on the winter of my discontent; happiness in 4 1/2 gestures

39on the winter of my discontent; happiness in four & a half gestures

1 Franz Kafka. (1998). The Trial. pp.223.

Merde

That was the sound from behind the door. Or at least that was what

we—I—remember. A judging sound, the sound of judgement: after all,

Kenny Png had to submit himself, be judged, before the law. Which is

not to say that was definitely what happened: after all, one can never be

definitive about such things, especially when they are based on memo-

ry. One has to then approach—keeping in mind the register that one is

called to such things—with a certain amount of reasonable doubt.

One has to note here that this was a piece written for two primary

reasons: to be seen by peers; and also to be judged by a certain examiner,

by one who knew nothing of the persons involved in the piece, nor the

piece itself, one who was aptly termed an ‘external examiner’. And here,

it is difficult to ignore the tropes of dissection and dismembering, as if

an autopsy was to be performed, on not only the performance, but the

performers as well.

Here, if we allow ourselves to be sensitive, it is not difficult to hear

the registers of K, of Kafka, and of The Trial; in particular where K is

brought before a power that he neither knows—and can never know—

nor can see, but which clearly has effects on him. Hence, at best, all K

can do is to guess, to posit, what is required of him. It is this positing that

is captured in the statement of the priest in the cathedral when he says

to K, “no … you don’t have to consider everything true, you just have to

consider it necessary.”1 This is due to the fact that K is faced with a law

that he must approach, and which has power of judgment over him, but

ON tHE wINtErOf my dIScONtENt;HAPPINESSIN4jErEmyfErNANdO

40 on happiness 41on the winter of my discontent; happiness in four & a half gestures

4 ibid. pp.221.5 ibid. pp.215.6 ibid. pp.216.

remain; it is of his own free will that he does. This opens the possibility

that it is the man who is free; unlike the doorkeeper who is captive to

his duty, is captive to the Law, as not only has he to wait for the man to

appear, but must also wait there till he decides to leave: in this sense, it

is the executer of the Law who is most bound to it. As the priest explains

to K,

the man is in fact free: he can go wherever he wishes, the entrance

to the Law alone is denied to him, and this only by one person,

the doorkeeper. If he sits on the stool at the side of the door and

spends the rest of his life there, he does so of his own free will; the

story mentions no element of force. The doorkeeper, on the other

hand, is bound to his post by his office; he is not permitted to go

elsewhere outside, but to all appearances he is not permitted to

go inside either, even if he wishes to.4

Even as the doorkeeper is bound to the Law, it is not as if he knows what

the Law is: one can assume that he hasn’t been too far into the Law—“I’m

only the lowest doorkeeper … the mere sight of the third is more than

even I can bear”5 —and moreover, it is the man who “in the darkness …

now sees a radiance that streams forth inextinguishably from the door of

the Law”6; nothing is said of whether the doorkeeper sees this light. This

suggests that both the man and the doorkeeper, regardless of whether

they are there by choice or by duty, are affected by a power that is beyond

2 ibid. pp.215.3 ibid. pp.216.

at the same time, is a law that is always hidden from him. And it is this

that the priest attempts to highlight to him through the famous parable

of the Law:

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. A man from the country

comes to this doorkeeper and requests admittance to the Law.

But the doorkeeper says that he can’t grant him admittance now.

The man thinks it over and then asks if he’ll be allowed to enter

later. “It’s possible,” says the doorkeeper, “but not now.”2

It is not that the man—or K—is not allowed into the Law, not allowed to

see what it is that is judging him, but that he is not allowed to at this very

moment. As there is no time stipulation to “but not now,” it is not that

the doorkeeper is lying to him, but that the moment of admittance is de-

ferred, not necessarily eternally, but perhaps for just one moment longer

than the life of the man. However, it is not as if the Law has no effect on

their lives: on the contrary, the man from the country waits outside the

doorway till the end of his life, and K’s trial fully occupies his daily exist-

ence. In other words, both of them are completely consumed by the Law,

by a force that they do not—and cannot—see or comprehend, by a force

that they remain completely blind to.

