MERIDIANCrossin g Aesthetics Werner Hamacher & David E. Wellbery Eitor Edited by Thomas Duroir Stanßrd Ulivmit f" StaoJrd Climil ON THE NAME Jacques Derid Originally publi5hed in F�nch in 1993 B Ihr� sep�r.m: bo kc': Pasion. Su/k W0Æ; and Kh6" by Eilions G�lira:. C 199} by Edilions Galila: Stanford Univnsity Pra SWlfr, Cifri� C I99S by Ihe B ofTruslC of Ihe Ld�nd Slanford Junior Univiy Primed in Ihe Uniled SfItC of Americ 1ì!* d�l� apper at Ihe end of the bok Contents Translating [he Name? b Thomas Dmoir Passions: "A Oblique Ofering" Sufk nom (Pst-Scriptum) Kom Nmes 1 1)1 Translating the Name? Jacques Derrida's DntbcNamtcomprises three essays, which, if taken rogether, would "form a sorrof £:a;ontbcNamc"(5« below p. xiv). In 1993 the three essays simultaneously appeared in France Û a Co#tìon of three separardy bound but matching books published by Editions Galilee. DntbcNamc, the title of this book published by Stnford University Press, thus is not a translation of any French book dde by Jacques Derridai it is a name given to what is a hypothetical book in France. The title DntbcNamtwould in French be Surk nomGiven the meanings of the French preposi· tion 3Mf, one could cll this book by other names Û well: for example. DwrtbcNamc.¬bewtbcNamc.or ¬bouttbcNamc.(One should also be aware in this tide of t "no" jnon|which in spoken French sounds exactly the same Û "name" jnom I, especially in view of what the frst essay says about homonymy and the second essay's concern with a certain negativiry.) Moreover, given Derrida's dis cussion of "sur-naming," which runs through the three essays, one might justifably also read surk nom(on the name) in the inverted order of k su¬om(the sur-name), with surÛ the prefx that it is in English and French. The translation throughout this volume of :u¬om by "sur name" could cause some confusion. Su¬ommeans a name, title, or epithet added to a person's name, a in a "nickname" such Û Earvin "Magic" Johnson or William "the Conqueror." The English "sur- 7 Iammn ngtb�N«m�! name" is thus roughly synonymous with "cognomen" or "ro name," as ,he OED 3nesu. Moreover, just as tu¬omgive us the sense of "surname" in William "the Conqueror," the Norman Conquest is said to have given us the other meaning of "surname," which su¬omno longer has: "The Norman Conquest . .. brought with it the novelty of family nomenclature, that is to say, the use of hereditary surnames" (Ew A. Freeman, H·sto¸o[tbNoÎ Conçueo[Engkn4[New York: Macmillan, 1876], 5: 377). In English the word "surname" still means (and this has even �ome its primary meaning) the "family name'" that follows one's frst, given, or baptismal name, i.e .• that follows one's "pre-name" or ¸~nomas it is called in French. Unlike the English language, the French language. in iu modern usage, has nOt retained this mean· ing of su¬om Indeed, the expression "connaitre quelqu'un par nom et par surnom," an expression which means "to know some one very well," dearly shows that in French the nom{family name} is something diff erent from the su¬om(sur·name as nickname). A the "surname" as "nickname" L supplement a given name to the point of replacing it-as Freeman puts it, "in some 1the surname or nickname �Î to have altogether supplanted the baptismal name" (377)-SO tOO has "surame" in the contemporary English sense of a hereditary "fmily name" supplanted "surname" in the French sense of su¬om or "nickname." Because of this diference berween tu¬omand "surame" in contemporary French and English, tu¬om is translated in these three essays as "sur. name," with the hyphen serving to call anention to the "sur· name" as the "supplemental name" that any surname in fact is. It is nece to keep "sur·name" insted of "nickname" as noun and verb for su¬om and su¬omm·r bu in Derrida's French tet their function is tOO important not t be crried over into English, even though in English they bear a sense not admined in moder French. The potential confusion berween "surname" as added name and "surname" as family name is perhaps owing to (he fact that the fmily name is originally, as Freeman contends, only a "surname" in the sense of an added name that at some point became heredi. Ism/tingrb�Nam�? tary. In this way, the "family name" is itsdf always just a hereditary nickname, as "the surname of Black may be borne by a pale man, that of Alfredson by one whose father is not named Alfred, that of Fecham by one who neither lives at Fecham nor owns land there" (378). If one's "family name," the proper name, is originally lacking in such a way that a nickname, a sur·name, must, by n¸�tìnon. fll its lack, then one's name, one's fame, one's renown comes before anything else through an act of n-namìng Perhaps such is pan of what Derrida suggests when he asks: "What happens, above all, when it is necesary to sur-name jtu¬omm~|, re-naming there where, precisdy, the name comes to be found lacking?" (below, p. xiv). The sur·name, by repetition or "re-naming," constitutes the proper name. Moreover, the translation of n-nommantby "re·naming" fails t retain the complexity of n-nommantTo begin with, n"omm�rand its deceptive cognate "to rename" are not normally hyphenated. In other contexts, withom the hyphen, nnommantmight commonly be translated as "reappointing" or "re.decting." Rcomm·r also means "to name ofen and with praise, to celebrate." If someone has, in everyday French, nnom.she or he has "name.recognition," cdebrity, or popularity in mainly a positive sense. Rcomthus gives "renown." (One should recall the word "name" in both "nown" or "noun" and rcom. French has only nom for both "noun" and "name.") Also, the noun nnomm/� is "renown" or "fame." This semantic feld is active in Derrida's essays. Yet in the quote above, the hyphen in n-nommantStrs the repetirion of naming, of naming as originally re-naming, a repetition that in the sur·name frst constitutes (he name, the proper name. The surname is a repetition (and a forgetting) that conceals the sur-name, itself a repetition. This superimposition of one surname ("fmily name") onto another (the sur· name) is part of what the tu¬omor "sur·name" says by defnition, for (he prefx "sur," derived from L.uin m¸:r, allows one to read, as Derrida at rimes does, tu¬omm�ror sur· " " " . "" " " " naming as supernammg, overnammg. etra or excess nam· ing. Conveying while distinguishing these various senses of "sur· WÏ I Lnogtb� N4m�? naming" and of "re.naming" is part of the task of translating and reading [he three essays that make up Doth� Nam�. Two of the tides given [0 mee three �ys require brief com menl. In [he third. Kom, Oerrida has, in keeping with recent French practice, prefernd [Q transcri� (he Crttk letter X (khi) with "k" instead of "ch" (thus Mora for xwp. instead of cJir, as it has customarily h«n transcribed), Moreover, klora is a feminine noun, and in Dcrrida's tet the pronoun that replaces it is the feminine (Ior "she." Ind«d. rather [han writing "the khora" as commenrators have always done, Derrida writes simply" Mora," as if "kMra" wen a feminine given name. In the beginning of the English text, Ian McLeod translates tilt by "it," for there the sense of elk is [hat of all impersonal "it." Yet as [he essay pro. gresses, this til gradually becomes appropriately translated by "she." Both readers familiar with Plato's TmatuJand those coming to it frst through Derrida's Jora will see mat J ora designates a very problematic space, place, or site. Mcleod's translation of terms such as l plCt. and siu has careflly distinguished these terms and the various idioms in which they occur. Where Derrida dinin. guishes ple and lnt{x) in conjunction . the translation choose "places" and "site(s)"; English "positions" should a be heard in [he French pl. Anomer instance of pi being translated by "place" is the unslation of the expresion pT p/u by "to take place," where the sense is more a "place" or a "position" being "taken" than "to happen." "Site(s)" is used for litu{x} only where liro and piu are in proximity; otherwise "site" translates siu, and "place" translates litu. The particular distinction between "places" (pICtS) and "site(s)" (litu{xj) should not obscure another distinc. rion operating in Khora. that between "to situate" (sit) and "to give place" (doo¬lint). There is really no one adequate English translation for Sauf I oom. The most apparent sense in English would be "Except the name." Saufl nom means precisely that; thus, for example, when Derrida writes fout wufl oom.the sense is "everything except the name." But the preposition "except" fails to convey the other sense 1wmkuogtht Nnmt? 7ÏÎÏ of wul which as an adjective means "safe." A less obvious transla· tion of wufl 10m is "s the name, n which should be read with an intonation that pauses after "safe . . . Transcribed, that intonation would be "s, the name." In bener, more grammatical English, the sense is that "the name is s," even the subjunctive "that the name be safe"; thus, for example, tOlt u 10m then would be in English "totally safe the name," which may be understood in the indicative as "the name is totally s" or in the subjunctive as "that the name be totally safe." "Except" for siu/is unfortunate because it loses the signifed "safe." There would seem to be an alternative: the somewhat literary "save" is synonymous with "except." Thus, saufl 10m would be "save the name," which could be understood exactly as "except the name." The danger with ;'save." however, is that it sounds like a verb in the imperative mood. In the French sallf 10m, there is no imperative whatsoever. "SauP' is not a verb, but either a preposition-more common than its English cognate "save"-or an adjective. "Save the Namc" would be an unforrunate English title for Souf k 10m, since it would sound as if the essay were a clto "save the name," a sensc [hat appears in the text only discreetly. Even though "Save the Name" as a title might be better than "Except the Name" or "Safe, the Name," such a title would risk giving a false sense of what the essay is about. Therefore. owing to the double syntax of wllfl 10m, everything in the essay has been translated "save its name," or tirie. Yet within the essay itself "save the name" has been used to translate [he prepositional phrase mllf � nom, and "safe, the name" has been added afer it in brackets where the possibility of understanding that adjectival phrase is also present. Of the three essays in 01 tb� Nnmt, Psuìom.translated by David Wood, appeared originally in English and in a shorter form in De"idn: A Critical Rtnd, edited by David Wood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992). An earlier, shorrer version of Sli/ 10m appeared for the frst time also in English, in rhe Ifanslation of John P Leavey, Jr., under the title "Posr·Scriptum" in a volume entitled DtTidland N�ativt 1/eolog.edited by Harold Coward and Toby Foshay (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992). They 7V TrnJ/tng the Name? appear here courtey of thet publishers. Kora, translated by Ian McLeod, appears here for the frst time in English. in a revised version from how it originally appeared, in French, in Poikili a: Et o d Jean�Pi" Vmt (Paris: Ecole des Haules Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1987). In On the Name, these three translations have �en 1 ionally modifed s that common dements harmoniu and so mat ech correponds [ the more recent versions of Payions, Sauf k nom, ad Khora published by Editions Galiltt. When the three books were published in Frana:. each included an unbound. four.page insert. called in French the Pmd1� and serving there. Û well Û here. to articulate the three: Each of thee three essays, PasionI, Stuf k 10m, and K6ra, forms an independent work and ¯ be read as such. If it has nonetheless ben judged advisable [0 publish them simultaneously. this is bu. in spite of the singular origin of ech of them. the same them.ic thred Î through the three. They frm a WI of £ on t Namin three chapters or three steps. Three fctions. to. In following the sigs that the dm p1Uof th� fctions silently addres one to the other. one  her the qtjon of tm I m� reound there where it heitte on the edge of the cll, of the dCd or of the promise, befre or afer the response. The name: What does one cl thus� What does one understand under the name of name? And what V U when one gives a name? What does one give then? One doe nO( off er a th!ng, one delivers nothing, and still something come to be which comes down to giving that which one doe not have. as Plotinus sid of the Good. What happens, above all, when it i s ne to sur-name (ðmm"l. re naming there where. precisely, the name come to be found lacking? What make the proper name into a son of sur-name, pseudonym, or cryptonym at once singular and singularly untranslat2ble? Passions says an absolute secret, at once essential and foreign to what one in general clls by the noun/name secret. In order to get there. it w nT ry, within the more or less fctive repetition of a "this is my body." and in the course of a medittion on the p.adoxes of polite nes, to st.ge the experience of where an inclcul.ble debt R up: if there i s duty (au doirl. shouldn't it consist in not h.ving to [n p Trmiting t!� N4m�? ¼ ao;rl, in h.ving to without having to Idir ¶Æairl, in having to not h.ve to [air nt pa aojrj? In having to not have to act [a dUir n� pa aojr agir) �in conformity with duty (Mvirl," not even, as Kant would say, "by duty [dir]"? What could the ethical or political consequence of that�? What should one understand under the name "duty" [Mvir)? And who L undertake to carry it, in and through responsibility? Sufk 10m. It's a matter here of salutation and salvation (au salul; the fmiliar greering S/ut is a to wish for the other's salvation or happinessl. On 2 summer d2Y. twO interlocutors converse-that's 2nother fction-2bout what turns 2round (tUn� autour) the n2me, singularly around the name of name, the name of God (Dil and what becomes of it in wh2t one calls negarive theology, there where the Sur-Name names the unnamable, that is, at the same time what one neither can nor shoul name, defne, or know, because, to begin with. wh2t one sur-names then slips away brond wing, without staying there. Where "negative theolog" seems to open OntO a �politics" to come (today or tomorrow), such a fction also risks taking a few steps of an heir who follows the trace or vestige as a "cherubinic wanderer" (Angelus Sileius), What is a Sur-Name. t which is worth mor lhan the name but a that which come intht p!ctof the name? And do il ever put iuclf forward as the salvation (S/UI] of the name, which is fnally Sf� And very simply, as the salut2(ion, very simply, the "Good Day" or the "frewell" (aitu]? Khm the oldest of the three essa�, is nonetheless not their "ma trix" or the originary "imprint-bearer," a one might be tempted to consider it. It only situates an exemplary aporia in the Pl2tonic text. The 7imanlS names khra (locality. place. spacing. site), this "thing" that is nothing of that to which this "thing" nonetheles seems to �give place" -withom. however, this �thingn ever giling anything: neither the idel paradigms of thing nor the copies that 2n insistent demi urge. the fed ide before his eyes, inscribe in it. In.ensible, impas ible bU! without cruelty. inaccessible to rhetoric. Kr discourage. it "is" precisely what disarms efortS 21 persuasion-and whoever would like to fnd the heart to believe or the desire to make believe; for example. in the fgures. tropes, or seductions of discourse. Neither sensible nor intelligible. neither metaphor nor literal designation, "dt this 1or that. both this ana that, participating and not par ticipting in the tO terms of a couple. kh7-aso called "matrix" or ¿¡ Iao:unogtu Nam�? "nursc"-nonethdess reembles a singular proper name, a prname Ip�nom, here literally, colloquially one's "frst name") that is earlier, both maternal and virginal (this is why one sy here Ihora and not, as usual, the Ih6ra) even though, in an eperience that has to b thought, it/she bOlh calls in silence the sur-name that one gives to her and mnds beyond every maternal, feminine-or theological-fgure. And this silence, from the depths of which Ihora thus mJto cl her name but in truth clls the sur-name of a frst name [prnoml. this silence is perhaps not even any longer a modality or a re5reof speech. No more than this depth without depth promises the night of a day. On the subject of Ihora, there is neither negative theology nor thought of the Good, of the One, or of God beyond Being. This incredible and improbable experience is also, among other dimensions, political It announces. without promising, a thought, or rather, a putting to test of the political. And when Socrates makes a show of addressing himself to the others and of speaking of poliuia in passing (and as the passerby he is, in a life that is tO short), there he begins to resemble it, to resemble her, Ihoro, to play her in a fction that will always have gone unnoticed, to fgure her, her who is the intangible, the ungrasp able. the improbable. (Otally ncar ad infnitely f away, her who receive everything beynd echange and beyond the gif. Her a what i n«nmr Iii fut) still. Nit, without debt. In addition ( mis inscrt, each of the bok included the follow- ing passage, following a statement of the essay's publication history: In spite of all that separates them, thee teIS S m to respond to each OIher, and maybe to shed light on ech other within a single confgura tion. Under the mobile syntax of thee tite, one could red thm f on a namt givtn or on what c hapIm t tlt "amt givtn (anonymity. metonymy, paleonymy, cryptonomy, pseudonymity), hence to the name rtaivtd indeed, to the name owtd [nom duj, on what perhaps one ought to give or to sacrifce as well as what one ow la qUt ptut-hrt 10" doit] to the name, to the name of name, hence to the sur-name. and to the name of the dut [devoir] (to gv or to mtiw). -Thomas Dutoll PASSIONS NOTE: A certain "COntext" forms the theme or center [f] of these reRections. Some comextual instructions are therefore espe cially necesary for reading a "response" whose original version (slightly modifed here) was uanslared by David Wood and pub lished in English in a work entitled Do:¬ Crìn:alR� edited by David Wood (Oxford: Blackwell. 1992). The work con tained rwelve essays; rhe present essay. in principle, was supposed to respond to the others. In (he Anglo-Saxon tradition of the "Reader," this collection of essays was nonetheless conceived of less as an introduction or commentary. and even less as homage, than as the place for a critical discussion, as its tide indicted. The participants in this discussion were Geofrey Bennington, Roben Berasconi, Michel Haar, Irene Harvey. Manfred Frank. John Llewelyn, Jen-Luc Nancy. Christopher Norris. Richard Rorty, John Sallis. and David Wood. § Passions: "A Oblique Ofering" Let u imagine a scholar. A specialist in ritual analysis. he seizes upon this work. assuming that someone has nm presented him with it (something we will never know). At any rate, he makes quite a thing of it, believing he c recognize in it the ritualized unfolding of a ceremony. or even a liturg. and this become a theme. an obur of analysis for him. Ritual. to be sure. doe not defne a feld. T.here is ritual everywhere. Without it, there would be no society, no institutions. no history. Anyone c specialize in the analysis of rituals; it is not therefore a specialty. This scholar. let us call him an analyst, may also be. for example. a sociologist. an anthropologist. a historian. whatever you prefer, an a critic or a literary critic, perhaps even a philosopher. You or me. Through experience and more or less spontaneously. ech of ¼ can to some degree play the part of an analySt or critic of rituals; no one refrains from it. Moreover. to play a role in this work. to ¸k;arokwherever it may be, one must at the same time be inscribed in the logic of ritual and. precisely so as to perform properly in it. to avoid mistakes and transgressions. one must to some extem be able to analyze it. One must understand its norms and imerpret the rules of its fnctioning. Between the actOr and the analyst. whatever the distance or diff erences may be, the boundary therefore appears uncertain. Always permeable. It mut even be crossed at some poim not only J 4 Passions for there t be analysis at all but also for behavior to be appropriate and ritualized normally. But a "critical reader" would quite properly object that not all analyses are equivalent. Is there nor an essential diference between, on the one hand, the analysis of him or her who, in order to participate properl in a ritual, mUSt undersmnd irs norms, and an analysis which, instead of aligning itself with the ritual, tries to explain it, t "objectif" it, to give an account of its principle and of its purpose? A critical diference, to be exact? Perhaps, but what is a critical diference? Because in the end if he is to analyze, read, or interpret, the participant must also maintain a certain critical position. And in a certain manner, an "objectifing" position. Even if his activity is often close to passivity, if nOt passion, the partici� pant goes on to critical and criteriological acts: a vigilant discrimi� narion is required from whoever, in one capacity or anmher, be� comes an interested party in the ritual process (the agent, the benefciary, me priest, the sacrifcer, the property man, and even the excluded, the victim, the villain or the phamJakoJ, who may be the ofering itself, because the ofering is never a simple thing. but already a discourse. at least the possibility of a discourse. putting a symboliciry t work). The participant must make choices, djs� tinguish. diferentiate, evaluate. He must operate according to some krinein. Even the "spectator." here the reader, in the volume or outside the volume, fnds himself in the same situarion in this regard. Instead of opposing critique to noncritique, instead of choosing or deciding between critique and noncririque, objectivity and irs contrary, it would be necessary, then, both to mark the diferences between the critiques and to situate the noncritical in a place which would no longer be opposed to, nor even perhaps exterior to, critique. Critique and noncritique are surely not identi cal. bur, deep down, they may remain the same. In any case, they panicipate in the same. Let us then imagine this work being proposed (delivered, of� fered, given) to a reader-analyst concerned with objectiviry. This Passiolls , analyst may be among us: any recipient or sender of this book. We can imagine that without making available an