarket hardcover book. Gorgeous dust jacket, dreamy heft to the pages, brilliant typeface and packaging. One is easily lured into thinking, as I was, that it can be read conventionally. You know, ascending page order, chapter after chapter, with the occasional glance at the end notes.
Beginning-middle-end.
Equilibrium-disruption-equilibrium restored and/or rearticulated.
The transformative promise of a narrative arc.
Not so fast. For the first 170 odd pages, I can’t find my bearings. The experience of holding Afropessimism and casting my eyes over the words is disorienting to say the least. No purchase, no traction. The concepts on offer are elusive, the phasing non-linear. My gaze keeps sliding off the text, as it were.
This isn’t a proper review because the object under consideration isn't a conventional book. This is more like the documentary evidence of a collision. Where my 47-year-old head crashes into an incendiary arsenal of provocative ideas and theses. Ideas that, incidentally, sound pretty persuasive right now (as Minneapolis burns in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by the police).
Maybe I should say at this point that I’m not African. Nor American. Nor from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions. Twenty years since graduate school when I last read any critical theory. And the author’s first-person narration: well, let’s just say very little strikes any sort of chord.
I persist with the stories neither for their autobiographical resonance nor the intellectual pyrotechnics. I stay because something locks me in. The elemental fury, perhaps. The unabashed ownership of the contradictions. The defiance in the face of repeated breakdowns. Following the thread of unhinged reason in Wilderson’s labyrinth, I’m thwarted at every turn. The narrative refuses to yield its meaning easily. In furiously scribbled notes, I keep making these interjections: History? Pluralism? Race & Class? And inevitably, WTF?
Unfamiliar names (except Fanon) zoom into view. So I look up Hartman, Spillers, Sexton, and Marriott; and say hello. (Thanks, YouTube.) Watching a few minutes of lectures, panel discussions, and media events is hardly adequate preparation, but at least the outlines of the ballpark start to become visible. Still miles away, but walking towards the raucous din of the game.
Things come to a head in Berlin. The dustup at the academic conference. Every single one of the objections raised in the conference is already vocalized in my notes. Specifically in response to Li-ling Chen’s outburst, Wilderson says this (page183): “Instead of working through and then against my argument and the archive of critical literature that scaffolded it … Li-Ling sidestepped the archive of Afropessimism as well as my lecture’ thesis.” And again on 185: “I would not presume that more than a handful actually agreed with me or with Afropessimism. But it didn’t matter. Agreement was not my prerequisite. Honest engagement was.”
I’m not sure, Frank (we are first-name basis by this point in the internal monologue). I don’t know what to do with the perceived gaps in the analysis. But the hours of wrestling with your words and the distended moments of raw blankness: if that isn’t honest engagement, then I'm clearly inept at engaging honestly.
Let’s capture my gaps quickly here:
1. The cartographic range of this theory excludes non-Muslim Asia. More specifically, the Hindu treatment of Untouchables and the Japanese attitude towards the Eta. It’s not sufficient to say these are subalterns and covered by the analysis of non-Black subalterns. In the rigid caste hierarchies of India, a Shudra would be a subaltern. An untouchable wouldn’t even show up in the human hierarchy.
2. The case of Haiti presents a problem. What to do with Louverture and Dessalines? Here are ‘speaking implements’ that upturn the social order at a sufficiently fundamental level to create an independent state through slave revolt. The post-revolution emergence of lighter-skinned mulattoes as the culturally dominant class might, in the language of Afropessimism, be seen as another example of parasitic dependence on Black bodies, but it isn’t so straightforward. Likewise Ethiopia, the only African country never to be colonized.
3. At the paradigm level, the world is one big plantation where anti-Black violence has no coherent form of redress. Blackness is a social death: one is born into it, but it is also constructed by the imagination of others (page 103). As a construct, it can be destroyed. This for me is the most radical claim in the book. Having made it, Frank backs away claiming psychic weakness. Maybe I don’t understand this properly. But it strikes me as a cop-out.
I hope someday to raise these points in person. Maybe at an event in London and perhaps an online open forum. Because in my head, I’ve already started the conversation. There's a Sikh, you see, who gets racially assaulted on page 233: I’ve just inserted myself into that role.
So there we are, travelling on the underground in NYC. Sat cheek by jowl on the A Train. You’re not an Afropessimist at that point, and I’m only a 17-year-old on his first visit to the States. ‘Fuckin’ towelhead,’ screams Jerry as he kicks me in the teeth. You jump out of your skin and clock the blood spurting from my face. Unlike the event in the book, I don’t disembark at Fiftieth. When you ask again if I want a doctor or the transit police, I signal no but say politely: ‘thanks for caring’.
In the stunning first edition by Liveright, it looks like an upmarket hardcover book. Gorgeous dust jacket, dreamy heft to the pages, brilliant typeface and packaging. One is easily lured into thinking, as I was, that it can be read conventionally. You know, ascending page order, chapter after chapter, with the occasional glance at the end notes.
Beginning-middle-end.
Equilibrium-disruption-equilibrium restored and/or rearticulated.
The transformative promise of a narrative arc.
Not so fast. For the first 170 odd pages, I can’t find my bearings. The experience of holding Afropessimism and casting my eyes over the words is disorienting to say the least. No purchase, no traction. The concepts on offer are elusive, the phasing non-linear. My gaze keeps sliding off the text, as it were.
This isn’t a proper review because the object under consideration isn't a conventional book. This is more like the documentary evidence of a collision. Where my 47-year-old head crashes into an incendiary arsenal of provocative ideas and theses. Ideas that, incidentally, sound pretty persuasive right now (as Minneapolis burns in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by the police).
Maybe I should say at this point that I’m not African. Nor American. Nor from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions. Twenty years since graduate school when I last read any critical theory. And the author’s first-person narration: well, let’s just say very little strikes any sort of chord.
