ABSTRACT
This chapter contemplates failure as a reorienting experience through a number of interactions relevant to Black experience. First, the sculptural art of Michael Richards provides a focal point for a failed interaction between the West and Black bodies, namely, the Icarus myth. Icarus provides Richards with a generative trope, but not in any customary terms of classical reception. Rather, the accidental and continuous failure of Icarus is read in terms of Afropessimism, wherein suffering and loss are purposeless and irredeemable. Instead of a productive relationship between a classical Western symbol and a Black Atlantic artist, Icarus provides Richards a means by which to iterate loss. Taking Richards’ art as a worthwhile provocation, the essay turns to three sites of classical or ancient failure as significant for contemplation: Carthage, Kush and West Africa.
