In Praise of Risk

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.