Mari Ruti > Quotes

“Older people are wise not only because they have lived longer. They're wise because they have lost more.”
― Mari Ruti, The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can't Master the Madness of Love And Why That's the Best Part

“Life has a way of turning things around. Those who mourn well know this. As a result, they also live well--with courage and curiosity.”
― Mari Ruti, The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can't Master the Madness of Love And Why That's the Best Part

“We are taught to believe that having deep passions is foolish at best and dangerous at worst. We live in a cultural moment that is suspicious of ardent desires and strong commitments, propagating the idea that few things in life matter, that we have outlived ideals and ethical principles, and that comprehensive cultural change is impossible. Many of us have adopted the view that because we cannot remedy the enormous inequalities of the social world, we should not even bother to try. We have resigned ourselves to the idea that in the long haul nothing we do has any real impact and that caring too much is consequently a waste of our energies. By the same token, our (postmodern and sophisticated) recognition that meaning is inherently relative at times causes us to stop looking for meaning altogether. Though we are surrounded by a multitude of objects, artifacts, cultural icons, and shimmering images, few of these items manage to affect us on a deep level. In some ways, we are increasingly reconciled to the idea that the best we can do is to avoid the more crushing disillusionments of life–that the less we invest ourselves, the more inoculated we are against the misfortunes of the world.”
― Mari Ruti

“Yet if we are to take the Lacanian account of singularity seriously, we must admit that what really counts in life is not our ability to evade chaos, but rather our capacity to meet it in such a manner as to not be irrevocably broken or demolished.”
― Mari Ruti, The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within

“We routinely replace damanged parts of ourselves with new ones that are, arguably, more resilient, more able to handle challenges. As long as we avoid the trap of growing our skin so thick that nothing gets through, getting bruised can only boost our ability to cope with whatever life throws at us.”
― Mari Ruti, The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can't Master the Madness of Love And Why That's the Best Part

“What makes this inner void so difficult to deal with is that it's amorphous. We can't fix it because we can't pinpoint its precise cause. And even if we could, we wouldn't be able to banish it. It's the price we pay for being human.”
― Mari Ruti, The Case for Falling in Love: Why We Can't Master the Madness of Love And Why That's the Best Part

“When our stoicism interferes with our humanity, we risk developing a wooden emotional life and an equally wooden personality. In contrast, the realization that our ability to work through pain makes us stronger than all of our efforts to exorcise it may in the long run alleviate its burden. It may enable us to take up our destiny as creatures whose very vulnerability renders us capable of inspired and truly awe-inspiring love.”
― Mari Ruti, The Summons of Love

“we are tempted to erase the unsettling elements of the other's alterity-the ways in which the other does not coincide with our fantasies-because we imagine that, by so doing, we manage to stabilize our lives. Rather than allowing ourselves to be surprised by the other, rather than allowing the other to touch us in unforeseen and potentially enlivening ways, we resort to idealizations that seem to guarantee the reliability of our life-worlds. In this manner, we deprive ourselves of the kinds of transformations that can only ensue from a courageous encounter with the other's irreducible alterity.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“Schopenhauer once put it, we insist on living our lives "with great interest and much solicitude as long as possible, just as we blow out a soap-bubble as long and as large as possible, although with the perfect certainty that it will burst.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“That is, it is my encounter with the other’s inimitable uniqueness that allows me to emerge—to come to my own—as a similarly unique entity: I define my singularity in part in relation to what I am not. This implies that the more I perceive and respect the other’s difference from me, the more I will be able to activate my own distinctiveness. The fact that the other remains a robust subject in its own right (rather than a hollow reflection of my ideals) enhances the existential viability of both of us.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“Love is a slippery, unruly thing, and trying to control it robs us of its delicious unpredictability.”
― Mari Ruti

