. . . A period of mourning has kept me away from music, so my head fills with static bombs instead. I usually like to work with some sort of sonic signature. A subtle incentive laying down a basic beat, musical accompaniment allows me to pummel at a stubborn knot in life. In his work on cryptonymy, Laurence Rickels has claimed that background music rings a death knell. That may be so. I’m always hitching a ride on the death drive—the flex of my drivenness—a sure fire way to language. Doing without the rhythmic support that music supplies has presented complications in the mostly monogamous relation to writing. Ach! Despite my willingness to integrate silence and random noise into phrasal regimes, I become a bit sissyish when drafts recede so that nothing on the order of language assertion comes my way. Plunk, plunk. OK, so I’m still learning. As...
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Research Article|
December 01 2017
The Time of My Life
Avital Ronell
Avital Ronell
avital ronell is a philosopher, professor of German and of comparative literature, and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University as well as Jacques Derrida Chair and professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School. Her publications include, most recently, Loser Sons: Politics and Authority (2012). In 2015 Ronell was awarded the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French minister of culture. With Peter Connor, she is a founding editor of Qui Parle.
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Qui Parle (2017) 26 (2): 249–269.
Citation
Avital Ronell; The Time of My Life. Qui Parle 1 December 2017; 26 (2): 249–269. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10418385-4208406
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