Limited Accounts: Thinking Race and Recognition

This essay reflects on the difficulties of situating recognition as a basis for ethics by putting end (2018), a paper, wood, and staple assemblage by Philadelphia- and Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Wilmer Wilson IV, in conversation with Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself. Analyzing end, which offers a meditation on representation, racial capitalism, and intimacy, reveals how visual art can be both the scene and mode of address. This duality has important implications for Black studies’ effort to work around recognition. It does so by muddying firm distinctions between “you” and “I” and enabling a deeper consideration of what escapes.