General theory of failure and fragility

The Academy’s dictionary defines disability as an incapacity , an invalidity . It is, therefore, a term that assumes the existence of a standard , a norm – concepts that, let us never forget, are nothing more than mere statistics. We all realise that a blind person, unable to guide his steps using a sense as essential as sight, is at a disadvantage compared to all those who can see, but does this mean that he is less valuable (which is precisely what “ invalid ” means – deprived of part of his value)? More importantly, what does it mean to be normal , a normal person? When you look at it all, at the end of the day, what is normal is not knowing who we are, it is discovering that we are always under construction. What defines us as human beings, ultimately, is not so much what we are, but the process by which we can transform ourselves into something else.

This is why, in children's stories, physical limitations do not always mean something negative. In Andersen's The Little Mermaid , for example, the protagonist's loss of voice or difficulty in moving does not seem to us to be a defect at all, but a sign of the excellence of that creature who, abandoning her kingdom at the bottom of the sea and driven by the power of love, wants to become a girl – someone who has to give up her song in order to be able to speak, as if words had to emerge precisely from this renunciation of the intoxication of song. It is this permanent construction of ourselves, characteristic of the human condition, that all stories speak of, whose mission would not be so much to tell a single truth, but rather to make it possible for each person to tell their truth to others.

Today we live under the rule of self-satisfaction: economic and technological development has made Western man look at humanity from other eras and cultures with a smile of compassion and superiority. But are we better than them? We enjoy an incomparably greater well-being than our parents and grandparents, but are we wiser for that?

The Bushmen, living in a world of atrocious scarcity, created some of the most beautiful stories ever told. A people who, from our point of view as developed men, lived in the most painful conditions, were nevertheless able not only to express the most moving things in their stories, but to show the mysteries and anxieties of human existence with enviable precision and poetic power. We have progressed technologically and formulated theories that illuminate the physical world, but I fear that we have made little progress in understanding that elusive thing which the ancients called the soul .

This is why literature is important. What stories seek is a non-rational knowledge, which has to do with wisdom: a knowledge capable of illuminating the world. The characters in stories move us and force us to pay attention to each of their words and actions, because it is as if they carry a small lamp in their hands. Their light is delicate and intimate, the opposite of the blinding and dull brightness of so many supposed truths. It is not a light that emanates from power, but from weakness. Perhaps this is why stories are full of characters that today we would call disabled or invalid : the little mermaid has to lose her voice and learn to walk in order to achieve what she wants; Sleeping Beauty lives in an eternal sleep from which no one seems able to wake her; In The Wild Swans , one of the princes will be forced to live with a swan's wing instead of one of his arms, and children's stories are full of boys and girls who have lost their arms or hands, and who cannot speak or see. They are not complete, but they are alive. Who knows if the true message of the stories is not precisely that to be alive is to be incomplete.

These characters are not very different from us, because we all search for something we do not have. That is why we speak, so that we can complete ourselves. What is love, for example, if not the search for what we lack? Ancient cultures believed that deformed beings were endowed with extraordinary powers. Mutilation, abnormality, and tragic destiny, as Juan Eduardo Cirlot wrote, were the price and sign of excellence of certain gifts – for example, the poetic faculty: Homer, the greatest of poets, was blind.

Unlike the world of psychology, where certain qualities are nothing more than the compensation or sublimation of an original deficiency, in the world of stories, failure designates the place of openness to the other. In The Wild Swans , the presence of the swan's wing implies a deformity, but it also constitutes a sign of exceptionality, of a connection with the wider world of nature, where the prince is the master of faculties unknown to others. Adorno said that the real question, the one that founds philosophy, is not the question of what we have, but of what we lack. And our world lacks many things. There is no problem in acknowledging this, because the place of lack is where the question arises of whether we could be otherwise. From this point of view, we are all invalids , because to live – at least humanly – is to feel the tragic weight of all our innumerable deficiencies.

There are many reasons to be proud of our world, but no fewer reasons to criticize it. Will our healthy and well-fed children one day have memories, for example? Children in the past knew what a spring and a nest were, they knew animals and watched the changing seasons with wonder in their eyes. Technology has made our lives extraordinarily easier, allowing us to achieve a level of well-being that was absolutely unthinkable just a few years ago. Children in our developed countries have a comfortable home, go to school and have at their disposal a multitude of entertainment that makes their lives more pleasant and easier. But neither Artificial Intelligence nor cartoons can replace the trembling of a cat curled up on our lap. And, as the delicate Marlen Haushofer saw, their world could become much poorer than that of children who, even living in underdeveloped countries, are able to experience this trembling. In this sense, all newborns are like small invalid children, because they are born incomplete, and to see how true this is, one only has to compare them with other creatures in the animal kingdom. Furthermore, their beauty derives precisely from the immaturity with which they come into the world. A child who cannot walk, or a blind or deaf child, suffers from a clear deficit in relation to the faculties of other children, but is not essentially different from them. They all want to live, they all feel dissatisfied and incomplete, they all tremble without knowing why, because perhaps this is what life is: trembling in the face of the unknown.