Davis 17

(Elliot, Relationality and The Non,

https://www.academia.edu/34969422/Relationality_and_The_Non)
Discourse on the intersection of antiblackness and capitalism is prevalent in many pieces
of Afro-pessimist literature that seek to decipher the way in which the two function
simultaneously and act as complements. The intersectionality of capitalism, as the
science of economy, and blackness, as an identity (or lack thereof), often generates two
opposing theses. The first of these theses is that capitalism is the nexus of antiblack
violence, being the invisible grammatical force that arbitrarily deems black bodies as
economically and socially unproductive and thus as wholly outside of relation to that
which possesses such a productive capacity (Wilderson’s ruse of analogy). The second
thesis, which also relies on the ruse of analogical relation, theorizes that blackness is
the thing that structures and defines capitalism, being the force that grants
capitalism’s value system coherence simply because it is not of that value system.
In this essay, I seek to reason three theses that each necessarily come to the conclusion
that it is blackness that structures capitalism, and pose an additional thesis on how to
understand methods of rupturing the antiblack dialectic.
The first of these theses is that capitalism is denotatively the science of relation. That is,
it works through the imposition of a value onto an object that is analogical to the value of
another object, and thus that can be exchanged for a quantity of the latter object. In
metaphysical terms, it operates through the imposition of analogical being onto
everything. This means that everything can be measured on the same metric of value,
from objects to people to identities. This analogy is then completely grounded in the
notion that everything possesses some sort of relation to everything else. For something
to be analogical to something else, or for that something to be exchanged for another
something, there must be some way to compare or synthesize the aforementioned things.
This synthesis is derived from relation, as to conduct a comparative analysis one must
first understand these things as able to be compared: as commensurable, even if
asymmetrical (asymmetry being characteristic of a force that still exists on the plain of
being of that which it counters). If something cannot be in some way related to another
thing, even if this relation occurs through identifying the fact that both of the related
things are on opposite ends of the spectrum, then those two things are
incommensurable, or unable to be evaluated using an identical or even vaguely similar
metric. Think of it as trying to convert ten dollars to a quantity of Euros, versus trying to
convert ten dollars to one dollar. The first is completely possible, as, even though Euros
and dollars are different currencies, they possess an analogy that allows them to coexist
and be exchanged. Now, consider the second circumstance. Whereas we are using the
same metric at face value, something interesting happens when we attempt to execute
the exchange. The dollar, being only one currency, necessitates that each quantity of
dollars be equal to only that quantity. Any attempt at deviating from that rule completely
voids the purpose of having a currency, as every different quantity is supposed to possess
a uniform analogy to every other quantity, even more uniform than converting a dollar
into a Euro. This means that a conversion from ten dollars to one dollar eliminates the
rudimentary analogy between different quantities of dollars, effectively creating a new
dollar currency completely exterior to the American dollar. But, here is the interesting
part. Unlike the Euro, this new dollar currency cannot be exchanged for the American
dollar, as its existence relies on the crucial assumption that one dollar, using the exact
same metric of value as the American dollar, is equal to ten dollars. This then creates two
separate global economies, one in which the dollar is worth one of itself, and one in
which the dollar is worth ten of itself. These two economies cannot merge, as their
assignment of value onto the dollar is incommensurable with the other’s assignment of
value onto the dollar. This hypothetical circumstance is particularly good at illustrating
capitalism’s imposition of value on the physical plain. Thus, it is necessary to see analogy
and relation as the foundation of capitalism, and incommensurability as a rejection of
this analogy.
The next thesis is that civil society and the world writ large conceptualize black identity
as wholly outside of and incommensurable with relation. That is, as possessing no
analogical relation to any being: Nonexistence. We can reason this thesis through
looking at the implications of blackness as a product of slavery and the European
imposition of identity. Before there were blackness and whiteness, there were only
Europeanness and Africanness. These two identities were incommensurable with one
another precisely because identitarian value did not exist, rather the metric for the value
of a human life resided on the character of that individual as opposed to their skin color.
