Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. The Free Black Is Nothing  1
1. The Question of Black Being  26
2. Outlawing  62
3. Scientific Horror  110
4. Catachrestic Fantasies  143
Coda. Adieu to the Human  169
Notes  173
Bibliography  201
Index  211

About the Author

Calvin L. Warren is Assistant Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory University.

Reviews

"Calvin L. Warren recalibrates Afro-pessimism in new directions while he seriously deepens, extends, and requires that we pay closer and better attention to the claims made by Afro-pessimist thinkers. He turns toward a new philosophy of the Americas that requires a re-reading of philosophy insofar as it is founded in producing the absence of blackness and black people as the foundation of its very possibilities. Poised to re-animate Black studies in an important way, Ontological Terror will be a foundational text of Afro-pessimist thought, even as it exceeds the term. This is a work of accomplishment."--Rinaldo Walcott, author of "Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies "

"Calvin L. Warren recalibrates afro-pessimism in new directions while he seriously deepens, extends, and requires that we pay closer and better attention to the claims made by afro-pessimist thinkers. He turns toward a new philosophy of the Americas that requires a re-reading of philosophy insofar as it is founded in producing the absence of blackness and black people as the foundation of its very possibilities. Poised to re-animate Black studies in an important way, Ontological Terror will be a foundational text of afro-pessimist thought, even as it exceeds the term. This is a work of accomplishment."--Rinaldo Walcott, author of "Queer Returns: Essays on Multiculturalism, Diaspora, and Black Studies "