Maurice Blanchot - The Instant of My Death

Maurice Blanchot - The Instant of My Death

I remember a young man - a man still young - prevented from dying by death itself - and perhaps the error of injustice.

The Allies had succeeded in getting a foothold on French soil. The Germans, already vanquished, were struggling in vain with useless ferocity.

In a large house (the Chateau, it was called), someone knocked at the door rather timidly. I know that the young man came to open the door to guests who were presumably asking for help.

This time, a howl: "Everyone outside."

A Nazi lieutenant, in shamefully normal French, made the oldest people exit first, and then two young women.

"Outside, outside." This time, he was howling. The young man, however, did not try to flee but advanced slowly, in an almost priestly manner. The lieutenant shook him, showed him the casings, bullets; there had obviously been fighting; the soil was a war soil.

The lieutenant choked in a bizzare language. And putting the casings, the bullets, a grenade under the nose of the man already less young (one ages quickly), he distinctly shouted: "This is what you have come to."

`The Nazi placed his men in a row in order to hit, according to the rules, the human target. The young man said, "At least have my family go inside." So it was: the aunt (ninety-four years old); his mother, younger; his sister and his sister-in-law; a long, slow procession, silent, as if everything had already been done.

I know - do I know it - that the one at whom the Germans were already aiming, awaiting but the final order, experienced then a feeling of extraordinary lightness, a sort of beatitude (nothing happy, however) - sovereign elation? The encounter of death with death?

In his place, I will not try to analyze. He was perhaps suddenly invincible. Dead -- immortal. Perhaps ecstacy. Rather the feeling of compassion for suffering humanity, the happiness of not being immortal or eternal. Henceforth, he was bound to death by a surreptitious friendship.
At that instant, an abrupt return to the world, the considerable noise of a nearby battle exploded. Comrades from the maquis wanted to bring help to one they knew to be in danger. The lieutenant moved away to assess the situation. The Germans stayed in order, prepared to reamin thus in an immobility that arrested time.

Then one of them approached and said in a firm voice, "We're not Germans, Russians," and, with a sort of laugh, "Vlassov army," and made a sign for him to disappear.

I think he moved away, still with the feeling of lightness, until he found himself in a distant forest, named the "Bois des bruyeres," where he remained sheltered by trees he knew well. In the dense forest suddenly, after how much time, he discovered a sense of the real. Everywhere fires, a continuous succession of fires; all the farms were burning. A little later, he learned that three young men, sons of farmers - truly strangers to all combat, whose only fault was their youth - had been slaughtered.

Even the bloated horses, on the road, in the fields, attested to a war that had gone on. In reality, how much time had elapsed? When the lieutenant returned and became aware the young chatelaine had disappeared, why did anger, rage, not prompt him to burn down the Chateau (immobile and majestic)? Because it was the Chateau. On the facade was inscribed, like an indestructible reminder, the date 1807. Was he cultivated enough to know this was the famous year of Jena, when Napoleon, on his small gray horse, passed under the windows of Hegel, who recognized in him the "spirit of the world," as he wrote to a friend? Lie and truth: for as Hegel wrote to another friend, the French pillaged and ransacked his home. But Hegel knew how to distinguish the empirical and the essential. Everything was searched, however. Some money was taken; in a separate room, "the high chamber," the lieutenant found papers and a sort of thick manuscript - which perhaps contained war plans. Finally he left. Everything was burning, except the Chateau. The Seigneurs had been spared.

No doubt what then began for the young man was the torment of injustice. No more ecstacy; the feeling that he was only living because, even in the eyes of the Russians, he belonged to a noble class.

This was war: life for some, for others, the cruelty of assassination.

There remained, however, at the moment when the shooting was no longer but to come, the feeling of lightness that I would not know how to translate: freed from life? the infinite opening up? Neither happiness, nor unhappiness. Nor the absence of fear and perhaps already the step beyond. I know, I imagine that this unanalyzable feeling changed what there remained for him of existence. As if death outside of him could only henceforth collide with death in him. "I am alive. No, you are dead."

