Afro-Blue Notes

The Death of Afro-pessimism ( 2.0 )

Bibliographic Data

ID15030348
AuthorsGreg Thomas (0000-0001-8887-5626, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume21
Issue1
Pages282-317
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTheory & Event (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1092-311X • E-ISSN: 2572-6633
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tae.2018.0011
OpenAlexW2787713581
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited5

This article examines Wilderson and Sexton's trending reiteration of an old Euro-imperial pessimism—a perverse "Afro-pessimism (2.0)" in which Africa disappears altogether along with most of the Black diaspora. Its fatalist representation of "slavery" is interrogated for its "Americanism" and Occidentalism besides its canonical erasure of Black resistance and Pan-African revolt for white settler state historiographies. Although their academic critique disguises itself as a "Black radical discourse," it is here interrogated vis-á-vis actual traditions of Black radical praxis which it typically disregards (e.g., C.A. Diop; Césaire; Sylvia Wynter) or distorts (e.g., Fanon; Assata; the "BLA"). The article closes with an analysis of Wilderson's simply shocking distortion of Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead, a novel of the liveliest maroonage

Art · Art history · Diaspora · Epistemology · Literature · Pessimism · Praxis · Resistance (ecology · Sociology · Theology · White (mutation · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Race, History, and American Society

Tools

Open DOI