Excellent, balanced review by @JRWinters77 in @BlkPerspectives
I'd only add that, in my reading, critics of #Afropessimism who see it as "a death knell for...the kind of hope and energy needed to confront current problems" don't really understand Afropessimism
It's VERY utopian
It's certainly pessimistic as it relates to OTHER utopian visions (Pan-Africanism, Marxism, feminism, etc.) but only then as it relates to the question of Black ontologies and the capacity to address antiblackness. Destroying capitalism/sexism is part of destroying the world.
In this way I always contend that a better name for those who get hung up on the pessimism part is Afrorealism or Afroskepticism.
And while intellectuals might feel deflated by their mis/non reading of Afropessimism, on the ground it is providing exactly the kind of activist energy and analysis that armchair intellectuals worry that it will sap out of the movement.
Important to note too that activists are not just adopting AP wholesale but riffing on ideas floated in the academic theory and infusing them with a life and new set of meanings that good Afropessimist theorists encourage and anticipated.
Anyway thanks to @JRWinters77 for an excellent review.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.