Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation

In Ontological Terror Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. Warren uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with nonbeing-a logic which reproduces antiblack violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks-Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.

Author: Calvin L. Warren
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 05/18/2018
Pages: 232
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780822370727

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