Black Ontology: Contemporary Black Fiction and the Problem of Metaphysics

“Black Ontology: Contemporary Black Fiction and the Problem of Metaphysics” addresses the ability of black life to have social meaning or significance without making violence or death an essential or defining element of black life or without emphasizing post-racial transcendence as the inevitable path for black identity. I look to fiction that does not allow essentialized definitions of blackness, whether defined through oppression (Afropessimism) or optimism.Through the works of Percival Everett, Paul Beatty, and Octavia Butler, I look at narratives that allow the black subject to be read outside of the public conception of blackness, while not denying the role this definition plays in providing meaning to the subject. Current arguments about black ontology which posit black life as existing in an antiblack world, most saliently those forwarded by Frank Wilderson and Fred Moten, depict black characters as confirming or resisting their own preconceived understanding of “blackness.” The authors in my study, by contrast, propose a different model, portraying black subjects who do not express the meaning that critics such as Wilderson and Moten attempt to wrest from them. This countercanon of philosophizing instead points towards evacuation, erasure, and effacement—clarifying that essentializing meaning in black fiction through the political narrative of oppression voids any ability to speak about black subjects qua black without also simultaneously commenting on their political position. My dissertation provides a philosophical basis for understanding the current political movement, inclusive of Black Lives Matter. Percival Everett, Paul Beatty, and Octavia Butler clarify that when we say “black lives matter,” we are missing aspects of black being that the political narrative by definition precludes, and the novel restores.