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(2227)

Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)

Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)

If you asked a passerby on the street what anarchism is, they may answer that it is an ideology based on chaos, disorder, and violence. But is this true? What exactly is anarchism? Anarchism: a Very S...

7 Feb 55min

Olivier Esteves et al., "France, You Love It but Leave It: The Silent Flight of French Muslims" (Polity, 2025)

Olivier Esteves et al., "France, You Love It but Leave It: The Silent Flight of French Muslims" (Polity, 2025)

Their names are Mohamed, Samira, sometimes Matthieu or Sophie. They were born and bred in France and are highly qualified, but they have decided to go and live in London or New York, Montreal or Bruss...

6 Feb 57min

Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, "Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke, "Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Human geography offers answers to some of the most important challenges of our time. To understand contemporary struggles over global economic inequality, forced migration, racial injustice, gender ju...

5 Feb 1h 7min

Kevin Hart, "Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Kevin Hart, "Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

In Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation (U Chicago Press, 2023), Kevin Hart develops a new hermeneutics of contemplation through a meditation on Christian thought and secular philosophy. ...

5 Feb 1h 17min

Samuel Holley-Kline, "In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico" (U Nebraska Press, 2025)

Samuel Holley-Kline, "In the Shadow of El Tajín: The Political Economy of Archaeology in Modern Mexico" (U Nebraska Press, 2025)

Located in the Papantla municipality of the Mexican state of Veracruz, El Tajín is a UNESCO World Heritage site but a lesser-known tourist destination and national symbol. The Indigenous Totonac resid...

4 Feb 45min

Lisa Min et al. eds., "Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State" (punctum books, 2024)

Lisa Min et al. eds., "Redacted: Writing in the Negative Space of the State" (punctum books, 2024)

When it comes to the political, acts of redaction, erasure, and blacking out sit in awkward tension with the myth of transparent governance, borderless access, and frictionless communication. But shou...

4 Feb 1h 25min

Jacqueline Couti and Anny Dominique Curtius, "Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

Jacqueline Couti and Anny Dominique Curtius, "Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings (Liverpool UP, 2025) bridges the gap between the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. It collect...

3 Feb 1h 17min

Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most o...

3 Feb 1h 19min

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