Unseen Whiteness

Abstract

To paraphrase Jacques Derrida’s reading of Mallarmé’s whitenesses, we might argue that in María Zambrano’s works as a whole “The ‘whitenesses’ do indeed gather importance”. At the highest level of the spiritual seeker’s inner journey, Ibn al-‘Arabî observes, symbols are reduced to nothing when we draw close to the inevident presence of the Silent, the non-abode (maqâm lâ maqâm, the “station of no station”), the presence of uncreated light. María Zambrano practises a metaphysics of whiteness (“the quête for whiteness”) from the “original source” of the invisible. This resembles the “light of the invisible” (nûr al-ghayb) or apophatic light which, according to Ibn al-‘Arabî, demands the “annihilation” of the witness; and Zambrano also demands that death should precede visionary perception: the “unseen whiteness” or the “invisible whiteness” which is the image of the non-image she uses to refer to the light of the absolute. Finally, note that cinema (Dreyer, Bresson, Duras, etc.) has also transformed this light without image into photosensitive material.