I persist with the stories neither for their autobiographical resonance nor the intellectual pyrotechnics. I stay because something locks me in. The elemental fury, perhaps. The unabashed ownership of the contradictions. The defiance in the face of repeated breakdowns. Following the thread of unhinged reason in Wilderson’s labyrinth, I’m thwarted at every turn. The narrative refuses to yield its meaning easily. In furiously scribbled notes, I keep making these interjections: History? Pluralism? Race & Class? And inevitably, WTF?
Unfamiliar names (except Fanon) zoom into view. So I look up Hartman, Spillers, Sexton, and Marriott; and say hello. (Thanks, YouTube.) Watching a few minutes of lectures, panel discussions, and media events is hardly adequate preparation, but at least the outlines of the ballpark start to become visible. Still miles away, but walking towards the raucous din of the game.
Things come to a head in Berlin. The dustup at the academic conference. Every single one of the objections raised in the conference is already vocalized in my notes. Specifically in response to Li-ling Chen’s outburst, Wilderson says this (page183): “Instead of working through and then against my argument and the archive of critical literature that scaffolded it … Li-Ling sidestepped the archive of Afropessimism as well as my lecture’ thesis.” And again on 185: “I would not presume that more than a handful actually agreed with me or with Afropessimism. But it didn’t matter. Agreement was not my prerequisite. Honest engagement was.”
I’m not sure, Frank (we are first-name basis by this point in the internal monologue). I don’t know what to do with the perceived gaps in the analysis. But the hours of wrestling with your words and the distended moments of raw blankness: if that isn’t honest engagement, then I'm clearly inept at engaging honestly.
Let’s capture my gaps quickly here:
1. The cartographic range of this theory excludes non-Muslim Asia. More specifically, the Hindu treatment of Untouchables and the Japanese attitude towards the Eta. It’s not sufficient to say these are subalterns and covered by the analysis of non-Black subalterns. In the rigid caste hierarchies of India, a Shudra would be a subaltern. An untouchable wouldn’t even show up in the human hierarchy.
2. The case of Haiti presents a problem. What to do with Louverture and Dessalines? Here are ‘speaking implements’ that upturn the social order at a sufficiently fundamental level to create an independent state through slave revolt. The post-revolution emergence of lighter-skinned mulattoes as the culturally dominant class might, in the language of Afropessimism, be seen as another example of parasitic dependence on Black bodies, but it isn’t so straightforward. Likewise Ethiopia, the only African country never to be colonized.
3. At the paradigm level, the world is one big plantation where anti-Black violence has no coherent form of redress. Blackness is a social death: one is born into it, but it is also constructed by the imagination of others (page 103). As a construct, it can be destroyed. This for me is the most radical claim in the book. Having made it, Frank backs away claiming psychic weakness. Maybe I don’t understand this properly. But it strikes me as a cop-out.
I hope someday to raise these points in person. Maybe at an event in London and perhaps an online open forum. Because in my head, I’ve already started the conversation. There's a Sikh, you see, who gets racially assaulted on page 233: I’ve just inserted myself into that role.
So there we are, travelling on the underground in NYC. Sat cheek by jowl on the A Train. You’re not an Afropessimist at that point, and I’m only a 17-year-old on his first visit to the States. ‘Fuckin’ towelhead,’ screams Jerry as he kicks me in the teeth. You jump out of your skin and clock the blood spurting from my face. Unlike the event in the book, I don’t disembark at Fiftieth. When you ask again if I want a doctor or the transit police, I signal no but say politely: ‘thanks for caring’.
May 27, 2020
As a critical theory, afro-pessimism makes three important claims: first, blackness was and remains synonymous with slavery, second, the social category "human" (that which is not black) is reinforced and replenished by persistent anti-black violence, and third, humanist theories of progress and liberation are false, misleading, and serve to perpetuate anti-black violence. Put simply in Frank B. Wilderson's stunning new book on the theory, Afropessimism, afro-pessimism understands, "Blackness is social death." Wilderson continues, "there was never a prior metamoment of plenitude, never equilibrium: never a moment of social life. Blackness, as a paradigmatic position...is elaborated through slavery. The narrative arc of the slave who is Black...is not an arc at all, but a flat line" (102).
To be sure, afro-pessimism makes some bold and unflinching claims (many of its critics, for example, take umbrage with its totalizing and uncompromising positions). But what I find appealing about the theory is the structural position blackness occupies (constitutive yet excluded). Furthermore, afro-pessimism challenges the seductive narrative of social progress. Afro-pessimism refuses to think the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Instead, it encourages its readers to think that before justice (i.e., black subjectivity) is even possible, we must exist in a universe free from white hegemony.
Unlike many texts that are "critical" and "theoretical," Wilderson's Afropessimism blends critical theory with narrative and memoir. Afropessimism is the second of such books I have read this year, and while I like the approach (it certainly renders theoretical ideas easier to understand), there are times when Afropessimism is bloated and repetitive. Wilderson is a great storyteller, I enjoyed the experience, but this is not a book that needs to be 350 pages. I often refrain from these sorts of petty criticisms. Still, I make it here because I want afro-pessimism, flawed as it is, to have a seat at the table (I think Wilderson does too), and I fear the length and repetitiveness of Afropessimism limits its overall effectiveness.
To be sure, afro-pessimism makes some bold and unflinching claims (many of its critics, for example, take umbrage with its totalizing and uncompromising positions). But what I find appealing about the theory is the structural position blackness occupies (constitutive yet excluded). Furthermore, afro-pessimism challenges the seductive narrative of social progress. Afro-pessimism refuses to think the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice. Instead, it encourages its readers to think that before justice (i.e., black subjectivity) is even possible, we must exist in a universe free from white hegemony.
