Denise Ferreira da Silva: Unpayable Debt

Sternberg Press, 2022, Softcover, 328 pages, 18 × 12 cm

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.