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This chapter looks at an unnoticed dimension of Kant's notorious comments, namely, how the exclusion of the Black subject occurs through Kant's erasure in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (1764) of Francis Williams from Hume's note. The note had circulated most likely via private translation to Kant. In the same text, Kant subsequently distorts an unnamed lack woman from Jean-Baptiste Labat's Nouveau voyage aux isles de l'Amerique. The chapter demonstrates how, through false attributions and distorted citations, a politics of unmarked whiteness hides Kant's racism. The chapter questions how the figures of Francis Williams and the unnamed Black woman might be haunting Kant's efforts to elaborate an ethical philosophy in this early work preceding his Critical texts.

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