Black Nihilism and the Politics
of Hope

Calvin L. Warren

George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Dedicated to the brave woman at the D.C. Metro station

1

Perverse juxtapositions structure our relation to the Political This becomes
even more apparent and problematic when we consider the position ofblacks
within this structuring On the one hand, our Declaration of Independence
procaims, “All men are created equal,”and yet black captives were fractioned
in this political arithmetic as three-ffths of this “man” The remainder, the
two-fifths, gets lost within the arithmetie shufle of commerce and mercenary
prerogatives. We, of course, hoped that the Reconstruction Amendments
would correct this arithmetical error and finally provide an ontological equa:

tion, or an existential variable, that would restore fractured and fractioned

025
216 e Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

black being, This did not happen. Black humanity became somewhat of an
“imaginary number” in this cquation, purely speculative and nice in theory
but difficult to actualize or translate into something tangible. Poll taxes,
‘grandfather clauses, literacy tests, and extra-legal and legal violence made a
mockery of the 14th Amendment, and the convict leasing system turned the
15th Amendment inside out for blacks. Yet, we approach this political perver.
sty with a certain apodictic certainty and incontrovertible hope that things
il (and do) get better. The Political, we are told, provides the material or
substance of our hope;ts within the Politcal that we are to find, i we search
with vigilance and work trclessly, the “answer” to the ontological equation—
hard work. suffering, and diligence wil restore the fractioned three-fifths with
its alienated two-fifths and. finally, create One that we can include in our
declaration that"All men are created equal” We are still awaiting this “event.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. placed great emphasis on the restoration of
black being through suffering and diligence in his sermon “The American
Dream” (1965)

And wouldlike to say to you this morning what I'e tried to sy all over this
nation, what I believe frmly: that in secking to make the dream reality we.
must use and adopt a proper method. T'm more convinced than ever before
that iolence s impractical and immoral . we necd not hate;we need not use.
violence. We can stand up against our most violent opponent and say: we will
matchyour capacity to nfit sullering by our capacity to endure suffering. We.
will meet you physicalforce with soul force. Do o us what you willand we will
stilllove you .. we willgooin those jils and transform thern from dungeons
of shame to havens of freedorm and human dignity. Send your hooded perpe:
rators of violence into our communities after night and drag us ot on some.
wayside road and beat us and leave us halfdead, and as diffcult as s, we will
stll ove you.... [Tlhreaten our children and bomb our churches, and as
diffcult as itis, we wil silllove you

But be assured that we willrde you down by our capacity to suffer. One
day wewillwin our freedom, but we will ot orily win it forourselves, we willso
‘appeal to your hearts and conscience that we will win you i the process. And

our victory will be double
Calvin L Warren ®217

‘The American dream, then, is realized through black suffering.It s the humil
fated, incarcerated, mutilated, and terrorized black body that serves as the
vestibule for the Democracy that s to come. In fact, it almost becomes impos
sible to think the Political without black suffering. According to this logic,
corporeal fracture engenders ontological coherence, in a political arithmetic
saturated with violence. Thus, nonviolence is a misnomer, or somewhat of a
ruse. Black-sacrifice is necessary to achieve the American dream and its
‘promise of coherence, progress, and equality.

We find similar logic in the contemporary moment. Renisha McBride,
Jordon Davis, Kody Ingham, Amadou Diallo, Alyana Stanley-Jones, Frederick
Jermain Carter, Chavis Carter, Timothy Stansbury, Hadiya Pendleton, Oscar
Grant, Sean Bell, Kendrec McDade, Trayvon Martin, and Mike Brown, among
others, constitute a fatal rupture of the Political; these signifiers, stained in

blood, refuse the closure that the Political promi

. They haunt political
discourses of progress, betterment, equality, citizenship, and justice—the
metaphysical organization of social existence. We are witnessinga shocking
‘accumulation of injured and mutilated black bodies, particularly young black
bodies, which place what seems to be an unanswerable question mark in the
political ield:if we are truly progressing toward this “society-that-is-to-come
(maybe).” why is black suffering increasing at such alarming rates? In re-
sponse to this inquiry, we are told to keep struggling, keep “hope” alive, and
keep the faith. After George Zimmerman was acquitted for murdering Tray.
von Martin, President Obama addressed the nation and importuned us to
keep fighting for change because “cach successive generation seems to be
making progress in changing attitudes toward race” and, if we work hard
enough, we will move closer to “becoming a more perfect union.” Despite
Marti

corpse lingering in the minds of young people and Zimmerman's
smile of relief after the verdict, we are told that things are actually getting
better. Supposedly, the generation that murdered Trayvon Martin and Ren
isha McBride is much better than the generation that murdered Emmett Til
Black suffering, here, i instrumentalized to accomplish pedagogical, cathar.
tic, and redemptive objectives and, somehow, the growing number of dead
black bodies in the twenty-first century is an indication of our progress to
ward *perfection.”Is perfection predicated on black death? How many more
218 o Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

black bodies must be Iynched, mutilated, burned, castrated, raped, dismem
bered, shot, and disabled before we achieve this “more perfect union”? In
many ways, black suffering and death become the premiere vehicles of polit
ical perfection and social maturation.

‘This essay argues that the logic of the Political —linar temporality, bio.
political futurity, perfection, betterment, and redress—sustains black suffer-
ing. Progress and perfection are worked through the pained black body and
any recourse to the Political and its di

‘ourse of hope will ultimately repro-
duce the very metaphysical structures of violence that pulverize black being.
‘This piece attempts to rescue black nihilism from discursive and intellectual
obliteration; rather than thinking about black nihilism as a set of pathologies
in need of treatment, this essay considers black nibilism a necessary philo.

sophical posture capable of unraveling the Political and its devastating logic
ofpal
is possible to purge the Political of anti-black violence and advances political

ical hope. Black nihilism resists emancipatory rhetoric that assumes it

apostasy as the only "ethical” response to black suffering,

1L Tug Povitics ox Hovk

To speak of the “Pol

cs of Hope” s to denaturalize or demystify a certain
usageof hope. Here Iwant to make a distinction between “hope” (the spiritual
concept) and “the politics of hope” (political hope). The relationship between
the spiritual concept of hope and its use as a political instrument s the focus
of the black nihlist critique.*

Following Kant and other postmetaphysical philosophers, the critical
field questions (and in some circles completely denounces)a certain spiritual
predisposition to the world—that “unknowable” noumenon that limits Rea:
Son but provides the condition of possibility for its organization of the world
of perception. phenomenon. The problem with the critical questioning of the
spiritual i that it often appropriates spritual concepts and then,insidiously.
translates them into the

sentific”or the knowable, as a way to both capital
ize on the mystic power of the spiritual and to preserve the spiritual under the
guise of “enlightened understanding” We find this deceptive translation and
capitalization of spiritual substance within the sphere of the Political —that
Calvin L. Warren 219

organization of social existence through political institutions, mandates, log:
s, and grammars—as a way to govern and di

ipline beings. I we think of
hope as a spiritual concept—a concept that always escapes confinement
within scientific discourse—then we can suggest that hope constitutes
“spiritual currency” that we are given as an inheritance to invest in various
aspects of existence. The issue, however,is that there is often a compulsory
investment of this spiritual substance in the Politcal. This i the forced desti
nation of hope—it must end up in the Political and cannot exist outside of it
(or any existence of hope “outside” the political subverts, compromises, and
destroys hope iself. Like placing a fish out of water. It i as if hope only has
intellgibility and efficacy within and through the Political. Put diffrently,
the politics of hope posits that one must have a politis to have hope: politics
is the natural habitat of hope itsel. To reject hope in a nihilistic way, then, is
really to reject the politcs of hope, o ertain circumseribed and compulsory
forms of expressing, practicing, and conceiving of hope.

