The Ontology of Blackness: Heidegger and Afropessimism Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

The Ontology of Blackness argues that blackness is a forgotten movement of being. In turning to Martin Heidegger's ontology alongside the Afropessimist works of Frantz Fanon, David Marriott, and Calvin L. Warren, I argue that blackness names an essential ontological foreclosure of a non-ontological absence called the n'est pas (“is not”). Metaphysics, as the history of presence, emerges from this prohibition: the ontological foreclosing of the non-ontological that shapes how beings appear in their presence. The black reveals this foreclosure through an ontological absence that appears within metaphysics, disclosing how being's essential withdrawal [Entzug] requires an originary prohibition of the n'est pas that over time becomes what the black bears as its imposed being. The black who appears at the end of metaphysics thus discloses how being essences as blackness, though this truth has been disavowed in order for metaphysical presence to persist unchallenged by the non-presence and the non-ontological that shapes it. In tracing how this prohibition deepens across three periods of Heidegger's thinking and manifests in the racial figure of the black that Afropessimism reveals, I show that any thinking of being necessarily requires an understanding of its racializing prohibition. By disclosing this forgotten movement, the dissertation ultimately argues that being can only be thought by bearing witness to what the black carries as its imposed absence, and that any ontology, social theory, or political formation that refuses this truth reproduces the very prohibition it claims to overcome.

Table of Contents

Introduction................................................................................................................... 1

 

Chapter One: In Need of Nothing................................................................................. 13

S1: The Null Ground .................................................................................................... 18

S2: The Need of The Nothing........................................................................................ 27

S3: The Truth of Concealment ...................................................................................... 37

 

Chapter Two: Fanon and Black Being........................................................................... 51

S1: The Disavowal of Being........................................................................................... 58

S2: Trembling and The Blackness of Being................................................................... 75

S3: The Comportment of Descent................................................................................. 85

     3.1 Inheriting the Disavowed................................................................................... 85

     3.2 The Clearing for Blackness ................................................................................ 99

 

Chapter Three: Blackness in Withdrawal.................................................................... 110

S1: Being’s Racial Withdrawal..................................................................................... 117

S2: The Prohibition of the N’est Pas............................................................................. 131

S3: Bearing Blackness.................................................................................................. 139

     3.1 A Disavowing Prohibition................................................................................ 139

     3.2 Being: Blackness?............................................................................................. 151

 

Chapter Four: The Social Ordering of Blackness......................................................... 159

S1: Blackness as Social Phenomenon?......................................................................... 166

S2: Positionality and The Politics of Hope................................................................... 184

S3: The Blackness of Being.......................................................................................... 194

 

Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 201

 

Works Cited................................................................................................................ 207

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Philosophy
Degree	Ph.D.
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Keyword	Metaphysics Ontology Black Studies Afropessimism Heidegger Fanon
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Axelle Karera, Emory University Andrew J. Mitchell, Emory University
Committee Members	Geoffrey Bennington, Emory University Calvin L. Warren, Emory University David Marriott, Emory University

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