Of Effacement: Blackness and Non-Being

David Marriott

Published by Stanford University Press 2023

Of Effacement

Blackness and Non-Being

David Marriott

In the series Inventions: Black Philosophy, Politics, Aesthetics

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503637269

Overview
Contents

About this book

In Of Effacement, David Marriott endeavors to demolish established opinion about what blackness is and reorient our understanding of what it is not in art, philosophy, autobiography, literary theory, political theory, and psychoanalysis. With the critical rigor and polemical bravura which he displayed in Whither Fanon? Marriott here considers the relationships between language, judgement and effacement, and shows how effacement has become the dominant force in anti-blackness.

Both skeptically and emphatically, Marriott presents a series of radical philosophical engagements with Fanon's "is not" (n'est pas) and its "black" political truth. How does one speak—let alone represent—that which is without existence? Is blackness n'est pas because it has yet to be thought as blackness? And if so, when Fanon writes of blackness, that it is n'est pas (is not), where should one look to make sense of this n'est pas? Marriott anchors these questions by addressing the most fundamental perennial questions concerning the nature of freedom, resistance, mastery, life, and liberation, via a series of analyses of such key figures as Huey Newton, Nietzsche, Malcolm X, Edward Said, Georges Bataille, Stuart Hall, and Lacan. He thus develops the basis for a reading of blackness by recasting its effacement as an identity, while insisting on it as a fundamental question for philosophy.

Author / Editor information

David Marriott is Charles T. Winship Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. He is the author of Lacan Noir: Lacan and Afro-Pessimism (2021) and Whither Fanon? Studies in the Blackness of Being (Stanford, 2018), among others.

Reviews

"With an unflinching lucidity in reading and critique, Marriott develops a demanding and often startling thinking across the fields of ontology, politics, and aesthetics. Of Effacement deserves the closest attention of all those working in philosophy and theory today."—Geoffrey Bennington, Emory University

"Brilliant, relentless, and unblinking in its acknowledgment that 'there is no ontology of black pain,' David Marriott's Of Effacement is a tour de force of critical analysis. Lingering with Fanon's crystallization of wretchedness into 'a new law of expression' that would precipitate a 'politics beyond that of racial community,' Marriott refuses to avert his gaze from the abyss of Fanon's 'n'est pas.' For in the 'nothing that governs the world gone black,' he locates the possibility of invention without 'arche,telos, or predestined end.' The result is this rigorous, transformative, and supremely necessary book that dares, like Fanon, to 'make the incomprehensible the vocation of [its] politics' and so to open—in ways at once unbearable and exhilarating to contemplate—new pathways for our own."—Lee Edelman, Tufts University

"Dazzlingly original, forcefully subtle in its argumentation, Of Effacement is undeniably path-breaking. Marriott's reading allows us to see Fanon's 'black being' as a 'disquieting in-plenitude' visible only in the way it curves the spaces of the personal, cultural, and political."—Joan Copjec, Brown University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Part I: Ontology and Language
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One. N’est Pas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
Two. Nigra Philologica Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
Three. Nègre, Figura Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	86
Four. Ontology and Lalangue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
Part II: Writing and Politics
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Five. Autobiography as Effacement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Six. Crystallization Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
Seven. On Revolutionary Suicide Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
Eight. The Real and the Apparent Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	298
Part III: Art and Philosophy
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Nine. Corpus Exanime Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	349
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	381

Language: English
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 410
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 4
Keywords: Fanon; Philosophy; Philology; Lacan; Said; Donald Rodney; Malcolm X; Stuart Hall; Huey Newton; Non-Being

eBook

Published: November 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781503637269