In the essay *A Fidelity to Politics: Shame and the African American Vote
in the 2004 Election,” Grant Farred (2006) exposes a kernelof rationality at
the center of African American political participation. Traditionally, political
partcipation is motivated by selfinterested expectancy: this political caleu
lus assumes that politcal participation, particularly voting,is an investment
with an assurance of a return or political dividend. The structure of the
Political —the circular movement between selF interest,action, and reward—
is sustained through what Farred callsthe *clectoral unconscious.” It “histo-
ricizes the subject in relation to the political n that it determines the horizon
of what is possible it maps, through its delimitation or its (relative) lack of
timits, wha the constituency and its members imagine they can,or, would ke
to expect from the political” (217).In this way, the electoral unconscious, as
the realm of poitical fantasy, mirrors the Lacanian notion offantasy: it maps
the coordinates ofthe political subject and teaches it how exactly to desire the
Political. For Farred, there is a peculiar logic (‘another scene”) operating as
the motivation for African American participation in the Political. Unlike the
traditional political calculus, where action and reward determine civic en-
gagement, African American participation does not follow this ational calcu
us—because fit did, there would actually be no rational reason for African
2208 Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

Americans to vote, given the historicity of voting as an ineffective practice in
‘gaining tangible “objects” for achieving redress, equality, and political subjec
tivity. African Americans, accordingto Farred, have an “irrational fidelity” toa
practice that, historically, has yielded no concrete transformations of anti
blackness. This group is governed not by the “electoral unconscious” but by

the “historical conscious.” which i the “intense [and incessant] understand.
ing of how the franchise has heen achieved, of its precarious preciseness as
wellas their (growing) contemporary iminality. their status as marginalized
political subjects” (217). African Americans are a faithful voting block not
because of votings political efficaciousness but as a way to contend with a
painful (and shame-full history of exclusion and disenfranchisement. Polti
cal participation becomes an act of historical commemoration and obliga:
tion; one votes because someone bled and died for the opportunity to partic
ipate, and “duty” and “indebtedness” motivate this partal poitical subject.
‘Within this pcce, we get a sense that black fidelity to the Politcal i tanta.
mount to the Lacanian notion of drive—one perpetuates a system designed to
annibilate—participation, then, follows another logic. The act of voting, accord:
ing to Farred, is legitimate in and of itself: i is a means as an end (or a means
without an end, if we follow Agamben's logi 000 ). The means, the praxis of
voting, is all there is without an end in sight. African American political
participation is an interminable cycl of reproduction, a continuous pracice

of reproducing the means of reproduction itself. This irrational fidelity to a

means without an end gives rise to “the politics of despair”—representation
forits own sake and the apotheosis of ingular figures—and a politics without hope:

African American fideliy, however, takes its distance from Pauline “hope’ —
like faith, hope is predicated upon a complex admixture of expectations and
difference. In this respect, the African American vote s ot asin the colloguial
sense, hopefu: it has not expectations ofashining.city appearing upon an ever
distan, ever retreating, hillin the unnamed.-able future. Fdelity represents

the anti-Pauline poliics in that s truth.

s oy truth, resides in prasis (223)

“This brilliant analysis compels us to rethink political rationality and the value
in “means’—as a structuring agent by itself. What I would like to think
Calvin L Warren e 221

through, however, is the distinction between *hope” and “despair” and“expec-
tations” and “object.” Whereas Farred understands political participation as
‘anact without a political object, or recognizable outcome—without an “end.”
if we think of “end” and “object” as synonyms—I would suggest that the
Politics of Hope reconfigures despair and expectation so that black political
action pursues an impossible object. We can describe this contradictory object
as the lure of metaphysical political activity: every act brings one closer to a
“not-yet-social order.” What one achieves, then, and expects is “closer.” The
political object that black participation encircles endlessly, like the Lacanian

driveandits object, i the idea of inear proximity—we can call this “progress,”
“betterment,” or “more perfect.” This idea of achieving the impossible allows
one to disregard the historicity of anti-blackness and its continued legacy and
conceive of political engagement as bringing one incrementally closer to that
which does not exist—one'simpossible object. In this way, the Politics of hope
recasts despair as possibility, struggle as triumph, and lack as propinguity.
‘This impossible object i not tethered to real history, so it is unassailable and
irrefutable because it is the object of political fantasy.

‘The politics of hope, then, constitutes what Lauren Berlant would call
“eruel optimism” for blacks (Berlant 201). It bundles certain promises about
redress, equality, freedom, justice, and progress into a political object that
always lies beyond reach. The abjective of the Political is to keep blacks in a
relation to this political object—in an unending pursuit of it. This pursuit,
however,is detrimental because it strengthens the very anti-black system that
would pulverize black being, The pursuit of the object certainly has an “irra-
tional” aspect to it, as Farred details, but it is not mere means without expec.
tation;instead, itisa means that undermines the attainment ofthe impossible:
object desired. In other words, the pursuit marks a cruel attachment to the
means of subjugation and the continued widening of the gap betuween histor.
ical reality and fantastical ideal,

Black nihilism is a “demythifying” practice, in the Nietzschean vein, that
uncovers the subjugating strategies of political hope and de-idealizes its fan
tastical object. Once we denude political hope of its axiological and ethical
veneer, we see that it operates through certain strategies: 1) positing itself as
the only alternative to the problem of anti-blackness, 2) shielding this alter.
2226 Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

native from rigorous historical/philosophical critique by placing it in an un.
known future, 3) delimi
nized and legitimated by the Political, and 4) demonizing critiques or

ing the field of action to include only activity recog:

different philosophical perspectives.

‘The polities of hope masks a particular cruelty under the auspices of
“happiness”and life” It terrifies with the dread of “noalternative.”"Life” tself
needs the security of the alternative, and, through this logic, life becomes
untenable without it. Political hope promises to provide this alternative—a
discursiveand political organization beyond extant structures ofviolence and
destruction. The construction of the binary “alternative/no-alternative” en
sures the hegemony and dominance of political hope within the onto
existential horizon. The terror of the “no alternative™—the ultimate space of
decay, suffering, and death—depends on two additional binaries: “problem/
solution” and “action/inaction.” According to this politics, all problems have
solutions, and hope provides the accessibility and realization of these solu
tions. The solution establishes itself as the elimination of the problem’ the
solution, in fact, transcends the problem and realizes Hegel's aufhieben in its
constant attempt to sublate the dirtiness of the “problem” with the pristine
being of the solution. No problem is outside the reach of hope’s solution—
every problem is connected to the kernel of its own eradication. The politicsof
hope must actively refuse the possibility that the “solution” s, in fact, another
problem in disguised form; the idea of a “solution” is nothing more than the
repetition and disavowal of the problem itself.

‘The solution relies on what we might call the “trick of time” to fortfy tself
from the deconstruction of its binary. Because the temporality of hope is a
time “not-yet-realized.” a future tense unmoored from present-tense justif
cations and pragmatist evidence, the politics of hope cleverly shields its *so
lutions™ from critiques of impossibility or repetition. Each insistence that
these solutions stand up against the lessons of history or the rigors of analysis
is met with the rationale that these solutions are not subject to history or
analysis because they do not reside within the horizon of the “past” or “pres
ent” Put differently, we can never ascertain the efficacy of the proposed
solutions because they escape the temporality of the moment, always retreat-
ing to a “not-yet” and “could-be" temporality. This “trick” of time offers a
Calvin L. Warren 223

‘promise of possibility that can only be realized in an indefinite future, and this
promise is a bond of uncertainty that can never be redeemed, only imagined.
In this sense, the politics of hope s an instance of the psychoanalytic notion of
desire: its sole purpose is to reproduce its very condition of possibility, never
tosatiate or bring fulfilment. This politics secures ts hegemony through time
by claiming the future as its unassailable property and excluding (and deval
uing) any other conception of time that challenges this temporal ordering.
‘The polities of hope, then, depends on the incessant (re)production and
proliferation of problems to justify its existence. Solutions cannot really exist
within the polities of hope, just the illusion of a different order in a future
tense.

