His writing has been honored by the legacy award for creative nonfiction and any a literature, in his new book afropessimism, memoir and philosophy flowthrough and from one another as Frank Wilderson discusses an afro pessimist world of the occult with examples from his own life which in turn inform a lot. The screen is all yours. Guest it seems new every time. I thank everyone for coming up and sharing their evening with me in the auditorium of the free library of philadelphia. We are to gather like this perhaps. As horrible as this is, would have been in an auditorium. It is not worth the extra numbers. I hope everyone is safe and healthy. I am going to share with you an episode from my book. Those of you who have seen the book or read my other work or some are familiar with afropessimism, there are two trains running and i told John Williams of the new york times, what is the chain of critical theory which speaks to explain the structure the structure of black suffering that cannot be recognized old reconciled with press winning. The working class and postcolonial subjects. That is the high theory intervention we have made in the last 10 or 15 years but i want to reiterate the intervention was made for at least 200 years for a sublimated way in the form, story, and music of black people. In the first principle and constituent elements with respect to critical theory. That is one part of the book. Probably a lot of questions for people Like High School or college the baiters who use this extraction in their debates or College Students are graduate students or in marxism or psychoanalysis but the general public may not have an idea what is at stake with respect to the afropessimism intervention. Taking up all the time i have to share a story with you and i really cant go into that. What i hoped you would do, that you would buy this book and then as you read if you are not familiar with afropessimism, note for people who have been quoted in this and because a trade book as opposed to a Critical Theory University press book, footnotes were embedded which are found in the back of the book. I dont know if i can show you, not with numbers but with bold letters of words, various parts in the body of the text itself. You see the phrase inside of a story. You dont know what the economy is . Turn to the back of the book and find in the economy and bold and there is a definition of it from my friend and colleague, they are not numbered but they will help. Before i begin this vignette. What the stakes are, for that i need a stage prop. This is orlando patterson, to my mind this is a book as momentous through thinking about captivity and slavery as carl marxs volume one was as compared to the racial dynamic in 1869. Theres a piece in slavery and social death. The problem in a slaveholding society, to the status of slaves, they died out, the workers were fired, remains be worker. There is no shift in getting fired. You are in the same position, unemployed but you could become employed later on. But the slave was no longer a slave. To repeat the violent act of transforming free man into slave, to repeat, read it again. To repeat the original violent act of transforming free men into slave. I found to be for me, one of the problems we deal with is that the structure and ritualistic performance of antiblack violence cannot be reconciled with the structure and ritualistic performance of antiimmigrant bias. There is a way in which there is Something Different going on here. The act of violence constitutes the prehistory of all satisfied society, the prehistory of all stratified society. Economists understand what that means. 300 years ago we did not have a racial dynamic of capitalism. In order to produce a new paradigm that will describe growth you need an ocean of violence to transform into proletarian and it is called the prehistory of the paradigm. Then the after i will read it again. Determining the prehistory and concurrent history of slavery, that is one of the golden moments of terror and trauma. What it says is inside the structure of capitalism once people have inculcated their role then you do not want the gratuitous nature to continue on, you want to rule those people through hegemony, you want them to be different. You want the violence that created capitalism when there is resistance. The cuban revolution, with slavery and what constitutes the paradigm, the concurrent history of the lived experience of the paradigm. The slave lives in a soup of irrational or nonsensical violence, cant be reconciled with the violence of the working class, the violence of the slave doesnt transform itself into hegemony when the slave acquiesces to the position. Is at stake for me. The other mode of expression, a different kind of vernacular is a story and it resonates with what i just said even only i can read you 6 pages and it may not be clear but if you read the chapter, you understand what i say. Let me begin. Chapter 3, a few pages that begin on page 55. And and that is okay. One thing i want to say in norton to produce this beautifully constructed book, we are in the first printing of the book. What all the folks in ww norton, really heavy, literally heavy paper, with special return of its material value, wont have heavy paper. This is the years 19761980. 2024 to jump around in that particular time period, 761980. The city, minneapolis, minnesota. This is a story i never told before, not to my brother or sister or who i partnered with or married. 