“There is nothing simpler and more human than to desire. Why, then, are our desires unavowable for us? Why is it so difficult for us to put them into words? It is so difficult, in fact, that we end up hiding them, constructing a crypt for them somewhere within ourselves, where they remain embalmed, suspended and waiting.
We are unable to put our desires into language because we have imagined them. In reality, the crypt contains only images, like a picture book for children who do not yet know how to read, like the lmagerie d'Epinal of an illiterate people. The body of desires is an image. And what is unavowable in desire is the image we have made of it for ourselves.
To communicate one's desires to someone without images is brutal. To communicate one's images without one's desires is tedious (like recounting one's dreams or one's travels). But both of these are easy to do. To communicate the imagined desires and the desired images, on the other hand, is a more difficult task. And that is why we put it off until later. Until the moment when we begin to understand that desire will remain forever unfulfilled - and that this unavowed desire is ourselves, forever prisoners in the crypt.”
- Giorgio Agamben, Profanations. Translated by Jeff Fort. New York: Zone Books, 2007. pp. 53-54
