Filed under: Literature, Philosophy, Poetry, Uncategorized | Tags: abandonment, being-with, Jean-Luc Nancy, Kay Ryan, Ontology, Philosophy, Poetry
Recently-minted U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, from a July 17 New York Times article:
“I realized that whatever we do or don’t do, we’re utterly exposed.”
At first blush, any one who’s read Jean-Luc Nancy’s work on being-with or his ontology of plural sinularity will at the level of basic philosophy some resonance in Ryan’s words. But Ryan’s economy of expression at once withholds itself and leaves itself open to questions and amplifications. ‘Exposed’: to what, or two whom? To things, to people, to beings, to a beyond, or being wherever we are? If there’s any suitable supplement to Ryan’s utterance of resignation, it can perhaps be that exposure itself is the basic human fact placing us with relation to many others, be the people, ourselves, or objects.
