Tuesday, April 19, 2011

an horizonal beauty



Should you think (in the sense of affectation that means: In case you do so think) that I’m lost to some idiosyncratic way of mind, look at an account of Peggy Kamuf’s mourning of her dear friend Jacques Derrida, which may be about a sense of beauty on each side of mourning, which would be a principle of hope on the other side of lost potential. “Another name for this special kind of receptive vigilance—without which there would be no surprise— is ‘reading.’ Only when one approaches a text as an unknown other can one be surprised by it. To encounter the other, therefore, is to be on the watch for surprising encounters that can only take place when one encounters the other as text.”