Output details

'Yes... but when?' - an open letter

Research content/process:

The output was invited for submission to a special issue of Parallax journal to ‘reflect the different ways in which affirmation can itself be affirmed’ (Gary Peters, issue editor). The output experiments with different writing and layout conventions, testing the relationship between these and notions of truth and certainty. At the heart of output is a reading of a scene from Cixous’ Love Itself (2008), which brings a site of affirmation (between lovers) up against discourse of critical philosophy (frequently framed in terms of negation). The output explores the possibility that to say ‘yes’ is never just yours to say alone. Whereas ‘no’ can be all your own. A ‘yes’ is never just a ‘yes’, but a when, where, how, with/for whom. ‘Yes, I do/will…’ extends out to another. In the interstice there is always a matter of ‘vertical time’, when (one hopes) it is tested and affirmed. In order to examine the plurality of affirmation, the paper draws influence from Cixous’ methods of writing, in this case to construct a dialogue form, and includes ‘novelistic’ fragments with critical sources, which bring into view the precariousness of saying ‘yes’, but which also questions the relationship between (the time of) writing and living. ‘Yes’ potentially reveals a wholly other form of philosophy, arguably a form of writing – the ‘most beautiful of all failures’ (Cixous) – that cannot be finally asserted, at least not by one alone.