‘The "triek” of time and political solution converge on the site of “action.”
In critiquing the politics of hope, one encounters the rejoinder of the dangers
ofinaction. "But we can'tjust do nothing! We have to do something.” The field
of permissible action is delimited and an unrelenting binary between action/
inaction silences critical engagement with political hope. These exclusionary
operations rigorously reinforce the binary between action and inaction and
discredit certain forms of engagement, critique, and protest. Legitimate ac-
tion takes place in the political —the political not only claims futurity but also
action asits property. To"do something” means that this doing must translate
into recognizable political activity: “something” i a stand-in for the word
“politics’—one must *do poli

" to address any problem. A refusal to “do
politis” s equivalent to “doing nothing”—this nothingness is constructed as
the antithesis of lfe, possibility, time, ethics, and morality (a “zero-state” as
Julia Kristeva [1082] might call it). Black nihilism rejects this “rick of time™
‘and the lure of emancipatory solutions. To refuse to “do politics” and to reject
the fantastical object of politics s the only “hope” for blackness in an anti
black world

L Brack NiuiLisy

‘Within eritical discourses, black nihilism is saturated with negative seman
tics. Theorists consider it the bane of black existence and appropriate lan
‘guage and metaphors of the pathological to situate black nihilism outside of
Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

Ethics and moral law. Many describe it as a “disease of the soul” that produces
callousness, meaninglessness, and masochism. Thus, the rhetorical maneu

vers performed in this work attempt to foreclose a eritical engagement with
the term itself—to deprive the term of intellectual nourishment and precipi

tateits demise. I want to rescue the term from this discursive annihilation and
offerit up as the most significant philosophical perspective in the twenty-first
century. Thi

ertainly an audacious claim, but any eritical analysis of black
existence in the twenty-first century will have to contend with black nibil
ism—cither reluctantly or otherwise. It is the inescapable interlocutor in
every utterance about blackness; it demands an address. One cannot simply
disregard the black nihil

tic position as insane, naive, or irrational any.
more—although these rhetorical maneuvers were successful in previous gen
erations. The surd of anti-blackness requires a position outside the liberal
‘grammar ofbio-poli

futurity, and “hope” tolimn the depth of lack suffer
ing, Black niilism expresses discursively what black bodies endure existen.
tially in an anti-black world (the “bio-poli

il grotesque™). The project of
rescuing (or resuscitating) this term, which is the objective of this essay.

absolutely essential to understanding the “lived experience of the black." as
Fanon would have it

Frederick Nietzsche is credited with the term “Nihilism” and describes it
as a particular erisis of modernity. The universal narratives and grounds of
legitimation that once secured meaning for the modern world had lost integ-
sity. In the absence of a metaphysical grounding of social existence, we
were left with a void—a void that dispenses with metaphysical substance,
even as this substance unsuccessfully attempts to refill this void. Nil

lism,
then, presents itself as the philosophical reflection of social decays it offers
politico-philosophical death (the death of ground) as the only “hope” for
the world. Thearists often strip black nihilism of this philosophical signif-
icance and thi

inmy view, s a fatal error. When denuded of philosophical
functionality, black nihilism becomes nothing more than a catalog of
“dysfunctional” behaviors. Behavior and philosophy are unmoored in this
understanding of black nihilism, as if one is not the articulation of the
other—they, indeed, “inter-articulate” each other. We might even suggest
that the purported, dysfunctional behavior of the black nihilist is dis
Calvin L. Warren @225

course by other means, when traditional avenues of articulation and re
dress are inadequate and inaccessible.
Cornel West introduces black nihilism as a term to describe a cr

black communities in Race Matters (1994). For him,

itlis i 0 be understood Rere o as a philosophic doctrine that there are no
rational grounds fo legtimate standards or authoriy; it is.far more, the lved.
experienceof coping witha fe ofhorfing meaningless. hopelessness,and (most
important) ovelessness. The frightening resultis numbing detachment from
others and a self-destructive disposition toward the world. Life without mean-
ing, Hope, and love breeds a coldhearted, mean-spirted outlook that destroys.
both the individual and others. (23)

It is an existential angst that resembles *a kind of collective clinical depres
sion” and a disease that resembles alcoholism and drug addiction (20). 1t “can
never be completely cured, and there is always the possibility of elapse” (29).
According to West, lovelessness, hopelessness, and meaninglessness are re-
sults of market forces and market moralities attenuating black institutions,
wweakening the armor that once provided protection against the pulverizing
force of anti-blackness. Black nihilism indexes a devastating exposure to
institutional, spiritual, and psychic violence against blacks.

‘Within this description of nihilism, however, there is certain tension
between grounding and ungrounding Black institutions assert themselves as
hecessary ground but are unable to secure this position, which leaves a void
that capitalistic market forces are filling, This shifting of ground is a symptom
ofthe metaphysical organization of lfe. The problem, then,is groundingitself.
How do black institutions establish themselves as ground and by what pro
cess does this ground shift? It is preciscely the establishment and shifting of

‘ground that is the “meaninglessness” of which black nihilism rejects—it has

no legitimacy other than its “own will to power.” If existential wholeness is
predicated on the security of this ground, then black existence itselfs always
fractured and fragile. The shift of ground from black institutions to market
forces indicates that social existence will also shift and bend with the various
transitions. We have at the heart of Wes

‘s analysis an “ontology of coherence™
226 '@ Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

that undermines itself it assumes a coherent self that never existed but is,
instead. the fantasy construction of political hope and its grounding logic. In
other words, West can only restore hope and meaningif he re-establishes a
‘grounding for black existence, but as this crisis indicates, any such grounding
is subject to shift, transform, or decay.”

Meaningitselfis an aspect of anti-blackness, such that meanings lost for
the black: blacks live in a world of absurdity, and this existential absurdity is
meaning for the world. Meaninglessness s really all there is or we could say
that “real” meaning for the world s utter meaninglessness). In an interview
with Mark Sinker, Greg Tate provided a reconceptualization of meaning when
he stated, “the bar between the signifier and the signified could be understood
as standing for the Middle passage that separated signification from sign”
(Sinker 1991). The very structure of meaning i the modern world—signifier,
signified, signification, and sign—depends on anti-black violence for its con-
stitution. Not only does the trauma of the Middle passage rupture the signify-
ing process, but it also instantiates a “meaningless” sign as the foundation of
language, meaning, and social existence itself. Following the work of Nicolas
Abraham and Maria Torok (1986). we could suggest that the meaninglessness
ofanti-black violence s the “erypt-signifier” that organizes the modern world
and its institutions. Any “meaning’” that is articulated possesses a kernel of
absurdity that blacks embody as “fleshy signs.” The “meaninglessness” that
Cornel West bemoans is nothing more than the kernel of nonsense that an
anti-black world attempts to conceal withits discourses of hope and futurity.
‘What the black nihilist does is bring this meaninglessness to the fore and
disclose it in all of its terroristic historicity

For West, this crisis of meaning and hope can be rectified through the
“politcs of conversion” (we can read in this Kierkegaard's idea of a “conver

sion experience”). This is deliverance from the bondage of market moralism,

which results in the “politicization of love” —conceptualizing love as an orga:
nizing political principle (another spiritual principle appropriated by the
Politcal). West dentifes Toni Morrison's masterpiece Beloved s an example
of this ethic of ove that converts the self-destructive nihilist. Beloved teaches
us how to” generate a sense of agency amonga downtrodden people” (29). But
‘West neglects the trauma that organizes this text and the nihilstic response
Calvin L Warren @227

to this trauma as the only form of “agency” in an absurd anti-black world.
Racial terror compels Sethe to leave the plantation with her children, and the
threat her children could be recaptured and subjected to the horrors of the
plantation motivates her to make a very heavy decision: the choice between
prolonged social death or physical death. These are really the only choices
that she has, and her ethic of love is to choose the latter—it is an act of merey

‘We could say that Sethe becomes a nihilist in that moment of decision, and
infanticide is not an irrational, pathological, or loveless act, but the ultimate
testament of agency and love. This is what Paul D could not understand
because it contravened the narratives of political hope and futurity; her act
was read as cruel by those who attempted to translate the absurd “false
choice” that structured her existence intoa bio-political grammar of meaning.
Itis certainly "
or "hopeless.” for in doing so, we fail to understand the philosophical state-

