Lawacrificing what is in one more than oneself�(ideas I mention briefly in Chapter Three). 沤i啪ek examples include Keyser Soeze in Bryan Singer 1995 film, The Usual Suspects. Played by Kevin Spacey, Soeze is a mysterious criminal figure who, upon finding his wife and child held at gunpoint by rival criminals, first kills his wife and child and then pursues the other criminals and their families to their deaths. By killing his own family, Soeze escapes the false choice (there was no way for him to save them) presented in the situation, gaining the freedom to act. Having lost everything, he has nothing left to lose. 沤i啪ek more powerful example is Sethe, the former slave who murders her own child to save her from slavery, in Toni Morrison Beloved. The child, Beloved, was the most precious core of Sethe being. For this precious thing, this part of Sethe that was in her more her than herself, death was preferable to life in slavery. Morrison writes,That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful magical best thinghe part of her that was clean.77These examples have their drawbacks. In them, the sacrifice of hat is in one more than oneself�is actually the sacrifice of someone else. These others may well be those closest to or most like one self, so they fill in as substitutes for that which one sacrifices in oneself, giving it material form. Even less fortunate is the way that in these examples the bodies are feminine and infantile, sacrifices, in a way, of the maternal as well as of the future.