40 years came and went. What i always thought, could only cause embarrassment for me. The natural response to a confession. Even now the story makes me squirm leaving the shame of wanting this when i thought i could die. I believed when it was time, i would face a manlike black Liberation Army soldier of the new jersey turnpike and state trooper shutter in the chest. I would get busy as Charles Jackson got busy at the courthouse in california. It is a revolution that required my sacrifice and tap a secret reservoir of courage accumulating inside you from the age of 12. My Junior High School teacher, the doppelgangers, defendant of a political trial by chicago aid. This happens to be one of those. Together almost ten years, she was 38 when we met. I was 22. I met stella at the end of march, 1958, meeting black students in a campaign in solidarity to the people who need food and clean the toilets just outside of town. Apparently complained to the Administration People from the appalachian trail brought on by what some Fraternity Brothers called two early in the greetings. Seeing them in the appalachian trail eating in the same room system gives them indigestion. The Administration Responded by ruling that a dining hall and buildings and grounds workers from that moment on must eat during offpeak hours at the chamber, set aside for them and them alone. This was a fascist decree and we had to take action. The workers who came from nearby backwaters in New Hampshire and two store and one saloon town skirting the mountain through the confederate flag, speeding pickups as they drove past us. Lost in the countryside at a time when not even dick tracy had gps. We drove past houses ranged along the courts of matchsticks on the floor. Every fourth or fifth car was a carcass on cinderblock wheels. We started by the lack of hatred in the eyes of children who stared as we drove by. I turned and looked back at them, waiting for god to help them name what they just saw. In the end, the africanamerican society at Dartmouth College aimed at forcing that ministration to rescind its decree. During the campaign, i was arrested and jailed. The New Hampshire courthouse, he handed me a 2page single spaced charge sheet. I told him who had drunk all the charges. He implored me to read the letter. The troubles with the town distended he said. But your troubles with Dartmouth College have just begun. Two years prior just before i turned 20, the fbi tracked me to trinidad. Like most intelligence file that is when we were declassified, reactions like buckshot, attached on the flank of the deer. The name of the agent killed in the winter of 1976, the winter of my sophomore year at Dartmouth College has been redacted, nor did he or she seem interested in a not quite 20yearold young man he or she shadowed at the university of the west indies. He studied the other. He had research on a major family in trinidad in carnation of the west african religion. The third course with an independent study designed himself, 50 page piece of paper he wrote as a participant researcher of the communist party in trinidad. The fbi filed a reference, none of this. The report went like this. During his day in trinidad he was in contact with a member of the Trinidad And Tobago solidarity committee. He promised that individual he would attempt to make contact with that organization and attempt national aid, to procure financial aid. He claims to be a member of an unspecified revolutionary group from the United States was he was born april 11th, 1956, in the United States from a student at Dartmouth College, number f 23216 one 7 and his Mailing Address is 3983 Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. This report, ght from caracas, the legal attache in venezuela, jay a good hoovers successor at the fbi. According to official propaganda the fbi legal attache works for the agency in the host country with investigation of interest in both countries. The role of legal attache was one of coordination that did not develop counterintelligence investigation. More explanation was given why they were running an asset from trinidad to spy on an American Students to make sure the operation between the us and the country, trinidad or venezuela might be. The report began, this confidential source mentioned in the memorandum, the action is nearly 2 lines long. In other words more than a name is being withheld. It continues, it came to the attention in the past of extremist activities in the United States. Then the Boston Office requested to provide what came to prior attention to the security activities. This is not the story of every africanamerican child but this fbi report complicates that story. A corrupt the causal link that helps me make sense of what we were subjected to four years after i returned from trinidad in 1980. Two years after Dartmouth College in 1978, there was a campaign on behalf of workers who were white to our black, on an unrepentant basis. In the middle of writing this chapter it corrupted the events that make my head quiver as i stretch these words with my pen. I thought at last i could go point to point, what chose stella and me, and 11yearold daughter from our home. And there are other ways to live in safety. From the state of minnesota, friends and sanctuaries. The fbi file came when i was steadfast in my conviction that what happened had to do with that. Hers alone. I even blamed the break at my studio apartment by two white men who wanted collateral heat. Against the government. I was not yet driving a cab at that time. That would start when i moved in with our. I worked as a waiter in uptown minneapolis but the restaurant, i was sent home early. The studio was on the ground floor from the lake of the aisle. It was change from the inside, how could he have done that, i thought. It is like a moment for me to realize i could not have done that. Someone else did