The Ground of Art and the Limits of Color
A TRIBUTE TO REV. DR. PATRICK NEGRI, S.S.S. (1935-2016)
by Randall Lindstrom
Randall Lindstrom, Ph.D., is an adjunct researcher at the University of Tasmania, School of Architecture and Design, where he also engages in sessional teaching of theory, history, and design. It was in his capacity as an architect and liturgical designer that he came to know Pat Negri and, for nearly twenty years, to enjoy a highly productive professional relationship, as well as a deep, personal friendship with him.
by Randall Lindstrom
Randall Lindstrom, Ph.D., is an adjunct researcher at the University of Tasmania, School of Architecture and Design, where he also engages in sessional teaching of theory, history, and design. It was in his capacity as an architect and liturgical designer that he came to know Pat Negri and, for nearly twenty years, to enjoy a highly productive professional relationship, as well as a deep, personal friendship with him.
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The colors of my life are bountiful and bold
The purple glow of indigo, the gleam of green and gold The splendor of a sunrise, the dazzle of a flame The glory of a rainbow, I put ‘em all to shame. No quiet browns or grays, I’ll take my days instead And fill them ‘til they overflow, with rose and cherry red And should this sunlit world grow dark one day The colors of my life will leave a shining light to show the way.1 |
Patrick Negri
detail, Breakout
1991, Oil on canvas
Artist’s Collection
Sentimentality is perhaps forgivable if, as in this epigraph, it foremost offers a faithful analogy or useful metaphor. The world of Patrick Negri was, indeed, a sunlit one; no more so than for anyone else in a literal sense, but extraordinarily brightened by the radiant, bold, and bedazzling colors through which he viewed the world, and with which he painted his world views. Although momentarily dimmed—when, in February 2016, cancer’s nine-year assault finally prevailed—the colors of his life are enduringly recorded in his works of art, where they remain ever vivid, luminous, and illuminating; a legacy that is its own tribute.
Concerning a priest who paints, the proposition that faith shaped his art is to be expected, and undoubtedly holds truth. Pat was, after all, raised as a Roman Catholic and made an early, profound, and unwavering commitment to a life of faith by entering the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament at the age of sixteen. But his artistic propensities, including an acute awareness of color, seem to have been inborn, kindled without provocation or indoctrination, and never requiring conscious commitment. He writes, “I cannot remember a time when I was not compelled to paint. As a child, I painted gum trees backed by the deep blue of the Grampians.”2 His development as an artist was never to stop, eventually continuing alongside his religious studies. Upon entering the seminary, he acquired a set of oil paints, and the consequent possibilities for experimentation—to one who had known only watercolors—presented an almost religious experience: “a revelation.”3
detail, Breakout
1991, Oil on canvas
Artist’s Collection
Sentimentality is perhaps forgivable if, as in this epigraph, it foremost offers a faithful analogy or useful metaphor. The world of Patrick Negri was, indeed, a sunlit one; no more so than for anyone else in a literal sense, but extraordinarily brightened by the radiant, bold, and bedazzling colors through which he viewed the world, and with which he painted his world views. Although momentarily dimmed—when, in February 2016, cancer’s nine-year assault finally prevailed—the colors of his life are enduringly recorded in his works of art, where they remain ever vivid, luminous, and illuminating; a legacy that is its own tribute.
Concerning a priest who paints, the proposition that faith shaped his art is to be expected, and undoubtedly holds truth. Pat was, after all, raised as a Roman Catholic and made an early, profound, and unwavering commitment to a life of faith by entering the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament at the age of sixteen. But his artistic propensities, including an acute awareness of color, seem to have been inborn, kindled without provocation or indoctrination, and never requiring conscious commitment. He writes, “I cannot remember a time when I was not compelled to paint. As a child, I painted gum trees backed by the deep blue of the Grampians.”2 His development as an artist was never to stop, eventually continuing alongside his religious studies. Upon entering the seminary, he acquired a set of oil paints, and the consequent possibilities for experimentation—to one who had known only watercolors—presented an almost religious experience: “a revelation.”3
Patrick Negri
Our Lady of the Eucharist
1965, Oil on canvas
S.S.S. (Australian Collection)
But it was only after his ordination that he undertook formal instruction in tonal painting, resulting in “more sophisticated” and “more confident” work, as well as an accelerated opening-up to art’s manifold expressions.4 Early works were always competent but largely representational, often pious, and, in terms of color, generally conservative. Clearly evident in his sketchbooks, however, was a more than passing interest in art of the “modern” genre. And, when he later pursued a doctoral degree in the United States, an emerging attraction to abstract art was creatively conjoined with his faith to produce a research topic: the spiritual significance of the art of the Abstract Expressionists.5 The abstract movement, and his research into it, dramatically influenced Pat’s worldview and, beginning in 1991, spawned what he called his “Free Period.” In that period, which would last a quarter-century and never be followed by any other, his art broke free of representational expression and his color palette found exuberance; his work shed its inhibitions and became almost exclusively abstract, yet evermore seasoned; and all of that, I would suggest, saw his faith similarly affected. It may, then, be insightful to consider briefly the notion that Pat’s art shaped his faith; that it perhaps even enabled and sustained the very commitment he made to his faith, with art and faith each bettered as a consequence.
