Self-Portrait of a Conservative

ONE IMAGINES NEW THINGS in order to have them in one's mind, before one's inner eye, without having them in reality, in one's spacewithout having to confront them. This is a form of exorcism or prophylaxis-the use of intelligence, imagination, speech to avoid the real threat, the threat of real things. Those who act in this manner are acutely aware of the presence of novation around them; new things, undefined, flutter about. By giving those objects a shape and a name, and by limiting them to the realm of imagination and speech, they protect themselves. But is there another way

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