Vesper No. 9 | The Adversary | Fall-Winter 2023
Sara Marini
The Adversary
Keywords
Adversary, conflict, time, enemy, threat
To oppose is to turn against someone or something (in a fight, in a game, in a
discussion, in a trial…), but it is also to distance oneself from a
position, from a theory as well as from a practice. The etymology of the
adversary therefore implies a logic of confrontation: being turned against,
however, paradoxically discloses the constitutive bond of the interaction
between antagonists. This crossing of gazes makes conflictual
interaction a privileged place for the production of masking, camouflage, but
also parades, ostentation, threats, intimidation. The adversary takes shape
both by relentlessly pursuing Eden projects, and by allowing immense miseries
and shortcomings to thrive, shelving them in an elsewhere, which then returns.
It is the (adversative) measure of the difficult search for a balance. The term
recurs in countless biographies in the history of architecture, of the arts, of
thought, of science, of politics, even though sometimes we see inversions: some
well-known opponents then became followers and vice versa.
contacts
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