BLST 255 Afro-Pessimism and Its Kin
This course is an exploration of Afro-pessimism, a set of scholarship (authored by Frank B. Wilderson and Jared Sexton, for example) that has emerged in the twenty-first century, that claims to describe the condition of black (non) existence in such a way that enlightenment ideals – like humanism, the political, civil society, freedom and equality – are taken off the table as adequate guides for achieving a world fit for the flourishing of black lives. To better understand the claims of this scholarship, we will also read those thinkers that Afro-pessimists claim as their fore-mothers and -fathers (like Orlando Patterson, Sadiya Hartman and Hortense Spillers), as well as those thinkers that claim Afro-pessimists as chosen family (like Fred Moten and Cristina Sharpe). Central to this course will be concepts like antiblackness, civil society, slavery, and social death.