---------------

Later, having returned to Paris, he met Malraux, who said that he had been taken prisoner (without being recognized) and that he had succeeded in escaping, losing a manuscript in the process. "It was only reflections on art, easy to reconstitute, whereas a manuscript would not be." With Paulhan, he made inquiries which could only remain in vain.

What does it matter. All that remains is the feeling of lightness that is death itself or, to put it more precisely, the instant of my death henceforth always in abeyance.

From:

Blanchot, Maurice. Instant of My Death/Demeure: Fiction and Testimony. (Palo Alto, CA, USA: Stanford University Press, 2000) pp. 2-11

The voice of authority

"If you want me to talk to you, please be quiet."

The voice of authority demands quiet and passive adherence. It wants to talk to you; it has no interest in listening to what you have to say.

"Listen and listen well, this is the way its gonna be...
Be quiet, be still, don't step out of line; we know what's good for you..."

Critical thought, it is assumed, subverts order, leading invariably to anarchy. The voice demands quiet passivity. The voice sermonizes, for what emanates from its lips is assumed to be true. Why resist what is true? O, great Rationality rears its head.

To challenge the voice of authority does not, as it likes to believe, spawn anarchy. The challenge requires a quality other than silent adherence or tacit consent. It involves someone standing before fellow citizens and courageously speaking out against injustice and inequity, arrogance and vanity, and against ignorance in general. "I rebel, therefore we exist."

What's it to me?

I'm still here. I'm as shocked as you. I thought I would be dead now. The scars were there as it had been for as long as I remembered. The coughing became more severe. My eyes yellowed day after day. No use to struggle now, I thought, it was only a matter of waiting. But I'm still here. And I'm not sure why.

One early morning, after a night of binge drinking, I passed out and woke up in an open grave smelling like death. The scent of embalming fluid would follow me for several days. I couldn't reconstruct memories that had passed into oblivion. So I left it alone. And there it stood - a ragged nihilist waking up in an open grave. Like I said, I'm still here somehow without reason or purpose. For me, life is a cruel joke taken too far.

When I venture downtown, the locals are, without fail, absolutely appalled by my appearance. How can this be? they must ask. How can such a promising young man descend into utter squalor? The answer is rather simple: I chose it. I'm a nihilist and, as I often inform would-be employers, I believe in nothing. They rarely take well to my revelatory statement - with at least one notable exception. It was during an interview for a political job, a position with the local conservative party. Nothing, the politician noted with great interest. I was hired on the spot to work on the campaign. The job wasn't too unagreeable. I was quite content going door to door preaching the virtues of crime control, homeland security, and denouncing the evils of abortion, gays, and such. As a nihilist, what's it to me? All was well until I walked into the Congressman's office to find him shagging his pet poodle. I had no objections to his behaviour, being a nihilist and all, and shut the door to continue with whatever task. The Congressman, though, had his concerns. He and his campaign manager invited me for drinks, two nights after the supposed incident. They told me I had a future in the party. They cited my dedication and passion for the cause had separated me from the others. And so on and so forth. Their deluge of ingratiations stopped short of complimenting the size of my male anatomy. I was kind of disappointed. Its always nice to have someone compliment my cock. On a related note, neither of them offered me fellatio, which would have been far less transparent than what they did offer. They promised me a consulting position in exchange for my signature on a piece of paper. The note, in spite of its technical language, could not have been any vaguer.

I, the nihilist, hereby promise never to disclose details regarding the events occurring between 2:30pm - 2:45pm on September 27 19-- that took place at 2345 Parker Blvd, Room 12.

I signed it. What's it to me? I was fired the next day. So much for keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. I never disclosed the details of that specific event in September. Never. I may be nihilist. I'm not a narc. But, these things tend to end badly, loose lips or not. The studious go-getters who flittered around the office found out that the Congressman favored those who offered to take Fluffy on her afternoon walk. They all came out of the woodwork at 2:30pm to bang down his door only to find the Congressman plowing poor Fluffy on his desk. Alas, most go-getters aren't nihilists, at least they don't readily admit to it; but they're narcs-in-waiting and word got out. The Congressman, seeking his tenth consecutive stint in Washington, had to step aside and rode Fluffy off into the sunset.

