Metaphysics has become an ontological cliché: it is now subordinated to it's own sub-discipline and devoid of the spiritual exploration it once inspired. The God in heaven was killed by the gods of 19th and 20th century western philosophy- interpreting the mysteries of essence and the mystical intangibility of spiritual understanding, with a set of logical arguments that render them materially untenable.

i heard it all and it's all over.
i come after it all and am beyond any of it.
when the final moment is spoken into being,
i will watch it pass in silent darkness,
and record it for posterity.

These are the words that heralded the legendary 'Post-finalist' art exhibit of the late nineties: “It’s After the End”, In which the greatest social revolutionary thinkers of the last century, Red Clay, sang a new frame of mind into being. If post-finalism represents an understanding that within everything that has been, lies everything that will ever be- then we cannot fail to conclude that every moment in history lies beyond every other moment: In it, of it and beyond it at once. In this displacement of time, we discover that the concept of measuring change within a framed chronology is a fallacy of perception. Time then, or at least our perception of it, is a fallacy of understanding. If we are to measure change, its trajectory would be much more accurately portrayed as a 'pretzel' like structure, going through, over and around itself, so that no moment lives as the chronological offspring of the one that precedes it- but is rather recognized as an individual occurrence in the psychic continuum. So every moment is a new world burning itself out with the intensity of a collapsing star- leaving us to understand that there is nothing created that has not already existed. Everything that will be, has been, and can never cease to be again and therefore, 'ceasing to be' represents the true metaphysical anomaly. No ends are final and all beginnings are redundancies- every thought that is spoken, has survived its own semantic death- it is truly, after the end.

For this reason, the appearance of the "Red Bone Guerillas" represents a seminal moment in the development of post-finalist thought. In their attempts to deconstruct the understanding of reality, as perceived through the inherently fallacious lens of third party apprehension- they find the essence of significant artistic and political achievement. Who among us hasn't used deception as an instrument to permeate the nature of reality? Who can deny that deception, employed in the interest of exposing greater deception, is in fact, truth (if not reality)? They are that anachronism, combining the nihilism of the Mau Mau, the spiritual abyss of Sartre and the principles of Maat, to find themselves on the other side of everything. Just as in Ralph Ellison's early readings of Malraux, they arrive at the conclusion that permeating the fallacies of your time with the beauty of your truth- is the heroic responsibility of the artist. Your life must be bigger than the proportions of your body and your mind must encompass more than the limitations of your time.

Federico Anderson.
Chair of the Philosophy Department
Morehouse College