The Problem of the Human: Black

Ontologies and the Coloniality of Our

Being
Rinaldo Wa/colt

Introduction
against Black people
What it means to be Human is continually defined
engagement are
and Blackness. The very basic terms of social Human
s normativities
shaped by anti-Black logics so deeply embedded in variou
must attempt
we
yet
and
t
though
that they resist intelligibility as modes of
ness defined
Human
to think them. The profound consequences of having
and the ongoing
against Black being means that the project of colonialism
a perverse rela
workings of coloniality have produced for Black people
existence as human
tionship to the category of the Human in which our
the category of a
beings remains constantly in question and mostly outside
death. This global anti-black
1
4ft, remains an existence marked as social era, still and again manifests
condition produced in the post-Columbus
how Black people
itself in numerous ways that have significantly limited
people might
Black
might lay claim to human-ness and therefore on how
world.
us 2
impact on what it means to be Human in a post-Columb
continually pro
This essay is about the ways in which anti-blackness
and about the
ns
locatio
olonial
duces Black people as out of place in (post)c
is also about
it
But
consequences that entail from such out-of-place-ness.
s an impossible
the ways in which what I call a pure deco/onialptvject remain
of anti-blackness will
project as long as attention to the deathly production
ning anti-blackness
positio
by
desires. Only
not become to future political 3
ages Orlando Pattersons term
I See the work of Jared Sexton (2010; 2011) as he re-eng
social death as it relates to plantation slavery.
us orientation. When seeking to
21 capitalize Human when refernng to its post-Columb
it is, I use lower-case.
express human in terms broader than Europes idea of what
from Derridas notion of a
essay
this
in
project
nia!
31 am adapting the idea of apus decolo
nce on modes of being
insiste
(2000)
as
Derrid
d
by
inspire
am
I
pure hospitality. Indeed
as he proposes in
event
the
of
e
for which we cannot predict their outcomes in advanc

event.
nial
decolo
future
a
t
gabou
OfHospitality as a method for

RINALD0 WALCOTT

94

in which European modernity has cemented its

the
global rein, and thus taking on the predicament of Black social death as
to
ents
movem
will
as
dom,
unfree
instantiation of modernitys project of
the
now
and
s
interrupt and indeed to bring to a conclusion Europe
ng the
Wests, horrific global rein be successful. It is precisely by engagi
in whith its invention
conditions of the invention of blackness, the ways
n of how those
questio
the
produces the conditions of unfreedom and
u
conditions produce various genres of the Human, genres that are contin
pro
ally defined against blackness, that any attempt to engage a decolonial
as central to

the

ways

ject may avoid its own demise.

Taking seriously the insights of the philosopher of the Americas Sylvia
and
Wynters (2003) claim that the Human is always hybridthat it is bios
logoswe might begin to more carefully glean how Black peoples insist
ence on their humanness alters and changes the genre of the Human con
ian
tinuallyas Wynter would put it. In the realm of the post-Columb
er
(Wynt
colonial project and its resulting global coloniality of being
is
it
2003) Black people have been its most phantasmagoric creation. While
lantic
clear that slavery and other forms of captivity existed prior to transat
central
e
a
becam
slavery, the unique ways in which transatlantic slavery
t
plank of the European colonial project as well as of its Enlightenmen
ant
narrative of the Human as not a slave, as one of the single most import
ideological frames of coloniality, continually require careful reconsidera
tion. Snyder (2010) suggests in her study that if we do not adequately un
ty
derstand other forms of captivity, especially as those forms of captivi
which sometimes promised kinship only to be transformed into chattel
slavery, it is impossible to fully grasp the ways in which racial slavery is
out
fundamentally different. Consequently, Frank B. Wilderson, working
racial
modem
of an intellectual tradition that recognizes the uniqueness of
slavery points out
But African, or more precisely Blackness, refers to an individual who is by defini
nce of a
tion always already void of relationality. Thus modernity marks the emerge
who, a
people
s,
appear
race
entire
an
which
new ontology because it is an era in
a
losing
as
(such
act
ressive
transg
the
of
ency
conting
priori, that is prior to the
of
rest
the
to
n
relatio
in
dead
y
as
sociall
stand
,
crime)
a
ted
of
convic
war or being
the world. This, I will argue, is as true for those who were herded onto the slave
ships as it is for those who had no knowledge whatsoever of the coffles. (2010,
18, original emphasis).