As I crawl towards the reaper's hand, I look back fondly at that image of the Congressman and Fluffy. It explains a lot. To try to explain it here would only diminish the significance it has for me. Let's leave it at that. That was the first of a long string of failed careers, each less interesting than the last. But failure in general isn't all that intriguing. Neither is death.

I saw a ghost the other day. Not a poltergeist or one of the walking undead. The ghost, in this case, was my walking, living, breathing, fleshy past. She had a kid in a stroller, another dangling from her body, and - from the looks of things - another on the way. Her youthful innocence and beauty had been snuffed out by spermatozoa and zygotes and all the stress that follows. Staring at her faded haggard features and worn down body from across the street, I felt nothing. Not an inkling of sadness or pity or yearning. I stared blankly, occupied with the absent years that laid between us. She eventually noticed me and reciprocated with an equally vacant glare. I knew she didn't recognize me. She didn't want to recognize me. She didn't want to remember what once was. It was merely an absent gaze shared by estranged lovers, no words, no gestures, and no use for recollection. The little ones stirred and she broke away. I continued with my day, per usual, without another thought of her. Its funny that one does not recognize that alienation is the natural state of man until one is struck by a vacant glare authored by moribund eyes. It was only a few days later, reading her obituary in the paper, did I reflect on the encounter. If you want, I can tell you I mourned her violent passing - struck down by a drunk driver - remembered our past fondly and felt compassion for her children. But if you want an honest answer, I was satisfied with the fate the cosmos had rendered. It was just to extinguish a body absent of its soul. It was a ghost I saw that day. It wasn't confirmed until I read her name in the paper.

I jotted down the appropriate details - ceremony open to the public, St. Mark's Church, 3:00pm, October 28, 20--, and prepared for the service. I didn't know why I went. Well, I actually I do. The freshly minted widower was instinctively a subject of interest. I never met the man who ripped her from my insecure and petty grip. He was a mystery to me, that is until I saw him: tall, lanky, non-descript Caucasian male in his mid-thirties, whose once boyish features had been dulled by the drudgery of work and the ephemeral joys of alcohol, tobacco, and whatever else. I looked vacantly at the guy, unable to choose an emotion to feign. He appeared to have recognized me. He thought I was her cousin George and extended his hand. I let him believe he was right and shook his waiting hand. What's it to me? Being a nihilist and all, I humored him. I gave him my formal condolences as her "cousin", extended the ubiquitous "if you need anything..." spiel, and even hugged him. He was genuinely touched by my charade and began to open up. He confessed that although things never unfolded as they had planned - financially or romantically - he loved her deeply. He was genuine, tears welled up with every passing word. I felt nothing and tried my best to feign empathy. I sensed he began to feel a real bond with this supposed cousin-in-law - who in reality couldn't be troubled to attend his cousin's funeral - and I saw the dupe standing before me.

I raised the stakes and began regaling him with childhood stories about times "George" shared with his dear departed cousin - like the time she saw a fairy fly around the ravine near her parent's home and we spent a day with butterfly nets in pursuit. Oh how he laughed and laughed! And then he cried. I felt nothing and continued with my stories - careful to conceal the time I played doctor with his deceased wife. Then, he made a crucial mistake. He was seduced and asked if I would say a few words during the ceremony. He was asking for it really. When the fool asks to be embarassed, the asshole is obliged to deliver in spades.

"She was mine before she was yours!" That was how I concluded my address. He thought about it for a second; it takes the fool a little while to process the obvious. His face contorted like a Picasso at the thought of his wife enjoying some cousin lovin' with the louse standing at the podium and charged the stage, with bullheaded aggressions, to accost me. I intuitively tried to extricate myself from the proceedings and his chase quickly short-circuited, as he tumbled over the casket in a mad dash after "George". At a safe distance and peering from behind a curtain, I saw a pathetic sight. He cried and cried over the meticulously made up cadaver and pulled out a mickey of Jim Beam to drown his sorrows. You don't really understand that love is illusion until it all falls apart and leaves even the most contented simpleton a blubbering mass of confusion.