Even though the Law is a force that affects them, has an effect on

them, it is not as though they are compelled to be before it: after all, the

man decides that “he would prefer to wait.”3 At no point is he forced to


at best whether it is a correct understanding; which suggests that every

misunderstanding is not only potentially a correct understanding, but

that it is impossible to distinguish between them in the first place. One

might even posit that within every understanding lies a misunderstand-

ing. It is for this reason that even the executer of the Law remains blind

to it: all the doorkeeper is doing is carrying out the Law in that particular

situation, the situation of the Law being “solely for you”; in other words,

the only knowledge that the executer of the Law has is of its effects; the

only time that the executer knows of the Law is at the very moment(s)

he is executing it.

But it is not as if our own K is unaware of this; of the absurdity of

standing before a Law he is not privy to—being judged by a judge undoing

the very Law he is judging by, the very Law that allows him to judge in

the first place. After all, he is constantly reminding us that, “I am happy,

because I should be happy!” And at that point, I recall many in the audi-

ence jumping to the conclusion that he must have been writing a com-

mentary on the state, on politics, on public policy. Of course, they were all

completely missing the point: what was at stake was far more than mere

politics; what was at play was the very notion of happiness itself. And

more precisely, the absurdity of the relationality between happiness and

choice. Perhaps it might be helpful to take a strange detour here—to tem-

porarily defer a direct approach to the relationality—and look through

the lens of politics itself, in order to open a register between freedom and

happiness.

7 ibid. pp.217.8 ibid. pp.223.9 ibid. pp.219.

their comprehension; even the “radiance that streams forth” is only seen

at the end; only “now” does he see this light. And even though the man

sees this light, this radiance emanating from within the door, within the

Law, he never knows what it means, or even what the light is.

The unknowability of the Law becomes even more curious if we take

into account the fact that “no one else could gain admittance here, be-

cause this entrance was meant solely for you.”7 This suggests that it is a

personalized Law, and this opens the register of the paradox that every

law—that the Law itself—faces: in order for something to be Law, it has

to have a certain universality, in that it is applicable to everyone with-

out distinction or discrimination; however, each application of the Law

is singular, unique, and situational. Hence, at best, the Law can only be

known—if that term can even be used in the first place—at the very mo-

ment in which it is applied; to the man, to K, to you: the Law can only be

glimpsed by the effects it has on one, but can never be known as such.

This is precisely why the priest tells K, “you don’t have to consider eve-

rything as true, you just have to consider it as necessary.” For, it is not

so much that one cannot tell between what is true or not (which is the

misunderstanding that K has in thinking that “lies are made into a uni-

versal system”8) but more radically that each truth—and by extension

each lie—is only provisional, situational, singular. It is the situationality

of the Law, of each positing of the Law, that allows the “commentators

[to] tell us: the correct understanding of a matter and misunderstand-

ing the matter are not mutually exclusive.”9 In fact, one can only guess


In a democracy, the subject has to assume complete responsibility for

both her/his actions and that of the state. The freedom of the subject is

closely related to the choice(s) that is presented to the subject; and in

fact, the point of ultimate freedom, expression of one’s will and choice,

comes at the moment of election. At each election, the subject has three

options: elect a particular candidate or party, spoil the vote, or refuse to

vote. But whichever option the subject chooses, (s)he has already agreed

to accept the outcome of the election. This, for instance, makes all claims

to Bush’s illegal election moot the moment the results were officially an-

nounced; one can challenge them up to the point they are announced, but

no longer after. More crucially, the subject has to take responsibility for

the outcome. In effect, whether or not you elected that particular person/

party, you are responsible for her/his/their actions. By extension, this

means that whatever legislation is passed by those elected to office—no

matter how brutal or disagreeable they may be—is effectively passed by

the subject(s) on themselves.

This ironic lack of freedom in democracy is due to the attempt at bridg-

ing the gap between the subject and the other; by attempting to know the

other too well. By having a direct hand in choosing one’s own leaders,

one is in effect having a stake in the leadership, whilst being governed by

that same leadership. Hence, there is no longer a gap, a space, to complain

about that same leadership; after all, you were the one who chose it.

