"Hit happens. A rip, a quick cut by a razor. From the outside, something breaks through and in: an intervention into the stabilized form of psychic life. As if by fate or chance: disturbance, disruption – what will be felt as pain, a crisis or breakdown. A punch in the guts, a violation, a horrible, helpless, caught in the grips of. A terror, an after-awe, an anguish of ruination. Defensively: deflection, mis-recognition. Look, the birds are on fire. We are forced, overwhelmed, blown away. We hit a wall, crash, are shredded. And we come out on the other side, spilling down, ash and glass. And not even then, but only later, the question: what the … ?"
— Gene Ray, Terror and the Sublime in Critical Theory (2005)
