Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Werner Herzog,Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Fitzcarraldo: Au cuisinier de vos chiens! À Verdi! À Rossini! À Caruso!

Don Araujo: À Fitzcarraldo, le conquérant de 50'inutile!

Fitzcarraldo: Aussi vrai que je me tiens devant vous, j'apporterai un jour un grand opéra dans la forêt vierge! Je suis…dans le surnombre! Je suis les milliards! Je suis le spectacle dans la forêt! Je suis le découvreur de caoutchouc! Grâce à moi seul, le caoutchouc est Verbe!

L'homme est une passion inutile.

–Jean-Paul Sartre, L'ê tre et le néant

D'un espace inutile

J'ai plusieurs fois essayé de penser à united nations appartement dans lequel il y aurait une pièce inutile, absolument et délibérément inutile. Ça north'aurait pas été un débarras, ça due north'aurait pas été une chambre supplémentaire, ni united nations couloir, ni un cagibi, ni un recoin. Ç'aurait été un espace sans fonction. Ça n'aurait servi à rien, ça n'aurait renvoyé à rien.

Il thousand'a été incommunicable, en dépit de mes efforts, de suivre cette pensée, cette paradigm, jusqu'au tour. Le langage lui-même, me semble-t-il, s'est avéré inapte à décrire ce rien, ce vide, comme si fifty'on ne pouvait parler que de ce qui est plein, utile et fonctionnel.

United nations espace sans fonction. Non pas « sans fonction précise », mais précisément sans fonction ; non pas pluri-fonctionnel, mais a-fonctionnel. Ça n'aurait évidemment pas été united nations espace uniquement destiné à « libérer » les autres (fourre-tout, placard, penderie, rangement, etc.) mais united nations espace, je le répète, qui n'aurait servi à rien.

–Georges Perec,Espèces d'espaces

Bestiary of Ann Walsh (England, 15th century)

Bestiary of Ann Walsh (England, 15th century)

Some say the give-and-take "Odradek" descends from the Slavic, and they account for the give-and-take's formation on that basis. Others believe it descends from the German and has just been influenced by Slavic. The uncertainty of both interpretations suggests, probably correctly, that neither of them is authentic, specially since one cannot find a meaning of the word in either of them.

Of course no ane would be concerned with such investigations were at that place not an actual entity called Odradek. Information technology looks at kickoff like a flat, star-shaped spool of thread, and indeed it seems to be covered in thread; these threads nevertheless could just be tattered, old pieces of the most disparate kind and color, knotted together but also tangled upwardly in 1 another. Only information technology is non just a spool: from the eye of the star emerges a small diagonal rod, and joined to this rod at a right angle is some other 1. With help from this 2nd rod on one side and ane of the star'south emanations on the other side, the whole thing can stand upright as if on 2 legs.

One might be tempted to believe that this figure once had some purposeful form and is at present simply cleaved. But this does not seem to be the case; or at to the lowest degree at that place is no indication thereof; nowhere tin can edges or breakages be seen that would suggest something of the kind; the whole thing appears rather senseless and yet complete in its own way. At that place is, incidentally, nothing more to say about it, since Odradek is extraordinarily mobile and not to be caught.

He resides alternately in the attic, the stairwell, the passageways, the hall. Sometimes he is out of sight for months, likely having moved into other houses; but to our firm inevitably he returns. Sometimes, upon walking out the door to detect him but so leaning on the banister below, one is inclined to speak to him. Of class one doesn't ask him hard questions but rather handles him – duped by his tininess – like a child. "What's your name?" one asks. "Odradek," he says. "And where practise you live?" "No fixed home," he says and laughs, but it's just the kind of express joy that can exist produced without lungs. It sounds something like the rustling of fallen leaves. And that is ordinarily the end of the conversation. Incidentally, fifty-fifty these answers are not always to be had; oft he is mute for a long time, similar the woods that he appears to exist.

In vain I enquire myself what will become of him. Can he die? Everything that dies in one case had a kind of purpose, a kind of function and that is what has footing it downward; this is not true of Odradek. Will he 1 24-hour interval rumble downward the stairs, a strand of thread dragging behind him, earlier the feet of my children and my children's children? Clearly he is hurting no one; but the notion that he will outlast me is an nigh painful one.

–Franz Kafka, "The Father's Business organization" (Trans. Lisa Marie Anderson)

Gavest Thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich? Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, and forgetteth that the human foot may shell them, or that the wild animate being may interruption them. She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers: her labour is in vain without fear; Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted her understanding. What time she lifteth upward herself on loftier, she scorneth the horse and his rider.

