Ontological Terror

The author intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the "Negro question" is intimately imbricated with questions of Being. The author uses the figure of the antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and Being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing. This nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence and force as well as that which whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. by pointing out how all humanism is based on investing blackness with non-Being - a logic which reproduces anti-black violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks - the author urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of way of existing that are not predicated on grounding in Being.