\appropriate” to disregard this weighty decision as “loveless™

ment her action is articulating This is a philosophical statement that under.
stands the inadequacy of political hope in conditions of anti-black violence.
It is casy to disparage behavior that runs contrary to the dictates of a
bio-political order. Black nihilism invites us to consider this behavior as a
form of philosophical discourse that must be addressed. In separating the
behavior fromits philosophical statement, we not only run the risk of patholo-
gizing forms of blackness but also of foreclosing a particular critique of polit
ical hope that is absolutely necessary to understand black existential angst in
the twenty-first century. In “Cornel West and Afro-Nihilism: A Reconsidera-
tion,” Floyd W. Hayes (2001) offers an alternative reading of black nihilism
that considers it a “reaction to the dominant culture’s nihilism” and a critique
of anti-blackness. In Hayes's masterful critique of West, he interpres this
behavior as a form of ressentiment. Following Nietzsche and Scheler, Hayes
argues that black ressentiment is a critique of metaphysical thinking, anti
black absurdity, and inequitable distribution of resources. It is a “historical
‘and contemporary phenomenon” (251) that emerges during the trans-Atlantic
slave trade and calcifies over time. These sentiments of anger, revenge, and
rage engender rebellion, and what s often misinterpreted as black pathology.
Ressentiment, then, s the meeting ground for an array of responses to anti.
blackness, and it challenges the erroncous separation of behavior and philos
228e Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

‘ophy. Black nibilism, in my analysis, acknowledges the persistence of ressen
timent, but, unlike Hayes, posits no escape from . The inability to ameliorate
ressentiment s the essence of black suffering. Ressentiment constitutes tor.
ment without relief, and the desperation for relief results in forms of self-
injury, in which the body must speak the existential cri

s that gets muted
within humanist grammars.

In Hope on the Brink: Understanding the Emergence of Nihilism in Black
America, theologian Lewis Brogdon (2013) would describe this theory of unre-
solvable torment as the “death of hope.” For Brogdon,this deathis even mare
Severe than West's nihilism. This death is something that Brogdon mourns
throughout the text with the assurance that it can be resurrected. The hope
that he pines for s really political hope, for the hope that s lostis a hope in the
efficacy of the Political to redress the injuries of anti-black violence. Brogdon
believes that the withdrawal of political hope leads to despair. Reflecting on
this lost hope, Brogdon suggests:

‘And today, the black community is increasingly populated by people whose
hopein just and equitable society either died a ong time ago or continues Lo
i as they face stifling social inedquities and disappointing economie dispari-
ties.

T heard a similar comment while teaching a study on why the church
struggles with the issue of racism. One older congregant rom the Civil Rights
generation said, “We already heard that and tried that. Nothing has changed.”
Instead of working for change, some blacks, like this congregant, choose Lo
respond to the permanence of racial inequality by retreating from the struggle
altogether, accepting the inequitable nature of sociely as permanent, afler

having one's hope die aslow, painful death. (42)

‘The challenge that the “older congregant” put to Brogdon was a serious one. If
Brogdon admonishes her to keep political hope alive, then he must answer the
question “why?” For this congregant, we have exhausted the discourses of
humanism and the strategies of equality—nothing has worked. Brogdon side
steps this challenge by presenting “working for change” as a viable option,
which is really a nonanswer. What type of “work” will bring about the prom
Calvin L. Warren @229

ises of the Politcal? Is there a type of work that will, once and for all alleviate
black suffering? Why would someone continue to do the same thing repeat.
edly without any substantial change (some would say this s the definition of
insanity)? Brodgon leaves these nihilistic questions unanswered, preciscly
because they are unanswerable, and, instead. continuies to exhort blacks to
strugglefor the fantasy object. Ths strugle is presented as spirtual virtue,
and the spiritual concept of hope is contaminated with the prerogatives of a
political order. This problematic conflation is never adequately explained.
Why is continued hope in an anti-black political order a sign of spiritual
maturity? And if this order is redeemable, then it is the obligation of the
advocate to explain how this redemption will occur, This merging of the
spiritual and the political creates a flawed theology that cither endangers
‘people or necessitates living in what Lewis Gordon would call bad faith” in
‘Bad Faith and Anti-black Racism (1995). Perhaps it is the retreat from the
Politicalthat

he ultimate sign of spiritual maturity.

Poliical Apostasy

For West and Brogdon, nihilism is a spiritual-psychic disorder that requires a
spiritual antidote.In this configuration of the spiritual, the nihilist isin need of
deliverance—deliverance from the bondage of “hope-death.” We might, how-

ever, think of the nihilists not as the fleshly embodiment of “hope-death” but
asspiritualists invested i the deliverance of the spiritual from the clutches of
the Political. The black nihil

‘addresses the contamination of the spiritual by its political sequelac, Unlike

. in this regard, is profoundly spiritual and

the political-theologian, the nihilist does not promise redess within the
structure of the politica,for this is impossible, but offers, instead, ejection of
the political s a spiritual practice iselt.

In a very thought- provoking discussion published in Religious Dispatches
about the murder of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman's acquittal,J
Kameron Carter, Anthea Butler, and Willie James Jennings conceptualize
anti-blackness as a form ofspiitual idolatry (Carter 2013). Evoking the semi-
nal text s God a White Racist? (1973) written by Dr. William R.Jones, these
scholars suggest that anti-black political organization s often anchored in a
2308 Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

racist theology—one that considers anti-blackness God's will Jones put the
theodicy question to Black Liberation theologians and questioned this undy-
ingfealty to liberation grounded in political reconfiguration and emancipa
tory rhetoric. Is God a White Racist? not only articulates the disjuncture
between emancipatory “hope” and the devastating reality of black suffering
but also questions the place of the Political within this iberation theology
‘This theology,indeed, presupposes certain metaphysical assumptions about
the Palitical—progress, linear time, and ageney—and Jones reveals a certain
‘paradox within iberation theology: it i grounded in the Political but lacks a
strong political philosophy to justfy this grounding (ic. a philosophy that
connects the thealogical to the Political). This becomes even more problem
atiebecause these metaphysical presumptions are themselves instruments of
anti-blackness. Anti-blackness, ironically, becomes the very foundation for
the purported iberation from anti-blackness in this theology. This s precisely
the contradiction that Jones intimates throughout the text, and it is this
entanglement that renders political iberation somewhat of a ruse.

In the article “Christian Atheism;: The Only Response Worth Is Saltto the
Zimmerman Verdict” (2013),|. Kameron Carter perspicuously foregrounds
the problem of the Zimmerman verdict as a perverse deification of anti
blackness.If the shooting of Trayvon Martin was *god's will as Zimmerman
expressed to Sean Hannity in an interview, then this god considered black
death a moral imperative, or an act of rightcousness, and Zimmerman, in
shooting Trayvon Martin, assumed the role of the obedient disciple. For
Carter,this god is nothing more than an idol spiritual imposture created by

modernity and its institutions:

“The white, western god-man i anidol that secks o determine what s normal.
s a norm by which socity governs the body politic or egulates, measures,
evaluates,and indeed judges what is proper or improper, what is acceptable
citizenship. I i this idol the idol of‘the American god.”that is the symbolic
figure Zimmerman identified himself with and in relationship to which he
judges Trayvon Martin as n effct, rligiously wanting—wanting in proper

citizonship, and ultimately wanting in bumanity. (3)
Calvin L Warren e 231

‘The “white, western-god-man” (or the *American god) that Carter describes
bears resemblance to what Slvia Wynter wold call“Man” (2003, 322)—both are
philosophical-theological apparatuses of anti-blackness, and they function to
colonize essential spheres of existence (*Man® colonizes human and the
“white,western-god-man” colonizes God). The*white, western-god-man” and
“Man” index a process of extreme epistemological and metaphysical violence,
and this violence serves as the foundation of Western socicty and its politics.
‘The only response to this cpistemological and metaphysical violence, accord
ing to Carter,is atheism. It is here that we hear an uncanny resonance with
Ernest Bloch's Atheism in Christianity (1o71) in which “a good Christian must
necessarily be a good atheist.” True Christianity necessitates a certain athe-
ism—in fact it depends on it—to fortify the boundaries between the just/
unjust and the righteous/unrighteous. In other words, when a Christian en-
counters the idol of anti-blackness, she must assume an atheistic posture
toward this dol to remain faithful (or as Carter would describe it to be “worth
Your salt”).

