Syncope

[Dave Monroe]

Clément, Catherine.  Syncope: The Philosophy of
Rapture.
   Trans. Sally O'Driscoll and Deirdre M. Mahoney.
   Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994.

Syncope: a fainting, a musical disruption, an elision.
The Marquise of O's baby, conceived in a swoon, is
born of such a lapse. The tango, with a dip, suspends
a woman in time. Poetry skips a beat and compresses
the world.

Blending the lyricism of écriture feminine, the rigor
of philosophical discourse, and the clarity of
journalism, this book takes us whirling through the
timelessness of syncope, the stop-time of music,
literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy.

By disclosing moments of "syncopation" in the
discourses of Plato, Descartes, Pascal, Hegel, and
Kierkegaard, Catherine Clément critiques a certain
operation of classical Western logocentric philosophy
that always tries to master any fissure of
uncertainty. She plays with the paradigm of syncope as
it appears in medicine, grammar, music, and poetry. As
she uncovers syncopation in Indian philosophies,
Clément develops an anthropological account of
ravishment in India and at the same time tackles
global problems of power through various concepts of
the subject. A study of absence among those who
traffic in time, her book offers a thrilling look into
the lapses where rapture awaits us.

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/C/clement_syncope.html

--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> On 07/01/2006:
> 
> > vw #2: syncope - shortening a word by dropping a
> letter or syllable
> >
> > "...spending an intermission among the eventless
> corridors of Syncope..."
> 
> Probably not the grammatical or musical denotation
> in the context:
> 
> syncope n. (Med.) temporary loss of consciousness
> from fall of blood pressure
> 
>
http://www.tchain.com/otoneurology/disorders/medical/syncope.htm
> 
> i.e. "had I been then taken for dead, whilst in
> fact" having just fainted due to "the final Bowl 
> of Ale [...]"
> 
> Wicks is being a wiseguy but Pynchon is doing a bit
> of a riff on the Resurrection of Christ.


		
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