Such a notion arises not out of any need to find a priority among art and faith—their mutual enrichment has been well-argued by many, including Pat—but, rather, out of a view that art was Pat’s grounding and that he was never more grounded than during the period he labels “free.”6 St. Thomas Aquinas, in his “Fourth Way,” sees grounding as that which first causes “being, goodness, and every other perfection.”7 Thomas, of course, is attempting to prove that God—or what “everyone understands to be God”—is the first cause, but, whether or not he succeeds, his case ultimately posits ground as that in which something’s or someone’s potential rests. Pat’s recollection of self-awareness, emerging from a call to draw and paint, confirms the potential that rested in the ground of art; ground that, according to philosopher Martin Heidegger, is the origin of both the artist and the work of art.8
The idea of being grounded—anchored, rooted, placed—can seem somehow at odds with that of being free. Groundedness not only suggests limits; it insists on their existence, and that can appear limiting, at least until limits are seen—in the manner of Heidegger, and the Greeks before him—not as restrictions but as thresholds from which things begin.9 It is at such limits that potentiality ceases to rest and begins moving toward actuality. For Pat, color—certainly the color of paints but, more significantly, the concepts of color, including light, shade, texture, and movement—offered exceptionally productive limits. Color offered the thresholds from which his artistry and art could begin and, ultimately, the limits that enabled progressively greater “freedom.” Color, though initially restrained and “quiet,” animated Pat’s childhood instincts toward art, and later—with the discovery of still more limits, more color—made abstraction possible. Freed from presenting “reality,” Pat used increasingly bold color to suggest ideas that were no less real and, arguably, worthier of contemplative thought. When his art is allowed to tell the story, it becomes clear that the more limits Pat discovered, the freer he became.
Ironically, freedom came to Pat from a kind of faithfulness, but not only that expected of a priest. It came from what Albert Camus calls a “fidelity to his limits,” a “lucid love of his condition” (whatever that might entail at a given time); or, paradoxically, from “man’s pride.”10 Pride, in the sense of arrogance or hubris, is not, of course, a highly regarded trait in religious teaching—though many religious institutions ably and amply demonstrate its presence—and Pat’s artistry has, more than once, attracted accusations of pride or its makings; first, at the outset of his religious pursuits.
