from "The Cure by Love" by Kaja Silverman

Appearance is a complex event, and one that exceeds our usual explanatory categories. It is neither strictly subjective, nor strictly objective; rather, it occurs only where there is a "meeting" of look and world.

This is because although we alone can look in the way that releases the world into its Being, we do not ever ourselves initiate this action. On the contrary, when we light up the world in this way we are always responding to its own appeal to be so illuminated. Creatures and things might be said to intend toward appearance: to solicit the performance of the action in which we engage when we speak our language of desire. The Being that we confer upon creatures and things is thus paradoxically their essence; we do not so much "create" it as "disclose" it.

It is not only that we cannot by ourselves release other beings into their Being. We are also powerless by ourselves actually to see. Looking can take place only where there are perceptual forms. This is because it is only within the infinitely variegated bodies of other worldly beings that our desire can take shape. Without those bodies we would literally see nothing, no matter how strong the force of our desire. Appearance is therefore not just a disclosure; it is a co-disclosure-an event requiring two participants.

...


Although Freud himself tells us that we must love or fall ill, we are not accustomed to conceptualizing love as a cure. We are generally less aware of its medicinal properties than of its powers of intoxication. This is because we are accustomed to thinking in narcissistic ways about love. Hiroshima, mon amour encourages us to approach this topic from the other direction: from the direction of what is loved. It asks us to conceptualize love not in the form either of the aggrandizement or rapture of the one who loves, but rather in the form of care for the world. It suggests that creatures and things are in need of this care because without it they cannot help but suffer from the most serious of all maladies: invisibility.