And here we momentarily turn to Slavoj Žižek—potentially a strange

source when attempting to examine a notion like happiness—who con-

In a Fascist state, the subject is denied all freedom; all power lies

in the hands of the one absolute leader—in this sense, (s)he plays the

role of the (Absolute) Other, on which everything depends. The sub-

ject is merely a part of the whole body (in the form of the state): this

is the corporatisation of the state and its subjects. Hence, all action of

the subject is a result of the Leader: this is why Adolf Eichmann’s de-

fense in Jerusalem, when he claimed that he was innocent as he was

merely following the orders of the Führer, is perversely correct. Ironi-

cally, this absolute enslavement also ensures the absolute freedom

of the subject; for there is nothing that the subject can be responsible

for. (S)he is merely a cog in the entire body, and as such, the subject is

not responsible for anything, even her/him self. So, even if the subject

is punished by the law for something in a Fascist state, it is not that

(s)he is guilty for doing—or not doing—something, for one can only be

guilty if one is responsible for it, but the fact that the Leader deems her/

him so. The fact that the private and the public spheres are collapsed en-

sures the true freedom of the self; one is accountable only to the self and

not to any external force.

In a Totalitarian state—the Soviet Union under Stalin for instance—

the Other takes the form of the Party. In this manner, once again there is

no freedom for the subject as everything is determined by the Party; all

responsibility comes under, and is of, the Party. Hence, the subject can

always blame the Party for anything, even bad weather. Once again, a per-

verse form of freedom for the subject can be found in this situation.


too far away, not too close. This fragile balance was disturbed—by

what? By desire precisely. Desire was the force that compelled the

people to move on—and end up in a system in which the great ma-

jority are definitely less happy.10

And it is this absurd gap between absolute freedom of choice, and the

act of choosing, that K opens: for if we were only ever satisfied with real

choices, all commercialism, and advertising would fail. Even though

shaving cream is essentially the same, we are only satisfied when we get

to choose between 20 variations; and this is what we want: sterilized,

safe, options; alternatives. But instead of complaining about the illusory

nature of choice, what K does is to plunge head-on into the illusion; and

here we awaken another spectre, that of the Beckettian ‘I cannot choose,

but I must choose’.

This though, is a reconstitution of choice, of the act of choosing itself;

for it is no longer a choice that is purely of the self, but rather a choosing

that is always already in relation with what is out there, with a certain

throwness into a situation. In other words—and here do we have much

choice but to speak in words that are other to us—this is a choice that

is in response to the call from elsewhere, to a call from the other. And

here perhaps, it may be helpful to allow ourselves a momentary turn to

Werner Hamacher, and his response to Peter Connor, where he meditates

on what a call entails, on what it means to be called:

10 Slavoj Žižek. (2003). The Puppet and the Dwarf: the Perverse Core of Christianity. pp.42.

The above paragraphs on Fascism, Totalitarianism and Democracy were inspired by a conversation with Žižek on 8 August, 2004 in Saas Fee, Switzerland.

tends that happiness lies in the gap between the ability to choose, and the

actual consequences of real choice. He asks:

When exactly can people be said to be happy? In a country like

Czechoslovakia in the late 1970s and 1980s, people were, in a way,

actually happy: three fundamental conditions of happiness were

fulfilled. Their material needs were basically satisfied—not too

satisfied, since the excess of consumption can in itself generate

unhappiness. It is good to experience a brief shortage of some

goods on the market from time to time (no coffee for a couple of

days, then no beef, then no TV sets): these brief periods of shortage

functioned as exceptions that reminded people that they should

be glad that these goods were generally available—if everything

is available all the time, people take this availability as an evident

fact of life, and no longer appreciate their luck. So life went on in

a regular and predictable way, without any great efforts or shocks;

one was allowed to withdraw into one’s private niche. A second

extremely important feature: there was the Other (the Party) to

blame for everything that went wrong, so that one did not feel re-

ally responsible—if there was a temporary shortage of some goods,

even if stormy weather caused great damage, it was “their” fault.