In the basement of the Seminary of Christ the King, during my free time, I experimented. Upstairs, during my study hours, I devoured every book on modern art I could find. I produced works that satisfied me, as products of a unique imagination, so much so that I put some of them on my bedroom walls, painting the window frames as well to accommodate them. Discovered by the Director of Scholastics, I was rebuked for my inordinate pride. The paintings had to come down, and the window frames restored to their original color.11
Insofar as “pride” can be seen in this event, it is neither arrogance nor hubris but that emanating from a fidelity to limits—Pat’s ongoing discovery and honoring of limits—and his delight, his enthusiasm, his exuberance, his willing acceptance and love for the “condition” in which he found himself (or, rather, through which he was always finding himself). More constructively, this early and unofficial “exhibition” might have been seen as a display of Pat’s capacity for faithfulness (and faith) and art’s enabling influence in that. Revealing of such influence is his reflection on the seminary incident’s aftermath: “I did what I was told, but I continued to paint.” Despite its limits—or, more precisely, because of them and Pat’s fidelity to them—art never asked that Pat deny or resist freedom. Instead, throughout his ministry, art freed him to do what needed to be done in and for the church, and to do that faithfully (and full of faith). Still, suspicions about “artistic freedom” lingered in some quarters, and, many years later, upon his election as Provincial, Pat perused his (confidential) personnel file only to find a previous provincial’s notation and, therein, an echo of the seminary incident: “Patrick is an artist; he needs to be watched.”12
Pat would always laugh about those incidents, and loved to tell of them. He seemed “proud” of them, probably because they confirmed the love he had for his “condition,” both sunlit and shadowed. Indeed, Pat laughed about many things, with contagious effect. He laughed, not least, when he painted and when he talked of his painting and paintings, and he encouraged the viewers of his work to laugh, as well: “Enjoy the lines, the shapes, the colors. Float around in them. Grow angry, sing with joy, remember lost loves, bask in the warmth of the new and, above all, laugh. For the world is a sorry place without a chuckle.”13
It might be said that laughter was, for Pat, an essential means of maintaining his fidelity to limits and, therefore, that his art emerged from a “practice of laughter.”14 Yet his paintings never joked, nor were they jokes. Laughter in Pat’s practice did not simply (or simplistically) reveal a sense of humor. Instead, it marked a kind of abandon and self-imposed vulnerability; a willingness to open up, foolishly, to the condition at hand (of which he was always and already a part) and, in that opening, to attentively gather in the condition’s limits, or color—plural, complex, illogical, absurd—and then to pour out that color lavishly in a work that concretized the condition even while necessarily maintaining its unfinished-ness, its undecidable-ness, its abstract-ness. It is not difficult to see Pat’s practice of laughter as a form of kenosis, a risky and disruptive emptying of power and a simultaneous filling with strength—clearly foolish in its promotion of powerlessness and clearly irrational in its proposal that powerlessness empowers. Kenosis is foolish and irrational; seriously so. But it cannot be taken with the seriousness that renders it a strategic pretense, because “when foolishness becomes serious, [it is] no longer truly foolish.”15 Pat never set out to make his works of art either rational or irrational, only open and faithful to his limits, and it is precisely that which allows them to sit comfortably amid the tense and contradictory structure of laughter. Perhaps abstraction demands such a structure, affording the capacity to find and attend to the absurd that lurks in so much of the “real” world. And perhaps it was the structure and practice of laughter that allowed Pat to keep due measure of the world for which he would care.
Although an academic, with decidedly intellectual tastes, Pat measured the world not merely with knowledge but, equally or more so, with emotion and instinct, and with wisdom. His art can be seen to prioritize ontology over epistemology, concerning itself less with knowing what to do, and more with exploring what it is to be. In so doing, his explorations hold open the very questions they pursue (both sacred and secular). Fidelity to limits does not include their mastery or domination. Limits, as thresholds, establish the domain in which things freely begin and unfold, the domain in which questions emerge. Thus, limits resist the peremptory closure brought about by absolute answers—those which might restrict the ongoing unfolding and opening up that they enable, or what Pat saw as “a path toward the Absolute.”16 Color—which, I have argued, held Pat’s artistic limits—opened up a lifetime of questions: questions of human being and the significance of religious experience in such being.
Ever faithful to limits, Pat’s art never sought conclusive answers. Each painting poses real questions and always stops short of resolution. His paintings are never entirely finished, and their questions are never entirely decidable; remaining always open to further interpretation. In that sense, Pat’s art can also be seen to honor the longstanding Christian tradition of hermeneutics (itself ironically open to interpretation among various Christian traditions). Hermeneutics holds open the question and the conversation thereby initiated. It honors “the other” by opening up to the other and recognizing the legitimacy of the other’s view—especially when, as Emmanuel Levinas suggests, the other is thought to be “not worthy of desire”—and it requires reciprocation, the mutuality of kenosis.17
Our Lady of the Eucharist
1965, Oil on canvas
S.S.S. (Australian Collection)
But it was only after his ordination that he undertook formal instruction in tonal painting, resulting in “more sophisticated” and “more confident” work, as well as an accelerated opening-up to art’s manifold expressions.4 Early works were always competent but largely representational, often pious, and, in terms of color, generally conservative. Clearly evident in his sketchbooks, however, was a more than passing interest in art of the “modern” genre. And, when he later pursued a doctoral degree in the United States, an emerging attraction to abstract art was creatively conjoined with his faith to produce a research topic: the spiritual significance of the art of the Abstract Expressionists.5 The abstract movement, and his research into it, dramatically influenced Pat’s worldview and, beginning in 1991, spawned what he called his “Free Period.” In that period, which would last a quarter-century and never be followed by any other, his art broke free of representational expression and his color palette found exuberance; his work shed its inhibitions and became almost exclusively abstract, yet evermore seasoned; and all of that, I would suggest, saw his faith similarly affected. It may, then, be insightful to consider briefly the notion that Pat’s art shaped his faith; that it perhaps even enabled and sustained the very commitment he made to his faith, with art and faith each bettered as a consequence.
