Anger is an Energy: On the Politics of Thymos

Thymos 2 (from a series of 50 mixed media images) 

Alejandro Tarantino

Most people are familiar with the ancient Greek terms for love (eros) and for reason (logos).

But many are unfamiliar with another crucial component of the psyche that the Greeks termed thymos and by which they referred to the desire of the male subject not merely to be found sexually attractive and in full possession of his senses, but acknowledged as one who is worthy of respect.

It is this need to be shown due regard that often leads to anger and violent confrontation within patriarchal and phallocratic society. For example, one might recall the powerful scene from A Few Good Men (dir. Rob Reiner, 1992), in which Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessep addresses Tom Cruise as US Navy lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee:

"You see, Danny, I can deal with the bullets and the bombs and the blood. I don't want money and I don't want medals. What I do want is for you to stand there in that faggoty white uniform and with your Harvard mouth extend me some fucking courtesy!"

Staying in the cinematic universe if I may, I would suggest that it's this same (irrational) aspect of the male soul we are obliged to consider in Joel Schumacher's 1993 thriller Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas as alt-right poster boy William Foster (D-FENS).

The movie suggests that, ultimately, even an average man can be pushed too far and that nobody likes to feel they've been lied to, or made a fool of. And nobody likes to feel they're invisible and thus able to be totally ignored. It makes the blood boil. One seeks justice; or some form of revenge.

Deleuzeans might dream of becoming-imperceptible. But they are a very rare and very unusual type. Most people - particularly most men - want to be seen and want to be listened to; want the world to recognise that they too have rights, including the right to freely express their views and affirm their values, whether these coincide with the views and values of a gender-neutral liberal elite or not.      

Idealists who subscribe to a philosophical fantasy of universal love and reason, will never really grasp what motivates men like Jessep and Bill Foster. If this makes them poor film critics on the one hand, so too does it make them poor political commentators on the other; people, we might say, who can't handle the truth.

And so, whilst they might write for The Guardian or appear on Dateline London, not one of them seems able or willing to conceive of why it is that reactionary and/or fascist ideas to do with cultural identity and national greatness that tap into white male rage not only persist, but have renewed appeal amongst sections of even the most prosperous and peaceful democratic societies.  


To watch the scene referred to above between Nicholson and Cruise in A Few Good Men, click here. 

To watch the official trailer to Falling Down, click here.

All Dolled Up with Lulu Hashimoto

Lulu Hashimoto: tumblr.com

Japanese beauty, Lulu Hashimoto, is a girl who has really taken the expression all dolled up to heart.

Or, more precisely, Lulu Hashimoto is a doll-like character performed by an anonymous model who has really taken the idea of self-objectification to an uncanny level.  

In other words, Lulu is actually a full-body doll suit, consisting of a wig, a mask and stockings patterned with doll-like joints, created by Hitomi Komaki, a 23-year-old fashion designer who has a thing for dolls and their unique attraction (a disturbing combination of cuteness and creepiness).

Despite Komaki's rather puzzling and somewhat disingenuous denials, there's obviously something fetishistic about this game of dress up and disguise born of the world of BDSM; of becoming-object through a process of dollification - a process of physically and mentally transforming oneself into a living doll and seeking out an Owner to whom one must be subservient at all times.  

Lulu has not only turned heads on the streets of Tokyo, but has built up a substantial following on social media, with fans all over the world. She is, in addition, among the finalists of the annual Miss iD (alternative) beauty pageant this year; a contest open to all kinds of beings, human and non-human, actual and virtual, including holographic characters generated by artificial intelligence.

To broaden our understanding of the real in this manner - and to redefine notions not only of aesthetics, but humanity - is, I think, a good thing; it's certainly an interesting project from a queer philosophical perspective.    

And the possibility of donning a doll-suit, whatever one's age, race, or gender and (if only momentarily and imaginatively) becoming a beautiful young Japanese girl like Lulu, certainly has its appeal ...  

Notes 

Those interested in seeing more photos of Lulu and becoming one of her 31.3k followers on Instagram, click here.

Those interested in dollification as practiced within the kinky community might like to visit dollification.com

Chinese Beauty Tips with Reference to the Case of Kina Shen

Kina Shen / Instagram (16 Dec 2016) 

The Chinese still like to think they are a people apart, with their own unique aesthetic ideals - including ideals of what constitutes female beauty. But, actually, when one examines these ideals, be they Taoist or Confucian in origin, one finds they don't greatly differ from those that have been cherished amongst other peoples, in other times and other parts of the world.