unlimited credit to such a reader. At any rate (he analyst (I choose this word, of course, with the use that Poe made of it in mind)' would be sure, perhaps rashly, that he had come across the coded unfolding of a ceremony, an unfolding both foreseeable and prescribed. C�r�mon y is doub[� less the most precise and me richest word to bring together all the aspects [tit) of the event. How could I, then, how could you, how could we, how could they, not be ceremonious? What pre� cisely is rhe subject of a ceremony? But it is here in the description and me analysis of ritual, in deciphering it or, if you prefer, in reading ir, that a difculry suddenly arises, a SOrt of dysfunctioning, what could be called a crisis. In shon, a critical moment. Perhaps it would afect the very unfolding of me symbolic process. What crisis? Was it foreseeable or unforeseeable? And what if the crisis even concered the very concept of crisis or of critique? Some philosophers have got together or have been gathered together by academic and editorial procedures fmiliar to M Let us emphasize the critical determination (impossible because open, open to yu precisely) of this personal pronoun: who is "us," who are we precisely? These philosophers, university academics from diferent countries, are known and nearly all know each other (here would follow a detailed description of each of them, of their type and of their singulariry, of their sexual allegiance-only one woman -of their national afliation, of their socio�academic status. of their past, their publications, their interests, etc.). So, on the initiative of one of them, who cannot be just any one and is someone whose interests are certainly not uninteresting, they agreed to get together and participate in a volume whose focus (relatively determinate, rhus indeterminate, one could say secret up to a certain point-and the crisis remains tOO open Í merit the name of crisis yet) will be such and such (relatively determined, etc., relatively identifable, in principle, by his work, his publica� dons, his proper name, his signatures, "signatures" being perhaps best left in the plural, because it is impossible, at the ourset, and even iflegal, illegilimate, to preclude their multiplicity). If a critical 6 difculry arises in this case, one likely-bm (his is not yet certain to pOi in difculry {he programmes of rimal or of its analysis. it docs not n«sarily have to do with (he con rent, the theses, (he positive or negative evaluations. most ofen infnitely overdeter· mined. II need not, in short. concern (he quality of (he discourse of this or that person, what mey traslate, or what they make of their relation to the tide. to the pretext, or t the object of the book. The critical difculty concerns the fct that it has been thought neces sary to ask, propose, or ofer (for reasons which it is possible to analyze) to the supposed signatory of the texts which are the focus of the book ("me," surely?) the opportunity of intervening, as they say, of "conrribu£ing," which means bringing one's tribute. but doing so freely, ìntbcboo/.We will have something to say in due course about the extent of this freedom; it is almost the entire question. The editor of the work, head of protocol or master of ceremonies, David Wood, had suggested that the book might here even begin with a few pages of text which, without rruly respond ing to all the others, could appear under the suggestive tide of " Oblique Ofring." What? From whom? To whom? (More of rhis later.) BUI straightaway, as we were saying. the unfolding of the ritual risks losing its automatic quality, that is to say, it risks no longer conforming to the frst hypothesis of the analyst. There is a second hypothesis. Which? At a certain place in the system, one of the elements of the system (an "I," surely. even if the I is not always, and "with all ... candor" jsam ¡¡on:also "without frther ado" J2 "me") no longer knows what it should do. More precisely it knows that it must do contradic(Qry and incompatible things. Contradict ing or running counter to itself, this double obligation thus risks paralyzing, diverting, or jeopardizing the successful conclusion of the ceremony. But does the hypothesis of such a risk goagaìmtjt I'encontre] or on the contrary go a/onguìtb jtla rencontre] the desire of the participants, supposing that there were only one desire. that there were a single desire common to all of [hem or that each had in himself only one noncontradictory desire? Because one can imagine that one or more than one participant, indeed the Pa··ions 7 master of ceremonies himself, may somehow desire the filure of the aforementioned ceremony. More or less secretly, it goes without saying, and that is why we must ulthe secret, nOt reveal it, bur with the eample of this secret, pass judgment on the secret in general. What is a secret? vrrainly, even if this work in no way corresponds (Q a secret ceremony, one may imagine that there is no ceremony, however public and eposed, which docs not revolve around a secret, even if it is the secret of a nonsecret, if only what one calls in French a :��r t Pohcbìn�h,a secret which is a secret for no one. On the analyst's frst hypothesis, the ceremony would unfold normally. according (Q the ritual; it would achieve irs end at the cost of a detour or of a suspense which nor only would not have at all threatened it, bur would perhaps have confrmed. consolidated. augmented. embel lished, or intensifed it by an expectation (desire, premium of seduction, preliminary pleasure of play, foreplay [¸n/ud|, what Freud calls Iorlust). But what would happen on the second hy pothesis? This is perhaps the question that, by way of a replay and as a token of boundles gratitude, 1 would like to ask. I, in my rum, and in the frst instance to all those who have generously brought their tribute ja¸¸o·ukurmbt] to this work. Friendship as well as politenes would enjoin a double 4uq: would it not precisely be to avoid at all COSt both the knguag�o[ ritualand me knguag� o[4uç¹Duplicity, the being-double of this duty. cannot be added up as a J + 1 = 2 or a I + 2, but on rhe contrary hollows itself out in an infnite abyss. A gesture "of friendship" or "of politeness" would be neither friendly nor polite if it were purely and simply to obey a ritual rule. But this 4uqt eschew the rule of ritualized decorum also demands that one go beyond the very language of 4uç One must nOI be friendly or polite out of duty. We venture such a proposition, without a doubt, against Kant. Would there thus be a duty not to act accor4ìng10 4uq: neither ìn con߬nìç 10 4uç. as Kant would say (¸ßìcbt- mL·ìg),nor even OUI o[4uç(amPiclJ)? In what wy would such 8 Psn ìoo: a duty, or such a counter-duty, indebt us? According to what? According to whom? Taken seriously, this hypothesis in the form of a question would be enough t give onc vertigo. It would make one tremble. it could also p3nlyze onc at the edge of the abyss, there where you would be alone, all alone or already caught up in a strugle with the orher, an other who would seek in vain to hold you back or to push you into [he void, to save you or to lo� you. Aways supposing-we shall return to this-that one evcr had any choi� in this maner. Because we already risk no longer knowing where the evidence could lead us, let us venture to stare [he double axiom involved in the hypothesis or in the question with which we inevitably had to begin. Doubtless it would be impolite to appear to be making a gesrure, for example, in responding to an invitation, out of simple dury. It would also be unfriendly to respond to a friend out of duty. h would be no better to respond to an invitation or to a friend in conformity with duty, pfichti ig (rather than out of duty. IUl _ì.bt.and we cite once more the C·ouo4uor/)r1 Mhria o[ Mom/ of Kant. our exemplary "critical reader" [in English in original-Ed.]. indebted as we are, as his heirs, to the great philoso pher of critique). That would indeed add to the essential derelic tion, one further fult: to consider oneself beyond reproach by playing on appearances just where intention is in default. h is insufcient ro say that the "ought" jìl fUl] of friendship, like that of politeness, mUll ootb�oom�omo[4uqIt must not even take the form of a rule, and cenainly not of a ritual rule. A soon as it yields to [he necessity of applying the generality of a prescription to a single case, the gesture of friendship or of politeness would itself be detroyed. It would be defeated. beaten. and broken by the ordered rigidity of rules, or. put a diferent way, of norms. An axiom from which it is not nece to conclude frther that one can only accede to friendship or politeness (for example. in re sponding to an invitation. or indeed to the request or the question of a friend) by transgressing all tules and by going against all duty. The counter-rule is still a rule. A critical reader will perhaps be surprised to see friendship and P± ìom 9 politeness regularly associated here. each distinguished. by a single [rait, from ritualized behaviour. For whatever cultural tradition is linked to (Western or otherwise), the hypothesis about politeness and the sharp determination of this value relate t what enjoins us to go beyond rules. norms, and hence ritual. The internal Contra diction in the concept of politeness. as in all normative conceptS of which it would be an example. is that it involves both rules and invention without rule. Its rule is that one knows the rule but is never bound by it. It is impolite to be merely polite. to be polite out of politeness. We thus have here a rule-and this rule is ftturrent. structural, general, that is to say. each time singular and exemplary -which commands action of such a sort that one not act simply by conformity t the normative rule but not even. by virtue of the said rule, out of respect for it. Lds ootb�at«rouo4ru bu:b[N'y allons pas par quatre chemins]: what is at issue is the concept of duty. and of knowing whether or up to what point one can rely on it, on what it structures in the order of culrore. of morality, of politics. of law, and even of economy (especially as to the relation between debt and duty);' that is to say. whether and up to what point one can truSt what the concept of duty lays down for all responsible discourse about responsible decisions, for all discou�, all logic, all rhetoric o[ responsibility. By speaking of reponsible discou� on respon sibility, we are imp/ingalready that discou� itself must submit to the norms or to the law of which it speaks. This implication would seem t be inescapable. but it remains disconcerting: what could be the responsibility, the quality or the virtue of responsibility, of a consistent discourse which claimed to show that no responsibility could ever be taken without equivocation and without contradic tion? Or that the self-justifcation of a decision is impossible, and could not, a priori and for structural reasons. respond absolutely for itself? We have jUst said: "fly allm pm par çumcheim [an almost untranslatable French expression which invokes the cross or the crucial, the crossing of ways, the four and the fork of a crossroad (qudriflmtm) in order to say: let | proceed directly. without Passi(ns detour, without ruse and without calculation]: what ; s at i sm� [i1 s'agit del i /h� c(nupt (f . . and kn(wing whtth� . . . . " What is implied by an expression of such an imperative order� That one could and one should tackle a concept or a problem frontally, in a nonoblique way. There would be a concept and a problem (of this or that, of duty, for example, it maners little for the moment), that is to say, something determinable by a knowing ("what matters is knowing whether") and that lies before you, there before you (probkma). infi(nt (fyou [in English in the original-Tr.); from which comes the necessity to approach from the front. facing towards. in a way which is at once direct, frontal, and head on [capitl]. what is before your eyes, your mouth, your hands (and not behind your back). there, before you, like an (bjm pro-posed or posed in advance [pro-p(si (u p"-p(si], a question to deal with, therefore quite as much a subject proposed (that is ro say, surren dered, ofered up: in principle one always ofers from the front. surely? in principle). Continuing [he semantics of prbkma, there would also be the question of an (b-subjm ard like a jetty or the promontory of a headland [capJ,4 an armor, or protective garment. Pblema also means. in certain contexts. the excuse given in advance to shirk or dear oneself of blame, but also something else that would perhaps interest us here more. By metonymy, if you will, prblmn c come to designate that which. as we say in French, serves as a "cover" when assuming responsibility for an other or passing oneself off as the other, or while speaking in the name of the other, that which one places before one or behind which one hides. Think of the passion of Phil octet us. of Ulysses the oblique-and of the third (tmtis), at once innocent witness (ut), ac/(r-participant but also an /lct(rto whom it is given to playa role. instrument and active delegate b represmtlti(n. that is [he prob kmicchild, Neoprolemus.� From this point of view responsibility would be pr(blematic to the further [suppkmm/air�] extent that it could sometimes, perhaps even always. be what one takes, not for oneself, in (nls (wn nam� and b�fre /h� (/h�r (the most classically metaphysical defnition of responsibility) but what one must take for another. in his place, in the name of the other or of oneself as Passi(ns Î other, before another other, and an other of the other, namely [he very undeniable of ethics. "To the frther [supp/mmtairel extent," we said, but we must go further: in the degree to which respon sibility not only fails ro weaken but on the contrary arises in a structure which is itself supplementary. It is always exercised in my name as the name of the other, and that in no way affects its singularity. This singularity is posired and must quake in the exemplary equivocality and insecurity of this "as." If the experience of responsibility could nOt be reduced to one of dury or of debt, if the "response" of responsibility no longer appeared in a concept with respect to which we must "know whether . . . "; if all this were ro challenge the space of the pr(blm and returned nOt only to within the pro-positional form of the response but even to within the "qunti(n" form of thought or language. and thus what is no longer or not yet problematic or questionable, i.e .• critique. namely of the order of judicative deci sion, we could no longer, we sh(uld n(t ab(l/� al approach in a direct. frontal proj�ctil�, that is. thetic or thematic way. And this "do not do it." this "should not above al," which seems to give the slip to the problem, the project, the question, the theme, the thesis, the critique, would have nothing to do with a shortcoming, a lapse in logical or demonstrative rigor, quite the contrary (always sup posing that the imperative of rigor, strict( ðÎJ) of the most stict rigor, is sheltered from all questioning6). If there ^a shortcom ing, and a shortcoming of justice as much as of reading, it would occur rather on the side where one would want to summon such a "do-nor-do-ir," a "should-not-above-all-do-it," to appear before some philosophical or moral tribunal, that is to say. before proceed ings both critical and juridical. Nothing would seem more violent or naive than to call for more frontality, more thesis or more rhematization, to suppose that one can fnd Û standard here. How can one choose between the economy or the discretion of the �Iipu with which one credits a writing, and an a-th�maticit, an insuf ciently thematic explanation of which some believe it is possible to accuse a philosopher? 1 Passions II Instead of tacklng the question or the problem head on, direcdy, straightforwardly, which would doubtless be impossible, inappro priate. or illegitimate, should we proceed obliquely? I have onen done so, even to the point of demanding obliqueness by name7 even while acknowledging it. some might think, as a failure of duty since the fgure of the oblique is ofen associated with lack of frankness or of directness. It is doubtless with this FaraHry in mind, (his tradition of the oblique in which I am in some way inscribed, that David Wood, in order to invite me, encourage me, or oblige me to contribute to this volume, suggests to me [m'of J (hat these pages be entitled "An Oblique Ofering." He had even printed it beforehand on the projected Table of Contents of the complete manuscript before I had written a line of this rexr.8 Will we ever know whether this "ofering" is mine or his? Who takes respon· sibility for it? This question is as serious and intractable [intrait· abl]9 as the reponsibility for the name one is given or bears. for the name that one receives or the name that one gives oneself The infnite pardoxes of what is so calmly called narcissism are out· lined here: suppose that X, something or someone (a t.race, a work, an institution, a child), bears your name. that is to say, your title. The naive rendering or common illusion [fnm� 4oMÎÎt] is that you have given your name to X, thus al that returns ro X, in a direct or indirect way. in a straight or oblique line, nturt/to you, as a proft for your narcissism. But as you annot your name, nor your tide. and given that, as the name or the title, X does very well without you or your life, that is, without the place toward which something could nhlr-just as that is the defnition and the very possibility of every trace. and of all names and al tides, so your narcissism is frustrated a priori by that from which it profts or hopes to proft. Conversely. suppose that X did not want your name or your tide; suppose that, for one reason or another, X broke free from it and chose himself another name, working a kind of repeated severance from the originary severance; then your narcis· Passions I J sism. doubly injured. will fnd itSelf al the more enriched precisely on acount of/his: that which bears, has borne, will bear your name seems sufciently free. powerful, creative, and autonomous [0 live alone and radiclly to do without you and your name. What rerurs to your name, to the secret of your name, is the ability [0 disappear in JUT nam�. And thus not to return to itSelf, which is the condition of the gif (for example, of the name) bur also of all expansion of self of all augmentation of self, of all auctoritas. In the tO c of this same divided passion, it is impossible to dissociate the greatest proft and the greatest privation. It is consequently impossible to construct a noncontradictory or coherent concept of narcissism. thus to give a univocal sense to the "I." It is impossible [0 speak it or to act it, as "I," and as Baudelaire put it, sansffon [without ado; without ceremony] . This is the secret of the bow or of the instrumental string (n�ura) for Philoctetus, for the passion according to Philoctetus: the child is (he problem, always, that is the truth. On reRection, the oblique does not seem to me to ofr the best fgure for all the move that I have tried to describe in that way. I have always been ill at e with this word of which I have, however, so ofen made use. Even if I have done so in a generally negative way, to disrupt rather than [0 precribe. to avoid or to say that one ought to avoid, mat moreover one could not fil to avoid defance or direct confrontation, the immediate approach. Con· fession or autQ critique, then: one has to smile at the hypothesis of the most hyperbolic hbrs, namely the hypothesis mat this whole "critical reader" would add up to an "autocritical reader" (critique of self, bUl critique of whom exactly? To whom would the reRexive be returned?). a reader that sustains itself and carries itself along, having in particular no more need of "me" for this purpose. no need of an I which itself needs no help from anyone else in asking itself al the questions or putting to itself all the critical objections that one could want. (In the syntax of "X: A Critical Reader," it will. moreover. always be difcult to determine who is the reader of whom, who the subject, who the text, who the object, and who ofers what-or whom-to whom.) What one would have to ceit· ' 4 Passions ici7C in the oblique, today, is withom doubt the geometrical fgure, the compromise still made with the primitiveness of the plane, the line. the angle, [he diagonal, and rhus of the right angle between the vertical and the horizontal. The oblique remains the choice of a strategy that is still crude, obliged to ward ofwhat is most urgent, a geometric calculus for diverting as quickly as possible both the frontal approach and the straight line: presumed to be the shortest path from one point to another. Even in its rhetorical form and in the fgure of fgure that is called oratia obliqua, this displacement still appears too direct, linear, in shorr. economic. in complicity with the diagonal arc. (I think straighraway of the fct that a bow [arc] is sometimes std; and again of the passion of Philoc� [ems; ro say of a bow [arc] that it is stretched [tendul can mean, in some comexrs, that its string is taur and ready m propel the weapon, namely, the deadly arrow, or that the bow is ofered [upl. given, delivered, transmiHed (handd on, over to [English in original-Tr.D. Let us therefore forget the oblique. Is this a way of nOt responding m the invitation of David Wood and of all those whom he represents here? Ought I to respond to him? How is one to know? What is an invitation? What is it m respond to Ûinvitation? Towhom, to what, does this return, what does it amount to? (a quoi cel revient�i/?J. An invitation leaves one free, otherwise it becomes constraint. It should [dvraitJ never imply: you are obliged to come, you have to come, it is necessary. But the invitation must be pressing, not indiferent. It should never imply: you are free not to come and if you don't come, never mind, it doesn't marrero Without the pressure of some desire-which at once says "come" and leaves, neverrheless, the mher his absolute freedom-the invitation immediately withdraws and becomes un welcoming. It must therefore split and redouble itself at the same time, at once leave free and lake hostage: double act, redoubled acr. Is an invitation possible? We have JUSt glimpsed under what condi tions there would be an invitation, if there is one, but even if there is one, does it ever present itself, in fct, as such, at the moment? What we are glimpsing of the invitation (but of the cl in general, as