'The Reason of Unreason': Achille Mbembe and David Theo Goldberg in conversation about Critique of Black Reason. (December 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Goldberg, David Theo
• Is Part Of: Theory, culture & society. Volume 35:Number 7/8(2018)
• Page Start: 205
• Page End: 227
• Publication Date: 2018-12
• Subjects: Afro-pessimism -- archives -- reason -- slavery -- unreason -- violence; Social sciences -- Periodicals; 301.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0263276418800843
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0263-2764

Abstract

David Theo Goldberg engages Achille Mbembe in a wide-ranging conversation on the key lines of analysis of Mbembe's book, The Critique of Black Reason . The discussion ranges across a broad swath of key themes: the constitutive feature of racisms in the making of modernity and modern capitalism as conceived through the global black experience; the African and French archives in constituting, resisting, and refashioning 'black reason' and its multiple registers; the centrality of slavery to this constitution and resistance; thinghood and humanity; liberalism as the basis for racial pessimism. The discussion closes with Mbembe's plea for a shared being and an exchange about repair and reparation.