Such a notion arises not out of any need to find a priority among art and faith—their mutual enrichment has been well-argued by many, including Pat—but, rather, out of a view that art was Pat’s grounding and that he was never more grounded than during the period he labels “free.”6 St. Thomas Aquinas, in his “Fourth Way,” sees grounding as that which first causes “being, goodness, and every other perfection.”7 Thomas, of course, is attempting to prove that God—or what “everyone understands to be God”—is the first cause, but, whether or not he succeeds, his case ultimately posits ground as that in which something’s or someone’s potential rests. Pat’s recollection of self-awareness, emerging from a call to draw and paint, confirms the potential that rested in the ground of art; ground that, according to philosopher Martin Heidegger, is the origin of both the artist and the work of art.8
The idea of being grounded—anchored, rooted, placed—can seem somehow at odds with that of being free. Groundedness not only suggests limits; it insists on their existence, and that can appear limiting, at least until limits are seen—in the manner of Heidegger, and the Greeks before him—not as restrictions but as thresholds from which things begin.9 It is at such limits that potentiality ceases to rest and begins moving toward actuality. For Pat, color—certainly the color of paints but, more significantly, the concepts of color, including light, shade, texture, and movement—offered exceptionally productive limits. Color offered the thresholds from which his artistry and art could begin and, ultimately, the limits that enabled progressively greater “freedom.” Color, though initially restrained and “quiet,” animated Pat’s childhood instincts toward art, and later—with the discovery of still more limits, more color—made abstraction possible. Freed from presenting “reality,” Pat used increasingly bold color to suggest ideas that were no less real and, arguably, worthier of contemplative thought. When his art is allowed to tell the story, it becomes clear that the more limits Pat discovered, the freer he became.
Ironically, freedom came to Pat from a kind of faithfulness, but not only that expected of a priest. It came from what Albert Camus calls a “fidelity to his limits,” a “lucid love of his condition” (whatever that might entail at a given time); or, paradoxically, from “man’s pride.”10 Pride, in the sense of arrogance or hubris, is not, of course, a highly regarded trait in religious teaching—though many religious institutions ably and amply demonstrate its presence—and Pat’s artistry has, more than once, attracted accusations of pride or its makings; first, at the outset of his religious pursuits.
In the basement of the Seminary of Christ the King, during my free time, I experimented. Upstairs, during my study hours, I devoured every book on modern art I could find. I produced works that satisfied me, as products of a unique imagination, so much so that I put some of them on my bedroom walls, painting the window frames as well to accommodate them. Discovered by the Director of Scholastics, I was rebuked for my inordinate pride. The paintings had to come down, and the window frames restored to their original color.11
Insofar as “pride” can be seen in this event, it is neither arrogance nor hubris but that emanating from a fidelity to limits—Pat’s ongoing discovery and honoring of limits—and his delight, his enthusiasm, his exuberance, his willing acceptance and love for the “condition” in which he found himself (or, rather, through which he was always finding himself). More constructively, this early and unofficial “exhibition” might have been seen as a display of Pat’s capacity for faithfulness (and faith) and art’s enabling influence in that. Revealing of such influence is his reflection on the seminary incident’s aftermath: “I did what I was told, but I continued to paint.” Despite its limits—or, more precisely, because of them and Pat’s fidelity to them—art never asked that Pat deny or resist freedom. Instead, throughout his ministry, art freed him to do what needed to be done in and for the church, and to do that faithfully (and full of faith). Still, suspicions about “artistic freedom” lingered in some quarters, and, many years later, upon his election as Provincial, Pat perused his (confidential) personnel file only to find a previous provincial’s notation and, therein, an echo of the seminary incident: “Patrick is an artist; he needs to be watched.”12
Pat would always laugh about those incidents, and loved to tell of them. He seemed “proud” of them, probably because they confirmed the love he had for his “condition,” both sunlit and shadowed. Indeed, Pat laughed about many things, with contagious effect. He laughed, not least, when he painted and when he talked of his painting and paintings, and he encouraged the viewers of his work to laugh, as well: “Enjoy the lines, the shapes, the colors. Float around in them. Grow angry, sing with joy, remember lost loves, bask in the warmth of the new and, above all, laugh. For the world is a sorry place without a chuckle.”13