However, when Europeans came to Africa in slave ships, they needed a way to justify the
inferiority of Africans. That is, to manufacture a difference that could be perceived as
monumental enough to warrant inhumanity. This inhuman label was blackness
(Europeans being white), as the only difference Europeans saw between themselves and
Africans was skin color. Europeanness became the accepted human, defined only in
relation to what it could never be: an African. Blackness is then the embodiment of Anti
African violence, as it is the single thing that justified gratuitous acts of slavery, murder,
torture, and rape against African people for over a century. The only way that something
this vile—this horrendous and this warrantless—could be explained is through
Wilderson’s thesis of an absence of analogy. Humans work through an empathetic code
that dictates and assigns feelings of remorse, pity, and sympathy towards other beings,
and this code necessarily resides on the existence of analogy to these beings. For one to
feel bad for another, they must first be able to relate to that other. Blackness was then
strategically created by Europeans to be incommensurable with whiteness—not different,
not asymmetrical, but completely exterior to any possible articulation of white being.
This then meant that empathy, being the anthropological expression of relation, was
reserved only for those that possessed this necessary analogical relation. Even animals
had the capacity to exist on the same plain of being as Europeans, as, though they were
different, their being was still quantifiable and able to be translated into the human
empathetic value metric. Yes, they were lower than humans, but they still were.
Inhumanness manifested in a different way for Africans, as they weren’t positioned lower
on the relational chain, they were positioned outside of it altogether. This ideological
construction of blackness as the nonsubject was thus a means of justifying any act of
violence against black bodies. The violence of relationality then illustrates the violence of
its lack in black subjectivity.
The third and final thesis is that things are defined only in relation to what they are not.
In other words, the only way that anybody can grasp the being of an object or concept is
by knowing every single thing that the aforementioned being can never be. For instance,
the only way that I know that I am sitting on a chair at this very moment is because I
understand that it is not a cat, I understand that it is not a house, I understand that it is
not my grandmother, nor my civics teacher; rather, through the infinite process of
elimination that my brain calculates in less than a microsecond, I can come to the
conclusion that what I am sitting on is in fact a chair. If I had not first narrowed down
every other possibility—say I was tied in between a chair and a person—then I would
have absolutely no way to metrically determine the semiotic position of that object. Is it a
chair, or is it a person? Even though I had already crossed an infinite number of items off
of the list, just one straggler ruined the entire process. When determining the position of
an object in the ontological matrix, adding one to infinity is not only possible, it is
unquestionably essential to the entire operation. Just one outlier has the potential
override one’s ability to codify an object’s semiotic status. Thus, unless one possesses an
understanding of what a thing can never be, then they will never be able to understand
what that thing is. Specifically in terms of analogical capitalism, the only way that I
understand an object’s value is because I understand every value that it is not. I only
know that a pencil is worth ten cents because I understand the magnitude of a cent and
its relation to every other value in the dollar system. Moreover, the only way that
capitalism knows the value of a cisgender man is because it understands that it is
metrically above a cisgender female. Thus, the only way to assign anything definition is
through a comprehensive understanding of what that definition can never embody.
To review, I have reasoned the logical consistency of three theses. The first is that
capitalism is the science of relation, being a grammar that organizes everything to fit a
measurable scale of analogy. The second is that blackness was constructed by Europeans
to be incommensurable with and exterior to empathetical relation, as an absence of
analogy was the only way in which violence against them could be gratuitous. The last
thesis is that things are defined only in relation to everything that they can never be, as
one can never know what something is unless they are able to identify everything it isn’t.
This means that, using the fundamental assumptions made by these three theses, one
could logically reason that if capitalism is relation, and antiblackness is only justified
through the absence of relation (seeing as blackness is without analogy to any identity),
then capitalism must be structured by the only thing that it can never be, which is the
force that ensures the nonrelationality of blackness. This then necessarily indicates that
the only way that capitalism renders itself coherent is through ensuring the incoherence
of black identity, meaning that antiblackness is the nexus of capitalism.
