Kazimir Malevich’s Negative Theology and Mystical Suprematism

This article examines Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematist art in the context of negative (apophatic) theology, as a crucial tool in analyzing both the artist’s theoretical conclusions and his new visual optics. Our analysis rests on the point that the artist intuitively moved towards recognizing the ineffability of the multidimensional universe and perceiving God as the Spiritual Absolute. In his attempt to see the invisible in the formulas of Emptiness and Nothingness, Malevich turned to the primary forms of geometric abstraction—the square, circle and cross—which he endows with symbolic concepts and meanings. Malevich treats his Suprematism as a method of perceiving the ineffability of the Absolute. With the Black Square seen as a face of God, the patterns of negative theology rise to become the philosophical formula of primary importance. Malevich’s Mystical Suprematism series (1920–1922) confirms the presence of complex metaphysical reflection and apophatic thought in his art. Not only does the series contain icon paraphrases and the Christian symbolism of the cross and mandorla, but it also advances the formulas of the apophatic faith of the modern times, since Suprematism presents primary forms as the universals of “the face of the future” and the energy of the non-objective art.

Political Theology/Theopolitics: The Thresholds and Vulnerabilities of Sovereignty

Anthropological work on political theology has been informed by Agamben's work on the state of exception and, thus, by a Schmittian account of sovereignty as analogous to that of the God who bestows miracles. In this review, we read gestures to this analogy's limits in recent ethnographies of the state, vital force, and the Anthropocene as also pointing to the limits of anthropology's secularity and its embedding in the colonial enterprise. In so doing, we recover a potential opening to theistic force that anthropology has long fought to foreclose. We conclude by proposing a conceptual counter to political theology, grounded in negative theology as well as critical theories drawing on the force of the negative, which we call theopolitics. Theopolitics refers to a sovereignty from below characterized by vulnerability and openness to an ever-provisional messianic force that partakes in history, including the colonial history of anthropology itself. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 50 is August 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.