Afropessimism: Blackness, At The End Of This World / Frank B. Wilderson III

Award-winning writer, poet, and scholar Frank B. Wilderson III joins me to discuss his book ‘Afropessimism,’ a "seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness" that, through a combination of profound personal reflection and meta-critical theory, peers deeply into the heart of the Black experience in the world today.

Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery—in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms—continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world?

Combining trenchant philosophy with lyrical memoir, Wilderson presents the tenets of an increasingly prominent intellectual movement (Afropessimism) that sees Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Drawing on works of philosophy, literature, film, and critical theory, he shows that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive anti-Black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but the very engine that powers our civilization, and that without this master-slave dynamic, the calculus bolstering world civilization would collapse.

Bio:

Frank Wilderson is an award-winning writer, poet, scholar, activist and emerging filmmaker. Dr. Wilderson spent five years in South Africa as an elected official in the African National Congress during the country’s transition from apartheid and was a member of the ANC’s armed wing Umkhonto We Sizwe. He also lectured at the University of Witwatersrand (a White English medium university in Johannesburg), Vista University (a Black English medium, Afrikaner-controlled university in Soweto), and Khanya College (a tertiary-level liberation school for activist youth whose studies had been “interrupted” by the revolution). Dr. Wilderson served as a Market Theater dramaturge and worked on an all-Black South African cast production of the Black American play The Colored Museum; and as an elected official in the (ANC-aligned) Congress of South African Writers. His books include Incognegro: a Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (Duke University Press, [2008] 2015), Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Duke University Press, 2010), and Afropessimism (Liveright, 2020).

Episode Notes:

Learn more about Frank’s work

Purchase a copy of Afropessimism

Recommended reading: The Argument of “Afropessimism” by Vinson Cunningham, and As Free as Blackness Will Make Us at Ill Will Editions

The song featured is “hurtoknx.” by Knxwledge from the album GT.V2