Perhaps this would be cause for black opti­mism or, at least, some black ope­ra­tions. Perhaps the thing, the black, is tan­ta­mount to ano­ther, fugi­tive, subli­mi­ty alto­ge­ther. Some/thing escapes in or through the object’s ves­ti­bule ; the object vibrates against its frame like a reso­na­tor, and trou­bled air gets out. The air of the thing that escapes enfra­ming is what I’m inter­es­ted in—an often unat­ten­ded move­ment that accom­pa­nies lar­ge­ly unthought posi­tions and appo­si­tions. To ope­rate out of this inter­est might mis­present itself as a kind of refu­sal of Fanon. But my rea­ding is enabled by the way Fanon’s texts conti­nual­ly demand that we read them—again or, dee­per still, not or against again, but for the first time. I wish to engage a kind of pre-op(tical) opti­mism in Fanon that is tied to the com­merce bet­ween the lived expe­rience of the black and the fact of bla­ck­ness and bet­ween the thing and the object—an opti­mism reco­ve­rable, one might say, only by way of mis­trans­la­tion, that brid­ged but unbrid­geable gap that Heidegger explores as both dis­tance and near­ness in his dis­course on “The Thing.”