The paraon­to­lo­gi­cal dis­tinc­tion bet­ween bla­ck­ness and blacks allows us no lon­ger to be enthral­led by the notion that bla­ck­ness is a pro­per­ty that belongs to blacks (the­re­by pla­cing cer­tain for­mu­la­tions regar­ding non/relationality and non/communicability on a dif­ferent foo­ting and under a cer­tain pres­sure) but also because ulti­ma­te­ly it allows us to detach bla­ck­ness from the ques­tion of (the mea­ning of) being. The infi­ni­te­si­mal dif­fe­rence bet­ween pes­si­mism and opti­mism lies not in the belief or dis­be­lief in des­crip­tions of power rela­tions or eman­ci­pa­to­ry pro­jects ; the dif­fe­rence is given in the space bet­ween an asser­tion of the rela­tive nothin­gness of bla­ck­ness and…

What would it be for this dra­ma to be unders­tood in its own terms, from its own stand­point, on its own ground ? This is not sim­ply a ques­tion of pers­pec­tive awai­ting its unas­king, since what we speak of is this radi­cal being beside itself of bla­ck­ness, its appo­si­tio­na­li­ty. The stand­point, the home ter­ri­to­ry, chez lui—Charles Lam Markmann’s insight­ful mis­trans­la­tion of Fanon illu­mi­nates some­thing that Richard Philcox obs­cures by way of cor­rec­tion, Among one’s own, signi­fies a rela­tio­na­li­ty that dis­places the alrea­dy dis­pla­ced impos­si­bi­li­ty of home and the modes of rela­tio­na­li­ty that home is sup­po­sed to afford (Fanon 1967). Can this…

I am total­ly with him in loca­ting my opti­mism in appo­si­tio­nal proxi­mi­ty to his pes­si­mism even if I would tend not to talk about the inside/outside rela­tio­na­li­ty of social death and social life while spea­king in terms of appo­si­tion and per­mea­tion rather than in terms of oppo­si­tion and surrounding.…

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.…

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…

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,…

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.…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Refugees stu­dy change not only because they’ve been put through changes but also because changes are what they want and what they play and what they are. Refugees stu­dy a mode of study—the contra­pun­tal inter­sec­tion of a set of inter­sti­tial fields, dis­lo­ca­tion in a hole or a hold or a whole or a crawls­pace. Such stu­dy is inha­bi­ta­tion that moves : by way of—but also in appo­si­tion to—injury, which is irre­du­cible in the refu­gee though she is irre­du­cible to it. There is, in turn, pas­sage in ack­now­led­ging the theo­re­ti­cal prac­tice of the one who emerges as if from now­here, roo­ted in…

Such opti­mism, black opti­mism, is bound up with what it is to claim bla­ck­ness and the appo­si­tio­nal, runa­way, pho­nop­tic black ope­ra­tions-expres­sive of an auto­poe­tic orga­ni­za­tion in which flight and inha­bi­ta­tion modi­fy each other-that have been thrust upon it. The bur­den of this para­doxi­cal­ly alea­to­ry goal is our his­to­ri­ci­ty, ani­ma­ting the rea­li­ty of escape in and the pos­si­bi­li­ty of escape from.…

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…

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,…

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.…

Against the grain of the state’s mono­po­li­za­tion of cere­mo­ny, cere­mo­nies are small and pro­fli­gate ; if they weren’t eve­ryw­here and all the time we’d be dead. The ruins, which are small rituals, aren’t absent but sur­rep­ti­tious, a range of song­ful scar­ring, when people give a sign, shake a hand. But what if toge­ther we can fall, because we’re fal­len, because we need to fall again, to conti­nue in our com­mon fal­len­ness, remem­be­ring that fal­ling is in appo­si­tion to rising, their com­bi­na­tion given in lin­ge­ring, as the giving of pause, recess, ves­ti­bu­lar remain, cus­to­dial remand, hold, hol­ding in the inter­est of rub,…

Rester dans la cale c’est per­sé­vé­rer dans ce jeu de pra­tiques com­munes où la théo­ri­sa­tion anti­ci­né­tique est à la fois mise entre paren­thèses et mobi­li­sée dans une contem­pla­tion per­for­ma­tive, (…) où l’absence her­mé­tique de chez(-)soi se donne pour théâtre de dupes, mai­son de fous, asile. Le club, notre truc infra­cé­no­bi­tique, notre cha­pelle de quar­tier, est une ligne dure de contacts constam­ment impro­vi­sés, une inti­mi­té de la dépos­ses­sion et de la fric­tion, dont la répé­ti­tion mys­tique s’oppose à la règle ou, plus pré­ci­sé­ment, s’y appose, et par­ti­cipe d’une logique sociale concrète sou­vent (dé)considérée comme un simple tis­su d’insanités (ce qui est,…