Alexander Ghedi Weheliye is a professor of African American studies, teaching Black literature and culture, critical theory, social technologies and popular culture at Northwestern University ("Alexander G. Weheliye"). Weheliye’s first contact with black feminism began when he participated in a Black German movement led by May Ayim, and Katharina Oguntoye as a teenager (Conversations In Black: Alexander G. Weheliye). He credits his career trajectory to his exposure to this movement and his black feminist mentors Abena Busia and Cheryl Wall (Conversations In Black: Alexander G. Weheliye). According to an interview, he states that he “...wanted to highlight Black feminism’s role in shaping and maintaining Black Studies institutionally and intellectually by reclaiming the radical intellectual-cum-political dimensions of the Black Studies project with feminist thought at its center…” (Conversations In Black: Alexander G. Weheliye).

Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human is one of the books he has written and published in 2014. The book is focused on theories of modern humanity and explores blackness and feminism.

Habeas Viscus is concerned with the relationship between race and the human. The chapter is structured in a clear and straightforward manner. It begins with a quote by an Afro-Trinidadian Historian and activist, Cyril Lionel Robert James ("C.L.R. James | West Indian-Born Writer And Activist"). The quote promptly introduces Weheliye’s main point, which is that black studies is not only concerned black people, but the field is largely worried about western civilization and is not only focused on ethnic problems.

In the first chapter of Habeas Viscus, Blackness: The Human, Weheliye deposits theories by black feminist scholars Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter against the philosophies of European theorists like Agamben and Foucault. According to Weheliye, these thinkers have not considered the role that race plays in the formation of the idea of who is deemed to be fully human. In it, the concept of ‘Man’ is investigated and confronted, and he attempts to correct their theories. This chapter criticizes the traditions of the study of humanity and instead encourages establishing new ways of identifying and examining humans. Weheliye begins by explaining that non-white subjects are not considered fully human in western society, so there is a readjustment when they are considered in the concept of humanity. For example, the words man and woman are synonymous with the white man and white woman. There is no need to articulate that they are white. If the subjects are not white, it is specified that they are a different kind of human they are the other. He is not a man, he is a black man. This biological differentiation is the way in which modern humans have been subjected to the hierarchy of human, not-quite-human and non-human. Weheliye focuses on challenging the term Man, attempting to disfigure it or possibly abandoning it. He calls to question Man because it symbolizes a privileged type of human that excludes other subjects. Throughout the chapter, he communicates that the goal is not to confirm the idea of “Man” but to desert it because it would be far more helpful to go through the oppressive system than to readjust and submit to it. This chapter insists that blackness offers innovative new ways of studying humanity that does not follow the existing confining methods. Therefore, the black studies field is able to dig through the old routines to redefine the human. Through using what he calls racial assemblages we are able to study subjects regarding technologies like politics, culture, geography and economics.

Weheliye continues in this chapter, insisting that black studies must be a field that produces knowledge, aiming to invent new ways to identify humans that does not include looking at race as a biological descriptor but collection of political technologies. For example, he presents W.E.B DuBois, an African American activist, sociologist and historian, who he uses to illustrate a program of study that does not accept the statement that black subjects are naturally inferior to other groups ("W.E.B. Du Bois | Biography, The Souls Of Black Folk, & Facts"). DuBois is an essential figure in this argument because his method is a model of how to study groups of people concerning social structures and not as an set object of knowledge. For example, DuBois saw the links between the black experience and the experience of southern whites and new immigrants to the United States (Weheliye 20).

