Papers by John Gillespie Jr.
Philosophy Today, 2023
This essay produces a paradigmatic analysis of anti-Blackness from within the history and philoso... more This essay produces a paradigmatic analysis of anti-Blackness from within the history and philosophy of biology in order to explore Frantz Fanon's concept of ontological resistance. Through developing Sylvia Wynter's notion of the Darwinian Imaginary alongside an Afropessimist paradigmatic analysis, the paper argues that scientific humanism's claim that the Black is "the ostensible missing link between rational humans and irrational animals" (Wynter 2003: 266) is a form of metaphysical violence that the Black cannot ontologically resist. This heretical reading of three canonical figures in Western bioscience-Carl Linnaeus, George Cuvier, and Charles Darwin-is an attempt to synthesize Wynter's demonic ground and Wilderson's grammatology in order to develop a Black anti-philosophy of science that thinks antagonistically about what it means to be "the missing link" in the chain of Human being.
Catalyst: Feminism, Theory and Technoscience, 2022
This essay reexamines the life of the three enslaved Black "women" Anarcha, Lucy and Betsy at the... more This essay reexamines the life of the three enslaved Black "women" Anarcha, Lucy and Betsy at the hands of the acclaimed "Father of Modern Gynecology" J. Marion Sims through the lens of Afropessimism as a means of developing a new analytics of seeing modern scientific development. Through a critical Black studies engagement with the work of Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, the paper sets out to explain and expand the concept of 'primitive accreditation' as it relates to the foundational narratives and performances of violence constitutive of the modern scientific conceptual economy. Through paradigmatic analysis, the essay aims to antagonize the ease in which anti-Blackness coheres bio-centric notions of gender, sexuality, and humanity as well as suggest that science studies as a field has not yet wrestled with the gender/genre question of Blackness as a problem for the axioms of thought and being.
Critical Ethnic Studies, 2019
Talks by John Gillespie Jr.
Abolitionish: A Podcast at the End of the World, 2021
Content Warning: This episode features explicit discussion of Black suicide and suicidal ideation... more Content Warning: This episode features explicit discussion of Black suicide and suicidal ideation. Complementary conversations on afropessimism and black mental health. First up is swim., a Philly-raised musician and PhD student in the Department of Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. After being introduced to existentialism through rap and poetry at a young age, swim. continues to pursue questions about Black existence in his music and theory. On this episode, he tells us about the first poem he wrote, shares some (mis)conceptions about afropessimism, and teases his in-progress dissertation thinking suicide as a problem for thought. Oh, and a song!
We're then joined by Dalyn Pacheco-Smith, a Black LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) from San Bruno, California now living in Metro Detroit. After receiving his Master's in Counseling Psychology with a focus on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Marriage and Family Therapy, Dalyn worked with Black youth in Oakland. And, after experiencing firsthand the limits of therapy as a client and clinician, he's imagining a different approach to being with Black clients, inside and outside of the room. On this episode, he shares stories of practicing-while-Black and his audacious hope for a future where Black rage lives.
Poet, musician, and PhD student John Gillespie Jr. (aka swim.) joins the show to discuss his art ... more Poet, musician, and PhD student John Gillespie Jr. (aka swim.) joins the show to discuss his art and scholarship around suicide in the Black community.
Conference Presentations by John Gillespie Jr.
This conference paper focuses on the way in which various dimensions of difference - racial, sexu... more This conference paper focuses on the way in which various dimensions of difference - racial, sexual, corporeal, psychic, and otherwise - shape public (and psychiatric) responses to Black suicidal acts and ideations by providing a brief reading of a section given by the interviewee, Ida Blackshear Hutchinson, in the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writer’s Project. The focus of my reading will be on the suicide of a Black woman named Lucy in order to illustrate how the centrality of the suicide note in the study of suicide more generally is complicated by the structure of antiblack slavery and how these problematics have come to shape the public perception that, “Negroes Won't Commit Suicide."
The following paper will look abstractly at three occasions of Black resistance: first, the 'We C... more The following paper will look abstractly at three occasions of Black resistance: first, the 'We Charge Genocide' Petition; second, Ruby Bridges' first day of school; third, the 1969 Afro-American Society occupation of Willard Straight Hall at Cornell University. Upon looking abstractly at the instances, the paper will argue that an outline of the metaphysical violence of the conceptual economy of the West is necessary to gathering an understanding as to how anti-Black violence gets rendered illegible in these scenarios.
In Frantz Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Mask,’ Fanon takes two chapters of his first book to analyze... more In Frantz Fanon’s ‘Black Skin, White Mask,’ Fanon takes two chapters of his first book to analyze the, ‘The Woman of Color and The White Man,’ as well as ‘The Man of Color and The White Woman.’ Fanon does not, however, spend a chapter on the intramural Black (sexual) relation. In this letter-essay, written
to a Black lover, the author seek to address and work-through this intramural absence within the text of Fanon in order to raise the question of whether or not Black love is or is not possible in an anti-Black world. Turning to the insights of Afropessimist theories of Blackness-as-Nothingness, while relying on psychoanalytic and Black feminist critiques of the heteronormative investment of the gender normativity itself, the author argues that Black love is a nihilist love, a relationship of Nothingness-with-Nothingness, that can only be brought into existence through a monstrous intimacy with non-existence.