Unlike many texts that are "critical" and "theoretical," Wilderson's Afropessimism blends critical theory with narrative and memoir. Afropessimism is the second of such books I have read this year, and while I like the approach (it certainly renders theoretical ideas easier to understand), there are times when Afropessimism is bloated and repetitive. Wilderson is a great storyteller, I enjoyed the experience, but this is not a book that needs to be 350 pages. I often refrain from these sorts of petty criticisms. Still, I make it here because I want afro-pessimism, flawed as it is, to have a seat at the table (I think Wilderson does too), and I fear the length and repetitiveness of Afropessimism limits its overall effectiveness.
July 29, 2020
Whoa, like just WTF?
Thoughts still marinating (7/23) with full review to come once the mind has cleared and processed the challenges to my critical thinking skills!
7/28.Fully processed, I think. If you fancy yourself a critical thinker, this text is your final exam. I mean this is serious business no entertainment reading here, strictly for learning and it isn't easy. I feel like I took a seminar on Afropessimism.
This theory is hard to explain in a review, but I’ll say succinctly it is the thought that like hot explains cold, and up gives meaning to down, Blacks elucidate not only whites but all of non-Black humanity. “Blacks give even the most degraded position a sense of human possibility because we are the locus of human impossibility.Whatever grace others may fall from, they will never be Black. This is a comforting thought. The flame of human warmth.”
And the most impressive thing about this text is Mr. Wilderson is well aware of how troubling his theoretical analysis is, "… will experience the analysis of Afropessimism as though they are being mugged, rather than enlightened" I fell somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, intrigued would be the closest word to describe my experience and engagement. Though, I can see some coming away from this having felt mugged. In explaining Afropessimism he mixes in memoir bits, which are fascinating and thoroughly revealing, and gives the reader some respite from the lyrical mugging taking place.
The reader will find the theory at turns challenging, frustrating, absurd, honest, irresponsible and irreconcilable. To sum up the theory in a review is hard for me, because I don't want to do the theory or the text a disservice by attempting to sum it up neatly and end up being misleading.
Let Mr. Wilderson speak: “But Afropessimism is premised on a comprehensive and iconoclastic claim: that Blackness is coterminous with Slaveness: Blackness is social death: which is to say that there was never a prior metamoment of plenitude, never equilibrium: never a moment of social life. Blackness, as a paradigmatic position (rather than as a set of cultural practices, anthropological accoutrements) is elaborated through slavery. The narrative are of the slave who is Black (unlike Orlando Patterson’s generic Slave, who may be of any race) is not an arc at all, but a flat line, what Hortense Spillers calls ‘historical stillness’: a flat line that moves from disequilibrium, to a moment in the narrative of faux-equilibrium, to disequilibrium restored and/or re-articulated.”
If that paragraph has your head spinning, there are plenty more contained within this text, that like the above are beautifully complex. This book requires your full attention when reading and the best advice I can give is to approach it like you would a university level class, come prepared to think and take notes.
This is for those who love to challenge their mind, but be not discouraged if you feel “mugged”, Mr. Wilderson tried explaining the fear people encounter when attempting to understand Afropessimism “Afraid of a problem in which everyone is complicit and for which no sentence can be written that would explain how to remedy it. Most people…..even profound intellectuals…..if I’m to be honest, are emotionally unable to wallow in a problem that has no solution. Black suffering is that problem. And a suffering without a solution is a hard thing to hold, especially if that suffering fuels the psychic health of the rest of the world.”
But his own mother pushed back, as no doubt many readers will “Mom rejoined that she wasn’t anybody’s slave, and that even when our ancestors were slaves they were Human beings.” I have some questions for Mr Wilderson and I’m certain careful readers will come away from this text with some questions of their own. Ultimately I'm grateful for being challenged intellectually in a way that very few books do currently, and finally this is the reward for those readers who dare investigate the theory of Afropessimism. Thanks to Goodreads for the advanced digital copy.
Thoughts still marinating (7/23) with full review to come once the mind has cleared and processed the challenges to my critical thinking skills!
7/28.Fully processed, I think. If you fancy yourself a critical thinker, this text is your final exam. I mean this is serious business no entertainment reading here, strictly for learning and it isn't easy. I feel like I took a seminar on Afropessimism.
This theory is hard to explain in a review, but I’ll say succinctly it is the thought that like hot explains cold, and up gives meaning to down, Blacks elucidate not only whites but all of non-Black humanity. “Blacks give even the most degraded position a sense of human possibility because we are the locus of human impossibility.Whatever grace others may fall from, they will never be Black. This is a comforting thought. The flame of human warmth.”
And the most impressive thing about this text is Mr. Wilderson is well aware of how troubling his theoretical analysis is, "… will experience the analysis of Afropessimism as though they are being mugged, rather than enlightened" I fell somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, intrigued would be the closest word to describe my experience and engagement. Though, I can see some coming away from this having felt mugged. In explaining Afropessimism he mixes in memoir bits, which are fascinating and thoroughly revealing, and gives the reader some respite from the lyrical mugging taking place.
The reader will find the theory at turns challenging, frustrating, absurd, honest, irresponsible and irreconcilable. To sum up the theory in a review is hard for me, because I don't want to do the theory or the text a disservice by attempting to sum it up neatly and end up being misleading.
Let Mr. Wilderson speak: “But Afropessimism is premised on a comprehensive and iconoclastic claim: that Blackness is coterminous with Slaveness: Blackness is social death: which is to say that there was never a prior metamoment of plenitude, never equilibrium: never a moment of social life. Blackness, as a paradigmatic position (rather than as a set of cultural practices, anthropological accoutrements) is elaborated through slavery. The narrative are of the slave who is Black (unlike Orlando Patterson’s generic Slave, who may be of any race) is not an arc at all, but a flat line, what Hortense Spillers calls ‘historical stillness’: a flat line that moves from disequilibrium, to a moment in the narrative of faux-equilibrium, to disequilibrium restored and/or re-articulated.”
