Corpus Exanime

This essay suggests that to read black art the viewer is obliged to read what is not there. What does this paradoxical statement imply? First, it implies that every black image is a caricature—a refusal—of the blackness of its concept; and to that extent what we see as black is no longer readable or seeable as image (or Dasein). Secondly, taking as my example the singular relation between pain and image in the artwork of Donald Rodney, and in particular the notion of a corpus exanime, I examine the implications of this notion for the traditions of art, philosophy, and aesthetics more generally.