It might be said that laughter was, for Pat, an essential means of maintaining his fidelity to limits and, therefore, that his art emerged from a “practice of laughter.”14 Yet his paintings never joked, nor were they jokes. Laughter in Pat’s practice did not simply (or simplistically) reveal a sense of humor. Instead, it marked a kind of abandon and self-imposed vulnerability; a willingness to open up, foolishly, to the condition at hand (of which he was always and already a part) and, in that opening, to attentively gather in the condition’s limits, or color—plural, complex, illogical, absurd—and then to pour out that color lavishly in a work that concretized the condition even while necessarily maintaining its unfinished-ness, its undecidable-ness, its abstract-ness. It is not difficult to see Pat’s practice of laughter as a form of kenosis, a risky and disruptive emptying of power and a simultaneous filling with strength—clearly foolish in its promotion of powerlessness and clearly irrational in its proposal that powerlessness empowers. Kenosis is foolish and irrational; seriously so. But it cannot be taken with the seriousness that renders it a strategic pretense, because “when foolishness becomes serious, [it is] no longer truly foolish.”15 Pat never set out to make his works of art either rational or irrational, only open and faithful to his limits, and it is precisely that which allows them to sit comfortably amid the tense and contradictory structure of laughter. Perhaps abstraction demands such a structure, affording the capacity to find and attend to the absurd that lurks in so much of the “real” world. And perhaps it was the structure and practice of laughter that allowed Pat to keep due measure of the world for which he would care.
Although an academic, with decidedly intellectual tastes, Pat measured the world not merely with knowledge but, equally or more so, with emotion and instinct, and with wisdom. His art can be seen to prioritize ontology over epistemology, concerning itself less with knowing what to do, and more with exploring what it is to be. In so doing, his explorations hold open the very questions they pursue (both sacred and secular). Fidelity to limits does not include their mastery or domination. Limits, as thresholds, establish the domain in which things freely begin and unfold, the domain in which questions emerge. Thus, limits resist the peremptory closure brought about by absolute answers—those which might restrict the ongoing unfolding and opening up that they enable, or what Pat saw as “a path toward the Absolute.”16 Color—which, I have argued, held Pat’s artistic limits—opened up a lifetime of questions: questions of human being and the significance of religious experience in such being.
Ever faithful to limits, Pat’s art never sought conclusive answers. Each painting poses real questions and always stops short of resolution. His paintings are never entirely finished, and their questions are never entirely decidable; remaining always open to further interpretation. In that sense, Pat’s art can also be seen to honor the longstanding Christian tradition of hermeneutics (itself ironically open to interpretation among various Christian traditions). Hermeneutics holds open the question and the conversation thereby initiated. It honors “the other” by opening up to the other and recognizing the legitimacy of the other’s view—especially when, as Emmanuel Levinas suggests, the other is thought to be “not worthy of desire”—and it requires reciprocation, the mutuality of kenosis.17
Patrick Negri
detail, Remembering Andrew
1991, Oil on canvas
R. Lindstrom and J. Emery Collection
Pat’s animated and colorful works for one of Australia’s first interfaith sacred spaces, at a public hospital in Dandenong (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) exemplify his fidelity to limits and his interpretive sensibilities.
detail, Remembering Andrew
1991, Oil on canvas
R. Lindstrom and J. Emery Collection
Pat’s animated and colorful works for one of Australia’s first interfaith sacred spaces, at a public hospital in Dandenong (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) exemplify his fidelity to limits and his interpretive sensibilities.
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At the unveiling of the paintings, a Buddhist monk, dressed in his saffron robes, approached me to thank me. So did the leader of the Muslim community. There was obviously nothing here that could cause offense. It must be said that this was one reason for abstraction. The planners of the Sacred Space wanted nothing that would disturb the religious sensitivities of those who would use the space. For me, however, abstraction is the way in which I tap into those challenging pockets of the human psyche that I dare to call religious, or, as the planners of this project put it, that ‘brush with the primal mysteries of life.’18
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The four paintings, entitled Absence, Emptiness, Presence, and Fullness, comfort and challenge those who use the hospital, yet make no attempt to tell anyone what to think or do about any of their topics. They merely invite viewers, of all faiths and no faith at all, to be open to the array of questions (and perhaps a few interim answers) that each viewing may present, and that ongoing thought may extend. In an environment of necessarily calculative thinking—where the technological often trumps the human—they awaken thinking of the contemplative and inherently critical sort, the sort that is (thus far) exclusively human. The works are the product of wisdom and foster the same.
