Don Robotham, a former teacher of my mine, has done me a great honour by reading my book Omens of Adversity: Tragedy, Time, Memory, Justice in the deft and allusive and succinct way he has done. He reads me thoughtfully, indeed knowingly, for what is in the center of the page as much as for what is off in the margin, for the manifest as much as for the latent text (to borrow a psychoanalytic metaphor). And even where I believe in the end Robotham gets me wrong ("late Hegel," "Dostoyevskian Weber," and so on), he illuminates something of the arena of my preoccupations in a way that is informative, and provocative, and that at least invites considered response. I am grateful therefore to have been afforded this opportunity to reflect on the project of my book in the context of his remarks. I will be brief.
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