Of ‘Decolonial Refusal’ and ‘Abolitionist Skepticism’

• In Event: The Colonial Fantasy of American Futurities

Abstract

This paper tracks the ways that traditions of “decolonial refusal” and “abolitionist skepticism” that emerge from Native/Indigenous and Black Studies expose the limits and violence of contemporary non-identitarian and non-representational impulses within white “critical” theory. Further, this article poses the question as to whether western forms of non-representational (subjectless and non-identitarian) theory can truly transcend the human through self-critique, self-abnegation and masochism alone? Ultimately, this paper argues that external pressure, specifically the kind of pressure that Native and Black feminist critique enact through either outright rejection or a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” is needed in order to truly address the recurrent problem of the violence of the human in continental theory.

Author

• Tiffany King, Georgia State University