Radicality Quotes

“Is there something inherently queer about pregnancy itself, insofar as it profoundly alters one’s “normal” state, and occasions a radical intimacy with—and radical alienation from—one’s body? How can an experience so profoundly strange and wild and transformative also symbolize or enact the ultimate conformity? Or is this just another disqualification of anything tied too closely to the female animal from the privileged term (in this case, nonconformity, or radicality)?”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“It is not a question of conferring some kind of positivity on thought, since its operation is precisely to detract from the truth and the legitimacy of existence. And radicality doubtless has no other function than to provide an added bonus of pleasure.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Fragments

“He suddenly felt a pain that was as violent as if it were real.

Existence, similar to the stucco angel whose extremities meet in a curved mirror, comes back, almost by necessity, to a state of radicality and silence. The ideal existence is the one that lasts long enough to come back to this point of origin.
Those who forge straight ahead will never know where they have come from.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004