Weheliye also talks about feminism, insisting that the human should be the main focus of feminists. The movement should not only be concerned with issues of oppression that exclusively affect females, it should be a concerned with the human. Evidently, throughout this chapter*; Blackness: The Human*, Weheliye is concerned with trying to discover a new type of humanism. Sylvia Wynter argues that humanity should be imagined differently, and the destruction of the genres of human should be the primary goal of feminism because fighting as women is to do so as something other than human. Gender equality is great, but accepting gender as a normal conforms to the system that allows humans to be divided into genres. The genres of human cause discrimination and oppression and by subscribing to it, the system is still able to thrive while all the other -isms are left intact. Wynter makes it clear that feminism that does not wish to invent a new definition of what it means to human is a feminism that is not taking into account the relationship between all forms of oppression (Weheliye 23). Also, that type of feminism is the kind that accepts gender as something that is natural, supporting the separation of humans into ‘biological’ categories. According to Wynter, the goal is the abolish ‘Man,’ the “full human” that is described as a white, heterosexual male. Racism and sexism are both linked in that they are a result of the hierarchy of humans. Weheliye uses Fanon and Wynter to show that race is a tool used to benefit Man and that is why it is vital to shed the idea that race and gender are natural, their only created to determine who can access freedom and power and justify the mistreatment of black and brown subjects. “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” (Weheliye 23). This quote illustrates the need for intersectional emancipation. Therefore, the only way to liberate humanity is to develop feminism that puts the human at the center and fights for the rights of all oppressed groups. The human must be at the center of black studies to include non-white subjects as human and not as other. In short, Weheliye’s objective is to communicate the idea that race is a social construct and is not natural, blackness is accessible to anybody because it is an assemblage of political and technological devices that alter the experience of subjects affected by these tactics. Flesh is a significant part of exclusionary procedures and rethinking the figure of human is to look beyond the flesh. This body of work prompts a movement through the limitation of race and gender to attain liberty for humans.

Weheliye uses a very peculiar style where he often presents the ideas of other philosophers and scholars and connects them rather than formulate his own brand new ideas. He very often recites the work of Wynter and Spillers, making the content of the chapter more of an assemblage rather than an original piece of work. The goal of the chapter seems to be to make past theories from black feminists more digestible to readers. Creating a section that reads more like an agreement or review with others before him. The target audience seems to be white male readers because it is packaged as a piece that challenges the work of European thinkers like Foucault and Agamben, whom that audience is more familiar with. Although, this may have been his intention. In a 2015 interview, Weheliye says “Over the years of working in both critical theory and Black Studies, I noticed how Black thought, especially Black feminism was continually “put in its place” as ethnographic and local if it was consulted and discussed at all,..” (Conversations In Black: Alexander G. Weheliye). Earlier, in the introduction, he states that women-of-colour writers write about their identities and that work is degraded and dismissed from the mainstream discourses (Weheliye 7).

Weheliye begins the chapter Blackness: The Human by explaining the function of black studies in the mission to restructure the concept of the human. His theory of racialized assemblages is primarily inspired by black feminist Spillers and Wynter. The work is centred around the creation of new methods of thinking and studying humanity that disarticulates the human from Man. Weheliye tackles this idea by focusing on the roles black studies and black feminism play in the transformation from identities formed by the flesh, being non-white and therefore non-human to Man, to a society that recognizes and treats everyone as fully human.

The redefining of who is considered human and the reimagining of a world that is not organized by the flesh is the central idea of Weheliye’s work. He highlights the problems with the traditional definition of Man and tries to decolonize the term. He states that Wynter’s model opposes “the radical particularity of black life and culture, which accepts too easily the unimpeachable reality of the “Man-as-human” episteme” (Weheliye 29). Here he points to the faults of European centred definitions of the human and shows how contemporary theories can correct these mistakes. He states that the insights of Foucault and Agamben displace minorities because their concepts on bare life and biopolitics do not consider race. Weheliye is not trying to say others should not work with those thinkers, he just wanted point out that the exclusion of other races makes the model for human white and race something that is natural. Wynter and Spillers offers theories that oppose the categorization of humans, where race and gender are discarded. Weheliye’s primary focus is the abandonment of these categories that label subjects as not-quite-human. The classification of humans into the three groups human, not-quite-human and nonhuman is possible because Man, which signifies white-hetero males, is the full human that can access complete freedom and rights while everyone else is subject to little to no rights at all. The flesh, to have black or brown skin, has been an indicator of the experience you will have in the world and what Weheliye is trying to do with the human is to release it from Agamben’s Bare Life model.