Ti-ia PROBLEM OF THE HUMAN

95

being. It is my
Wilderson narrates Black corning-into-being and thus Black
radical or new
contention that Black ontology needs to be central to a
times of para
these
humanism as Frantz Fanon (1967) articulated it,. in
intimacies. The post-Colum
doxical and contradictory planetary human 4
absence thereof
bus colonial frames for experiencing Humanness and the
sations so
conver
dern
postmo
e
for Black bodies continue to overdetermin
acial and
cross-r
that the possibilities for creating significant and lasting
desire
our
of
indeed cross-human solidarities seem to remain out of reach
and life.
to bring to a close the dreadful duration of Human organization
our
frames
ality
coloni
lack
Resolving the multiple ways in which anti-B
future.
niai
Human present is central to achieving a possible decolo
18) helps us to
Wildersons idea of the void of relationality (2010,
essay will also
make sense of the ongoing stability of anti-Blackness. This
to engage
being
of
ality
coloni
employ Sylvia Wynters articulation of the
ca, and
Ameri
North
in
contemporary debates in and on settler colonialism
antiof
t
contex
more specifically the nation of Canada. It is precisely in the
limits of use
Blackness that the language of settler colonialism reaches its
in which the
ways
the
probes
fulness and precision. In particular, my essay
of Black
ion
invent
enforced Black being in the world, indeed the very
the
aided
has
people as art and parcel of European colonial expansion
ined them
practice of settler colonial societies but simultaneously underm
ion of
invent
The
West.
the
by producing a new kinds of indigeneity of
be
and
eity,
indigen
Black people troubles understandings of land, place,
d
severe
has
longing because the brutal rupture that produced Blackness
to moder
Black being from all those claims now used to mark resistance
thus
might
We
s.
ulation
accum
s
nitvs unequal distribution of its variou
re
and
e
critiqu
of
s
have to think of indigeneity as more a flexible proces
t
sugges
further
sistance to modernity rather than an organic identity; and I
Europes Enlight
that to invoke it as other identity is already to accede to
Humanness
rizing
catego
of
enment and modernist anthropological project
on its terms and logics.
ation of in
Some contemporary arguments against the ongoing coloniz
a thorough
digenous people in North America do not adequately sustain
would rec
e
critiqu
a
such
e
becaus
going critique of colonialist capitalism,
Black
which
in
ways
the
ognize the non-Human status of the Black and
of
status
very
peoples legacy as a commodity has thus been haunting the

4 Black Skin, White Mask.s (1967) is where Fanon

calls for a new humanism.

RINALD0 WALcoTT

96

engagement,
the Human and indigeneity in the
luntarilyinvo
if
those arguments and discourses find themselveseven
pro5ect,
embedded in anti-Black thought. As commodities of the colonial
ssive
Black people have remained outside modernitys various progre
al
sexu
,
gender
of
terms
and/or libertarian re-inventions of the Human (in
ed
termin
itv, disability, or trans-practices) and have always remained overde
to pro
by racist epistemology. I must point out that I am not attempting
aim
my
,
Rather
m.
ionalis
except
duce some kind of competitive oppression
ated
implic
y
directl
is
is to point to the profound ways in which Black being
g pro
by negation and devaluation, as a negative foil, that is, hi the ongoin
human
duction of diversity of what Wynter calls the genres of being
present. Bypassing such an

(2003, 331).