If that paragraph has your head spinning, there are plenty more contained within this text, that like the above are beautifully complex. This book requires your full attention when reading and the best advice I can give is to approach it like you would a university level class, come prepared to think and take notes.
This is for those who love to challenge their mind, but be not discouraged if you feel “mugged”, Mr. Wilderson tried explaining the fear people encounter when attempting to understand Afropessimism “Afraid of a problem in which everyone is complicit and for which no sentence can be written that would explain how to remedy it. Most people…..even profound intellectuals…..if I’m to be honest, are emotionally unable to wallow in a problem that has no solution. Black suffering is that problem. And a suffering without a solution is a hard thing to hold, especially if that suffering fuels the psychic health of the rest of the world.”
But his own mother pushed back, as no doubt many readers will “Mom rejoined that she wasn’t anybody’s slave, and that even when our ancestors were slaves they were Human beings.” I have some questions for Mr Wilderson and I’m certain careful readers will come away from this text with some questions of their own. Ultimately I'm grateful for being challenged intellectually in a way that very few books do currently, and finally this is the reward for those readers who dare investigate the theory of Afropessimism. Thanks to Goodreads for the advanced digital copy.
April 21, 2020
Absolutely annihilating. One of the most radical books I've read about race probably in my entire life. Wilderson's prose is sharper than a knife, and each observation rings so true and so loud that there were moments where I was left gasping, unable to breathe, absolutely blinded by not just the anti-Black violence, but the nonchalance, and the ease of which he identifies it, and lets it wash over him, because as he says, Afropessimism isn't a balm, it isn't meant to help. Afropessimism is a grenade with no pin. Afropessimism is the scream of rage which until now Blacks have only been able to whisper. Black existence is a flat line, one with no historical beginning or end, and thus no possibility of redemption, just a host for the parasite of humanity. Life changing.
July 28, 2021
I feel like I dived into a pool and didn't know how to swim during and after reading this. Meaning, I probably wasn't entirely ready to this text just yet. what I grasp with ease mostly centered on the arguments of antiBlack violence fueled by the the spectacle of Black death or Black suffering. I presume that's the core definition of afro pessimism which relies on civil society dependence on anti-Black violence, in ways in which Black people are placed into positions of violence that doesn't make sense.
I can understand how Afropessimism is a lens to look through the world. I certainly need to read more to contextually grasp all that is present in here and in this critical theory. I suppose this text would have been made better for me without as much personal experiences to center this theory - to me it just got in the way. And I'm not sure where I entirely stand with this theory myself. However, critical scholarship and I'm glad I read it!
I can understand how Afropessimism is a lens to look through the world. I certainly need to read more to contextually grasp all that is present in here and in this critical theory. I suppose this text would have been made better for me without as much personal experiences to center this theory - to me it just got in the way. And I'm not sure where I entirely stand with this theory myself. However, critical scholarship and I'm glad I read it!
September 21, 2020
When the author wrote about his own life, the book came alive, for the most part. The theory was too much intellectual masturbation. I love theory, but there were parts where it didn’t seem to stop and I questioned my investment - both with time & money, in the book. Luckily, the story comes alive again. It’s also really difficult to see how he ended up marrying a white woman, given his politics. I wish he explained that more. Otherwise it kind of seems to weaken his whole political impetus. But, this is an important book & I hope the author (and editor) demonstrate a more disciplined hand in future work. It deserves it! Well done, Frank!
August 29, 2023
I was lucky enough to attend a lecture on afropessimism through the Dartmouth Debate Institute when I was in high school. It was shortly after the publication of this book, and we spent a good deal of time on Wilderson’s ideas. The background knowledge of that was extremely helpful in digesting this book, and let me deepen my understanding of these ideas.
Wilderson’s prose is stunning, but these concepts are both dense and provocative, which may make it a difficult read for those unfamiliar with truly radical theories of anti-blackness. The book is half memoir, half critical theory, which is a format I’ve never seen before. His accounts of his time working against the apartheid government in South Africa, his tutelage under Edward Said at Columbia, and the epilogue about his mother all stood out to me. I do have some problems with his theory, but I think his ideas are extremely important and there should be space for them in academia. Although I understand his argument that blackness is the most important structuring force (or perhaps anti-structuring force) for identity and social relations within libidinal economy, I find his hand waving of intersectionality to be premature.
There were some points he made that felt so deeply true that it was like a gut punch, and others that made me raise an eyebrow. Regardless, Wilderson’s work is genuinely revolutionary, and I hope his work continues to be recognized and influence future scholars, whether they agree or disagree with his thesis.
Wilderson’s prose is stunning, but these concepts are both dense and provocative, which may make it a difficult read for those unfamiliar with truly radical theories of anti-blackness. The book is half memoir, half critical theory, which is a format I’ve never seen before. His accounts of his time working against the apartheid government in South Africa, his tutelage under Edward Said at Columbia, and the epilogue about his mother all stood out to me. I do have some problems with his theory, but I think his ideas are extremely important and there should be space for them in academia. Although I understand his argument that blackness is the most important structuring force (or perhaps anti-structuring force) for identity and social relations within libidinal economy, I find his hand waving of intersectionality to be premature.
There were some points he made that felt so deeply true that it was like a gut punch, and others that made me raise an eyebrow. Regardless, Wilderson’s work is genuinely revolutionary, and I hope his work continues to be recognized and influence future scholars, whether they agree or disagree with his thesis.
May 17, 2021
"Afropessimism ain't exactly an aphrodisiac in an interracial love affair. 'Hey baby, how 'bout we smoke a little structural antagonism before we make love? 'Shoot. It's a wonder I ain't cross-eyed."
I sometimes disagree with Wilderson and I question some (if not most) of his analysis, which he uses to undergird his theory. But, we can agree to disagree because his memoir was illuminating and, well, I suppose there are merits to his arguments. I hear you, Frank.
Edward Said's brief cameo in his life was also rewarding (and timely) to read about.
