Zombies, Feelings, Brains

“There would be no living dead if there were no ‘rational homunculi’ (de Sousa’s term for ‘simplified models of rational agent[s]”].” (Rei Terada, Feeling in Theory, 156) Let’s start with the question of values. Who has them? Does such a thing truly remain on the face of the Earth? Values exist for the hopeful. Values […]

Rural Wiggers II

I think when you grow up Black in a predominately poor white area in America, there’s a certain austerity you are made to adopt towards your suffering that can transform gaslighting into the everyday state of being alive. Rural wiggers have a different attitude towards suffering. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard describes it as a condition of having […]

In Defense of Waithe’s Nightmare: Notes on Black Horror, Gore and ‘Them’

We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn’t matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are […]

Philosophy or Psychosis

PHILOSOPHY. Stay philosophical. – John Murungi When philosophers speak about the public or the masses as if they are not a part of such masses or publics, one should begin their philosophical skepticism there. Why? Because there becomes a separation between what thou art and what thou art with. One is skeptical only in sincerity. […]

Reimagining Science Syllabus

Reimagining Science: Continental Realism and Black Studies’ Philosophies of Science Syllabus I was recently discussing with my advisor about how a dream of mine would be to one day teach a Continental Philosophy of Science graduate seminar in a Comparative Literature Department. I’ve always been interested in Continental philosophy’s approach to traditional philosophy of science […]

Protected: Consent Not To Be A (Human) Being

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Exhaustion

Notes for Classroom Presentation: Black Visual “Exhaustion is the contemporary crisis of black studies.” Calvin Warren names exhaustion as the contemporary crisis of Black studies as the field maneuvers more and more towards a desire for an afterword to Slavery. It is this move to turn slavery into a “thing of the past” that animates […]

Collapse Of The Paradigm

Collapse of the paradigm. Classroom Presentation: Afropessimism and the Status of the Subject Thursday, January 14th 2021 Orlando Patterson’s analysis of slavery in Slavery and Social Death is an explosion of the notion of slavery from its prevailing definitions in the general academic parlance. Patterson’s constituent elements of slavery argue against a consensus that understands […]

Fashioning Desire, Desiring Fashion Winter 2021

Syllabus for hypothetical reading group of Winter 2021. Week 1-2: Fashion and Psychoanalysis Rikky Byrd, “On the ‘Black Designer’” Week 3-4: The Subject of Fashion Week 4-5: The Sex Which is Not Uniform Francisco J. Galarte, “The Crowns of Stuzo Clothing” Eva Hayward, “Don’t Exist” Week 6-7: The Libidinal Economy of Decadence David Marriott, […]

The Anti-Fashion(ing) of Desire: Readings I, II & III

Starting 2021 after the Fall Semester, I have to/want to start reading some more of the books on my PhD Exam Reading List. So I created a reading syllabus out of some of the books I’ll be reading/having to read under the topic of “The Anti-Fashion(ing) of Desire.” The majority of the reading is psychoanalytic […]