Scarcely on the Way: The Starkness of Things in Sacral Space

Abstract

If “some form of exile … is intrinsic to dwelling,” the exposure to strangeness and absence might open to another modulation: humans find themselves at home scarcely, though sufficiently to deflect any counter-privilege of exile in favor of the nonplenitude of what is simply given.¹ If givens are scarce but not systematically lacking, they can also open to an overdetermination by which they relate to the sacral idea of gift, and so exceed the purely frugal.² It is not that things in the world are minimized, but that their generosity is fragile and scarce of access: they are both defeasible and “reserved.”³ This essay explores both the complexity and leanness of inhabiting an abundant world at a time when common associations have become weaker and the gauntness of unmediated objective existence starker. What we understand as “natural” is on the way toward exceeding any functional economy but also touches on a condition of plenitude obstructed, a wound potentially creative but simultaneously muffled in self-diminishing damage. Scarcity at the heart of excess insists on both positive and negative relationality, rather than sheer surplus. It is this that plays a part in the problematics of the sacral, both upholding and challenging the “thereness” of things.