“Creativity facilitates the work of mourning.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“Along similar lines, Stephen Mitchell points out that we need to pay close attention to what we mean when we assert that we “know” another person. There are obviously many different ways of knowing
someone, some utilitarian, others desire-driven, some superficial, others intensely intuitive, and there is little reason to assume that any one version of our image of the other—what we believe we know about the other—is the accurate one. In effect, the fact that the other can be viewed from various perspectives at once forces us to regard the other as a multifaceted and ever-shifting entity who is no less complicated,
no less dependent on context and setting, than we are ourselves. Most important, it asks us to recognize that the other does not possess transparent knowledge of itself either—that what we deem uncanny or
unknowable about the other is often experienced as such by the other as well. From this viewpoint, the idea that we could ever know the other in any certain fashion is a curiously arrogant assumption. And it
is also peculiar in the sense that it is often precisely the other’s mysterious opacity that elicits our desire—that makes the other of interest to us—in the first place. Why, then, are we so devoted to solving the other’s secret?”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“We discovered that existential authenticity has traditionally often been conceived as a matter of resisting collective complacency and of assuming responsibility for one’s beliefs, passions, and unique perspective. I would propose that the line of reasoning that Lacan advances regarding unconscious desire represents a specifically psychoanalytic answer to the question of authenticity. In other words, I would like to highlight the similarity between the philosophical conception of authenticity and the Lacanian conviction that actively listening to, and taking responsibility for, the “truth” of one’s desire—even (or particularly) when this “truth” seems alien or uncomfortable—allows one to distance oneself from the dominant dictates of the symbolic Other. Lacan in fact implies that only the subject who has been able to liberate itself from the Other’s desire retains the capacity for satisfaction. The flipside of this “unfettered” subject position is that the subject is less likely to expect the Other to compensate for the catastrophes of its desire. If the subject under the sway of fantasies tends to repeatedly re-create the same relationship—of being punished, suffocated, persecuted, loved, or admired, for instance—to the collective world of the Other, the shattering of fantasies allows it to gain a measure of self-sufficiency in relation to the Other. It grows to be less afraid of the world’s judgments, which suggests that it becomes increasingly capable of
independent deliberation and action. As Bruce Fink underscores, one of the aspirations of Lacanian analysis is to facilitate the subject’s departure from ideals and configurations of thought that have been inculcated within its psyche by the various authority figures that surround it from birth; the goal of Lacanian analysis is to allow the subject to think and act without being overly dependent on the views and opinions of others.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“Perhaps even more fundamentally, it is possible to argue that there is no “reality” that is not always already a form of fantasy: that fantasy is all we have got. In other words, the very distinction between “reality” and “fantasy” is in many ways an artificial one, reminiscent of an Enlightenment worldview—one that believed in the power of the rational mind to tell fact from fiction—that has been seriously undermined in recent decades of postmodern theorizing. That is, the belief that we could ever relate to the world objectively, as it “really is,” has itself been discredited as a fantasy that occludes the recognition that the ways we perceive and interpret the world always necessarily reflect the value systems within which we operate. In effect, while the Enlightenment worldview distinguishes between “reality” and our more or less successful efforts to represent it, contemporary theorists recognize—as Nietzsche already did—that our very attempts to represent reality invariably shape the form of this reality. By this I do not mean to say that there exists no reality independently of human representations, but merely that we do not possess any immediate or unmediated access to that reality; since we only understand the world around us through the conceptual frameworks, labels, and systems of thought that we impose on this world, there is no way to know what this world might be like outside of our endeavors to comprehend it.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“What we most care about in the world—and particularly what we cannot help caring about on the unconscious level—influences our fate by shaping us into the sorts of persons we are.