well) governs by the same "mken" the logic of the Pass;om ª, response, both of the response to the invitation and the response by itself. Whoever ponders the necessiry, the genealogy and therefore also the limits of the concept of responsibiliry cannot fil m wonder at some point what is meant by "respond," and roruivmen [English in original-Tr.J. a precious word for which I can fnd no strict equivalent in my language. And m wonder whether "to respond" has an opposite, which would consist, if commonsense is m be believed, in not responding. Is it possible to make a decision on the subject of "responding" and of "responsiveness"? One can roday, in many diferent places, attend m or participate in a congenial and disturbing task: resmring moraliry and, espe cially, reassuring those who had serious reasons for being troubled by this topic. Some souls believe themselves m have found in Deconstruction [ "f" DtconstruCionJ-as if there were one, and only one-a modern form of immoraliry, of amoraliry, or of irre sponsibiliry (etc.: a discourse too well known; I do not need to continue), while others, more serious, in less of a hurry, better disposed toward so-called Deconstruction, today claim the op posite; they discern encouraging signs and in increasing numbers (at times, I must admit, in some of my texts) which would testif to Û permanent, extreme, direct, or oblique, in any event, increasingly intense attention, to those things which one could identif under the fne names of "ethics," "moraliry," "responsibility," "subject," etc. Before reverting to not-responding, it would be necessary ro declare in the most direct way that if one had the um� of dury and of responsibiliry, it would compel breaking with both mese moral isms, with these [O restorations of morality. including, therefore, rhe remoralization of deconstruction, which naturally seems more attractive than that to which it is rightly opposed, but which at each moment risks reassuring itself in order to reassure the mher and to promOte the consensus of a new dogmatic slumber. And it is so that one nOt be in tOO much of a hurry m say that it is in the name of a higherresponsibility and a more intractable (intrlitablJ moral exigency that one declares one's distaste, uneven as it may be, for both moralisms. Undoubtedly, it is always following the afr- mation of a certain excess that one cn suspeCt the well-known immorality. indeed the denigrating hypocrisy of moral isms. But nothing aJlows one to Û Ï that the best names or the most suitable fgure for this afrmation are ethics. morality. politics. responsibility. or the subject. Furthermore. would it be moral and responsible to act morally bu one has a unu(the word empha sized above) of duty and responsibility? Clerly not; it would be tOO easy and, precisely. naroral, programmed by nature: it is hardly moral to be moral (responsible, etc.) bu one has the ð of the moral, of the highness of the law, etc. This is the well-known problem of "respect" for the moral law, itself the "cause" of respect in the Kantian sense; this problem draws aJl of its interest from the disturbing paradox that it inscribes in the heart of a morality incapable of giving an account of being inscribed in an afect (G4hl) or in a sensibility of what should not be inscribed there or should only enjoin the sacrifce of everything that would only obey this sensible indination. It is well known that sacrifce and the sacrifciaJ ofering are at the heart of Kant ian moraJity, under their own name (Dpfutmg, Aum ). (C£., for example, Kant's Cri tiquofPactcal R�aon, L. ̶ ch. III. The object ofsacrifce there is aJways of the order of the sensuous motives [mobik sibkJ. of the secretly "pathological" interest which must, says K. be "hum bled" before the moral law; this concept of sacrifciaJ ofering, thus of sacrifce in general, requires the whole apparatus of the "critical" distinctions of Kantianism: sensible/intelligible, passivity/spon taneity, intuituJ dvatu I intuitus ongnriu etc.; the same goes for the concept of pa ion; what I am looking for here, passion according to me, would be a concept of passion that would be non "pathological" in Kant's sense.) All this, therefore, still remains open, suspended, undecided. questionable even beyond the question, indeed, t make use of another fgure, absolurely aporetic. What is the ethicity of ethics? The morality of morality? What is responsibility? What is the "What is?" in this case? etc. These questions are always urgent. In a certain way they must remain urgent and unanswered, at any rate without a general and rule-governed response, without a response ' 7 other than that which is linked specifcally each tlme, to the occurrence of a decision without rules and without will in the cou� of a new rest of the undecidable. And let it nor be said roo precipitately that these questions or rhese propositions are alnady inspired by a concer that could by right be called ethical, moral, responsible, etc. For sure, in saying that ("And let it not be said too precipitately . . . " etc.), one give ammunition to the ofciaJs of anti-deconstruction. but al in all isn't that preferable to the consti tution of a consensuaJ euphoria or, wo�, a community of compla cent deconstructionists, reassured and reconciled with the world in ethical certainty, good conscience, satisfction of service rendered, and the consciousness of duty accomplished (or, more heroically slill, yet to be accomplished)? So the nonresponse. Clearly. it will always be possible to say, and it will be true, that nonresponse is a response. One always has, one always must have, the right nOt to respond, and this liberty belongs to responsibility itself, thar is, to the liberty that one believes must be associated with it. One must always be free not to respond to an appeal or to an invitation-and it is worth remembering rhi s. reminding oneself of the essence of this liberty. Those who think that reponsibility or the sense of responsibility is a good thing, a prime virtue, indeed the Good itself, are convinced, however. that one must always answer (for oneself, to the other, before the other, or before the law) and that, moreover, a nonresponse is aJways a modaJity determined in the space opened by an unavoidable re sponsibility. Is there then nothing more to say about nonresponse? On it or on the subject of it. if not in its favor? Let us press on and, in the attempt to convince more quickly, let us take an example, whether or not it is vaJid for the law. What example? This one. And certainly, when I say this very example, I already say something more and something else; I say something which goes beyond [he tod�ti, the this of the example. The example itself, as such, overfows its singularity as much as its identity. This is why there are no examples, while at [he same time there are only examples; I have said this, too, ofen about many examples, no doubt. The exemplarity of the example is clearly never the exem- Passions plarity of the example. We can never be sure of having put an end to this very old children's game in which all the discourses. philo sophical or nOt, which have ever inspired deconstrucrions are entangled by the performative fction which consists in saying, starting up the game again, "take precisely this example." If, for example, I respond to the invitation which is made to me to respond to the texts collected here. which do me the honour or the kindness II'miHI of taking an interest in certain of my earlier publications, am I not going to be heaping up errors (jilt') and therefore conduct myself in an irresponsible way-by taking on false [mauvniJa] responsibilities? What fults? I. First of all. that of endorsing a situation, of subscribing to it and acting as iff found myself at ease in such a strange place, as if I found it normal or natural to speak here, as if we were sitting down at [he table in the midst of twelve people who were speaking on the whole about "me" or addressing themselves to "me." "I" {Moil . who am both a rfh insofr as I am part of a group, one among others, and already. being thus split or redoubled. the thirteenth insofar as I am not one example among others in the series of twelve. What would it look like if I supposed f could reply to all these men and this woman at the same rime, or if I supposed I could Ill b mondng, thus disregarding me very scholarly and very singular strateg of each of mee eleven or twelve discourses. at once so generous and so unself-satisfed and so overdetermined? By speaking last. both in conclusion and in introduction, in twelfh or thirteemh place. am I not taking the insane risk and adopting the odious anirude of rrearing all these thinkers as disciples, indeed the apostles. among whom some would be preferred by me, others potential evil rrairors? Who would be Judas here? What is someone to do who does not want t be and who knows himself not to be (but how can one be sure about these things, and how can one extricate oneselffrom these matrices?) either an apostle (apost% s. a messenger of God), or Jesus. or Judas? Because it dawned on me a little late, counring [he number of participants gathered here, exactly twelve (who is still to come?), then noticing the words Pasions ' 9 ';oblique ofering" and "passion" in his letter, that David Wood was perhaps the pervef producer {mmnlr Clc�n�] ofa mystery-and that in fact the "oblique ofering." which w no less his than mine. had a favor that Nironically. sarcastically, eucharistic (no vege tarian-there Ûar least two among the gueslS-will ever be able to break wim the sublimity of mystical cannibalism): the "this is my body which is given for you, keep [his in remembrance of me." is this not the most oblique ofring (dn]? Is this not what I com mented on all year long in Glsor in my last seminars on "earing the other" and the "rhetoric of cannibalism"? All the more reason not to respond. This is no LaSt Sup�r (Ontl, and the ironic friendship which brings us together consiStS in knowing this. while peering with a "squinty eye" [English in original-Tr.] toward rhis cannibalism in mourning. Ý» If I did respond I would put myself in the situation of someone who felt capabl ofmponding: he has an answer for everything, he takes himself to be up to answering each ofus, each question, each objection or criticism; he does nm see that each of the texts gathered here h its force, ilS logic. its singular strateg. that it would be nece to reread everything. to reconstitute the work and its trajectory. the memes and arguments of each. the discursive tradition and the many rexts set to work. etc. To claim to do althis. and to do it in a fewpage, would smackofa hbriJand a na"ivett withoUi limit-and from the outset a Aagrant lack of respect for the discourse, the work, and the ofering of the other. More reasons for not responding. 3. From these two arguments we can glimpse that a certain 1l0nmponl�can arrest to this politeness (without rules) of which we spoke above. and fnally to respect for others. that is to say, also to an exigency of responsibility. It will perhaps be said that this Ilonresponse is the best response, that it is still a response and a sign of responsibility. Perhaps" Let us wait and see. In any case, one thinks of that pride. that self-satisfaction, that elementary conf dence which it would take to answer when a good education 20 Passions [caches children that they muSt not "aswer back" (at any rate in the sense and tradition of French maners) when grown-ups speak to them, they must nor reproach mem or criticize them, and certainly not ask them quetions. 4. The overweening preumption from which nompnwiU rb� f not only has to do with the fact that the response claims to measure up to the discourse of the other, to situate it, understand it. indeed circumscribe it by responding thus tothe other and befn the other. The respondent presumes, with as much frivolity as arrogance, that he can respond t the other and before the other because frst of all he is able to answer for himself and for all he has been able to do. say, or write. To answer for oneself would here be to presume to know all that one could do, say, or write, 10gather it together in an intelligible and coherent synthesis, to stamp it with one and the same seal (whatever the genre, the place, or the date, the discursive form, the contextual suateg, etc.), to posit that the same "I think" accompanies all "my" representations, which them· selves form a systematic, homogeneous tissue of "theses," "themes," "objects," of "narratives," of "critiques," or of "evaluations," a tissue which c be subjectivi zed and of which I would have a total and intact memory, would know all {he premises and all the consequence, etc.; this would a be to suppose that deconstruc· tion is of the same order as the critique whose concept and history it precisely deconstructs. So may dogmatic naveres that one will never discourage, but all the more reson not to respond, not to act as if one could repond to the other, before the other, and for oneself. Someone will retort: indeed, but then this nonresponse is still a response, the most polite, the most modest, the most vigilant, the most respectful-both of the other and of truth. This non· response would again be a respectable form of politeness and respect, a responsible form of the vigilant exercise of responsibility. In any case, this would confrm that one cannot or that one ought not fail to respond. One cannot, one ought not to respond with nothing. The ought and the can are here strangely co·implicated. Perhaps. Let us wait and see. P( ;OI " Continuing these four prect-ing arguments, I would avoid cr· rors (errors of politeness, moral errors, etc.) by not responding, by responding elliptically, by responding obliquely. I would have said to myself: it would be bener, it is birer, it is more decem, and more moral, not to respond. It is more respectful to the other, more responsible in the face of the imperative of critical, hypercritical, and above all "deconsrructive" thought which insists on yidding as little as possible t dogmas and presuppositions. So you see-if I rook heed of all these reasons, and if, niH believing that this non response w the best response, I decided nOl to respond, then I would run even worse risks. Which ones? 1. To start with, the frst injury or injustice: seeming nor to take sufcienrly seriously the persons and the texts ofered here, ro evince roward them an inadmissible ingralitude and a culpable indiference. 2. And then to exploit the "good reasons" for not responding to make use of silence in a way that is still strategic: because there is an art of the nonresponse, or of the deferred response, which is a rhetoric of w, a polemical ruse. Polite silence can become the most insolent weapon and the most deadly irony. On the pretext of waiting to have read through, pondered, labored to be able to begin to reply seriously (which will in fct b necessary and which could take forever), nonresponse as postponed or elusive, indeed abso- lutely elliptical response can always shelter one comfortably, s from a objection. And on the pretexi of feeling incapable of responding 10 the other, and answering fr oneself, does one nOt undermine, both theoretically and practically, the concept of re· sponsibility. which is actually the very essence of the socius? 3. To justify one's nonresponsc by all these argumenrs, one can still refer to rules, to general norms, but then one falls shorr of the principle of politeness and of responsibiliry [hat we recalled above: never to believe oneself free of any debt and hence never to act " Passiom simply according to a rule, in conformity to duty not even out of dut. still less "out of politeness." Nothing would be more immoral and more impolite. 4. Certainly, nothing would be worse than substituting for an inadequate response, but one still giving evidence of a sincere, modest, fnite, resigned efort, an interminable discourse. Such a discourse would pretend [ provide, instead of a response or a nonresponse, a performative {more or less perrmanu (literally; performing, also dynamic, effective} and more or less metalinguis tic) for all these questions. nonquestions, or nonresponses. Such an operation would be open ro the most justifed critiques, it would ofer its body, it would surrender, as if in sacrifce, the most vulnerable body ro the most just blows. Because it would suffer froma dubl failure, it would combine rwo apparendy comradic� tory faults: frst, the claim to mastery or to an overview [survol] (be it meta�linguistic, meta�logical, meta-metaphysical, etc.) and sec ond, the becoming�work of art (literary performance or performa tive, fction, work), the aestheticizing play of a discourse from which one expects a serious, thoughtful, or philosophical response. III So, what are we to do? It is impossible to respond here. It is impossible to respond to this question about the response. It is impossible to respond to the question by which we precisely ask ourselves whether ir is necessary to respond or nor to respond, whether it is necessary. possible, or impossible. This aporia without end paralyzes us because ir binds us doubly. (I must and I need not, I must not, it is necessary and impossible, erc.) In one and the same place, on the same apparatus, I have my tO hands tied or nailed down. What are we to do? But also how is it thar it does not prevem us from speaking, from cominuing to describe the situation, from trying r make oneself understood? Whar is thy ilature of this language, since already it no longer belongs, no) longer belongs simply, either to the question or to the response whose limits we Passiom 2) have JUSt verifed and are continuing to verify? Of what does this verifcation consist. when nothing happens without some sacrifce? Will one call this a testimony [thnoignag�. also [he act of "bearing witness" -Ed.] in a sense that neither the martyr. the attestation nor the testament would exhaust? And. as with every testimony, providing that it never be reducible, precisely, to verifcation, ro proof or to demonstration, in a word. to knowledge? Among other things, to return to the start of the scene, we fnd that the analyst, the one r whom we have given the name, can no longer describe or objectif the programmed development of a ritual, still less of a sacrifcial ofering. No one wamed to play the role of the sacrifceable or of the sacrifcer, all the agmts (priests, victims. participanrs. spectators, readers) not only n to act, but even if they wanted to make the prescribed gesrures they would fnd themselves brought to a halt when fced with these contradic tory orders. And it is not only a religious sociality whose identiry is thus menaced, it is a philosophical socialiry. insofar as it presup� poses the order (preferably circular) of the appeal [or the call: app�l-Tr.]. of the question and the response. Some will say that this is me very principle of the community which sees itself thus exposed [ disruption. Others will say that the threat of disruption threatens nothing, that it has always been the instituting or con srirutive origin of religious or philosophical ties, of the social bond in general: the community lives and feeds on this vulnerability. and so it should. If the analyst in fact discovers limits to his work of scientifc objectifcation, that is quite normal: he is a participant in a process which he would like to analyze, he can virtually play all the roles in it (that is to say. also mime them).l° This limit furnishes positively the condition of his intelligence, of his reading, of his interpretations. Bur what would be the condition of this condition? The fct that me Critical R�adr [English in original-Tr.] is a priori and endlessly exposed to a critical nadillg [English in original-Tr.]. What could escape this sacrifcial verifcation and so secure the very space of this v n di scours�. fr Dampk? No question, no response, no responsibiliry. Let us say that there is a secret here. Let 2 4 Passions us testif: T"�" is somnhing sWt. [II yo I du mnt.) Wewill leave the maTter here for tOday, but nOt without an exercise on the essence and existence of such a secret, an (xcrciS( that will have an apophatic asp«t:. 1 1 The apophatic is not here necessarily depen dent on negative rheology, even if it makes it possible, too. And what we are anempting t put to the test is the possibiliry. in truth the impossihiliry. for ay tetimony to guarantee itself by express ing irselflstlonrMm! in the following form and grammar: "l t us testif {hat . . . " We tetif [rtmoignoml to a secret rhat is without content, without a content separable fromirs performative experience, from its performative tracing. (We shall not say from its performative enlmcio/ion or fromits propositional argumentation; and we keep in reservc a number of questions about performativity in general.) Let us say, therefore; Thut i som�thingsur�t Ulya I dl ucwJ. It would not be a mauer of an artistic or technical S(cret rcserved for somrone-or for several, such as style, ruse, the signature ofralent or the mark of a genius, the know. how that is thought t b incommunicable, untransmittable, unteachable, inimitable. It would not even be a matter of that psycho-physical s«ret, the a hidden in the depths of the human soul. of which Kant speaks i n conn«rion with the transcendenral schematism, and of the imagi. nation (tint vtrborgtn� Kunst in d Tqtt mtnschlichtn 5k). Thtrt i ssom�thing stcr. It would nor be a question of a s«ret as a representation dissimulated by a conscious subj«t, nor, morrover, of the content of an unconscious representation, some s«ret or mysterious motive that [he moralist l 2 or the psychoanalyst might have the skill to det«t, or, as they say, to de·mystif. This s«ret would not even be of the order of absolute subj«tivity, in the rather unorthodox sense, with respect to a history of metaphysics, that Kierkegaard gave to oisunu and t all that resists the concept or frustrates the system, esp«ially the Hegelian dialectic. This secret would not belong to any of the stages (aesthetic, ethical. religious Passions a or b) that Kierkegaard distinguishes. It would be neither sacred nor profane. Thtrt i som�thing Stetl. But to take account of what we have JUSt suggesred, the being.there of the Sttret belong no more to the private than to the public. It is not a deprived interiority that one would have t re, confess, announce, that is, to which one would have to respond by accounting for it and thematizing it in broad daylight. Who would ever determine the proper extent of a rhematization so as to judge it fnally adc=uate? And is there any worse violence than that which consists in calling for the response, demanding that one giv� an account ofeverything, and preferably thtmaticall? B«ause this secret is not phenomenalizable. Neither phenomenal nor noumenal. No more than religion, can philoso phy, morality, politics, or the law accept the unconditional rcpect of this secret. These authoritics are constituted as authorities who may properly ask for accounts, that is, responses, from those with accepted responsibilities. No doubt they allow sometimes that there are conditional s«rets (the s«ret of confession, the profes sional Sttret, the military secret, the manufacturing secret, the state secret). But me right t Stertt is in all these 1a conditional right. Beca l lS( the S(cret L be shared there. and limited by given conditions. The secrct becomc simply a probkm. It c and must be made known under other circumstance. Everywhere mat a rcsponS( and a responsibility are rc=uired, the right to a Sttrer becomes conditional. There are no Sttrets, only problems for the knowledges which i n this respect include not only philosophy, science, ad t«hnolog, but also religion, morality. politics, and the law. Thtrt is somtthirlg Stcw. [II ya d1 $tJt.J It concerns neither that into which a revealed religion initiatts us nor that which it mlt/ (namely a mystery of passion), nor a learned ignorance (in a Christian brotherhood practicing a kind of negative theology), nor [he content of an esoteric doctrine (for example, in a Pythagorean, Platonic, or neo·Platonic community). In any �it cannot � reduced to these because it makes them possible. The secret is not mystical. 