And last, but not least, there was an Other Place (the consumerist

West) about which one was allowed to dream; and one could even

visit it sometimes—this place was at just the right distance: not


12 Jacques Derrida. (1998). Right of Inspection. pp.1.13 ibid. pp.1.14 ibid. pp.1.

ensures that this communion is one that is without consumption, with-

out subsumption; the other remains wholly other to ourself, even as we

attempt to momentarily get in touch.

Perhaps it is this touching that we have to examine, a touching that is

clearly an act—we must after all attempt to touch something—but an act

that is also always already exterior to us, to ourselves, to all notions of the

self. And here, as we are attempting to read, we must never forget that we

are reading a play, for even though we are free to read, we are always al-

ready governed by the laws of reading, and the rules that come with each

genre. As Jacques Derrida reminds us time and time again, even though

the reader has a “right to see,” and that it takes a certain “skill to see,”

in that it is not a random, purely arbitrary act, (s)he is always already

bound by a “law of seeing.” After all, “you have the authority to tell your-

self these stories but you cannot gain access to the squares of that other

one. You are free but there are rules.”12 In this way, reading, and seeing, is

a negotiation between the reader and the text. One is free within a cer-

tain set of rules—after all, one is always already bound by grammar—and

one’s reading is an interjection, an interplay between the reader and the

text within the rules laid out, the rules before which both the reader and

the text must stand; “there is a law that assigns the right of inspection,

you must observe these rules that in turn keep you under surveillance.”13

In order to play the game—the game of seeing, the game of reading—you

have no choice but to “remain within these limits, this frame, the frame-

work of these frames …”14 And more than this, a text gives both you and

11 Werner Hamacher. ‘Interventions’. in Qui Parle: Journal of Literary Studies 1, no. 2, Spring 1987: 37-42. italics from source.

Why is the call thought of as something which, rather than taken,

taken down, or taken in—be it from a specific agent, subject, prin-

ciple, preferably a moral one—will be given? And if each call which

issues is destined to make demands on the one who is called (but

this is also questionable), is it already settled that I will hear,

that I will hear this call and hear it as one destined for me? Is it

not rather the case that the minimal condition to be able to hear

something as something lies in my comprehending it neither as

destined for me nor as somehow oriented toward someone else?

Because I would not need to hear it in the first place if the source

and destination of the call, of the call as call, were already certain

and determined. Following the logic of calling up, of the call … and

along with that the logic of demand, of obligation, of law, no call

can reach its addressee simply as itself, and each hearing is con-

summated in the realm of the possibility not so much of hearing as

being able to listen up by ceasing to hear. Hearing ceases. It listens

to a noise, a sound, a call; and so hearing always ceases hearing,

because it could not let itself be determined other than as hearing,

to hearing any further. Hearing ceases. Always. Listen…11

And as Hamacher teaches us, listening is the openness to the possibil-

ity of the other, of the potentiality of being in communication—in com-

munion—with the other, an objectless other, an other that might always

remain completely other. It is this objectlessness of the other which


something is illegitimate that the authority of a person is required in or-

der to enact it. In other words, authority is the very undoing of the Law

itself. For instance, a death-sentence can only be pardoned by the author-

ity of the sovereign. In doing so, (s)he is going against the legal system

which sentenced the person to death; the same legal system that upholds

her/his very sovereignty. However, a foregrounding of the illegitimacy

of the sovereign would not only shatter the illusion, but also bring about

the collapse of the entire system. This is the lesson of The Emperor’s New

Clothes: the shock and horror of the crowd was not in the fact that the

little child pointed out that the Emperor was naked (who didn’t already

know that), but in foregrounding the absurdity of the situation (he is only

the Emperor because everyone deems him to be so; and they are subjects

because he is Emperor). The child was told to be quiet precisely because

what was highlighted was the fact that the people were making them-

selves subservient; they were subjected by their own act of subjugation,

and moreover in the face of an absolute lack of evidence that the man

standing in front of them was the Emperor. What was at stake though was

not just the status of the Emperor himself, but the very empire itself; for

if the illusory state of his authority is exposed, then the entire kingdom

comes crashing down. And hence, the child was silenced not to protect

the Emperor from the shame of being naked, but more pertinently to

protect the secret that his authority rested on nothing: he was only Em-

peror because he was in a lineage that was recognized by his subjects; he

was sovereign not because he was a singular one, but because he was in a

15 ibid. pp.2.

