Dividing Zero: Beholding Nothing

How is it possible to write about nothing? Only by forcing it into one of something’s categories; by turning it inside out so that its contours might become visible; or by clothing it in vapid vestments that pretend to show what they in fact disguise? If we begin by defining nothing as something that does not exist,1 then nothing has already been negated on at least two levels: such a definition turns nothing into its ontological opposite (something) and then annuls its existence. In order to attempt to grasp, hold, pin down nothing, the grammatical subject of its definition must already be assumed to be the opposite of what is being defined. From this perspective, nothing can only be understood as the negation (does not exist) of the negation (something); it is rarely defined in terms of its own ontological categories. We can thus only approach the always already impossible task of writing or representing nothing by inverting the ontological categories governing such a definition and writing about nothing that does exist, nothing that is.