1bceìssomctbìogsecret. But it does not conceal itself. Hetero· geneous to the hidden, to the obscure, to the nocturnal, t the invisible. to what can � dissimulated and indeed to what is nonmanifest in general, it cannot � unveiled. It remains inviolable even when one thinks one has reveled it. Not that it hide itself forever in an indecipherable crypt or �hind an absolute veil. It simply exceeds the play of veiling/unveiling, dissimulation/revela tion, night/day, forgetting/anamnesis, earth/heaven, etc. It does not belong therefore ro the truth, neither to the truth as homoiosisor adequation, nor r the truth as memory (Mnemosyne, authei a). nor t the given truth, nor ro the promised truth, nor ro the inaccessible truth. Its nonphenomenality is without relation, even negative relation, to phenomenality. Its reserve is no longer of the intimacy that one likes r clsecret, of the very close or very proper which sucks in or inspires [arpimou itupiml so much profound discourse (the Ghtimnisor, even richer, the inehaustible 0obeìmhcbe). Certainly, one could speak this secret in other names, whether one fnds them or gives them r it. Moreover. this happens at every instant. It remains secret under all names and it is its irreducibility to the very name which makes it secret, even when one maIm tbe n¬tbi n its name lìtt vcìtéI soosujtll as Augustine put it so originally. The secret is that one here calls it secret, putting it for once in relation to all the secrets which br the same name but cannot be reduced to it. The secret would also be homonymy. not so much a hidden resource of homonymy, but the functional possibility of homonymy or of mìmesu 1bcci something scoOne can always speak about it. that is not cnough to disrupt it. One can speak of it ad infnitum. tell stoties') about it, uttcr all the di scourses which it puts ro work and the stories which it unleashes or enchains, because the secret ofen makes one think of these secret histories and it even gives one a PlJiom 27 taste for them. And the secret will remain secret, mute. impassive as the !hara, a Kiora foreign 10 every hinory. as much in the sense of Cocbìcbwor TgNat as of knowledge and of historical narrative (e]ìsrém�. hiJton'a nrum gmaÏm), and outside all periodization, all epochalization. lt remains silent, nor ro keep a word in reserve or withdrawn [m ntTait} , but because it remains foreign to speech ,w paTo/l. without our even �ing able to say in that distinguished syntagm: "the secret is that in speech which is foreign to speech." II is no more in speech than foreign to speech. It does not answer to speech, it does not say "I, the secret," it does not correspond. it does not answer [rondnl: either for itself or to anyone else. before anyone or anything whatsoever. Absolute nonresponse which one could not even call to account or for something on account (acomp. ttsJ. grant indemnities, excuses, or "discounts"-so many ruses. always. to draw it into a procm Iproc�sJ that is philosophical, ethical, political. juridical. etc. The secret gives rise to no procm (pÏhl. 1t may appear to give rise tb one (indeed it alW2Ydoes so), it may lend itself t it, but it never surrenders to it. The ethics of the discussion may always not respecl it (according to me it owe it respect. even if this seems difcult or contradictory. because the secret is intractable [intTailbk]), bUI it will never reduce it. More over, no discussion would either begin or continue without it. And whether one respects it or not. the secret remains there impassively, at a distance, out of reach. In this one cannot nor respect it, whether one likes it or not, whether one knows it or not. There. there is no longer time nor place. A confdence to end with today. Perhaps ali i W2nted to do was to confde or confrm my taste (probably unconditional) for litera ture. more precisely for literary writing. Not that I like literature in general, nor that I prefer it to something else, to philosophy, for example. as thcy suppose who ultimately discern neither one nor the other. Not that I want to reduce everything to it, especially not philosophy. Literature I could, fundamentally do without, in fCt, rather easily. If I had to retire to an island, it would be particularly Pio1lS history books. memoirs, that ( would doubtless lake with me. and that ( would read in my own way, perhaps to make literature out of them. unless it would be the mher way round, and this would b true for other books (an, philosophy, rdigion, human or natural sciences, law, etc.). But if. without liking literature in general and for its own sake, ( like something about ii, which above all cannot be reduced to some aesthetic quality. to some source of formal pleasure (jotisanuj. this would be ;1 plu oftlus�In place of an absolute secret. There would be the passion. There is no passion without secret, this very secret, indeed no secret without this passion. [npiu ofth� scrtt: there where nevertheless everything is said and where what remains is nothing-bm the remainder, not even of literature. I have often found myself insisting on the necessity of distill. guishing between literature and belles·lerrres or poetry. Literature is a modern invention. inscribed in conventions and institutions which. to hold on to just this trait, secure in principle its Tight tOSll �rytlillg. Literature thus ties its destiny to a certain noncensure, 10 the space of democratic freedom (freedom of the press. freedom of speech, etc.). No democracy without literature; no literature without democracy. One can always want neither olle nor the other. and there is no shortage of doing withom them under all regimes; it is quite possible to consider neither of them to be unconditional goods and indispensable rights. But in no Lcan one dissociate one from the other. No analysis would be equal to it. And each time (hat a literary work is censured. democracy is in danger, as everyone agrees. The possibility of literature, the legit. imation that a society gives it, the allaying of suspicion or terror with regard to it, all that goes together-politically-with the unlimited right to ask any question, t suspeCt all dogmatism. to analYle every presupposition, even those of the ethics or Ihe politics of responsibility. BU this authori7.tion to say everything paradoxically makes the author an author who is nm responsible to anyone. nm even to himself, for whatever the persons or the characters of his works, thus of what he is supposed to have wrinen himself, say and do. for Pnsio1 example. And these "voices" speak, allow or make to come-even in literatures withom persons and without characters. This autho· riution to say everyrhing (which goes together with democracy. as the apparent hypeHesponsibility of a "subject") acknowledge a right to absolme nonresponse, JUSt where there can be no question of responding, of being able to or having to respond. This non response is more original and more secret than the modalities of power and duty because it is fundamentally heterogeneous [0 them. We fnd there a hyperbolic condition of democracy which seems to contradict a certain determined and historically limited concept of such a democracy. a concept which links it to the concept of a subject that is calculable, accountable, imputable. and responsible, a subject having.urrespond (dlt · "pOndT�], having.to-tell [ d· diu] the (ruth, having to testify according to the sworn word ("the whole truth, nothing but the truth"), before [he law [d11l 1 loil, having to reveal the secret, with the exception of certain situations (hat arc determinable and regulated by law (confession. the professional secrets of the doctor, the psychoanalyst, or the lawyer, secrets of national defence or state secretS in general, manufcturing secrets, etc.). This contradiction also indicates the task (task of thought. also theoretico·practical task) for any democracy to come. There is in literature, in the o�mplry secret of literature. a chance of saying everything without touching upon the secret. When a hypotheses art permitted. groundless and ad infnitum, about the meaning of a text, or the fnal intentions of an author, whose person is no more represented than nonreprescnred by a character or by a narrator, 1 4 by a poetic or fctional senrence, which detaches itself from its presumed source and thus remains lock�d fvay[al UCT�t], when there is no longer even any sense in making decisions about some secret behind the surface of a textual man· ifestation (and it is this situation which I would call text or trace), when it is the call [app�1] of this secret. however, which poinrs back ¹4 the other or to something else, when it is this itself which keeps our passion aroused. and holds us to the other. then the secret impassions us. Even if there is none, even if it does not eXiSt, JO Passiom hidden behind anything whatever. Even if the secret is no secret, even if there has never been a secret, a single secret. Not one. Can one ever fnish with obliqueness? The secret, if there is one, is not hidden at the corner of an angle, it does not lay itself open to a double view or to a squinting gaze. It cannot be seen, quite simply. No more than a word. A soon as there 3rc words-and this can be said of the trace in general. and of the chance that it is direct intuition no longer has any chance. One can reject, as we have done. the word "oblique"; one cannot deny the destinerram indirection [indirrcrion din�tnu; se Derrida's Th� Post Crd: Frm Sotu 10 Fmui and Brnd trans. AJan Bass (Chicgo: University of Chicago Press, 1987)-Tr.1 as soon as there is a trace. Or, if you prefer, one can only deny it. One can stop and examine [arraisomurj a secret, make it say things, make out that [dnntr a croirj there is something there when mere is not. One can lie, cheat, seduce by making u of it. One can play with the secret as with a simulacrum, with a lun or yet another strateg. One can cite it as an impregnable resource. One can try in this way to secure for oneself a phantasmatic power over others. That hap�ns every day. But this very simulacrum still b witness to a possibility which exceeds it. It does not exceed it in the direction of some ideal community, rather toward a solitude without any measure common ro that of an isolated subject, a so lipsism of the to whose sphere of belonging (Eigmtiiclktit) would give rise {/ituj to some analogical appresentation of the alter ego and to some genesis constitutive of intersubjectivity (Husserl), or with that of ajmuinigktitof Da.stin whose solitude. Heidegger tells u. is still a modality of Mittin. Solitude. the other name of the secret to which the simulacrum still bears witness. is neither of consciousness, nor of the subject. nor of Da.stin, nO[ even of Da.st;n in its authentic being-able, whose testimony or attestation (Bt uugung) Heidegger analyzes {cf. Bthlg lnd Tinu, par. 5 4 It makes them possible, but what it makes possible does not put an end to the secret. The secret never allows itself t be captured or covered over by the relation to the other. by being-with or by any formof "social bond". Even if it makes them possible, it does not Passions J ' answer to them, it is what does not answer. No mpolls;IJtIm [English in original-Tr.). Shall we call this death? Death dealt? Death dealing? I see no reason not to call that life, existence, trace. And it is not the contrary. Consequently, if the simulacrum still bears witness to a pos sibility which exceeds it, this exceeding remains, it (is) tt re mainder. and it remains such [if (t't) Ie mit, il le restl even ifone precisely cannot here trust any defnite witness, nor even any guaranteed value to bearing witness. or, to put it another way, as the name sugests. to the history of any 1Tm (m rtrl ). For one will never reconcile the value of a tetimonywiclthat of knowledge or of certainty-it is impossible and i t ought not be done. One will never reduce the one to the other-it is impossible and it ought not be done. That remains, according to me, the absolute solitude of a passion witham martyrdom. TRANSLATED BY DAVID WOOD SAUF l E NOM NOTE: The frst version of this text w published in English under the title Post�Scriptum (subtitle: Aporit, Waysand Voiu) in a volume devoted to negative theology (Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, eds., D�"id and N�gatiw Th�olgy [Albany: State Univer� sity of New York Press, 1992]). I had been invited to respond, in the formof a conclusion, to the papers delivered at a conference having the same tide Û the volume, organized under the auspices of the Calgary Institme for the Humanities in Canada, and under the direction of Harold Coward. I was nOt able to attend this collo quium. This fctive dialogue was written, therefore, after reading the papers, themselves gathered in the volume mentioned above. I would like ro thank again the amhors: Toby Foshay, Michel Desp� land, Mark C. Taylor, Harold Coward, David Loy, and Morny Joy. In order to reconstitute a context, the editors of that volume re� published in English translations rwo essays that I had already brought out elsewhere, D'un ton apocalptiqu� adopt! nauer� e philoðophi�(P=is: Galilee, 1983), "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy," trans. John P Leavey, Jr., Th� Oxrd Literar Review 6: 2 (1984); and "Comment ne pas parler: Denega lions," in Psch!: Invenriol de/'um(Paris: Galilee, 1987), "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials," trans. Ken Frieden, in Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, cds., Languages ofthe UlSyabl: The Ply of Negativit ill Literature ald Literar Theor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), pp. 3-70. J § Saufle nom (Post-Scriptum) -Sorry, but more than one, it is always necessary to be more [han one in order to speak. several voices are necessary for that . . . -Yes. granted, and par excellence, let us say exemplarily, when it's a matter of God . . . -Still more, if this is possible, when one claims t speak abom God according to what [hey call apophasis [/'pophmel, in other words, according to the voiceless voice [1 voi bll1che], the way of theology called or so-called negative. This voice multiplies itself, dividing within itself: it says one thing and its contrary, God that is without being or God that (is) beyond being. The apophtis is a declaration, an explanation, a response that, taking on the subject of God a negative or interrogative form (for that is also what lPophasismeans), at times so resembles a profession of atheism as to be mistaken for it. All the more because the modality of apopht; ;, despite its negative or interrogarive value, ofen recalls that of the sentence, verdict, or decision, of the statement [in English in the original-Ed.]. I would like r speak to you, don't hesitate to interrupt me, of this multiplicity of voices, of this quite initial, but interminable as well, end of monologism-and of what follows . . . J5 Snufk nom -Like a certain mysticism, apophatic discourse has always been suspected of atheism. Nothing seems at once more merited and more insignifcant. morc displaced, more blind than such a trial [procesj. Leibniz himself was inclined to rhis. Heidcgger recalls what he said of Angelus Sik'Sius: "With every mystic there arc some places that are extraordinarily bold, full of difcult metaphors and inclining almost to Godlessness, JUSt as I have St'n in [he German poems of a certain Angelus Silesius, poems beautiful besidl'.'" Inclining, but not going beyond incline or inclination, not even or almost (ljnnh� zur Gotllsigk�il himuigmd), and the oblique slope [pmchamJ of this cinamm docs not seem separable from a certain boldness oflanguage (UWIUj , from a poetic or metaphoric tongue . . . -And beautiful besides, don't forget, Leibni1 notes this as if it were a marrer of an addition or an accessory (jm ;ibrigmschinm G�dichtm), but I wonder if it isn't a matter there. beauty or sublimity, of an essential trait of negative theology. A for rhe example of Angelus Silesius . . . -Let'S leave this question aside for the moment: docs the luri tag�of Angelus Silesius (Johannes Schefer) belong [Q rhe rradition of negative theology in the strict sense or nor? Can one speak here of a "strict sense"? You couldn't deny, I think, thar Angelus Silesius keeps an evidenc kinship with apophatic theology. His example signifes for us, at this moment, only this afnity bcnveen the atheism suspected by Leibniz and a certain apophatic boldness. This apophatic boldness always consisrs in going further than is reasonably permitted. That is one of rhe essential traits of a negative theology: passing to the limit, then crossing a frontier, including that of a community, thus of a sociopolitical, institu tional, ecclesial reason or raison d'erre. -If on the one hand apophasis inclines almost IOward atheism, can't one say that, on the other hand or thereby, the extreme and most consequelll forms of declared atheism will have always testi fed [tboill1 to the most intense desire of Cod? Isn't that from Sllf l flom )7 then on a program or a matrix? A typical and identifable recur rence? -Yes and no. There is one apophasis thar can in efect respond to, correspond to, correspond with the most insatiable d�si" of God according to the history and the event of its manifestation or the secret of its nonmanifestation. The orher apophasis, the other voice, can remain readily foreign to all desire. in any Lto every amhropotheomorphic form of desire. -But isn't it proper ( desire to carry with II liS own proper suspension, the death or the phantom of desire? To go toward [he absolute other, isn't that the extreme tension of a desire that tries thereby to renounce irs own proper momentum, Irs own move mem of appropriation? -Totesrif you were saying, to testify to the desire ofCod. The phrase is nor only equivocal, of an equivocity esential, signifying, decisive in irs very undecidability, to wit, the equivocity rhar [he double genirive marks ("objective" and "subjective," even before the grammatical or ontological upsurge of a subject or an object). in other words, the equivocity of the origin and of the end of such a desire: does it come from Cod in us, from God for us, from us for Cod? And as we do nor determine olneIm bir� this desire. as no rclation to self can be sure of preceding it, t wit, of preceding a rdation to the other, even were this to be through mourning, all reAection is caught in the genealogy of this genitive. I understand by that a reAection on self, an autobiographical reAection, for example. as well as a reRection on [he idea or on [he name of God. Bm your phrase is otherwise equivocal: when it names mtimolY. For if atheism, like aphophatic theology, testifes to the desire of God, if it avows, confesses, or indirectly signifes, as in a symptom, the desire of Cod, in the presence of whom does it do this1 Who speaks to whom? LeI us stay a little while with this question and feign (Q know what a discourse of negative theolog is, widl its determined traits and irs own proper inclination. Towhom is this discourse addresed? Who is itS addressee? Do it exist before this Saufk nom interlocutor. before the discourse. before its actualization [son plU� sag� I licul. before its performative accomplishment? Dionysius the Areopagite. for example, arriculates a cerrain prayer, turned toward God; he links it with an address to the disciple, more precisely to the becoming�disciple of him who is thus called to hear. An apomophe (to God) is turned toward another apostrophe in the direction of him . . . -Never of her . . . -Not to my knowledge. not in this L (but don't hasten to conclude that the scene is unfolding betw«n men, and above al that the one who speaks is a man). The other apostrophe is thus addressed to him who, precisely, does not yet know what he knows or should know, but should know with a nonknowledge, according 10 a certain nonknowledge. The hymn and the didactic become allied here according to a mode whose essential and thus irreduc� ible originaliry would have to be recaptured. It is a matter of a singular movemem of the soul or, if you prefer, of a conversion of existence that accords itself to, in order to reveal in its very night, the most secret secret. This conversion turns (itself) toward the other in order to turn (it) toward God, without there being an order to :hese twO movements that arc in truth the same, without one or the other beingcircumvemed or diverted. Such a conversion is no doubt not without relation to the movement of the Augustin� ian confession . . . -Whose autobiographical character and what mat confession inaugurates in mis regard it would also be useless to recall; it would be naive to mink that one knows what is the essence, the prove� nance, or the history of autobiography outside events like Au� gustine's Con/roions . . . -When he asks (himself), when he asks in truth of God and already of his readers why he confesses himself to God when He knows everyrhing, the