‘The atheism that Carter proffers, however, is entangled in the metaphysical
bind that sustains the very violence is atheism s designed to dismantle For him,
this atheism entails “social,political and intellectual struggle... struggle in soli
dariy with others, the struggle to be for and with others, the struggle of the
multitude, the struggle that is blackness [as] the ne ecclesiology” (2013, 4). The
term “strugge” here presents politcal metaphysics as a solution o the problem of
anti-blackness—through labor,travail, and commitment one embraces prog;
ress and linearity as sacial goods. With this metaphysics, according to Carter,
e can “struggle to gt id of these Stand Your Ground' Laws that are in place
in many states besides Florida, struggle against state legislatures (such as
North Carolina’s) that are enacting draconian laws of various sorts strugele in
the name of the protection of women's agency about their own bodie:

short, struggle to imagine a new polities of belonging” (4). This struggle
contains the promise of overcoming anti-blackness to usher in a “not-yet-
social-order.” Again, the trick of time is deployed to protect “struggle”
from the rigorous historical analysis that would demand evidence of its

efficacy. The “not-yet-social-order, situated in an irreproachable future (a

political prolepsis), can only promise this overcoming against a history
2328 Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

and historicity of brutal anti-black social organization. Carter is looking

for a political theology—although we've always had one under the guise of
democratic liberalism—that will provide conditions of life by mobilizing
the discourses of hope and future temporality. The problem that this theology encir

cles, and evades,

the failure of *social justice” and “liberation theology” to
dismantle the structure of anti-black violence; this brings us fullcircle to the
‘problem that Dr. William R. Jones brilliantly articulated. Are we hoping for a
hew strategy, something completely novel and unique, that will esolve all the
‘problems of the Political once and for all? If the Political itself is the “temple”
of the idolatrous god—the sphere within which it is worshipped and pre-

served—can we discard the idol and purify the temple? Does this theology
offera political philosophy of purification that will sustain the “progress” that
struggle is purported to achieve? In short, how does one translate the spirtual
principleafhopeintoa political program —a politcal heology? The problemoftrans.

lation haunts this theology and the lookingforward stance ofthe political theologian
‘cannot avoid the rupture between the spiritual and the Poltical.

Can we reject this racist god and, at the same time, support the political
structure that affirms this idol? Can we be “partial” atheists? This becomes a
problem for Carter when he suggests that we abandon this idol but fails to
eritique the structure of political existence, which sustains the power of this
idol. Atheism as imagined here would entail rejecting the racist-white-god, or
a racist political theology, and replacing it with a just God, or an equitable
political theology. Will replacing the idol with a more just God transform the
Politicalintoa life-affirming structure for blackness? Unless we advocate fora
theacracy, which is not what 1 believe Carter would propose, we need an
‘answer to this question of translation. The answer to this question is glaringly
absent in the text, but I read this absence as an attempt to avoid the nihilistic
conclusion that his argument would naturally reach. We might even suggest
that one must assume a nihilistic disposition toward the Political if justice,
redress, and righteousness are the aims. The problem with atheism, then, is
that it relies on the Political as the sphere of redemption and hope, when the
Political is part of the idolatrous structure that it seeks to dismantle. In this
sense, Dr. William R. Jones becomes an aporia for Dr. Kameron Carter's text, if

we read Jones as suggesting that black theology offers no cogent political
Calvin L. Warren ®233

‘philosophy, or political program, that would successfully rid the Political ofits
anti-black foundation. The Political and anti-blackness are

sseparable and
mutually constitutive. The utopian vision of a “not-yet-social order” that
purges anti-blackness from s core provides a promise without relief—its
onlyanswer to the immediacy ofblack sufferingis tokeep struggling. The logic
of struggle, then, perpetuates black suffering by placing reliefin an unattain

able future, a future that offers nothing more than an exploitative reproduc-

tion ofits own means of existence. Struggle action, work, and labor are caught
in a political metaphysics that depends on black-death.

‘The black nihilist recognizes that relying on the Political and its grammar
offers nothing more than a ruse of transformation and an exploited hope.
Instead ofatheism, the black nihilist would embrace political apostasy: it is the
act of abandoning or renouncinga situation of unethicality and immorality—
in this sense, the Political itself. The apostate is a figure that “self-
excommunicates” him- /herself from a body that s contrary to its fundamen
tal beliefsystem. As political apostate, the black nihilist renounces the idol of

anti-blackness but refuses to participate in the ruse of replacing one idol with

another. The Political and God—the just and true God in Carter's analysi
are incommensurate and inimical. This is not to suggest that we can exclude
God, but that any recourse to the Political results in an immorality not in
alignment with Godly principles (a performative contradiction). The project
to align God with the Political (political theology) willinevitably fail. If anti.
blackness is contrary to our beliefs, self-excommunication, in other words
“black nihilism, is the only position that seems consistent. We can think of
political apostasy, then, as an active nihilism when an “alternative” political
arrangement is impossible. When faced with the impossibility of realizing the
“not-yet-social order,” political apostasy becomes an empowered hermeneu
tical practice; it interprets the anti-black Political symbolic as inherently
wicked and refects it both as critique and spiritual practice.

IV. BLack NiniLisy anp HERMENEUTICAL NIHILISM

‘The Italian nihilist Gianni Vattimo has revived and developed the philosoph

ical tradition of nibilism in gravid ways that speak to contemporary threats of
Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

annihilation and destruction. His project is important because it permutes
the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger, and in doing so, he not only offers an
important critique of modernity but also puts this eritique in the service of a
politico-philosophical imagination—an imagination that conceives of the
weakening of metaphysical-Being (Nihilism) as the solution to the rational
ization and fracturing of humanity (the source of modern suffering or pain).In
short, this project attempts to restore dignity, individuality, and freedom to
society by remembering Being (proper-Being, not metaphysical-Being) and
allowing for the necessary contextualization and historicization of Being as
event.

In The End of Modernity (1988) and Nihilism and Emancipation (2004),
Vattimo reads Heidegger's destruction of ontology as a philosophical comple-
ment to Nietzsche's declaration of the “death of God.” Both Nietzsche and
Heidegger offer trenchant critiques of metaphysics, and by reading them
together, he fills in certain gaps, in particular, the relationship between meta.
‘physics and social rationalization, foundations and Ontology, and sociologi
cal philosophy and thinking itself. We can understand both Vattimo's and
Heidegger's project as the attempt to capture the relationship between what
we might call metaphysical-Being (fraudulent Being as object) and Being (in
its proper contextualized sense). This relationship, indeed, has been particu
larly violent and produced various forms of suffering—this suffering s the
essence of metaphysics, or what Vattimo would call “pain,” anditis sustained
through the “will to power.” violence (e.g. physical, psychic, spiritual, and
philosophical) and the destruction of iberty. The metaphysical tradition has
reduced Being(an event that structures historical reality and possibility tself)
to an object, and this objectification of Being s accomplished through the
instruments of science and schematization. The result of this process is that
Being is forgotten; the grand aperture that has provided the condition for
relationality for many epochs is now reified as a static presence, a presence to
be possessed and analyzed. In this sense, we lose the grandeur of Being and
confuse it for the particularity of a certain epoch, being. The niilist, then,
must overcome the obli

ion of Being through the weakening of metaphysical
Being Vattimo recovers Heidegger s term Verwindung distorting acceptance,
resignation, or twisting) asa strategy to weaken metaphysical Being, since the
Calvin L. Warren @235

nihilist can never truly destroy metaphysics or completely overcomeit (Uber-
winden). This strategy of twisting and distorting metaphysics helps us to
re-member and re-collect (An-denken) the grandeur of Being (Ge-Shick as the
ultimate gathering of the various epochal presentations ofbeing) and to place
metaphysical-Being back n its proper place, as a particular manifestation of
this great historical process. Only by inserting our present signification of
Being into the grand gathering of Being (Ge-Shick) can we properly contextu
alize our own epoch—the epoch of social ationalization, technocracy, meta-
physical domination (Vattimo 1988, 1-13).

