I think when Saidiya Hartman said,

“the slave trade’s investment and obsession with ‘black enjoyment’ and the significance of orchestrated amusements were part of a larger effort to dissimulate the extreme violence of the institution and disavow the pain of captivity” —

she was being very constructive against folks who oppose the social-death concept in Afropessimism within particular methodological approaches in Black studies. I do not read these theoretical concepts, particularly Hartman, as not loving and embracing Black people. Or robbing—

us from our sense of being. I read them as posing instructive and legitimate critiques against the facade of progress and intimation of Black life and possibility within the Americas. I think it’s unfair to not read Afropessimism in dialogue with others; to reduce its

indispensable starting point for
theorizing about Black life. I think it’s unfair to STOP at Frank Wilderson, as I also have my points of departures, but not do that for other discourses. Nobody STOPS at Dewey or James for pragmatism. But, the entire AP framework is reduced to

wilderson. The parasitic concept AP offers to the ongoing dialogue of social death — which is being heavily taken up by historians such as Stephanie Smallwood — is constructive and still being expanded. Those of us engaging AP are taking Wilderson’s claims seriously WHILE

expanding them. It is unfair that many people are not making room for the expansion of Afropessimist discourse because they refuse to read people in conversation with others. As someone who is reading Wilderson in conversation with Avery Gordon, Robin DG Kelley, Saidiya Hartman —

and Toni Morrison, I think it’s fair to say that Afropessimism is on to something, AND there’s more to be added to it. However this crossroads of not having your research/project taken seriously because of the stigma and trauma associated to a particular

discourse and thinker is unfair and uncritical. As Hartman offers, we cannot be so obsessed with Black joy that we misdiagnose the real social entrapment of slavery and its impact on slaves and their progeny. It’s unfair to be uncritical for the sake of affirmation

It’s unfair to have to act like shit is not that bad just because people are afraid to hear the realities of anti-Blackness and it’s ongoing effects today. But here we are:
“Airbrushing revolution for the sake of abolition” (Let me and Joy James off this planet!!)