The Invitation of Blackness

The Invitation of Blackness offers a rigorous, interdisciplinary study at the intersection of Black Studies, Psychoanalysis, and Literary Theory. Drawing on thinkers including Fred Moten, Marquis Bey, Nahum Chandler, and Jacques Lacan, Jake Reeder explores what he terms “the invitation of blackness”—a conceptual and ethical call to engage the radical potential of blackness beyond identitarian confines.Through close readings of Toni Morrison’s Sula and a psychoanalytic case study of abolitionist John Brown, the book examines how blackness functions as both a site of social negation and a horizon of transformative possibility. Reeder situates this inquiry within debates on Afropessimism, paraontology, and the psychic structures of race, arguing that sublimation—the creation of new social values from what society deems valueless—offers a framework for thinking revolutionary change. Engaging with Derrida’s notion of the eskhaton and Lacanian concepts of desire and the mirror stage, the book reconsiders the role of race in subject formation and interrogates the limits of psychoanalytic formalism. Combining Literary Criticism, Deconstruction, and Critical Race Theory, The Invitation of Blackness contributes to ongoing conversations about the ethics of reading, the politics of whiteness, and the future of psychoanalysis in relation to race. This work will appeal to scholars and advanced students in Black Studies, Psychoanalysis, Continental Philosophy, and Literary Theory seeking a nuanced account of race, desire, and the possibilities of social transformation.