Supernormalising Nothing from the Hyperbolic Nihil to the Ordinary Supernothing

The essay connects the mystical concept of "supernothing" with Henri Bergson's idea of nothingness as a movement in the making, using the film The Empty Man as an illustrative case. It argues that nothingness should be understood not as a static void but as a dynamic process of transmitting and receiving images in the brain, aligning with Bergson's theory that the brain does not store images but merely communicates movements. This "nihilistic" view of the brain—lacking positive content—rejects the ego-as-void model of Thomas Metzinger. Instead, it proposes a rethinking of nothingness and nihilism centered on a moving "supernothing," leading to an "ordinary" account of the supernatural: a process of "supernormalisation" that extracts the supernatural by natural means, without exotic or hyperbolic claims.

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Abstract

Abstract This essay connects the mystical concept of “supernothing” with Bergson’s notion of the image of nothingness as a movement in the making. I do this also with respect to the film The Empty Man (David Prior, 2020) – which explicitly cites Gorgias’s four-part embargo on nothing (it exists, it cannot be known, communicated, or understood): nothingness is re-rendered as movement, in particular, the transmission and reception of images in the brain. Indeed, this is precisely Bergson’s theory of the brain too – as the receiver and transmitter of images, a communication of movements. This “nihilistic” approach to the brain (it does not store images, it has no positive content) is not a valorisation of the ego as void à la Metzinger, but the real, processual rethinking of what nothingness and nihilism might mean – with a full, moving “supernothing” at its heart. Though there is a mystical and a film-philosophical account referenced in this renewal of nothingness, it will not lead to any exotic or hyperbolic excess (the brain as supernatural agent), but rather a very “ordinary” account that we will describe in terms of “supernormalisation”: an “unlearning” or mundanising of the supernatural: an extraction of the supernatural by natural means.