SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 62
done, I am left with a further question that deepens the relationship between literary craft
and the corridors of theory powering it: How might one maintain formal integrity while
simultaneously subverting it? That is what radial suspense was introduced to make clear.
In Radial Suspense, Blackness operates as a generative gravitational center of tension,
where stakes orbit to conceal, reveal, and hallucinate the source of irreducibility. The
illegibility of the core, then, makes Blackness non-representational and, thus, non-capturable,
non-conforming, and all-structuring. It is a lens that sidesteps what isn’t clear to ask a larger
question of literary criticism—one that invites sustained contemplation about world-building
elements in relation to the state and empire: does the condition of suspended animation arrive
from what lives, what has died, or what transcends both states? Radial suspense’s value lies
in its capacity to show how fractured forms of blackened humanity are presented as resolved
wholes, even when nothing has truly been resolved in a world carrying the onus of existential
irresolution: struggle. And yet, this resolved wholeness is upheld, even in aesthetic regimes,
to sustain the illusion of composed intelligibility—of comfort in an uncomfortable world.
This is what I call a Conclusure, an aesthetic illusion of resolution. It creates a deliberate
endpoint that satisfies readers while concealing unresolved conditions at the constructed
world’s conceptual core.
While many may see Blackness, or the treatment of Blackness, as arbitrary or as a residual
category of literary conversation bound to Afro-diasporic genres of art and entertainment, I
contend that Blackness, as stated, is the whole from which all other genres are parts—within
a world and aesthetic order structured in negation to it. My acknowledgment would suggest
that radial suspense becomes legible across all forms of literature—even those not inclusive
of Black characters—and raises the question of the disappeared Black figure and the world
constructed upon their disappearance. That is to say: Blackness is the force that structures
suspense. And all literary genres require suspense. Therefore, all literary genres—not just those
featuring black(ened) characters—are modes of dealing with Blackness. This opens up a broader
discourse on the theoretical relationship between B/blackness, literature, and craft.
Jermaine Anthony Richards is a critical communication researcher, theorist, and
philosopher; award-winning social impact producer; multimedia relational artist, critic, and
curator; and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School,
where he is a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow. Jermaine Anthony’s work focuses on video games
as strategic tools for managing civilizational risks, crises, and disasters. He seeks to resolve
communicative crises by connecting critical communication and information theory and
philosophy; histories of science, medicine, technology, and religion; and contemporary art,
culture, and entertainment. Richards holds degrees from The City University of New York,
the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Southern
California.
39
