by François Laruelle In the beginning there is Black – man and Universe, rather than philosopher and World I. In the foundations of color, vision sees the Universe; in the foundations of the Universe, it sees man; in the foundations of man, it sees vision. The Earth, the World, the Universe have to do with man: the Earth a little, the World a lot, the Universe passionately. The Universe is the inner passion for the Remote. Man works the Earth, lives in the World, thinks according to the Universe. The Earth is man’s ground, the World his neighbor, the Universe his secret. The Earth is the strait through which passes the light of the World; it is the tongue made of sand and water upon which, standing, man strides against the World. The World is everything too vast and too narrow for the Earth, and again too narrow for the Universe. Man gropes around the World and the World floats in the Universe unable to touch its borders. Into the World of narrow-minded thoughts, man brings the emotion of the Universe. The Universe, an object greater than the World, is not the object of thought, but rather its how or its according to. The Universe is an opaque and solitary thought, which has already leapt through man's shut eyes as the space of a dream without dreaming. The Universe is not reflected in another universe, and yet the Remote is accessible to us at each of its points. The World is the endless confusion of man and Universe, the Universe treated as man's object. The forgetting of the essence of the Universe is less noticeable than the forgetting of the World. The forgetting of man as One(-of-)the-Universe and the Universe as One-through-man is less noticeable than the forgetting of being-in-the- World. II. In the beginning there is Black--man and Universe, rather than philosopher and World. Surrounding the philosopher everything becomes World and light. Surrounding man everything becomes Universe and opacity. Man, who carries away the Universe with him, is condemned, without knowing why, to the World and to the Earth, and neither the World nor the Earth can tell him why. He is answered only by the Universe, being black and mute. Black is not in the object or the World, it is what man sees in man, and the way in which man sees man. Black is not merely what man sees in man, it is the only “color” inseparable from the hyper- intelligible expanse of the Universe. Solitude of the man-without-horizon who sees Black in Black. The Universe is deaf and blind, we can only love it and assist it. Man is the being who assists the Universe. Only with eyes closed can we unfold the future, and with eyes opened can we conceive to enter it. Light strikes the Earth with repeated blows, divides the World infinitely, solicits in vain the invisible Universe. The Universe was “in” the World and the World did not see it. Black prior to light is the substance of the Universe, what escaped from the World before the World was born into the World. Black is the without-Ground which fixes light in the remote where man observes it. Here lies the crazy and catatonic light of the World. 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. The black universe is the opacity of the real or the “color” that renders it invisible. No light has ever seen the black universe. Black is anterior to the absence of light, whether this absence be the shadows that extinguish it, whether it be it nothingness or its positive opposite. The black universe is not a negative light. Black is the Radical of color, what never was a color nor the attribute of a color, the emotion seizing man when affected by a color. As opposed to the black objectified in the spectrum, Black is already manifested, before any process of manifestation. This is vision-in-Black. Black is entirely interior to itself and to man. Black is without opposite: even light, which tries to turn it into its opposite, fails in the face of the rigor of its secret. Only the secret sees into the secret, like Black in Black. The essence of color is not colored: it’s the black universe. Metaphysical white is a simple discoloration, the prismatic or indifferent unity of colors. Phenomenal blackness is indifferent to color because it represents their ultimate degree of reality, that which prevents their final dissolution into the mixtures of light. Philosophy and sometimes painting treat black and white as contraries, colors as opposites; they mix them, under the authority of light as the supreme mix. The human science of color is founded on the blackness known as the “universe.” They cognitively unify man, the Universe, and color theory--and their potencies in Black, which is their common reality, but in the last instance only. A human science of color makes the black universe the requisite that is real or immanent to their physics. Black is the posture itself of science and of its “relation” to color. IV. Science is a way of thinking in black and white which studies the light of the Cosmos and the color of the World: black, by way of its posture or its inherence to the real; white, by way of its representation of the real. A way of thinking where white is no longer the opposite of black, but rather its positively discolored reflection. Science is the mode of thought in which black determines in the last instance white. The black universe transforms colors without mixing them. It simplifies color in order to bring out the whiteness of understanding in its essence of non-pictorial reflection. Our uchromia: to learn to think from the point of view of Black as what determines color in the last instance rather than what limits it. Philosophical technology has been withdrawn mimetically from the World, in order to reflect and reproduce it. Such technology is inadequate for thinking the Universe. We are still postulating that reality is given to us through the paradigm of the World. We perpetuate the inhuman amphibology that confuses the World and the Universe. We believe that reality is horizon and light, aperture and flash, whereas it resembles more the posture of an opaque non-relation (to) light. When exploring the uni-versal dimension of the cosmic, we remain prisoners of cosmo-logical difference. Our philosophers are children who are afraid of the Dark. Philosophy is thinking by way of a generalized “black box”; it is the effort to fit black into light and to push it back to the rear of the caverns. Yet, the cosmo-logical generalization of black does not save it from its status as attribute, quite the contrary. Black alone is subject and may render manifest the philosophical interlocking of concepts. Do not think technology first: rocket and the lift off of the rocket. Look instead, like in the depths of a closed eye, into the opacity of knowledge where, forming one with it, the rocket passes through infinite distances. Think according to the knowledge that steers the rocket as if in a dream, heavier and more transparent than the boundless night it penetrates with a silent thunderclap. Think science first. Stop sending your ships through the narrow cosmo-logical corridor. Stop making them climb the extreme walls of the world. Let them jump over the cosmic barrier and enter into the hyperspace of the Universe. Cease having them compete with light, for your rockets too can realize the more-than-psychic, postural mutation, and shift from light to black universe which is no longer a color; from cosmic color to postural and subjective black. Let your rockets become subject of the Universe and be present at every point of the Remote. Simplify color! See black, think white! See black rather than believe “unconscious.” And think white rather than believe “conscious.” See black! Not that all your suns have fallen-- they have since reappeared, only slightly dimmer--but Black is the “color” that falls eternally from the Universe onto your Earth.
taken from:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Steven Craig Hickman - The Intelligence of Capital: The Collapse of Politics in Contemporary Society
Steven Craig Hickman - Hyperstition: Technorevisionism – Influencing, Modifying and Updating Reality
Archives
April 2020
|