Beyond anti-blackness? Engaging Black Theology and the entanglement of metaphysical brutality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21492779 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fabian A Oliver (0009-0008-9788-643X, University of South Africa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-28 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0259-9422 • E-ISSN: 2072-8050 |
| Publisher | AOSIS (PUBLISHER • ZA) |
| DOI | 10.4102/hts.v81i1.10956 |
| OpenAlex | W4416686044 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
This article explores the role of Black Theology within the context of sustained anti-blackness. It argues that anti-blackness is not only a political failure but the ontological ground of modern life. Engaging critically with Black Theology of Liberation, the article examines how even liberatory theological discourses can become entangled in Christianised redemptive frameworks that inadvertently uphold anti-black metaphysics. Drawing from a broader scope of black studies, it argues that Black Theology often remains entangled in anti-black metaphysical structures, especially in its assumptions about being, life and liberation. The article turns to Armstrong’s ‘Wayward Black Theology’, which foregrounds waywardness, refusal, lament and disruption as theological imperatives. Building on this, it proposes a both–and approach to blackness. That is, blackness as poiesis: a creative, spiritual and ideological force tethered to waywardness, and blackness as a condition that signals the end of the world as we know it, where black existence has been positioned as non-being. Contribution: Ultimately, the article asks: What theo-political and spiritual imperatives must Black Theology embrace if it is to move beyond the limits of the world structured by anti-blackness and its metaphysical foundations
Black theology · Ideology · Infinity · Lament · Metaphysics · Politics · Postmodernism · African cultural and philosophical studies · Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies · Theological Perspectives and Practices
Black and Blur
Un-thinking the West
Racism en Route
Black feminism at the end of the world
Paraontology
Losing Salvation
Becoming Human
Toward a Black Feminist Poethics
Ontological Terror
Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope
After the end of the world? Rethinking temporalities of critique and affirmation in the Anthropocene
Paratheological Blackness
Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom
| Highly cited | No |
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