El mapa de las Tinieblas

Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in allthe glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces onthe earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map(but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the Equator, and in every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres. I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that. But there was one yet--the biggest, the most blank, so to speak--that I had a hankering after.True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank space of delightful mystery--a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness.

Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Escolio sobre los Infames

Como el pasaje de Foucault nos revela, los hombres infames son los elementos de toda colección válida. Una Ciencia no puede apuntar en la colección de sus ejemplos a la excelencia de los mismos, pues tal excelencia, si se plantea como pretérita a la mirada misma, y a la labor que el pensamiento ejerce sobre esa mirada, anula la promesa de su plenitud porque toda promesa se cumple en el futuro. Se ha de preferir en la mirada la contingencia del mundo. El homo sacer, que es el hombre que ha devenido invisible excepto para los ojos de un dios y para la mirada de la muerte, antecede al Infame, que es una moneda cuya cifra ha sido borrada, ha quedado fuera de toda economía, y ha devenido ilegible excepto bajo la mirada del Coleccionista. Queremos hacer una Ciencia a la imagen de ese hombre. Queremos una Literatura que sea una Heráldica, queremos una Historia que sea una Cartografía, una Filosofía que sea una Numismática y nada más.

Los hombres infames