Post It #240

Haverá ainda espaço para alguma originalidade entre os balanços e listas dos melhores não-sei-o-quê-do-ano que se reproduzem por todo o lado? A resposta é um hilariante e redondo sim. O Times acaba de atribuir prémios para as declarações e gaffes mais divertidas de escritores e críticos literários, publicadas durante 2004.

Crucial philosophical problem of the year

"I have trouble keeping silent within me a protest that comes of finding oneself naked, one's sex exposed, stark naked before a cat that looks at you without moving, just to see . . . It is as if I were ashamed, naked in front of this cat, but also ashamed for being ashamed. A reflected shame, the mirror of a shame ashamed of itself, a shame that is at the same time specular, unjustifiable, and unable to be admitted to . . . Before the cat that looks at me naked, would I be ashamed like an animal that no longer has the sense of nudity? Or on the contrary, like a man who retains the sense of his nudity? Who am I therefore? Who is it that I am (following)? Whom should this be asked of if not of the other? And perhaps of the cat itself?"

(Jacques Derrida, extract from a "10-hour address", in "Animal Philosophy: Ethics and Identity")