response make it appear that what is essen- Su/knom 39 tial to the avowal or the testimony does not consist i n an experience of knowledge. Its act is not reduced to informing, teaching, making known. Stranger to knowing, thus to every determination or to every predicative attribution, confession shares (partg�l this des tiny with the apophatic movement. Augustine's response is in scribed from the outset in the Christian order of love or chariry: as fraterniry. In order to make them better in chariry, Augustine addresses himself to "brotherly ad devout ears" (10.)4.51), and to the "brotherly mind" so that it "loves in me" what you, God, "teach us to love" (Am�r in m� ftnU Inimus quod aldum dcn) (10·4·6). Confesion doe not consist in making known-and thereby it teches that teaching as the transmi ssion of positive knowledge is not essential. The avowal does not belong in essence to the order of cognitive determination. it is quasi-apophatic in this regard. It has nothing to do with knowledge-with knowledge as such. A act of chariry. love. and friendship in Christ. the avowal is destined to God and to creatures, to the Farer and to the bromers in order to "stir up" love, to augment an afect. love. among (hem, among us (u.I.I). And so that we give thanks to God and pray to Him for us in greater numbers (10.4.6). For Augustine does not respond only to (he question: Why do I confess to you, God, who know all in advance? Augustine speks of "doing me (fUm" (," iUl�m fo�), which does not come down ro reveling, unveiling. nor to informing in (he order of cognitive reason. Perhaps it comes down ro tntifing. He responds to the question of public, that is to say, wrinen testimony. A wrinen testimony seems more public and rhus, as some would be tempted to think. more in conformity with the essence of testimony, that is also to say. of its survival through the test of testamentary anestation. I want "to do the truth." he says, in my herr, in fronr of you, in my confession, but also "in my writing before many witnesse" (in stilo luum m�o coram mul usribus) (10.1.1). And if he confesses in writing (in lums, p�r has lilt�rl) (9.12.33; 10.3.4), it is because he wants to leave a trace for his brothers to come in chariry in order to stir up also. ar (he same lime as his, the love of readers (qui hau /uilt) (11.1.1).2 This moment of writing is done for "aferwards" [apml. But it also Sau[ù nom follows the conversion. It remains the trace of a present momenr of the confession that would have no sense without such a conversion, without this address to the brother readers: as if the act of con· fession and of conversion having a¡r�aq taken place betw"een God and him, being as it were written (it is an act in the sense of archive or memory), it was necessary to add a ¸ost-scptm-the Con- [ecions, nothing less-addressed [ brothers, [Q those who are called ro recognize themselves as the sons of God and brmhers among themselves. Friendship here has to be interpreted as charity and as fraternity. But the address to God itself already implies the possibility and the necessity of this ¸ou-scri¸tum that is originarily essential t it. Irs irreducibility is interpreted fnally, but we won't elaborate on that here, in accord with the Augustinian thought of revelation, memory, and time. -Would you say that every ¸ost-sc·i¸tum necessarily lets itselfbe interpreted in the same horizon? And that it has the same structure? -No, not without numerous precautions. But can a ¸ost-sc¬`¸- tum ever b� inuqr�ud in the sense of hermeneutic reading as well as of musical performance, for example, without composing at least indirectly with the Augustinian scansion or score [¸a·n`tion l ? An analogous question could be posed for all that we in the West call autobiography, whatever the singularity of irs "here and now." -Do you mean that every "here and now" of a Western autO biography is already in memory of the Con ¡«ions' "here and now"? -Yes. but the Con ¸·ssions themselves were already, in their wild est present, in their date, in their place, an act of memory. Let us leave Augustine here, although he always haunts certain landscapes of apophatic mysticism. (Meister Eckhart cites him ofen; he ofen cites the "without" ofSainr Augustine, that quasi-negative predica· tion of rhe singular without concept, for example: "God is wise uithom wisdom, good uithout goodness, powerful without pow er.") In Ihis place of retreat you invited me to, in this rown of Su[ l� nom 4' familial exile where your mother has nor fnished dying, on (he shore of the Mediterranean, I was able to carry with me. for these TO weeks, only extracts fromthe Ch�rubir.ic Wlltrerof Angelus Silesiusl and the manuscripts of this volume here. All the time I am wondering if this work of Silesius indeed comes under negative theology. Are there sure criteria available to decide the belonging, virtual or actual, of a discourse t negative theology? Negative theolog is nor a genre, frst of all because it is not an an. a literary art, even if, as Leibniz justly remarked ofSilesius, it is a matter there also of "German poems . . . poems beautiful besides" fl of "difcult metaphors." Is there, to take up again an expression of Mark Taylor's, a "classic" negative theology?� One c doubt this. and surely we shall have to return to this grave and limitless question. If the consequent unfolding of so many discourses (logi cal, onto-logical, thea-logical or not) inevitably leads to conclu sions whose formor content is similar to negative theology, where are the "classic" fromiers of negative theology? The fact remains that the fnale, the conclusion (Bsch¡u/) of this book, and this leads us back to the question of the addressee, is an ultimate address. It says something of the end of discourse itself and is an address to the friend, the extremity of the envoi, the hail, or the farewell \de l`¬ooi, du sa¡w ÛM d ¡ndie]. Freund Ý is! auch genug. Jm f du mehr wilt lesen, So geh und werdC selbst die Schrif und selbst das Wesen. Friend, let this be enough; if you wish t rCd beyond. Go and become yourself the writ and yourselfthe essence. (6: 26}) -The friend, who is male rather [han female, is asked, recom· mended, enjoined, ¸ncribcdto render himself. by reading, beyond reading: beyond at least [he legibility of what is currenrly readable, beyond the fnal signature-and for [hat reason t write. Not to write this or that that flls outside his writing as a nOte. a nota b¬c or a ¸ost-scµmm letting writing in its turn fall behind the written, Sufknom bUI for the friend himself to become the written or Writing. to become the essence that writing will have treated. (No) more place. starting from there. beyond. but nothing more is told us beyond. for a post-scriptum. The post-scriptum will be the debt or the duty. It will have to. it should. be reorbm into a writing that would b nothing other than the esence that would b nothing other than the being-friend or the becoming-fiend of the other. The friend will only become what he is. ro wit. the friend. he will only have become the friend at the moment when he will have read that. which is to say. when he will have read beyond-to wit. when he will have gone, and one goes there, beyond, to give oneself up, only by becoming writing through writing. The becoming ( Wtrn), the becoming-friend, the becoming-writing, and the essence ( Wtst) would be the sae here. -Certainly, but this essence (Uost) that, in wanting ro read more, the friend would become in writing, in writing itself, in scripting irsclf {m s'crivanl, m s'criturant], this essence will have bun nothing before this becoming, that is, before this writing prescribed to the friend-reader. Thi s essence is born from nothing and tends toward nothing. For earlier, didn't Silesius say . . . -By what right are thee aphorisms. these sententious frag ments, or these poetic Rashes linked together, as if they formed the continuous tissue of a syllogism? The fnal Bnchlujis not the conclusion of a demonstration, but the frewell of an envoi. Each speaking [parok] is independent. In any Ǹ you cannot logically connect them in any manner without posing this problem of logic, form, rhetoric. or poetics. You cannot treat this peregrination of writing as a treatise of philosophy or theolog, nor even as a sermon or a hymn. -Certainly, but in what remains the same book, one also read: Nichts wtr it GOn w. NichlS wird was Ýuvor i sr; wiJru nichl NMÏ ZM nicht, So wirstu nimmermehr gebohryomewgen Lichl. Sufk nom T Mcomt Nothing i t Icomt Go Nothing becomcs what isbefore: ifyu do noc become nothing. Never will yu b born of elernal lig. (6; 1)0) 43 How is this baoming to be thought? W: at once birth and change, formation and transformation. This coming to beingstart ing from nothing and W nothing, a God and a Nothing, as the Nothing irsclf, this birth that ca"its itt! without premise, this becoming-self as becoming-God-or Nothing-that is what ap p impossible, more than impossible, the . most �mposs�ble � ssi ble, more impossible than the impossible If the ImpoSSible IS the simple negative modality of the possible. -This thought seems srrangely familiar to the experience of what is called deconstruction. Far from being a methodical tech nique. a possible or necessary procedure, unrolling the law of a progra and applying rules, that is. unfolding possibilities, de construction has ofen been defned as the very experience of the (impossible) possibility of the impossible,S of the moSt impossible. a condition that deconstruction shares with the gif,6 the "yes," the "come." decision, tctimony. the secret, etc. And perhaps death. -The becoming-nothing, as becoming-self or as becoming God, the becoming (W) as the engendering ofthe � th � r, n SiflC the other, that is what, according to Angelus SlleslUS, IS possible, but as more impossible still than the impossible. This "more," this beyond. this bptr (lb) obviously introduce an absolute heterogeneity in the order and in the modality of the possible. The possibility of the impossible, of the "more i � possi ble" [hat as such is also possible ("more impossible than the Im � s sible"), marks an absolute interruption in the regime of the poSSible that nonetheless remains, if [his can be said, in place. When Silesius writes: Da ubmmmigfichJtt ut miJich. Du kanst mil deincm Pfeil die Sonne nichl crreichen, Ich kan mil meincm wol die ewge Sonn besueichen. 44 Saufk nom T"� most imposihk i fDssibk With your arrowyou cannot rech the sun, With mim: I c sep under my nr the eterna sun. (6: IU) The fb" of ibtulmigJichsu, moreover, can signif juS[ as well "most" or "more than": the most impossible or dlC more than impossible. Elsewhere: Geh hin, wo du nlchl kanst: sih, ¾du sihcst nichl: HOT wo nichlS schallt und kling!, so bis[U wo GOn sprichÎ Go Ihcr� where you LÜnot; s where you do not s ; Hear wher nothing rings or sounds, so arc you where God speaks. (I: [99) -The possibility of the impossible, of the "most impossible," of the morC impossible than the most impossible, that recalls, unless it announces, what Heidegger says of death: "die Moglichkcit der schlechthinnigen Daseinsunmeglichkeit" ("the possibility of the absoluu: impossibility of Dasein").7 What is, for DIl�in, for its possibility, purdy and simply impossible i s what is possible, and death is its name. I wonder if [hat is a maner of a purdy formal analogy. What if negative rheolog were speaking at bottom of the mortality of Df�in? And of irs heritage? Of what is written afer it, according to [dapmJ iÎ? We shall no doubt come back to this. -All the apophatic mystics can also be read as powerful dis courses on death, on the (impossible) possibility of the proper death of being-there that speaks, and that speaks of what carries away, interrupts, denies, or annihilates its speaking as well as its own DIl�ill. Berween the existential analytic of bcing-to-death or being-for-death, in &ing lnd Tim�, and the remarks of Heidegger on the theological, the rheiologica, and above all on a theolog in Snuf/� nom 45 which the word "being'" would not even app<ar, the coherence seems t me profound and the continuity rigorous. -What would this hyper-impossibility have to do, in the singu lar obscurity of this sun, wim friendship? With the address to the friend? -The queslions of address and destination, of love and friend ship (beyond even determinations of pbi/il or charity) could lead us in numerous directions. In our place here and in [he little time at our disposal this summer, allow me to privilege one, only one, of these questions. What reunites us here, the rwo of u, afer [he Calgary colloquium on negative theolog? Mark Taylor ofen ques tioned himself on the experience of what gathers or reunites, of gllth�rjng.9 This colloquium has already taken place. We were nOt there. A colloquium is a place one goes to (as to a synagogue, mat place one comes ro to gther together) to address oneself to others. At this colloquium in which we were not able, despite our desire, to participate direcriy, we had nonetheless promised, you recall, to bring ourselves together in a certai n form. with some delay. and by writing: that is, am Ih� �vrnl (aprb coup]. In any cse, the possibility of a colloquium-and then of speaking wim one an other-was indeed announced to u a colloquium whose tide bore the words "negative theolog." Thi s project could be announced only under certain conditions. What was required was to deire to share there. What was one already able to share there? Who then addresses whom? And what does "friendship" signif in this cse? -From the very beginning, and from the frst word of our promise. you remember, we had thought we had to forgo, for countless reasons, a post-scriplum that was a long and detailed response. We have had above all to forgo an original discussion that is on the same scale as so many contributions whose richness and rigor, diversity tOO, we have admired and that we will still have much to learn froIand to meditate on. Every immediate response would be hasty and presumpmous, in truth irresponsible and nor Saufk nom very "mpomi,"." It will be necessary to postpo"�once more a true post-scriptum. -What you samed ro c about. you said to me, was to testify to a gratitude whose meaning would not be without relation to what is called here negative theolog and that in its turn would not risk. not too much, becoming ingratitude, an inversion that lies in wait to threaten all apophatic movements. And then no doubt you have more afnity at the outset. an immediate afnity. given or cultivated, with particular participants, with particular discourses held here . . . -What's the use of denying it? Bur also what's the use of remarking or underlining it? These shared portions [partlgt'], these common inclinations, or these crossed paths appear from the reading of our respective texrs, in particular those that are pub lished right here. And if I have nOt yet ever met the other partici pants of the colloquium, it is also true that my friendship and my admiration. my gratefulness ro Mark Taylor, are not separable from his thought or his writings-including the text which he is publish ing in the proceeding of this colloquium. Nevenheless, I would like ro speak of another "community" (a word I never much liked, bu of its connotation of participa tion, indeed fusion, identifcation: I sa in it as many threats as promise). of another being-together than mis one here, of another gathering-together of singularities, of another friendship, even though that friendship no doubt owes the essential to being- or gathering-rogether. I mcan the friendship that permits such a meeting, and that very polylogue through which are written and read those forwhom "negative theology." through the enigma of irs name and irs original lack of meaning, still signifes something and pushes them to address one another Imdtr this name, ill thi slame, and b this title. How, today. can one speak-that is, speak together, address some one, tenif-on the subject of and in the name of negative theology? Sufle 10m 47 How can that take place today. today still, so long aer the inaugural openings of the via leativa? Is negative theolog a "topic" (Engli sh in original-Ed.]? How would what still comes to us under the domestic, European. Greek, and Christian term of negative theol og, of negative way, of apophatic discourse, be the chance of an incomparable translatability in principle without limit? Not of a universal tongue, of an ecumenism or of some consensus, but of a (Dngue to come that can be shared more ilian ever? One should wonder what signifes in this reg.the friendship of the friend. if one withdraws it, like negative theology itself, fromall its dominant determinations in the Greek or Christian world,lo fromthe fraternal (fraternalist) and phallocentric schema of philia or charity, as well as froma certain arrested formof democracy. -Friendship and translation, then, and the experience of trans lation as friendship, that is what you seem to wish we were speaking about. It is true that one imagines with difculty a translation, in the current sense of the term, whemer it is competent or not, withom some phikin, withom some love or frendship. without some "lovence" [aimanu], as you would say, borne (portle] toward the thing, the tet, or the other to be translated. Even i hatred c sharpen the vigilance of a translator and motivate a demystifying interpretation, mis hatred still re an intense form of desire, interet. indeed fscinacon. -Those are eperiences of translation, it sams to me, that make up this "Colloquium," and almost all the aurhors even give this to be remarked. Let it be said in passing, a translation (the nonorigi nal version of a textual event that will have preceded it) also shares that curious status of the posl-scri ptum about which we are going around in circles. -In which, rather, we discuss [nous dlbattons], we Rounder [nous 10U dlbattoml. How does negative theology always run the risk of resembling an exercise of translation? An exercise and Sauf/ nom nothing but? And an exercise in the form of a post-scriptum? How would this risk also give it a chance? -Let'S start again from this proposition, if you like: "What is called 'negative theology,' in an idiom of Greco-Latin fliation, is a language [kmglg�J." -Only a language? More or less than a language? Isn't it also what questions and casts suspicion on the very essence or pos sibility of language? Isn't it what, in essence, exceeds language, so that [he "essence" of negative theolog would carry itself outside of language? -Doubtless, but whar is called "negative theology," in an idiom of Greco-Latin fliation, is a language, at least, that says, in one mode or another, what we have JUt specifed about language, that is, about itself. How does one leap out of this circle? -Consequently, to believe you, an admissible disputing [con testation n¿abk J of [his proposition of the type S is P ("what is called 'N . . . is a language," etc.) could nor take the form of a refutation. It could nOt consist in giving a critique of its falseness, but in suspecting its vagueness, emptiness, or obscurity. in accusing it of not being able to determine either the subject or the attribute of that judgment, of nOt even proving this learned ignorance. in the sense ennobled byNicolas ofCusa or certain supporters of negative theology. The proposition ("What is called 'negative theolog' . . . is a language") has no rigorously determinable reference: neither in its subject nor in its attribute, we just said, but nOt even in its copula. For it happens that, however litrie is known of the said negative theolog . . . -You avow then that wedo indeed know something about it, we don't speak ofit in the void, we come Ifur this knowledge, however minimal and precarious. We preunderstand it . . 