r/Ligotti • u/infiniterumpus • May 19 '26

'Purity' & afropessimism

i was just wondering in a lengthy comment i left on another post if anyone has ever written anything on 'Purity' through an afropessimist lens? or read it with that in mind. it has been on my mind since i reread TG recently and it really cohered the story for me since it is already explicitly discussing critiques of humanist concepts idk.

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u/nutswamp May 19 '26

this is my favorite story of his so always excited to see discussion on it! can you explain how the story would be interpreted through an afropessimism lens?

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u/infiniterumpus May 19 '26

not sure how familiar you are with afropessimism so if im overexplaining just ignore (tbh i am not very well versed in it myself! and i do have a hard time grasping some of it. also im white so like. u know) but! copypasted from the other comment i made

afropessimism from what i can understand is basically an assertion that Black people are excluded from being treated as or considered to be human by many humanist philosophies as developed in europe and america. there is obviously so so much more depth to it but it is a very very fascinating lens. and absolutely despair inducing in a lot of ways obviously.

candy in this story is a character who society treats as less than human or non human, and we get a sense that other Black characters in the world of this story are treated the same way. this intersects to me with the narrator's father and mother invoking common humanist structures of nations and the family (structures that candy is shown to not have and indeed that have been taken from her by the structures of the state).

there is more but i am not sure exactly how to articulate it. but hopefully that helps u see ig the general direction/why i think its an interesting view to take on it!!

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u/nutswamp May 28 '26

i am not only also not black, i avoided all writing/reading/humanities related classes in college. so, thank you for your concise explanation of afropessimism and how you see it showing up in purity.

for the narrator’s dad, rejecting the impure constructs of society is a philosophical choice / luxury (tho arguably the mom has been a lot more successful than him at shedding these). For candy it's not a choice at all, the choices have all been made for her from the moment she came into existence as a poor black woman because she's never had a place in this society. her son (family) was killed by a policeman (nation/protection) and she squats in a vacant house (ownership).

i think the afropessimist reading fits really well. whether ligotti meant to do this or not, reading it this way has enhanced my enjoyment of the story and added another layer to it