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“It is therefore only insofar as the subject is asked over and again to reincarnate the lost Thing that it attains creative agency and that it can hope to engage in the continuous process of becoming a person. However, it is very difficult for the subject to conceive of its predicament in these terms. The realization that the self is not synonymous with the world, but rather a frail and faltering creature that needs to continuously negotiate its position in the world, introduces an apprehensive state of want and restlessness. Lacan explains that because lack is devastating to admit to—because the subject tends to experience it as an aching wound rather than as a humanizing principle that gives it access to creativity—it is predisposed to seek solace in fantasy formations that allow it to mask and ignore the reality of this lack. Such fantasies alleviate anxiety and fend off the threat of fragmentation because they enable the subject to consider itself as more unified and complete than it actually is; by concealing the traumatic split or tear within the subject’s being, such fantasies lend (an always illusory form of ) consistency and meaning to its existence.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“It is as if our psychic lives were the sum total of our bad habits in the sense that what we unconsciously assume to be the limits of our lives ends up curtailing the range of our existential scenarios for the simple reason that it consistently directs us to certain situations, behaviors, and interpersonal relations while steering us away from others. Or, to express the matter slightly differently, it dictates how we seek and obtain pleasure in the world, thereby determining the very shape of our enjoyment. This is a perfect manifestation of what Roberto Harari, following Jacques Lacan, calls “a destiny compulsion.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“This is one reason that improving our external circumstances may not always be enough to alleviate our longstanding anxieties or to make us feel more empowered; to the extent that the unconscious is committed to preserving the past—even when this past is not what we would have chosen—in an unchanging form, it can prevent our inner lives from catching up with modifications of our external conditions.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“It is less important—and ultimately perhaps rather futile—to reach ethical or intellectual conclusions about the unconscious than it is to create a space of inquiry where we diligently attend to how it continues to reincarnate the past in the present.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“It may of course seem counterintuitive to posit language (however poetic) as a mode of attaining singularity given that, as we have learned, it is precisely language that causes the kind of foundational lack that deprives us of psychic cohesion (and thus of uncontested personal integrity) in the first place. But I believe that it is useful to recognize the distinction between the formative experience of being subjected to a preexisting order of meanings on the one hand, and our subsequent capacity to participate in the shaping of that order on the other. The fact that we begin our lives in a position of helplessness with regard to the symbolic Other should not be taken to mean that we will never be able to gain agency in relation to it. This is why I have sought to demonstrate that even if our initial encounter with the signifier is devastating in that it causes lack and alienation, the signifier at the same time grants us access to structures of meaning-production that we can subsequently use to cope with this alienation. And I have tried to show that the fact that we cannot fill our inner void once and for all—that we cannot undo alienation—is precisely what sustains us as creatures of psychic potentiality.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“Lacan implies that learning to live without the kinds of fantasies that protect us from our lack entails an epistemological leap to a vastly different existential attitude. In particular, Lacan invites us to acknowledge that regardless of all the busy and clamorous activity that we habitually undertake in order to suppress or ignore our lack, deep down we know that there will always be moments when it breaks out into the open with the piercing clarity and sadness of a foghorn. No matter how many layers of fantasy we wrap around this hollow in our hearts, it reverberates through us like a muted but persistent echo that carries the uncanny messages of what most terrifies us about ourselves. From a Lacanian viewpoint, our existential assignment is to heed that echo, to withstand moments when nothing fills the void, and to work through the realization that neither we nor the world —nor any of the objects of this world— can ever live up to the perfection of our fantasies. Our task, in other words, is to learn to endure the sharp points of existence without being irrevocably devastated.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“In this manner, language becomes a medium that allows the conscious and unconscious realms to come together in a fluid manner. From this viewpoint, self-stories are effective not so much because they help us make sense of our lives, but because they give us access to the spirited liveliness of language. Indeed, to the extent that our identities are tied to discursive structures, it could be argued that the mobility of language is directly linked to the flexibility of being.