Re-membering the Present Notes as if in Parenthesis D Sasheej Hegde There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. Marx I start off, then, strategically, from the place and time in which 'we' are, even though my opening is not justifiable in the final account, and though it is always on the basis of difference and its 'history' that we can claim to know who and where 'we' are and what the limits of an 'epoch' can be. Derrida I. OVERTURE? I am not where you think I am, but if you must insist. What are we about here in a journal devoted to the 'Arts', to 'Ideas'? Could the issue to which this number is dedicated, the a special issue on Modernity and Modernism, have anything to do with our presence here? Maybe, but I should think not. We share neither the august company of its contributors, nor their concerns; and indeed, even our indecisions seem different. And yet we are here, driven to speak with those one wouldn't, rather, couldn't. If only to reclaim a sphere that is our's, one's own, T. For those who would still want to hear, attend to listen, this writing is being dedicated. We may yet have lessons to learn, terms to confound. These overtures, at once friendly and distancing, serve to re-position our writing, to fragment the totality we are going to talk about, limiting it to a response: a set of notes as if in parenthesis. This is all we are capable of, here. And besides, where we are concerned, it would be a burden to attempt otherwise, our thought having invaded itself, a de-ranged, but self-asserting reason, that knows itself to be in part problem, in part solution: the cutting edge of all modernity, of a Numbers 25-26