itself (through its characters, through the outcome of its own narrative),

a right to look, the simple right to look or to appropriate with the

gaze, but it denies you that right at the same time: by means of its

very apparatus it retains that authority, keeping for itself the right

of inspection over whatever discourses you might like to put forth

or whatever yarns you might spin about it, and that in fact comes

to mind before your eyes.15

It is in this way that every seeing reveals and conceals at the same time;

every seeing always already involves a certain inability to see, an inability

to know. In effect, every reading is a positing, taking a position, making

a choice, which comes with a moment of madness, blindness. Otherwise,

all one is doing is re-writing the text; otherwise, one might as well not

be reading at all. And here, once again, the spectre of Kafka returns to

us, whispering to us that one can never know the law before which one

stands.

At this point, we might want to take yet another detour, and alter the

perspective of the thinking, and perhaps direct it onto K himself—and

here open the register of authorship. One can detect an echo of the author

that can be heard in authority, as if the writer of the situation can play at

being God; all-seeing, and in full-control. The trouble with authority is

that it is always already illegitimate. For, if something is legitimate, access

to it would be open to everyone—governed by the Law. It is only when


Perhaps this is the lesson of Andy Warhol. It was not so much the

reproduction itself that is the art, but the very gesture of recognizing

the objects to be reproduced. There is nothing to an old pair of shoes ly-

ing around; it is van Gogh’s realization of the possibilities in those very

shoes—the singularity of the situation—that momentarily elevates it to

the realm of art. In this sense, one can posit that both Warhol and van

Gogh were authors at that moment of recognition; through their respec-

tive media, both of them create a singularity by arresting a particular

moment in time. And since it is a singular moment, it is in some sense

always also an original gesture; one that has never happened before, and

one that is also non-repeatable. In this manner, one can posit that the

artistic gesture is the reification of time itself: the concretisation of a mo-

ment through a medium, as if that moment was real; in other words, the

authoring of a moment.

The irony though is that every gesture is always already a reproduced

gesture. After all, regardless of medium, one is capturing a moment, and

more precisely, a moment that has passed. In this sense, all art is a recon-

stitution of memory. This is not to say that every act of memory is art; or

that every attempt to capture memory is art. Far from it.

Perhaps here, one might consider the status of forgetting. In order to

do so, we should momentarily stop and consider what it means to say “I

forgot.” One can always posit that “I forgot” is a performative statement:

anyone who has been through a school system has used this umpteen

times when faced with an assignment, and in particular when one has

series of ones. In fact, if he was truly new and original, no one would rec-

ognize him, and he would not be sovereign, barring a war-like situation

where a new Emperor enforced his authority over people, subjugated a

new group. However, even in that situation, he is only Emperor when his

subjects finally recognize him. Hence, all authority is only as such due to

the sovereign being a reproduction of all the sovereigns before her/him;

and not the person as such. However, the very source of that authority it-

self, the reason for a pact between the Emperor and his subjects, remains

a tautological premise (he is Emperor because the people are subjects;

they are subjects because there is an Emperor), remains outside of rea-

son, remains unknown; remains a secret.

In some way, the question that remains sounds paradoxical: if we

posit that it is important that the secret is protected, how is it a secret, if

everyone already knows what the secret is?

Here perhaps, we need to turn to the very notion of secrets them-

selves. And to do so, let us momentarily draw upon an old tale. When Isis

poisoned Ra, she promised him the antidote in exchange for his secret

name, which was the source of all his power. And he whispered into her

heart, and she felt herself filled with all the knowledge and wisdom of Ra,

with all the power that came with his name—Amen-Ra. However, it was

not as if no one else knew it; in fact everyone knows that his name is Ra.

What this shows is that secrets rarely lie in the content (after all, Amen

is merely an affirmation), but in knowing that something is secret, in the

gesture of acknowledging that the secret is a secret, that he is indeed Ra.


all knowledge—that gives each situation the possibility of singularity.

