Moten, Blackness and nothingness (Mysticism in the Flesh

What would it be for this dra­ma to be unders­tood in its own terms, from its own stand­point, on its own ground ? This is not sim­ply a ques­tion of pers­pec­tive awai­ting its unas­king, since what we speak of is this radi­cal being beside itself of bla­ck­ness, its appo­si­tio­na­li­ty. The stand­point, the home ter­ri­to­ry, chez lui—Charles Lam Markmann’s insight­ful mis­trans­la­tion of Fanon illu­mi­nates some­thing that Richard Philcox obs­cures by way of cor­rec­tion, Among one’s own, signi­fies a rela­tio­na­li­ty that dis­places the alrea­dy dis­pla­ced impos­si­bi­li­ty of home and the modes of rela­tio­na­li­ty that home is sup­po­sed to afford (Fanon 1967). Can this sha­ring of a life in home­less­ness, this inter­play of the refu­sal of what has been refu­sed and consent, this under­com­mon appo­si­tio­na­li­ty, be a place from which to know, a place out of which emerges nei­ther self-conscious­ness nor know­ledge of the other but an impro­vi­sa­tion that pro­ceeds from somew­here on the other side of an unas­ked ques­tion ? But not sim­ply to be among one’s own ; rather, also, to live among one’s own in dis­pos­ses­sion, to live among the ones who can­not own, the ones who have nothing and who, in having nothing, have eve­ry­thing. To live, in other words, within the gene­ral com­mon­ness and open­ness of a life in Deleuze’s sense (hence the neces­si­ty of a phi­lo­so­phy of life ; hence the neces­si­ty but also the rigor of a dis­be­lief in social death, where social death is pre­ci­se­ly unders­tood as the impo­si­tion of the subject’s neces­si­ty rather than the refu­sal of the subject’s pos­si­bi­li­ty, which, in any case, the impo­si­tion founds and enforces. At stake is the curve, the sup­ple­ness and subt­le­ty, not only of contem­pla­tion on social life but of contem­pla­tive social life ; at stake is the force of an extra­phe­no­me­no­lo­gi­cal poe­tics of social life. And so we arrive, again and again, at a pro­found impulse in Fanon that—as Chandler indi­cates in his rea­ding, which is the ini­tial rea­ding, of Du Bois—constitutes Du Bois’s hori­zon and which appears in the various forms of that ques­tion whose neces­si­ty is so fun­da­men­tal that it must be unasked—the ques­tion of the mea­ning of (black) being, the ques­tion of the mea­ning of (black) things. We stu­dy in the sound of an unas­ked ques­tion. Our stu­dy is the sound of an unas­ked ques­tion. We stu­dy the sound of an unas­ked ques­tion. In the absence of the ame­ni­ty (some plea­sant­ness or plea­san­try of wel­come or mate­rial com­fort), what is borne in the emp­ti­ness or nothin­gness of the ame­ni­ty (of which love or soul is born, in exhaus­tion, as a socie­ty of friends), what are the other ele­ments of mu ? Chant and ko¯an and moan and Sprechgesang, and babble and gob­ble­dy­gook, le petit nègre, the lit­tle nig­ger, pid­gin, baby talk, bird talk, Bird’s talk, bard talk, bar talk, our loco­mo­tive bar walk and black chant, our pal­let cries and ship­ped whis­pers, our black notes and black cant, the tenor’s irrup­tive habi­ta­tion of the vehicle, the monas­tic pre­pa­ra­tion of a more than three-dimen­sio­nal trans­cript, an ima­gi­nal manus­cript we touch upon the walls and one ano­ther, so we can enter into the hold we’re in, where there is no way we were or are.