Frank Wilderson III, "Afropessimism" (Liveright, 2020)

Frank Wilderson III, "Afropessimism" (Liveright, 2020)

How should we understand the pervasiveness – and virulence – of anti-Black violence in the United State? Why and how is anti-Black racism different from other forms of racism? How does it permeate our moral and political ideals? Frank Wilderson III combines memoir and works of political theory, critical theory, literature, and film to offer a philosophy of Blackness. In his new book Afropessimism (Liveright, 2020), Wilderson insists that the social construct of slavery – as seen through pervasive anti-Black subjugation and violence – permeates our principled and practical assumptions. It is not a relic but a worldview that supports our conception of, for example, what it means to be human. For Wilderson, Blacks remain slaves in the human world because “at every scale of abstraction, violence saturates Black life.” To define what it means to be human, we require people who are slaves. While the podcast highlights the theory, the book uses accessible autobiographical stories as examples of the philosophical claims. Wilderson’s remarkable life – from his childhood in mid-century Minneapolis to his work with the African National Congress during apartheid – serves to demonstrate that there are no easy solutions (thus his afropessimism) given the level of hatred and violence. Susan Liebell is associate professor of political science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. She is the author of Democracy, Intelligent Design, and Evolution: Science for Citizenship (Routledge, 2013). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Episoder(2229)

What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life

What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life

Mothers and fathers use their time differently, with women spending roughly twice as many hours on family labor as men. But what about the gendered differences in the ways women and men think? What’s ...

12 Mar 50min

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for Dialogical Sociology" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

In an era of deepening polarization, Sari Hanafi examines how social scientists often reproduce the very injustices they seek to challenge, taking entrenched positions while dismissing alternative per...

11 Mar 50min

Jacob Stegenga, "Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Jacob Stegenga, "Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

In Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 2026), philosopher Jacob Stegenga breaks with the most dominant epistemologies of science to argue that in judging...

10 Mar 48min

Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency" (Lever Press, 2026)

Movies open a window into our collective soul. In Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency (Lever Press, 2026), Stephen Lee Naish guides us through recent cinematic phenomena that reflect/refract...

10 Mar 1h 9min

Sean Parson, "Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sean Parson, "Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a radical critique of contemporary politics, offering an alternative framework rooted in anarchism, punk rock, dadaism, situationi...

7 Mar 42min

The Cave and the Coalition: Philosophy, Populism, and the MAGA New Right

The Cave and the Coalition: Philosophy, Populism, and the MAGA New Right

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny sits down with political theorist Laura Field to trace the intellectual currents shaping today’s right — from Straussian thou...

7 Mar 56min

Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan eds., "Autotheories" (MIT Press, 2025)

Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan eds., "Autotheories" (MIT Press, 2025)

A transdisciplinary array of authors offering a new frame of reference for autotheory and its genre-bending synthesis of autobiography and critical theory. Autotheories (MIT Press, 2025) tells the s...

6 Mar 1h 9min

Damion Searls, "The Philosophy of Translation" (Yale UP, 2024)

Damion Searls, "The Philosophy of Translation" (Yale UP, 2024)

The Philosophy of Translation (Yale UP, 2024) is a fresh, approachable, and convincing account of what translation really is and what translators actually do. As the translator of sixty books from mul...

5 Mar 57min

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