a lot of people stick their careers on the exactopposite, that we are all part of the universal human family and if you've written three books like that , so what sets these causes is of course the anxiety of antagonism and this is the last point i'll before i close on the question because the anxiety of antagonism is something that it's interesting to me as i travel the world. i have had to deal with the anxiety of antagonism in teaching young people in the united states in germany or

in south africa and that is the anxiety of being presented with a problem for which there's no imaginable solution even though if there is a solution it cannot be theorized at this moment so the anxiety of antagonism produces responses which are redundant and unread and emotional rather than analytic. that has a lot to do with the work in 1869, he changed the british public school system and one of the things he did, he said we can't be teaching but people in the public schools columns that don't have solutions because if they do that the working class will develop themselves in the streets so when we present a problem in a classroom we present it with a solution and this is the bane, were supposed to be setting a hovel of british

americanpsychic reality . this need to have policy or answers to every question there is and if you're not you're certainly not a group thinker and you will become a revolutionary >> it reminds me of the part in the book where after, or being in proximity to south africa you come up with an exercise for the class, and exercise about violence and everybody who wants anything to deal with it don't want to think about it and how they are privileged and benefiting from the perpetration of that violence. >> thank you for saying that because i almost read that passage but yes, and this book ended up being 1300 thousand words, i think i turned it in at hundred50,000

. i tried to trick him and turn in at hundred 30,000 and he said your contract says so he gave me another 3000 words but that vignette you're talking about where i'm teaching creative writing in the extensionscourt in south africa , those creative writers are like that one guy who comes from soweto and he was happy to have this exercise and i wrote the whole thing out and try to truncated because when he saw the rage in these white students response to me, he just shrugged his shoulders because he was south african and he knew what can happen with that rage. i'm a black american, i don't give a damn so you mess with me i'm goingto mess with you . you know? you've got to bring asked to get. [bleep].

but that was in and he said: god, this is going to go. anyways, next question. >> somebody posted a link in the questions and answers to the article. for some of the listeners and viewers . there was a question, i'm having trouble finding it now about how to take the language of "afropessimism". how do we translate late parlance practice against slum dwellers just ripping off what we were just talking about. >> well, we don't. i think that would be a dangerous move . one of the things that i say ... and in a dangerous move, for the sake of a wider audience let me do it anecdotally .

when i give your big lectures and readings in mainstream auditoriums or art museums in vienna, i always ask them to find me a group of black people involved in the movement for black lives whether your city has a black lives matter chapter or whatever so and a doing a three-hour workshop on afropessism because before this book came out, for the past 10 years a lot of people don't know is there's a subterranean river of people around the world, black people in these different cities who are reading "afropessimism" and debating and discussing on social media and while people in the academy have been not including it or whatever so what i'm going to say is like this community center in montrcal or a group of black lives matter people in vienna , i'm entering states where these comrades, brothers and

sisters are involved in potent political ventures. in other words they're not making a call for the end of the world, the end of the human capacity to make the world. this is doing things like we've got to have better housing and that'sright . we're all people, especially now we're seeing that structural violence and covid-19, the way black people are dropping like flies and nobody rooting us. is a structural dynamic to this so i don't go in and say you've all got these reformists , they've invited me to do a workshop on afropessism so the first thing i do is celebrate their efforts for a more or less

civil rights agenda because that has opened up a space which we have gladly invited me and other entries to talk more concretely and deeply about the structure of black suffering even though their political projects arenot about the structure of black suffering . they're about this immediate thing like can we get accountability whereas afropessism calls for the end of this. two different things. why do these people in these movements keep inviting us to do these workshops because afro, afropessism is not to discuss her discovery. it's a listening ear to black people to the discussions black people would make if they didn't have to make sense of the world so the space of reformist organizing has been a space that has opened up for a more

comprehensive theoretical understanding of black suffering and it's a two-way street. i wouldn't be here if it weren't for the movement of black lives and the movement of black lives is trying to write a new perspective but i always go in with saying what we're doing is a train, even though some of you might be revolutionary minded you can go to your communities and say let's deal on the system with the end of the world, you can't mobilize people overnight like that but the beauty is that the space that they have is open to thinking about the structure of suffering as opposed to the immediacy or the ritual. so these two things work together so you can't necessarily at this moment in history in afropessism say here is the practice, the way that che guevara or fidel castro bought marxism or leninism, here's the praxis .