In this paper I present an argument for the constitutive relation between Blackness and Stupidity... more In this paper I present an argument for the constitutive relation between Blackness and Stupidity in the work of Immanuel Kant. The return to Immanuel Kant in Black Studies by theorist such as Da Silva, Zakiyyah Jackson, Ronald Judy, Fred Moten and Anthony Paul Farley all point to different intonations of a similar gesture in regards to the place of Blackness and Philosophy in the canons of Thought which onto-epistemically institute the Enlightenment play of Reason as the still reigning scene of regulation in the very nature of the Being of Human being and the axioms of canonical Philosophy, i.e. the Doctrines of Thought and the Museum of Ideation. The following account is an account of how the play of Reason is a theater of cruelty for the Black precisely in and through the way in which the Black gets named Stupid through its universal nomos.
Here, we intend to tell an impossible story of a black girl, a suicidal black girl, in hopes of l... more Here, we intend to tell an impossible story of a black girl, a suicidal black girl, in hopes of listening closer. In our investigation, we center those Afropessimist ‘facts of blackness’ (natal alienation, gratuitous violence, general dishonor) as crucial to any discussion of the Black, and as paradigmatic conditions present and pressurizing the case of Naika Venant in specific. The inability to ground a sense of commonsense to Naika Venant’s actions produces in an anti-Black World - a crisis in empathetic identification. This paper attempts to dwell in this crisis of empathetic identification, the incapacity through which one can ‘feel for’ the suicidal Black girl as a means of outlining the problem Black suicide presents for the Human when the Human’s humanity is attached to notions of ‘honor’ and ‘recognition’ disabused of the Black.
Frantz Fanon writes in Black Skin, White Mask that, “We believe that the juxtaposition of the bla... more Frantz Fanon writes in Black Skin, White Mask that, “We believe that the juxtaposition of the black and white races have resulted in a psycho-existential complex.” We concur with that statement and look to investigate the way that black suicide as an implosive performance of psycho-somatics re-writes the world’s expectations. This is done, not as a means to glorify black suicide, but as means to shine light on the horrifying design of the anti-black paradigm that presents immobility as the only possible form of mobility, and self-destruction as an optimal modality of agency . “The name psychosomatic pathology,” Fanon says, “is given to the general body of organic disorders developed in response to a situation of conflict. Psycho-somatic, because its determinism is psychic in origin. This pathology is considered a way the organism can respond, in other words how it adapts to the conflict, the disorder being both a symptom and a cure.” We read this Fanonian conflict as an elaboration of paradigmatic relations where a Manichean conflict between “a white folks’ sector” and “a sector of niggers,” results in Blackness being consistently born into a dehumanization, a structural positioning in-absence. These dynamics lay the foundations for a theory of gratuitous violence. And yet, I argue that Fanon’s work is deeper than a theory of social death, not because of an insistence on social life, but because of an insistence that gratuitous violence becomes gratuitous trauma and that this relationship between metaphysical violence and psychic damage present problems for thought worth thinking through.
Teaching Documents by John Gillespie Jr.
The following "Introduction to Black (Fashion) Studies" syllabus is constructed for an introducto... more The following "Introduction to Black (Fashion) Studies" syllabus is constructed for an introductory level Writing, Research and Argumentation course at the University of California, Irvine. In this Writing 60 course, students learn fundamental principles of writing, research, and argumentation through the lens of black fashion studies. This lens introduces students to issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, environmentalism, and more all through the lens of Black and fashion studies.
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Papers by John Gillespie Jr.
Talks by John Gillespie Jr.
We're then joined by Dalyn Pacheco-Smith, a Black LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) from San Bruno, California now living in Metro Detroit. After receiving his Master's in Counseling Psychology with a focus on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Marriage and Family Therapy, Dalyn worked with Black youth in Oakland. And, after experiencing firsthand the limits of therapy as a client and clinician, he's imagining a different approach to being with Black clients, inside and outside of the room. On this episode, he shares stories of practicing-while-Black and his audacious hope for a future where Black rage lives.
Conference Presentations by John Gillespie Jr.
to a Black lover, the author seek to address and work-through this intramural absence within the text of Fanon in order to raise the question of whether or not Black love is or is not possible in an anti-Black world. Turning to the insights of Afropessimist theories of Blackness-as-Nothingness, while relying on psychoanalytic and Black feminist critiques of the heteronormative investment of the gender normativity itself, the author argues that Black love is a nihilist love, a relationship of Nothingness-with-Nothingness, that can only be brought into existence through a monstrous intimacy with non-existence.
Teaching Documents by John Gillespie Jr.
We're then joined by Dalyn Pacheco-Smith, a Black LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) from San Bruno, California now living in Metro Detroit. After receiving his Master's in Counseling Psychology with a focus on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Marriage and Family Therapy, Dalyn worked with Black youth in Oakland. And, after experiencing firsthand the limits of therapy as a client and clinician, he's imagining a different approach to being with Black clients, inside and outside of the room. On this episode, he shares stories of practicing-while-Black and his audacious hope for a future where Black rage lives.
to a Black lover, the author seek to address and work-through this intramural absence within the text of Fanon in order to raise the question of whether or not Black love is or is not possible in an anti-Black world. Turning to the insights of Afropessimist theories of Blackness-as-Nothingness, while relying on psychoanalytic and Black feminist critiques of the heteronormative investment of the gender normativity itself, the author argues that Black love is a nihilist love, a relationship of Nothingness-with-Nothingness, that can only be brought into existence through a monstrous intimacy with non-existence.