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This book uncovers a logical fallacy underlying Afro-Pessimism and provides a formal theory of Articulation, teasing out new reflections on race and Blackness.
Afro-Pessimism maintains that Blacks, subject to a subordinate position in society, suffer a cultural death. In this monograph, Victor Peterson rejects this theory, demonstrating that Black subjectivity is inherently multiple, articulating identities appropriate to the contexts in which it finds itself and yet remaining continuous across its individual but not mutually exclusive instantiations. Peterson argues that we should consider the mechanisms that produce the conditions under which individuals obtain positions of either dominance or subordination. By providing a working logical foundation for Articulation theory within cultural studies, Peterson encourages us to rethink the politics of racial identity and subjectivity in contemporary social life.
Encouraging critical thought about the arbitrarily determined but instrumentally objective of our global racial order, this book will be of great interest to scholars of Black Studies, sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy.
List of contents
0.SUBJECTIVITY: SUBJECT/SUBJECTED. 1.THE LOGIC OF ARTICULATION: THE SYSTEM (N, 0). 2.LOGIC OF REPRESENTATION. 3.FORMAL THEORY OF ARTICULATION. 4.SUBJECTIVITY AND IDENTITY. 5.BLACK-NESS AND BLACK IDENTITY. 6.PESSIMISM AND OVERDETERMINATION. EPILOGUE. REFERENCES. INDEX.
About the author
Victor Peterson II,
hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, received his PhD from Kings College, London. He currently teaches in New York City.
Summary
This book uncovers a logical fallacy underlying Afro-Pessimism, and instead provides a formal theory of Articulation, teasing out new reflections on race and Blackness.
