Unpayable Debt

Coloniality, raciality, and global capitalism from a black feminist "poethical" perspective.Unpayable Debt examines the relationships among coloniality, raciality, and global capital from a black feminist "poethical" perspective. 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. This is the first volume in the On the Political series.