A Fragment on Cnutism with Brief Divagations on the Philosophy of the Near Miss
| Published date | 01 March 2004 |
| Author | Peter Goodrich |
| Date | 01 March 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2004.00282.x |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 31, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2004
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 131±41
A Fragment on Cnutism with Brief Divagations on the
Philosophy of the Near Miss
Peter Goodrich*
This fragment is taken, mid-sentence as it were, from a longer discourse. It
is plucked in process from a discussion of friendship for ideas. It is part of
a longer journey through the annals of amity. The fragment also examines
a fragment, a gloss on a text, a marginal comment, a handwritten note,
which is taken to constitute the modern origin of Cnutism.
All of which makes me inordinately fond of the most nodal of spaces, that of
the near miss. It is the zone of failures that come close to success, of
successes that mingle, as they always must, with their own demise. It is the
domain of the brief flaring or momentary venture in which we glimpse, but
no more than glimpse, the recognizable presence of a friend. You know the
sort of thing. The flush of fellow feeling, the sense of common critical
apprehension, of shared insight, or elective affinity, and then it suddenly gets
pulled up short. The friend votes with the opposition, or gets distracted and
marries, or expresses affection for someone else, moves on, fails to write, or
lets you down by posting someone else's letters rather than writing you their
own. So let's think about these momentary relational modes, these fleeting
flashes of amicable connection, these near misses.
The near miss implies both nearness and missing. Take your pick, but
amity involves both. There is closeness and there is the lateral and often less
visible sense of missing, of being to the side of where you wish to be.
Friendship has always had a marginal site. In the French tradition, it has
tended to be located in spaces that exist in between other things: the alcove,
the ruelle or bedside, the dressing chamber, as well as the salon or chambre
bleu, the blue room. We find it also in spaces of solitary connection. In the
study, or the library or the laboratory, on a map, or inside an envelope, on a
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* Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, Brookdale Center, 55 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10003, United States of America
Many thanks to Lauren Berlant, Richard Collier, Drucilla Cornell, Marinos Diamantides,
Peter Rush, and Pierre Schlag for offering comments and suggestions. An especial thanks
to Ed Mussawir, for providing the Cnutist fragment. Thanks to Adam Gearey for
suggesting publication. Especial thanks to Linda Mills for seeing it through.
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