Vattimo extends the Heideggerian critique of metaphysics to Politics and
understand it as a particular metaphysical organization of existence. The
logic of modernity “of lincar time, a continuous and unitary process that
moves toward betterment” (Vattimo 2004, 49-50), continues to dominate the
Political field and serves asits foundation. It ims at a continuous perfection
of metaphysical concepts. We can deseribe this movement as both a constant
rediscovery/reengagement of metaphysical concepts and the upward move-
ment to perfect these concepts. For Vattimo, however, once we have accom:
plished the nihilistic project of remembering (true) Being and weakening
metaphysical foundations, we are left with an empowered hermeneutics. This

hermeneutics, or what is also considered “ontological hermeneutics,” at-

tempts to facilitate the “self-consumption” of metaphysical Being, so that
there is nothing left to it. This *self-consumption” of metaphysics results in
the dissolution of foundations, of first philosophies, and it presents incom

mensurability, conflict, and contingency as the *weak foundation.” In short,
Vattimo thinks of metaphysical Being as a particular interpretation of Being;
it establishes itself as irrefutable ground and

ilences, or extinguishes, com.
peting interpretations of existence. The nihilistic project dissolves the herme-
neutical foundation of metaphysics and enables conflictinginterpretations to
‘emerge. This interpretation of violence departs from the metaphysical usage
ofit, as a violation of innate rights or equality, and, instead, indicates “the
preemptory assertion of an ultimacy that, like the ultimate metaphysical
foundation, breaks off dialogue and silences the interlocutor by refusing even
to acknowledge the question ‘why?” (Vattimo 2004, 98). Put differently, Vat.
timo's foundation is the dissolution ofall foundations—even this interpreta.
236 @ Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

tion—and any “founding violence” that silences competinginterpretations of
existence. In doing so, he weakens metaphysical being and opens up the
possibility of “projectionality—the ability to engage in your unique project
unencumbered by metaphysical strictures. Once this unencumbered projec-
tionality is actualized, we understand “emancipation” as the freedom from
metaphysical enclosures and the ability to interpret existence according to

one’s own life-project.

For the black nihilist, however, the question is ths: Willthe dissolution
of metaphysical Being that Vattimo advances climinate anti-black vio
lence and redress black suffering? What would “emancipation” entail for
black-objects (as distinet from the "human” that grounds Vattimo’s proj
cct)? Anti-blackness becomes somewhat of an unacknowledged interloc-

utor for Vattimo;

Philosophy follows paths that are not insulated o cut off rom the social and.
political transformations of the West (since the end of metaphysics s unthink-
able without the nd of colonialim and Eurocentrism) and "discovers” that the
meaning of the history of modernity s not progress toward a final perfection
characterized by fullness, total transparency, and the prosence of, and the
presence finally realized of the essence of man and the world. (Vattimo 2004,

35 emphasis mine)

s and colonialism/

Vattimo adumbrates a relationship between metaphys
Eurocentrism that renders them coterminous. If, as Vattimo argues, “the end
of metaphysics is unthinkable without the end of colonialism and Eurocen

trism”—which I will suggest are varicties of anti-black violence—then herme-

neutical nihilism must advance an escape from anti-blackness to accomplish
its agenda. Furthermore, if philosophy follows paths created by sociopolitical
realities, then we must talk about anti-blackness notjust asa violent political

formation but also as a philosophical orientation. The nihilist would insist
that its hermeneutics would transform political reality and, concomitantly,
climinate black sulfering Ultimately, we rely on An-denken (thinking other
wise) to resalve the problem of asymmetrical power relations and the uneven

distribution of resources that characterizes black suffering in the modern
Calvin L Warren @237

world. But how would a philosophical project translate into a political pro
gram or usher in the “yet-to-come” social unencumbered by metaphysics?
Must we eradicate anti-black violence before we can think otherwise? Or, to
put this issue differently, can we think at all without anti-blackness?

For the black nihilist, anti-blackness is metaphysics. It i the system of
thought and organization of existence that structures the relationship be-
tween object/subject, human/animal, rational/irrational, and free/en:
that constitute the field of Ontology. Thus,
the social rationalization, loss of individuality, economic expansionism, and

slaved—essentially, the categori

technocratic domination that both Vattimo and Heidegger analyze actually
depend on anti-blackness.” Metaphysics, then, is unthinkable without anti
blackness. Neither Heidegger nor Vattimo explores this aspect of Being's
oblivion—itis thelteral destruction of black bodies that provide the psychic,
conomic, and philosophical resources for modernity to objectfy, forget and
ultimately obliterate Being (nonmetaphysical Being). We might then consider
black captivity in the modern world as the *perfection” of metaphysics, ts
shameful triumph, because through the violent technology of slavery Being
itselfveas so thoroughly devastated. Personality became property.as Hortense
Spillers would describe it, and with this transubstantiation, Being was objec.
tified, infused with exchange value, and rendered malleable within a saciopo-
litical order. In short, Being lost its integrity with the TransAtlantic Slave
“Trade;at that moment in history, it fnally became possible for an aggressive
metaphysics o exercise abscene power —the ability to turn a "human” into a
“thing” The captive is fractured on both the Ontological and ontic levels. This
violent transubstantiation leaves little room for the hopeful escape from
metaphysics that Heidegger envisions. Can the black-as-object lay claim to
Dasein? And i
that which is an object?

how exactly does hermencutic nihilism restore Being to

If we perform a “philosophy of history.” as Vattimo would advise, we

understand that metaphysicians, and even those we now consider “post-

metaphysicians.” constructed the rational subject against the nonreasoning
black, who, accordingto Hegel, Kant, Hume, and even Nietzsche was situated
outside of history, moral aw, and consciousness (Bernasconi 2003: Judy 1993
‘and Mills1998). It s not enough, then, to sugges that metaphysics engenders
238 o Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

forms of violence asa necessity, asa byproduct; thinkingitselfis structured by
anti-blackness from the very start. Any postmetaphysical project that does
not take this into account will inevitably reproduce the very structures of
thought that it would dismantle.

Hermencutic nihilism provides a discursive frame to understand the in-
transigence of metaphysics as the residue of antiblackness in the contemporary
moment. The black nihilist, however, must part ways with Vattimo concern.
ing the question of emancipation. For Vattimo, hermeneutic nihilism avoids
“passive nihilism.” Passive nihilism is characterized by strands of fatalism or
bymelancholic nostalgia forlost foundations. Toavoid this ituation, Vattimo
introduces hermeneutics as an alternative to passive nihilism and conceives
of hermeneutics as the natural result of an accomplished nihilism—namely,
after the weakening of metaphysical Being, hermeneutics replaces metaphysics as a
self-consuming “foundation.” He attempts to move beyond the metaphysical
remnants found in the theories of Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Wittgenstein and
think of hermeneutics as competing interpretations that reduce the violence
of secure foundations. This of course provides the possibility for a radical
democracy and a reconfiguration of Ethics, Law, and the Political. Ultimately,
this weakening of metaphysical Being allows the human to project him-/
herselfin the world, what Vattimo calls “projectionality.” and engage in the
unique project that constitutes existence. This s the crux of emancipation for
Vattimo. We, ironically, find ourselves back in the province of “progress.”
“hope.” “betterment,” all the metaphysical instruments that constrain the
very life that he would emancipate. This, of course, is unavoidable, for he can
only twist these concepts and reclaim them as part of a postmetaphysical

‘agenda. Vattimo's hermeneutic nihilism is not very much different than po
litical theology and demacratic liberalism. It is a discourse of hope, a polities
‘of hope that advances the belief that we can weaken metaphysics and reduce
Suffering, violence, and pain. When it comes to black suffering, however, we

are compelled to hold up the mirror of historicity and inquire about the

possibilities of emancipation for the black-as-object. Anti-blackness is the
residue that remains, the intransigent substance that makes it impossible to

destroy metaphysics completely. The black nihilist must confront this resi

due, but with the understanding that the eradication of this residue would
Calvin L. Warren @239

truly end the world itself. Black emancipation is world destructives it is not an
aperture or an opening for future possibilities and political reconfigurations
(Wilderson 2010). The “end of the world" that Vattimo envisions does not take
into account that pulverized black bodies sustain the world—its institutions,

cconomic systems, environment, theologies, philosophies, and so forth. Be-

cause anti-blackness infuses itself into every fabric of social existence, it is
impossible to emancipate blacks without literally destroying the world. More-
over, this means that black emancipation will not yield a new world or poss
bi

that would destroy the field of all possible solutions. In this sense, black

s for reorganization—black emancipation is the nihilistic “solution”

emancipation becomes something like death for the world—with all its
Heideggerian valences.

