Black Holes of the Heart: Trauma, Time, and the Feminine Cosmos
Black Holes of the Heart: Trauma, Time, and the Feminine Cosmos
Speaker/Author: Farheen Bhuiyan Nancy
Location & Time: 9:12 AM, MIST, Mirpur Cantonment, Dhaka-1216
Introduction
In this lecture, I explore the convergence of physics, metaphysics, and
feminist trauma theory through the poetic and philosophical lens of my work
“Blackhole, String Theory and Block Universe.” The core argument is that
emotional trauma, especially that which results from deep interpersonal
betrayal, can be productively understood through metaphors drawn from
astrophysics: black holes, string theory, and the block universe. These
metaphors do not trivialize science; instead, they enact a form of epistemic rebellion,
reclaiming scientific cosmologies as containers for affective and spiritual
meaning, especially for those who have been marginalized by both reason and
patriarchy.
I. Trauma as Singularity: The Emotional Black Hole
“Each time any person leaves, they convert me into a black hole… no light now
can come out of me.”
In theoretical physics, a black hole is a region in
spacetime where gravitational pull is so strong that nothing—not even light—can
escape it. In this poem, the black hole becomes a metaphor for emotional
implosion: when love is betrayed, the psychic system collapses inward,
absorbing energy and giving nothing back.
This is mirrored in trauma theory. Cathy Caruth (1996)
speaks of trauma as “an event that is experienced too soon, too unexpectedly to
be fully known and is therefore not available to consciousness until it imposes
itself again.” The poem reflects this recursive gravity, where memory and
affect spiral endlessly within. Bessel van der Kolk (2014) notes that trauma
“resides in the body,” much like how matter warps space in the theory of
general relativity.
II. Block Universe and Time-Looped Memory
“Your past smiles at you, your present snatches you, and your future nudges
you—all at once.”
The block universe model in physics proposes that time is
not linear but a dimension like space: past, present, and future coexist. The
poem captures this beautifully through flashbacks, emotional recursion, and
nonlinear temporality—hallmarks of post-traumatic experience. This aligns with
Bergsonian duration (durée), where subjective time diverges from clock time, a
view also embraced by Deleuze (1985) and other phenomenologists.
Trauma time, like the block universe, resists chronology.
It loops. The mind revisits pain as if no time has passed. This phenomenon of
‘time traveling’ emotionally is rendered poetically through phrases like “in
the time travel you revisit them…” The speaker exists in a spacetime fog where
affect collapses boundaries between now and then.
III. Feminine Cosmology: Love as Expansive Force
“Love is not sporadic now… it has become idealized, altruistic.”
Here, love becomes not a romantic yearning but a
cosmological principle. The shift from personal to impersonal love echoes the
Sufi concept of ishq-e-haqiqi (divine love), found in the writings of
Rumi and Ibn Arabi. From a feminist metaphysical perspective, Irigaray (1993)
argues for a non-phallic, relational ontology—a mode of being rooted in care,
breath, and infinite receptivity. The poem enacts this shift by transforming
romantic agony into universal compassion.
The feminine black hole is not a void of despair, but a
womb of possibility—a place where matter, emotion, and new universes are born.
It resists classical binaries (subject/object, active/passive), instead embracing
complexity, multiplicity, and duality.
IV. Duality and Grey Zones: Ethics Beyond Binaries
“Stranded between morality and immorality… not black nor white.”
This ethical ambiguity is critical. The poem does not
offer moral resolution but dwells in the in-between: a grey zone that
acknowledges the co-presence of heaven and hell, light and darkness, love and
hatred. This reflects a poststructuralist ethics, akin to Levinas’s notion of
infinite responsibility or Kristeva’s abjection—the unresolvable, uncanny space
of simultaneous attraction and repulsion.
Emotionally, this zone manifests when we continue to
defend the image of someone who hurt us—a form of psychic entanglement
reminiscent of quantum superposition. One is both free and not free, both grieving
and transcending.
V. Becoming a Universe: From Personal Pain to Cosmic
Identity
“In the process—you have engulfed a universe and became one.”
The speaker ultimately becomes the black hole, the block
universe, and the multiverse all at once. This radical subjectivity echoes
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980) notion of the rhizome: non-hierarchical,
ever-expanding, and multidimensional. It is also deeply mystical—a
transformation of suffering into sacred becoming.
To exist fractured yet magnetic, silent yet echoing across
spacetime, is the final transcendence the poem offers. This is the metaphysics
of wounded identity becoming cosmic agency.
Conclusion
“Blackhole, String Theory and Block Universe” is more than a poem. It is a
philosophical cartography of grief, memory, and feminine metaphysics. In it, I
strive to reclaim the cosmos as a site of emotional reckoning and spiritual
becoming. Trauma here is not a rupture, but a portal. Love is not an end, but a
vibrational thread across the fabric of spacetime.
References
- Caruth, C. (1996). Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History.
Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Deleuze, G. (1985). Cinema 2: The Time-Image. University of Minnesota
Press.
- Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1980). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism
and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
- Irigaray, L. (1993). An Ethics of Sexual Difference. Cornell
University Press.
- van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body
in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
- Bergson, H. (1911). Creative Evolution. Henry Holt and Company.
- Ibn Arabi. (trans. 1980s-2000s). The Bezels of Wisdom. Classics of
Western Spirituality.
- Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia
University Press.
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