Beyond the edge of the so-called human, beyond it but by no means on a single opposing side, rather than ‘‘The Animal’’ or ‘‘Animal Life’’ there is already a heterogeneous multiplicity of the living, or more precisely (since to say ‘‘the living’’ is already to say too much or not enough), a multiplicity of organizations of relations between living and dead, relations of organization or lack of organization among realms that are more and more difficult to dissociate by means of the figures of the organic and inorganic, of life and/or death. These relations are at once intertwined and abyssal, and they can never be totally objectified. They do not leave room for any simple exteriority of one term with respect to another. It follows that one will never have the right to take animals to be the species of a kind that would be named The Animal, or animal in general.
Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am
Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am
It is so lonely to feel deeply about the world and be met with the complete failure of language to communicate it. Poetry gets us marginally (but importantly!) closer than rhetorical language, like how standing on a roof gets one a few feet closer to grabbing a star than standing in the dirt. It makes the loneliness of being here a little easier to bear.
Kaveh Akbar, ”Galloping Towards Delight: A Conversation with Kaveh Akbar and Ilya Kaminsky”, published in Magma Issue 83, Solitude, Summer 2022
Kaveh Akbar, ”Galloping Towards Delight: A Conversation with Kaveh Akbar and Ilya Kaminsky”, published in Magma Issue 83, Solitude, Summer 2022
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