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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
Who hasn't had the frightening experience of stumbling around in the pitch dark? Alain Badiou experienced that primitive terror when he, with his young friends, made up a game called "The Stroke of Midnight." The furtive discovery of the dark continent of sex in banned magazines, the beauty of Black ink on paper, but also the mysteries of space and the grief of mourning: these are some of the things we encounter as the philosopher takes us on a trip through the private theater of his mind, at the whim of his memories. Music, painting, politics, sex, and metaphysics: all contribute to making Black more luminous than it has ever been.
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Translator’s note
Childhood and youth
Military black
The Stroke of Midnight
The black dog in the dark
The inkwell
Chalk and markers
Confusions
Early sexuality
The dialectics of black
Dialectical ambiguities
Black souls
Soulages’ ultrablack
Flags
Red and black. And white. And violet.
Stendhal: the red and the black
The dark desire of/for darkness
Clothing
The black sign
Black humor, or black vs. black
Outward appearance
Physics, biology, and anthropology
The metaphorical black of the Cosmos
The secret blackness of plants
Animal black
An invention of white people
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Black
The brilliance of a noncolor
Alain Badiou
Translated by Susan Spitzer
polity
First published in French as Le noir. Éclats d’une non-couleur, © Autrement, Paris, 2015 This English edition © Polity Press, 2017
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1211-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Badiou, Alain, author.Title: Black : the brilliance of a non-color / Alain Badiou.Other titles: Noir. EnglishDescription: English edition. | Malden, MA : Polity Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references.Identifiers: LCCN 2016020612| ISBN 9781509512072 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781509512089 (pbk. : alk. paper)Subjects: LCSH: Black. | Color--Psychological aspects. | Color--Social aspects. | Symbolism of colors.Classification: LCC BF789.C7 B3313 2016 | DDC 152.14/5--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016020612
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Translator’s note
In Le Noir, the original French edition of this book, the adjective noir and the noun le noir are, as might be expected, ubiquitous. But their cumulative impact on readers of this translation will no doubt be somewhat attenuated owing to the simple fact that English uses not just one but a variety of terms to convey their meanings. Thus, the adjective is often rendered as “dark” rather than “black.” Similarly, the noun offers the translator a range of choices, depending on the context: “black,” “the black,” “blackness,” “black person,” “darkness,” “the dark,” etc. Alain Badiou is well aware of the pitfalls of the translation of noir/le noir. He claimed, for example, in his 1988–89 seminar on Beckett and Mallarmé, that the phrase “in the dark” in Beckett’s prose poem Company was much weaker than its counterpart dans le noir in the author’s own translation of that work into French. The French language, Badiou concluded, “radicalized” Beckett’s thought. In this book, he again highlights, as it were, the “black” vs. “dark” problem from an ontological point of view when he comments on the English translations of “trou noir” – “black hole” – and “matière noire” – “dark matter” – in the chapter entitled “The metaphorical black of the Cosmos.”
Childhood and youth
Military black
I was a senior airman – one of my many incarnations – back in the day. The 3rd Air Region band. Dark blue uniform, cap, white gaiters, piccolo, my fingers and lips accustomed to the shrill high notes of our old warhorse, the chorus of La Marseillaise, which was played on every occasion. Nothing black, in other words, except the winter nights. The regulation stipulated that at 9 pm we had to put out the coal stove – aha! a touch of black in the décor (let’s make a note of that), with the bucket full of coal and the pervasive, sticky coal dust everywhere – which gave off heavy smoke amid our neatly aligned beds.
Our very lives were at stake. If the regulation wasn’t enforced, said the staff sergeant, a firstrate trombonist, the carbon monoxide would quickly kill a sleeping soldier, even if he was a member of the band. The black coal couldn’t have cared less that, without us, the 3rd Air Region would be deprived, and for a long time to come, of the chorus of La Marseillaise. And who was responsible for making sure that the abovementioned regulation was enforced? The senior airman, who, by reason of his rank, was appointed Barracks Chief, with no resistance possible. Thus, coaxing, bargaining, coercing, bringing extra blankets, browbeating the trumpeters, cracking down on the clarinetists, being easy on the flutists and tough on the drummers, I ruled over the coming of the freezing dark. Putting out the stove, putting out the lights, ensuring that, no matter what, the bitter cold and the vast night descended on all these young men bundled up like sausages in countless layers of scratchy military blankets – that was my duty, my mission.
So, when I’d overcome the last resistances and we were all freezing together in the musical, patriotic night, my friend the oboist, in a soft yet strong voice, would start singing (or might have started singing, later on) the famous Johnny Hallyday song “Noir c’est noir, il n’y a plus d’espoir”1 [Black is black, there’s no hope anymore], like one of those melancholy lullabies he was a great connoisseur of, or like a hymn of resignation. And we’d all join in, the way we did with the lullabies, keeping the evil powers of the night and the cold at bay this way, since singing of black despair is some consolation for having to endure it.
1
Black Is Black,” originally released in 1966 by the Spanish band Los Bravos, was covered as “Noir c’est noir” the same year by rocker Johnny Hallyday in France, where it went on to become a hit single.
The Stroke of Midnight
I was eight years old, don’t worry, well before I was a senior airman in the 3rd Air Region band. But I was already interested in controlling the dark. As a matter of fact, I made up a somewhat suspicious game called “The Stroke of Midnight.” To play the game, our group had to have at least five or six kids in it, and above all it had to be co-ed – which was certainly not the case with the hopelessly single-sex band whose nocturnal ruler I later became. However dark they all may be, the various “strokes of midnight,” the comings of the night, may not necessarily be alike. “Black is black,” sure, but there are secret and exquisite differences between them. And that’s why, in the end, there’s always a little hope.
Six was the ideal number of players, and the ideal ideal, which was rarely attained, was for there to be three girls and three boys. The game only began after dark. In addition, it was essential that parents of any sort, at any rate the ones who lived in the apartment we were getting together in, be out of the way: at the movies, at some late dinner, at one of the tense political meetings of the time. This was in 1945 – can you believe?! What dark times those parents were from! And what a lot of soon-tobe-dashed hopes were attached to the end of that darkness! But regardless of whether they were in the film-lovers’ dark of screen images or absorbed in the unlikely clearing of our country’s darkness, the important thing for us, the players of “The Stroke of Midnight,” was that the parents be out of the picture. What stringent requirements! I learned from this that darkness is only exquisite when it is, if not outright prohibited, then at least temporarily free from the forces of prohibition. Let’s make a distinction between official darkness, which is the regulated cessation of active daytime, and unofficial darkness, artificially induced darkness, the darkness mobilized against daytime so that action at once restricted2 and infinite might emerge in it.
