Abstract
Fred Moten offers a unique philosophical perspective on the deadlock between black optimism and Afro-Pessimism. This essay presents Moten’s “black mysticism” as a philosophy that imagines blackness without Being, thus shifting emphasis from a phenomenology of anti-Blackness (political ontology) to a phenomenology of black spirit (black mysticism). By shifting emphasis, Moten opens up an alternative grammar for understanding black existence and black endurance in a hostile world.
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