Sublime

The meaning of “collectivity” tends to shift from one text to the next, as does the word itself; at times, Weil applies the label of “blind social mechanism.” But the fundamental conception remains constant, pointing to the convergence of the political, social, cultural, and economic forces that dictate our lives.

Their own experience of their own nature might have contributed something to this idea of a self within but somehow independent of the body.

Feral women of all ages, and especially the young, have a tremendous drive to compensate for long famines and exiles. They are endangered by excessive and mindless striving toward people and goals that are not nurturant, substantive, or enduring. No matter where they live or in what time, there are cages waiting always; too-small lives into which

Does she ‘go crazy’? No, not at all: after a few moments of bewildered fugue, Heather Lelache accepts the ‘new’ world as the ‘true’ world, editing out the point of suture. This strategy – of accepting the incommensurable and the senseless without question – has always been the exemplary technique of sanity as such, but it has a special role to play

a key aspect of what is entailed by being different from the majority: you become accountable, you have to explain yourself.

by ‘following their bliss,’8 they embodied ‘a flowering of existence in a very creative and new way.’9

Within the obvious limitations of her situation, the diarist discovered creative options