Reasons for Étant Donnés:

A Poetic Unveiling

The book explicitly adopts the Rosary's structure, presenting its content as a series of "Mysteries of Light". The "Order of Operations" instructs the reader to "Touch each bead while meditating on the mysteries of the Goddess, in the following order". This immediately establishes a meditative and spiritual tone, reinterpreting a traditional devotional practice to focus on a "Goddess" and the book's unique "mysteries."

The definition of "The Rosary" in the book emphasizes its contemplative nature: "Without contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul, and its recitation becomes a mechanical repetition of formulas, rather than the panorama of 'ceaseless' prayer". This suggests that the book itself is an invitation to this deeper, non-mechanical form of contemplation, guiding the reader through its "mysteries" as if touching each bead.

Étant Donnés as the Embodied Artistic Reference

The entire book is titled Reasons for Étant Donnés, directly referencing Duchamp's final major artwork. Within each "Mystery of Light," the book includes specific "Operational Instructions" for Étant Donnés. These instructions are highly technical and prescriptive, detailing how to set up the waterfall, framework, bricks, lights, and especially the nude body.

Étant Donnés is defined as an "approximation démontable" (an approximation that can be taken apart, or disassembled). This concept of something constructed and re-constructible is central to the book's exploration of reality, artificiality, and the body.

The artwork's design, particularly the "voyeur’s peepholes" and the precise lighting of the nude, positions the viewer as a voyeur. The book acknowledges this, with the speaker returning "again and again to the voyeur’s hole, squinting at what is still and past, admiring the artwork and then pulling away".

The phrases "étant donnés" and "given" are frequently used throughout the book, particularly in the "Fifth Mystery of Light: Body," tying the artwork's title directly to the themes of what is presented, consumed, sacrificed, or observed.

The Book's Unique Message: Reinterpreting Reality, Body, and Spirit in a Damaged World

The book uses the Rosary's contemplative framework and the literal construction of Étant Donnés to articulate a complex, often raw, message about modern existence. It juxtaposes the meticulous instructions for assembling the artwork with poetic narratives that explore themes like environmental degradation ("stomachs full of plastic", "molten fetus full of metals wrought as bullets, fired at the Ocean’s heart", "dried out dunes digesting plastic"), personal trauma and violence ("bloody footprints bagged and tagged at the station", "brain bullet, the gurgle of bloody lungs"), and the artificiality of human constructs ("everything faux covers everything dirty", "flesh born in a lab— my body is not my own").

It re-contextualizes sacred and mythological narratives (e.g., Baptism, Marriage, Transfiguration) through a lens of contemporary suffering and ecological crisis. For example, the "Fifth Mystery of Light: Body" begins with "Take and eat / This is My body," directly referencing a sacred rite, but then explores the body's vulnerability, its constructed nature ("Head is fitted to the body with a screw"), and its ultimate decay into nature ("hug me lovingly into humus, dismantle each exhausted piece, wasting nothing").

A core message is the blurring of boundaries—between self and other, human and machine, natural and artificial, past and present. The question "what is the difference between you and me? 'I am a language model' she answers, 'and you are language'" highlights this existential inquiry, as the speaker's own "étant donnés" becomes absorbed into the digital realm. The book suggests that, unlike the precise Étant Donnés artwork, "the pieces won’t stay put, the manual is useless, overly instructive" for preserving true beauty or meaning in the chaos of life.

In essence, the book uses the Rosary as a spiritual and structural guide for its "mysteries," while the physical and conceptual presence of Étant Donnés serves as the central art object and metaphor through which the book's unique message — a raw, contemplative, and often critical examination of the body, environment, and human condition in an increasingly artificial and damaged world — is conveyed. The "Operational Instructions" become the literal and metaphorical "beads" upon which these profound meditations are hung.

Reasons for Étant Donnés by Sara Cahill Marron, uniquely interweaves the Rosary, Marcel Duchamp's artwork Étant Donnés, and its own distinct poetic and thematic message by using the former two as both a structural framework and a conceptual lens.

Here's how these elements are connected: