He played stupid—he looked at my scars and feigned confusion as he dropped the kindling. “What happened?” he asked. “An owlbear attacked,” I answered wryly. He sat down with us, and between their powers, I started to heal.

Alternative figurings may be available for interpreting the everyday, and alternative ways of figuring systems of privilege may be developed in contestations over social arrangements.

For example, an Italian woman named Laura Mesi recently drew supportive nods, raised eyebrows, and media attention aplenty for her sologamy ritual. With 70 guests, a wedding cake, a honeymoon (solomoon?) in Egypt, and presumably a huge bill, Mesi’s commitment to herself had every trapping of a “normal” wedding — except a partner.

Perturbations and passions, which trouble the fantasy, though they dwell between the confines of sense and reason, yet they rather follow sense than reason because they are drowned in corporeal organs of sense. They are commonly reduced into two inclinations, irascible and concupiscible.