Blackness: Spectres and Monsters are the Future of Theological Subjectivity Philip Butler Abstract: This essay peers into the off-centered points of globality in hopes to unpack a few nodes of posthuman subjectivity—namely Blackness. Historically, the ghostly and monstrous were used to distance Blackness from the humanity and divinity. Outside of the realm of Black theology, Blackness has not historically been associated with divine embodiment/incarnation. This essay seeks to turn the terms specter and monster on their head, being subjectivities that bear divine reality. An investigation into the dangers posed by Black spectral and monstrous divinity points toward new posthuman subjectivities (being specters and monsters of Black personhood and divinity). Philip Butler is the Assistant Professor of Theology and Black Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems at Iliff School of Theology. He is the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational artificial intelligence with mental health capacities. He is also the author of Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Spirituality and Technology. Denver, USA preed-butler@iliff.edu Key words: Black studies, Blackness, posthumanism, anti-humanism, horror, monstrous, Black theology, Theology, Theological Anthropology Whenever people see a ghost they make sense of it the best they know how. Or, not. Here, meaning relies heavily on the current contours of individual perspectives/knowledge systems. Very little prepares people for seeing a ghost, except experience with the ghostly. Further, people rarely actually see the specter. They see and feel the effects of the ways ghosts interact with their environment. The same goes for when people try to make sense of an encounter with a monster. 1 What’s worse, experiences with the divine are no different. The ineffable/unspeakable aspects of divine encounters often leave people with a sense of awe that is primarily perceptible through the effects of said encounter. Where one might say, “I had an encounter with God,” or “God moved on my behalf [this way]”. It often follows that whatever people encounter immediately becomes transcribed through the vantage points of the epistemological nodes that uphold their historically situated sense of self/reality. These transcriptions serve to bolster the stability of their phenomenological experience. In this way people often see, but seldom, beyond the specters/ phantoms of their own imagination. This essay peers into the off-centered points of globality as a Adam Frank, “If Dark Matter Can't Be Seen, What About Ghosts?” NPR: Opinion Science. September 1 16, 2016. Accessed September 26, 2020. https://n.pr/3jkSCNn.