Black Abstraction

Sometimes: I want to kill myself just to see what’s on the otherwise. One of the consequences of metaphysical violence has been: the violent erasure of Black abstraction and ideation and the subsequent (dis)placement of Black thought to the position of the unthought. This violence has prevented not only the activity of Black thought and […]

War, or The Art of Failure

Inspired by a ghost of a friend, a shadow of a dancer, a fellow mumblr-in-theory brian muraya This was supposed to be about the art of war. It became a note on the art of failure. Somehow these terms crossed paths on the tip of my tongue. Somehow I made them make a sweet embrace. […]

Marriott’s Fanon, or Brevity on the Tabula Rasa

Classroom Presentation: Libidinal Economy Reading: Marriott, David (2011) “Whither Fanon?” Textual Practice 25 (1), 33-69. “Turning to Fanon’s discussion, we will see how the theme of the psyche and culture come together in the form of a mutual abhorrence that is itself a sign of a traumatic inheritance … “ – David Marriott, Whither Fanon […]

On “The Function of ‘the Black Father’”

“If black children were raised in an environment that focused not on bemoaning their lack of fathers but on filling their lives with the nurturing love we all need to thrive, what difference would an absent father make?” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/10/the-dangerous-myth-of-the-missing-black-father/) This question sets up a false binary: either we bemoan the loss of a Black Father […]

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 […]

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 […]

Lucifer, son of the Morning

You are Guilty by Association Everywhere. Everyone will find a way to detonate your name to destroy what you have made there is nothing to be done about this. Let it fall down Let it die a desperate death nothing here is worth being cherished nothing here is worth fake love. *** Lucifer, son of […]