ABSTRACT
Introduction If the cryptic remark attributed to Lacan that birth is an event of distress appears to counteract the celebratory view of birth, it is not because of the painful labor of childbearing, but because of the promise implicit in the induction of any and every human into the symbolic order with respect to the travail of ambiguity that will need to be engaged and developed in relation to the condition of mortality. Following Arendt, Kieran Bonner (1998) analyzes such awaiting as interruption. What is inherited by every human is the need to meditate upon the condition of mediation, which seems impossible because we cannot imagine the absence of mediation, while yet speaking it as such seems to suggest that this impossibility is possible. Thus, the idea of birth as an event of distress is imagined as the moment when the in-between character of life as awaiting becomes poignant, suggesting that the best of reflection must grasp the irony of this mix of living and dying as jouissance, the insistence of the drive of life (narcissism, self-preservation) for the one who must suffer the pain of this distress wordlessly.
