Frank Wilderson III: Afropessimism

KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents a webinar

FRANK WILDERSON III
AFROPESSIMISM
with Davey D

In the tradition of Edward Said's Orientalism and Franz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, Afropessimism is a brilliant account of the experience of being black. The black radical tradition has drawn upon the term as a way to acknowledge the power, depth, and vitality of the resilience and radical imagination of people of African descent.

A seminal work that strikingly combines groundbreaking philosophy with searing flights of memoir, Afropessimism presents the dynamic principles of an increasingly influential Intellectual movement that theorizes blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery.

Rather than interpreting slavery through a Marxist framework of class oppression, Frank B. Wilderson demonstrates that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive, anti-black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but an almost necessary force in our civilization today, and that black struggles cannot be conflated with the experiences of any other oppressed group. In exceptionally clear prose, Wilderson juxtaposes his own seemingly idyllic upbringing in mid-century Minneapolis with the harsh reality he would later encounter, whether in radicalized, late 1960's Berkeley or in the slums of Soweto. Following in the such literary tradition of works by W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X and James Baldwin, Afropessimism reverberates with wisdom and painful clarity.

Frank B. Wilderson III, professor and chair of African American Studies, and a core faculty member of the Culture & Theory Ph.D. Program at UC Irvine; is an award-winning writer whose books include Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid; and Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms.

Davey D is host of Hard Knock Radio (HKR) on KPFA, an award-winning daily syndicated prime time afternoon show focusing on Hip Hop culture and politics.

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