Translator’s Introduction: The Risk of Reading | ix
To Risk One’s Life | 1
Eurydice Saved | 4
Minuscule Magical Dependencies | 8
Voluntary Servitude and Disobedience | 11
In Suspense | 13
At the Risk of Passion | 17
Leaving the Family | 22
Forgetting, Anamnesis, Deliverance | 24
Incurable (In)fidelities | 29
Zero Risk? | 33
How (Not) to Become Oneself . . . | 36
Being in Secret | 39
Befriending Our Fears | 41
At the Risk of Being Sad | 46
At the Risk of Being Free | 49
The Time They Call Lost | 52
Dead Alive | 55
Of a Perception Infinitely Vaster . . . | 59
Anxiety, Lack—Spiritual Hunger? | 63
Farewell Magic World: Beyond Disappointment | 67
Life—Mine, Yours | 70
At the Risk of the Unknown | 72
At the Risk of Being Carnal | 74
May There Be an End to Our Torment . . . | 79
Breaking Up | 82
At the Risk of Speech | 86
Solitudes | 89
Laughter, Dreaming—Beyond the Impasse | 93
Hope No More | 101
Once Upon a Time, the “Athenaeum” . . . or, Why Risk Romanticism? |
106
Risking Belief | 111
Risking Variation | 114
The Event: Hyperpresence | 119
Intimate Prophecy | 122
At the Risk of Bedazzlement | 127
Desire, Body, Writing | 130
Healing? | 139
An Other Language | 142
Risking Scandal | 145
Taking the Risk of Childhood | 148
Assiduity | 151
Risking the Future | 154
At the Risk of Beauty | 158
At the Risk of Spirit | 162
Risking the Universal? | 164
Hauntings | 167
Spirals, Ellipses, Metaphors, Anamorphoses | 170
Envisaging Night | 173
Revolutions | 176
At the Risk of Going Through Hell (Eurydice) | 180
Notes | 187
Anne Dufourmantelle (Author)
Anne Dufourmantelle, philosopher and psychoanalyst, taught
at the European Graduate School and wrote monthly columns for the
Paris newspaper Libération. Her books in English include Power of
Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Being; Blind Date: Sex and
Philosophy; and, with Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality.
Steven Miller (Translator)
Steven Miller is Associate Professor of English and Director
of the Center for Psychoanalysis and Culture at the University at
Buffalo, SUNY. He is author of War After Death: On Violence and Its
Limits and translator of books by Jean- Luc Nancy, Catherine
Malabou, and Étienne Balibar.
. . . In Praise of Risk, defies classification. It is not an
ordinary philosophical or psychoanalytic study but an extremely
original mixture of the two.-- "Sofia Philosophical Review"
. . . Anne Dufourmantelle's In Praise of Risk makes a number of
careful interventions related to the notion of risk, intercut with
narratives of her own sessions as an analyst.-- "Cultural
Critique"
Magisterial. Dufourmantelle shows how life is universalized in risk
and how recognizing this fact means enlisting in a fraternity among
humans.---Antonio Negri
To live is to accept a certain degree of risk--the risk of hairline
disappointments, of a too forceful will to believe, of brusque
rejections that fatigue the soul, of being misunderstood yet again,
of being undone without ever being saved. We could venture the
idiom 'life goes on' with cynicism or despair, but we could also do
so with the measure of desire. Anne Dufourmantelle's beautiful book
places us on the side of life and love, showing us the power of
psychoanalytic reflection on those moments when we are asked to
find the courage to risk ourselves on behalf of the
other.---Jamieson Webster, author of Conversion Disorder
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