Edge

Summary

Dominique Pagani defines the edge as a "switching": it converts a thing into its opposite, turns the vertical into the horizontal, the solid into the liquid, what remains into what passes, the stability of the ground into the "everything flows" of water12. For him, every edge is perilous: it attracts and frightens, it is at once charm and peril3. At the edge, the subject leaves the safety of home and finds himself facing the outside and the other4. He also connects the edge to the figure of the border in Nerval, a space where one stands. In his view, the question "where are we going to want to stay?" sums up the dialectic of the edge. In 2022, he also sees it as a refuge, an intermezzo between two extremes, and then develops the notion of the "perpetuated edge": an edge held by a subject who wants to lose nothing of either extreme, like Swann with the little phrase in Proust5.

1. 1#10.5 The figure of Antigone, such as into herself at last…24 Nov 2021 · 1:29:17
2. 2#10 Ukraine: from the problem of “edges” to the unleashing of war24 Feb 2022 · 18:26
3. 3#10 Ukraine: from the problem of “edges” to the unleashing of war24 Feb 2022 · 4:07
4. 4#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge7 Apr 2022 · 37:08
5. 5#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge7 Apr 2022 · 1:52:35

Summary produced automatically from 8 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.