I was about to walk out of St. Mark's until her sister intercepted me. She blocked the exit with her mischievous grin. She remembered me. She remembered my lecherous gaze and my repressed desire for her nubile body. At an intimate distance, I looked into her eyes and knew what she wanted. I wrapped my arms around her waist, swung open the door to the confessional, and we tore savagely into each other. Her voracious appetite was unlike her sister's submissiveness. She was in full control and I was a mere passenger. What's it to me? I let her handle me like a toy. I rather enjoy being a toy sometimes.

Anyways, the imminent possibility that the widower would ingest enough Jim Beam to continue his hunt drove us deeper into the throes of ecstasy. "He would surely cut your dick off", she whispered and knelt down, "and what a shame that would be." She slurped lustily away at her toy, as I felt nothing as the mechanisms churned. After the t's were crossed and i's were dotted, we left the confessional. She walked back into the service and I walked out of the church. I never saw her again. Once was more than enough.

Between lust and love, lust has reality and substance, while love is fluff. It is reserved for those who are both perpetually vain and eternally bored. I love you. I luv you. I wuv you. I muv you. Love is an escape from boredom through self-deception. Love merely justifies one's shallow narcissistic vanities. "I love him for who he is," she says. When in reality, she means she loves him because he's a tall, well-hung, rich white guy like any other guy her girlfriends goes with. She feels included and satisfied with her apparent normalcy. Love is a smoke screen justifying masturbatory desires. Lust is honest. Lust is direct. Lust is instinct acting out fantasies repressed by rational morality or moral rationality. Lust is all we need. Rather than wasting away longing for impossibilities and concocting soap operas to pass the time...he loves me, he loves me not, lust launches one into a moment and passes through it without regret. One does not dwell on the moment; it merely passes. I prefer lust over love and there's no sense to belie that point.

I once had a friend who was consumed by unrequited love and set himself on fire. He was, by most accounts, a brilliant and studious student, in addition to being a very outgoing and engaged person - very social with both boys and girls, but strictly on a platonic level for the first sixteen years of his life. That was until he met her. She was a beautiful petite blonde with a set of beautiful ample breasts yearning to bust out of her dress at any instant, and blue eyes that turned even the most hardened delinquent into passive obedient mush. She was our Food Studies teacher, Ms. Morrison. Of course, all of the boys were smitten with her and wanted to do all sorts of unholy things to her, but most could only muster enough courage to jerk off to her in the comfort of their bedroom, flanked by their trusty tissue box and lotion bottle. My friend, however, was, what should I say, very gung-ho about everything; he was never half-ass; there was always an utmost seriousness to his actions. His tragic end remains an eternal source of inspiration for my nihilism.

The details remain murky, but I think he did have a tryst with Ms. Morrison. It was after one parent-teacher night. He stayed behind to help clean up. As the story went, she was unusually despondent throughout the night - lacking her requisite zeal, apparently because she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her with an older woman - which, depending on the account, was with a slightly older or a much older woman. My friend was much too perceptive to allow a golden opportunity to go unnoticed or fulfilled.

The encounter itself is, to this day, the stuff of mythic folklore, recounted even twenty years later by bathroom graffiti. An anthropological analysis of adolescent cave-scribblings would lead one to think that the bathroom stall where fifteen year old freshmen came to jack off to Brad Pitt photos was the site of the encounter. Catatonic. He was catatonic for the longest time after his unfortunate encounter. He dropped out of school, wandered for a decade, and stabbed a hooker four thousand three hundred and twenty-three times. Love destroys even the most gifted. Four thousand three hundred and twenty-three times, he told me over the prison phone, was the number of times he thrusted inside of Ms. Morrison that night. Sufficiently impressive, I told him.

Kitsch

"Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion."

