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CHAPTER 1

THE QUESTION OF BLACK [begin strikethrough]BEING[end strikethrough]

This essent, through questioning, is held out into the possibility of nonbeing. Thereby the why takes on a different penetration.

HEIDEGGER, Introduction to Metaphysics

A question whose necessity is so fundamental that it must be unasked — the question of the meaning of black being, the question of the meaning of (black) things. We study in the sound of an unasked question. Our study is the sound of an unasked question. We study the sound of an unasked question.

FRED MOTEN, "Blackness and Nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh)"

BUILDING A WAY

One must ask a certain question of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], a question that opens us onto a horizon of representational and conceptual crisis. This question emerges within a context of urgency: the intensity of black suffering, spiritual and physical deprivation, political demoralization, and the proliferation and permanency of necropolitical agendas. The question, its urgency, and the crisis that it engenders recycle historically in various guises, and in each (re)incarnation, it demands an address — an address that seems impossible, since the discursive material we use to formulate an answer is also called into question. Hortense Spillers meditates on certain facets of this redoubling problematic when she suggests that in any investigation of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], "we are confronted by divergent temporal frames, or beats, that pose the problem of adequacy — how to reclaim an abandoned site of inquiry in the critical discourse when the very question that it articulates is carried along as part of the methodological structure [or metaphysical structure], as a feature of the paradigm that is itself under suspicion, while the question itself foregrounds a thematic that cannot be approached in any other way." The "unasked question," as Fred Moten would call it, is this "abandoned site of inquiry." My objective in this chapter is to return us to the abandoned, arid ontometaphysical space — the space and place of the question in ontometaphysics. I use the unasked and unanswerable question to "build a way," as Heidegger would describe it, through the treacherous terrain of ontometaphysics and antiblackness.

What follows is a tracing of this question through the discourses of ontometaphysics and the paradigm of the free black. My propositions attend to the important function of the Negro, or black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], in ontometaphysics: (1) The Negro is the incarnation of nothing that a metaphysical world tries tirelessly to eradicate. Black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is invented precisely for this function ontologically; this is the ontological labor that the Negro must perform in an antiblack world. (2) The Negro is invented, or born into modernity, through an ontometaphysical holocaust that destroys the coordinates of African existence. The Negro is not a human, since [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] in not an issue for it, and instead becomes "available equipment," as Heidegger would call it, for the purpose of supporting the existential journey of the human being. Black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is the evidence of an ontological murder, or onticide, that is irrecoverable and irremediable. The condition of this permanent severing between black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] and Being is what I call the "execration of Being." In this sense, Being does not withdraw from the Negro, as it does from the human, for what withdraws can reemerge. Instead, Being curses black-[begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] by creating an entity unintelligible within the field of ontology. (3) The Negro Question that becomes the obsession of antebellum culture ("What do we do about our free blacks?") masks the ontological stakes involved in answering the question, since what the question is really about, as I propose, is what we do about the nothing that terrorizes us, that destabilizes our metaphysical structure and ground of existence. The terms free and black do not just present political problems of citizenship, rights, and inclusion, but also present serious ontological problems, since the boundaries of ontology — between human and property and freedom and unfreedom — are thrown into crisis with the presence of the free black. Ultimately, I propose that the Negro Question is a proper metaphysical question, since the Negro is black and black(ness) has always been a terror for metaphysics. These propositions unfold through an engagement with different ontometaphysical discourses in the black radical tradition alongside and against Heidegger, since Heidegger's critique of metaphysics, as the disavowal, forgetting, and contempt of Nothing assists us in understanding how metaphysics engages the nothing that it despises but needs (the tension between hatred and necessity). I, however, depart from Heidegger, since black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is not human being (or Dasein) but available equipment, equipment in human form, that Heidegger does not consider because of his Eurocentric perspective.