Black bodies and black suffering, then, pose a problem for emancipatory
logic. If literal black bodies sustain modernity and metaphysics—through
various forms of captivity, terror, and subjection—then what would emanci
‘pation entail for blacks? How do we allow metaphysics to self-consume and
weaken when blackness nourishes metaphysies? (We can define the “prob-
lem” in W. E. B. Dubois’s poignant question “what does it mean to be a
problem?” in the twentieth century as metaphysics itself (1903, 10]. Now we
must ask: “what does it mean to be the source of metaphysics’ sustenance in
the 215t century?”) Either the world would have to eliminate black bodies,
which would amount to a self-destructive solution for all, or it would have to
wrest blackness from the clutches of metaphysical anti-blackness that sus
tains the world. Our hope s that black emancipation would be accomplished
through the latter, but history does not prove that this is possible—every
emancipatory strategy that attempted to rescue blackness from anti
blackness inevitably reconstituted and reconfigured the anti-blackness it
tried to eliminate. Anti-blackness is labile. It adapts to change and endlessly
refashions itself; this makes emancipation an impossible feat. Because we are
still attempting to mine the depths of anti-blackness in the twenty-first cen
tury and still contemplating the contours of this juggernaut, anti-blackness
will escape every emancipatory attempt o capture it

We are left, yet again, to place our hope in a future politics that avoids
history, historicity, and the immediacy of black suffering, For this reason, the
2408 Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

black nihilist rejects the emancipatory impulse within certain aspeets ofblack
eritical discourse and cultural/critical theory. In this sense, the modifier
“black” in the term *black nihilism” indicates much more than an “identity’; a
blackenedihilism pushes hermeneutic nihilism beyond the limits ofts meta-
‘physical thinking by foregrounding the function of anti-blackness in structur-
ing thought.

Epistemology/Hermeneutic Nilism

Black nihilism acknowledges that metaphysics is a destructive matrix, but it
resists the temptation to believe that there is an alternative or a “beyond” the
violence that sustains the world. For many, this could be read as fatalism or
‘passive nihilism, The terms *passive” and “fatalism” applied to black nihilism
are saturated with negativity to discredit its legitimacy; this discursive ma-
neuver becomes another metaphysical strategy of disciplining and punishing
“errant” thought. Despite these invectives and political hope's “will to power,”

m uses hermeneutics to return the political “dream” to ts proper
the place of the void (Fanon). Black nihilism demands a traversal,
but not the traversal that reintegrates “the subject” (and Being) back into
society by shattering fundamental fantasies of metaphysics, but a traversal
that disables and invalidates every imaginative and symbolic function. Its
hermeneutics “blackens” the world, as Lewis Gordon suggests in “Theory in

Black: Teleological Suspensions in Philosophy of Culture” (2010).

‘The problem that confronts the black nihilist is one of epistemology, espe-
ciallywhen the dominant epistemology privileges metaphysical forms of anti
black organizations of knowledge. The field of knowledge is uneven and
reflects the asymmetrical power relations that sustain anti-black violence in
modernity. The difficulty in expressing black nihilistic thought is that it is
situated in the tense space between hermeneutics and epistemology. If we
think of epistemology as an anti-black formation, then every appeal to it will
reproduce the very metaphysical violence that is the source of black suffering,
Nihilistic Hermeneutics allows us to fracture epistemology. to chip away at its
metaphysical science, and to enunciate from within this fissure. Vattimo
provides a cogent explanation of the distinction between epistemology and
Calvin L Warren e 241

hermencutics in his reading of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of
Reflection (1981):

Epistemalogy is founded on the presumption that all discourses are commen.
surate with and translatable among cach other, and that the foundation of
their truth consists procisely in this translation into a basic languag, that is,
the one which mirrors facts themselves. Hermeneutics instead admits that
thereis o such single unifying language, and tries Lo appropriate the language
of the other rather than translate into its own tongue . Epistemology i the
discourse of normal science, while hermeneatics is discourse about as-yet-

incommensurable discourses. (Vattimo 1985, 149)

Read through the register of anti-blackness, we can understand epistemology
as the violent attempt at discursive and linguistic unification—the compul
ion to establish a unifying ground of language. Because blackness is placed

outside of the *customary lexis oflife and culture,” s Hortense Spillers (2003)
reminds us, blackness speaks an inassimilable language, an “anti-grammar™

that res

s linguistic/epistemological domination—what we call “transla:
tion' (221). Anti-black epistemology s somewhat schizophrenienitsaimyitat
once posits blackness as an anti-grammatical entity—paradosically a non
foundation-foundation that provides the condition of possibility for its own
existence—and at the same time, and in stunning contradiction, it forces a
translation of this anti-grammar into a system of understanding that is de-
signed to exclude it. This tension between grammatical exclusion and com
‘pulsory inclusion is part o the violence of captivity. A hermencutical practice
that acknowledges the impossible translation of blackness without forcingits
annibilation (through translationdomination) i the only way we can under
m shatters the coherence of

stand the nihilist. Put another way, black nl
anti-black epistemology and cannot be *known,” or rendered legible, through
traditional epistemology.

‘The problem that we encounter is that black nihilism is reduced to an
anti-black epistemology—the “illegible grammar” that speaks through the
black body, psyche, and *spirit” s forcibly, and erroneously, translated into an

epistemology that s inimical toits meaning, Black nihilism cannot be reduced
242 '@ Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

to an anti-black foundation of knowledge (or metaphysics), and when this
translation, this compulsory alignment of knowledge, fails to explain or un.
derstand the black nihilist, black nihilismis considered pathological and must
be disciplined, contained, and, ultimately, destroyed. If all knowledge must
submit to a bio-political imperative, then the socially dead object is always
already situated at an impasse in relation to this imperative: cither one livesin
bad faith—the “optimistic” and politically hopeful belief that anti-black struc-
tures can be transformed to provide vitality to blackness, despite all evidence:
to the contrary—or one lives as the pathogen (ie., socially pathological) and
risks increased vulnerability to violent state apparatuses. In other words, the
“pathological behavior” that West and Brogdon bemoan as self-destructive,
‘pessimistic, and apathetic from black youth is a gross misreading, Perhaps
this “pathology’ is a way of speaking otherwise when other forms of discourse:
areinaccessible; the nihilist might have to assume an anti-grammatical enun
ciation to express the inexpressible. West and Brogdon subject this anti
‘grammar to an anti-black epistemaology, which mandates that all action must
align with its bio-political imperative. When this forced translation fails, the
troubled.”“faithless.” “suicidal,” “fatalistic.”
and “reckless.” Hermeneutical nihilism challenges this domination and al

nihilist is labeled “pathologic:

lows incommensurate grammars to exst. The strategy of forced alignment—
translation as domination—is a tool of the Political designed to preserve its
metaphysical organization. Bio-politics will always fail the politcally dead
object because bio-politics depends on the politically dead black object to
constitute itself. If poltical integration s the drcam of the optimists, it will
esult in nothing more than what Achille Mbembe (2003) calls the “necro-
political”(40).In this context, we can define neco-politics asthe distribution
of fraudulent hope that leaves the subject endangered,