We will all be turned into kitsch, shit turned into gold. We accumulate. We consume. We discard. We do these things habitually; life means churning out a lot of shit. Productivity is correlated to consumption, supply and demand, the good capitalist preaches. And then a time comes when our capacity for accumulation is exhausted, we are discarded, leaving a malleable object: an archetype, a stereotype, an idyllic remembrance. The desperate need for the fallen soldier is kitsch; the memorial immortalizes resentment, entrenches the impossible dreams of purity and perpetual peace - rows and rows of headstones stretching to as far as the eye can see - and alchemizes revanche with the spirit of a people, "lest we forget...let us kill in their honor and join their blessed ranks." Headstones - rows and rows of kitsch, sweet images of immortality for those who have passed into the void.

But don't get me wrong, kitsch is not absolutely malformed or "evil" nor should it be demonized. It is how it is employed, manipulating the most abysmal human emotions - blind faith in hope - for power ambition, that makes it the enemy of life. Kitsch often is an imperfect expression of an inarticulate human voice reaching out for affirmation. But the one enamoured with kitsch does not wait for response from life or from above, he seeks to construct meaning through saccharine remembrance. Recollection searches a shrapnel-filled, fragmented, and fractured world for objects of kitsch: the possibly tragic, yet invariably sweet, face of an orphaned child mourning his father's death; the son shall carry on the work of the father. Humanity longs for inspiration, for hope, however detached from reality. Without the possibility of kitsch, man would only see the blood and gore, fragments and fissures, and stare aimlessly at the dark expanse. The possibility of kitsch keeps him from offing himself and ending the meaningless suffering. But it isn't kitsch that keeps humanity from plunging off the ledge into an abyss. We are therefore we live. I rebel therefore we are, Camus once wrote. Kitsch is the ass-god providing fleeting comfort; resentment invariably returns to animate revanche.

Taut, proud, and erect, the proud solider stand frozen for all time. He is peddled to believers by dishonest brokers of power. Freedom is irrelevant for he who worships illusion.

Grey matter, white matter

Grey matter and white matter fading into an infinite expanse. Tell me the truth that conceals the lie. Remember me, my friend...no forget it. With perfection beyond me and failure ever imminent, I concede and walk voluntarily to the gallows, and the floor goes out from under me. Languorous death comforts through idle meditation. What has been done? What was to be done? Should've...could've...would've...as around and around I go, dangling from the ephemeral worth of regret.

Thunderous roars from the peanut gallery cheer me on. "Loser!" Indifferent reality ripped from the insecure arms of sanity - one last breath, one more tear left to be shed. My friend, forget me, and remember who I would've been. Here's the addendum: burn the recollection once you construct it. Save nothing, let it all slip away. Grey matter and white matter embraces sweet oblivion; here I go, go, go...to paradise I go.

Artificial paradise erodes, unable to withstand a vociferous knock on its fluffy door, and implodes. Spiraling all the way down to reunite with my brother-twin; Hades, you old dog, how do you do? Where's the booze at?

Democracy...

Democracy... as a word; empty and hallow, lip-service paid...
Democracy... as ideal; groundless, dangerous tool employed by ambition...
Democracy... as practice; freedoms given, not practiced...
Democracy... as rule; the rule of the people over the people?
Democracy... as beginnings; origin of solidarity, of communcal bonds, of failure, of hope, of war, of peace and of the end?
Democracy... as ethos; the trap of moralism?
Democracy... as challenge; contend and subordinate...hierarchy? structure? metaphysics? vanity?
Democracy... as networks of recalcitrance; stagnant order crushes freedom - unfettered freedom is vanity all the way down?

"Humanity Tied..."

L’Humanité chaussit le vaste enfant Progrès.

Humanity tied the shoes of Progress, that enormous child.

