The other side of my work is political disappointment - the realization that we are living in an unjust world. "Blood is being spilled in the merriest way, as if it was champagne," Dostoevsky says. That raises the problem of justice, what it might mean in an unjust world and whether there can be an ethics and a political practice that would be able to face and face down the injustice of the present. How might we begin to think about that?
Simon CritchleyI guess what happens to a lot of people as they get older is that they get more conservative, but with me, the opposite is the case.
Simon CritchleyIt's complicated. On the one hand we're killer apes, and on the other hand we have this metaphysical longing.
Simon CritchleyWe might even define the human as a dynamic process produced by a series of identifications and misidentifications with animality.
Simon CritchleyWhen the animal becomes human, the effect is pleasingly benign and we laugh outloud, "Okay come clean now. This isn't really about hunting, is it?" But when the human becomes animal, the effect is disgusting, and if we laugh at all, then it is what Beckett calls the "mirthless laugh", which laughs at that which is unhappy.
Simon Critchley