The Editorial Board has planned the first three themed (and foundational) issues, on the following concepts:

• “liquidity” – Vol 5 no. 1 – Spring 2021

• “blackness” – Vol 5 no. 2 – Fall 2021

• “aesthetics” – Vol 6 no. 1 – Spring 2022

After two foundational issues devoted to “liquidity” and “blackness,” we now turn to our third concept, “aesthetics,” to explore its radical potential for Black Studies. We are inspired by Fred Moten’s posing of black aesthetic sociality as a problem for ontology, and appositional to epistemology and phenomenology. Moten’s insistence on the irreducible vitality of black sociality has been both inspirational and aspirational to the theoretical foundation, the ethics, and the praxis that sustain this journal. His aesthetic thinking and practice—we hesitate to call it a “theory”—unravels in a multitude of ways throughout his long career as poet, theorist, philosopher, art critic, and through his engagement with an extraordinarily rich, varied, and unruly archive.

Inspired by this capacious model of practice and the ways Moten’s work radically upends traditional distinctions between ontology, phenomenology, epistemology, and aesthetics, we offer below some concepts that have appeared in his recent trilogy “consent not to be a single being” to invite contributions that engage with, and might enrich, the theoretical, methodological, and artistic archives mobilized in Moten’s work, or, conversely express skepticism and offer criticism.

We take this opportunity to explore the expansive possibilities of “aesthetic thinking” broadly conceived, and investigate who can do theory (scholars, artists, activists…), how theory can be done (in image, writing, archiving, curating, social activism…), and what a Black aesthetic object is (“high”/“low” art, sound and image, practice and praxis, the work of individual artists and ensembles…).