For example, they think that girls with large eyes are very beautiful; particularly if the eyes have a double-fold lid (often achieved by cosmetic surgery), similar to the eyes of Westerners. The Chinese also value porcelain white skin and fine, delicate features, believing as they do that these physical traits reflect an inner moral dimension or natural nobility. Finally, when it comes to hair, the Chinese like it to be long, shiny, dark, and soft.

Those big-bodied blondes, with their fake tans and fake tits that so many Western men seem attracted to, are regarded as ugly and vulgar within the erotico-aesthetic that determines the Sino-pornographic imagination. And so it's not surprising to find that one of the most popular models in China today is 25-year-old Kina Shen, who prides herself on her hyperreal doll-like appearance, with eyes that are bigger-than-big, skin that is paler-than-pale, a body that is slimmer-than-slim, and hair that is sleeker-than-sleek.

Even though I don't view the world through Chinese eyes, she's certainly extraordinary looking and clearly a very talented make-up artist which, I suppose, makes her fully deserving of her huge following on social media, including 634k followers on Instagram [click here if interested in becoming one of them].

And even though I'm not a smoking fetishist, I admire the fact that Kina Shen often poses with a cigarette - something that now seems exotic and transgressive here in the West, where people have become so obsessed about their health that they've sacrificed style and forgotten the importance of living dangerously. I also like her attempts at philosophizing about the gothic nature of her being, as in this astonishing remark posted online:

"All this time I thought I was dark, but maybe I was wrong. I cannot stay away from darkness, because it needs me. Because I am the light it craves ... So maybe I am not cursed, but blessed with a dark kind of light."


To watch Kina Shen giving a YouTube make-up tutorial on how to achieve her big eye look, click here. 

Dollification: The Cases of Bastian Schweinsteiger and Alexander Hepburn

Cover of the first US edition (1923) 

by Knud Merrild 

I: The Case of Bastian Schweinsteiger

There was an amusing story in the press a couple of years ago concerning the German footballer Bastian Schweinsteiger and his lawsuit against a Chinese toy company that had manufactured an action figure that bore an uncanny resemblance to him.

The fact that the doll also came dressed as a Nazi soldier and was named Bastian, pretty much obliged the midfielder to take legal action, even though a spokesman for the company brazenly attempted to deny the undeniable by insisting that any likeness was purely coincidental. He further explained that, to Chinese eyes, all Germans look alike ...!

I've no idea if the case went ahead, or if there was some kind of out-of-court settlement; one assumes the doll has been withdrawn from sale, but even that I don't know for certain. At the time, most people simply smiled at the story and then quickly forgot about it. But it always stuck with me. And that's because, as a reader of Lawrence, it reminds me of the case of Alexander Hepburn ... 


II: The Case of Alexander Hepburn

Written in 1921 and published two years later, The Captain's Doll is a short novel by D. H. Lawrence that tells the tale of an illicit love affair between an aristocratic German woman, Johanna zu Rassentlow (known as Hannele), and a Scottish army officer, Capt. Hepburn.

Thanks to the War, she has fallen on hard times and so has to work for a living making puppets and beautiful cushions of embroidered coloured wool. He, arguably, has been damaged in other ways by the years of bloody conflict and evolved his own idiosyncratic philosophy based on his love of the moon that he's keen to enact in his own life, without any further compromise and at whatever cost.

If the existence of a wife, Evangeline, is problematic to his future happiness and his relationship with Hannele, so too is the existence of a doll that the latter makes of him, complete with tight-fitting tartan trews. A doll which not only accurately captures his physical likeness, but seems to insult the integrity of his being; objectifying him and belittling him at the same time:

"It was a perfect portrait of an officer of a Scottish regiment, slender, delicately made, with a slight, elegant stoop of the shoulders and close-fitting tartan trousers. The face was beautifully modelled, and a wonderful portrait, dark-skinned, with a little, close-cut, dark moustache, and wide-open dark eyes, and that air of aloofness and perfect diffidence which marks an officer and a gentleman."

