[-empyre-] Liquid Blackness, Matter & Flesh

[simon]

Dear <<empyreans>>,

this month's topic made me curious because of its overpowering 
metaphoricity. Even when race is invoked this is retained. A power in 
the slogan Black Lives Matter. (About which, the imagery of power and 
its toppling, here 
<http://sfaq.us/2016/04/reclamation-the-art-of-dissent-made-flesh/>.)

By chance, I picked up François Laruelle's “Du noir univers: dans les 
fondations humaines de la couleur” and read in Miguel Abreu's translation:

In the beginning there is Black

Black is not merely what man sees in man

The Universe is deaf and blind, we can only love it and assist it.

Black prior to light is the substance of the Universe.

Light strikes the Earth with repeated blows, divides the World 
infinitely, solicits in vain the invisible Universe.

Man approaches the World only by way of transcendental darkness, into 
which he never entered and from which he will never leave.

A phenomenal blackness entirely fills the essence of man. Because of it, 
the most ancient stars of the paleo-cosmos together with the most 
venerable stones of the archeo-earth, appear to man as being outside the 
World, and the World itself appears as outside-World.

...

Laruelle also writes "Black is entirely interior to itself and to man." 
And we have to wonder about women.

Daniel Colucciello Barber, Alexander Galloway, Nicola Masiandaro, and 
Eugene Thacker together wrote a book about Laruelle's aphoristic essay. 
The book came from the staging of a four-night colloquium during which 
each of the authors, on consecutive nights, addressed him-self to 
her-meticism (& /Du noir univers/).

Best,
Simon
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