V. Concrusion

‘Throughout this essay, I have argued that the Politics of hope preserve meta-
‘physical structures that sustain black suffering, This preservation amounts to
anexploitation ofhope—when the Political colonizes the spiritual principle of
hope and puts it in the service ofextending the “will to power” ofan anti-black
Calvin L. Warren 243

organization of existence. The Politics of hope, then, is bound up with meta-
‘physical violence, and this violence masquerades as a “solution” to the prob-
lem of anti-blackness. Temporal linearity, perfection, betterment, struggle,
work, and utopian futurity are conceptual instruments of the Political that
will never obviate black suffering or anti-black violence; these concepts only
servetoreproduce the conditions that render existence unbearable for blacks.
Political theologians and black optimists avoid the immediacy of lack suffer
ing, the horror of anti-black pulverization, and place reliefin a “not-yet-but-is
(maybe)-to-come-social order” that, itself, can do litle more but admonish
blacks to survive to keep struggling, Political hope becomes a vicious and

abusive cycle of struggle—it mirrors the Lacanian drive, and we encircle an

object (black freedom, justice, elief, redress, equality, etc.) that isinaccessible
because it doesn't really exist. The political theologian and black optimist,
then, propose a collective Jouissance as an answer to black suffering—finding
the joy in struggle, the victory in toil, and the satisfaction in inefficacious
action. We continue to “struggle” and “work” as black youth are slaugh
tered daily, black bodies are incarcerated as forms of capital, black infant
mortality rates are soaring, and hunger is disabling the bodies, minds, and
spirits of desperate black youth. In short, these conditions are deep meta
physical problems—the sadistic pleasure of metaphysical domination—
and “work” and *struggle” avoid the terrifying fact that the world depends
on black death to sustain itself. Black nihilism attempts to break this
“drive’—to stop it in s tracks, as it were—and to end the cycle of insanity
that political hope perpetuates.

‘The question that remains is a question often put to the black nihilist
what is the point? This compulsory geometrical structuring of thought —all
knowledge must submit to, and is reducible to, a point—it is an epistemic
flicker of certainty, determination, and, o put it bluntly, life. “The point” exists
for life it enlivens, enables, and sustains knowledge. Thought outside of this
mandatory point is illegible and useless. To write outside of the “cpisteme of
life” and its grammar will require a position outside of this point, a position
somewhere in the infinite horizon of thought (perhaps this

what Heidegger
wanted to do with his reconfiguration of thought). Writing in this way is
inherently subversive and refuses the geometry of thought. Nevertheless, the
244

Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

nibilist is forced to enunciate his refusal through a “point” a point that is
contradictory and paradoxical all at once. To say that the point of this essay is
that *the point” is fraudulent —its promise of clarity and lfe are inadequate—
will not satisfy the hunger of disciplining the nihilist and insisting that one

undermine the very ground upon which one stands. Black nihilistic herme-

heuties resists “the point” but is subjected to it to have one’s voice heard
within the marketplace of ideas. The “point” of this essay is that political hope
is pointless. Black suffering is an essential part of the world, and placing hope
i the very structure that sustains metaphysical violence, the Political, will
never resolve anything, This is why the black nihilist speaks of “exploited
hope,” and the black nihilist attempts to wrest hope from the clutches of the
Political. Can we think of hope outside the Political? Must “salvation” trans.
late into a political grammar or a political program? The nihilist, then, hopes
for the end of political hope and its metaphysical violence. Nihilism is not
antithetical to hope it does not extinguish hope but reconfigures it. Hope is
the foundation of the black nihilistic hermeneutic.

In*Blackness and Nothingness.” Fred Moten (2013) conceptualizes black-
nessasa“pathogen” to metaphysics, something that has the ability to unravel,
to disable, and to destroy anti-blackness. Ifwe read Vattimo through Moten's
brilliant analysis, we can suggest that blackness is the limit that Heidegger
‘and Nietzsche were really after. Itis a “blackened" world that will ultimately
end metaphysics, but puttingan end to metaphysics will also put an endto the
world tself—thisis the nihilism that the black nihilist must theorize through.

Thisisa far ery from what we call ‘anarchy.” however. The black nihlist has as
litle faith n the metaphysical reorganization of society through anarchy than
he does in traditional forms of political existence.

‘The black nihilist offers political apostasy as the spiritual practice of
denouncing metaphysical violence, black suffering, and the idol of anti
blackness. The act of renouncing will not change political structures or
offer a political programs instead, it is the act of retrieving the spiritual
concept of hope from the captivity of the Political. Ultimately, it is impos
sible to end metaphysics without ending blackness, and the black nihilist
will never be able to withdraw from the Political completely without a
certain death-drive or being-toward-death. This is the essence of black
Calvin L. Warren 245

suffering: the lack of reprieve from metaphysics, the tormenting complic
ity in the reproduction of violence, and the lack ofa coherent grammar to
articulate these dilemmas.

After contemplating these issues for some time in my office, I decided to
take a train home. As I awaited my train in the station, an older black woman
asked me about the train schedule and when I would expect the next train
headed toward Dupont Circle. When told her the trains were running slowly,
she began to talk about the government shutdown. “They don't care anything
about us, you know.” she said. “We elect these people into office, we vote for
them, and they watch black people suffer and have no intentions of doing
anything about it.”I shook my head in agreement and listened intently. Tm
‘goingto stop voting, and supportingthis process: why should I keep doing this
‘and our people continue to suffer,” she said. I looked at her and said, "l don't
know maam; [just don't understand it myself.” She then laughed and thanked
me for listening to her —as ifour conversation were somewhat cathartic. “You
know, people think you're crazy when you say things like this,” she said giving
meawink."Yes they do,”said. “But 1 am a free woman,” she emphasized “and
I won't go back.” Shocked, I smiled at her, and she winked at me: at that
moment I realized that her wisdom and courage penetrated my mind and
demanded answers. I've thought about this conversation for some time, and it
is for this reason 1 had to write this essay. To the brave woman at the train
station, I must say you are not crazyat all but thinking outside of metaphysical
time, space, and violence.

Ultimately, we must hope for the end of political hope.

[

. Thisessay s it with certain geo-politcalspecfcty my purview here. i the United
State and the pasticular history of ani-black brutality that stuctures back exisence.
‘within this context. Although my analysis s ocused on the U, context would arguo that
the dvastating logie of antiblackness and metaphysics constitute agobal problem, and.
this essay offrs an entré into s much langer discusson about anti-blacknessin glabal
frame,
246 '@ Black Nihilism and the Palitics of Hope

3. Definingthe “spiritusl i notoriously dificult ssk.The spiriual i this nalyssis similax
to what Fred Moten (sor3) and Nabum Chandie (3013) would call “passontology. It

excecdsand precedes pliicalontology. The spiriualescapes the confinesofthe Poliical
anditsorganization,providing perhaps the anly reprieve from the Palitica,

3 The dea of the "ungrounding of geound” or the mpossibily ofafinal permanens geound
s aso expressed in the poltical philosophy of “post-foundationalism.” The *Poltca’

indexes the mposibilty of inal round, and th poltica rocess s designed o il this
Vacutum, “The Poltcal’ i my analysisconsttute an episteme af metaphysics, a5 way 1o
hink being through a particularset of predispositons —progres, bio-futuricy. change.

betterment, and so forth. The alitical (the uncapitaized"p") dockets th programmaic
efort to materiaize metaphysical seniblties. This is usualy what we mean when we
spesk of politc.Olver Marchart (s007) maintains thediffrence between th Polical nd
polticsto uggest that the Pltical cn transform plticsby destablzing tsmetaphysical
rounding, The blck nifilist would disagree with Marchartthat any such transformation
1 possble for antblackness and would eject the idea tha the poliical diffrence (the
Polical v, plitics) would provide any emancipatory relie from black suffeng o possi-
biltyofa world without ant-blackness

4. My use ofthe word "ojct”hore s very similar to the word “etreat” that Pilppe Lacoue-
Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy use i thei seminl work Retrating the Plical(997). For
them, reteating the political constitutes @ critcal questioning of the relationship.

between plitcs and philosophy. and this retreat enables s toeflect o the Politicalas
a efusal to think—a retreat rom thinking isel, when thinking i hijacked by meta-
physical closure. L have somethingsimilar i mind with the term “rfection.” | enisage

reection” s a critcal posture toward the Politcal and its metaphysical, ant-black
organization of existnce.

The work of theorists such as Hanmnah Arendt (1966),Lindon Barrett (2013, and Denise
Fernera d Si (2007) presents ant-blackness s & oundation for modorn thought and.

poltical organization.

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