I speak of her pla­ce­ment, her posi­tion (within a struc­ture), the­re­by rai­sing, by way of a kind of sub­mer­gence, the ques­tion of her agen­cy, her trans­verse, auto-exces­sive inter­ven­tion in the his­to­ry of agen­cy. To attempt to locate her agen­cy is pre­ci­se­ly to mark the fact that it lies, impos­si­bly, in her posi­tion, in an appo­si­tio­nal force deri­ved from being-posed, from being-sent, from being-loca­ted. Her agen­cy is in her loca­tion in the inter­val, in and as the break. This is what it is to take, while appo­sing, the object posi­tion with some­thing like that dual force of hol­ding and out­pou­ring that Heidegger attri­butes to the thing…

Fred Moten
,
« Taste Dissonance Flavor Escape (Preface to a Solo by Miles Davis) »
,
Women & Performance : a jour­nal of femi­nist theo­ry n° 17
,
2007
,
p. 217–246

In The pain­ting of modern life T. J. Clark says Olympia has a choice, wor­king against the defi­ni­tion of the pros­ti­tute offe­red by Henri Turot, for whom pros­ti­tu­tion implies ‘first vena­li­ty and second absence of choice’ (Clark 1984, 79). For Turot, fur­ther, the prostitute’s very exis­tence depends upon the tem­po­ra­ry rela­tions she enter­tains with her cus­to­mers, the sub­jects, rela­tions that are public and without love. An absence of pri­va­cy, then, where pri­va­cy implies a self-pos­ses­sion ali­gned not only with rea­son, will, choice, but also with fee­ling or with the abi­li­ty to feel. An absence of sove­rei­gn­ty where sove­rei­gn­ty implies a kind of auto-posi­tio­ning, a posi­tio­ning of one­self in rela­tion to one­self, an auto­cri­ti­cal auto­po­si­tio­ning that moves against what it is to be posi­tio­ned, to be posed by ano­ther, to be ren­de­red and, as such, to be ren­de­red inhu­man, to be pla­ced in some kind of mutual appo­si­tion with the in/human and the ani­mal (the black female ser­vant ; the las­ci­vious lit­tle cat). The lit­tle girl’s image extends a line tra­ced by Clark from Olympia’s pose, to the pose of Titian’s The Venus of Urbino (see Figures 2 and 3). That line moves within the his­to­ry of the idea­li­za­tion and re-mate­ria­li­za­tion of the nude, the his­to­ry of the pros­ti­tute as artist’s model, the his­to­ry of the wres­ting of mode­ling from pros­ti­tu­tion and the yoking of it to peda­go­gy.

Fred Moten
,
« Taste Dissonance Flavor Escape (Preface to a Solo by Miles Davis) »
,
Women & Performance : a jour­nal of femi­nist theo­ry n° 17
,
2007
,
p. 217–246

Movement like this isn’t paral­lel but off and out ; tan­gent as much as cros­sing ; asymp­to­tic, appo­si­tio­nal encoun­ter. As soon as we call this line we’re on derailment we’ll begin to stu­dy how all this out root goes. Train circle, then bridge, then fall.

Fred Moten
,
« The New International of Rhythmic Feeling(s) »
,
Sonic Interventions n° 18
,
2007
, lien

The work of bla­ck­ness is inse­pa­rable from the vio­lence of bla­ck­ness. Violence is where tech­nique and beau­ty come back, though they had never left. Consider tech­nique as a kind of strain and consi­der the tech­nique that is embed­ded in and cuts tech­niques – the (Fanonian as appo­sed to Artaudian) cruel­ty. The inter­nal dif­fe­rence of bla­ck­ness is a violent and cruel re-rou­ting, by way and out­side of cri­tique, that is pre­di­ca­ted on the notion, which was given to me, at least, by Martin Luther Kilson, Jr., that there’s nothing wrong with us (pre­ci­se­ly inso­far as there is some­thing wrong, some­thing off, some­thing ungo­ver­na­bly, fugi­ti­ve­ly living in us that is constant­ly taken for the patho­gen it ins­tan­tiates). This notion is mani­fest pri­ma­ri­ly in the long, slow motion – the series of tra­gi­cal­ly plea­su­rable detours – of the imme­diate (of impro­vi­sa­tion, which is some­thing not but almost nothing other than the spon­ta­neous), a re-rou­ting that turns away from a tur­ning on or to itself. The appo­si­tion of Fanonian and Artaudian cruel­ty is an iti­ne­ran­cy that bridges life and bla­ck­ness.

