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Paradisical Pessimism: On the Crucifixion Darkness and the Cosmic Materiality of Sorrow

Paradisical Pessimism: On the Crucifixion Darkness and the Cosmic Materiality of Sorrow Paradisical Pessimism On the Crucifixion Darkness and the Cosmic Materiality of Sorrow nicola masciandaro Sunt lacrimae rerum --Virgil, Aeneid 1.462 All men have matter of sorrow; but most specially he feels matter of sorrow that knows and feels that he is. --The Cloud of Unknowing "The contours of cosmic pessimism," writes Eugene Thacker, "are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view . . . shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one's relationship to thought."1 By intellectually elevating the worst to universal magnitudes, cosmic pessimism forces the question of the relation between what ultimately is and how one feels about things. More specifically, it necessarily entertains--with utmost due skepticism-- the problem of whether human sorrow, our volitional and affective sensor for what is wrong, has any universal validity. This essay finds in cosmic pessimism the conceptual starting point for a mystical reinterpretation of the most radical representation of cosmic sorrow in the Christian tradition: the crucifixion qui parle 23:1 · articles darkness. As an ultimate figural conjunction of the pessimal and the optimal, this event provides the grounds for a paradisical inversion of pessimism around the axis http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences University of Nebraska Press

Paradisical Pessimism: On the Crucifixion Darkness and the Cosmic Materiality of Sorrow

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University of Nebraska Press
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Abstract

Paradisical Pessimism On the Crucifixion Darkness and the Cosmic Materiality of Sorrow nicola masciandaro Sunt lacrimae rerum --Virgil, Aeneid 1.462 All men have matter of sorrow; but most specially he feels matter of sorrow that knows and feels that he is. --The Cloud of Unknowing "The contours of cosmic pessimism," writes Eugene Thacker, "are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view . . . shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one's relationship to thought."1 By intellectually elevating the worst to universal magnitudes, cosmic pessimism forces the question of the relation between what ultimately is and how one feels about things. More specifically, it necessarily entertains--with utmost due skepticism-- the problem of whether human sorrow, our volitional and affective sensor for what is wrong, has any universal validity. This essay finds in cosmic pessimism the conceptual starting point for a mystical reinterpretation of the most radical representation of cosmic sorrow in the Christian tradition: the crucifixion qui parle 23:1 · articles darkness. As an ultimate figural conjunction of the pessimal and the optimal, this event provides the grounds for a paradisical inversion of pessimism around the axis

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Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences – University of Nebraska Press

Published: Oct 9, 2014

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