I sometimes disagree with Wilderson and I question some (if not most) of his analysis, which he uses to undergird his theory. But, we can agree to disagree because his memoir was illuminating and, well, I suppose there are merits to his arguments. I hear you, Frank.
Edward Said's brief cameo in his life was also rewarding (and timely) to read about.
July 20, 2021
You guys have got to read this
July 25, 2021
Frank B. Wilderson III.... Smh...
More thoughts to come.
More thoughts to come.
July 26, 2025
speechless
October 22, 2025
- finally got around to reading the whole thing. Wilderson argues the Black ‘subject’ is not a subject and indeed this lack of subjectivity (constructed through the instrumentalization of Black bodies as Slaves) denies any kind of relationality between Black people and non-Black people. In this dynamic, slavery is always-already extant- indeed, slavery never ended- and Blackness is Slaveness. This objectification of Black ‘subjects’ is also the ground from which the psychic and ontological coherence of the Human (non-Black) subject rises and flourishes. As implied by the name this theory is deeply pessimistic and offers no positive political program insofar as the Black ‘subject’ is always-already excluded from the narrative redemption which structures so much of critical theory and racial politics since the Black ‘subject’ is not within a temporality which includes their ontological wholeness or non-Slaveness. The Black ‘subject’ had to be constructed as Slave and historicized in order to build the non-Black world which is always-already premised on the suffering of, and violence towards, Black bodies. Indeed, this suffering is necessary for the coherence and operation of the world: for the Black ‘subject’ to be rehabilitated would mean the end of the world as we know it. The economy of violence and death that surrounds the Black body and structures its existence is politically and ontologically *necessary* for all other Subjects. Where does this leave us? Self-annihilation seems to be the only political program we can look forward to and this claim sheds light on the Afro-Pessimist necrophobic themes which permeate Black media and culture today, even if they go by a different name and elude the interpretation of white and non-Black POC critical theorists. Since Black ‘subjects’ never experienced the psychic equilibrium which precedes the disequilibrium of trauma and subsequent equilibrium (restored), there is no narrative redemption for which to strive, a fact which allows us to understand that madness is not a break from psychic health but a structural component of Black existence. What then does madness mean? What does it mean to be mad in a world that requires it, that requires it of you and your body for its own coherence? The structural character of the argument can be overwhelming but is ultimately correct in its assessment that despite the performatives of white and non-Black POC, this relational dynamic (of Slavery) can never be overcome. This is ESSENTIAL reading for non-Black thinkers and academics but also everyone. Extremely lyrical auto-theory that seared my heart and forever altered my mind.
January 18, 2021
Structurally, this book is a mess. Mainly because I don’t really know what it’s about, and, quite frankly, I don’t think it does, either. Frank Wilderson is a beautiful writer who composes sentences with an evocative elan, a gracefulness that grips. When he talks about his life - especially when he reflects on his mother’s death in the final pages - it’s as good an elegiac as I’ve ever read.
But Wilderson’s book moves abruptly from autobiography to academic claptrap. Wilderson’s entire premise is that Black people have never been human as they have never experienced, as a people, a narrative arc of justice. Blackness begins and ends with slavery, and as slavery is the modern-day affect of Black men and women, the disconnect between “Human” and “Slave” is the disconnect between “Society” and being Black. It’s an interesting theory far beyond my pay grade to criticize. I will say that the idea of afropessimism, while not entirely within my own conception of race in America, is certainly thought-provoking, and I doubt I’ll forget this idea whenever I deign to look at the spine on my bookshelf.
If Wilderson were able to explain this theory through his stories, the book would have been a best seller. But there were parts that were just masturbatory exercises in academic writing, where he felt the need to do the thing that academics do: cram as many million-dollar words as possible into a sentence to make the theory seem more respectable to an audience of mortarboards. These parts of the book were easily the hardest to get through and took away from the very good stories that Frank told. Although, truthfully, I never knew why he decided to tell them. They didn’t really have a beginning or an end. Perhaps this was purposely done; a Kafkaesque juxtaposition of his tales with his theories. But even if this were the case, the book could have benefitted from an editor. In some spots, whole paragraphs were repeated (for emphasis?). In others, whole chapters ranged from three lines to thirty pages. It gave the entire book a disjointed feel.
I knew nothing about Wilderson before reading and am glad I was introduced to him. For any future books, I’d want him to put the thesaurus away and write the stories that resonate with people; the ones that had me close to tears at the end.
But Wilderson’s book moves abruptly from autobiography to academic claptrap. Wilderson’s entire premise is that Black people have never been human as they have never experienced, as a people, a narrative arc of justice. Blackness begins and ends with slavery, and as slavery is the modern-day affect of Black men and women, the disconnect between “Human” and “Slave” is the disconnect between “Society” and being Black. It’s an interesting theory far beyond my pay grade to criticize. I will say that the idea of afropessimism, while not entirely within my own conception of race in America, is certainly thought-provoking, and I doubt I’ll forget this idea whenever I deign to look at the spine on my bookshelf.
If Wilderson were able to explain this theory through his stories, the book would have been a best seller. But there were parts that were just masturbatory exercises in academic writing, where he felt the need to do the thing that academics do: cram as many million-dollar words as possible into a sentence to make the theory seem more respectable to an audience of mortarboards. These parts of the book were easily the hardest to get through and took away from the very good stories that Frank told. Although, truthfully, I never knew why he decided to tell them. They didn’t really have a beginning or an end. Perhaps this was purposely done; a Kafkaesque juxtaposition of his tales with his theories. But even if this were the case, the book could have benefitted from an editor. In some spots, whole paragraphs were repeated (for emphasis?). In others, whole chapters ranged from three lines to thirty pages. It gave the entire book a disjointed feel.
I knew nothing about Wilderson before reading and am glad I was introduced to him. For any future books, I’d want him to put the thesaurus away and write the stories that resonate with people; the ones that had me close to tears at the end.
