Afropessimism, then, is less of a theory of more of a metatheory: a critical project that, by deploying Blackness as a lens of interpretation, interrogates the unspoken, assumptive logic of Marxism, postcolonialism, psychoanalysis, and feminism through rigorous theoretical consideration of their properties and assumptive logic, such as their foundations, methods, form, and utility; and it does so, again, on a higher level of abstraction than the discourse and methods of the theories it interrogates. Again, Afropessimism is, in the main, more of a metatheory than a theory. It is pessimistic about the claims theories of liberation make when these theories try to explain Black suffering or when they analogize Black suffering with the suffering of other oppressed beings. It does this by unearthing and exposing the meta-aporias, strewn like land mines in what these theories of so-called universal liberation hold to be true.
If, as Afropessimism argues, Blacks are not Human subjects, but are instead structural inert props, implements for the execution of White and non-Black fantasies and sadomasochistic pleasures, then this also means that, at a higher level of abstraction, the claims of universal humanity that the above theories all subscribe to are hobbled by a meta-aporia: a contradition that manifests whenever one looks seriously at the structure of Black suffering in comparison to the presumed universal structure of all sentient beings. Again, Black people embody a meta-aporia for political thought and actionâBlack people are the wrench in the works.
Blacks do not function as political subjects; instead, our flesh and energies are instrumentalized for postcolonial, immigrant, feminist, LGBTQ, transgender, and workers' agendas. These so-called allies are never authorized by Black agendas predicated on Black ethical dilemmas. A Black radical agenda is terrifying to most people on the Leftâthink Bernie Sandersâbecause it emanates from a condition of suffering for which there is no imaginable strategy for redressâno narrative of social, political, or national redemption. This crisis, no, this catastrophe, this realization that I am a sentient being who can't use words like "being" or "person" to describe myself without the scare quotes and the threat of raised eyebrows from anyone within earshot, was crippling.
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turnnoffyourmind
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