we're not there yet. >> you had mentioned earlier, here's a question that mentions phenomena as well. how with your ring own experience with the black struggle would you explain south africa is not avoiding the national pitfall that are known to clearly explain half a century beforethe resolution of that struggle ? >> andy, could you do something for me ? can you see what the question is that person is asking because i can talk aboutsouth africa and i'd be off on a tangent and our timewould be up so help me out . what is the motive ? >> how is your own experience in south africa would you say that they have fallen into the trap essentially that the only way up was that they could possiblyget through ?

>> say again. >> in an ideal resolution of the struggle. >> i would say to this person to really read two things. my first book, how we deal with that question. so i know i'm just being honest with you. this book is done and invested, i've marketed people like you on the phone and getting set up and when i have intellectual time, i'm writing a new novel for my next one so i don't remember everything in incognito but what i will say is there's a moment in 1992 when we had an opportunity. we had an opportunity. there are committees i was on and we were studying the phenomenon.

chris i was head of people staff of the person who was my handler and people to write a book for south africa so that we could avoid what is out in the chapter called the pitfalls of national consciousness and he says what you're going to get is a class that just want to get over, have great jobs and have a connection to europe and you're going to find yourself more impoverished and all the problems that happen the world will talk to you as if those are your problems and that's what happened to south africa and there was a moment in which here in that amc, we're writing documents about how we were going to d-link the political economy not just in south africa but of the entire southern african region.

a critical economy free that from local capitalism by producing a barter system between south africa, mozambique, south africa, zimbabwe, zambia. the states that have suffered 1.5 million deaths because they housed us. are going to create a system where the resources that we had would be bartered with the resources they have so we would not be exploitingraw materials . we would renege on the imf world bank wealth and that we would completely pass the buck so in this period you had the moderates, right, who were down with that and the argument was if we do this, they're going to vamp on us the way they found on cuba. and i'm like well bring it

on. it would be interesting for the american military to send a battalion of soldiers and sailors, many of whom were black to come fight against a black liberation movement. let's see how that plays out because we know what happened in vietnam where more often officers died with a bullet in their back so in that period, to make a long story short of moderates who had been in exile in the west were in deep conflict with the radicals who had been in exile in cuba and in the soviet bloc and in north korea and in palestine and the radicals who had stayed in the country. we're having a deep ideological conflict. what do we want to do?

and in this period the soviet union crumbled and what that meant was the moderate faction of the anc had more power and global connection than the radical faction because $400 million from the non-communist west and flowed into the anc over the past 30 years in cash and $400 billion in weapons and logistical support and training and flowed into the anc on the soviet bloc so we were kind of like even at loggerheads because the people on the ground were down for a total revolution where we take back the land. we take back the banking, take back the mining and we get the middle finger to the west but when the soviet union fell, that ended support of the radicals so one of the key moves out and it right here in the negotiation that began in

late 91, nelson mandela very shrewdly took all of us communists off of the negotiating committee that was negotiating with the apartheid state for the future dispensation of the economy and he put an x economic school trained person, he put him on the committee and he put the radicals and put them on a kind of social cultural committee of negotiations so what the moderates did, we had a mandate to nationalize thecentral bank . to tell the imf and world bank that the loans that we owed to the western world where loans that had been secured i the apartheid state and we were simply going to renege on those loans, to nationalize the minds and to take back all corporate farms and redistribute land and once the soviet union fell