Personally, I'd love to be dollified and wouldn't find it in any way unseemly or humiliating, whoever made it and however it was costumed. But Hepburn reacts very differently, when he one day sees the toy version of himself standing in a shop window. He stood and stared at it, as if spellbound; so disgusted that he wouldn't enter the little art shop:

"Then, every day for a week did he walk down that little street and look at himself in the shop window. Yes, there he stood, with one hand in his pocket. And the figure had one hand in its pocket. There he stood, with his cap pulled rather low over his brow. And the figure had its cap pulled low over its brow. But, thank goodness, his own cap now was a civilian tweed. But there he stood, his head rather forward, gazing with fixed dark eyes. And himself in little, that wretched figure, stood there with its head rather forward, staring with fixed dark eyes. It was such a real little man that it fairly staggered him. The oftener he saw it, the more it staggered him. And the more he hated it. Yet it fascinated him, and he came again to look.
      And it was always there. A lonely little individual lounging there with one hand in its pocket, and nothing to do, among the bric-à-brac and the bibelots. Poor devil, stuck so incongruously in the world. And yet losing none of his masculinity.
      A male little devil, for all his forlornness. But such an air of isolation, or not-belonging. Yet taut and male, in his tartan trews. And what a situation to be in! - lounging with his back against a little Japanese lacquer cabinet, with a few old pots on his right hand and a tiresome brass ink-tray on his left, while pieces of not-very-nice filet lace hung their length up and down the background. Poor little devil: it was like a deliberate satire."

One wonders if Schweinsteiger also felt this way when seeing his doll for sale: disgusted, but fascinated; staggered, but spellbound ...? If so, then, as one commentator has noted, we can hardly begrudge him taking legal action.

Towards the end of the novella, Hepburn confronts Hannele on the issue of the doll when hiking in the mountains (which she loves, but which he hates for their snow and affectations). He suggests that she might marry him - but he doesn't want her love, for it was love from which the doll was born. She is understandably full of perplexed rage at the things he says to her; including his claim that the handcrafted effigy does him the greatest possible damage - even if he can't quite explain why:

"'I don't know. But there it is. It wasn't malicious. It was flattering, if you like. But it just sticks in me like a thorn: like a thorn. ... And you can say what you like, but any woman, today, no matter how much she loves her man - she could start any minute and make a doll of him. And the doll would be her hero: and her hero would be no more than her doll. ... If a woman loves you, she'll make a doll out of you. She'll never be satisfied till she's made your doll. And when she's got your doll, that's all she wants. And that's what love means. And so, I won't be loved. And I won't love. I won't have anybody loving me. It is an insult. I feel I've been insulted for forty years: by love, and the women who've loved me. I won't be loved. And I won't love. I'll be honoured and I'll be obeyed: or nothing.'"

Appalled by this line of thinking, Hannele dismisses Hepburn as a madman of conceit and impudence. Nevertheless, she agrees to accompany him to Africa, where he plans to help establish a farm and, when he's made a few more observations and established all the necessary facts, write a book on the moon. 

And so Hepburn promises to call for her in the morning, before pulling back quickly into the darkness ...

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Captain's Doll' in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, edited by Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 2002). 

Note: The Captain's Doll (1923) can be read online as an eBook thanks to Project Gutenberg of Australia: click here. 

  

On Nietzsche's Epicureanism

Edvard Munch: Friedrich Nietzsche 

(oil on canvas, 1906)

Whenever there's a lovely day like today - sunny and frost-bright, with blue skies and trees aflame with autumnal reds and golds - I think of Nietzsche in his cheerful mid-period writings gaily affirming the world and its eternal recurrence exactly as is.

That is to say, the Nietzsche who attempts to construct an ethos in the heroic-idyllic manner of Epicurus, delighting in modest pleasures and the cultivation of philosophical serenity [ἀταραξία].

As Keith Ansell-Pearson points out, Nietzsche's interest in Epicurus is, on the face of it, rather curious considering the plebeian aspects of the latter's thinking. And Nietzsche's relation to Epicurus is certainly ambiguous - increasingly so in his later work.

However, it's undeniably the case that during the late-1870s and early-1880s, Nietzsche was full of praise for this pleasure-loving ancient Greek and this is something that should be remembered by those who would portray Nietzsche as an austere philosopher who scorns all forms of hedonism as self-indulgence, or decadence. 

Ultimately, I agree with Ansell-Pearson that the essential thing is that, for Nietzsche, Epicurus's teaching demonstrates how best "to quieten our being and so help temper a human mind that is prone to neurosis". He helps us, as Larry David would say, curb our enthusiasm and not to care so much about great events, focusing instead on the little things that matter most (such as flowers, fresh figs, and friendship, for example).

