Death is the ultimate event that is seen coming without ever being seen

Evidence

What is being said here of reading, and of the possibility of reading the living being per se, should we not also say it of death? If we were to ask how to name or categorize the event which a living being always ‘sees coming’ (letting it come to it as that which in any way will be an absolute surprise and thus be entirely unsubjective), sees coming without ever seeing it come, that is to say, without ever being able to see or foresee it, and hence without ever knowing and without ever having any power over it, an event which remains for it the place marked by an absence of all power and as itself impossible, how can we not name that death … The plasticity of death at the heart of the ‘to see (what is) coming’, is that not also (as the root of habit) a kind of mourning? Or mourning itself? — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 91

What is being said here of reading, and of the possibility of reading the living being per se, should we not also say it of death? If we were to ask how to name or categorize the event which a living being always ‘sees coming’ (letting it come to it as that which in any way will be an absolute surprise and thus be entirely unsubjective), sees coming without ever seeing it come, that is to say, without ever being able to see or foresee it, and hence without ever knowing and without ever having any power over it, an event which remains for it the place marked by an absence of all power and as itself impossible, how can we not name that death, as obscure as this event remains or the thing designated as such? The ultimate unity of ‘to see (what is) coming’ and ‘not to see (what is) coming’, of the ‘to see coming without ever seeing what comes in the act of seeing what comes’, the ‘seeing without ever seeing’, and thus of the without everywhere and anywhere this word articulates something, whatever it is, to itself, is that not what we ought or should call or name death? The plasticity of death at the heart of the ‘to see (what is) coming’, is that not also (as the root of habit) a kind of mourning? Or mourning itself? What we understand or determine as the work of mourning? — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 91

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Derrida’s move — reading plasticity into death itself, making death the paradigm case of the ‘in-between’ future — is dense enough to sit with for days.
• XREF: The ‘work of mourning’ here connects to Malabou’s broader project of Hegelian negativity and to her later work on ‘the work of mourning’ — and resonates with White Noise’s death-anxiety themes. — connects to: Waiting for an event requires determinate causal processes, which death lacks.; Death cannot be waited for because its causal conditions are indefinite and uncountable.; Only death is an image of undistorted, not-hypostasized life — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 88 (+4 more)
• BMF: The idea of the living being ‘seeing death coming without ever seeing’ evokes 2001’s Star Child — the entity poised in the between of evolution, seeing the future arrive across the monolith’s threshold — a genuine cross-domain leap rather than thematic overlap.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 91

Broader Connections

• Death converts the for-itself into an in-itself that only others can interpret #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1259
• At death a life becomes an in-itself whose meaning only others sustain. #expands (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 63
• Only the Other’s being, not the for-itself, contains death #expands (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1272
• People are generally oblivious to death yet it shapes their experience #complicates (0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 613