This session outlined certain elements in the history of philosophical pessimism that might be productively discussed within the field of Black studies. The point of departure was the political culture of racial slavery—as it emerges in the early modern era. If the goal of critical theory is “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them,” then it stands to reason that we meditate upon the fate of the slaves of human beings in order to best appreciate the critical purchase of pessimism as a political and intellectual orientation.
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