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theresa95's review
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
lucasmiller's review
3.0
Don't really know what star rating to give to this. A profound and difficult book to read. I went back and forth several times over the past week trying to determine what was my emotional response to the book versus I thought of the books argument and evidence. I read the 2/3 of the book in just two sittings and then had to measure out the final 75 pages a couple at a time.
The combination of memoir and critical theory is unique. It is truly like nothing I've ever read, but it often strikes an odd tone. Wilderson is an astounding memoirist, but the idea that his highly personal, often wild experiences translate into universal truths can be jarring. He seems to have a built in mechanism throughout the book where people who disagree with his ideas prove that he is right. The section about the academic conference in Berlin seemed ungenerous in a way that didn't advance his thesis.
I first became aware of Afropessimism through reading Ta-Nehisi Coates, especially We Were Eight Years in Power. I think there are stylistic parallels between Wilderson and Coate's style of memoir and personal reflection, though Wilderson is much more stringent and academic.
There is a blurb on the back of the book from Claudia Rankine "There are crucial books that you don't agree with, but one still comes to understand the importance of the thought experiment." One of the central arguments of the book is that Human liberation projects (the author focuses on Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial struggles) are by there very nature premised on anti-black violence, and that there is no solution to this problem. This is difficult, because I feel invested in these liberation movements, even in an aspirational way. I want to live up to the commitment and moral confidence of these liberation movements. It's all tough stuff.
This book is essential. It's a masterpiece in it's own way. Conversations about Black liberation or racial violence, or America that don't include Afropessimism are are incomplete, but there is room for critique, and strident critique at that, but my mind has been so thoroughly melted. I will have to leave it to another time.
The combination of memoir and critical theory is unique. It is truly like nothing I've ever read, but it often strikes an odd tone. Wilderson is an astounding memoirist, but the idea that his highly personal, often wild experiences translate into universal truths can be jarring. He seems to have a built in mechanism throughout the book where people who disagree with his ideas prove that he is right. The section about the academic conference in Berlin seemed ungenerous in a way that didn't advance his thesis.
I first became aware of Afropessimism through reading Ta-Nehisi Coates, especially We Were Eight Years in Power. I think there are stylistic parallels between Wilderson and Coate's style of memoir and personal reflection, though Wilderson is much more stringent and academic.
There is a blurb on the back of the book from Claudia Rankine "There are crucial books that you don't agree with, but one still comes to understand the importance of the thought experiment." One of the central arguments of the book is that Human liberation projects (the author focuses on Marxist, feminist, and postcolonial struggles) are by there very nature premised on anti-black violence, and that there is no solution to this problem. This is difficult, because I feel invested in these liberation movements, even in an aspirational way. I want to live up to the commitment and moral confidence of these liberation movements. It's all tough stuff.
This book is essential. It's a masterpiece in it's own way. Conversations about Black liberation or racial violence, or America that don't include Afropessimism are are incomplete, but there is room for critique, and strident critique at that, but my mind has been so thoroughly melted. I will have to leave it to another time.
musaup's review
5.0
"Afropessimism offers an analytic lens that labors as a corrective to Humanist assumptive logics. It provides a theoretical apparatus that allows Black people to not have to be burdened by the ruse of analogy -- because analogy mystifies rather than clarifies, Black suffering."
"Afropessimism gives us the freedom to say out loud what we would otherwise whisper or deny: that no blacks are in the world, but, by the same token there is no world without Blacks."
"Afropessimism offers a structural problem but offers no structural solution to that problem."
Most people are "Afraid of a problem in which everyone is complicit and for which no sentence can be written that would explain how to remedy it. Most people, even profound intellectuals, are emotionally unable to wallow in a problem that has no solution. Black suffering is that problem. And suffering without a solution is a hard thing to hold, especially if that suffering fuels the pyschic health of the rest of the world."
"Afropessimism gives us the freedom to say out loud what we would otherwise whisper or deny: that no blacks are in the world, but, by the same token there is no world without Blacks."
"Afropessimism offers a structural problem but offers no structural solution to that problem."
Most people are "Afraid of a problem in which everyone is complicit and for which no sentence can be written that would explain how to remedy it. Most people, even profound intellectuals, are emotionally unable to wallow in a problem that has no solution. Black suffering is that problem. And suffering without a solution is a hard thing to hold, especially if that suffering fuels the pyschic health of the rest of the world."
liminaljest's review
3.0
half memoir, half "metatheory," overall an engaging format! found it interesting that wilderson flattens gender and class experiences--though that Is part of his thesis--as a second-gen Ph.D, especially when those other identity markers really define who are most often victims of america's police state. afropessimism (this book, at least) starts and ends in the ivory tower.
dscarlton's review
5.0
Words can and also cannot describe how timely this read was. Beautifully written
apollonium's review
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Racism, and Rape