-Louis-Xavier de Ricard
A. Rimbaud
from the Album Zutique 1871-1872

The Asshole Agon

He stood there naked as the day the midwife torn him, kicking and screaming, from his mother's womb. The unexceptional man made a vow to never, never again be subjected to condescension. "Here I stand..." he cut off the remark, disgusted on how the thought would inevitably conclude. "Here I stand." His edit made the remark definitive and consequently more ambiguous. A lecture filled with his peers, set abuzz, gaped incomprehensibly at the spectacle. There stood the aspiring agon, having already exhausted all possible veneers, no longer able to conceal anything. "Here I stand."

The voice of authority, the one who held his academic future in her hands, pointed out the obvious contradiction.

"If you let it all hang out, does that not destroy the realm of the public? Does that not destroy the veil of mystery necessary for the function of play in civilization? Does this not lead to disenchantment?"

"Was Eden disenchanted?" he rebuted.

"They ate the apple to escape boredom," a female student blurted out. "That was beyond disenchantment."

"The temptation was never external. It gave completion to free will. Yes, Eden was disenchanted, lame, and boring," another shouted.

He looked down at his member dangling passionlessly, as if the object of clinical observation. He scanned the room to check out their eyes. He saw insecurity; some were secretly measuring and comparing. He saw curiousity and repressed lust; there was intrigue. He saw revulsion; the uninitiated suffering an insoluble clash between impulse and proper morality. He saw his professor's eyes; they were bored.

The spectacle did not impress nor shock her. She had seen it countless times before in a bedroom or a restroom or an elevator or in a kitchen. She had seen more impressive displays, as well as inferior ones. She knew who his intended audience was, as well as his readily transparent motive. She wasn't buying it.

"Put your clothes, Mr. Stevens, unless you can provide a compelling reason why you should not."

"In the agora..." he stared dispassionately into her eyes as his right hand readied itself to demonstrate his point. He performed the task, as he done countless times in private, in the public realm, in his own agora.

Some cheered. Most were aghast. A few were outraged. A couple walked out. But she sat there unfazed, unchanged, and unimpressed, as he neared climax. She stood up, calm and collected as ever before, to provide her critique.

"The true agon does not bring attention to himself. The agonistic act is done through both act and deed, prefigured by thought. Pull your pants back on and clean up after your mess."

The unexceptional man stood there and broke into tears.

Blanchot on Writing

"To write is to enter into the affirmation of the solitude in which fascination threatens. It is to surrender to the risk of time's absence, where eternal starting over reigns. It is to pass from the first to the third person, so that what happens to me happens to no one, is anynonymous insofar as it concerns me, repeats itself in an infinite dispersal. To write is to let fascination rule language. It is to stay in touch, through language, in language, with the absolute milieu where the thing becomes image again, where the image, instead of alluding to some particular feature, becomes an allusion to the featureless, and instead of a form drawn upon absence, becomes the formless presence of this absence, the opaque, empty opening onto that which is when there is no more world, when there is no world yet." (32, The Space of Literature)

"When will I be blown up?"

"There are no problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when will I be blown up?"

- William Faulkner, 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech

I'll save you the rehashed image of mushroom clouds lingering over Nagasaki and Hiroshima and direct your attention to an everyday, albeit less iconic, image: the plastic watering can. I know, I know, I'm ripping off a Radiohead track, but stay with me. The plastic watering can may represent the repressed anxiety and apparent peace of suburban life, i.e., a retiree watering the flower bed. As the retiree waters his or her flower bed, thoughts are not about atomic war or the state of the world in general; the garden alone is worthy of attention. The garden is something to tend to, to pass the time, until death visits silently on a fated day or night. The plastic watering can, tranquil in its place, would find Faulkner's quote quite foreign to its own nature. The plastic watering can is that vaunted escape from violent death, trading a bayonet blade to the heart for blissful atrophy. "When will I be blown up?" The fear of violent death stays with us, even in the iron bosom of the state.

