Provisions

“There are two ways to die, two ways to sleep, two ways to be stupid – a head first dive into chaos or stabilized installation in order and chitin. We are provided with enough senses and instinct to protect us against the danger of explosion, but we do not have enough when faced with death from order or with falling asleep from rules and harmony”

-Michel Serres, 1980 [2007] (The Parasite.  Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.  Pg 127)

A learned reply

“I am often asked the question, ‘Do you believe in the afterlife?’ After mumbling something stupid on a few occasions, I have now learned to reply, ‘Yes, of course I believe in the afterlife. I believe in the life of those that come after, those we love, who are few in number, and those we don’t even know, who are obviously many more, a great many in fact.’ People rarely seem impressed by this answer.

However, why should we assume that the question of the afterlife must always be answered with reference to me? Isn’t just a teensy bit selfish? What is so important about my afterlife? Why can’t I believe in others’ afterlife without believing in my own?”

-Simon Critchley, 2009 (via Flavorwire)

A million-dollar-question

“How, then, does one live when the time to die has passed, when it is even forbidden to be alive, in what might be called the experience of living the ‘wrong way around’?  How, in such circumstances, does one experience not only the everyday but the hic et nunc when, every day, one has both to expect anything and to live in expectation of something that has not yet been realized, is delaying being realized, is constantly unaccomplished and elusive?”

-Achille Mbembe, 2001 (On the Postcolony.  Berkeley: University of California Press.  P 201)