Paradise absent is different from paradise lost

Paradise absent is different from paradise lost: it may not be seen as annihilated only to be regained in some hoped-for, apocalyptic future or sublimely blank utopia that, through a kind of creation ex nihilo, will bring total renewal, salvation, or redemption. It is not there, and one must therefore turn to other, nonredemptive options in personal, social, and political life—options other than an evacuated past and a vacuous or blank, yet somehow redemptive, future.

—Dominick LaCapra. “Writing History, Writing Trauma.”