51ufk nom 49 -The preunderstanding then would be the fCt fromwhich we should indeed start, in relation to which we would be placed-afer [post-pos6]. We come If�rth� fct [aptes Ie fait]: and the discursive possibilities of the viIn�gltivl are doubtless exhausted, that is what remains for us t think. Besides, they will be very quickly ex hausted; they will always consist in an intimate and immediate exhaustion [ehaustion] of themselves, as if they could nor have any history. That is why the slightness of me reference corpus (here Th� Chmbinic Wanunr, for example) or me rarefaction of examples should not be a serious problem. We are in absolute exemplarity as in the aridity of the desert, for the essential tendency is to frmaliz ing rarefaction. Impoverishment is de rigueur. -These discursive possibilities are exhausted as formal possibili ties, no doubt, and if we formalize t the extreme the procedures of this theology. Which seems feasible and tempting. Then nothing remains for you, not even a name or a reference. You c speak of exhaustion [dipuitt[ only in me perspective of this complete formalization and in posing as extrinsic to this formal or concep tual completeness those "difcult metaphors . . . inclining almost t Godlessness," that poetic beauty, tOO, which Leibniz speaks about concerning Angelus Silesius. Thus you would oppose one formto the other, that of onto-logical formalism to that of poetics, and would remain prisoner of a problematic opposition between form and coment. But this so traditional disjunction between concept and metaphor, between logic, rhetoric, and poetics, be rween sense and language, isn't it a philosophical prejudgment not only that one can or must deconstruct, but that, in its very pos sibility, the event named "negative theolog" will have powerfUlly comributed to calling imo question? -I only wanted to recall that we preunderstood Iluad and therefore that we write If�rpreunderstanding negative theology as a "critique" (for the moment let's not say a "deconstruction") of the proposition, of the verb ,,� ,,4 in the third person indicative and of 50 Sau¡u nom everything that, in the determination of the essence, depends on Ihis mood, this time, and this person: brieRy, a critique ofomology. of theology, and of language. To say "What is called 'negative theolog', in an idiom of Greco�Latin fliation, is a language" is then to say liule, almost nothing, perhaps less than nothing. -Negative theology means (t say) very little, almost nothing, perhaps something other than something. Whence its inexhaust ible exhaustion . -That being the case, can one be 3mhorized t speak of this ap parently elementary ]ctum, perhaps indeterminate, obscure. or void and yet hardly contestable, ro wit, our preunderstanding of what is "called 'negative theolog' . . . ," etc.? What we are identif ing under these two words, mday, isn't it frst of all a corpus, a once open and dosed, given, well-ordered. a set of statements [u:t msvn bù d'ooncés 1 recognizable either by their fmily resemblance [En- glish parenthetical gloss in the original-Ed.] or because they come under a regular logicodiscursive t whose recurrence lends itself to a formalization? This formalization c become mechanical . . . -Althe more mechanizable and easily reproducible. flsifable. exposed [ forgery and counterfeit since the statement of negative theolog empties itself by defnition, by vocation. of all intuitive plentitude. Kmosisof discourse. If a phenomenological type of rule is followed for distinguishing between a full intuition and an empty or symbolic intending [vi·c� J forgetful of the originary perception supporting it. then the apophatic statements ar�, must b� on the side of the empty and then of mechanical. indeed purely verbal, repetition of phrases without actual or full intentional meaning. Apophatic statements represent what Husserl identifes as the mo ment of cni· (forgetting of the full and originar intuition, empty functioning of symbolic language. objectivism, etc.). But in reveal ing the originary and fnal necessity of this crisis, in denouncing from the language of crisis the snares of intuitive consciousness and Su/ùnom 5 ' of phenomenology, they destabilize the very axiomatics of the phenomenological, which is also the ontological and transcenden tal, ctitique:. Emptiness is essential and necessary to the m. If they guard against this, it is through the moment of praye: r or the hymn. But this protective moment remains structurally exterior to the purely apophatic instance. that is, to n�atii·� throlog as such, if there is any in the:strict sense, which c at times be doubted. The value. the �i·a/uation, of the quality, of me intensity, or of the force ofevents of negative theolog would then result from mis ·�wton that articulates this void [v¡d| on me ple:ntitude ofa prayer or an attribution (theo-Iogical, theio-Iogical. or onto-logical) negated [nicc], let`s say denegated ,dnic�] The criterion is the measure of a nktion, and this relation is stretched between two poles. one of which must be that of positivity de-negated. -From what does this re doubtable mechanicity result, the fcil ity mat the re c be in imitating or fabricating negative theology (or, as well, a poetry of the same inspiration, of which we indeed have examples)? From the fact, I belie ve, that the very fnctioning of these statements resides in a formalization. This formalization essentially does without, tends essentially to do without all content and every idiomatic signifer, every presentation or representation, images and even names of God, for eample, in this tongue or that culrure. In brief, negative theology lets itselfbe approached (preun derstood) as a corpus largely archived with propositions whose logical modalities, grammar, lexicon, and very semantics are al ready accessible to \¡ at least for what is determinable in them. -Whence the possibility of a canonizing monumentalization of works that, obeying laws. seem docile to the norms of a genre and an an. These works repeat traditions; they present themselves as iterable, infuenrial or infuenceable, objects of transfer, of credit and of discipline. For there are masters and disciples there. Recall Dionysius and Timothy. There are exercises and formations, there are schools, in the Christian mystical rradidon as well as in an 3au[bnom omotheological or meonrological (morc Greek) tradition, in its exoteric or esoreric forms. -urrainly, and he is a1r(dy a disciple. how(er inspirro, the one who wrote that not only God but the ddty surpa knowl. edge, that the singularity of the unknown God overAows the ( nce and the divinity, thwarting in this manner the oppositions of the n�ative and the positive, ofbcing and nothingness, of thing and nonthing-thus transcending all [he theological attributes: Dcruncrkandu GOt. Was GOn ist wdB man nieht: Er ist nicht Licht, nieht Geist, Nieht Wonnigkdt, nieht Eins [Derrida's version: Nieht Wahrhdt, Einhdt, Eins], nieht was man Gotthdt heist: Nieht WdBhdt, nieht Verstand, nicht Udx:, Wille, GUne: Kdn Ding, kdn Unding auch, kein Wn, kein GemUtte: Er iSI ws ich, und du, und kdne Cr(tur, E wir g(:Woroen sind ws Er i, nie erfhr. TIunknau bb Cd Whal God is one knows not: He is not light, not spirit, Not ddight, nOI one [Nol lruth, unity, one], not what 'u a1lo divinity: Not wisdom, nOI intellect, not love, wl, goodnes: No thing, no no-thing either, no essence, no concer: He is what I, or you, or any other cI$Ure, Bl w became what He is, have never come to know. (-: 11) -The following maxim [su) is precisely addressed [0 Saint Augustine as if to someone close, a master and a predecessor that he can amicably or respectflly challenge: "StOP, my Ag`ne:bcfore you have penetrated God to the bottom [e'Xriindo), one will fnd the entire sea in a small pit [ Grbbin) (4: 22). -Angelus Silesius had his own peculiar genius, but alr(dy he was repeating, continuing, importing, transporting. He would 3au[b10m 53 transfer or translate in all the senses of this term because he already w ¡o:r-u·:ring This heir kept [he archive, kept in memory the teaching of Chrisroph Kaler. He had read Tauler, Ruysbroeck, Boehme. and above alEckhart. -What we ought to start from, iff undersrand you rightly (and this would b the a¡rio·iof our a¡o:rmo¬ to wit. of this ¡osr- sciptm we are engaged in). is this astonishing [cr [fit], this a|nad¸dnc[deja fir] , this adJne[tout fir]: while negating or efcing all, while proceeding to eradicate every predicate and claiming to inhabit the dcert . . . -The desert is one of the beautiful and difcult metaphors that Leibniz was no doubt speaking of, but I am also struck by irs recurrence, in other words, by the q¡ica|:n:kingthat reproduces the metaphor like a s. Thus: man mu[nachuboGOt. . . . Wol sol ich dann nun hin? Jch muB noch tiber GOt! in eine wUSte ziehn. Onmmgo bqandCod . . . What should my qUet then be? I must bnd G inlo a descrt fe. (I: 7) Or again: D' �Einwmk�'r Die Ei nske is{ noth: doch s nur niehl gemein: So klU liberall in einer Wlisten seyn. Slt Solitude is nCry, but be only nol (in) public, So you L everywhere be in a dert. (1: 11 7) And elsewhere it is a question of "desert times" lindi:ouurcn/eit [): 18 4 ]). Isn't the desert a paradoxical fgure of the a¡oria: No j¡a: 54 Sufk nom d marked OUt [/d] or assured passage. no route in any case, at the very most trails that arc nO( reliable ways, the paths arc not yet cleared (jay1 , unless me sand has already re�covcred them. But isn't the unclered way also the condition of JiJion or �nt which consists in opening the way. in (JurJpasing. rhus in going bqond? In (sur)passing the aporia? -Despite this desert, [hen, what we call negative theolog grows and cultivates itself as a memory. an institution, a hinory. a disci pline. It is a cul[Un, with its archives and irs uadirion. It accumu lates the a of a tongue [ln"J. That in panicular is what the phrase "What is caJled 'negacive theology,' in an idiom of Greco Ltin fliation. is a language" would suggest. However much one recalls (one precisely must recall and recall that that proves the possibility of the memory kept) that negative theology "consists," through its claim to depart from all consistency, in a language that doe not c testing the very limits of language, and exemplarily those of propositional, theoreticl, or constative language . . . -By that, negative theolog would be not only a language and a testing of language, but above all the most thinking, [he most exacting, the most intractable experience of the "essence" of lan guage: a di scourse on language, a "monologue" (in the heterologi cal sense that Novalis or Heidc er gives ro thi s word) in which language and tongue speak for themselves and record [prntt (et d j that dit SprachtIpricht. Whence this poetic or fctional dimen sion, at times ironic, always allegorical, about which some would say that it is only a form, an appearance, or a simulacrum . . . . It is true that, simultaneously, this arid fctionality tends to denounce images, fgures, idols, rhetoric. A iconoclastic fction mwt b thought. -However much one says, then, that beyond the theorem and constative description, the discourse of negative theology "consistS" in exceeding �nce and language, by testifing it rtm(inJ. Sufknom 55 -What does "remain" mean here? Is it a modality of "being"? -I don't know. Perhaps this, pr«iscly, that this theology would be nothing . . . -To be nothing, wouldn't that be its s«ret or d«larc vow? What do you bclieve you are thus threatening it with? OUf discus sion still supposes that this theolog is something (determinable) and not nothing and wants to be or become something rather than nothing. Now we meant, jwt a moment ago too, to claim the contrary . . . -A question of reading or hearing [lortilkj. In any c, nega tive theology would be nothing, very simply nothing, if this excess or this surplus (with regard ro language) did nOt imprim some mark on some singular eventS of language and did not leave some remains on the body of a rongue . . . -A corpus, in sum. -Some (face remains right in this corpus, becomes this corpw as Iur-vivanct of apophasis (more than life and more than death), survivance of an imernal onto-Iogico-semantic auto-detruction: there will have been absolute rarefCtion, the deert wlhave taken place, nothing will have taken place but this place. Certainly, the "unknowable God" (¨Dcuntrandtt GOu," 4: 21), the ignored or unrecognized God that we spoke about says nothing: of him there is nothing said that might hold . . . -Save his name (SufIon nom; "'Saf, his name"] . . . -Save the name that names nothing that might hold, not even a divinity (Goull;t), nothing whose withdrawal (dbtmt'tj does not carry away every phrase that tries to measure itsclf against him. "God" "is" the name of this bottomless collapse, of this endless ,6 S ufk nom descrtifcation of language. But me trace of this negative operation is inscribed in and on and a me twnt {what comn, what (here i s and which is always singular, what fnds in this kenosis the maS( decisive condition of its coming or its upsurging). Th�" i [his event, which remains, even if this remnance is not more substan rial, more essential than this God, more oncologically determinable than this name of God of whom it is said that he names nothing that is, neither this nor that. h is even said of him that he is not what is giwn t in the sense of Cgibr: He is not what gives. his is beyond algifs rCOt u!alk Gabro," 4: 30), -Don'[ forget that that is said in the course of a prayer. What is prayer? No, one should not ask "What is prayer?," prayer in general. It is necessary (Q attempt [0 think prayer. in truth to test it out (to pray it, if one can say that, and transitively) through this particular prayer, this singular prayer in which or toward which prayer in general Itraim it�1 For this particular prayer asks noth� ing, althe while asking more than everything. It asks God ro give himself rather than gifs: "Giebsru mit dich nicht selbst, so hasru nichtS gegeben"; "If you don't give yourself to me, then you have given nothing." Which interpretS again the divinity of God as gif or desire of giving. And prayer is this interpretation, the very body of this interpretation. In and on. you said, that implies, apparendy. some topos . . . - . . . or some kMra (body without body. absent body but unique body and place [litu} of everything, in the place of every thing, interval. place [piu}, spacing). Would you also say of kMra, as you were just doing in a murmut, "save irs name" [saufIon nom; safe. irs name]? Everything secret is played our here. For this location displaces and disorganizes all our ORto-ropological preju� dices, in particular the objective science of space. KMra is over there but more "here" than any "here" . . . -You well know that. in nearly all irs Greek, Christian. Of Jewish ne rworks [fMml . the v i a nratila conjugates re: fe: re:nce: ro Sufk nom '7 God, the name:of God, with the:expcrience:of plaj. The:descn is also a fgure of the:pure place:. But fguration in ge: ne: ral results from this spatiality. from this locality of the: word [parokl. -Yc, Angelus Silesius writes this about the: word (d Wort), that is to say, about the: divine word as weil, and some: translate: Wrt here:JUSt simply by God: D O, i, d Wort. Deorr und's Wr ist Eins, und w nieht dec 1Ï (Bey Ewger Ewigeid) Ë ware niehl das Wort. Th�p/u is ,ht wr The place and the wr is one, and were the place not (of all eteral eternity!) the wr would not b. (I: 205) -Not objective: nor e3nhly, this placc comes under no geogra phy, geome: ry, or grophysics. It is not that in whi(h is found a subject or an object. It is found in ½y whe: nce: [he: cuivocal necessity of at once:recognizing it and gening rid of it: D Orh i s Stlbstin dir. Nicht du bist in dem Orth, der Orth der ist in dir! Wirftu jhn auB, so sIeht die Ewigeit schon hier. Tht plu i itt/ in yu It is nO( you in the place, the pla� is in you! Cast it Out, and here is altedy eternity. (I: 18S) -The here (hi�r) of eternity is situated there, already (schon): already there, it situates this throwing [jnl or this throwing up [ r�jnl (Auswun is difcult to translate:: at once e: xdusion, putting aside, throwing out 1�t/] , but frst of all throwing that puts Outside, that produces the: outside and thus Ipau, scparates the ,8 Sau[ù nom place from itself: Mor). It is from this already that the ¸ost- scriptum fnds its place-and fatally. -A if in response, it is already in correspondence with what Mark Taylor will have written of the "pretext of the text," which "is a before that is (always) yet to come." Or again when he plays without playing with the word, the word for word, such as it takes place or takes up residence in the other's rongue: "What is the Ort of the wort?°!! -The event remains at once tn and on language, then, within and at the surface (a surface open, exposed, immediately over· Rowed, outside of itself). The event remains in and on the mouth. on the tip [bout| of the (Ongue. as is said in English and French, or on the edge of the lips passed over by words that ca·¡ themselves toward God. They are ca¬�d [¸o·té| , both ev¸ort�d and qoru by a movement of [cce (transference, reference. diference) to· ward God. They name God. speak of him, speak htm, speak to htm, ùt htm s¸�ak in th�m, let themselves be carried by him, make (themselves) a reference to just what the name supposes to name beyond itself. the nameable beyond the name, the unnameable nameable. A if it Nnecessary both to save the name and to save everything except the name, :a:� th� nam� [saufle nom], as if it was necessary to lose the name in order to save what bears the name, or that toward which one goes through the name. Bur to lose the name is not t attack it. to destroy it or wound iL On the contr to lose the name is quite simply (0 respect it: as name. That is (0say. to pronounce it, which comes down Î traversing it toward the other, the orner whom it names and who bears it. To pronounce it without pronouncing iL To forget it by calling it, by recalling it (t oneself), which comes down (0 calling or recalling the other . . . -Certainly, bur it is then necessary (0 Stop submitting language, and the name in language (by the way, is the name, the proper name or the name par excellence in language and what would this indusion mean?) (0 generality. (0 whatever fgure or topological SallfI nom '9 schema? We speak here in and on a language that, while being opened by this (reice. says the inadequation of the reference, the insufciency or the lapse of knowing, its incompetence as to what it is said (0 be the knowing of Such an inadequation translates and betrays the absence of a common measure berween the opening, openness ,a¸crttc|, revelation. knowledge on the one hand and on the other a certain absolute secret, non provisional, heterogeneous (0 all manifestation. This secret is not a reserve of potential [¸otei- :;µ] knowing, a potential [o ¸ut::ance] manifestation. And the language of ab.negation or of renunciation is not negative: not only because it does nor scate in the mode of descriptive predication and of the indicative proposition simply afected with a negation ("rhis is nor that"), but because it denounces as much as it renounces; and it denounces, enjoining; it prescribes overAowing chis insuf· ciency; it mandates, tt nt'ssitardoing the impossible, necessitates going (Gh, Go!) there where one cannot go. Passion of, for, the place, again. I shall say in French: tl ¡a l�d(which means ilfllt, "it is necessary." "there is ground for") rendering oneself th�r� uh�r� it is impossible t go. Over there, tOward the name. toward rhe beyond of the name tn the name. Toward what, tOward he or she who remains-save the name [sau[ù nom, or "safe, the name" Ed.]. Going where it is possible ro go would not be a displacement or a decision, it would be the irresponsible unfolding of a program. The sole decision possible passes through the madness of the undecidable and the impossible: t go where (uo, Ort wo·t) it is impossible to go. Recall: Geh hin, NM du nicht kanst: sih, NM du sihest nich[: Hor wo nichu scaUt und klingt, so bislU ¼Ü Got! spricht. (I: 199) -According to you, it is this normative denunciation on the ground of impossibility, this sweet rage against language, this jealous anger of language within itself and against itself, it is this passion that leaves the mark of a scar in that place where the 60 Soufl nom impossible take place. isn't it? Over there. on the other side of the world? The other side ofth� world, is that still the world, in the world. the otherworld or the other ofth�world, everything save the world [/OUI sau/k mont. also "totally safe, the world"-Ed.]? -Yes, (he wound is there, over there. Is there some orer thing, ever, that may bt legible? Some other thing than the [race of a wound? And some other thing that may ever take place? Do you know anomer defnition of event? -BU[ nothing is more illegible than a wound, as well. I sUPPOS( that in your eyes legibility and illegibility do not equal rwo i n this place. According to yOll, it is this trace in any case that becomes legible. renders and renders itself legible: in and on language, that is, at the edge of language . . . -There isonly the edge in language . . . That is, reference. From the supposed fCt that there W never anything but reference. an irreducible reference, one 1JUIr M �Uconclude that the refer· ent-everything save the name [rour ðufk nom, also "totally safe. [he name" -Ed.I-is or is not indispensable. All history of negative theolog, I bet, plays itself out in this brief and slight axiom. -''At the edge of language" would then mean: "at the edge as language," in the same and double movement: withdrawing (d. rob�m(nt) and overfowing [dbor). But as the moment and the force, as the movmuntsof the injunction take place Ol tlu�d� (par·dessus bord), as they draw their energ fm having ai"ady tkm piu-even ifit is as a promise-the legible.illegible text, the rheologico.negative maxim IS(ntmc� I remains as a post-scriptum. It is originarily a posHcnptum, it comes after the event . . . -an event, iff understand right, that would have the form of a seal, as if, witness withour witness, it were committed to keeping a secret, the event sealed with an indecipherable signatute, a set of initials, a line itlin] before the letter. Soufi nom _The sealed event corresponding to the experience of a trait (drawn line. Zug, edge, border, overowing, relation to the other, Zug, Bnug, ference, reference to some othn thing than self, dif fcrance), the deferred action (/'P"S-coup] is indeed the coming of ,1 writing after the other: pOJ1-scnpmm. -The trace of this wounded writing that bears the stigmata of its own proper inadequation: signed, assumed, claimed . . . _ . + + of its own proper disproportion also, of its hubris thus countersigned: that cannot be a simple mark identical 10 self . . . -. . . as i there ever were any . . . -That cnnot be a signature unelced, inefceable, invulner able, legible for what it is on a surface, right on a support that would only equal one with (it)self. The very surface serving as support for me signature [I JUbl mbn�] remains improbable. This mark rake place afer taking place. in a slight. discreet. but powerfl movement of dis-location. on the unstable and divided edge of what is called language. The very uniry of what is called language becomes enigmatic and uncertain there. And so the phrase "What is called 'negative theolog' . . . is a language" says at once tOO much and tOO linie. It no longer has the intelligibiliry of a sure axiom, no longer gives the chance of a consensus, the charter of a colloquium, or the assured space of a communiction. -Let's not yet discredit the phrase. Let'S provisionally keep ii, as a guiding thread, as if we had need of it and the desire of going further. -Don't all the apophatic theologemes have the status or ralher the movement, Ihe instabiliry of [his trajectory? Don't they resem ble arrows, dartS [trait]. a grouped fring of arrows destined to point in the same direction? But an arrow is only an arrow; it is 6, Su[ù nom never an end in itself It is everything save what it aims fOf. save what jt strikes. even. indeed, save what it wounds; [his is what makes the arrow miss even mat which it touches, which thereby remains safe . . . -Silesius says this well when he speaks precisely of the possibility of the most impossible or of the more than the most impossible ("Das Oberunmoglichste ist faglich"). It specifes. you recall: With your Û ½N yu cannm roch [he sun, With mine I \J seep under my fre the ecernal sun. (6: In) -Let'S k«p this proposition ("What is called 'negative theol ogy' . . . is a language"), L try to question it in its most manifest meaning. ar [ceva/u�[in English in original-Ed.]