Black Holes of the Heart: Trauma, Time, and the Feminine Cosmos
Black Holes of the Heart: Trauma, Time, and the Feminine Cosmos.
Adapted from my poem titled the same.
Abstract: This hybrid essay, grounded in personal
poetic experience, explores the metaphor of the black hole as a symbol of
trauma, emotional implosion, and cosmic becoming. Drawing on string theory,
block universe theory, and Sufi metaphysics, the work reframes heartbreak as a
generator of inner multiverses. It critically engages with trauma theory,
quantum cosmology, and feminist philosophy to suggest a posthuman reimagining
of selfhood through poetic and metaphysical resonance.
1. Introduction: The Black Hole Within
The metaphor of a black hole—scientifically understood as
a collapsed star whose gravitational pull is so immense that not even light can
escape—resonates powerfully with the experience of emotional trauma. In the
poem “Blackhole, String Theory and Block Universe,” the black hole becomes an
ontological state of being: a site of loss, absorption, and unknowability. As
Bessel van der Kolk (2014) argues in The Body Keeps the Score, trauma is
not merely a memory but a physiological loop—an inward gravitational pull that
disorients the linearity of time.
2. Love, Loss, and Emotional Gravity
The speaker experiences abandonment not as simple sadness,
but as existential implosion. Each time someone leaves, she writes, “they
convert me into a black-hole,” suggesting that repeated emotional injuries
collapse her internal light. This correlates with Judith Herman’s (1992)
concept of complex trauma, where relational betrayals—especially within
intimacy—result in self-fragmentation. But instead of being annihilated, the
speaker begins to create: “A blackhole creating many many a block universes all
at once.” Trauma becomes not only a sinkhole but also a generative singularity.
3. Block Universe and Temporal Entanglement
The block universe theory, derived from the relativistic
model of spacetime, proposes that past, present, and future co-exist
simultaneously (Barbour, 1999). In the poem, the speaker performs temporal
travel: “Through the lane of memories you do time travel.” This aligns with how
trauma survivors often re-experience the past as vividly present (Caruth,
1996). However, the poetic speaker reclaims agency within this
temporality—constructing multiverses from memory rather than being held hostage
by it.
4. Duality and the Grey Zone of Being
The poem refuses binary categorization: “Stranded between
morality and immorality… Between love and hatred.” This recalls Julia
Kristeva’s (1982) theory of abjection—the psychic struggle with what defies
boundaries. The speaker inhabits a liminal zone where contradiction becomes
coherence. In poststructural feminist theory, such as Luce Irigaray’s (1985)
notion of “the feminine as space,” this ambiguity is not weakness but capacity:
the ability to hold paradox within.
5. The Feminine Cosmos: From Scar to Star
The poetic speaker transforms personal injury into
universal love: “Love for the entire universe and its all creature, And, in
love with the creator.” This reflects the Sufi trajectory of ‘Ishq’ (divine
love), where personal longing becomes cosmic. Hallaj’s declaration “Ana
al-Haqq” (I am the Truth) echoes here: the self becomes both wound and world.
Moreover, the poem’s speaker exhibits characteristics of a posthuman feminine
subjectivity—no longer centered on body or ego, but on vibrational presence, or
as Karen Barad (2007) might term it, “intra-acting” agency.
6. Conclusion: Becoming Multiverse
Ultimately, the poem’s black hole is not a symbol of
defeat but of ontological transformation. The speaker writes, “you have
engulfed an universe and became one.” This becoming mirrors Irigaray’s (1993)
call for women to exist beyond patriarchal representation—toward a cosmic
subjectivity that generates her own symbolic systems. Through the synthesis of
poetic metaphor, scientific theory, and spiritual reflection, the poem becomes
a philosophical testament to the power of emotional gravity: to absorb, to
reconfigure, and to create worlds.
References:
Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum
Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press.
Barbour, J. (1999). The End of Time: The Next
Revolution in Physics. Oxford University Press.
Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed Experience: Trauma,
Narrative, and History. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The
Aftermath of Violence–from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.
Irigaray, L. (1985). This Sex Which Is Not One.
Cornell University Press.
Irigaray, L. (1993). An Ethics of Sexual Difference.
Cornell University Press.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on
Abjection. Columbia University Press.
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score:
Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
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