Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction

Afro-Pessimism illuminates, with the intention to abolish, the omnipresence or anti-Black racism in modern society.In the wake of uprisings and public outrage at the continual murder of Black people by the police, discourse is incrementally acknowledging racialized police violence and discrimination in all areas of society. Yet there is a fissure between the prescriptions offered to rectify these issues and the failure to bring that about. Afro-Pessimism offers an analytical lens to examine this gap and the ways in which society is structured through anti-Black racism. Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction is a collection of articles compiled for the purpose of offering an overview of this theory. The collected articles span three decades of thought and cover, in addition to police violence, topics ranging from the labor of Black women and the slave's transformation following the emancipation to the struggles of the Black Liberation Army and the elements of anti-Blackness in Indigenous struggles for sovereignty.