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Dance Cadaverous

Antiblackness of the Social World and Social Theory

Cover of Dance Cadverous shows a fragmented, mosaic-like aerial landscape with the typography above in light blue and white.

Book

Pages: 168

Illustrations: 3 illustrations

Release Date: February 16, 2027

Authors: Moon-Kie Jung and João H. Costa Vargas

In Dance Cadaverous, Moon-Kie Jung and João H. Costa Vargas argue that the modern social world and modern social theory are foundationally antiblack. Antiblackness, the ontological exclusion inaugurated by racial slavery, persists while social theorists reproduce the exclusion, missing and misrecognizing this profoundly antisocial predicament at the heart of modernity. Across three historical moments—antebellum, Jim Crow, and contemporary—Jung and Vargas offer fundamental critiques of antiblackness, putting under scrutiny humanist and posthumanist social theories, science and technology studies, agency, genocide, racism, people-of-color intersectionality, and environmental justice. Drawing on radical Black study, freedom struggles, and jazz improvisation, they propose antisociology and abolitionist antipolitics as paths forward to provincialize and leave behind the modern social world.

Praise

“A timely, insightful work, Dance Cadaverous offers an accessible and clear account of the distinctions between racism and antiblackness for scholars and the general public alike.” - Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition

“This is a short book that packs an intellectual punch. An incisive and ground-breaking contribution, it engages clearly and succinctly how slavery and death shape modern theorizing. Moon-Kie Jung and João H. Costa Vargas bring us back to the limits of the human as a paradigm by drawing on a wide range of Black contemporary scholarship, taking the dialogue on antiblackness in a new and exciting direction. A necessary and urgent intervention.” - Rinaldo Walcott, author of The Long Emancipation

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Information

Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Moon-Kie Jung teaches sociology and antisociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

João H. Costa Vargas teaches Black study and anthropology at the University of California, Riverside.

Table Of Contents

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Prologue
Part I. Death
1. Antiblackness Beyond (Post)Humanism  7
Part II. Afterdeath
2. Antiblackness Beyond Genocide  41
3. Antiblackness Beyond Racism  61
Conclusion. Beyond the Weather of Antiblackness  79
Notes  109
References  123
Index

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3970-9 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-3467-4 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6323-0 /