The Black Register : Essays on blackness and the politics of being

How can thinkers grapple with the question of the human when they have been dehumanized? How can black thinkers confront and make sense of a world structured by antiblackness, a world that militates against the very existence of blacks? These are the questions that guide Tendayi Sithole’s brilliant analyses of the work of Sylvia Wynter, Aimé Césaire, Steve Biko, Assata Shakur, George Jackson, Mabogo P. More, and a critique of Giorgio Agamben. Through his careful interrogation of their writings Sithole shows how the black register represents a uniquely critical perspective from which to confront worlds that are systematically structured to dehumanize. The black register is the ways of thinking, knowing and doing that emerge from existential struggles against antiblackness and that dwell in the lived experience of being black in an antiblack world. The black register is the force of critique that comes from thinkers who are dehumanized, and who in turn question, define, and analyze the reality that they are in, in order to reframe it and unmask the forces that inform subjection. This book redefines the arc of critical black thought over the last seventy-five years and it will be an indispensable text for anyone concerned with the deep and enduring ways in which race structures our world and our thought. Cover 1 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Foreword 10 Introduction: The Black Register 16 The Category of the Black Register 17 The Category of the Unthought 36 The Itinerary 44 1 Sylvia Wynter: Contra Imperial Man 45 The Imperial Man 47 Niggerization 56 The Rebel 61 Decolonial Scientia 68 Practices of Freedom and the Politics of Being - After Man 72 2 Aimé Césaire and the Scandal of the Human 78 Europe and its Other 80 Humanism as the False 90 The Return 98 3 Steve Biko as the Figure of the Outlawed 109 On Blackness: The Problem of the Problem 110 On the Mystique of the Martyr 122 The Outlawed in the Racist State 126 The Tyranny of the Paradigm of Policing 133 White Liberals in Black Affairs 141 The Politics of Black Solidarity 151 Authority to Judge 158 4 The Prison Slave Narrative: Assata Shakur and George Jackson’s Captive Flesh 161 The Prison Slave Narrative 163 The Tyranny of Justice 177 The Loving Subjectivity 185 5 For Mabogo P. More: A Meditation 193 The Existential Struggle as Philosophy 194 The Infrastructure of Antiblack Racism 198 The Bad Faith of White Liberals 206 For Black Solidarity 211 Mandela’s House Mystique 220 Sartre, Fanon, Manganyi, and Biko Against the Manichean Axis 227 By Way of Fanon’s Prayer 234 6 Marikana: The Conceptual Anxiety of Bare Life 237 Bare Life Qua Subject Erasure 238 A Deathscape and the Zone of Non-Being 241 On Structural Violence 243 The Politics of Life: The Negation of Ontology 247 Human Rights for Humans Only 249 Ontological Density 252 Conclusion: On the Reconfiguration of the Subject 255 Shifting the Geography of Reason 262 The World, Its End 272 References 276 Index 290 EULA 304 1.pdf 1 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Foreword 10 Introduction: The Black Register 16 The Category of the Black Register 17 The Category of the Unthought 36 The Itinerary 44 1 Sylvia Wynter: Contra Imperial Man 45 The Imperial Man 47 Niggerization 56 The Rebel 61 Decolonial Scientia 68 Practices of Freedom and the Politics of Being - After Man 72 2 Aimé Césaire and the Scandal of the Human 78 Europe and its Other 80 Humanism as the False 90 The Return 98 3 Steve Biko as the Figure of the Outlawed 109 On Blackness: The Problem of the Problem 110 On the Mystique of the Martyr 122 The Outlawed in the Racist State 126 The Tyranny of the Paradigm of Policing 133 White Liberals in Black Affairs 141 The Politics of Black Solidarity 151 Authority to Judge 158 4 The Prison Slave Narrative: Assata Shakur and George Jackson’s Captive Flesh 161 The Prison Slave Narrative 163 The Tyranny of Justice 177 The Loving Subjectivity 185 5 For Mabogo P. More: A Meditation 193 The Existential Struggle as Philosophy 194 The Infrastructure of Antiblack Racism 198 The Bad Faith of White Liberals 206 For Black Solidarity 211 Mandela’s House Mystique 220 Sartre, Fanon, Manganyi, and Biko Against the Manichean Axis 227 By Way of Fanon’s Prayer 234 6 Marikana: The Conceptual Anxiety of Bare Life 237 Bare Life Qua Subject Erasure 238 A Deathscape and the Zone of Non-Being 241 On Structural Violence 243 The Politics of Life: The Negation of Ontology 247 Human Rights for Humans Only 249 Ontological Density 252 Conclusion: On the Reconfiguration of the Subject 255 Shifting the Geography of Reason 262 The World, Its End 272 References 276 Index 290 EULA 304 How can thinkers grapple with the question of the human when they have been dehumanized'' How can black thinkers confront and make sense of a world structured by antiblackness, a world that militates against the very existence of blacks'' ' These are the questions that guide Tendayi Sithole's brilliant analyses of the work of Sylvia Wynter, AimE CEsaire, Steve Biko, Assata Shakur, George Jackson, Mabogo P. More, and a critique of Giorgio Agamben. Through his careful interrogation of their writings Sithole shows how the black register represents a uniquely critical perspective from which to confront worlds that are systematically structured to dehumanize.' The black register is the ways of thinking, knowing and doing that emerge from existential struggles against antiblackness and that dwell in the lived experience of being black in an antiblack world.' The black register is the force of critique that comes from thinkers who are dehumanized, and who in turn question, define, and analyze the reality that they are in, in order to reframe it and unmask the forces that inform subjection. This book redefines the arc of critical black thought over the last seventy-five years and it will be an indispensable text for anyone concerned with the deep and enduring ways in which race structures our world and our thought "Drawing upon Africana existential phenomenology, black radical thought, and decoloniality, Sithole offers a new way of thinking about the contemporary relevance of seminal thinkers such as Wynter, Cesaire, Shakur, and Biko"-- Provided by publisher