In this chapter, Weheliye uses Spillers’ thought on blackness that demands that black people and blackness must separate. If the two are bound together, it particularizes humans, feeding into the western Man idea where black humans are classified into a different category of human like not-quite-human or non-human. The dangers of particularity that have taken place throughout history are perfectly exemplified in this passage “...the relegation of black thought to the confines of particularity only affirms the status of black subjects as beyond the grasp of the human. Given the histories of slavery, colonialism, segregation, lynching, and so on, humanity has always been a principal question within black life and thought in the west...” (Weheliye 19). Therefore, blackness is inside and outside of humanity, so it becomes a great tool to examine the human in an alternate frame. So, according to Spillers black studies is a tool of knowledge production that provides new styles of humanity.

Weheliye presents that racialized assemblages offer a way of looking at the complexity of subjects that allows us to understand humans in a broader sense. Through identifying the political and social assemblages of people, we can see how humans operate. The racialization of biological life is related to the concept of Man because it permits white subjects to recognize their status of full humans that deserve a better life while non-white subjects are condemned to oppression, they are non-human. Weheliye brings forth the words of Fanon, to demonstrate the detrimental psychological effects of political violence towards black subjects. The mental and physical ripping apart of black subjects serves as a technique to support the separation of humans into genres, drawing these borders allows the creation of non-humans. According to Wynter, the job of black studies is to examine the roles that racialization play in modern humanity. The only way for subjects that are Black, Latino, Native, poor, transgender, homeless etc. can escape being subject to the racialized assemblages that authorize Man to become fully human and to reconstruct the definition of the human.

Weheliye communicates issues in diasporic studies. The method of research reproduces the system they are trying to destroy by creating particular groups under the umbrella of black people. The comparisons are drawn between black people from different countries. This emphasizes differentiation and accepts a system of separation, therefore affirming genres of human. The objective is to replace the transnational racial bond with peoplehood, a natural community where non-white subject transform into ‘the people.’ The issue appears to be the danger of particularity and comparisons in the Afro-diasporic field because it can freeze the productivity of black studies concerning the reformation of the human.

Weheliye repackages Wynter writings that steer feminism away from distractions of gender and race to more fundamental issues like genre and Man that generate all of the ideas that support and create the -isms. Rather than band together because of womanhood or natural femaleness, Wynter’s proposes that feminism should reject the gender and race as natural. The human should be placed at the center, carving out a new way to move through the assemblages. Similarly, Hortense Spillers articulates that backing gendered femaleness implies that gender is natural and undermines the derailment of Man from the human. Black feminism is not about exclusively fighting for the rights of black women, it is inclusive because black women cannot be free unless everyone else has attained equality. The black woman is at the most disadvantaged position because she is, at the minimum, a part of two oppressed groups. Generally, Weheliye expresses that black feminism and black studies must be at the foundation of the research of modern humanity to redevelop it. Blackness: The Human calls for people to deny the dominant ideology of western society that licences white subjects as humans and non-white subjects as non-human by dismantling the patriarchy through abandoning genres of the human.

Weheliye’s writing is widely based off of the work of Spillers and Wynter. In an interview, he reveals his thinking by saying: “Spillers and Wynter are important figures for a few reasons. First, they are both Black feminist thinkers who have also offered the most detailed recent theorizations of Black Studies as an intellectual project and institutional formation in the US academy. Second, Wynter and Spillers have devised global theories of modern humanity and how it is cut by racial and gender differences. I think part of why Wynter was not discussed more widely until recently is that her texts are difficult in terms of their prose and in their insistence on the global human and the significance of the biological, which have been discredited in mainstream academic discourse” (Conversations In Black: Alexander G. Weheliye). Slavery, segregation, Jim crow, and the prison system are all technologies that have justified the treatment of black subjects by stripping them of human status and citizenship for the benefit of Man. Sylvia Wynter’s writing in “No Humans Involved”: An Open Letter to My Colleagues, published in 1994, may have influenced Weheliye. In the letter, she speaks about the phrase used by law enforcement, “no humans involved”, when police officers refer to black males. Once again, black subjects are recognized as entities outside of humanity.

