Ontological Terror Blackness, Nihilism and Emancipation

• Main Author: L. Warren, Calvin (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Durham Duke University Press 2018
• Subjects: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography; awareness; philosophy; ontology; race; race identity; racism; political aspects; nihilism; blacks; Free Negro; Humanism; Martin Heidegger; Metaphysics; Negro
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

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.