(De-/Re-)
Constructing
Worlds
On Violence
Marking the distinction between brutal acts of violence and considerate acts of violence, between the violence enacted by oppressors and oppressive regimes and the violence enacted by freedom fighters and liberation movements.
Investigations into the Modern University: An Introduction
The modern university is not, and has never been, a noble institution. Much to the contrary, it has historically been and remains to this day a racist, sexist, and classist institution devoted to the reproduction of ruling class elites and the reproduction of knowledge as the preserve of ruling class elites.
Anticolonialism, Antiracism, and Ecology
The global ecology movement can only become a force for radical change today by deferring to the victims of modern colonialism and racism, especially the indigenous peoples whose homelands were stolen from them and the black peoples who were stolen from their homelands during the formation of the modern world system.
(Self-)Possession, (Anti-)Blackness, and Abolition
Inspired by my encounters with the glyphs BLM and ACAB graffitied on the streets of Rome, this dispatch seeks to articulate how it is that chattel-slavery, wage-slavery, mass incarceration in the United States, anti-migrant policies in the Global North, and anti-blackness are intimately related to one another in today’s world.
Burning Out
I need to admit something — to myself most of all but to my readers as well — and it is this: I am burning out.
It is important that I admit this to myself and to my readers because, if I am to live by what I write, it is imperative that I do not divorce what I produce from the conditions and relations of its production.
TEK & the Technosphere
The fabrication of “unscientific and superstitious primitives” was obviously at the cost of immense expenditures of psychic and intellectual energies in the Euro-Atlantic West. The exercise was obligatory. It was an effort commensurate with the importance that the repression and ruination of Traditional Ecological Knowledges (TEK) possessed for the maintenance and advancement of Western(ized) “human, all too human” social arrangements.
A Note on Bantu Philosophy
Few of my readers, however, are likely to recognize my touchpoints from the African philosophical tradition.
This is my fault: I have oriented my works towards Western readers who have no interest in African philosophy, and I have not thought to cite African philosophers and acknowledge their deep influences on my work.
With this dispatch, I hope to begin to do some reparative work in this regard by talking about the influence of Alexis Kagame on my own theoretical framework.
The Shape of Things to Come
Reading Giovanni Arrighi’s Long Twentieth Century alongside Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism.
Who Goes Anti-Colonial?
It is an interesting and radical parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go anti-colonial and what sort of showdown would trigger them to do so.
Anti-Blackness and the Prevalence of Afropessimism
I have written that the power formation that prevails over our world today is a white-supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal power formation, citing the work of bell hooks. I would like to qualify my previous writings by marking the difference between white supremacy and anti-blackness.
The Ruling Class & the Radical Resistance
A radical resistance seeks to abolish the need for a ruling class, not to reform a ruling class.
Profound Silences
Any and every story that enables us to make sense of modern European colonialism and imperialism must feature an increasing number of indescribable horrors.
Running Thoughts on Trauma
The way to get peoples to affirm an ideological or mythical reason for denying care to themselves and others is to (i) traumatize peoples in some way shape or form, (ii) allow their traumas to fester unresolved for an extended duration, and then (iii) play upon their traumas.
For the Witches
The witch hunts were an assault on indigeneity within Europe that complemented European’s assaults on indigeneity without. These twin assaults on indigeneity prepared the way for humanism to prevail by enabling European Man to make the “enlightened” claim that his local peculiarities were universalities that peoples all across the globe must be made to aspire to.
For the Ancestors
The progressive capitalist says it is imperative that we reduce the dead to the eliminated in order to accelerate and innovate, but the fact is this: all liberating social transformations involve taking time to commune with the dead.
A revolution that does not liberate the dead from oppressive forces cannot liberate the living from oppressive forces.
Towards Genuine Intellectual Freedom
If the university appears to be an indispensable haven for the intellect it is only because the world at large has become a hell for the intellect.
Seven Ways to Signify a Circle
As I have come to see it, symbolic signs that are meant to communicate a given idea ought to be supplemented by iconic and gestural signs that further communicate a given idea.
No need to rectify your language.
In a world that is warped and twisted, plain language fails to describe matters; only hyperbolic and elliptical language will do.
Anthropologies Beyond the Human
Why must Western(ized) anthropologists speak of peoples living in “small foraging bands” when the peoples they are referring to can and do live as if they are part of immense and complex societies that involve great multitudes of sentient non-human others?