The Subprime and the beautiful

Elaborating and extending Cedric Robinson's notion of ‘the preservation of the ontological totality’ is a crucial task for black studies at a moment when its practitioners are serially (and properly) enjoined to attend critically to the brutal conditions under which many black people live as well as the existential interdictions all black people are forced to endure. This paper assumes an irreducible relation between preservation and celebration and considers the subprime crisis to be a moment that requires and also allows practitioners of black studies to develop ways of integrating celebration and critique.