TY  - BOOK
AU  - L. Warren, Calvin
AB  - 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.
DO  - 10.1215/9780822371847
ID  - OAPEN ID: 649831
ID  - OAPEN ID: OCN: 1008764960
KW  - awareness
KW  - philosophy
KW  - ontology
KW  - race
KW  - race identity
KW  - racism
KW  - political aspects
KW  - nihilism
KW  - blacks
KW  - Free Negro
KW  - Humanism
KW  - Martin Heidegger
KW  - Metaphysics
KW  - Negro
L1  - https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/c8f97085-da56-4bb0-bae9-8f13c657877d/649831.pdf
LA  - English
LK  - http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/30152
PB  - Duke University Press
PP  - Durham
PY  - 2018
SN  - 9780822370727;9780822370871
TI  - Ontological Terror : Blackness, Nihilism and Emancipation
ER  - 
