An examination of the relationship between coloniality, raciality, and
global capital through a black
feminist poethical framework, inspired by Octavia E. Butler's
sci-fi novel
Kindred (first volume in the
On the
Antipolitical series).
Unpayable Debt examines the relationship between coloniality,
raciality, and global capital through a black feminist poethical
framework. Inspired by Octavia E. Butler's 1979 sci-fi novel Kindred,
in which an African American writer is transported back in time to the
antebellum South to save her owner-ancestor, Unpayable Debt
relates the notion of value to coloniality—both economic and ethical.
Focusing on the philosophy behind value, Denise Ferreira da Silva exposes
capital as the juridical architecture and ethical grammar of the world.
Here, raciality—a symbol of coloniality—justifies deployments of total
violence to enable expropriation and land extraction.
"Denise Ferreira da Silva's "Unpayable Debt" places before us a clear and deeply incisive understanding of the "unpayable debts" incurred through the deployments of coloniality, raciality and economic exploitation as they have exacted an essential and pervasive violence that attacks humanity at its core. This work is a remarkable achievement even within the total oeuvre of this prolific author whose tremendous insights challenge us to reach the same depths of understanding.
— Professor Jacqueline Martinez, President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association
First volume in the
On the Antipolitical series, edited by
Ana Teixeira Pinto, devoted to the historical study of the depoliticization
process, situating it within the
neocolonial
continuum that animates the digital frontier as the new locus of settler
becoming.
2nd edition (2025).
Dr. Denise Ferreira da Silva's academic writings and artistic practice
address the ethical questions of the global present and target the
metaphysical and ontoepistemological dimensions of modern thought.
Currently, she is a Professor and Director of The Social Justice Institute
(the Institute for Gender,
Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice) at the University of British
Columbia.