that. Someone was inside. One red curve out the window, to the other leg. And the other one rolled out with the grace of clearing the bar, in the low yellow light, chasing them halfway down the alley like an even bigger pool. I called the cops. When the Police Arrived even with my clothes into the wall, one large cop at the sink, me and his partner in the middle of the room. There was a lot of cash on you or when you went to work is what he said to me pointing to the money in the dish trainer that was left by the sink before i could close the bank. I told him i had rested there. Did you leave the camera here . He went to the restaurant. Whoever did this i said, knew my schedule, they had time, time for what . You done know unless you investigate. Investigate what . Got you. How murder went unpublished. Carl marx. He placed both books back. What are you doing reading this stuff for . Not surprising i soon moved in with estella and a gun in the closet that we didnt know how to use. Thank you. Thank you for the reading. Before we move to audience questions, i wanted to circle and allow you to wind things together again by asking you would you talk about afro pessimism and how that applies to your book . A small passage from book and one of the things that i i think this notion that hes bringing up is gratuitous. Violence has no coherent sensemaking reasons for it. In other words, you cant say awe, its not triggered and paradigms need to discipline people to produce, say, occupied land or to produce surplus value in capitalism. So if you live in a paradigm of contingent violence, then you can actually tell stories of redemption. Redemption in abstract way. Moving from plenty and equilibrium, 1492, if youre native american. Art of conflict in america which would be different equilibrium. Occupation of europeans and genocide, and then moveing to equilibrium restoreed, reimagine ed. People look at cinema, cinema of colonial revolutionaries, the story doesnt have to end in real life with the regaining of liberation but what it can do is it can end in a conceptual coherence of what liberation might look like. The one thing that can happen, among jackson and many other people that i can name, the interesting thing about this is if there was no moment, in other words, if there werent black or africa noting are indicated, african continent. If theres no if there are people before that, but they not are black, they are bugadi, this is very much like the structural position of workers, theres no such thing as a worker 5020 years ago. Worker comes into being with capitalism. So if you have a situation in which you were back, what you dont have that the macro schematic is you dont have a whole before, is that making sense so far . So far. Then you come back by what patterson said about the violence, violence is necessary to create a paradigm. You cant have a paradigm. We are coming together, collective agreeing that theyll be on top and people on the bottom. So if we also say so thats the case of the worker. These two working artificial positions, man and woman. The native and if thats the case, paradigm where theres no prior libertarian moment for this position and if is the antagonist is not the worker, not the man, not the colon dominator, humanity itself, needs to distinguish itself from what it is now. Then youre in something which its rough, you cant imagine what was before and if youre antagonist its not that kind of system, change in system, its not a certain kind of system, antagonist is a human race itself then what you have is a situation in which a its constructed, it can be dealt with, but, you cannot write a sentence as to how to deal with it because the past with plentitude and equilibrium, the lid off of concept of redemption by suggest its not universal human being than it requires its other, it requires being Walking Around that can never be redeemed. Thats the place that blackens occupies in the economy, especially people who say, i dont see race. [laughter] you know, im like dr. King. I judge on character and quality and not color of their skin. What theyre telling you, theyre not lying consciously but they are not tapped into the primary processes of signification like most people talking to you through conscious mind and saying theres all to me. No, theres something more essential. Phobic response to black bodies, actually does not have a conceptual grounding. Im phobic. Anxiety to black body. But unlike my eruption of native americans, phobic anxieties to jews, my phobic anxiety, i cant say why i have the anxiety. And that and that is symptomatic of the first thing i said before i started reading. Its symptomatic of living in a structure of violence because his or their structure of violence goes on with the gratuitous nature even after people conquered and acquiesce. You cannot say why did the cops shoot me if its necessary to restore health of world. Understood. Did i misread it . Those dais are over. I will listen. If you find the [laughter] i didnt do that this time because i can see exactly and i dont want to give it away. I will say it has to do with a relationship with my mother and i can see how the general reader its important and important because it does something it does something to better the daytoday experience of slaves in the plantation. The plantation im calling out house in minneapolis, minnesota. It does something to better the daytoday in short mural experience. What the book recognizes that there are important political differences between these people that can never be reconcile but they seemed to they will not fight about this so much anymore. Both suffer antiblack violence even though attitude wards the