Description
Book SynopsisIn
Stolen Life—the second volume in his landmark trilogy
consent not to be a single being—Fred Moten engages with the work of thinkers ranging from Kant to Saidiya Hartman, undertaking an expansive exploration of blackness as it relates to black life and the collective refusal of social death.
Trade Review"It's this spirit of the collective effort of study and exchange and resonance, the effort to keep the channels open and keep listening, that has made Moten (or, maybe, 'Moten/s') such a celebrated thinker. At the end of sentences like these, you want to say something like Amen." -- Jess Row * Bookforum *
"At a time when both theory and criticism are frequently and convincingly attacked as exhausted forms, Moten’s trilogy has reinvented both. . . . In its mixture of theoretical complexity and disarming directness, Moten’s beautifully written trilogy offers the sheer pleasure of art." -- Lidija Haas * Vulture *
"My favorite book(s) of 2018 are the three volumes of Fred Moten’s consent not to be a single being, individually titled
Black and Blur,
Stolen Life, and
The Universal Machine. In this collection of essays stretching back fifteen years, Moten challenges the reader to imagine a radically interconnected aesthetic and political sphere that stretches from Glenn Gould to Fanon to Kant to Theaster Gates, sometimes in the space of a single sentence. This trilogy is one of the great intellectual adventures of our era." -- Jess Row * Bookforum *
"2018 must go down for me as the year of Fred Moten’s trilogy:
Black and Blur,
Stolen Life, and
The Universal Machine. You could say they’re essays about art, philosophy, blackness, and the refusal of social death, but I think of them more as a fractal universe forever inviting immersion and exploration, a living force now inhabiting my bookshelf."
-- Maggie Nelson * Bookforum *
"
consent not to be a single being, titled after a phrase of Édouard Glissant’s, ranges across an impressive number of disciplines: black studies, performance studies, aesthetics, phenomenology, ontology, ethnomusicology, jazz history, comparative literature, critical theory, etc. Without announcing its intervention as interdisciplinary–Moten deftly renders discipline beside the point. . . . Taken together, the series amounts to a powerful argument for black study—as an analytic, an impetus, a mode, the collective shout from a radical vista, whose bellow requires nothing less than 'passionate response' (Moten 2003)." -- Mimi Howard * boundary 2 *
"Whether reading his poetry or theory, listening to his lectures, Moten will change how you think about almost everything." -- Melissa Chadburn * Literary Hub *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Preface ix
1. Knowledge of Freedom 1
2. Gestural Critique of Judgment 96
3. Uplift and Criminality 115
4. The New International of Decent Feelings 140
5. Rilya Wilson, Precious Doe, Buried Angel 152
6. Black Op 155
7. The Touring Machine (Flesh Thought Inside Out) 161
8. Seeing Things 183
9. Air Shaft, Rent Party 188
10. Notes on Passage 191
11. Here, There, and Everywhere 213
12. Anassignment Letters 227
13. The Animaternalizing Call 237
14. Erotics of Fugitivity 241
Notes 269
Works Cited 297
Index 309
