Frank B. Wilderson III, _Afropessimism_

 I DECIDED TO pick this up after reading Greg Tate's review in The Nation last fall (Sept. 17, 2021). One of the last things Tate published, I guess, and characteristically sharp and memorable. It wasn't a rave review by any means, but it certainly left the impression that the book was strong and important.

Afropessimism (the book) aligns in my head with Virginie Despentes's King Kong Theory and Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts in that it is critical theory, memoir, and capital-W Writing all at the same time. I can imagine it sitting on the same syllabus as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, or the same syllabus as James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, or the same syllabus as Rebecca Solnit and David Foster Wallace. 

Afropessimism (the theory) is of Wilderson's own coining, I think, though he cites Frantz Fanon, Orlando Patterson, and Saidiya Hartman as foundational. The theory is that Black subjection, the white preconception that Blacks are slaves and not humans, is so basic to white people's identity that they will never voluntarily give it up. However many sermons are preached, or marches are held, or Obamas are elected, the assumption of superiority will keep percolating in the white unconscious, wreaking the same social havoc it has since at least 1619.

I hope he's wrong, but I don't know that he is, and a lot of our public life suggests he's right.

The more controversial aspect of Afropessisism is that Blacks are a unique kind of Other among America's Others, such as the brown, the Asian, the female, the disabled, and the queer. Whites can be maneuvered into seeing the humanity of these Others, but the humanity of the Black is simply inadmissible and unimaginable. Wilderson seems skeptical of any attempt at coalition-building that does not grant this premise. I gather this does not sit well with some (see the chapters "Punishment Park" or "The Trouble with Humans"). 

Oddly, and to my own surprise, I found it relatively easy to identify with Wilderson. He is just two years younger than I am, we both grew up in the midwest, and we were both fascinated as teenagers with the radical politics of the late 1960s. As a white kid in Iowa, though, there was no way I was going to hang out with the Black Panthers. But Wilderson did hang out with the Black Liberation Army, which meant he got the attention of COINTELPRO. Then, while I was slogging through my dissertation, Wilderson was a stockbroker during the "greed is good" era, then an MFA student hanging out with Edward Said, then an ANC cadre (and restaurant worker) hanging out with Nadine Gordimer, then completing a doctorate in Berkeley and having a breakdown or two along the way. In short, his life has been wildly different than mine in uncountable ways. Still, I kept thinking, I get this guy. Is it generational? Is it the midwest? Maybe it was his good words for Marguerite Young.