No Happy Story: Modernitys Humans are Not Black

haunts
The colonial history that gave rise to contemporary life in the West
Atta
our present, it is not yet behind us despite our best desires. Every
hbor
neig
local
in
g
shootin
wapiskat, every riot in London, every police
at as
hoods, every deportation, every dead child in Haiti, could be looked
their
the fruits of the violence seeded in collective colonial encounters and
colonial
aftermath. The ways in which those diverse but interconnected
5
of an
story
happy
to
the
trajectories continue to frame our relationships
d
assume
of
egalitarian, democratic West and its unfolding possibilities
social,
rights and identities must continually be called into question. Any
again
political and cultural proximity to the good life in the West still and
es of
practic
hal
hierarc
the
to
largely depends on our historical relationship
Black
the
of
colonial ordering and management, and on the ongoing purge
of rule
from the category of the Human. An administrative system
ess as
founded on indigenous genocide, and on the making of Blackn
others,
uman
anti-H
te
ultima
social death, and of Black people as the
iate
frames our social relations, our intimacies and remains the immed
eground of living life in our present. Crucial to this ordering and manag
inal community of
5 In 2011 a housing crisis, both materially and otherwise, in the Aborig
mental policy
govern
ian
of
Canad
t
neglec
cant
and at Attawapiskat brought to light signifi
of
the ongoing
l
a
symbo
e
becam
piskat
s.
Artawa
people
inal
ning
Aborig
action concer
colonial conditions in Canada for Aboriginal peoples.

THE PRoBLEM OF THE HUMAN

97

ior-directing signs (1990,

ment is production of what Wynter calls behav
legacies, even in a puta
449) by and in colonial histories and their ongoing
tively post-civil tights and postcolonial world.
s of Canada my
Since I write from within the geo-political border
states production of
thinking is influenced by witnessing the Canadian
se to those practices,
forms of being it deems less than Human. As a respon
nous movements to
there has recently been, a push by conservative indige
seeking a radical intimacy
align themselves with neo-liberalism, instead of
al urgency for this pro
against colonialism and anti-Blackness. The politic
remove Black people
to
ject remains unmet. One of the central conceits
understood to be outfrom Humanness is that Black people are constantly
Black people, is one
of-place. This out-of-place-ness especially of poor
it becomes highlighted in
which has profound life and death consequences;
Gilmore 2007) but also
the extreme by the carceral state of the USA (see
stop and frisk and
by practices like the enormously disproportionate
across the North Atlantic
carding measures used against young Black men
as the state practice of
zones (New York City, Toronto, London), as well
men labor to impe
Black
deportation and restriction of labor options for
the drug tradedanger
rial armies, prisons and the informal sector called
und anti-Black conditions
ous and deadly labor all of it. These are the profo
of our global past and present.
postmodern capitalism
The oppressive technologies of modern and
ways, so as to repro
have adapted and renewed themselves in inventive
no outside for anyone.
duce a global neo-coloniality to which there is
is individual ethnic
However, there has been a pervasive silence vis-I-v
nce and Dua 2005;
(Lawre
neoliberals in debates on settler colonialism
le on Canadas Aboriginal
Amadahy and Lawrence 2009), as for examp
in the Conservative gov
Conservatives (Leona Aglukkaq (Parliamentarian
Conservative govern
ernment), Patrick Brazeau appointed Senator by the
bly of First Nations,
ment) and others, Shawn Atieo (Chief of The Assem
government and consid
the leading organization that negotiates with the
in the current gov
ered to close to the Conservative government) roles
have attempted to
ernment and extra-governmental organizations, that
in which Abo
ways
the
bypass and ignore the issue of coloniality. Given,
the Canadian
of
l project
riginal abjection is shaped by the ongoing colonia
coloniality of being in
nation-state, the language for considering Aboriginal
te and/or not pos
contemporary debates remains at this time fairly inchoa
ide the attempt to
alongs
ism,
sible. And yet, a push for Aboriginal capital