July 9, 2023
I think this book did exactly what it was supposed to do--for the first fifty pages or so I was in a stage of extreme denial, but by the end I was able to see the points he was making. It was extremely challenging for me to read, and I still don't agree entirely with everything he says, but I think that everyone should at least take a look at this.
June 28, 2020
Not so much a critical theory book, but a book about the development of the theory. Frank B. Wilderson III simultaneously outlines Afropessimism and shows how it came to be in his mind.
July 4, 2020
Truth hurts, but at least its recognizable.
August 11, 2020
I'll post a full review a few months or years from now once the text settles.
Time to revisit some Sylvia Wynter essays.
Time to revisit some Sylvia Wynter essays.
Read
July 17, 2020This book combines memoir and philosophy to make an argument about what it means to be Black. Wilderson writes about growing up in Minneapolis, studying with Edward Said, living in Berkeley and South Africa, and a lot more. The book begins with a harrowing description of Wilderson’s mental health breakdown. As he tells his story, Wilderson argues that subjugating Black people is fundamental to the way non-Black people form their identity and their understanding of themselves as human. He argues that anti-Blackness is baked into our civilization and the only honest response to the situation is to acknowledge it. It’s a challenging argument that, combined with Wilderson’s absorbing memoir, makes for a powerful read.
https://bookriot.com/new-genre-bendin...
https://bookriot.com/new-genre-bendin...
August 10, 2020
Afropessimism is a coherent, cogent mode of making (non)sense from a global predilection with Black pain and suffering. Wilderson's text is useful, formally somewhat interesting, and well-executed. There are worthy criticisms of Wilderson's (and Sexton-by-way-of-Wilderson) formulation, but I have no need to rehearse them--Spillers, Hartman, and others have already levied their brilliant and attentive critiques, especially feminist ones; Iyko Day has written one of Wilderson's flawed approach to understanding and accounting for indigeneity and land. By my own hand, I might offer that this can partially be explained by Wilderson's failure to mention the property nexus that links land and Black enslaved qua property. But these are academic, scholarly quibbles--not literary ones.
February 11, 2025
If Black “people,” are, as Wilderson puts it, a structurally “static image of abjection,” completely unable to shift or advance paradigmatically, and incapable of honestly participating in “assumptive humanist”movements, what CAN we do (314)? I don’t believe in the idea that Black people cannot change their structural role in society; even if Black people are still slaves in modern day America, who is Wilderson to say that we can’t be free? How can you confidently determine an entire demographic of people as incapable of progress and condemned to an inhuman existence, which is to say, they don’t really exist as themselves at all.
The fact that Wilderson uses personal anecdotes and film to prove this point is … interesting and unconvincing to say the least. While Wilderson quotes other academics, his jump from “Black people as slaves” to “Black people are and will forever be slaves” is an incredibly big and horrible jump to make without significant historical or sociological evidence. If this is truly a paradigmatic theory, why not prove it with more structurally based evidence?
I had to put the book down when he started invoking scenes from Twelve Years a Slave… I mean, seriously. Obviously, the Black characters in an antebellum movie are structurally non-human in any meaningful sense.
Also, if Black people are objects, and White people are Human, how could he possibly not investigate the subject of interracial relationships, romantic and otherwise? By bro’s own logic he married his master🤔🤔🤔 How on earth did he not find this anecdote (the dynamics of the relation, memories, hesitancies) relevant enough to include in this haphazard book of his? He mentions his marriage at the very end of the book for about a page. He said making jokes about being his wife’s slave was weird; well, yeah, that’s really fucking weird and maybe something you should spend more than a page talking about? He broached the subject of interracial relationships again, briefly, when discussing a graduate student who admits to loving but also hating her white mother and Asian boyfriend… this, again, required further investigation Wilderson did not provide.
Maybe he didn’t include additional anecdotes regarding his marriage because it makes it almost impossible for the reader to take his theory seriously. Why should people care about an ingrained slave:master structure if it doesn’t prevent or change the basic nature of our (Black people’s) relationship capabilities with non-Black people? Again, WHY would a slave marry their master? The wording alone makes the situation inconceivable. How can an object give consent? Well, it can’t, and so this shit makes absolutely no sense.
I’m not saying that this theory is not interesting, or that it’s dumb, but Wilderson’s argument feels lazy and leaves me with more questions than answers. I’m curious! Actually, I’m very, very curious, because the ramifications of this theory are so devastating (only the end of the world would bring about a potential change in the state of Afropessimism), and yet Wilderson’s actions (again, white wife) undermine the proposed severity of his argument. If this contradiction doesn’t matter enough to prevent his marrying a white woman, then why should people care? Why should I care?
The fact that Wilderson uses personal anecdotes and film to prove this point is … interesting and unconvincing to say the least. While Wilderson quotes other academics, his jump from “Black people as slaves” to “Black people are and will forever be slaves” is an incredibly big and horrible jump to make without significant historical or sociological evidence. If this is truly a paradigmatic theory, why not prove it with more structurally based evidence?
I had to put the book down when he started invoking scenes from Twelve Years a Slave… I mean, seriously. Obviously, the Black characters in an antebellum movie are structurally non-human in any meaningful sense.
Also, if Black people are objects, and White people are Human, how could he possibly not investigate the subject of interracial relationships, romantic and otherwise? By bro’s own logic he married his master🤔🤔🤔 How on earth did he not find this anecdote (the dynamics of the relation, memories, hesitancies) relevant enough to include in this haphazard book of his? He mentions his marriage at the very end of the book for about a page. He said making jokes about being his wife’s slave was weird; well, yeah, that’s really fucking weird and maybe something you should spend more than a page talking about? He broached the subject of interracial relationships again, briefly, when discussing a graduate student who admits to loving but also hating her white mother and Asian boyfriend… this, again, required further investigation Wilderson did not provide.
