Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation

By Calvin L. Warren

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822370875
• ISBN13: 9780822370871
• Release Date: May 2018
• Publisher: Duke University Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"