Analytically, one can reason this claim too. Capitalism is, under the definition that I’ve
provided, the force that imposes analogy onto everything—it makes it so that everything
conforms to a decipherable scale of analogical relation, so that everything’s value can be
quantified and measured. Whiteness is the definition of analogical being. It was the
identity created to impose a hierarchy onto living things and situate certain bodies at the
top of this hierarchy, whiteness being the marker for topness. This means that capitalism
was literally created for the purpose of defining the position of whiteness and sufficing
the white desire to manufacture a system of analogy. That is, to not only manufacture
analogy and relation in race, but to impose it onto every material object and
metaphysical concept that existed in order to universalize its grip on the world.
Capitalism was necessarily created to structure whiteness as the dominant analogical
position. Moreover, whiteness was only created as a means of understanding the human
subject. Specifically, it was created to pose a counter definition to blackness, or to solidify
the African’s position as the non. Being wasn’t first created until bodies had to juxtapose
it with nonbeing. Thus, blackness was a necessary requisite for the formation and
definition of whiteness, as without nonbeing, being cannot be defined. This would
indicate that blackness produced whiteness, which produced capitalism. Capitalism is
not the beginning of this dialectic, it is if anything the product of the product.
There is then a paradox that lies in the idea of the black commodity—I.e. in the ability to
trade the slave. For, to trade the slave was to assign their being some kind of value, or to
give their life a quantifiable scale under which it could begin to be compared to other
bodies. This was obviously antithetical to the white mission to exclude the slave from
analogy, as to give a slave’s life a numerical value, no matter how menial, was to
reconcile with the idea that it possessed being that had the ability to be measured and
compared with that of any other being. Capitalism was created solely for the purpose of
defining the analogy of that which possessed being, so to associate capitalist value with
blackness on any scale was to provide blackness an avenue through which it could
articulate itself and break the human dialectical structuring of race. Whiteness could not
afford any such break, as its ability to articulate itself relied on the inability of blackness
to do so. Thus, there resulted in a division between blackness and the ability to do labor.
When one traded a black body, they were not trading that body—rather, they were
trading and quantifying the labor that that body could produce. This means that
whiteness gained the ability to sum up the capacities of a black body—that is, to
recognize that body’s ability to be productive, to recognize its ability to do labor, and to
recognize the value of those traits (no matter if they required a unique form of
subjugation)—while simultaneously separating those attributes from the body itself. To
even begin to recognize a body’s ability to do something valuable is to breathe human life
into that body. The ability to be valuable is unique to the ability to be given human
analogy, and thus it was necessary to sever this valuability from the black subject.
The use of value to define humanity can even be seen in the treatment of nonhuman
animals. When a dog does labor, you reward that dog with a treat. That is in and of itself
an act of recognizing that that dog did something uniquely valuable, which is an act of
giving that dog access to the human relational matrix (as only empathy can explain your
compulsion to reward the dog). However, when a slave does labor, you reward that slave
with lashings and a 2-hour night’s sleep. This ability to sever any positive value from
blackness is what gives blackness nonbeing. Moreover, it is the largest thing that extends
antiblack violence into modern times. The achievements of black folks have been on the
rise in countries like the United States since the abolition of physical slavery. We have
come from actively ensuring the illiteracy of black populations to giving black Americans
the ability to become president of the United States. This is surely a utopia, is it not? This
question actively neglects the pervasive slave rhetoric that still dominates American
society. Even though black Americans have come to achieve ends that our society
perceives as monumentally good, whiteness still possesses the capacity to separate these
achievements from the black body itself in order to ensure the perpetuity and gratuity of
antiblack violence. I.e., these achievements cannot be used to define the black
population, as to give black bodies the ability to sum up their own capacities is to grant
them coherence in the capitalist human economy. This ensures that, no matter how far
the black community progresses, they will still be actively omitted from the racial
dialectic of the United States. This is then the similar rhetoric that was used to separate
labor from the black body, as the point of slave auctions was not to give the body itself
value, but rather the labor that it could do. In other words, the United States has
inherited the ability to assign value to a black body’s means of production without
assigning any tangible value to the body itself. Therefore, we see predominantly black
communities in severe poverty, still given nothing by the white driven American
economy. We see black bodies being expended endlessly by police, as to be black is not to
be a person, it is to be the caricature of a criminal. This is not the end of slavery, it is the
perfection of slavery. The slave can no longer escape the plantation—there can be no
more underground railroad because slavery itself has expanded to being below the
surface—as the entire world is now the plantation. To quote Anthony Paul Farley, “The
slave only becomes the perfect slave at the end of the timeline, only under conditions of
total juridical freedom. It is only under conditions of freedom, of bourgeois legality, that
the slave can perfect itself as a slave by freely choosing to bow down before its master.”
