A01=Calvin L. Warren
Author_Calvin L. Warren
Category=JBSL
Category=QDHH
Category=QDTJ
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eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780822370871
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 18 May 2018
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Calvin L. Warren is Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.
