“Smashing the Icon of Black Lives Matter: Afropessimism & Religious Iconolatry” by Charles Athanasopoulos (2019, Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism)

In his first publication, Athanasopoulos intervenes in the critical conversations surrounding Black Lives Matter (BLM) to challenge the very political calculus from which we (dis)count lives and ascribe value or matter as itself being a mechanism of anti-Black power. Athanasopoulos argues that we must abandon the axiological framework of the Human by situating the Human as the centerpiece of rituals of anti-Blackness that occur in the most basic of social interactions. Furthermore, he argues that we must interrogate post-Ferguson rituals of iconolatry, the creation and extreme veneration of icons, in order to understand how BLM has transformed from an iconoclastic movement into an icon of U.S. racial progress. The essay ends with Athanasopoulos’ preliminary gesture towards an alternative praxis of Black iconoclasm that ritually enacts a shattering of various icons of Humanism in favor of what Christina Sharpe calls the hold of the slave ship.

background photo: "Embers" by birkancaghan. License: CC BY 2.0.