beginning, always beginning:
the desire to finish once and for all, or to be done with definitively, is a legacy of the western logos, promising finite transcendence but also a new, infinitizing start; …terminization is as much a myth as origin, offering the narcissistic comfort that goes along with closure…
- avital ronell, epigraph to “introduction: declinations of context in arab jewish letters” in gil anidjar, “our place in al-andalus”: kabbalah, philosophy, literature in arab jewish letters (stanford UP, 2002)
yes. thank you.
What about the narcissistic comfort that comes with prolonged, Important Works etc.?
i see what you’re saying, but think what ronell’s talking to is exactly that narcissistic comfort. that is, it isn’t one or the other. whether you emphasize continuities or differences, figuring your life as a work of art is part of a broader mode of thinking life, and that’s what she is addressing. at the same time, though, the potent force of such figurations can be mobilized in contexts where they’re desirable, too.