Fred Moten Stefano Harney
,
The Undercommons
,
Minor compositions
,
2013
, lien

In the trick of poli­tics we are insuf­fi­cient, scarce, wai­ting in pockets of resis­tance, in stair­wells, in alleys, in vain. The false image and its cri­tique threa­ten the com­mon with demo­cra­cy, which is only ever to come, so that one day, which is only never to come, we will be more than what we are. But we alrea­dy are. We’re alrea­dy here, moving. We’ve been around. We’re more than poli­tics, more than set­tled, more than demo­cra­tic. We sur­round democracy’s false image in order to unset­tle it. Every time it tries to enclose us in a deci­sion, we’re unde­ci­ded. Every time it tries to represent our will, we’re unwilling. Every time it tries to take root, we’re gone (because we’re alrea­dy here, moving). We ask and we tell and we cast the spell that we are under, which tells us what to do and how we shall be moved, here, where we dance the war of appo­si­tion. We’re in a trance that’s under and around us. We move through it and it moves with us, out beyond the set­tle­ments, out beyond the rede­ve­lop­ment, where black night is fal­ling, where we hate to be alone, back inside to sleep till mor­ning, drink till mor­ning, plan till mor­ning, as the com­mon embrace, right inside, and around, in the sur­round.

Fred Moten Stefano Harney
,
The Undercommons
,
Minor compositions
,
2013
, lien

So you pause at the reci­ta­tion of lost names and the mum­bled jar­gon where the rest of Uncle Toliver’s utte­rance remains unheard. In the space that jar­gon opens (a space off to the side or out-from-the-out­side ; an appo­si­tio­nal spa­cing or dis­pla­ce­ment of the encoun­ter in the inter­est of a sub­jec­ti­vi­ty whose pre­sence remains to be acti­va­ted ; a space not deter­mi­ned by the zero encoun­ter that rup­tures the sub­ject or the nos­tal­gic return to an other sub­ject before the encoun­ter ; a space where Uncle Toliver speaks through Tom and Henry—the sons of the master—and through the Workers of the Writers’ Project of the Works Project Administration of the State of Virginia, and through Leon Litwak to us : pier­cing and pos­ses­sing, disa­bling and enabling media­tion and medi­ta­tion) the rest is what is left for us to say, the rest is what is left for us to do, in the broad and various echoes of that utte­rance, our attu­ne­ment to which assures us that we are “in the tra­di­tion.

Fred Moten
,
« The Case of Blackness »
,
Criticism n° 50
,
Project Muse
,
2009
,
p. 177–218

The black radi­cal tra­di­tion is in appo­si­tion to enligh­ten­ment. Appositional enligh­ten­ment is remixed, expan­ded, dis­til­led, and radi­cal­ly fai­th­ful to the forces its encoun­ters car­ry, break, and consti­tute. It’s (the effect of) cri­tique or ratio­na­li­za­tion unop­po­sed to the deep reve­la­tion ins­tan­tia­ted by a rup­tu­ring event of dis/appropriation, or the rap­tu­rous advent of an impli­cit but unpre­ce­den­ted free­dom.

