AFTERMATH
After my conference paper on Cadillacs in Helsinki (in ref. to my previous two posts: Jove goes Rabbinic and I am's) I eat at a nice Caribbean restaurant downtown Oslo, and a vintage Cadillac parks just outside in plain view. Some things pursue the scholar, who had just mastered the art of driving through cultural texts. This reminds me of Alain Badiou's discussion of Mallarmé in his seminal Being and Event, where he says this:
"Given that the essence of the event is to be undecidable with regard to its belonging to the situation, an event whose content is the eventness of the event (and this is clearly the cast of the dice thrown 'in eternal circumstances') cannot, in turn, have any other form than that of indecision. Since the master must produce the absolute event (the one Mallarmé says, which will abolish chance, being the active effective concept of the 'there is'), he must suspend this production from a hesitation which is itself absolute, and which indicates that the event is that multiple in respect to which we can neither know nor observe whether it belongs to the situation of the site. We shall never see the master throw the dice because our sole access, in the scene of action, is to a hesitation as eternal as the circumstances." (193)
What can I say, if asked to act on my choosing a particular car, I'll say this: in spite of chance circumstances I won't hesitate to drive a Lamborghini over a Cadillac where speed and excitement is concerned - if asked to stand still and savor the moment, I may relinquish the pretense to mastering anything and pick the Cadillac, as my nose would definitely stumble hesitatingly over the rosewood on the steering wheel: is it musk, or cashmere scent I'm smelling?
Savor the journey, or speed up the game.
"Given that the essence of the event is to be undecidable with regard to its belonging to the situation, an event whose content is the eventness of the event (and this is clearly the cast of the dice thrown 'in eternal circumstances') cannot, in turn, have any other form than that of indecision. Since the master must produce the absolute event (the one Mallarmé says, which will abolish chance, being the active effective concept of the 'there is'), he must suspend this production from a hesitation which is itself absolute, and which indicates that the event is that multiple in respect to which we can neither know nor observe whether it belongs to the situation of the site. We shall never see the master throw the dice because our sole access, in the scene of action, is to a hesitation as eternal as the circumstances." (193)
What can I say, if asked to act on my choosing a particular car, I'll say this: in spite of chance circumstances I won't hesitate to drive a Lamborghini over a Cadillac where speed and excitement is concerned - if asked to stand still and savor the moment, I may relinquish the pretense to mastering anything and pick the Cadillac, as my nose would definitely stumble hesitatingly over the rosewood on the steering wheel: is it musk, or cashmere scent I'm smelling?
Savor the journey, or speed up the game.
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