The United States has found a way to make African folks serve the master; it has found a
way to make them be complicit in their own labor; it has found a way to simulate
“bourgeois legality”, all while simultaneously ensuring that they remain the targets of
gratuitous violence. This then follows the same logic of archaic slavery: “The labor is not
theirs, it is ours.” Thus, we must not understand the violence of capitalism in its ability to
articulate the value of black bodies, but rather in its inability to articulate the value of
black bodies.
If all of this is true, then attacking capitalism will have no effect on the antiblackness
inherent to civil society. Rather, it will perfect the antiblack grammar of the world,
destroying the thing that hierarchizes beings while simultaneously ensuring that black
folks are the only ones excluded from the new homogenous system. The hierarchy—the
grammar—only concerns the value of that which it perceives as something. Every being
possesses a degree of somethingness that, though distributed unevenly, makes its value
decipherable. Blackness was posited not at the bottom of the something hierarchy, but
rather wholly exterior to it—existing outside of its direct line of sight, only visible
through its periphery—merely a blurry figure that we glimpse out of the corner of our
eye, disappearing every time we attempt to look directly at it. The imposition of
incoherence onto black ontology and its stigmatization is why we must devise a strategy
that actively dismantles the structures that methodically condemn incoherence. An
unfolding of identity manifests as the only method of resisting the antiblack violence that
sustains the world. White lucidity grounds itself in the unintelligibility of black being,
meaning that whiteness possesses analogy simply because it understands what can never
possess any analogy (blackness). White being then necessarily understands itself as
coherent and intelligible, as well as every other identity on its plain of value (every
identity possesses an identical degree of intelligibility even though this analogy
distributes value differently), whereas it understands blackness as unintelligible. That is,
wholly unable to be placed on any scale of analogy precisely because its value cannot be
deciphered. This generates a dangerous paradox that the white body capitalizes on and
exploits.
If something is unintelligible, its being cannot be calculated or compared to that of any
other being, and therefore transcends normative kinds of oppression. The reason why
other forms of targeted, oppressive violence occur is because capitalism and whiteness
have rendered those bodies intelligible and translates them into the language of the
hierarchy. Thus, there is a clear delineation between white being and the being of that
‘other’. However, because black bodies were relegated to the position of the analogically
unintelligible—exterior to the hierarchy—they couldn’t be placed on this oppressive
matrix. Whiteness cannot understand itself as possessing a being distinct from and
against blackness (asymmetry), precisely because black subjectivity cannot be placed.
This is why whiteness constructed a new version of deviancy; that is, something so
utterly deviant that it is the literal demon of this earth. We cannot see it, we cannot
understand it, and therefore it is the most dangerous deviant of them all. This was their
construction of blackness (the paradox of rendering the unintelligible while it still
remains unintelligible), as to be black was to be inarticulatable or incalculable; unknown.
They then taught us not necessarily to hate this deviant, but to fear this deviant. It is the
fugitive, the odd man out, the needle in the haystack that if stepped on would pierce you
up into your heart.
This fear then culminated in the inability to feel for the deviant. If one simply hates
another—as was the oppression felt by other intelligible deviant bodies—one feels two
things. The first is an insatiable desire to destroy the physical body of the other. This was
exampled in things like genocide (being the material act of murder). Still, however
terrible an act of genocide may be, this destruction is not necessarily coupled by any true
act of ontological murder, as there is no pervasive reason to murder the being of the
hated other—They are not a threat, they are merely an annoyance. There are no
ontological stakes. The being of the destroyer is not jeopardized—the coherence of the
colonizer’s identity doesn’t rely on the position of the identity that they are targeting;
thus, the only thing in jeopardy is the invasive identity’s physical security and comfort.
