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The writings in this volume are bound by desire to refuse worry, to reject and throw it away the only way possible, by means that are themselves free from worry. If this is impossible—all the more reason to do so. I. The Sweetness (of the Law) II. Nunc Dimittis: Getting Anagogic III. Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia IV. Wormsign V. Gourmandized in the Abattoir of Openness VI. Grave Levitation: Being Scholarly VII. Labor, Language, Laughter: Aesop and the Apophatic Human VIII. This is Paradise: The Heresy of the Present IX. Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy X. Amor Fati: A Prosthetic Gloss XI. Following the Sigh
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Sufficient Unto the Day: Sermones Contra Solicitudinem
Which of you by taking thought [μεριμνῶν: lit. being divided, separated into parts, dis-tracted] can add one cubit to his stature? – Matthew 6:27 You can be invincible if you do not enter any contest in which victory is not up to you. – Epictetus
SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY Sermones Contra Solicitudinem Nicola Masciandaro
SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY: SERMONES CONTRA SOLICITUDINEM © Nicola Masciandaro and Schism Press This work is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommerical-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit: http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/3.0. schismmsihcs.wordpress.com NOTE: Portions of this book have been published previously: “The Sweetness (of the Law),” Non Liquet: The Westminster Online Working Papers Series, Law and the Senses Series: The Taste Issue (2013): 40-60; “Getting Anagogic,” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 19 (2010); “Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia," in Dark Chaucer, eds. Joy, Masciandaro, and Seaman (Brooklyn: Punctum, 2012), 69-88; “Gourmandized in the Abattoir of Openness,” in Leper Creativity: Cyclonopedia Symposium, eds. Keller, Masciandaro, and Thacker (Brooklyn: punctum, 2012), 179-189; “Paradise Now: The Heresy of the Present,” Passive Collective 2 (2012); “Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy,” Collapse VI: Geo/Philosophy (2010): 20-56. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author is grateful to Steven Shakespeare, Eugene Thacker, and Gary J. Shipley for their efforts and encouragement in support of publishing this collection. Cover: Stefano Maderno (1575-1636), Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome. Public domain image. ISBN-13: 978-0692222416 ISBN-10: 0692222413
CONTENTS Introduction
1
I. The Sweetness (of the Law)
6
II. Nunc Dimittis: Getting Anagogic
43
III. Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia
53
IV. Wormsign
70
V. Gourmandized in the Abattoir of Openness
85
VI. Grave Levitation: Being Scholarly
94
VII. Labor, Language, Laughter: Aesop and the Apophatic Human
105
VIII. This is Paradise: The Heresy of the Present
145
IX. Becoming Spice: Commentary as Geophilosophy
154
X. Amor Fati: A Prosthetic Gloss
184
XI. Following the Sigh
193
INTRODUCTION And all those who contradict it, I contradict them and care not a jot for them, for what I have said is true, and truth itself declares it. – M. E. Like every heretic, he [Meister Eckhart] sinned on the side of form. – E. M. Cioran1 The writings collected in this volume are bound by a common desire to refuse worry, to reject and throw it away the only way possible, namely, by means that are themselves free from worry. If this is impossible—all the more reason to do so. For such is the inescapable condition of thinking authentically against worry, of intellectually attacking it without fraud or self-dramatization, via a resolution that is not “sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.” The very intimacy of worry and thinking—a fact forgotten in the modern loss of