aporia

plural aporias

1. rhetoricAn expression of deliberation with oneself regarding uncertainty or doubt as to how to proceed.

   Aporia oft in doubt and fear will rest, And reason with itself what may be best.

   1835, L[arret] Langley, “[Rhetorical Figures.] Aporia.”, in A Manual of the Figures of Rhetoric, […], Doncaster, South Yorkshire: […] C. White, […], →OCLC, page 55

   2 more examples

   Meanings are superposed in an aporia – not ‘either/or’, but ‘and/and’.

   2012, Andy Martin, “Text Messenger”, in Literary Review, section 404

   What they intend sickens and frightens them, and they can never speak of it directly. Instead, wrapped in whispers are ellipses, euphemisms, mumbled aporia followed by throat-clearing and a brisk change of subject.

   2016, Ian McEwan, Nutshell, Vintage, page 9

2. human sciencesAn apparently insoluble contradiction or tension, especially in a text's meaning; a logical impasse suggested by a text or speaker; a paradox.

   EL James's multimillion selling series of novels ‘encodes the aporias of heterosexual relationships’, according to Professor Eva Illouz[.]

   2014 May 27, Alison Flood, quoting Eva Illouz, “Fifty Shades of Grey is really a self-help book, says academic”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   2 more examples

   But Green issues are already a contested zone, already a site where politicization is being fought for. In what follows, I want to stress two other aporias in capitalist realism, which are not yet politicized to anything like the same degree. The first is mental health.

   2009, Mark Fisher, chapter 3, in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Zero Books, →ISBN, page 19

   Plato believed that the core impulse to philosophizing lies in aporia, the point at which, in struggling to understand a phenomenon or answer a question, we come up against a seemingly irresolvable contradiction.

   2018, David Auerbach, Bitwise: A Life in Code, Vintage, →ISBN

   Synonyms: impasse, paradox, contradiction