and then the west in conjunction with people in our own party were able to marginalize winnie mandela, when they commandeered all the committees on the economy , the fix is in. we were right back in this chapter called the pitfalls of nationalconsciousness . the pompadour class, the middle class, the people who are mostly invested in a kind of western-style non-communist democracy were sold down the river and were all part of the same party and they did it legitimately. then they purged $100,000 from the 350,000 anc and turned it into this ship show we have now . >> there is one question here , i probably have 10 more and it looks like there are 15

more backup on the screen in front of me . we don't have time unfortunately but i'll just go to one that i think would offer a good ending and that is, i lost it . what are the emerging debates and questions in afropessism that excite you? >> i'm really tickled and energized by the way in which afropessism has scandalized the very foundation of the humanities. in other words, i'm trying to do this without getting into the psychoanalytic speak and without getting into symbiotic speak. but anyone who does post

structural critical. understand after may 1968 something major happened in which post structuralism came into itsown . with the people from derrida and foucault so one of the major touchdowns, the foundations of humanities research so much that most don't question it today is that everyone is patrician in subjectivity in the same way. what do i mean by that? i mean you're born, you go 18 months and then you are inculcated or brought into a linguistic system and when you're brought into a linguistic system solely after 18 months brought into the system you become provisioned to discourse as a

subject. but that positioning that's happening prior to your acquisition of speech, happening prior to your birth is the ultrasound and ultrasound shows a penis, there's nothing there in reality but discourse is mapped onto that pound of flesh in a gendered way. in other words, the room is painted blue and names like andy and frank are cost about as opposed to josephine and bernadette. the father is dreaming of football or soccer . the mother is wondering what kind of husband he might make and others in a heteronormative world so discourse, language. this semi-attic sign begins to create this being prior to its birth when it acquires language, interns

discursively into that and one thing whether your marks or floyd or con, and all the series booked upon that everyone is in agreement with how subjectivity works so one of the things that afropessism has done is that if there's a sentient being that is not positioned by discourse, that's a really scandalous and interesting thing and i would say 10 weeks we explain how that goes and we have to read about marxism for at the end of the argument. there's a being that is not positioned by discourse in the essential way but positioned by violence and that makes that being irreconcilable with all the other beings, rich or poor. brown, yellow, red , white. incompatible and so when it does is it comes back to

scandalized the very foundation of humanist research from literature to psychoanalysis to philosophy and saying there is no such thing as a universal subject because the subject is a parasite of the black, the slave. so we have done very rigorous work to show how that works whether your reading the cultural theory or the psychoanalytic policies, interventions updated marriott or the critiques of multiculturalism mixed race know that the psychoanalysis of jared hessman . so what we're finding is that this hurts people. it hurts me, i'm living with it and the response is highly emotive as opposed to highly theoretical. so in the next 10 years you're going to see about 10 to 15 books from people, advanced students and

professors which outline, not just in this country but here is an afropessimist reading alikein brazil , that experience is different than that of a black person in the united states but what has been able to do is to show how the structural dynamic is the same. so that, i'm really excited about the way in which this is going to, is upending the logic of the humanities. it's upending the assumptive logic of black studies and its spreading into the subject of the social sciences as well. >> sounds like you often put

yourself out of a job. >> i'd be out of a job if we had a president more electronic because my investigations and critiques of the liberal economy through my second chapter of my second book called the narcissistic frame within which i take psychoanalysis and i look at it schematically and i say here's what makes sense about its description of the unconscious which is why the psychoanalytic cure is inadequate and so i'm arguing that there's this kind of kernel of phobia of blackness that cannot be therapeutically dispensed with. i'm arguing the phenomenon, your phenomenon runs up against the small and we can only do that in a civil

