Moten, Blackness and nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh

The paraon­to­lo­gi­cal dis­tinc­tion bet­ween bla­ck­ness and blacks allows us no lon­ger to be enthral­led by the notion that bla­ck­ness is a pro­per­ty that belongs to blacks (the­re­by pla­cing cer­tain for­mu­la­tions regar­ding non/relationality and non/communicability on a dif­ferent foo­ting and under a cer­tain pres­sure) but also because ulti­ma­te­ly it allows us to detach bla­ck­ness from the ques­tion of (the mea­ning of) being. The infi­ni­te­si­mal dif­fe­rence bet­ween pes­si­mism and opti­mism lies not in the belief or dis­be­lief in des­crip­tions of power rela­tions or eman­ci­pa­to­ry pro­jects ; the dif­fe­rence is given in the space bet­ween an asser­tion of the rela­tive nothin­gness of bla­ck­ness and black people in the face, lite­ral­ly, of sub­stan­tive (anti­black) sub­jec­ti­vi­ty and an inha­bi­ta­tion of appo­si­tio­na­li­ty, its inter­nal social rela­tions, which remain unstruc­tu­red by the pro­to­cols of sub­jec­ti­vi­ty inso­far as mu—which has been various­ly trans­la­ted from the Japanese trans­la­tion of the Chinese wu as no, not, nought, non­being, emp­ti­ness, nothin­gness, nothing, no thing but which also bears the seman­tic trace of dance, the­re­fore of mea­sure given in walking/falling, that sus­te­nance of asym­me­try, difference’s appo­si­tio­nal mobility—also signi­fies an abso­lute nothin­gness whose anti­re­la­tive and anti­the­ti­cal phi­lo­so­phi­cal content is approa­ched by way of Nishida Kitaro¯’s enact­ment of the affi­ni­ties bet­ween struc­tures and affects of mys­ti­cism that under­gird and trouble meta­phy­sics in the “East” and the “West.” Indeed, the content that is approa­ched is approach, itself, and for the abso­lute begin­ner, who is at once pil­grim and penitent, mu signals that which is most empha­ti­cal­ly and lyri­cal­ly mar­ked in Édouard Glissant’s phrase “consent not to be a single being” and indi­ca­ted in Wilderson’s and Mackey’s ges­tures toward “fan­ta­sy in the hold,” the radi­cal unset­tle­ment that is where and what we are. Unsettlement is the dis­pla­ce­ment of sove­rei­gn­ty by ini­tia­tion, so that what’s at stake—here, in displacement—is a cer­tain black inca­pa­ci­ty to desire sove­rei­gn­ty and onto­lo­gi­cal rela­tio­na­li­ty whe­ther they are recast in the terms and forms of a Lévinasian ethics or an Arendtian poli­tics, a Fanonian resis­tance or a Pattersonian test of honor.