I RECENTLY HAPPENED TO COME ACROSS a text of mine, which had been published in the Neue Rundschau in 1996, and I was struck by the similarities between then and now. Here is the first full paragraph of my article, taking stock of the year 1995:

Is it a society in transition or merely “ein babylonisches Narrenhaus” (a Babylonian madhouse), as Robert Musil wrote in his 1922 essay “Das hilflose Europa” (Helpless Europe) with a view to Europe, where “tausend verschiedene Stimmen, Gedanken, Musiken gleichzeitig auf den Wanderer ein[schreien], und es ist klar, daß das Individuum dabei der Tummelplatz anarachischer Motive wird, und die Moral mit dem Geist sich zersetzt.”

Let me pause here for a moment and, with Michel Foucault, reflect on the difficulties of beginning if one is oneself the author of the discourse (see Foucault, “The Order of Discourse”). It is not an easy but instead a rather bewildering undertaking to take a look back at one's own past, at the beginnings and the by-no-means predestined or logical continuations of my so-called life's path. It is a path which has meandered and looped back on itself—and which still continues to evolve in a series of ongoing changes and metamorphoses that I may not be able to control. Surprisingly, however, the various stages, which could be characterized as permanent transgressions and border crossings, are connected to and with each other—sometimes in subtle, sometimes in very obvious ways.