Certain aspects of the fungible commodity render it more vulnerable to sustained and brutal violence—which is not completely captured under the banner “antiblackness.” Because we lack a grammar outside humanism that would allow us to articulate “particularity,” “difference,” and “surplus violence” without getting trapped in a double bind, I propose a procedure of writing with and against humanism to address this problem. I call this procedure “onticide.” It uses the technique of erasure (sous rature) in relation to features of human difference that exclude blackness but are necessary to articulate the fracturing of fungible commodities. This approach departs from intersectional analyses that attempt to either reconcile blackness with humanity and its difference or conceive of blackness as ontologically equivalent with features of human difference. I suggest that the intersectional approach is inadequate to the task of articulating the particularity of violence Steen experienced, and that an onticidal approach (writing with and against humanist terms of difference) enables us to contend with the humanist double bind more productively.
Calvin Warren, “Onticide: Afro-pessimism, Gay N***** #1, and Surplus Violence”
