The Pragmatics of Resistance: Framing Anti-Blackness and the Limits of Political Ontology

Abstract

This article argues that Frank B. Wilderson's political ontology can be read as both a critique and a radicalization of Giorgio Agamben's formal political-ontological framework constructed around the two extreme poles of sovereignty and bare life. Wilderson critiques and expands Agamben's framework by locating the zero point of political abjection not within bare life, which is still implicated within the ontological zone of Human being by way of an included exclusion, but within Black social death, which is cut off absolutely from Human being. While such a political ontological framework provides an extremely powerful optic for the absolute ontological abjection of Black existence in relation to all other racial positions in the modern West, its absolute prioritization limits the scope of an analysis of power relations that might offer an account of racial positioning that is both broader than and resistant to the political ontology of Western race relations. In conclusion, turning to Fred Moten's Black optimism and Deleuze's and Guattari's account of micropolitics and lines of flight, the article argues for a pragmatics of resistance that finds its practical condition of possibility within the micropolitical field of power relations that marks an excess to the anti-Black macropolitics of political ontology.

The Underside of Order: Race in the Constitution of International Order

“…The Afropessimist literature has, however, faced some criticism for an overemphasis on ontology that pre-emptively limits, or even disavows, the possibilities of resistance, care, and imagining things otherwise. Kline 2017;Sharpe 2016. 58.…”

Presence as Policy Action: Black Mothers as Policy Actors Navigating Antiblack Geopolitics

“…Working with the mothers one theme was consistent: they worked tirelessly, on a daily basis to showcase their abilities given that each day there were discriminatory forces wanting to overshadow their humanity. Systemic racism, capitalistic ventures, and educational disparities shape the forces that exclude Black families from educational opportunities (Dumas, 2016; Ewing, 2018; Kline, 2017). For the mothers, these forces took on the guise of what Dr. Serenity called “residues of modern-day slavery.” The mothers’ tenacious determination to be included at the system level stemmed from their desire to shift the antiblack practices experienced at the schools, their workplace, and their daily mundane routines.…”

Challenging Anti-Black Racism in Everyday Teaching, Learning, and Leading: From Theory to Practice

“…In this article however, we focus on ways to become free and more specifically ways for Black students to become free in the spaces that they learn. In the ontological polarity of the West, antiblackness draws its energy from the positioning of Blackness situated at the bottom of the polarity (Kline, 2017). In many ways, Black people are positioned as having no history prior to slavery and this myth is perpetuated through pedagogy and curriculum, thereby cutting off Black students from the rich history and knowledge which they come from.…”

“…In many ways, Black people are positioned as having no history prior to slavery and this myth is perpetuated through pedagogy and curriculum, thereby cutting off Black students from the rich history and knowledge which they come from. Kline (2017) argues further that antiblackness is also about power and is revealed through practices, forms, and apparatuses; and ways that “anti-Black racism have historically developed, changed, and reassembled/reterritorialized in relation to state power, national identity, philosophical discourse, biological discourse, political discourse, and so on” (p. 66).…”