I think this is another approach to the question we once formulated like this: how can we discover the obscure without exposing it to view? What would this experience of the obscure, in which the obscure offered itself in its obscurity, be?Yes, we were seeking then to circumscribe the affirmation of impossibility, this non-power that would not be a simple negation of power. And in asking ourselves what thought it might be that could not be thought in the mode of power and of appropriating comprehension, we came to say that ‘impossibility is the passion of the Outside itself,’ and also that ‘impossibility is the experience of non- mediate presence.’ A response (if to give affirmative force to a question is to respond) that philosophy has the right to despair of. — The Infinite Conversation by Maurice Blanchot