What Hobbes promised his readers was a diminishment, not an abolition, of the possibility of violent death. We should recall that Hobbes' Leviathan resembles a liberal state; charges of totalitarianism lobbed at Hobbes do not hold water. Any regime that strives for the absolute abolition of the possibility of violent death is by definition totalitarian. It must simulate the omnipotence previously presumed to lie in the hands of God to re-create the world more perfectly than He could ever have. The fatal flaw of creation, naturally, is free will; the possibility of evil. It is free will that leads the world astray from divine form and it is freedom that must be curbed, controlled, or ultimately annihiliated for the sake of an evermore perfect world. Hobbes believes the Leviathan to be a construct enabling individuals to exercise freedom. Hence, he values freedom as much as he does order. But, let us not make an amateurish error and contend that Hobbes believes freedom can exist without order. It is his nominalism, oddly enough, that absolves him from charges of totalitarianism. To put it simply, he in some ways shares Pope's contention that "whatever is, is right". The state, imperfect as it is, constructed through a sort of social agreement is right at least for the time being. The form of the state, i.e. the consolidation of both malevolent and benevolent power (where there is no difference between the two), is not the aim of Hobbes' project; curiously enough, it is human freedom. The general form of the state, as well as its accompanying narrative about the state of nature to civilization, are merely instruments in service of human liberty. Hobbes, far from advocating totalitarianism, would most likely ridicule it for its lack of scientific rigour and naturalism - mechanisms, we must remember, function causally, without the intervention of Providence or such, even though it may be modeled after divine forms.

The totalitarian approach effaces freedom at every turn in order to pursue a 'grand scheme'. This was true of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the United States, specifically but not exclusively during the era of McCarthyism. Some choose to throw this accusation at the current situation in the United States, but let us refrain from subscribing to that view, lest it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The atomic bomb may have "punctuated" a struggle against fascism and totalitarianism, but it opened up, for a lack of a better term, a pandora's box. Faulkner's quote bares the wound that the six decades following his address has tried to conceal, bandage, and eventually forget. The possibility of violent death is not only isolated to myself, my family, my clan, or even my country. It has extended to include the extermination of the entire species; the radical cessation of life, human or otherwise. The atomic bomb humbles us. But the stakes it presents are far too large to be adequately confronted. Alienated, afraid, and alone, people often seek salvation in the plastic watering can or the television (tuned neatly away from the news) or whatever else that leads to death by boredom and atrophy rather than death from above or below. I am not here to judge or prescribe. The prescription, as we can learn from Marx, is not as interesting or useful as the diagnosis. An age of fear is certainly one where threats are amongst us, invisible and clandestine, and 'beyond us', where one wrong move dooms the entirety of mankind. It is mindboggling for politicians, philosophers, journalists, scholars, and the rest to ponder, much less the common man. "When will I be blown up?" may be the question asked by modern man who has reached the limits of existence, who peers over the ridge and sees nothing but an abyss. Can he turn back, as Rousseau likes to think? Or will he plunge into the great primordial unity and fulfil Hegel's prophecy? Or maybe he will sit there looking at the abyss waiting for the photo slide to change? He waits in vain; Providence does not exist. He stares at nothing for eternity, until the very act of spectating melds him with the object of his observation. Modern man thinks of himself as collateral damage of an epic game of chicken between good and evil; when it is his actions that creates and proliferates both throughout the world, with no clear distinction where one starts and the other ends.

THE

The. The Bible. The Rock. The Game. The Sky. The Earth. The connotes universalism; The Law, for example. The Castle. The Lord. The Abyss. So is The effectively an expression of form, immutable and unquestioned? Maybe. The, however, may express an odd uniqueness. The One is a popular example of this. The One, as a vaunted romantic other, entails a completion of a predestined primordial unity, through finding the One. The One, as idol, exemplar, and hero, represents something else. I don't quite know what it is. The One is an imperfect vessel that provides a glimpse into divine form. By implying that God himself was beholden to divine forms - that the form is the house of all divine Power, Bayle prefigures the death of a god, who is left merely an administrative agent of higher forms. So what is The? Is it a Platonic aspiration for definitive forms. So wait, is Hobbes doing this, while understanding the irony inherent in the terms "The State" or "The Leviathan" or "The Sovereign"? These terms are true by definition, derived from geometical forms. What is then the epistemological relation between name and form?