BLACK, NOTHING, AND THE NEGRO

We can consider the Negro Question a proper metaphysical question. Heidegger reminds us that every metaphysical question always grasps the whole of the problematic of metaphysics. A proper question emerges within a context of urgency, but the investigation of the context and the question itself destabilizes the entire edifice within which the investigatory procedure is carried out, since the answer becomes a symptom of a larger problem. It is this larger problem (the "whole of the problematic of metaphysics," as Heidegger calls it) that the proper question is designed to address through a series of questions that, as they unfold, open the horizon of an empowered thinking. The proper question exposes an abyss, a black hole within the ontometaphysical tradition and its attendant discourses or, as Nahum Chandler aptly describes it, "the black in the whiteness of being, in the being of whiteness." The philosophical conditions that enable the tradition are themselves brought forward, questioned, and thrown into relief. To present a proper metaphysical question of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], however, our question, and procedure, must align with the philosophical instruction of Hortense Spillers to "strip down through layers of attenuated meanings, made an excess in time; over time, assigned a particular historical order, and there await whatever marvels of [our] own inventiveness." The objective of this question and our questioning is precisely to strip through layers of metaphysical baggage and attenuated meaning as they violently encrust over deep time and history. We can describe the whole problematic of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], then, as the aggregate, or collection, of these burdensome layers, which are traumatically imposed during the initiation of the transatlantic slave trade. But since "a genuine question is not done away with by finding an answer to it," according to Heidegger, the question remains as a feature of our own inventiveness. In other words, the question remains at the heart of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough]. And we must ask this question, since there is no getting rid of it, despite the marvelous power of our inventiveness. We can think, then, of Spillers's protocol of stripping through layers of attenuated meaning as the correction to Heidegger's Eurocentric Destruktion, or the "destructuring of the history of ontology," as he describes it in Being and Time. This is to say the destructuring of metaphysics must address the concealment of the Negro — buried deeply beneath layers of metaphysical violence. Our questions bring us to this concealment, within the history of ontology, as that kernel of antiblackness sustaining both metaphysics and ontology.

The question has been with black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], as a constitutive feature of it, since black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] was invented — since modernity gave birth to it through dispossession and abjection. We have grappled with this fundamental question for centuries, in various forms. Dubois asked a variation of this question: "What does it mean to be a problem?" This is, indeed, a proper metaphysical question, since it requires us to strip through layers of pulverizing meaning to arrive at a kernel of (non)meaning, or meaninglessness, as the answer to the question of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough]. The question that Dubois presents, "What does it mean to be a problem?," is both a metaphysical riddle and a formulation of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] — black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is this riddle. The question of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] must, then, start with the ontology of the problem. To be a problem is the being-ness of blackness. It is this problem that will preoccupy our concern here — the question of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] as the problem of ontometaphysics (put differently, we can rewrite Dubois's question as "what does it mean to be the problem of ontometaphysics?" What is the condition, or inhabitation, of this problem?). It is impossible to uncouple black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] from this problem. Exactly how does one be a problem? Or "inhabit" a problem, as Nahum Chandler might suggest is the riddle of blackness in modernity. When Hortense Spillers suggests that the black body is "reduced to a thing, to being for the captor," we can understand this being as the problem itself. Black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] embodies an ontometaphysical problem for the captor. Black being becomes a site of projection and absorption of the problem of metaphysics — a problem that the captor would wish to ignore or neglect by imposing it onto black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough]. Thus, black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is not only necessary for involuntary labor and pornotroping, but also necessary ontologically; it inhabits the problem of metaphysics. This inhabitation is the [begin strikethrough]space[end strikethrough] and [begin strikethrough]place[end strikethrough] of the Negro Question — our proper metaphysical question.

Thinkers from the antebellum period presented this problem as the "Negro Question." The question of the Negro is precisely the question of this problem. For Sylvia Wynter, the Negro Question cannot be a proper object of knowledge, given that the ruling episteme does not accommodate this strange being. Thus, the question itself and the metaphysical problem that it carries are positioned outside the frames of epistemology and its attendant discourses. For Wynter, the Negro is that being, or more accurately entity, that is excluded from the discourse of man and its overrepresentation of being otherwise. The problem that the Negro Question opens up is this position outside of man. We can present a reformulation of this proper metaphysical question, following Wynter: why does this outside position constitute a problem for the whole of metaphysics (and its paradoxical answer)? This problem is spatialized as the outside, which preconditions the metaphysical architecture of man, the privileged inside. But given that this outside position is actually an intimate aspect of the inside, since it provides the inside's condition of possibility, the problem is at the heart of the ontometaphysics of man. Black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is the absent center of the whole of metaphysics, and it, cartographically, constitutes the paradoxical inside/outside position of metaphysics. This begins to provide a path of investigation toward this proper metaphysical question. Why is black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] a problem? Why is this problem constitutive of an inside/outside paradox? Answering these questions, however, inevitably leads to more questions, or what I will call a fundamental question: How is it going with black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough]?