98

THE PROBLEM OF THE HuMAN

RINALD0 WALCOTT

produce continually wasted populations of non-resourced Aboriginal

communities is an important example of the ongoing adaptability of late
modern capitalism as neoliberal incorporation. But, most importantly,
resistances to these practices and incorporations call for relational political
logics, if resistances might begin to undo the coloniality of our being(s).
Indeed our studies of marginality remain silent on these relations because
so much of our political discourse remains locked in demonstrating our
subaltern realities and committed to inclusion in a paradigm of expansion,
which sits at the core of the colonial and neoliberal capitalist project. Eve
rybody can produce a perverse desire to belong to that, which does not
guarantee life. A significant element of the contemporary debate has
shifted to making indigenous claims that reproduce Euro-centered nativ
ism, expressing a desire for an emancipation, the terms of which can only
result in continued and new forms of unfreedom for Black people (Sexton
2010). One of the significant problems of the contemporary debate in and
on settler colonialism is the conceptual assumption that assumes every
oneindividuals and groupsto belong and be entitled to some kind of
original homeland, to have their own place somewhere. Such a claim does
not work in the context of post-enslavement, and post-Enlightenment
epistemic anti-Blackness, violent displacement and the rupture of Black
kinship (Amadahy and Lawrence 2009).
One of the central and complicated dynamics of geo-political spaces
like Canada or the U.S. is how to think through the complicated challenge
of a coloniality which has been maintained within new neo-liberal modes
of individualism, citizenship, identity and belonging, producing a global
space of competition and overlapping strategies of disadvantaged and dis
posed groups. To use an example from the United States, the Cherokee
Nations attempts to evict the descendants of Black Freedmen from the
tribe shows how coloniality functions to produce Black people as continu
ally out-of-place, even in indigenous contexts. The Black and mixed raced
descendants of freed Cherokee slaves had long held citizenship in the
Cherokee nation, until 2007 when a vote was taken to deny them their
citizenship. This battle over who is a Cherokee or put differently who
belongs, who is in place, who has claim, highlights the way in which the
asymmetries of contemporary neoliberal economy, politics and culture
work in our time (see Nieves 2007; Strernlnu 2011).
The distribution of resources, in terms of access and ownership, and its
concomitant multiple forms of dispossession produce relationships to

99

capital that force, but also allow white and non-white groups to act within
s
the historical legacies of colonial racial ordering, a practice which extend
of
beyond internal Canadian space. Accordingly, one of the shortcomings
scholarship on settler colonialism is to assume that Canadas colonial prac
tices end at the geographical border of the modem nation-state. The work
of Peter James Hudson (2010) on the history of Canadas banking system,
vaunted post-2008, amply demonstrates that Canadas colonial project
stretches far beyond the geo-politics of the entity we now call Canada.
in
Thus articulating Canadas role exclusively as a former settler colony
trajecto
al
s
coloni
North American does not adequately address its variou
ries. Hudsons work on the Canadian banking system and its exploitation
of the Caribbean region reminds us that Canadian colonialism has not only
meant the occupation of indigenous North American land and territories,
not only the management and curtailment of peoples rights and the ex
ploitation of the land and its resources on the North American continent.
To address Canadas role must also entail a discussion of its economic,
s
political, and cultural activities, which move beyond the traditional marker
global
the
in
life
of its historical colonial geographies to produce forms of
realm that are distinguished by a white capitalist assigned value and nonvalue (Barrett, 1999).
A number of major Canadian banks (Royal Bank of Canada, Canadian
Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Nova Scotia) have long occupied the
financial landscape of the so-called archipelago of poverty in the Caribbean
nor
basin. These Canadian financial institutions have not sought to service
nation
the
to
back
resources
to invest in the region, but rather to extract
of Canada. This kind of overseas neo-colonialism coupled with an at
home colonial project produces some very complicated conceptual di
lemmas for thinking about the culture and politics of coloniality in Canada.
That such practices of Canadas colonial project go beyond its geo-political
borders as a nation, means that how different non-white bodies are placed
within and/or arrive at the borders f the contemporary Canadian nation-state
of arrival and
is a complex story of placemaking or the denial thereof
place.
out-of6
exist
to
becoming or of constantly being made
dynairucs.
6 The work of Lawrence and Dua (2005) fails to adequately recognize these
point to
to
attempt
an
in
rejoinder
excellent
Sharma and Wrights (2008) response is an
Dua fail
and
Lawrence
that
argument
the
complicate
to
migration
of
various moments
as
to make. Sextons (2010) work also allows us to further complicate these concerns
well.

