Rhetorical Theory and Criticism: Rhetorical Theory – Contemporary Black Thought

Blackness is a condition for which Man and its onto-epistemological baggage remains a concern. Alongside its position as structural non-relation and/or impossibility, blackness might also be that which cannot help but submit the universalized European ideal of humanity to critical pressure. This seminar takes contemporary black thought to be narration of the embodied critique provided by those who live life amongst the “waste products and the blind spots that [may] have escaped the dialectic” (Adorno). The course will be grounded on turn-of-the-century texts by Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Denise Ferreira da Silva and Fred Moten, and will provide the opportunity to read a selection of recent monographs from the field of Black Studies.