Finding a Fitting Companion

Reading 'Genesis' After Cavell

Abstract

Given Cavell’s extensive engagement with themes of marriage and the role of desire in perfectionist transformation, it is striking that he never offered a sustained reading of Genesis 2-3—one of our culture’s foundational tales of marriage and the consequences of desire.

In this essay I begin developing a reading of these chapters that supports their inclusion in the conversation among perfectionist texts that Cavell encourages us to recognize. The overarching idea informing my reading is that these chapters do not depict a fall from original human perfection but, instead, represent a birth narrative; they trace the actions and events through which novice or proto-humans begin to achieve their humanity and so culminate in expulsion from the womb of Eden into the wider world of human life and labor. Given constraints of space, I focus on the first beginnings of the perfectionist journey in Genesis 2.

In this chapter the first human discovers that he requires, and comes to desire, a companion with whom he can develop into humanity. These initial steps are momentous but stumbling. The human’s speech of ecstatic delight in beholding the companion God creates renders her temporarily speechless and so unable to contribute to the work that compelled her creation and drives her to seek conversation with a welcoming serpent. My detailed reading ends at this perilous point. However, I conclude by gesturing toward Genesis 3 and its account of how the woman finds her voice and leads the pair into the next steps of human development.