engagement

see
with coloniality therefore demands that we
A critical
rvation, the housing
the mutual imprint and the overlap between the rese
name given to the
the
is
r
project, and the priority neighborhood (the latte
ct of deportation and the
archipelagoes of poverty in Toronto), the proje
das borders. In each case the very
dispossession of people beyond Cana
out-of-place-ness
terminology delineates a specific, if limited space and an
in the boundaries of the nation
for those marked as abject and waste with
ible because of
state of Canada. Such range of abjection has become poss
niality, which also
the capitalist and constaritly flexible dynamics of colo
s of ordering the
produces permanent leaks in the interconnected form
. Progressive schol
disposable bodies between and across the various sites
remain embedded in
arly discourses that refuse to acknowledge these leaks
(Lawrence and
-turn
over
to
the very terms of Human life that they seek
Amadahy and
ple
Dua, 2005; Arnadahy and Lawrence 2009). So for exam
the true horror of
Lawrence write that: From Indigenous perspectivies,
alized Africans,
slavery was that it has created generations of de-cultur
, denied even
base
land
denied knowledge of language, clan, family, and
thought fails to
.
knowledge of who their nations are (2009, 127) Such
possible in the con
comprehend the inventive being of Blackness as only
addressing and
been
has
essay
text of the terrible upheavals of which this
ns lost
origi
of
urse
the simultaneous reliance on an anthropologic disco
the condi
ge
Critical articulation of settler colonialism needs to enga
ghetto, and neo-colo
tions and ideas of the plantation, the reservation, the
of those discursive
nial dispossession, revealing the particular euphemisms
shared realities
d
and
and violent material constructions, but also their linke
s and thus a wider
as the result of the logic and practice of anti-Blacknes
ess the project of
reach of colonialitv. Only this relational logic can addr
related entities
Canada which has skillfully produced these sites as nonnothing to do
have
s
with separate dynamics so that priority neighborhood
with European
with ban/ieues and neither of those have anything to do
n, nor the economic
colonial practices in Canadas past on the reservatio
logic which repro
this
nst
Agai
n.
and cultural backyards in the Caribbea
alue, we need a
un-v
k
duces exclusive frames of Human value, and Blac
g which coloniality
pedagogy to work through the challenge of Black bein
dational Human pro
configured employed as its most significant and foun
Black body is not
,
ject of racist management and order. Consequently the
ession, but the
oppr
and
tion
the most abject body in a competition of abjec
Human was
the
h
Black body is the template of how the abjection by whic

100

RINALD0 WALCOTT

101

uced by the visualitv of ongoing

Significantly, at a gathering in part prod
by the excesses of colonial
colonialism at Attawapiskat, and compounded
ing between Aboriginal leaders
ity elsewhere, a call for a meeting and a meet
Ottawa in 2012. The conserva
and the Canadian government occurred in
at the meeting as one of access
tive government framed the conversation
constant refrain of bring Abo
to capitalism and its many resources, with a
would be that an invitation to
riginal peoples in. In fact, a cynical reading
ed as a form of justice by the
participate more fully in capitalism was offer
st exploitation becomes justice,
colonial state. A participation in coloniali
or territories themselves are
but only if and when resources on territories
former Canadian Prime Minis
needed for capitalisms expansion. Indeed,
Na
dation to make sure that First
ter Paul Martin has set up a foun
orary
emp
cont
to
intimately tied
tions/Aboriginal peoples can be more
with support from the banking
n,
datio
foun
Canadian capitalism. Martins
al students how to produce busi
industry (Scotia Bank) teaches Aborigin
among a range of other skills
ness plans, as an educational program,
within the nation. These programs
meant to alleviate their outsider status
and by a white desire to se
are driven both by Aboriginal demographics
ting a previously ignored popula
cure the future of capitalism by incorpora
lure of small rewards. How
tion into late modem capitalism by way of the
riginal communities required if
ever, to achieve the kinds of justice Abo
dged would mean to create a
their forms of life were to be fully acknowle
present forms, and therefore
significant opposition to capitalism in all its
radical Black demands. What
also needed to align indigenous claims with
ible in distinct opposition to
we might call Black freedom is only poss
ed
n that the Black body was inde
capitalism, historically and presently. Give

I Really Want to Hope

seductions of capitalism in
produced. Even though oppressions and the
colonialisms Red, White and
late postmodernity do not simply replicate
)after all, a Black man reigns
Black past (Wynter 1995; Wilderson 2010
nation state Aboriginal people
in the White House and in the Canadian
ered into a project of disposa
participateall non-white bodies are mast
s foundation as well as its con
bility. One cannot stress enough capitalism
n of death.
stant and continuous trajectory of a productio

THE PRoBLEM OF THE HUMAN

well as a significant producer of itthat it was

RINALD0 WALCOTT

of their own collectives.