Hence, singularity is always already external to the subject; it is the very

finitude of subjectivity.

This suggests that singularity, originality—or dare one say the artistic

gesture—is found not in a completed, accomplished, work, but rather in

the potential forgetting in that work. In this sense, art is the foreground-

ing of the possibility of forgetting. And since it is impossible to fore-

ground what one cannot know, this suggests that art is always already in

its praxis, and more than that, it is always already only to come. This is

an approach to art that acknowledges that part of art always lies outside

the person; that can at best only be glimpsed momentarily. This is art in

the precise sense of a craft at its highest level, where it consumes the

practitioner, and often in ways which are exterior to one’s cognitive abil-

ity. In this sense, art remains invisible to one; at best, it expresses itself

through one.

If one can never be sure of the status of one’s act—whether it is repro-

duced through memory, or whether it is a new act due to a forgetting—

every act is then both (n)either a first (n)or a reproduction. By extension,

each time one performs an act, one is both neither a virgin and always al-

ready virginal. This is also a foregrounding of the illegitimacy of author-

ity; one cannot legitimately say whether something is art or not. In other

words, any judgement is based on nothing except the praxis of judging it-

self, where one cannot rely on a metaphysical comfort that one is correct

(or wrong) with any certainty. Hence, art lies in its praxis, in each attempt

crossed the deadline—this is of course something our friend K could have

done when accused of “merde” by his judge: posit a certain forgetting, a

slip-of-mind in order to escape that particular sentence; this is of course

something that he did not do; a strategist among us might even say that

this was something that K failed to do. What is more interesting though

is to consider the possibility that “I forgot” is a constative statement: in

this case, for the statement to be true, there cannot be an object to it; the

moment there is an object to “I forgot,” then strictly speaking one has

remembered what one has forgotten. Hence, the utterance “I forgot” is

one in which there is no referent; at best, the subject is uttering the very

fact that (s)he has forgotten and nothing more. And if there is no refer-

ent to forgetting, this suggests that there is always already an element of

unknowability—an unknowable element—in forgetting. In other words,

there is an element that lies beyond the cognition of the subject; that lies

beyond the subject herself. The implication is, one cannot choose for-

getting, one cannot choose what one forgets—after all, there is no object

to forgetting. Hence, forgetting happens to one: it is something other to

the subject that then has an effect on her. And if this is so, there is then

absolutely no reason that each time one remembers something, each act

of memory, might not also bring with it the potentiality of forgetting. In

other words, forgetting is not an antonym to memory, but rather is po-

tentially part of memory itself. By extension, there is no possibility of

knowing if each act of remembering recalls the same memory. And it is

precisely this impossibility of knowing—this unknowability that haunts


16 This was in reference to the utopian ideal of the Leninist revolution and can be found in Slavoj Žižek. “A Plea for Leninist Intolerance” in Critical Inquiry. Winter 2000.

www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/v28/v28n2.Žižek.html (italics from source).

the realm of the polis, and consider the instance of revolutions. Here, we

return to Slavoj Žižek—this time calling on him as one of the thinkers of

modern day revolutions—who never lets us forget:

In a proper revolutionary breakthrough, the utopian future is nei-

ther simply fully realized, present, nor simply evoked as a distant

promise that justifies present violence. It is rather as if, in a unique

suspension of temporality, in the short circuit between the present

and the future, we are—as if by Grace—for a brief time allowed to

act as if the utopian future were (not yet fully here, but) already

at hand, just there to be grabbed. Revolution is not experienced

as a present hardship we have to endure for the happiness and

freedom of the future generations but as the present hardship

over which this future happiness and freedom already cast their

shadow-in it; we already are free while fighting for freedom, we

already are happy while fighting for happiness, no matter how

difficult the circumstances. Revolution is not a Merleau-Pontyan

wager, an act suspended in the futur anterieur, to be legitimized

or delegitimized by the long term outcome of the present acts; it

is as it were its own ontological proof, an immediate index of its

own truth.16

And it is this “as if” that remains crucial to us: we must act ‘as if ’ we

are able to do so. This suggests that each time we act, there is no way

at making something, doing something, practising one’s craft; at best, all

that can be said is that art is a gesture towards the possibility of art. More

than that, whether something ever reaches the realm of art—a reproduc-

tion that is not just a reproduction—or remains just another reproduc-

tion—not that there is any logical difference between the two—always

already remains a secret from us, perhaps until it happens. And when

it does, its reason might still remain unknown to us, which means that

all attempts to reproduce the gesture might only remain a reproduction.

In other words, art is nothing more than a gesture. And more than

that, since art always already remains potentially exterior to the person,

there are no artists; there is only the possibility of the gesture.

One that is made in blindness to everything but the possibility of art

itself.

“I am happy!”—in blindness to everything, but the possibility of hap-

piness itself.

Which is why, there always already had to be two of them; even as

they are walking around in circles, declaring their happiness—for hap-

piness could not reside in just a single, total, being. As K is teaching us,

happiness is always already there; perhaps the only reason we are unable

to see it is because it is there, but just not yet. However, this is not a ni-

hilistic gesture, one aimed at nothingness, for that would be too sure, too

certain, too totalising, but rather a gesture of hope, a gesture of possibil-

ity, potentiality. And here for a moment, it might be strange to make yet

another segue—a back-track even—as if it was possible to do so, re-enter


that one has to be forever separate from everyone else, from everything;

but rather, even in a joining, a conjoining, one always already remains

singular. In this very sense, the phrase “when two become one” has to be

read ironically; and what else would this gap, this distance, be, but that

of irony.

Perhaps here, we might as well reverse all the way to the beginning;

and start again. This is after all, one of the possible readings of a revolu-

tion; going round and round in circles. And listen to another register of

“merde”; that of Ubu Roi. More precisely—if we can ever even use that

notion when speaking of Ubu Roi—we need to open our receptors to his

laughter, the great guffaw of the King, a King very much unlike the naked

one we spoke of earlier. For, this king is one that takes his kingship—and

himself—with an absurd level of seriousness, so seriously that we have no

choice but to take him ironically, at a distance; otherwise we either have

absolutely no way of fathoming anything, or we understand nothing by

attempting to understand everything. Hence, what we have to do is to ap-

proach Ubu Roi at a distance, allow for the fact that he is king—whatever

that even begins to mean—and take everything he says, and does, with

belief and un-belief at the same time. For, there is no referentiality to the

words of this king; all he is doing is saying, all he is doing is speaking: all

he is doing is naming at the moment he names.

Isn’t that though the nature of all names? Singular as there is only one

thing, at one moment in time, that is being named; multiple as no name is

unique. Therefore, a name both refers to one thing and everything other

in which we will know whether it is a correct or wrong act—in other

words, we will never have the comfort of certainty. Each time we act is its

own “ontological proof,” with no hope of reference or precedence: each

act is singular, and irreducibly different from every other act. But at the

same time, we can only know that something is irreducibly different in

the presence of another; which suggests that each act—and by extension,

each person—to borrow Jean-Luc Nancy’s beautiful formulation, is al-

ways already singular-plural.

And if one is singular, but always already in relation to all others, this

suggests that happiness cannot be vested in the self; despite all the claims

of self-help gurus, and television psychologists, one cannot will oneself

to be happy. But as our friend K tells us over and over again, we can only

be happy “because we should be happy.” All the self can do is listen—and

open oneself to the possibility of being happy.

Here, we might begin to posit that happiness lies in the dash between

the singular and the plural; after all, if happiness is nothing but the open-

ness to the possibility of happiness, this suggests that it is both always

already there, and to come; all one can do is stand before it. But at the

same time, as we have opened in the register of maintaining the gap—the

proper distance as it were—between choosing and real choice, we must

allow the dash to keep the singular and the plural apart. As K demonstrat-

ed to us, the moment the two of them come together—the moment 3939

and 2424 do something because they want to, choose to do something as

“it feels real good”—all hell breaks loose. This of course does not mean


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on the winter of my discontent; happiness in 4 1/2 gestures

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