In his Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger presents the question "How is it going with Being" [Wie steht es um das Sein?] to indicate that this question is the fundamental question, even more fundamental than "why are there beings at all instead of nothing?" The importance of this question resides in the philosophy of the remains of Being, as Santiago Zabala has persuasively argued. Since being has become "just the sound of a word, a used-up term," Heidegger argued that we must destroy, or dismantle, the structure of metaphysics to renew a forgotten relation to Being, not as presence or object, but as the opening of existence itself — what Heidegger will later call "appropriation." Thus, the proper metaphysical question "How is it going with Being?" emerges after the destruction, or dismantling, of metaphysics; and after we have worn out the term, we must re-member Being by recollecting the fragments — the ontological pieces left after the destruction. "How is it going with Being?" is a way of inquiring about the status of Being after it has been thoroughly dismantled — what is left? Ontological investigations must now start with this fundamental question, according to Heidegger, to contend with the being abuse that has plagued the philosophical tradition from Plato onward. Reading Heidegger through Spillers, then, we could suggest that the task of Destruktion is to strip through layers of attenuated meaning, made in excess through the procedures and practices of metaphysics. The Heideggerian enterprise here is postmetaphysical to the extent that it urges us to twist metaphysics and instigate its self-consumption. This postmetaphysical movement marks the end of philosophy as we know it and inaugurates a thinking otherwise [Andenken] to arrive at a more fruitful understanding of the relation between Being and Dasein. "How is it going with Being?" dockets an uncovered or re-membered relationship between Dasein and Being, and it is the task of philosophy to illumine it.

If the aim of this postmetaphysical enterprise is to urge us to twist metaphysics to ask a more appropriate ontological question (i.e., the move from what is being to How is Being, as event and happening), it assumes that the metaphysics of being, its ontic science, has been settled and we can now get over metaphysics (even though we are still entrapped). Black being, however, does not easily afford this postmetaphysical movement, since the metaphysical question of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] — what is it? — has not been resolved, and thus, the ontological question, if one can be truly posed, what is the relationship between black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] and Being (or How is it going with black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough]?) is an unanswerable one (which, again, is why we must continually write black being under erasure). Put differently, the problem with the Negro Question is that we can never truly arrive at an appropriate ontological question, since black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is not ontological, but something other, something that lies outside of epistemology and ontology. This makes the Negro Question unanswerable on the register that Heidegger proposed for Dasein. The Negro Question is situated on a plane within/without metaphysics, but also outside the precincts of ontology. The space and place of the Negro Question are a problem for the whole of metaphysics, but a problem that provides the condition of possibility for human being to ask its fundamental question, "How is it going with Being?" The unpresentability of the Negro Question is the necessary ground for Dasein's ontological presentation.

To suggest that black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] constitutes the problem at the center of ontometaphysics, in the form of an unanswerable question, is to suggest that Heidegger's Destruktion relies on the indestructibility of antiblackness in modernity. Metaphysics can only be dismantled for Dasein because a primordial relationship between it and Being exists that metaphysics cannot pulverize, even though it tries with science, schematization, and technology, according to Heidegger. Thus, the dismantling or destruction of metaphysics is really the opening of a primordial relationality between Dasein and Being. But even though we can destroy metaphysics, in terms of twisting it and instigating its self-consumption [verwunden], we can never completely destroy it; a remainder or remnant will always persist within the very heart of the destructive enterprise. This remainder, this intransigent entity, is indestructible and, in fact, structures the project of destruction. It is indeed a paradoxical formulation that destruction depends on the kernel of indestructability at its core, but when we consider that something must remain for the philosophical enterprise to continue, then we understand that this remainder keeps the destructive movement going — it is its metaphysical fuel. I would also present another audacious claim and suggest that black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] is the name of this indestructible element because black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough]'s function within metaphysics is to inhabit the void of relationality — relationality between it and Being and relationality between it and human-being-ness and the world itself. Thus, we must reconceptualize black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] ontometaphysically as pure function and not relation (put differently, black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] emerges in modernity primarily to inhabit this treacherous position as function, which enables human beingness to engage in its projectionality into the world and to restore its forgotten relationship with Being. In a word, black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] helps the human being re-member its relation to Being through its lack of relationality. The essence of black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], like the essence of technology, is to open up an understanding for Dasein, it is always being for another. Black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough], then, is precisely the metaphysical entity that must remain for the post-metaphysical enterprise of freedom (the loosening up of metaphysical strictures) to occur for human beingness (or Dasein). This indestructible remainder is a problem for metaphysics, since it retains the trace of objectification that restricts complete freedom for Dasein, but it is also the answer to metaphysics, given that it serves as the catalyst for the self-consumption that engenders greater freedom, if not complete freedom, for Dasein. But this formulation presents more questions, proper metaphysical questions, that chart the course to the abyss of metaphysics, which is black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough]: why is black [begin strikethrough]being[end strikethrough] indestructible? Why has metaphysics been unable or unwilling to dismantle its remainder? How do we articulate the problem of black being, which is the problem for the whole of metaphysics?

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Excerpted from "Ontological Terror"
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