Black Existentialism

A discussion of Charles Burnett's 1978 film Killer of Sheep, with particular focus on the nihilistic, despairing pessimism of the film. Stan, the main character, has been worn down into an affectless figure whose sense of joy and human contact is all but eliminated. What space is there for joy and pleasure? Is escape possible? Is another sense of self and affect possible? Or does abandonment mean that the possibility of a confrontation and negation, as described by Angela Davis in her "Lecture on Liberation," requires deliberate leaving of the space of the neighborhood in search of the oppressor?

What is Black Existentialism?

Podcasted process pieces from my course Black Existentialism. The course introduces one of the most important and potent mid-century intellectual movements - the existentialist movement - through a series of black Atlantic thinkers. Our keystone will be Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, which is arguably the most important work of Black existentialism from this period. Across the semester we will see why existentialism, with its focus on the ambiguities and ambivalences of lived-experience, had such a deep impact on Black thinkers across the diaspora. We will see these existentialist insights register in literature, philosophy, and film. Old and new.