Blackness, Social Death, and the Volatile Sacred

Catalog description

In recent years, we have witnessed a renewed energy around theorizing blackness and its unsettling presence in the world. In addition to endeavors to think through the antagonistic relationship between blackness and the ideal human, authors have addressed topics such as black gender, the affinities and tensions between blackness and queerness, the ways in which blackness interrupts the logic of property, and the particular qualities of anti-black violence. In this course, we will pursue an aspect of contemporary black thought that has been central but undeveloped -- how blackness reimagines the religious and the sacred. Authors: Spillers, Wynter, Hartman, Sharpe, Moten, Glissant, Gumbs.