An invitation to write an essay is often a moment of crisis. One suddenly discovers how dated and old fashioned one is. When I was asked to write about relationships, I felt outdated. Even the radicalism of my time felt a bit stodgy before the language of my students who wanted to know whether I knew what ghosting was. Rather than being irritated, I suddenly felt what one needed was an archaeology of the word, a chance to outline the layers of meaning the word and its worlds evoked.
In my time, the word relationship evoked the miracle of the face-to-face encounter. Philosophers like Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas have been poetic about differentiating between the miracle, the sense of sacred that an I-thou relationship creates, with the banality of an I-it relationship. One captured the full authenticity of the human, the other, its distortion into objectivity and impersonality.
Her Hand In The State’s Grip 
Marriage Is A Box Of Chocolates 