Also, Hortense Spillers’ theory of separating the body and the flesh was the inspiration for the title Habeas Viscus (Conversations In Black: Alexander G. Weheliye). In Mama’s Baby and Papa’s Maybe, Spillers asks “we might well ask if this phenomenon of marking and branding actually “transfers” from one generation to another, finding its various symbolic substitutions in an efficacy of meanings that repeat the initiating moments?” (Spillers). Relating to Weheliye in that the past experiences of black subjects are tied to the flesh from generations to come and are modified as time moves forward.

The theory in this chapter reveals how black subjects are not considered to be fully human. If the laws that allow people to enjoy freedoms and have their rights are made for humans that exclude all non-white people, that means that there is no way to attain equality in a system that was never made to serve not-quite and non-humans. As Weheliye has communicated, it is unwise to fight for full human status using the same tactics. While Weheliye’s process reveals that the system needs to be changed, it is not very realistic to expect a shift in western society, where black subjects are treated as fully human in the near future. The Black Lives Matter movement is specific in its fight for justice and equality. If we were to shift the focus from black people to all people, it becomes the All Lives Matter movement, which diverts from the real issue. All lives do matter, but specifically black lives are not being treated as such. How can we fight for particular issues affecting a specific group of people without identifying the groups? Focusing on groups that are not at risk marginalizes the lives that are actually in danger. Redefining the human is important in ensuring that everyone is treated fairly and have equal rights, but right now non-white subjects continue to be brutally killed and compared to animals. Recently, PETA compared animal phrases with racial slurs, equating the experience of non-white, non-conforming subjects with animals. On December 4th, 2018, PETA tweeted: "Just as it became unacceptable to use racist, homophobic, or ableist language, phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start 'bringing home the bagels' instead of the bacon," (@Peta). Again, we can see the human, not-quite-human, non-human notion Weheliye speaks about in his piece. The issue is that presently specific groups need more attention, and abandoning genres of human all together downplays the urgency of precise problems.

Habeas Viscus has received positive reviews from within cultural studies. For instance, “These readings illustrate how Weheliye’s revitalization of Wynter and Spillers provides tools that might allow cultural studies to become nimbler and more intersectional. Habeas viscus is a well-structured book that combines detailed theoretical explication with targeted, scaffolding examples to create a strong intervention in both continental theory and black studies that will no doubt be important for cultural studies to address moving forward (Schmidt). Weheliye offers up alternative ways of operating through the limitations in the human studies field and maps possibilities of a world where human and Man are detached. A world where humanity is united as one.

"Alexander G. Weheliye". Sites.Google.Com, 2018, https://sites.google.com/site/alexweheliye/. Accessed 12 Dec 2018.

"C.L.R. James | West Indian-Born Writer And Activist". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/C-L-R-James. Accessed 12 Dec 2018.

Conversations In Black: Alexander G. Weheliye. 2018, https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/conversations-in-black-alexander-g-weheliye/. Accessed 12 Dec 2018.

Schmidt, Bryan. Tandfonline.Com, 2018, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09502386.2017.1354048?casa\_token=9FmhHn\_ejVAAAAAA:80SUsH6JSUQ8X19Z1wr1MvF-0JsxaXeq0ycvrhhH7wM7I7t0X4Frz6a1582P2CBL1JXUFTRqQJxRMQ. Accessed 12 Dec 2018.

Spillers, Hortense J. Black, White, And In Color. University Of Chicago Press, 2003, p. 207.

"W.E.B. Du Bois | Biography, The Souls Of Black Folk, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/W-E-B-Du-Bois. Accessed 12 Dec 2018.

Weheliye, Alexander G. Habeas Viscus. Duke University Press, 2014, pp. 17-32.

Wynter, Sylvia. “‘No Humans Involved’: An Open Letter to My Colleagues.” 1994.

@Peta.“Just as it became unacceptable to use racist, homophobic, or ableist language, phrases that trivialize cruelty to animals will vanish as more people begin to appreciate animals for who they are and start ‘bringing home the bagels’ instead of the bacon.” Twitter, 4 Dec. 2018, 5:23 p.m., https://twitter.com/peta/status/1070066205170397184.