Book, Afropessimism[LS]

Why does the issue of race permeate much of our moral and political universe? Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery—in all its forms: political, intellectual, and cultural—continue to define the experience of blackness? And why is violence against black people a prevalent trait throughout the world? These are just some of the questions this book raises. Wilderson presents, in this work, the bases of an intellectual movement — Afro-pessimism — that sees blackness through the prism of perpetual slavery. Drawing on classics of literature, cinema, philosophy and critical theory, he shows that the social construction of slavery, seen through the lens of black subjugation, is not a relic of the past, but a mechanism that fuels our civilization. Without the master-black slave dynamic, the author maintains, one of the pillars of world civilization would collapse. More than any other group, black people will always be seen as slaves in relation to humanity. Afropessimismo also talks about the author's childhood in Minneapolis and the racism he suffered — whether in California in the 1960s or during apartheid South Africa, where he joined the ranks of the African National Congress. This book offers no solution to the hatred that is everywhere, but Wilderson believes that recognizing these historical conditions is a gesture of autonomy in the face of an essentially racialized social world.