At this late stage of capitalist modernity the Canadian nation-states
flexible conceptions of sovereignty, of nation, and of self-determination
are meant to ensure capitalist longevity so that the stakes need to be se
cured through incorporation. In the case of places like Attawapiskat, no
such flexibility is evident in the face of an absence of desirable resources.
Attawapiskat is an interesting case for many reasons. As a territory lacking
in natural resources and a site not needed for the transportation of those
resources, its appeals to the national government are treated with disdain.
This disdain is for me the evidence that those territories that possess the
resources to continue to aid in the production of capital can find a place in
the late capitalist modern nation regardless of racial history, and those
without resources cannot. The point is that capitalism continually modifies
and includes on its own terms and gives way to old designations if those
designations can now fuel its engines. Attawapiskat cannot fuel its engines

is a

par
both commodity and laborthe question of freedom and capital
of
crossing
intimate
ticularly knotty one for Black being. Thus, given the
Blackness and capitalism, Black freedom as a claim, as a possibility,
challenges us to imagine and to produce new modes of life that might be in
accord with some of the most radical global indigenous calls for a differ
ent kind of world. It is precisely in the moment that Black being can enjoy
full human (the small h for human here signal Wynters concerns for a
humanism beyond Euro-American articulations) status, in the sense that its
being is counter-hegemonic to that of Euro-American articulation that new
indigenisnis enter the world.
Engaging the epistemological formations of anti-Blackness is not and
cannot be merely one among other modes of thought, because only en
gaging anti-Blackness as foundational limit to our collective livability makes
visible the overarching racial capitalist ordering of neo-coloniai peoples,
indigenous people, and Blacks. Thinking through anti-Blackness gives and
activists a lens to see the Human radically differently, to see that its present
incarnation has been contingent on the production of other beings un
Human-ness and un-freedom. The site of liberalisms compromise by way
of induction and seduction of selected Black and Aboriginal individuals
and/or groups only shores up as a complementary feature to violent intru
sion and the production of disposability which is why those Black and
Aboriginal politicians mentioned above may be engaged in the destruction

an instrument of capital, as

102

103

new

thus it must be managed. Radical discourses and practices that seek to

overcome coloniality might want to refuse the logic of belonging to place
in the sense of past ownership of land, and instead forge a relational logic
with Fanons (1963) landless damned of the earth. Such a claim is not to
ignore that human beings need to belong, but rather it is to position be
longing outside its historical, naturalized, quasi-organic trajectory and to
create another form of sociability not premised on a history of racist social,
political, and cultural gradations and exclusion.
The ongoing disposability of Black bodies in Canadian society has cre
ated Black severance and as a consequence, estrangement from the geo
politics of nationhood, no matter how broadly or inclusively defined nation
might appear in the multicultural Canadian sense. We can conceive of antiBlack racism as the crucially important element of the production of na
tionalist coloniality in which the Black subject is never able to occupy the
site of incorporation into the nation-state, because Blackness was deemed
as fundamentally disjunct with the idea of a nation of free subjects. The
fundamental out-of-place-ness for Black bodies persists, even if ambiva
lently attenuated by partial inductions to in late capitalism as it seeks new
bodies in its constant crises. But the more fulsome social reality is that
those inductions of the select few do not outweigh by any means the so
cial, cultural and political excorporations on a mass scale.
A pure decolonialp?vject thus gives up the politics of organic identity in
favor of a mobile politics of thought. This politics of thought will be
able to critique colonialitys most profound epistemic operations, which
have produced knowledges of bodies in and out-of-place, and its eco
nomic and material practices which have resulted in death-worlds for Black
people. To acknowledge these death worlds is an urgency: from that radical
vantage point it becomes possible to conceive of forms of relationality and
intimacy, of new modes of humanness beyond capitalist (post)modernity.
In a post-communist world, and a neoliberal globe, thinking, articulating,
and moving towards different and new modes of human life is our present
modes of relational
challenge. A pure decolonialproject works to produce
that Euro
intimacies
structured
racially
the
which
in
logics and conditions
refashioned.
pean colonial expansion produced for us might be
These new modes call for moving beyond and may be even against the
happy story of progressive liberation of indigeneity in the native land,
against the illusion of a move into the bounty of rights and freedoms. To
refuse such a happy story is to account for the ways in which history

THE PROBLEM OF THE HUMAN

RINALD0 WALCOTT

s and Black
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THE PROBLEM OF THE HUMAN