Acknowledgments

Thinking of and Thanking Stanley Cavell

Abstract

Thanking well is difficult work. And only someone who has attempted to convey thanks will know of the adversity one finds in trying to find (one’s own?) words of thanks. In an academic or we might say more broadly, bibliophilic context, the name we give to that moment of expressed and explicit (which is to say sanctioned) thanks is (the) Acknowledgments. The Cavellian resonances and overlaps of significance for this capitalized, capstone forum will stand out in high relief, even at first glance. But it is to the deep relationships between what an understanding of the Cavellian concept (or conception or even better, re-conception) of acknowledgment might (or must) betoken about the genre we call Acknowledgments that I turn to in what follows.