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“In this context, it is worth evoking Nietzsche’s distinction between self-negating (ponderous) and cheerful (affirmative) forms of asceticism. If self-negating asceticism characterizes the mortified existence of the individual who is ruled by defensive and self-defeating ressentiment, cheerful asceticism—the kind of self-limitation that enhances the individual’s sense of power—is a precondition of innovation. In both instances, the subject’s “will to power”—the elemental energy that drives its actions in the world—is being tamed and restrained, but while self-negating asceticism wears down the spirit, cheerful asceticism distills and strengthens it. Self-negating asceticism, then, is a pathological formation that depletes the subject’s energy, whereas cheerful asceticism channels it into vigorously life-enriching avenues. Likewise, in more Freudian vocabulary, the symptom arrests the subject’s desire, whereas sublimation displaces it indefinitely, enhancing the subject’s appetite for uncharted (and therefore potentially vitalizing) forms of life. If the symptom ensues from, and lends expression to, a blockage of unconscious energies, sublimation ensures that these energies flow in an unencumbered manner. This is why Freud asks us to work our way from symptoms to creative expression; creativity, for him, is a means of fluently releasing energies that would otherwise be sacrificed to painful symptoms.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“I merely wish to raise the possibility that the manner in which we unconsciously relate to the world—both as a structure of meaning-production and as a complex interpersonal space—might be an important feature in determining how the world responds to us, what we find challenging, where and how we are rewarded, and who (and in what way) gives or withholds what we need, want, or desire. That is, I wish to highlight the fact that the unconscious organizes the opportunities and obstacles that govern our existence, and particularly the fact that it can propel us to seek satisfaction in ways that are from the outset doomed to disappoint us.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“The fact that our understanding of the world—not to mention our sense of ourselves—can be posited to be a fantasmatic construct does not mean that we do not experience it as real; the recognition of the constructed nature of something should not be confused with the idea that it possesses no power over us or that it somehow lacks psychic resonance, for to the degree that fantasmatic constructs over time come to take on the force of reality for us, they function as a means of world-constitution that “actualize” the world for us. Talking about the molding of subjectivity in particular, Anne Anlin Cheng observes that fantasy is not an activity undertaken by an already fully formed subject, but rather (in part at least) what allows the subject to engage in the process of fashioning its identity in the first place; fantasy can be an essential vehicle for the crafting of the kind of identity that feels viable and worthwhile. In Cheng’s words, fantasy is a medium of self-narrativization that “constitutes the subject’s sense of integrity and hence his/her potential for agency.” Fantasy, in this sense, is not the opposite of reality, but rather what brings reality into being; it is “what authenticates realness, what makes reality real.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“If we are lucky, we gradually gain an appreciation for how destruction can give rise to unprecedented forms of vitality, how our capacity to survive distress leaves behind a smoldering residue that we can draw on to constitute empowering life narratives. Although the process of living is perhaps inherently damaging, we can learn to make use of this damage—the same way that we can learn to make use of accidents—to generate more vigorous forms of life.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“Many of us want one of the other events: we want to be part of a political revolution, a scientific discovery, an artistic innovation, and - because our society tells us that this is the event that in the end makes up for all our misery - we want to fall deeply in love and stay so.
Suffering, in turn, is not an event that any of us want. Unfortunately, it is probably the one that many of us are more likely to experience than any of the others. As tempting as it is to try to offer a more sanguine conclusion to the distilliation of ideas that this book has attempted to accomplish, I cannot end on a polite lie.
I know that if falling in love is an event, losing that love is no less so.”
― Mari Ruti, Distillations: Theory, Ethics, Affect

“Individuals in this predicament may find it next to impossible to relax their wakeful hypervigilance in relation to their surroundings even when no longer confronted by any immediate challenge or danger; a prolonged or repeated exposure to trauma can put individuals on the defensive for the simple reason that it causes them to anticipate, and brace themselves against, more trauma.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living

“On this view, it is not only how we die—or face the prospect of our mortality, as phenomenologists like to say—but also how we inhabit language that singularizes us, that gives our identities a distinctive resonance.”
― Mari Ruti, A World of Fragile Things: Psychoanalysis and the Art of Living