Thus, behind the history of the positivities, there appears another, more radical, history, that of man himself- a history that now concerns man’s very being, since he now realizes that he not only ‘has history’ all around him, but is himself, in his own historicity, that by means of which a history of human life, a history of economics, and a history of languages are given their form. In which case, at a very deep level, there exists a historicity of man which is itself its own history but also the radical dispersion that provides a foundation for all other histories.

I remember lonely and
what it tasted like before
your name took root in my throat,
before everything reminded me of your mouth.
I don’t know how I lived that way…

People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

We can destroy only as creators. -But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new ‘things’.

The individual is interpellated as a (free) subject in order that he shall submit freely to the commandments of the Subject, i.e. in order that he shall (freely) accept his subjection, i.e. in order that he shall make the gestures and actions of his subjection ‘all by himself’. There are no subjects except by and for their subjection. That is why they ‘work all by themselves’.

First, imagine a person in a dreamy state. Let us suppose he is thinking of nothing but a red colour. Not thinking about it, either, that is, not asking nor answering any questions about it, not even saying to himself that it pleases him, but just contemplating it, as his fancy brings it up. Perhaps, when he gets tired of the red, he will change it to some other colour, – say a turquoise blue, – or a rose-colour; – but if he does so, it will be in the play of fancy without any reason and without any compulsion. This is about as near as may be to a state of mind in which something is present, without compulsion and without reason; it is called Feeling.

Let us proceed in a summary fashion: we will consider a field of experience taken as a real world no longer in relation to a self but to a simple ‘there is.’ There is, at some moment, a calm and restful world. Suddenly a frightened face looms up that looks at something out of the field. The other person appears here as neither subject nor object but as something that is very different: a possible world, the possibility of a frightening world. This possible world is not real, or not yet, but it exists nonetheless: it is an expressed that exists only in its expression—the face, or an equivalent of the face.