. And let's come back to the theme of ¡hibin,let's say rather of love nee (aima1u] as transfer or translation. -Thee themes are not loclizable. but let's go on. -Do you want us m act as if they were? The appearance gives us to believe that the expresion "negative theology" has no sta equivalent ourside (O traditions. philosophy or ontotheolog of Greek provenance, Ne Testament theology or Christian mysti cism. These (O trajectories. these (O paths [tajm] thus arrowed would cross each other in the hean of what we call negative theology. Such a crossing . . . -Everything here, you realize, seems crvca|: the crossroads of these (O paths, the kvum�¡scOutch:rnichungunder which Hei degger crases the word being (which his theology to come would have had, he says, to dispense with). and the C�vi�rto which he claims then to refer, the Christian cross under which Marion himself erases the word "God" (a way, perhaps, to save the name of God, to shield it from all onm-theological idolatry: God without 'aq/ù10m 6) Being [DiC sn nl, also understandable as "God without being God" and herable as "God without Icner"; also the tide of a book by Jean-Luc Marion that h bccn translated as Godwirhoußi·tg DonT by Thomas A. Carlson {Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 199I)-E.J. -That's true. In any case, the expression "negative theolog" names most ofen a discursive experience that is siruated at one of the angles formed by the crossing of these (wo lines. Even if one line is then always cs [English parenthetical gloss in the origi nal-Ed.], this line is situated in that place. Whatever rhe transla tions, analogies, transpositions. transferences. metaphors. never has any discourse expressly given itself this title (negative theology, apophatic method, vi a ncgarim) in the thoughts of Jewish, Mus lim, Buddhist culture. -Are you sure that tis ririe has never been claimed by any au rhor for his ver own discourse. even in the traditions you invoke? -I was only wanting to suggest thar in the cultural or historical zone in which the epression "negative theology" appears as a SOr of domestic and controlled appellation, the zone in sum of rhar Christian philosophy whose concept Heideger was saying was as mad and contradictory as that of a squared circle. apophasis has always repreented a son of paradoxical hfIrbole. -That's a name quite philosophical and quite Greek. -From this paradoxical hyperbole, let's retain here the trait necessary m a brief demonstration. Let'S be more modest, to Ü working hypothesis. Here it is. What permits localizing negative theology in a historial site and identifing its very own idiom is also what uproots it from irs rooting. What assigns it a proper place is what expropriates it and ¬gag�s it thus in a movement of univer salizing translation . .In other words, it is what engages it in the clement of the most shareable j)arrag�aH] discourse, for example, 5u[b nam thaI of this conversation or of this colloquium in which are crossro thematics Christian and non*Christian Oewish. Muslim, Hindu. Buddhist, etc.), philosophical and nonphilosophical, European and non*European, etc. -Do you see in this cngagcmCtsomerhing that is allied with this singular friendship you spoke about juSt a moment ago with grateflness-and apropos gratitude? -I don't know. All this remains very preliminary, as precipitated as a ¡a:r-:¬¡rumcan be. If I use words as philosophical and Gr�k as "paradoxical hyperbole," 1 do so frst of all. among other things. to point [[irz:ignc] toward a well. known passage of Plato's R* ¡ubh`c Du¡ctbaPnames the movement of transcendence that cr* ties or transports beyond being or beingness ,nanur( c¡ckc¡na ti aMi M. This excessive movement, the fring ofthis displacing arrow [uttc jcl e m¡mrmcnr] encourages saying: X "is" beyond what is, beyond being or beingness. ut X here be the Good, it matters little for the moment, since we are analyzing the formal possibility of saying: X "is" beyond what "is," X is without being ( |mm (?irJ. This hyperbole annauncc:. It announces in a double sense: it sinals an open possibility, but i t also ¡ravakc:thereby the open* ing of the possibility. Its event is at once revealing and producing, ¡o:rc¬` ¡rumand prolegomenon, inaugural writing. Its event an* nounces what comes and makes come what will come fromnow on in al the movements in h¡¡¬ ultra, au-dD, bqvnd ubct, which will precipitate discoul' or, frst of all, existence. This precipita* rion is their passion. -You said "existence," i f I understand right, in order not to say "subject," "soul," "spirit," "ego," nor even Da*sein. And yet La:cin is open t being as being by the possibility of going beyond the present of what is. Passion: transcendence. -To be sure, and Heidegger does indeed understand La:cin thus: he describes the movement of its transcendence by explicitly Su[b nam citing the Platonic c¡ckcinar¿au:¡a:. But then he s�ms to under* stand/hear the beyond as the beyond of the torality of beings and not as the beyond of being itself, in the sense of negative theology. Now the hyperbolic movements in the Platonic. Plotinian, or Neoplatonic style will not only precipitate beyond being or God insofr as he is (the supreme being [émn|, but beyond God even as name, as naming. named, or nameable, insofr as reference is made there to some thing. The name itself seems sometimes to be there no longer safe . . . The name itself seems sometimes to be no longer there. save [mu]safe] . . . _ . . . besides, the beyond as beyond God is not a place, but a movement of transcendence that surpasses God himself, being, essence, the proper or the self·same, the Sc/b:r or &/ of God. the divinity of God (GOttlitl-in which it surpasses positive rhcog as well as what Heidegger proposes to cl rhcio|@, that is. dis course on the divinity (rhcian) of the divine. Angelus Silesius. again, who was saying, you recall: man mu[nach i, COn. Jc muS noch uber GOu in einC wi.iSte ziehn. (I: 7) but also: Dit u,·GOtit. Waman von COn geagt, d guger mir noch nicht: Die uber*COnheit ibt mein Leben und mein liecht. 7hc bnd divinit Wat w said of Cod. not yet sufces me: Te beyond divinity is my life and my light. (I: IS) -Carrying itself beyond, this movement radically dissociates being and knowing, and existence and knowledge. It is, as it were. a 66 Su[ùnom fracture of me c»gìto(Augustinian or Cartesian) as the cogtogives me [0 know not only tbat bll[ ubataoduboI Ã- This fcture is as valid for me as for God; it extends its crack into me analog between God and me, creator and creature. This time [he analogy does not repair, nor reconcile, bur aggravates [he dissociation. Man wi nichr u¬ao il. 1c weiB nicht wich bin. Jch bin nicht wich wciB: Ein ding und nit do ding: Ein Stilpffchin und do kreiK On� knows 10t what on� i I knownot wh:1 I Ü. I ÜnOI what I know; A thing and not a thing: a poin! and a circle. (I: s) And here is, hardly much farther, the analogy, (he ui�: }ch bin wir Cn, «o Cn wir ich. Jch bin so groB als GOn: Er is[ als ich so klein: E k nich UIKr mich. ich untet Jhm nicht .eyn. I a¬a Go aodcdQI I Ü¢ big as God; He is Ü small Ü I: He cannot b over me, I cannOl be under him. (I: 10) -I am always sensitive to this unusual alliance of ruo]ouand of n voìos in these poetic aphorisms or in mese declarations without appeal. above all when the I advance there in this way. at once alone with God and as the example that authorizes itself to speak for each one, ro dare testif for the orher (to testify for the witness). without waiting for any response or fearing discussion. Contrary ro what we said at me bq;inning of our conversation. mere is also a monologism or soliloquy in these imperturbable discourses: nothing seems to disquiet them. These two powers are, on tb�on�baod that of a radical critique. of a hyper-critique after which nothing more seems assured, neither philosophy nor meol og. nor science, nor good sense, nor the least d. and ootb�otber Su]I oom 6 7 baod conversely, as we are settled beyond all discussion. the au thority of that sententious voice that produces or reproduces me chanically its verdicts with the tone of the most dogmatic as surance: nothing or no one can oppose this, since we are in passion: the assumed contradiction and the claimed paradox. -The double power of mese twO voices is not withom relation to the dublcbiodof ex-appropriation or of the uprooting rooting I spoke abom just before. In effect, this theology launches or carries negativity as the principle of auto-destruction in the heart of each thesis; in any event. mis theology suspends every theis. all belief all d. . . -In which its �]okbëhassome afnity with the :kçsì:of scepti cism as well as with the phenomenological reduction. And contrary to what we were saying a while ago. transcendental phenomenol ogy. insofar as it passes through the suspension of all dof every positing of existence. of every thesis. inhabits the same element as negative theology. One would be a good propaedeutic for the other. -If you like. but mis is not incmpatible with what we said about the language of crisis. But let's leave that. Dotb�oo�baod then, placing the thesis in parenthesis or in quotation marks ruins each ontological or theological proposition. in truth. each phi losopheme as such. In this sense, the principle of negative theology, in a movement of internal rebellion, radically COntests the tradition fromwhich it seems to come. Principle against principle. Parricide and uprooting, rupture of belonging, interruption ofa sort of social contract, the one that gives right to the State, the narion, more generally to the philosophical community as rational and logo centric community. Negative theology uproots itself from there after the fct ja]rè:cou]|,in the torsion or conversion of a second movement of uprooting, as if a signature was not countersigned hut contradioed in a codicil or in the remorse of a ]o:t-scrì]rumat the bottom of the contract. This contract rupture programs a whole series of analogous and recurrent movements, a whole ombidding õ8 3a¡b nam of the nu ¡mum uthat calls to wimess the c¡�kc¡na INau:iar,and at rimes without pfnting itself as negative theolog (Plotinus, Heidegger, Levinas). But 01 rhc arhohand and in that very way. nothing is more fithfl than this hyperbole to the originary onmtheological in junction. The ¡a:r-:cn¡rum remains a caunrcnignarun, even if it denies this. And, as in every human or divine signature. (here rhe name is necessary [ilJ [ut b nam]. Unless, as was suggested a moment ago, the name be what efces itself in front of what it names. Then "the name is nece " would mean that the name is lacling [[irdurl: it must be lacking, a name is necessary [il[ur unnamJ that is lacking [¸at:cµurJ. Thus managingraq~iucq it im(uiübea{, uidb�. sai·ciucq[sera sallf lui-memel . In rhe most apophatic moment, when one says: "God is not," "God is neither this nor that, neither that nor its contrary" or "being is not," etc., even then it is still a matter of saying the entity [int] such as it is, in its truth, even were it meta-metaphysical, meta ontological. It is a maner of holding the promise of saying the truth at any price, of testifing, of rendering oneself to the truth of the name, to the thing itself such as it must be named by the name, rhar i I, bçand rhc name. The thing, save the name. It is a maner of � ecording the referential transcendence of which the negative way IS only one way, one methodic approach, one series of stages. A prayer, too, and a testimony of love. but an "I love you" on the way to prayer and to love, always on the way. Angelus Sileius, among others, specifes this well when he adds, in a sort of nme or PÛðr :cri¡rumto sentence t: 7, ¨manmu¸nachuberGOu°: "beyond all one knows of God or can think of him, according to negative contemplation [nacht ÞÎeinmd bcchauung|, about which search through the m¸uic." -Then you wouldn't say that the Chetubinic wndcretcomes under negative theology. -No, certainly nor in any sure, pure, and integral fashion, ahhough the Chc·vbinic W"derowes much [ it. But f would no 3aq]|c nam nlore say that of any text. Conversely, I trUSt no text that is not in some way contaminated with negative theolog, and even among those texts that apparently do nor have, w, or believe they have any relation with theology in general. Negative theolog is every where. but it is never by itself. In that way it also belongs, without fulflling, to the space of the philosophical or onto-theological promise that it seems to break [rznierj: to record, as we said a moment ago, the referential transcendence of language: to say God such as he is, beyond [¡ardl¦ his images, beyond this idol that being can still be, beyond what is said, seen, or known of him; to respond to the true name of God, to the name to which God responds and corresponds beyond the name that we know him by or hear. It is to this end thar the negative procedure refses, denies, rejects all the inadequate amibutions. It does so in the name of a way of truth and in order to hear the name of a JUSt voice. The authority of which we spoke a moment ago comes to the negative procedure from the truth in the name and on the way [vaie{ of which it raises the voice [vix]-the voice that speaks through its mouth: abrheiaas the forgorren secret that sees itself thus unveiled or the rrmh as promised adequation. In any case, desire to say and rejoin what is ¡ra¡cr[0 God. -But what is this proper, if the proper of this proper consists in expropriating itself, if the proper of the proper i precisely, justly [¡usremenr|,ro have nothing of its own [ m ¡ra¡rz|:What does "is" mean here? -Silesius never fails to expose, precisely, justly, the name of God [jMnmmr; for a re- and disadjustmenr ofjMnmmrand "justice," Á1C Derrida's S¡cmdmao(Paris: Galilee, 1993); S¡nma[mao: ¼e 3ran a[rhc Lcbt, thc warka[mau¬ing, andthNeÎnma- rional trans. Pegg Kamuf(New York: Rourledge, 1994l-Ed.J. Gortgtmchaf. Was isl GOns Eig�nshaf? sich in Geopf �rgitn Allzeit d�rselbe sen, nichls habn, wll�n, wisscn. ' 70 Saufk 110m Godi own prlr W:1 is God's own proper? Î pour forth in cfation, To b the same in al limes, Îhave, want, know nothing.' (1: 1)1) But the pOJt-S€iptum adds a decisive philosophical precision: a remorse reinscribes this proposition within the ontolog that op poses essence to accident, necessity to contingency: 'Undemand [his acdtur I vruh( accidemaliter} or in a con tingent way 1m zuflligtr witj: for what God wants and knows, he knows and wantS essentially [uxuntlich} . Thus he has nothing cs (by way of propery [or qualiry: mit EhafJ), God "therefore no longer has anything" and. if he gives, as (he Good of Plotinus (Enncad, 6. 7-15-/6-17), it is also what he does not have, insofar as he is not only beyond being but also beyond his gifs (Ja; IOU dimenou to ditI tptktilll en), And to give is not to engender, nor is it to gitl� biTth. Now this revolution, at once interior and exterior, which makes phitosophy, omo.theological metaphysics, pass over the other edge of itself is also the condition of its translatabitity. What makes phitosophy go outside itself calls for a community that overfows its tongue and broaches {mtmd a process of universalization. -Whar makes it go outside irselfwould come to it rhus already from [he outside. from the absolute outside. That is why the revolution could not be only interal [inutin�l. -That's exactly what the revolution says, what the mystics and the theologians of apophasis say when they speak of an absolute transcendence that announces itself within. All that comes down to the same or, indiferently, to the other. What we've JUSt said about philosophical Greece is also valid for the Greek tradition or transla· tion of the Christian revelation. On fh� OIU hand in the interior. if one can say this, of a history of Christianity . . . Salii 110m 7' -But for a while now I have the impression that it is the idea itself of an identity or a seif.imeriority of every tradition (tu OIU metaphysics, tl 011� onro·theoiog, Ih� 01� phenomenology, rh� OIU Christian revelation, tu 01� history itself. th� OIU history of being, rh� on�epoch, rlu on� tradition, self.identity in general, the one. etc.) that fnds itself contested at its root. -In efect, and negative theolog is one of the most remarkable manifestations of this self·diference. Let's say then: in what one coul b�/�v� to be the interior of a history of Christianity (and all that we have read of Sitesius is through and through overdeter· mined by the themes of Christian revelation; other citations would have demonstrated this at any moment), the apophatic design is also anxious to render itself independent of revelation. of all the literal language of New Testament eventness 11W11�m�1ialil], of the coming of Christ, of the Passion, of the dogma of the Trinity. etc. A immediate but intuition less mysticism, a sort of abstract kenosis. fr� this language from all authority. al narrative. all dogma, all belief-and at the limit from all fith. At the limit. this mysticism remains, mer the fct (apm (oupl. independent of all history of Christianity, abJoluul independent. detached even, per· haps absolved. from the idea of sin. fr even, perhaps redeemed, from the idea of redemption. Whence the courage and the dissi· dence, potential or actual. of these masters (think of Ear, whence the persecution they sufered at times. whence their pas· sion. whence this scent of heresy. these trials, this subversive mar· ginality of the apophatic current in the history of theolog and of the Church. -Thus, what we were analyzing a while ago, this ruptute of the social contract but as a process of universalization (in a way, a kind of spirit of the Enlightenment [Lllmi.mJ), is what would be regularly reproduced . . . -You could almost say normally, inevitably, typically . . . 7' Sufk nom _ . . . as dissidence or heresy, pharmaka! to be excluded or sacrifced, another fgure of passion. For it is true that. 01 th� oth" hand and according to the law of the same dubl bind me dissident uprooting can claim to fulfll the vocation or the promise of Christianity in its most historic essence; thereby it responds (0 the cland to the gif ofChris[, as it would resonate everywhere, in the ages of ages, rendering itself responsible for testiling before him, that is, before God (Aufkli rung rather than Enlightenment, bur let's leave . . . ), Besides, hidden or visible, metaphoric or literal (and with regard to the apopharic vigilance. this rhetoric on rhetoric moves iudf as if into a state of dogmatic somnambulism), the reference [Q [he Gospel is most ofen constitutive. inefaceable. prescribed. Recall, for example, mis "fgure" of Christian interiorization that makes here of the hean a Mount of Olives, as Saint Paul speaks elsewhere of the circumcision of the hean: Drr Oribrr. Sol dich deB Herren Ag! erlosen von beschwerden, So muB dein Her vor zu einem Odberg werden. Moum ojOlv Should (he Lord's aony redeem you of your sin, Your hert muS[ become fr! a MOUn! of Olives. (2: 81) -But don't you believe that a certain Platonism-or NeoplatO nism-is indispensable and congenital here? "Plato, in order to dispose to Christianity" [Ptltei6121219J. said Pascal, in whomone could at times discern the genius or the machine of apopharic dialectics . . . -A is [he case everywhere. And when Silesius names the eyes of the soul, how is one not to recognize there a vein of the Platonic heÍitage? But that can be found again elsewhere and without fliation. One can always afrm and deny a fliation; the afrma- Saufle nom 73 tion or the assumpt.ion of this inherited debt as de-negation is the doubl truth offliation, like that of negative theology. -But isn't it more difcult to replatonize or rehellenize creation ism? Now creationism ofen belongs to the logical structure of a good many apophatic discourses. In this way, creationism would also be their historic limit, in the double sense of this word: the limit ill history and the limit M history. Like that of hell, the concept of creature is indispensable to Angelus Silesius. When he says to us, "Go there where you cannot go," it is to develop the ride, in a way, of this maxim [maximej, to wit, "GOtt ausser Creamr," "God outside the creature" (I: 199). If rhe proper of God is nor to have properties (He is everything save what He has), it is, as we heard, buGod pours forth "in creation" (ins Gechipj) . -But what if rhat signifed, in place of being a creationist dogma, that creation means expropriating production and that everywhere there is ex-appropriation there is creation? What if that were only a redefnition of the current concept of creation? Once more, one should say of no matter what or no maner whom what one says of God or some other thing: the thought of whomevcr concerning whomever or whatever, it dem� mater [n'importe]. One would respond rhus in the same wayto the question "Who am I?" "Who are you?" "What is the other?" "What is anybody or anything as other?" "What is thc being of being [lttrd !'tam] as completely other?" All the cxamples are good oncs, cven ifthey a show that they are singularly though unequally good. The "no matter" of the "no matter whom" or of thc "no matter what" would open the way to a sort of serene impassibility, to a very shrill inscnsibility, if I can put it this way, capable of being stirred by everything, precisely because of this element of indifercnce that opens onto no matter what diference. This is how I somctimes undcrstand the tradition of Gelenheit, this serenity that allows for being without indiference, Icrs go without abandoning, unless it abandons without forgetting or forgers without forgetting-a se- 74 Sufu nom reoiry whose insisrance onc can trace from Meister Ekhardt to Heidegger. 1 2 -I have no objection to this hypothesis. As you describe this G�/stnbtit. you are very careful not to talk ahom love, and here love is probably only a particular fgure for all that this lwing can afect (without. however, afecting it). 