To Risk, One's Life

To Risk, One's Life Bryan Counter (bio) IN PRAISE OF RISK BY ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE; TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER Fordham University Press, 2019. IN PRAISE OF RISK BY ANNE DUFOURMANTELLE; TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER Fordham University Press, 2019. Composed of short chapters and written in a poetic style, Anne Dufourmantelle's In Praise of Risk (Éloge du risque) makes a number of careful interventions related to the notion of risk, intercut with narratives of her own sessions as an analyst. Because of the inclusion of these narratives, as well as the text's overall intimate tone, one could understand it as a series of letters addressed to risk. Each section is granted a particular thematic heading—"To Risk One's Life," "Desire, Body, Writing," and "Life—Mine, Yours," to name the main sections that I will discuss here—all uniquely related to the problematic of risk and its place in contemporary life. But Dufourmantelle does not simply piece together an oblique thesis from disparate fragments that happen to fall under a general idea. Rather, the very form of the book indicates an ethical position with regard to risk. It is through a close, sustained, and nuanced engagement with risk that Dufourmantelle gives voice to a stance that is unpopular, untimely, and risky in itself—namely, that risk is not only something to take seriously but may also be something to be celebrated. Its unorthodox structure notwithstanding, In Praise of Risk is first and foremost a psychoanalytic text. At its core, it is motivated by an understanding of the logic of the unconscious and its ability to disrupt a more traditional philosophical idea of causality, as seen in the descriptions of various analytical sessions. In particular, Dufourmantelle is concerned with highlighting risk as being already inscribed in [End Page 212] our lives before any idea of fate is mobilized, usually after the fact through our own narration. The inclusion of her analytical accounts is crucial in that they provide concrete examples of her patients' self-narration of their own lives, which in turn serve as the backdrop against which Dufourmantelle's discussion of risk takes place. In Praise of Risk begins with a simple but provocative statement: "Life is a heedless risk taken by us, the living."1 As Dufourmantelle suggests by characterizing it as "heedless," risk is installed before any intervention on the part of those who live (and before any calculation of outcome) before the very question of outcome is raised. From the text's beginning, life is established as a risk, indeed as risk itself, something reckless and resistant to calculation. If the living necessarily take part in the heedless risk of life, then living—life itself—is already permeated by risk. Dufourmantelle touches on this apparent paradox just a few lines down, in a passage that includes an important pair of clarifying questions: "To risk one's life" is among the most beautiful expressions in our language. Does it necessarily mean to confront death—and to survive? Or rather, is there, in life itself, a secret mechanism, a music that is uniquely capable of displacing existence onto the front line we call desire? For risk—its object still indeterminate for now—opens an unknown space. (1) The beauty of the expression in question, and of risking one's life, is presented here as already given. But this is also a rhetorical move that lays the groundwork for a unique understanding of risk: we do not necessarily have a solid understanding of it since risk is always in contact with its counterpart, precaution, which secures risk's status as "an unquestioned value" (1)—that is, unquestioned but also uninterrogated. Clearly, this pertains only to a common understanding of the term. So what exactly is risk? If it is not so straightforward as to entail simply putting everything on the line, confronting one's own demise, what can it be? As Dufourmantelle posits here, risk is something within life that subjects the living to desire. If, like desire, risk has an indeterminate object and unpredictable effects, then it is always at work for the living and in life, taking on a double valence: risk is, at once, an act...