Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh)

2013/10/01 by Fred Moten · 3 citations
Social Sciences · #African cultural and philosophical studies #Posthumanist Ethics and Activism #Race, History, and American Society

paper · doi:10.1215/00382876-2345261

crossref issued 2013/10/01 · crossref published 2013/10/01 · crossref published-print 2013/10/01 · openalex publication_date 2013/10/01 · crossref created 2013/10/24 · crossref deposited 2023/07/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

In taking up the profound and necessary challenge of Afro-pessimism, scholars engaged in black study must not only attend to the relation between blackness and nothingness that Frank B. Wilderson III and Jared Sexton elaborate in their encounter with the work of Frantz Fanon but must also investigate the resonance, presence, and topography of blackness in and as nothingness that is manifest at the intersection of mysticism and logic in black study. This essay is an attempt to contribute to that investigation.

Citations

• Black Skin, White Masks

Cited by

• Unspeakable Joy: Anti-Black Constraint, Loopholes of Retreat, and the Practice of Black Joy
• “Be Real Black for Me”
• Disappointment in the Archives of Black Freedom

Related

• Ship to the door of no return: on haunting, refusal, and imagination in black studies
• The Pitfalls of (Anti)Essentialism: Pan-Africanism, Afropolitanism, and Global Blackness
• Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds
• How to Think Black: A Symposium in Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters
• Anarcha’s Science of the Flesh: Towards an Afropessimist Theory of Science