{"id":16283,"date":"2016-07-17T09:39:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-17T07:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.hu-berlin.de\/simoneweil-denkkollektiv\/?p=16283"},"modified":"2021-02-04T11:16:40","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T10:16:40","slug":"michelle-ty-berlin-on-on-self-forgetting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.hu-berlin.de\/simoneweil-denkkollektiv\/michelle-ty-berlin-on-on-self-forgetting\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Ty (Berlin) on “On Self-Forgetting”"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\u00c9tant en usine, confondue aux yeux de tous et \u00e0 mes propres yeux avec la masse anonyme, le malheur des autres est entr\u00e9 dans ma chair et dans mon \u00e2me. Rien ne m'en s\u00e9parait, car j'avais r\u00e9ellement oubli\u00e9 mon pass\u00e9 et je n'attendais aucun avenir, pouvant difficilement imaginer la possibilit\u00e9 de survivre \u00e0 ces fatigues. \t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Simone Weil, \"Attente de Dieu\", 1942<\/cite>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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MICHELLE TY<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Abstract<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Michelle<\/a> <\/strong>is assistant professor of English at Clemson University.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Simone Weil draws thought toward that drift in which \u201cextreme attention\u201d becomes identified with \u201cprayer.\u201d \u00a0In lieu of an act of \u201cinterpretation\u201d that would actively produce textual signification out of the materials that lie at its disposal, \u00a0she gestures toward a practice of looking at objects\u2014and continuing to look upon them until \u201cthe light suddenly dawns.\u201d \u00a0Reading is thus a kind of self-forgetting\u2014that is, not so much a total annihilation than a suspension of intention, and in that suspension, an emptying of thought into a readiness to receive the object as it enters le vide that thought has necessarily become in order to be thought.\u00a0 Such an orientation toward understanding realizes an auto-dislocation from conventional epistemological and phenomenological centerings around the I that grasps what is around and brought before it.\u00a0 I would like to lend time to the relationships that are traced between this being en attente; the ego\u2019s relinquishment (particularly as it is enacted in and through writing-as-waiting); and the arrival of illumination from without.\u00a0 Touch-points that offer lines of sight for this exploration include literary moments of preoccupation with a mirror that holds no face in view (an image that recurs in the writings of both Virginia Woolf and Clarice Lispector); and the notion of wu wei in Taoist philosophy, which translates into a non-programmatic principle of nonaction.\u00a0 What forms of sustenance and disorientation attend this seeing without a self to hold that looking?\u00a0 And how does the extremity of an anti-narcissistic stance avoid re-consolidating the grounds of the I through the concentration on its absence?\u00a0 In what senses might decreation be scarcely exhausted by obliteration?\u00a0 And how might Weil\u2019s notion of attention be re-thought without the presumption of a self that was.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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