Interview: Frank B. Wilderson III on Afropessimism – Epistemic Unruliness 28

Always Already Podcast, a critical theory podcast

In this very special episode, Sid and James sit down with Dr. Frank B. Wilderson, III for a lively and wide-ranging conversation about his new highly-anticipated book Afropessimism. Culminating much of Wilderson’s critical theoretical ouevre of the last twenty years, the trio discuss this coming-of-age narrative that chronicles Wilderson’s youthful journey via radical political movements in the US and South Africa and intimate relationships through which Wilderson came to realize his iconoclastic premises of Afropessimism: “Blackness is coterminous with Slaveness…[and] social death” (102). How does Afropressimism view the relation between the libidinal and political economies in generating and sustaining anti-Blackness? Are liberationist-abolitionist projects the ruse of the Human? Should one read Afropessimism as a slave narrative, in anticipation of aporia and oxymoron? And in an Always Already exclusive scoop for our listeners, Wilderson details the wild scene from one memorable night during his stint as a bouncer at Prince’s Minneapolis nightclub.

Requests for texts for us to discuss? Dreams for us to interpret? Advice questions for us to answer? Email us at alwaysalreadypodcast AT gmail DOT com. Subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. RSS feed here. Thanks to Bad Infinity for the intro music, “Desiring Machines,” from their album FutureCommons; always already thanks to B for the outro music. For the mp3 of the episode click here.

https://alwaysalreadypodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/wilderson-interview-.mp3

Links:

• Frank B. Wilderson III’s webpage
• Paul Taylor’s review of Afropessimism
• Wilderson III’s interview about Afropessimism in The New York Times
• Covid-19 and Afropessimism
• Wilderson III reads and takes questions on Afropessimism
• Links to earlier episodes that relate to this discussion: Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism; Frank B. Wilderson III’s Red, White, and Black; and Calvin Warren and Frank B. Wilderson III on Antiblackness, Nihilism, and Politics

via frankbwildersoniii.com/