–Task 39:13-18 (KJV)

On sent bien que l'autruche n'avait aucun besoin de la fourchette ou de cet os en forme de V, destiné à prévenir le rapprochement des deux ailes dans les violens mouvemens qu'elles exécutent. Cependant cet bone existe; mais divisé vers le bas il est sans usage : chacune de ses branches se trouve soudée par son extrémité antérieure avec fifty'bone déjà composé de la clavicule et de l'omoplate.

(Quoiqu'inutiles dans cette circonstance, ces rudimens de fourchette n'ont pas été supprimés, parce que la nature ne marche jamais par sauts rapides, et qu'elle laisse toujours des vestiges d'un organe, lors même qu'il est tout-à-fait superflu, si cet organe a joué un rôle of import dans les autres espèces de la même famille...)

–Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, "Observations sur fifty'aile de l'Autruche, par le citoyen Geoffroy" (1798)

Henry Gray, Anatomy of the Human Body, Figure 1073

Henry Grayness, Anatomy of the Man Body, Figure 1073

Les activités humaines sont innombrables et variées.

Certains détournent des avions, d'autres des fonds publiques, ou la conversation.

Je préfère, quant à moi, détourner de leur usage courant les objets usuels. C'est moins dangereux, plus honnête et infiniment plus divertissant!

Mes objets, parfaitement inutilisables, sont le contraire de ces gadgets dont notre société de consommation est si friande.

Si on me le demandait, je les qualifierais de poétiques, hilarants, absurdes, philosophiques, ingénieux, morbides, puérils, profonds, dérisoires...

Le lecteur serait alors prié, selon son humeur, ses goûts et sa culture, de biffer les qualificatifs inutiles.

–Jacques Carelman,Catalogue d'objets introuvables (1969)

Jacques Carelman, "Cafetière pour masochiste"

Jacques Carelman, "Cafetière pour masochiste"

J'avoue que j'écris sans but, sans motif, & souvent sans thou'entendre moi-même. Je défie le plus déterminé partisan des causes finales d'en trouver une à mon ouvrage inutile. Je suis le torrent qui g'entraîne.

–Jean-Pierre Gallais, Extrait d'un dictionnaire inutile, Composé par une Société en commandite, & rédigé par un homme seul (1790)

The cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart; whatsoever exists, having somehow come up into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed, and redirected by some power superior to it; all events in the organic earth are a subduing, a becoming master, and all subduing and becoming master involves a fresh interpretation, an adaptation through which whatsoever "meaning" and "purpose" are necessarily obscured or even obliterated. Still well ane has understood the utility of any physiological organ (or of a legal institution, a social custom, a political usage, a form in art or in a religious cult), this means zilch regarding its origin: however uncomfortable and disagreeable this may audio to older ears–for one had always believed that to sympathize the demonstrable purpose, the utility of a thing, a form, or an establishment, was also to understand the reason why information technology originated–the centre beingness fabricated for seeing, the hand existence made for grasping. [...] Merely purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become chief of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a office; and the unabridged history of a "thing," an organ, a custom can in this way exist a continuous sign-chain of always new interpretations and adaptations whose causes do non fifty-fifty have to exist related to one another simply, on the opposite, on some cases succeed and alternate with 1 another in a purely chance fashion.

–Friedrich Nietzsche,On the Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Section 12 (Trans. Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale)

50'homme est un effet du surplus d'énergie : principalement 50'extrême richesse de ses activités élevées doit être définie comme la libération éclatante d'un excès. 50'énergie libre en lui fleurit et fait montre sans fin de splendeur inutile.

–Georges Bataille, "L'économie à la mesure de l'univers"

But though we might perchance accept all our sensations without them, still perhaps it may be idea easier to conceive and explain the manner of their production, by supposing external bodies in their likeness rather than otherwise; and then it might exist at to the lowest degree probable there are such things as bodies that excite their ideas in our minds. But neither tin this be said; for though nosotros give the materialists their external bodies, they by their own confession are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced: since they own themselves unable to cover in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint any ideas in the mind. Hence it is evident the production of ideas or sensations in our minds, can be no reason why we should suppose thing or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain equally inexplicable with, or without this supposition. If therefore it were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, still to hold they exercise so, must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that are entirely useless, and serve to no fashion of purpose.

                     –George Berkeley,Principles of Man Noesis