There is an asceticism involved here. But it's an insouciant asceticism, or what one commentator describes as a eudaemonic asceticism, which is antithetical to those later Christian-moral practices of self-denial and world-negation.

When you add this together with the fact that Epicurus was one of the first Greek philosophers to reject superstitious worship of the gods based on fear, affirm the fact of life's mortality, and deny "any cosmic exceptionalism on the part of the human", and you begin to see why Nietzsche found him so attractive (and why, in turn, I find Nietzsche so congenial).


See: Keith Ansell-Pearson, 'Heroic-Idyllic Philosophizing: Nietzsche and the Epicurean Tradition', Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements, Vol. 74, (July 2014), pp. 237-63. This essay can be read online via The Warwick Research Archive Portal (WRAP): click here.

Note: Ansell-Pearson's new book, Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy - which aims to provide a novel and thought-provoking examination of the mid-period writings - is published by Bloomsbury on 22 Feb 2018 and is available for pre-order on Amazon now: click here.

On the Question of Rewilding the UK (with Reference to the Case of Lilleth the Lynx)

An escaped Eurasian lynx called Lilleth - on the run from a zoo near Aberystwyth after leaping over an electrified fence - has been evading recapture and making news headlines for more than a week now.

Her shadowy feline presence amongst the Welsh hills, silently outwitting dozens of dozy policemen and scaring nervy local sheep farmers, has rekindled the debate about a possible rewilding of the British Isles; i.e., the large-scale restoration of ecosystems and, more controversially, the reintroduction of extinct native species, including large predators such as the lynx.

It's a project I fully endorse; it makes the heart happy to know that there are already small populations of beavers and wild boar at large and seemingly thriving. However, I can't seriously envision wolves and brown bears being able to roam freely once more without (i) a radical revaluation of values - something with which all rewilders agree - and (ii) a significant reduction of human numbers - something which many rewilders refuse to consider, or flatly deny the need for. 

The truth, however, is that large animals require lots of space and plenty of prey. Foxes may have adapted to an urban environment - and we may have become used to their presence in the city streets - but it's hard to imagine a family of wolves living under the garden shed and making do with some leftover chicken found in a bin bag.   

And it's also true that thanks to net migration and recorded births continuing to outnumber deaths, the population of the UK is growing at an accelerated rate. According to the latest report by the Office of National Statistics (July 2017), it presently stands at an all-time high of 65.6 million, having increased annually by an average of 482,000 for the last decade. By 2039, this same government body projects it will have risen to over 74 million.

That's a lot of people on a small island all needing to be fed and housed and all demanding the right to breed and to consume ever-more of the remaining natural resources. Eco-idealists who dream of man and nature living in perfect harmony are, frankly, fooling no one but themselves.

Sadly, if people want a world rich in flora and fauna - a world in which Lilleth's cubs can be wild and free - then the answer still remains what I said it was in a post published on 12 October 2013: voluntary human extinction [click here]. Only this will ensure that life's evolution continues to unfold in all its marvellous non-human diversity.        

Live long and die out people ... for how easily we might spare a million or two humans and never miss them. Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white frost face of a slim, golden-bodied lynx. 


Notes

Readers interested in knowing more about rewilding can visit the Rewilding Britain website: click here.

Readers interested in the latest report on the UK population by the ONS can click here.

Readers interested in knowing more about the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement can click here. 

The closing italicised lines are taken (in a slightly modified form) from the D. H. Lawrence poem 'Mountain Lion', Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923).

Update: 11 Nov 2017: The authorities have "humanely" killed the escaped cat, having been unable to recapture her; justifying the action in the name of "public safety", which, they say, must be paramount at all times. And so we expose the murderous nature of our anthropic idealism once more. Men! The only animal in the world to fear!

Going Gaga for Go-Go Boots

Young woman in white go-go boots 
and red hot pants: it's a good look

I've been told - and I don't know if it stands up to serious etymological scrutiny - that the term go-go is not simply what linguists term a reduplication.

That it derives, rather, from the French expression à gogo (in joyful abundance); an expression which is in turn derived from the ancient French word for happiness, la gogue. This sounds plausible to me, and I love the idea that go-go boots are a form of footwear born of gaiety and plenitude; just as go-go dancers embody the Dionysian spirit of ecstasy and excess. 