Patrick Negri
Absence
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Absence
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Patrick Negri
Emptiness
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Emptiness
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Patrick Negri
Presence
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Presence
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Patrick Negri
Fullness
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Fullness
2000, Acrylic on canvas
Fidelity to limits requires and cultivates wisdom—the heightened sense of awareness, both attentiveness and caring, that transcends knowledge. The freedom afforded by Pat’s grounding in art and the laughter of his practice yielded exactly such wisdom, and that is reflected in his works. His attunement to limits proved wise and opened up the artist and his art, not so much for art’s sake—since art ultimately remained primarily an avocation—but for the sake of his ministry (which nonetheless included his art), the vocation wherein Pat was comfortable with the questions, happy to ponder mystery over dogma and doctrine. Such ponderings, encouraged and enabled by his art, shaped his world views and then—turning back to the source of the questions—shaped his art. Pat’s art manifests his contemplative thinking. And although the artist is gone, his art continues to invite those who view it into the same sort of thinking about what is worthy of thought.19 Even more than an invitation, the art he leaves behind goes on showing, in the words of the epigraph, a “way” by which to engage in such thinking. Indeed, it is a way that pays tribute to Pat’s pride and fidelity to limits, the attentiveness to color by which he responded—more than intellectually, sometimes laughably, and always profoundly—to the conditions he saw, shared, and loved.
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It requires courage to make a mark on a bare canvas. It is your mark and no one else’s. It expresses emotion and is the beginning of the struggle with form and content. The mark changes with time. It takes into account the ‘joys and sorrows of life’; it deals with anger and frustration; it is firm sometimes and tenuous the next; it speaks of love.20
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NOTES
- C. Coleman and M. Stewart, “The Colors of My Life,” in Barnum: The New Musical, Pinne Collection of Songs and Music (New York: Notable Music Co., Inc., 1980).
- J. Emery and R.S. Lindstrom, P. Negri: A Retrospective (Melbourne: The Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament in Australia, 2008), 1. The Grampians are the mountains that provided the backdrop to Pat’s childhood environment in rural Victoria.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 11. These are the observations of Pat’s identical twin brother, Michael Negri.
- From 1984-1990, Pat studied in the United States, at Berkeley. There, he received a Master of Theology degree, from the Jesuit Theological College, and a Doctor of Theology degree from the Graduate Theological Union. Among his mentors and supervisors were Jane and John Dillenberger.
- P. Negri, “Barnett Newman: Touching the Metaphysical Pattern of Life,” in Beyond Belief: Modern Art and the Religious Imagination, ed. R. Crumlin (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 1998), 106-107; and “Mark Rothko: The Still, Ethereal World of Contemplation,” in ibid., 108-109.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I.2.3.
- M. Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 17.
- “Building Dwelling Thinking,” in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 152.
- A. Camus, “Helen’s Exile,” in The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage International, 1942; 1991), 191.
- Emery and Lindstrom, P. Negri: A Retrospective, 1.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 27.
- This notion is derived from J. Kristeva, “Maldoror and Poems: Laughter as Practice,” in Revolution in Poetic Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 217-25.
- B. E. Benson, “The ‘Thinking-after’ of Metanoia,” Philosophy and Theology 16, no. 2 (2004): 225.
- Emery and Lindstrom, P. Negri: A Retrospective, 56 (emphasis added).
- E. Levinas, as quoted in R. van Riessen, “Hermeneutics of Kenosis: The Road of Dispossession,” in Man as a Place of God: Levinas’ Hermeneutics of Kenosis (Dordrecht: Springer Verlag, 2007), 193-94.
- Emery and Lindstrom, P. Negri: A Retrospective, 56.
- Here, I have in mind a question from M. Heidegger, The Principle of Reason, ed. J. Sallis, trans. R. Lilly, Paperback ed., Studies in Continental Thought (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1996), 129. Heidegger asks, “Or, are we obliged to find paths upon which thinking is capable of responding to what is worthy of thought instead of, enchanted by calculative thinking, mindlessly passing over what is worthy of thought?”
- Emery and Lindstrom, P. Negri: A Retrospective, 1.
