Ontology of Avulsion: Posthuman Freedom and Accidental Becoming Page: 27
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white supremacy. In his "Letter from a Birmingham County Jail" ([1963] 1994), King
acknowledges the de-stabilizing power of tension.53 In fact, he points out that tension always
already exists in the system. The system of racism, in the case of his situation, is one that always
already is filled to the brim with tension. It is felt by the entire community and permeates the
lived experience of African Americans within it. It is not the goal of the philosophical praxis of
King to create this tension - or to dissolve it, for that matter, which would be impossible - but to
bring the tension to the surface. His mission is to reveal the tension "like a boil that can never be
cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines
of air and light".54 When this underlying tension is brought into the open and made obstinate, it
must be dealt with. It is at this point that tension itself marks the quintessential engine of radical
change. The entire structure of white supremacy is con-structed with tension. King forced that
tension to be encountered; in dealing with that tension and acting through it, his goal was to
destabilize the entire system into becoming something new. Unfortunately, such avulsion has not
been actualized. On the contrary, race-based voter discrimination is increasing across the country
still in 2021,5 rather than having been overthrown in the civil rights movement, the boil has only
again been bandaged back up. Tension is the mechanism of change and, without it, desire
remains Oedipalized, subordinated to capture within the barriers of the same. The water is forced
into the stagnancy of the river, the sediment remains locked in its position upon the ground and
orders of social oppression defy demands of change necessary for the radical becoming of new
structures of organization.
Woven into the fabric of habit as the divide between the body without organs and the
53 Martin L. King, Letter from the Birmingham Jail. (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994).
5 Ibid.
5 Lauren Fedor, "Voting Rights: The Battleground that could Determine the Next US Election." (FT.Com, 2021).27
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Grossman, Jacob Wayne. Ontology of Avulsion: Posthuman Freedom and Accidental Becoming, dissertation, December 2021; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1873811/m1/33/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .