On melancholy and the stakes of רנ"ט
Why should one write about the redemptive capacity of the body, so insistently, with such conviction? What is there left to convince oneself, or more closely, whatever could there be, at all, necessary to convince oneself about the body's place?
"Here I am." Saying so, have I already subordinated the body, as well as the framework in which I ask about it, to the precognitive spark, going by the name "being" articulated in the word "am?" That is, do the words "here" and "I" simply fall out from the "am" as ancillary, albeit natural, consequences of the apparent inviolability of the "am?" Subject to either philosophical or mystical scrutiny, does the "I" give way to an impersonal principle? At the essence of essences, would I find out that the floor caves in above a locus of purity so pure as to expel even the notion of essence, meaning either void or infinitude? Already the question "how can the body be justified?" is fraught: presupposing the body, or finitude as such, is in danger of vanishing altogether, annihilated as it is with respect to pure purity, such a question is already charged with the moral urgency of "why should the body persist?"
The question of the persistence of the body is already shot through with the unanswerable question of being more generally: in fact, is it merely this question in the register of the personal? So do the stakes of such a question become rapidly inarticulate as each scaffolding, each attempt at vocalization let alone systematization, falls away in the blinding interpenetration of all body-soul, speech-meaning, or chalice-wine conceptual dyads. But if we could bracket the metaphysical solvency of the question of the body's persistence, put our hand up against its brilliant center, what might be revealed in its corona? Specifically, if we might understand what imprint of the personal register is left, or could possibly be left, in the question of finitude, we might be led to find the traces of what is "answerable" about it, the horizon of even asking.
Maybe all that might mean would be to notice that the problematization of the body disturbs a kind of double locus: once, the body as the most personal thing, the thing that I always hold most dearly and closely to my self, but also the body as the apparent residence of the self, the place where I will always be at home. To ask of the body is first to concede that I might not have safe passage here. Then the body contracts as something that I might not have in my possession forever and expands as a place wherein I might not forever dwell.
In each case, we might ask: what raises the problem of personal finitude above and beyond the problem of multiplicity as such? Here, when we put our hand up against the most troubling of ideas, "finitude," we see in its remainder the most touching: the refuge of the personal. In the context of the body, the refuge of nearness. In the context of speech, the refuge of the personality of the voice as against the impersonality of meaning: it's the recognizability of the voice that warms and brings close the friend, the hasid, or the lover, and only the part of conversation which, risking not meaning anything at all, might first consecrate the freedom of dialogue in safety. Presupposed by the problematization of "here I am" is the uncertainty of the feminine "I am welcome here," the complement of being found in acceptance by being, acceptance which could always be refused.
Relentless attention paid to the priority of the refuge of the personal, as an attempt to surmount the seige of my self by my impersonal essence. To preserve that which is closest to me against that which is "truly" closest to me. An attempt marked totally by melancholy, and whose ultimate stakes, and even the character of its preservation, are melancholic. Not the kind of preservation to be found in essentializing the acceptance of the body, as might be done in a theological systematization of the body's meaning, but rather in accepting the essence of the body: an essence that, at best, means that which I might not truly be.
But melancholy is not a thought, nor is it just the connotation of a metaphysics. Melancholy is like coming up empty-handed to the question "what should I do now?" The stakes of the personal reside in the inertia of the body, not in its idea. My being engaged, preoccupied, or bored. Or in the midst, distractedly, of prayer. What's melancholic about the point of infinitude within me is not that it might render the idea of the self superfluous, but that it inspires the question, somewhere in the layers of preconscious that enfold it, "what can I even do?" It threatens to nullify the engagement of the self, the movement of bringing others near, singing, touching, or cooing. And all of this far more translucently than would be the disruption of "reasons" for being. Far more sensually: under the sign of "what is all this?" prior to "what is this?"
So might be the attempt to "redeem" the body, "redeem" speech, as simple as an attempt to "throw myself back into things," to begin anew and anew, in strength as well as in sadness, the ever-unfolding movement of the social.