The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.
Jacques DerridaRead
Surviving - that is the other name of a mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Survival can be seen as a form of mourning for something lost, which can never truly be anticipated.
In this quote, Jacques Derrida suggests that the act of surviving after a loss is intrinsically tied to the experience of mourning. This 'surviving' is not just about the physical act of living, but also encompasses the emotional and psychological toll of grieving, highlighting that one can never truly prepare for the depths of loss they'll face, as mourning is a complex, often unpredictable journey that reshapes one's existence.
Themes
SurvivalMourningLossGriefExistence
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a memorial service to reflect on the nature of grief.
More from Jacques Derrida
All quotes βEverything is arranged so that it be this way, this is what is called culture.
Jacques DerridaRead
No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn't understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.
Jacques DerridaRead
Psychoanalysis has taught that the dead β a dead parent, for example β can be more alive for us, more powerful, more scary, than the living. It is the question of ghosts.
Jacques DerridaRead
The trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.
Jacques DerridaRead
Every discourse, even a poetic or oracular sentence, carries with it a system of rules for producing analogous things and thus an outline of methodology.
Jacques DerridaRead
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