This book brings together the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jacques Lacan around their
treatments of 'astonishment ' an experience of being struck by something that appears to be
extraordinarily significant. Both thinkers have a central interest in the dissatisfaction with
meaning that these experiences generate when we attempt to articulate them to bring language
to bear on them. Maria Balaska argues that this frustration and difficulty with meaning reveals
a more fundamental characteristic of our sense-making capacities -namely their groundlessness.
Instead of disappointment with language's sense-making capacities Balaska argues that
Wittgenstein and Lacan can help us find in this revelation of meaning's groundlessness an
opportunity to acknowledge our own involvement in meaning to creatively participate in it and
thereby to enrich our forms of life with language.