society that hides its hatred. i could not do that once or out of a job like in the 1800s to 1830s when andrew jackson was president. now that we got andrew jackson again as president, a true american president who speaks the true unconscious of america. he's been president for the past hundred years there would be no reason for me to do rhetorical analysis because the they would be out in the open seeking american dream used it speak in 19th century. >> it's been terrific talking to you, hearing you talk . the book is wonderful and i highly recommend it to people and this is where i say thank you and good night and encourage people to follow us on ground and visit us online at other events. access our digital archives and updated events schedule. thank you frank, everyone keep reading and have a good

night . >> here's a look at publishing industry news. former president bill clinton and best-selling author james patterson are teaming up to write a novel called the president's daughter which is scheduled to be released next summer following the 2018 release the president is missing that sold 3.2 million copies. the new york public library card 125 years old last week and to mark the occasion the library has released lists of 125 adultand children's books they say inspire a lifelong love ofreading . the list of books are available at their website , and ipl.org. publishers weekly named porter square books in cambridge it's bookstore of the year. the 16-year-old store is owned by dana martel and david sandberg who want in 2013 and recently decided to sell half of it to several of their employees. also in the news and pe bookscan reports book sales were up close to eight percent for the week ending may 16.

adult nonfiction sales were flat and running down eight percent for the year . and many book festivals and conferences that were first to cancel continue to offer attendees a virtual experience there in the bronx book festival will take place online july 6 and the american library association's annual conference goes virtual from june 24 through the 26th. book tv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news and you can watch all our archive programs at any time at booktv.org. >> at politics and prose bookstore in washington dc author robert long look at how harriet tubman, clara barton, harriet beecher so and other women had an impact on the civil war. in this portion of the program he talks about poets julia ward howe, author of the battle hymn of the republic .

>> in the early 1860s when the war had just begun he came to washington with her husband, doctor samuel gridley howe.who was a piece of work and self and not shy about talking about his ability to do great things. she came and sort of was in the backseat while he was off doing things on official washington with the senate commission which was sort of a early version of the red cross. she went in the wagon with some friends across the potomac and watched the union soldiers arrayed and do their military kinds of things. on the way back they were surrounded by union soldiers and she was struck by two things. one was the fact that they were very young. some not much older than her own children and secondly that they started singing and what they started singing was john brown's body. and it was a very rousing marching to the one of the

people who accompanied her was her master from massachusetts and he said you know harriet, you could do a better job writingsomething than that . that's kind of denigrating to johnbrown . she processed obviously that night when she went back to the hotel where she and her husband were staying she woke up in the middle of the night, read some paper and started writing a poem on scraps of paper. the next morning when she got up she had made a few tweaks to it but basically it was what was going to be. the battle hymn of the republic. she had published a little bit later, the first of the next year in harper'sweekly . it took off. soldiers were singing it as they marched, civilians were moved by its lyrics and its finally bringing to the forefront what the union cause was really about. the beginning of the war, the

cause was to some extent bringing the union back together. that may be a fineunifying argument but it hardly raises people's spirits . when she talked about dying to set men free the purpose of the war took on a new tone that coupled with the emancipation proclamation that the unionoff on a new track . >> to view the rest of the talk visit our website, booktv.org. type his name or the title of his book the better angels at thesearch box at the top of the page . >> you're watching tv on c-span2. nonfiction authors and books, television for seriousreaders . hears programs watch out for this weekend. the book publisher random house asked asked several of their authors is david brooks and martha stewart to give virtual commencement addresses to the graduating class of 2020. espn national senior writers

group jacksonprovides his thoughts on the role sports play in american society . cultural writer katie royce report on how women experience and manage power and evolutionary biologist neal schuman looks at dna from prehistoricfossils . find a schedule on your program guide or visit booktv.org. >> joining us on book tv is author nick adams. his sixth book is just out. here it is. try and churchill: defenders of western civilization. mister adams, what do president trump and winston churchill have in common? >> it's great to be with you. donald trump and winston churchill have a lot in common. at first blush when you look at both men you wouldn't think that to be the case. one was five foot six and love drink to the other is a six foot three teetotalers. one