Therefore, because the issue resides entirely on a physical situation rather than a mode
of existence, there is an avenue through which this oppressed other can articulate their
being through compromise. The ability to compromise with this other after the hatred
has been cleansed is seen in the aftermath of genocide—that is, in the period in which the
destroyer attempts to reconcile with their previous sins and let that other know that they
are not hated anymore (as long as the latter conforms to the norms of Whiteness, of
course). Therefore, the second attribute of hatred is the human desire to rid oneself of
hatred. No sane human wants to hate, for to hate is to lose an integral part of your
humanity; that is, the ability to feel as though you are in touch with other humans. The
mitigation of hatred was then exercised in trying to integrate the intelligible other into
White society—To make them assimilate to white culture, even if they weren’t
biologically white, to make them more white. The whiter they were, the less capacity they
had to be hated.
Fear spurs a similar reaction to hatred, but is distinct in its ontological urgency. When
one fears something, they constantly run away from it. It is forever persisting, and is,
unlike hatred, something that threatens ontological security and is absolutely necessary
be purged of. If the identity of the master is one of the conqueror—of the dominant
being, of the superior angel—then they must maintain that identity, which is grounded in
strength, in order to maintain their coherence. Fear is an act of showing weakness; it
refuses to let up and chases you until you chase it back. Any attempt at reconciling or
compromising with fear is an act of giving it the ability to catch up and take hold of you.
Thus, in the presence of a frightening situation, one doesn’t try to understand fear—for
to understand it is to become more afraid. One doesn’t try to reason with fear—for to
reason with it is to show the weakness that the feared object supposedly thrives on. One
doesn’t try to ignore fear—for anything that induces enough fear is impossible to ignore.
Instead, one tries to overcome fear. That is, to prove that that which is feared cannot and
is not a true reason to be afraid. The traditional way of eliminating fear is then to
eliminate the feared object or concept. Once that object has been removed, the fear that
it induces no longer persists.
However easy that may seem, the juxtaposition of the master and slave in the ontological
matrix presents a unique issue that forecloses normative ways of dealing with fear. The
being of whiteness only understands itself if it understands the nonbeing of blackness. If
blackness is eliminated from this earth, then whiteness will lose its coherence. This is
precisely why this fear is not a temporary situation (as is hatred), as it is grounded in a
single, totalizing positional being. Thus, to address the difficulty of eliminating that
which defines your very essence, whiteness overcomes its fear through endlessly
justifying its superiority over the deviant non being. The logic is then that there is no
reason to fear the deviant because it is below and inferior to that which can access being.
This endless process of proving that the known is superior to the unknown comes from
exposing the unknown entity to any and every form of violence, be that slavery, murder,
torture, rape, dismemberment, maiming, spirit-murdering—these are all methods of
articulating superiority to the unknown.
The only way to counter this violence is then to embrace the unknown and the paralyzing
fear of descending into the existential abyss. Think of the abyss as the manifestation of
that which we can never define. We look down into it, attempting to understand what is
at the bottom (or if there is a bottom) while finding absolutely no indication or
explanation of what lies below. The only thing that we have the ability to see is pitch
darkness, which further obfuscates the outcome of a plunge into its maw. Yet, even while
standing there, shivering in fear, we descend. We do not shy away from it, we do not run
away from it, we do not even attempt to overcome it. Instead, we submit ourselves to it,
welcoming the paralysis induced by experiencing the mystic and frightening unknown.
One doesn’t descend into the abyss to eliminate fear—for, they understand that no level
of descent can render the unknown in a way inculcative of ontological security. Instead,
they descend to welcome fear. This does not make them less afraid, it conversely
preserves, sustains, and amplifies their fear. To reject the known and embrace the fearful
descent is the basis for any articulation of black being, as it refuses to conform to the
white metric that excludes and demonizes the black deviant and instead welcomes the
plunge into the abyss. A descent into the abyss terrifies with the question “what happens
if we hit the ground?”, and even more at the possibility that we may never hit the ground.
To preserve the double bind of unknown terror is then to reject the stigmatization of fear
and of the unknown that ensures the coherence of the white subject and the incoherence
of the black subject. Instead of residing in the comfort of my home, I take it upon myself
to wander aimlessly into the mountains, never looking forward and never looking back.