On Time, Being, and Hunger: Challenging the Traditional Way of Thinking Life

Acknowledgements

xi a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s Scholars around the world today are aware that the frequently denounced and deplored linguistic “imperialism” exerted by English speakers in our globalized and capitalized life constitutes an occasion for experiencing the most authentic hospitality. Languages belong to no one, which is why they can belong to anyone. The English language, like any other language, is utterly indifferent to nationalities and to any form of identity, whether cultural , historical, symbolic, racial, or social. My first acknowledgment is to my readers: I will certainly abuse your hospitality. My English is so poor that in all likelihood I am not even aware of when and where those abuses take place. I want to thank my friend David Johnson—not by chance the most hospitable friend that anyone may have—because he helped me immensely to lessen those abuses. I also thank Roberto Torretti for the many idiomatic remarks and all the advice he gave me, as well as the expert editorial work of Gregory McNamee. Any clever and witty formulation that my text may contain is probably theirs. I want to thank those people who have heard me read and explain these pages. I gave them partly as a three-day seminar in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo in the spring of 2010. Earlier versions of different parts of the book were communicated in two seminars in the University of Chile’s Doctoral Program in Aesthetics and Theory of Art, the first one on “Hunger” (March–July 2008) and the second one on “Art and Nature” (August–December 2008). I thank Aïcha Messina, who codirected the former seminar, and Eduardo Molina, who codirected the latter one, for what I learned in discussion with them. David Johnson and Roberto Torretti must be thanked once again, because during the revision of the manuscript they made mindful comments and raised important objec- xii Acknowledgments tions against my arguments. Other demanding readers I would like to thank are Andrés Claro, Carla Cordua, Alexander García Düttmann, Rodolphe Gasché, Fernando Pérez, and Roberto Rubio. (The reader should not think that the text I am delivering now to publication answers all the objections I have received!) Marcelo Boeri led a seminar of translation and discussion of Aristotle’s On the Soul at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Santiago) during 2010 and 2011; this offered me a unique occasion to revise and to improve my interpretation of Aristotle’s treatise. Andrés Aranda and Francisca Martínez—and Roberto Torretti, again—helped me with the study of scientific material. I thank Peggy Kamuf for authorizing me to review Derrida’s 1975 unpublished seminar La vie la mort, and I thank Marguerite Derrida for giving me permission to quote it in this book. Without the kind help of Andrew Jones, Special Collections Coordinator at UC Irvine, I would not have overcome the six thousand miles that separated me from Derrida’s archive. An earlier version of chapters 1–3, 11, and 12 was published in CR: The New Centennial Review 10, no. 3 (2011). I thank Michigan State University Press for granting me permission to use that material in this book. This book is part of the Fondecyt project Nº 1100024 (Government of Chile). On Time, Being, and Hunger ...