Review of Frank Wilderson’s _Afropessimism_

“Althusser writes about the three great fatherless children of modernity: Marx, Nietsche, and Freud. And then ya know you get from those guys up to Heidegger and Sartre and then you know whatever. Poststructuralism and all those folks and Derrida and Foucault and Lacan. But what if it turns out that the last great theorist of the subject is Frank Wilderson?” — Fred Moten

What is…no no no. Is there a black subject? How can a nonbeing be split? Perhaps by functioning as a vector through which others can accomplish themselves. Well well well. What is blackness? An identity that one may claim…at one’s own peril? No. No. No. Blackness is a structural position. An abyss. The zone of nonbeing. Ain’t no choice in that.

So, what do we have here with Afropessimism? Memoir-ish. Theoretical at times. Autobiographical annihilation. Careening off and against the bars of narrative.

Can there even be a “community” of niggers, as opposed to a “bunch” or a “collection”? Can black thought or performance even be a “suite” or a trilogy? Or simply a smattering of words. Incognegro, Red White and Black, Afropessimism. The slave’s suite. The Nigger’s Trilogy.

The Negro may find in Afropessimism a chorus singing “It’s ok to hate this world/sanity ain’t so sure anymore.” A sane black person is an oxymoron. “But Afropessimism isn’t a church to pray at, or a party to be voted in and out of office.” Afropessimism is a metatheory, a reading practice. It is an attempt to “rewrite the alphabet.”

“Slave narratives have tried to imagine this violence, but they have also turned away at crucial moments; moments when it becomes clear that without a causal logic, the story could fall apart. In cases such as these, the solution has been to disavow the inconvenient truths and get on with narrative.” How to represent the unrepresentable?Afropessimism has reinvigorated black intramural struggles. “I’m not even talking to anyone in this room. Ever. When I talk, I’m talking to Black people. I’m just a parasite on the resources that I need to do work on behalf of Black liberation.” To raise the impossible question NOW, or watch it be pushed to the side forever — a profound faith in what black people can do with the impossible.

I hate when I hear that black people aren’t threats because we most certainly are when our deaths keep this whole modern world sutured together. As if the very idea of us is not a stimulus to your anxiety. Black freedom is theft of the world’s most enduring property.

“Make them feel safe…”

The daemonic aura, the scandalous aurality, the obscene sight, the uncanny feel, the funky aroma of sentient flesh.

What do you want from me, Human?! (repeat refrain 2x ad nauseum)

You know how the political economy is always already the libidinal economy? Cause when black folk bleed, somebody gets a check. When black mothers publically grieve, somebody gets a check. Is our blood the grease keeping the levers of political economy moving? After January 6th I kept hearing this refrain playing on an endless loop, “If it was black people…” followed by vivid descriptions of torn flesh and battered bodies. It’s not just that such thoughts are inadequate, or that they should be so self-evident as to not require utterance — it’s the way well-meaning humans get to casually fantasize a lynching without feeling bad about it. Remember DuBois lamented that he did not study Freud and psychoanalysis as seriously as he could have in his study of race. “White people are the police.” Police couldn’t stop killing black folk even when we were all indoors. When all eyes were on them.

What does it really mean to have nothing to lose but our chains? Did you think that was hyperbole? You’re running but. Flight will not save you. Fugitivity will not save you. You’re at rest but. Borrowed institutionality will not save you. Death will not save you. Even in death you’re still a speaking implement. No horizon of redemption and no narratives of innocence. No tomatoes no gazpacho. No niggers no life. More black death more life.

Let’s play a game: Cops and robbers. CIA and communists. Masters and slaves.

What are the stakes of a work like this? “As a Black writer I am tasked with making sense of this violence without being overwhelmed and disoriented by it. In other words, my writing must somehow be indexical of that which exceeds narration, while being ever mindful of the incomprehension the writing would foster, the failure, that is, of interpretation were the indices to actually escape the narrative. The stakes of this dilemma are almost as high for the Black writer facing the reader as they are for the Black insurgent facing the police and the courts.”

Freefallin’ through the abyss. No coordinates, no history to lay claim to, no kinship to be secure in, no territory to rest in. Objective vertigo. Black writing demands reading practices that feel like surrendering to a sensory deprivation tank.

Do you really think that when black people are “alone”, or sharing space with each other, that nonblacks ain’t there too? Kill the Human in your head, skip gates across the color line and dance with the dead. “If we are to be honest with ourselves, we must admit that the “Negro” has been inviting Whites, as well as civil society’s junior partners (for example, Palestinians, Native Americans, Latinx) to the dance of social death for hundreds of years, but few have wanted to learn the steps.” Who’s ready for a program of complete disorder?

Against redemption. Against mastery. And of the ending of the book, if blackness presents an aporia for the structure of narrative. The epilogue is not a resolution, not a return to anything. It is simply the social life of social death. Afropessimism is not an affective prescription. Until we blow the lid off the unconscious, there can be no black jouissance. Live your death as you please. “I wish I had died there, Mom. How can I go on without that illusion? There’s only one way…” There’s only one way to go on and that is your way.

The “difference between . . . something to save . . . [and nothing] to lose”? What is the relationship between hope and action? Hope may be necessary to make a better world. Hope is not necessary to end the world. Which project is yours?