Maybe he didn’t include additional anecdotes regarding his marriage because it makes it almost impossible for the reader to take his theory seriously. Why should people care about an ingrained slave:master structure if it doesn’t prevent or change the basic nature of our (Black people’s) relationship capabilities with non-Black people? Again, WHY would a slave marry their master? The wording alone makes the situation inconceivable. How can an object give consent? Well, it can’t, and so this shit makes absolutely no sense.
I’m not saying that this theory is not interesting, or that it’s dumb, but Wilderson’s argument feels lazy and leaves me with more questions than answers. I’m curious! Actually, I’m very, very curious, because the ramifications of this theory are so devastating (only the end of the world would bring about a potential change in the state of Afropessimism), and yet Wilderson’s actions (again, white wife) undermine the proposed severity of his argument. If this contradiction doesn’t matter enough to prevent his marrying a white woman, then why should people care? Why should I care?
May 20, 2021
Afropessimism is a theory (or "meta-theory") that cannot be dismissed. It posits that antiBlackness is the foundation for what it means to be "Human," because antiBlackness is the foundation on top of which all of modern society has been constructed. From this basic premise comes the Afropessimist assertion that Black suffering is irreparable and without redemption, and that Black suffering cannot be analogized with the suffering of any other group or people. Accordingly, Afropessimism articulates a problem (foundational, intractable, and permanent antiBlackness) that has no solution.
Author Frank Wilderson cohesively weaves the above-stated tenants into an autobiography of his life, tracing his development from a young Black Communist radical who believed in the efficacy of cross-racial radical solidarity as a means of dismantling the white supremacist-capitalist-imperialist-patriarchal social order, to an Afropessimist who sees in all theories of resistance the fundamental flaw of "Humanism." One of the main weaknesses of this book is Wilderson's reliance on personal anecdote and experience in informing his Afropessimist thought. It was Wildreson's interactions with nonBlack people in various stages of his young life that eventually led him to conclude that nonBlack people were irredeemably antiBlack, and that antiBlackness was constitutive of their very "Being."
In order to understand the philosophy of Afropessimism, one must grapple with the classifications and terminology, which as Wilderson readily admits, can be jarring and world-breaking. Wilderson repeatedly asserts that "Blackness is conterminous with Slaveness." Black "people" are Slaves, Objects, Non-Beings, Non-Humans, existing for the sole pleasure of white people and their "Junior Partners" (i.e. nonBlack "POCs"). He defines the "Human"--the entity that while sentient, Blacks can never be--as a person with the parasitic "capacity" to use the Black "person" however they see fit. This objectification and use is a part of the "libidinal economy" between nonBlacks and Blacks that underlies the antagonism. Wilderson emphasizes that Blacks are needed for Humans to be Humans. Blacks are the entity that all Humans measure themselves against. They are how Humans measure their humanity. With this, Wilderson explodes the idea that analogies between Black suffering and nonBlack suffering can be made, while simultaneously eviscerating the thought of cross-racial "solidarity." Blacks are political objects, instruments of the World, rather than subjects in the World.
One of the main distinctions between Humans and Blacks is the relationship to violence. Humans, according to Wilderson, are subjected to violence contingent on their particular relationship and reaction to their place in the sociopolitical order. For example, nonBlack workers can expect violence *if* they resist capitalism, nonBlack colonized groups can expect violence *if* they resist colonialism, nonBlack women can expect violence *if* they resist patriarchy, etc. etc. But for Blacks, violence isn't conditional or contingent, it is "gratuitious." White people (and their Junior Partners) commit violence on Black people because they can and because it affirms their "Humanity." Wilderson believes that this gratuitous violence is a product of antiBlackness being the foundation of the modern world. Thus, he posits that no matter how horribly Blacks are treated, they will never be completely genocided, because a World without Blacks would no longer make sense.
While this book is surely thought provoking and important as it relates to understanding Black folks' place in a white supremacist world, there are many important questions left unanswered and many historical contradictions left unaddressed. First, if Blacks are nothing but objects (Wilderson repeatedly analogizes Black people to inanimate objects such as nails, tools, water bottles, etc.), how does one account for the history of African revolt? There are moments throughout the book where Wilderson gets so caught up in his double consciousness (seeing his Black self through white eyes) that he forgets that through revolution--violent revolution--Black *people* have asserted themselves as autonomous, living, breathing political subjects. "Non-Beings" and "objects" didn't burn plantations in Saint-Domingue, African sociopolitical actors did. Objects don't resist, subjects do. This begs the question, how does Afropessimism deal with the history of Pan African revolt and resistance?
While Afropessimism is a theory to be reckoned with, it does not lend itself as a framework from which Black people can organize from because it seemingly requires Black people to accept designations that strip away all autonomy, capacity, and agency. While it is obviously helpful and vital to understanding how nonBlack people and societies view and treat Black people, it is another matter entirely to insist (or imply) that Black people adopt that view for themselves. This, I believe, is the greatest weakness of Afropessimist thought. Nevertheless, this book is a must read.
Author Frank Wilderson cohesively weaves the above-stated tenants into an autobiography of his life, tracing his development from a young Black Communist radical who believed in the efficacy of cross-racial radical solidarity as a means of dismantling the white supremacist-capitalist-imperialist-patriarchal social order, to an Afropessimist who sees in all theories of resistance the fundamental flaw of "Humanism." One of the main weaknesses of this book is Wilderson's reliance on personal anecdote and experience in informing his Afropessimist thought. It was Wildreson's interactions with nonBlack people in various stages of his young life that eventually led him to conclude that nonBlack people were irredeemably antiBlack, and that antiBlackness was constitutive of their very "Being."
