The Cliché: notes for a defeat of thought. For a naïve consciousness

Abstract

In which way can the cliché, the ready-made, ceaselesslyrepeated
sentence, the jargon – which have invaded pedagogical vocabulary
for quite some time already – represent a strategy for being reacquainted to
a world turned strange, where our concepts are no longer appropriate, and
have become an indication of danger to thought? From Camus’ image of
Sisyphe through Arendt’s examination of the Eichmann’s case, where the
cliché is associated to a defeat of thought, the article proposes a bizarre
task: a return to a naive consciousness, not as a gaping and disarmed relation
to the world, but as a production of a new dictionary, capable of livening up,
linguistically speaking, a stand of ad-miration before things.