Introduced into the world of women's fashion in the mid-1960s, go-go boots as originally conceived by French designer André Courrèges, were mid-calf in length, low-heeled, and distinctively white in colour. Since then, the term has also come to include knee-high boots with block heels in a multitude of colours.

Purists might moan about this development, but, personally, I think it a good thing. Indeed, if I'm honest, I prefer the later designs that come higher up the leg and have chunkier heels. I also prefer the boots to be made of PVC, rather than leather, thus giving them a younger, poppier, more futuristic feel (as intended by Courrèges) than footwear made from more traditional materials.

Ultimately, despite Nancy Sinatra's insistence to the contrary, these boots are made for dancing and for space travel, not walking - and certainly not walking all over another person as if one were wearing a pair of black jackboots! Sinatra may have helped popularise the go-go boot, but in also establishing it as an aggressive symbol of empowerment, she robs it of its seductive appeal which is based on the subversion of phallocratic forms through playfulness (understanding seduction as a differential concept in the manner of Baudrillard, not as a sexual term).              


Notes

To see an original boot design by Courrèges, click here. 

The song, These Boots Are Made for Walkin' (1966), written by Lee Hazlewood, recorded and performed by Nancy Sinatra, can be found on YouTube by clicking here. 

To read posts related to this one on futuristic 60s and 70s fashion, click here (mini-skirts) and here (hot pants). 

Fragments from a Dark History of Black Fashion (V-VII)

V.

The colour is black ... the seduction is beauty ... the aim is ecstasy ... the fantasy is death - or how fascism exerted its sartorial fascination ...

Initially, Mussolini seemed to have a better eye for fashion than Hitler; for clearly black shirts look so much better than brown! But the paramilitary thugs of the Sturmabteilung only wore brown shirts because a large number were available on the cheap following the end of the First World War and the fledgling Nazi Party had to watch the pfennigs. However, once in government and receiving the backing of big business - and once Röhm had been dealt with and the SA superseded by the SS - the Führer ensured that his Nazi elite were dressed to kill in a close-fitting, all-black uniform designed to make its wearer not only feel superior, but look supremely stylish.

Manufactured by Hugo Boss, the uniform was tailored to project malevolent authority and perpetuate the fascist aesthetization and eroticization of power. If many people felt sick with fear when they saw it, a significant number felt sexually aroused and the SS uniform has secured its place not only within the annals of terror, but the pornographic imagination.


VI.

In the post-War world of 50s youth culture, however, black - particularly the black leather jacket - became a symbol of individuality and rebellion; the colour of beatniks and bikers who didn't accept the established norms and values of society. In Paris, meanwhile, it was worn by Left-Bank intellectuals; painters, philosophers, writers, and über-cool performers such as Juliette Gréco, muse to Jean-Paul Sartre and lover of genius jazz musician Miles Davis.

The hippies who followed in the 1960s, with their love of psychedelic colours, tie-dyed clothing, paisley prints and floral patterns, subscribed to an almost anti-black rainbow aesthetic - one of the reasons that Malcolm McLaren despised them. But those within the punk movement of the mid-late 70s, shaped by McLaren in his own image, would again make black an emblematic colour. Finally, mention must be made of the post-punk goths and devotees of kink within the world of fetish fashion taking black outfits to a whole new level of perverse dark beauty.

VII.

According to Coco Chanel, a woman only needs three things to look elegant - and one of these three things is what has become known as the little black dress, a vision of which she published in Vogue in October 1926, radically changing women's fashion forever. After this date, a full-length gown might still be required for formal occasions, but, apart from these ceremonial social events, the LBD could be worn anywhere, anytime with the assurance that one would not be committing a faux pas and never not looking anything but chic, stylish, and sophisticated.

As Karl Lagerfeld has explained, black is the colour that goes with everything; if you're wearing black, you can't go wrong. Ultimately, black is fashion and fashion is black. And all those designers who suggest other colours upon which to build a wardrobe by declaring them to be the new black are basically fraudsters looking to push the latest trend and sell a few more frocks while they can. Hemlines rise and fall, accessories come and go, but the LBD is the essential must have item.           


Notes 

The image of the good-looking SS officer is by CainIsNotMyEnemy and can be found on Deviant Art by clicking here.

The photo of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly is a publicity shot for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); she is wearing a sheath little black dress, designed by Givenchy in Italian satin. 

