by James Corby and Ivan Callus
‘The whatever singularity is a singularity without quality, but it is a singularity with inclinations, a singularity that tends or aspires to the world. The singularity in its whateverness is a potentiality, but a possibility that wants. And what it wants is basically not a given attribute, but the world as a whole, embraced so that all that is possible is primordially welcomed.’
We at CounterText are deeply saddened at the passing of Thierry Tremblay, a valued contributor to the journal and a dear colleague at the University of Malta, where he served as an Associate Professor in the Department of French.
Thierry’s two CounterText essays, ‘Whatever Singularity, Negative Community, and Literature (Perhaps)’ and ‘Planning the Plan: Around Works by Édouard Levé’, explore the idea of ‘a potentiality in act’ – an actual potentiality – opened by negation. Both pieces attest to his deep and open optimism, rooted in the potential of the negative.
These important and characteristic essays are being made freely available in honour of his memory.
‘We are not separated by what unites us: language; one is united by what separates, in the coming common continent.Sooner or later, the word will appear, as its meaning is now unfolding.’
Ivan Callus
James Corby