Philosophy Today

Volume 67, Issue 4, Fall 2023

The Intersection of Black Studies and Continental Philosophy

Surpassed, Outstripped

Since the publication of Black Skin,White Masks, questions of blackness have invoked the problem as being related to time and temporality. Afropessimism has placed this temporal problem at the core of its endeavor. This paper takes that intuition as a means to interrogate and deepen Frank B. Wilderson III’s claim that black time is without narrative capacity or coordinates. Black time is thus one in which the movement of time is uncontestable. Moving through Patterson’s concept of natal alienation and then Heidegger and Derrida on Death and givenness, Wilderson’s argument can be substantiated. Specifically, if we understand black time as being nonauthentic rather than contained within Heidegger’s authenticity/inauthenticity constellation, and essentially bound up with an interminable and unsettled life debt that racial slavery entailed, there is a means to unfold Wilderson’s claim and approach the notion that what blackness gives is time.