A discussion with Mark Christian Thompson, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the Department of English at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of five books: Black Fascisms, published in 2007 by University of Virginia Press; Kafka’s Blues, out with Northwestern University Press in 2016; 2018’s Anti-Music: Jazz and Racial Blackness in German Thought Between the Wars, published by SUNY Press; Phenomenal Blackness, our occasion for discussion today, which appeared in late 2021 with University of Chicago Press and the forthcoming Critique of Nonviolence: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Philosophy. In this conversation, we explore the influence of key figures in German critical theory on post-WWII African American writers and political intellectuals.