INTRO
As the End of Humanity looms, a nocturnal, deeply black version of Academia remains the only rational thing to do. Academia Noir offers a space for a rebellious, anarchistic and black approach to academic study and research. It builds the avant-garde guerrilla of scholarship.
Black Academia is a rigorous intellectual tradition that engages with the darker, more profound and often threatening aspects of human existence, embracing complexity, ambiguity, and the unknown.
We are living in dangerous times. The 21st century is shaping up into monstrous, apocalyptic wraiths rising from the smothering vapours of our collective wilful ignorance.
Climate catastrophe is looming over the horizon. Pandemics are our new reality. Artificial Intelligence is a potential threat to economic, social and political stability, not to mention our ever more frail human identity. Nuclear weapons are back from never being entirely gone. There’s talk of atomic bunkers again. Post-truths are rising up like fetid fumes, obfuscating the public discourse. Moreover, these existential threats are intertwined, making them exponentially more perilous.
Not to be overly dramatic, but the Powers of Bleakness are crouching in upon us. The end of Sapiens as we know her is no longer a distant prophecy, but an impending reality.
You’d think that it’s time for all hands on deck and bailing water. But: no.
And — to be clear — it’s not as if we wouldn’t possess the tools to avert assorted catastrophes. Since the dawn of Homo Sapiens, our most outstanding qualities have been empathy, collaboration, and inventiveness.
So what does the Sapiens do? Creates divisiveness on all sides. Lets anger and fear stimulate him into stupidity. Embraces her post-truths with a vengeance.
The situation is hopeless, and hopelessly absurd.
Like misguided Luddites 2.0., we smash the machines — instead of the underlying Powers driving societal, environmental and economic upheaval.
We need Warriors of the Mind.
No ordinary Forces will be able to overcome the encircling Powers of Bleakness and their diabolical chicaneries.
We need the intellectual adventurous and the revolutionary intellects who will dive headfirst into the dark abysses beneath the current status quo.
The Black Combatants who will rush in where Angels fear to go.
We need Noir Academians.
The Academian Noir is fearlessly rebellious.
He is anarchistic in his scientific methods.
She doesn’t shun deeply black, even Machiavellian modi operandi.
Academia Noir explores what lies beyond conventional paradigms, confronting uncomfortable truths, exposing societal illusions and the limitations of mainstream thought.
It pushes the boundaries of accepted knowledge, delving into the hidden, marginalised, and often uncharted realms of intellectual inquiry.
Rooted in existentialism, nihilism, and transcendence, Noir Academians do not fear the darkest crevasses of the soul.
As the Powers of Bleakness tighten their grip, only the fearless and unyielding intellectual warriors of Academia Noir stand a chance of illuminating the path forward, confronting the chaos with a mind sharpened by reason and intuition, and forging a new dawn from the darkest corners of knowledge.