A zine version of Marquis Bey’s “Impossible Life: a Meditation on Paraontology” is now available in our printworks library
https://illwill.com/print/impossible-life
Is it possible to twist free of the ontological apparatus of anti-blackness? Marquis Bey intervenes into the debate around Afropessimism.
"The 'para' in paraontology invites us to care less about the mandates of ontology — mandates that offer paltry, unchosen options that stanch the possibility of life lived otherwise — and instead to care more about all those other things we might have been and might be if only we could unleash our imaginations."
For those less familiar with Marquis Bey's work or the relationship between afro-pessimism and anarchism, we recommend our interview with Bey from October 2021:
We've been thinking in and through afropessimism and its identification of anti-blackness as foundational to the modern world order since we began Ill Will. Here are a few articles that touch on these themes:
Print version of Wilderson's classic article The Prison Slave as Hegemony’s Silent Scandal which (along with Saidya Hartman's Scenes of Subjection) first articulated the afropessimist position : https://illwill.com/print/the-prison-slave-as-hegemonys-silent-scandal
Onticide: Afropessimism, Queer Theory, and Ethics: https://illwill.com/onticide-afropessimism-queer-theory-and-ethics
‘We’re Trying to Destroy the World’:
Anti-Blackness and Police Violence After Ferguson (interview with Frank Wilderson): https://illwill.com/were-trying-to-destroy-the-world-anti-blackness-and-police-violence-after-ferguson
Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope: https://illwill.com/black-nihilism-and-the-politics-of-hope
As Free as Blackness Will Make Them (interview with Frank Wilderson): https://illwill.com/as-free-as-blackness-will-make-them