This essay reads Unathi Slasha’s Jah Hills (2019 [2017]) in light of Afropessimism to argue that the novel articulates a grammar of Black suffering and offers a staunch critique of antiblackness and white supremacy. Through the character of Jah Hills, who inhabits the limbo between life and death, the novel reflects upon how slavery continues to shape the ontological position and everyday lives of Black people as they remain subjected to premature death. In the process, Jah Hills throws white theories of precarity into crisis as well as disrupts the antiblack politics of sentimentality as the story is told from the perspective of Jah-turned-isithunzela, a creature that, rather than primarily eliciting the sympathy of the reader, wreaks havoc on the living. An extended meditation on the political ontology of Blackness, Jah Hills can be read as an allegory of the Black condition, one that is not simply defined by precarity, but by a more fundamental deprivation as life itself is not guaranteed.

中文翻译：

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“抓住敞开的坟墓：”乌纳西·斯拉沙的贾山中的黑暗、死亡和奴隶制的来世

本文从非洲悲观主义的角度阅读 Unathi Slasha 的 Jah Hills (2019 [2017])，认为这部小说阐明了黑人苦难的语法，并对反黑人和白人至上主义提出了坚定的批评。通过在生与死之间徘徊的 Jah Hills 的角色，这部小说反映了奴隶制如何继续塑造黑人的本体论地位和日常生活，因为他们仍然遭受过早死亡。在这个过程中，Jah Hills 将关于不稳定的白人理论置于危机之中，并破坏了反黑人多愁善感的政治，因为故事是从 Jah-turned-isithunzela 的角度讲述的，一个生物，而不是主要引起读者的同情，对生者造成严重破坏。对黑人政治本体论的深入思考，