Fred Moten
,
« Knowledge of free­dom »
,
CR : The New Centennial Review n° 4
,
2004
,
p. 269–310

While non­coo­pe­ra­tion is figu­red by Fanon as a kind of sta­ging area for or a pre­li­mi­na­ry ver­sion of a more authen­tic “objec­ti­fying encoun­ter” with colo­nial oppres­sion (a kind of coun­ter-repre­sen­ta­tio­nal res­ponse to power’s inter­pel­la­tive call), his own for­mu­la­tions regar­ding that res­ponse point to the requi­re­ment of a kind of thin­gly qui­cke­ning that makes oppo­si­tion pos­sible while appo­si­tio­nal­ly dis­pla­cing it. Noncooperation is a duty that must be car­ried out by the ones who exist in the near­ness and dis­tance bet­ween poli­ti­cal conscious­ness and abso­lute patho­lo­gy. But this duty, impo­sed by an erstw­hile sub­ject who clear­ly is sup­po­sed to know, over­looks (or, per­haps more pre­ci­se­ly, looks away from) that vast range of non­reac­tive dis­rup­tions of rule that are, in ear­ly and late Fanon, both indexed and dis­qua­li­fied. Such dis­rup­tions, often mani­fest as minor inter­nal conflicts (within the clo­sed circle, say, of Algerian cri­mi­na­li­ty, in which the colo­ni­zed “tend to use each other as a screen”) or mus­cu­lar contrac­tions, howe­ver much they are cap­tu­red, enve­lo­ped, imi­ta­ted, or tra­ded, remain inas­si­mi­lable (231). These dis­rup­tions trouble the reha­bi­li­ta­tion of the human even as they are evi­dence of the capa­ci­ty to enact such reha­bi­li­ta­tion. Moreover, it is at this point, in pas­sages that culmi­nate with the appo­si­tion of what Fanon refers to as “the rea­li­ty of the ‘towel­head’ ” with “the rea­li­ty of the ‘nig­ger,’ ” that the fact, the case, and the lived expe­rience of blackness—which might be unders­tood here as the trou­bling of and the capa­ci­ty for the reha­bi­li­ta­tion of the human—converge as a duty to appose the oppres­sor, to refrain from a cer­tain per­for­mance of the labor of the nega­tive, to avoid his eco­no­my of objec­ti­fi cation and stan­ding against, to run away from the snares of recog­ni­tion (220). This refu­sal is a black thing, is that which Fanon car­ries with(in) him­self, and in how he car­ries him­self, from Martinique to France to Algeria. He is an anti­co­lo­nial smug­gler whose wares are consti­tu­ted by and as the dis­lo­ca­tion of black social life that he car­ries, almost una­ware.

Fred Moten
,
« The Case of Blackness »
,
Criticism n° 50
,
Project Muse
,
2009
,
p. 177–218

Meanwhile, Reinhardt sees black as a kind of nega­tion even of Mondrianic color, of a cer­tain Mondrianic urban vic­to­ry. Like all the most pro­found nega­tions, his is appo­si­tio­nal. This is to say that in the end the black pain­tings stand along­side Mondrian’s late work and stand as late work in the pri­vate and social senses of late­ness. Insofar as bla­ck­ness is unders­tood as the absence and nega­tion of color, of a kind of social color and social music, Reinhardt will have had no music playing, or played as he pain­ted, or as you behold—neither Ammons’s strong left hand or Taylor’s explo­ded and explo­ding one. But bla­ck­ness is not the absence of color.”

Fred Moten
,
« The Case of Blackness »
,
Criticism n° 50
,
Project Muse
,
2009
,
p. 177–218

It seems to me that this spe­cial ontic-onto­lo­gi­cal fugi­ti­vi­ty of/in the slave is what is revea­led as the neces­sa­ri­ly unac­coun­ted for in Fanon. So that in contra­dis­tinc­tion to Fanon’s pro­test, the pro­blem of the inade­qua­cy of any onto­lo­gy to bla­ck­ness, to that mode of being for which escape or appo­si­tion and not the objec­ti­fying encoun­ter with other­ness is the prime moda­li­ty, must be unders­tood in its rela­tion to the inade­qua­cy of cal­cu­la­tion to being in gene­ral.

Fred Moten
,
« The Case of Blackness »
,
Criticism n° 50
,
Project Muse
,
2009
,
p. 177–218