country cannot be reconciled. This is a good people that during race theory dont always get. People with get it better. Antonio great columnist, the first 20 years of century is mortal enemies to, host to parae called capitalism and just after fascist and implement capitalist domination and the communist workers are pressed by capital ism and constant advise to rail against it. Thats important. It would be great. If the fascist could understand, woe, jack, we dont need to look, we need to be part of the communist party. It would be great if that happened. The point of the matter, structurally if it never happened, those two entities are the same in the paradigm of capitalism. The end of the book doesnt make the argument because in the end of the book im trying to speak to black people about how we are with each other and what i have to do to do that in this episode with my family is to forego the apparatus of critical theory but if the person is curious theyll get it. Aha, this is an episode of the social life in social death, this is people on the plantation which we argue 21st Century America is, saying that they are going to be kinder to each other. Clearly i need to read more text because i got stuck in my motion in the last of it. Thats okay. I dont sell books. [laughter] let me go with audience questions. Do you think other scholars misunderstand and or oversimple fly oversimplify afropessimism . Yes, theres an article, people, many people got it, read it, afropessimism colon, the unclear word. Google it and you will find. One of the things that he does, the many things that he does is the actual response to the afropessimist logic and ensemble and its not analytic response, its an emotional response and what that what that when we characterize is responses that redundant and show that the people havent actually read the pessimist thinkers which is okay, you know, before i met edward, i didnt really understand critical theory either but requires learning it and anyone can do it. The work from Antonio Graham to young 18, 1920yearold people with holes in their shoes and then coming back to do workshop which you havent noted marxism and theory and grounds were that he used, social formation and and he wrote it but 10 years in prison, in other words, one of the problems is that people hear this, black people arent human and instead of saying thats an interesting claim, let me figure that out. They say i am too human because if they went into it, what they would see the applicants in this guestture is a critic combination of human capacity, the capacity to be human because that capacity is parisidic and also on working class. Its an argument that shows what are the capacities, what are the constituent elements and doesnt take it to be organic and then where does that power come from, people respond emotionialy, number 1, number 2, a lot of people with careers on the exact opposite that we are part of the human family. Youre getting 3 books like that, youre not going [laughter] so the anxiety of antagonist. The anxiety of antagonism was Something Interesting to me. I have had to deal with the anxiety of antagonism in teaching young people in the United States where i didnt have to deal in germany and south africa. Thats the anxiety of being presented with a problem for which theres no imaginable solution even though there is a solution, it cannot be theorized at this moment, and is the anxiety of antagonism produces response of unread, emotional and rather than analytic. One of the things that he did, he said, we cant be speaking people in Public Schools problems that dont have solutions because if they do that the working class would develop solution in the streets, like they do it in france. When we present a problem in the classroom, we present it with a solution and this has been the vein, british and american, psychic reality, the need to have policy, answer questions for every problem there is and huge amount of thinker and you certainly wont become a great revolutionary. It reminds me of the part in the book where after seeing or being in proximity to the massacre in south africa you come up with an exercise for the class and everybody. Exercise about violence and everybody dont want anything to deal with, dont want to think about it and how theyre privileged in benefiting from the perpetration of the violence. Thank you for saying that. Thats precisely and, you know, this book, 110,000 113,000 words. I turned it in to 150,000 like your contract says. Then i try to turn it in 130,000 and in your contract says, he gave me an extra 3,000 words. The vignette that youre talking about is creative writing in south africa. Writers are all white except for one guy and he was so happy to have this exercise and i had to i wrote the whole thing out in my book. When he saw the rage in these white students response to me, he just tucked his shoulders in and he was South African and he knew what what could happen with that rage, you know, im a black american. I dont give a damn. [laughter] i think somebody actually posted a link in the questions. Okay. How to take the language of afropessimism, how do i translate layperson dwellers as to what we were talking about . Well, we dont. Yeah, i think that would be a dangerous move. One of the things that i say a dangerous move because for whiter audience, let me do it anecdotally. If i give lectures and readings in mainstream auditoriums, viena, i always ask organizers to find me a group of black people who are involved in the movement for black lives so that your city has a black lives matter shelter or whatever. So i end up doing a 3hour workshop on afropessimism because before the book came