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ralowe's review against another edition
4.0
shoulda read the intro. i hate intros, but without this one, it was a truly hellish read. now i can laugh it off. this has to do with the imperceptible hairline fracture betwixt satire and the world. i got to a dark place and was considering reading *the coming insurrection,* just to indulge a brimming expertise in a miserable feeling. but i turned to the intro retroactively and the planet has thumped re-assuredly back upon its axis. my poor reception of orlando patterson has to do that this brief existentialist angst-ridden romp penned when he was 27 echoes with the mind that would compare michael jackson to dionysus as a disparagement. the negative vibes, resonant with uncanny middle-class unsavoriness between certain afropessimistic readings of fanon and tiqqunian anti-identitarian condescension, in spite of itself always intimate an awkward bratty demand for specialness. this tone sabotages what i think is actually useful in considering escape-hatch alternatives to the enlightenment human. it always comes off as desperate, like edelman trying to get berlant to admit she's a pessimist. no, you can't control the world and forsake it, too. what's valuable in this immiserating text is the tone, the vibe. i think an afropessimist isn't actually looking for an end but an escape. and that escape, or fantasy, is the source of the black radical imaginary; black death is black life. that problem is then well described, but can be overwhelming if you don't know it's satire, because so many adopt that tone unsatirically. this was perhaps written when suicide was thought to be antipode to blackness. we don't live that way these days.
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