In order to understand the philosophy of Afropessimism, one must grapple with the classifications and terminology, which as Wilderson readily admits, can be jarring and world-breaking. Wilderson repeatedly asserts that "Blackness is conterminous with Slaveness." Black "people" are Slaves, Objects, Non-Beings, Non-Humans, existing for the sole pleasure of white people and their "Junior Partners" (i.e. nonBlack "POCs"). He defines the "Human"--the entity that while sentient, Blacks can never be--as a person with the parasitic "capacity" to use the Black "person" however they see fit. This objectification and use is a part of the "libidinal economy" between nonBlacks and Blacks that underlies the antagonism. Wilderson emphasizes that Blacks are needed for Humans to be Humans. Blacks are the entity that all Humans measure themselves against. They are how Humans measure their humanity. With this, Wilderson explodes the idea that analogies between Black suffering and nonBlack suffering can be made, while simultaneously eviscerating the thought of cross-racial "solidarity." Blacks are political objects, instruments of the World, rather than subjects in the World.
One of the main distinctions between Humans and Blacks is the relationship to violence. Humans, according to Wilderson, are subjected to violence contingent on their particular relationship and reaction to their place in the sociopolitical order. For example, nonBlack workers can expect violence *if* they resist capitalism, nonBlack colonized groups can expect violence *if* they resist colonialism, nonBlack women can expect violence *if* they resist patriarchy, etc. etc. But for Blacks, violence isn't conditional or contingent, it is "gratuitious." White people (and their Junior Partners) commit violence on Black people because they can and because it affirms their "Humanity." Wilderson believes that this gratuitous violence is a product of antiBlackness being the foundation of the modern world. Thus, he posits that no matter how horribly Blacks are treated, they will never be completely genocided, because a World without Blacks would no longer make sense.
While this book is surely thought provoking and important as it relates to understanding Black folks' place in a white supremacist world, there are many important questions left unanswered and many historical contradictions left unaddressed. First, if Blacks are nothing but objects (Wilderson repeatedly analogizes Black people to inanimate objects such as nails, tools, water bottles, etc.), how does one account for the history of African revolt? There are moments throughout the book where Wilderson gets so caught up in his double consciousness (seeing his Black self through white eyes) that he forgets that through revolution--violent revolution--Black *people* have asserted themselves as autonomous, living, breathing political subjects. "Non-Beings" and "objects" didn't burn plantations in Saint-Domingue, African sociopolitical actors did. Objects don't resist, subjects do. This begs the question, how does Afropessimism deal with the history of Pan African revolt and resistance?
While Afropessimism is a theory to be reckoned with, it does not lend itself as a framework from which Black people can organize from because it seemingly requires Black people to accept designations that strip away all autonomy, capacity, and agency. While it is obviously helpful and vital to understanding how nonBlack people and societies view and treat Black people, it is another matter entirely to insist (or imply) that Black people adopt that view for themselves. This, I believe, is the greatest weakness of Afropessimist thought. Nevertheless, this book is a must read.
August 25, 2022
I will definitely be reading more about this
Read
April 13, 2023Um…what?
July 31, 2022
This book has captivated me in intense ways that are novel and disorienting. More than any other book I’ve read, the phrase “have an opinion on” feels wholly inappropriate for describing my disposition towards it, because that would relate that I had some sort of control or possession of it.
In truth, it’s enrapturing prose possessed me. Provoked me into the unknown land of black existentialism. I’m aware that there are divergent opinions on Fanon, but while reading this book, I had to suspend criticism in order to entertain (which is too soft a word) the possibility of Wilderson’s thesis: too be black is to find yourself in a position where the entirety of the world’s social order is against you, not just on a structural material level, but at the realm of the metaphyscial. To be black is to be necessarily subjected to violence at the hands of bourgeoisie libidinal economies rigged to exploit and dispossess.
It has been some time since I’ve read something so radically provocative that I’ve struggled to see substance to the author’s argument, but time and time again, Wilderson poetically narrates the contours of his existence and the ways in which he has been perpetually entangled in a panoptic snare of whiteness (a way of being and thinking that is manifestly oppositional to his existence).
In all sincerity, this is a book situated in a deep academic conversation that might require dozens of prerequisites, but at the same time, it’s accessibility is haunting. The glaring forwardness of Wilderson’s experiences speak for themselves. Of course, I don’t think it transcends criticism, but there are too many that will reject this book out of the subconscious fear of how right he actually is. An absolute juggernaut of a text that will be important for conversations in black studies, philosophy, and psychoanalysis for years to come.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad says, “The greatest challenge in reading this Afropessimism coming-of-age story is seeing a reflection of yourself and finding the will and the words to prove him wrong.”
In truth, it’s enrapturing prose possessed me. Provoked me into the unknown land of black existentialism. I’m aware that there are divergent opinions on Fanon, but while reading this book, I had to suspend criticism in order to entertain (which is too soft a word) the possibility of Wilderson’s thesis: too be black is to find yourself in a position where the entirety of the world’s social order is against you, not just on a structural material level, but at the realm of the metaphyscial. To be black is to be necessarily subjected to violence at the hands of bourgeoisie libidinal economies rigged to exploit and dispossess.
It has been some time since I’ve read something so radically provocative that I’ve struggled to see substance to the author’s argument, but time and time again, Wilderson poetically narrates the contours of his existence and the ways in which he has been perpetually entangled in a panoptic snare of whiteness (a way of being and thinking that is manifestly oppositional to his existence).
In all sincerity, this is a book situated in a deep academic conversation that might require dozens of prerequisites, but at the same time, it’s accessibility is haunting. The glaring forwardness of Wilderson’s experiences speak for themselves. Of course, I don’t think it transcends criticism, but there are too many that will reject this book out of the subconscious fear of how right he actually is. An absolute juggernaut of a text that will be important for conversations in black studies, philosophy, and psychoanalysis for years to come.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad says, “The greatest challenge in reading this Afropessimism coming-of-age story is seeing a reflection of yourself and finding the will and the words to prove him wrong.”
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