out, in the past ten years, a lot of people dont know that theres a subterranean river, people around the world, black people that are reading appear fropessimism and debating it on tumbler or social media, whatever, so what im going to say like a center in montreal, black community center, group of black lives matter people in viena. Im entering the space where they are informed in political adventures. They are not making the call for tend of the world that comes with afropessimism. This is one thing like we have to stop police from killing us. Block people especially now we are seeing the structural violence, antiblackens violence and nobody is shooting them. Theres a structural dynamic to this. I dont go in and say, yall got these reforms, goals, theyve invited me to do saying on afropessimism, graduate, invite ed me to talk more and even though political project is not act the structure of black suffering, immediate thing, can we get race accountability request afropessimism calls for the end to have police, two different things. Why do they keep inviting afropessimists to do the workshops, its because afropessimism is not a discovery. A big listening to black people, kinds of situations that black people make and would make if they didnt have to make sense of the world and so the space of reform organizing has been a space that has opened up for a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of black suffering and twoway street, i wouldnt be here if it wasnt for the movement of black lives and i always go in with the saying, what we do today is two trains running. Some of you might be revolutionary, you cant go to your black community and say, all right, now lets deal in the system with the end of the world. You cant mobilize people light like that overnight and so these two things Work Together here is the practice the way that che guevara, so here its the text. We are not there yet. How was your own experience of the South African struggle, would you explain the fact that south africa has not been able to avoid the national pitfalls that are known so clearly explained half a century before the resolution of the struggle . Andy, could you do something for me . Yes. So right. Help me out here. What is the point how would your own experience in south africa would you say that they have fallen into the trap, essentially, that known way up was that they could possibly get through. Yeah. [inaudible] say again . In an ideal resolution of the struggle. I would say to this person to really read two things, my first book negro, half of the work really deals with that question, so im just being honest with you. This book is done and dusted. Im heavily involved in marketed and people like you and when i have intellectual time im writing a new novel for my next book, so i dont remember everything, but what i will say is this, there was a moment in 1992 when we had an opportunity, we had an opportunity, there were committees that i was on and we were studying, studying, head of chief of staff, wanted, mind handler and people to write a book for south africa so that we could so that we could avoid what is out in the chapter called the pickalls of consciousness and he says what youre going to get is a middle class, wants to have good jobs and have a connection to europe and youre going to find yourself more impoverish than you were in colonialism and black face and the world would talk to you about problems. Thats what happened to south africa. Theres a moment in which there are a group of us over here in the amc writing document about how we are going to delink economy in africa, delink political economy from global capitalism by producing a barter system because south africa, south africas zimbabwe, the frontline states that have suffered 1. 5 Million Deaths because it housed us during apartheid. We will create a system that the resources that we have would be bartered from the resources that we have. We would renege on the Imf World Bank loan and completely cut ourselves off. In this period, you the moderates, right, who werent down with that and their argument was that if we do this, we are going to be they are going to vamp on us the way they vamped on cuba and people were like, yeah, bring it on. It would be very interesting for the American Military to send a a battalion of soldiers and sailors, many of whom were black to come fight against black federation movement. That happened in vietnam where more officers died with their bullet in their back. We were in that period to make a long story short the moderates who had been in the west were in deep conflicts with the radicals in cuba and in the soviet block and in north korea and palestine and radical who is stayed in the country. We are having deep ideological conflict and what do we want to do and in this period the soviet union crumbles and what that meant was that the moderate reaction of the anc had more power and global connection than the radical faction because 400 million from the noncommunist west had plowed into the anc and training and Logistical Support and flowed and so we were even at loggerheads. People on the grounds were down for a total revolution where we take back land, take back the banking and take back the mining and we give the middle finger to the west so when the soviet union fell, that end the support of radicals and so one of the key moves and i will end it right here, in the negotiation that began in late 91 Nelson Mandela took communists off the negotiating committee, negotiating with the apartheid state for the economy and he put becky, economic trained that became the second president. He put him on the committee and put the radicals on social cultural committees and so what the moderates did, we had a mandate to nationalize essential banks, still imf and the world bank that the loan that is loans that were owned to the western world were from the apartheid state and take back all of the corporate funds and redistribute the land. Once the soviet union fell and then the west in conjunction with some people in our own party were able to assassinate hani and negotiating committees on the economy, we are right back in chapter in the pitfalls of national consciousness. The middle class, the people who are emotionally invested in a westernstyle noncommunist democracy thrown this down the river. They did it legitimately. 