Beyond anti-blackness? Engaging Black Theology and the entanglement of metaphysical brutality

Abstract

This article explores the role of Black Theology within the context of sustained anti-blackness. It argues that anti-blackness is not only a political failure but the ontological ground of modern life. Engaging critically with Black Theology of Liberation, the article examines how even liberatory theological discourses can become entangled in Christianised redemptive frameworks that inadvertently uphold anti-black metaphysics. Drawing from a broader scope of black studies, it argues that Black Theology often remains entangled in anti-black metaphysical structures, especially in its assumptions about being, life and liberation. The article turns to Armstrong’s ‘Wayward Black Theology’, which foregrounds waywardness, refusal, lament and disruption as theological imperatives. Building on this, it proposes a both–and approach to blackness. That is, blackness as poiesis: a creative, spiritual and ideological force tethered to waywardness, and blackness as a condition that signals the end of the world as we know it, where black existence has been positioned as non-being.
Contribution: Ultimately, the article asks: What theo-political and spiritual imperatives must Black Theology embrace if it is to move beyond the limits of the world structured by anti-blackness and its metaphysical foundations?