Philosophy Today

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published on October 16, 2021

Mukasa Mubirumusoke

Prolegomena to any Future Cosmology

This paper highlights the shortcomings of Georges Bataille’s writings in terms of his failure to address white supremacy and blackness by critically engaging and expanding his cosmological metaphor through the figure of the black hole. The sun is a timeless figure in the history of western thought as an epistemological and ontological metaphor. Bataille offers alternative cosmological interpretations whereby luxurious excess and waste aim to transfigure the traditions of metaphysics, ethics, and political economy. This paper confronts Bataille’s cosmologies and heliotropes through an afropessimistic lens whereby blackness proves to be an ontological positionality that is not simply marginal to whiteness, but antagonistic, thus allowing for an expanded critical cosmology that incorporates the figure of the black hole.