100,000 of us from the 250,000anc and turned it into what we should have now. [laughter] theres one question here and i probably have ten more and looks like theres 16 more on the screen in front of me. We dont have time unfortunately. Im going with one that i think might offer us a good ending and that is i lost it. What are the emerging debates questions in afropessimism that excite you . Well, im im really im really tickled and energized by the way in which afropessimism has scandalized the very foundation of the humanityies. In other words, i im trying to do this without doing the without getting into speak and everyone understands that after may 19, 68 something major happened that post structurism came into its own, real embark and Antonio Graham resuscitated and one of the major touchstones, foundation of humanity, they dont question today s that everyone is petitioned in subjectivity in the same way. What do i mean by that . What i mean by that you go months and then you are brought into a linguistic system and when youre brought into a linguistic system, 18 months brought in linguistic system, you become positioned and so that but that positioning is happening prior to acquisition of speech, acquisition thats happening prior to your birth. Ultrasound is done and ultrasound shows penis and theres nothing there in reality and its flesh in a gender way. In other words, the room is painted blue after asking ultrasound, andy and frank ares toed about as opposed to josephine and bernadet. In other words, language, the semiotic and enters into that and one thing whether youre mar x, series wrote upon that, everyone is in agreement and so one of the things that afropessimism has done is theres being that is not positioned by discourse. Thats a really scandalist and interesting thing and i would need ten weeks to explain how that goes and we would have to read psychoanalysis, but thats the end of the argument. Theres a being thats not positioned by discourse in the essential but positioned by violence and that makes that being irreconcilable with all the other beings, rich or poor, brown, yellow, red, white, incompatible and so what it does is it comes it comes back to scandalize the very foundation of Human Research from literature to psycho analysis to philosophy by saying theres no such thing as the universal subject because the subject is a parasite of the black, the slaves, and so we have done very rigorous work to show how that works, whether youre reading the cultural history or psycho analytic and interventions, critic of multiculturalism and know the psycho analysis of jared sexton. What we are finding that it hurts people, it hurts me, im living with it and their response is highly motive and political. Outlies this, you know, you know, not just not just not just in this country, afropessimism reading of life in brazil. Absolutely fascinating, you know. Black person in brazil is different than a black person in the United States. How this has been able to do is how the structural dynamic is the same. And that im really im excited about the way in which this is going to is upending the presumptive logic of the humanities. Upending the asummittive logic of black studies and spreading into presumptive logic of social sciences as well. Sounds like you ought to be putting yourself out of a job. [laughter] id be out of a job if if i would be out of a job if we had a president more like sharp because my investigations and critiques of the economy through my Second Chapter of my second book is narcissistic slave, psycho analysis and i look and here is what makes sense of description of the unconscious, but here cure is inadequate, you know, and so im arguing that theres this kind of phobia of antiblackness that cannot be disand you dispense and you can only do that in a society that hides hatred. It would have been out of a job somebody 1830 when Andrew Jackson was in president and now that we have Andrew Jackson as president again, a true american president that speaks the true unconscious of america. If he had been president for 100 years theres no reason to do rhetorical analysis. It would be out in the open speaking the American Dream the way speaking in 19th century. Well, frank, the book is wonderful, i highly recommend it to people and this is where i say thank you and goodnight and encourage people to follow us on podcast and visit us online, to access digital archives and updated event schedule. Thank you, again, frank, everyone keep reading and have a good night. Thank you. Book tv continues now on cspan2. Television for serious readers. And now on book tv, we would like to highlight programs from our archives with political pj orourke. In 2007 on our monthly callin program indepth pj orourke discusses politics and why he uses human in political social issues. Is this picture on the left, is that a real picture of you . Oh, yeah. [laughter] not a wig. Not a wig. When was it taken . That was i would guess 71. Im not quite positive. What were your politics in