Those interested in reading fragments I-IV of this dark history of black fashion should click here. 

Fragments from a Dark History of Black Fashion (I-IV)

Portrait of a Lady in Black (c.1580)

I.

In much the same way that black absorbs all forms of visible light, thereby collapsing any distinctions of colour, so too does it seem to enchant all sorts of people and wrap them equally in its dark splendour. Paradoxically sexy and subversive at the same time as it is austere and authoritarian, black appeals to priests, puritans and policemen, as well as poets, punks and perverts; aristocrats and anarchists; fascists and fashionistas ...     


II.

By the Christian Middle Ages, black was commonly associated with the three great D-words: death, darkness and the devil. It's a little odd, therefore, that members of the clergy then as now had such a penchant for wearing black. Some argued that it was a sign of humility. But other priests knew that black robes and gowns symbolised their authority, as it did that of magistrates, government officials, and wealthy bankers and merchants. It's almost as if the Church secretly wished to acknowledge that their power too was rooted in the world, in fashion and in evil. 

III.

Eventually, members of the European nobility - such as the stylish Duke of Milan - also began to be seduced by the simple (yet sophisicated) elegance of black. From Italy, the look spread to France, then England, followed by Spain. By the end of the 16th century, black was worn in all the courts of Europe, whatever their religious persuasion. Indeed, even the best-dressed Puritans, for whom dress codes were very important, had a thing for black. It was red - as worn by the Pope and the Whore of Babylon - that they regarded with horror, even though, as a matter of fact, black clothing was very expensive due to the dyes used and a sign not of sober moderation, but privilege and status. For ordinary folk, it would have been socially unacceptable to be seen wearing the latest black fashions, even if they were able to afford them. They were thus obliged to stick with their workaday blues and browns, etc.   

IV.

For a while, during the 18th century, black lost some of its lustre as the fashion colour of choice, as members of the French nobility rediscovered their gaiety. However, 1789 soon put an end to that. As the Jacobins asserted their power, black again became the dominant colour and there was a moral revolt not only against the aristocracy, but against the extravagance of haute couture. Further, with the invention of new, inexpensive dyes and the industrialization of the textile industry, good quality black clothing became widely available for the first time. By the end of the Victorian era, it was the accepted colour of business dress, evening wear, and mourning in Britain, Europe and the United States - as well, ironically, the colour of choice for Romantic poets and anarchists alike.

Note: those interested in reading fragments V-VII of this dark history of black fashion should click here.  

Back to Black: Reflections on the Darkness of Being

Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)

I.

Black isn't merely the darkest colour. It's also the sexiest colour; the most dangerous colour.

In fact, it's more a state of mind or way of being than just an achromatic shade, as understood by artists, fashionistas, fascists and by all those for whom sensible blues and browns just don't cut it on the canvas or on the catwalk, anymore than they excite on the battlefield or in the bedroom.

The only other colour that comes close to having the erotic and evil allure of black is red and the two are often used in powerful combination. The ancient Greeks, for example, made their famous black-figure pottery by using an ingenious technique in which the figures, painted with a glossy clay slip, were set against a vivid red background.
 
However, whilst not wishing to denigrate erythrophiles for whom red is the king of colours, personally, like Amy - and as a thanatologist and nihilist - when the odds are stacked, I always go back to black ...

II.

The sculptor Anish Kapoor, who often works with ideas of negative space and the void of non-being, has said that black is the most emotive colour - particularly that darkest form of black that is carried within each of us; not as original sin, but as what we might think of as a black hole of the self, sitting at the centre of the soul and into which we might fall and disappear at any moment.

I think this is the disconcerting truth that Kurtz discovers, to his horror, in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). And, arguably, it's what Heidegger is referring to when he suggests that Dasein can only grasp its own wholeness by facing up to its emptiness - i.e., to the fact that being floats upon a sea of oblivion and the ever-present possibility of no-longer-being-there [sein Nicht-mehr-dasein].

Perhaps because of this - because we are creatures not merely threatened by but born of the darkness - black is crucial within the cave paintings of early man and has remained the fundamental reality upon which so much great art continues to build, making all other colours seem dirty and inferior.   

Note: 

As most readers will know, the title to this post, Back to Black, is taken from the fantastic song written and performed by Amy Winehouse, produced by Mark Ronson (Island Records, 2007). The accompanying video, dir. Phil Griffin, can be watched on YouTube by clicking here.