8U[ why nm recogniu there love itsdf, that is, this infnite renunciation which somehow SUT muto the impossibl [se rend a !'impossible]? Tosurrender to the other, and this is the impossible, would amount [0 giving onesdf over in going toward (he other, ro coming roward the orer but without crossing [he threshold, and to respecting, to loving even (he invisibility that keeps [he other inaccessible. To surrendering one's weapons [ undrt U Mrmes]. (And "ld" here no longer means to restore or to reconstitute an integrity, to gather up in the pact or in the symbolic.) To give oneelf up 1st Tmd"] and to surrender one's weapons IT I armnJ without defat, without memory or plan of war: so that this renunciation not be another ruse of seduction or an added stratagem of jealousy. And everything would remain intact-love, too, a love without jealousy that would allow the other to be-afer the passage of a vi a n�ativa. Unles I interpret it too freely, this via n�ativa does not only constitute a moVmmt or a mommt of deprivation, an asceticism or a provi sional ken6sis. The deprivation should remain at work (thus give up the work) for the (loved) other ro remain the other. The other is God or no matter whom, more precisely, no matter what sin gularity, as soon as any other is rotally other I tout aul tst tout aUIt] . For the most difcult, indeed the impossible, resides there: there where the other loses its name or can change it, ro become no matter what other. Passible and impassible, the GtlsmlJit exertS itself in us, i t ;so: nudon this indiference by some other. It plays at and plays with indiference, without playing. That explains, be sides, if not a certain quietism, at least the role that Gtlmhtil plys in the thought ofSilesius, and frst of all the role that plyitself does nOt fail to play in the thought of divine creation: Sull nom GOtt spitlt mit dn GmlHpf· Di£ alle iSI ein Spiel, d Jhr die GOuheit machl: Sie hal die Creamr umb Jhret willn erdachl. God plys with mation. All that is play thai the Deity gives Itself It has imagined the creature fr Its pleasure. (1: 198) 75 -Negative theolog then can only present itself as one of the most playful forms of the creature's participation in this divine play, since "I" am"as" "God," you recall. There remains the question of what gives rise and place to this play, the question of the place opened for this play between God and his creation, in other terms, for ex-appropriation. In the maxim " GOtt aUSJ" Crtatur, " the a Vb that says the place (wo) gathers the whole enigma. G � IR t � toil there where you cannot go [t Tdr] , to the impoSible, It IS indeed the only way of going or coming. To go [St rndr] there where it is possible is not to surrender [se rndr]. rather, it is to be already there and to paralyze oneself in the in-decision of the non event lanlnntnt] : Geh hin, wo du nicht kanse sih, wo du sihest nicht: Hor wo nichts schalll und k1ingt, so bestu wo GOIt spricht. (I: 1 99) This adverb of place says the place (w) of the word of God, of God as word, and" Der OTt at d Wort" (I: 205) indeed afrms the place d word [pa7l] of God. -Is [nis place created by God? Is it pan of the play? Or else is it God himself? Or even what precedes, in order to make them possible. both God and his Play? In other words it rem � ins to be known if [his nonsensible (invisible and inaudible) place IS opened by God, by the name of God (which would again be so � e other thing, perhaps), or if it is "older" than the time of creanon, than Sufknom time itself, rhan history, narrative, word, etc. It remains to be known (beyond knowing) if the place is opened by appeal (re sponse, the event that calls for the response, revelation, history. etc.), or if it remains impassively foreign, like Khorl, to everything that takes its place and replaces itself and plays within this place. including what is named God. L call this the test of Khrrl . . . -Do we have any choice? Why choose betw�n the two? Is it possible? But it i s true that these twO "places," these two experi ence of place, these twO ways are no doubt of an absolute herero geneity. One place excludes the orher, one (sur)passcs the other. one does without the other, one is. absolutely, without the other. Bm what still relates them to each other is this strange preposition. this strange with-without or without-with. without [English in original-Ed.]. The logic of this junction or of this joining (conjunction-disjunction) permits and forbids at once what could be called exemplarism. Each thing. each being, you, me, the other. each X, ech name, and each name of God can become the eample of other substitmable X's. A process of absolute formalization. Any other is totally other. [ ToUIIUhTet tou/aum.] A name of God, in a tongue, a phrase. a prayer, becomes an example of the name and of names of God. then of names in general. I i n�ctslr [il fur 1 to choose th� bm of the examples (and it is necessarily the absolute good, the Iglthon, which fnds itself to be, then, �p�k�ina fi ousil). but it is the best l aampk: for what it is and for what it is not, for what it is and for what it represents. replaces, exemplifes. And the "it is necessary" ((he best) is also an example for all the "it is necessary's" that there are and L be. -1 fut does not only men it is necessary, but, in French. etymologically, "it lacks" or "is wanting." The lack or lapse is never f away. -This exemplarism joins and disjoins at once, dislocates the best as the indiferent, the best as well as the indifferent: on O!� Jit. on one way, a profound and abyssal eternity, fndamental but Sufknom 77 :lcessible to messianism i n general, to the telco-eschatological narrative and to a certain experience or historical (or historial) revelation; on th� oth�r Jid, on the other way, the nontemporality of an abyss withom botrom or surface. an absolute impassibility (neither life nor death) that gives rise [0 everything that it is nOt. In fact, twO abysses. -But the twO abysses Silesius speaks about are two examples of the frst abyss. the profound, the one that you have just defned frst, although it is nOt in any way "frst," precisely. Silesius writes: Ein Abnd rf dma1ur. Der Abgrund meines Geim ruft immer mit Geschrey Den Abgrund GOnes an: sag welcher tiefer sey? Oll� ab calls rht othtT The abys of my spirit always invokes with cries The abys of Go: say which may be deeper? (I: 68) -Ir is just this singular exemplarism that at once roots and uproots the idiom. Each idiom (for example, Greek onto-theology or Christian revelation) can rcstify for irself and for what it is not (not yet or forever), without this value of testimony (marryrdom) being itself totally determined by the inside of the idiom (Christian martyrdom. for example). There, in this testimony offered � �t to oneselfbur to the other, is produced the horizon of translatablhty then of friendship, of universal community, of European decenter ing, beyond the values of philia, of charity. of every � hing that � be associated with them, even beyond the European mterpretauon of the name of Europe. -Are you implying that it is on this condition that one can organize international and intercultural colloquiums on :'ncgativc theolog"? (I would now put quotation marks around thiS expres� sion.) Sufk nom -For example. It is nece in any case to think the historial and a-his(Oriai possibiliry of this project. Would you have imagined such a colloquium only a century ago? But what seems possible become thereby infnitely problematic. This double paradox re sembles a double aporia: simultaneous negation and reafrmation of Greek onto-theolog and metaphysics, uprooting and expansion of Christianiry, in Europe and outside of Europe. at the very moment when vocations. some statistics tell us, seem on the wane there . . . -I am thinking of what is happening in Europe itself. in which the Pope appeals to the constitution or (0 the restoration of a Europe united in Christianiry-which would be its very essence, and its destination. He tries to demonstrate, in the course of his voyages. that the victory over the totalitarianisms of the East has been carried of thanks ( and in the name of Christianiry. In the course of the so-called Gulf War, the allied western democracies ofen kept up a Christian discourse while speaking of international law. There would be too much to say here, and that is nO[ the subject of the colloquium. -On the one hand. this negation. as reafrmation. can seem to double bolt the logocentric impasse of European dometiciry (and India in thi s regard is nO[ the absolute other of Europe). But on the other hand, it is also what. working on the opm edge of this interioriry or intimacy, kt {laisseJ passage. kts rbcotbobr. -Lis " is a difcult word to translate. How are they going to translate it? By "to leave," as in the phrase that won't be long in coming when we will shortly have to go our separate ways (I leave you, I am going, I knur) or else "to jd'? -Here we must have recourse to the German idiom. Silesius writes in the tradition of the Glmhrit that. as we noted above. goes fromEckhart, at least. to Heidegger. It is necessary to leave all. to leave every "something" through love of God, and no doubt to Sufk10m 79 leave God himsdf. (0 abandon him, that is, at once to leave him and (but) let him (be beyond being-something). Save his name [Ylufson 1I0m}-which must be kept silent there where it itsdf goes [il J r lui-mimrl to a"iv there. that is. (0 arrive at its own efcement. D4t mufl man WSt. Mensch so du erwas liebsl. so liebstu nichu rrwahr: GOn iSI nicht diB und das. drumb laB das E g. Ont must kaw tlu somtthing Man, ifyou love something, then you love nOlhing uuly: God is nOI this and that. leave Ihen fOln'er the something. (I: 4) Or again: Dit gtluimsu Gtlsstnheit. Gelassenheit &ht Gatt: Gatt aber selbSl zulassen, JSt ein Gela enheit, die wenig Menschen fsen. Tht most Ste t abandn Abandon seizs God; but ÏL leave God Himlf, Is an abandonment that few men L gp. (1: 91) -The abandonment ofthis Grlrhril the abandonment U this Glsrh�it does not exclude pleasure or enjoyment; on the COntrary, it gives rise to them. It opens the play ofGod (of God and with God. of God with self and with creation): it opens a passion to the enjoyment ofGod: Wit Ian man GOtU gmi ssen. Gatt is[ ein Einges Ein, wer �iner wil geniesen, Mug sich nichl weniger ab Er, in Jhn einschlissen. How ont can mjoy God God is a Unique Onc; whoever wants to enjoy Him Must, no less than He, be enclosed in Him. (I: 83) 80 Sufk nom -1 let passage to the alher, to the totally other, is hospitalit. A double hospitality: the one that has the form of Babd (the con. struction of the Tower. the appeal (0 universal rr:slation, but also the violent imposition of the name, of [he tongue, and of the idiom) and the one {another, the same} of the mcomn::cnon of the Tower of Babel. The two designs arc moved by a certain deire of universal community. beyond [he desert of an arid formalization. that is, beyond economy itself. But the two must deal {trait"] with what they claim [0 avoid: the unrreatable itself. The desire of Gad, God as the other name of desire. deals in the desert with radical atheism. -In listening to you, one has morc and more the feeling that drr is the other name, if not the proper place. of dir. And rhe at times oracular tOne of apophasis. to which we alluded a few min ute ago, ofen resounds in a desert. which does not always come down to preaching in the desert. -The movement toward the universal tongue oscillates between formalism. or the poorest. most arid. in efect the most desertlike techno-scientifcity, and a SOrt of universal hive of inviolable se crets, of idioms that are never translated except as untranslatable seals. In this oscillation. "negative theolog" is caught, comprised and comprehensive at once. But the Babelian narrative (construc tion and deconstruction at once) is still a (hi)story. Too full of sense. Here the invisible limit would pass less between the Babelian project and its deconstruction than between the Babelian place (event, Enigis, history, revelation, eschato�teleology, messianism, address, destination, response and responsibility, construction and deconstruction) and "something" without thing, like an inde constructible Kora the one that precedes itself in the test, as if they were twO, the one and its double: the place that gives rise and place to Babel would be indeconstructible, not as a construction whose foundations would be sure, sheltered from every internal or external deconstruction, but as the very spacing of de-construction. There is where that happens and where there are those "thing" Su/I nom 8 . called, for example, negative theolog and its analogues, de construction and its analogues, this colloquium here and its ana logues. -What do you mean, by reassuring yourself in these "analo gies"? That there is a singular chance in the transfer or the transla rion of clm of which negative theology would be a SOrt of ana¿on or general equivalent, in the translatability uprooting but also returning this ana¡o ¡ on to its Greek or Christian economy? That this chance would be that of a singularity doing today some other thing than losing itself in the community? -Perhaps. But I would not yet s�k of human, nor even anthropotheocentric, community or singularity. nor even of a G�vì�· in which what is called "animal" would be a mortal passed over in silence. Yes. the vta n�an`va would perhaps today be the passage of the idiom into the most common desert, as the chance of law [droit 1 and of another treaty of universal peace (beyond what is today called international law, that thing very positive but still so tributar of the Europen concept of the State and of law, then so easy to arraign [an uonncr] for particular States): the chance of a promise and of an announcement in any c. -Would you go so fr as to say that today there is a "politics" and a "law" of negative theology? A juridico-political lesson to be drawn fom the possibility of this theolog? -No, not to be drawn, not to be deduced as from a program, from premises or axioms. But there would no more be any "poli tics," "law," or "morals" without this possibility, the very possibility that obliges us from now on to place thee words between quota� tion marks. Their sense will have trembled. -But you admit at the same time that "without" and "nor without" [pl sn) are the most difcult words to say and to hear/undersrand, the most unthinkable or most impossible. What Saufk nom d� Silesius mean, for example, when he leaves us the inhmtnce of this maxim: K,in To isl ohndn ubm Notath is wilhoullf h: }6 and bener: Nicht kbr ohne Sur. GOtt sel�r, wenn Er dir wil le�n, muB er ster�n: Wie danckstu ohne Tad sein L�n zueremcn? Nothingu:s without dying God himself, If He wants to live fr yu, must die: How do you think, without death, t inherit his own life? (I: 33) -Has anything more profound ever been written on inheri· rance? I understand that as a theis on what inhmt means (to say). Both to give the name and to receive it. Save [Sauj' Safe]- -Ye, as the "without," heritage, inhetitance, fliation, if you prefer, is the most difcult thing to think and to "live," to "die." But don't forget that thee maxims of Sileius, notably those that immediately surround them (I: 30, 31, 32, 34, etc.), have a Christian sense. and the pOSNcript of maxims 31 and 32 (" God din and lu in M I I do not die or live: God himself die in me," etc.) cite Saint Paul in order [Q eplain how it is neces to read. They teach how to read by reading Saint Paul, and not otherwise. A posNcriptum of Christian reading or self-interpretation can command the whole perspective of the Cherubim'c Wnt and of all the "without's", including " GOtt mag nicht ohnr mich" (I: 96), including "GOn ist ohnr Wilkn" (I: 294). and including, whether Heidegger likes ir or not, the "Ohne warumb" of "Die Ros' ist ohn warumb" (I: 289). 1£ Heide er doesn't like this, it is necessary for him to write another post-scriptum, which is always possible, and represents another experience of inheritance. Saufk 10m 8J The difculry of the "without" spreads into what is still called politics. morals, or law, which are JUt as threatened as promised by apophasis. Take the example of democracy. of the idea of democ· racy. of democracy to come (neither the Idea in the Kamian sense, nor the current, limited, and determined concept of democracy, but democracy as the inheritance of a promise). Its path passes perhaps today in the world rhrough (across) the aporias of negative theolog that we just analyzed so schematically. -How c a path pass through aporias? -What would a path be without aporia? Would there be a way [voir] without what clears the way there where the way is not opened, whether it is blocked or still buried in the nonway? r cannot think the notion of the way without the necessiry of decid· ing there where the decision seems impossible. Nor can 1 think the decision and thus me responsibiliry mere where the decision is already possible and programmable. And would one speak. could one only speak of this thing? Would there be a voice [voix] for that? A name? -You recognize that the possibiliry, then, of speaking or walking seems just as impossible. So difcult in any 1 that this passage through aporia seems frst of all (perhaps) reserved as a secret for a few. This esoteri sm seems strange for a democracy. even for this democracy [0 come that you defne no more than apophasis defnes God. I to-come would b jealously thought, watched over. hardly taught by a few. Very suspect. -Understand me, it's a matter of maintaining a double injunc tion. Twoconcurrent desires divide apophatic rheolog, at the edge of nondesire, around the gulf and chaos ofthe Khora: the desire to be inclusive of all, thus understood by all (communiry, koini) and the desire to keep or entrust the secret within the very strict limits of those who hear/understand it right, as secret, and are then capable or worthy of keeping il. The secret, no more than democ- Suf/ 10m racy or the secret of democracy, must nor, besides, cannot, be cnrrusfed to the inheritance of no maner whom. Again the paradox of the example: the no-maner-who (any example sample) must also give the good example. Understand me when I say that, I am still citing Silesius, in this SOrt of post-scriptum that he adds to the maxim on " Thr bkssrdsilmcr (DI S((lig� Stilksch�igm)" (I: 19). It is a maner of rightly understanding a silence, as elsewhere, the Gr/ssmhrit: "Wie seelig ist der Mensch, der weder wil noch weiB!"; "How blessed the man who neither wishes nor knows!" And here is the Nora Bene as post-scriptum: "Oer GOn (versteh mich recht) nicht gibet Lob noch PreiB"; "To God (undemand me right) give neither praise nor glory." And you remember that "fe men" are ready to grasp the exemplary G�lsmh�jt, the one mat not only grasps, but knows how to abandon God (2: 9 2). The reserved, the most refned, the rarest secret is that of one G�lssm h�it and not of the other, of this G�/ssrhdt here and not of anomer that resembles it, of this leaving-the-other-here and nor of the other. From where would this serenity of abandonmenr be given (by what? by whom?), this serenity which would also be understood, beyond all knowledge, as nOt giving anything ro God /a Diroj, not even Adieu, not even r his name. -To give a name, is rhat still to give? Is that to give some thing? And something ever orher than a sur-name, such as God or Kira, for example . . . -One can have doubts about it from rhe momenr when the name not only is nothing, in any case is not the "thing" that it names. nOt the "nameable" or the renowned, but also risks to bind, to enslave or to engage the other. to link rhe called, to call him/her to respond even before any decision or any deliberation, even before any freedom. An assigned passion, a prescribed alliance as much as a promise. And still, if the name never belongs originarily and rigorously t s/he who receives if, it also no longer belongs from the very frst momenr to s/he who gives it. According to a formula that haunrs our tradirion from Plotinus to Heidegger, who Sufk fom does not cite him, and ro Lacan, who cites neither the former nor the larrer,!3 and bener than ever, the gift of the name gives that which it does nor have. that in which, prior to everything, may consist the essence, that is to say-beyond being-the nonessence, of the gif. -One last question. One may foresee it better, Angelus Silesius does nOt represenr the whole, nor even the best example of"dassic" or canonic negative theology. Why bring everything back to him? -Here you have ro believe in the accident or in the contingency of a (hi)srory: an autobiographical chance {alaj, if you like, that is happening to me this summer. I chose to bring here with me this given book. the Chff binic Wnt�f (and only etracts at thad, to bring it to this family place, in order to watch over a mother who is slowly leaving us and no longer knows how to name. A unknown as he remains ro me. Silesius begins to be more fmiliar and more friendly to me. I have been coming back to him recently. almost secretly. because of sentences that I have not cited mday. And furthermore, it takes up little room when one is traveling (seventy pages). Isn't negative meology-we have said this enough-also the most economical formalization? The greatest power of [he possi ble? A reserve of language, almost inehaustible in so few words? This literature forever elliptical. taciturn, cryptic, obstinately with drawing, however. from aillirerature, inaccessible there even where it seems to go {J� rend"], (he exasperation of a jealousy that passion carries beyond itself; (his would seem to be a literature for the desert or for exile. It holds desire in suspense. and always saying roo much or too little. each time it leaves you without ever going away from you. TRANSLATED 1¹ JOHN Ì. LEAVEY, JR. KHORA Ttmyth put in playa formof logic which culd b called-in contrast to the logic of noncontradiction of the philoophers-a logic of the ambiguous, of the equivocl, of polariry. Hocn one frmulate. or even frmalize. thee S -sawoperations. which Rip any term ino it oppoite whilst at Ihe same time keeping them both aPMt. from anoher point of vicw� The mythologist ¼ left with drawing up, in conclusion. this statement of defcit. and to tur to the linguists, logicians. mathematicians. that they might supply him with the tol he lacked: the strucrural model of a logic which would not b that of binariry, of the y or no. a logic other than the logic of the WOI. -Jean-Pierre Vernant, �Raisons du mythe." MytMtltoittl C Gl anfrnnr (Paris. 1974), p. 250. § Khora Khora reaches us, and Û the name. And when a name comes, it immediately says more than the name: the other of the name and quite simply the other, whose irruption the name announces. This announcement does not yet promise. no more than it threatens. It neither promises nor threatens anyone. It still remains alien to the person, only naming imminence, even only an imminence that is alien to the myth, the time, and the history of every possible promise and threat. It is wel known: what Plato in the Tm designate by the name of khora �Îto def that "logic of noncontradiction of the philosophers" of which Verant speks, that logic "of binarity, of the y or no." Hence it might perhaps derive fom that "logic other than the logic of the IOJ." The khor which is neither "sensible" nor "intelligible," belong to a "third genus" (triton gmOJ, 4a, 523). One cannot even say of it that it is luitht this tor [hat or that it is both this and that. It is not enough to recall that khora names neither this nor that, or, that Ihora says this and that. The difculty declared by Timaeus is shown in a diferent way: at times the khora appears to be neither this nor that, at times both this and that, but this alternation between the logic of exclusion and that of participation-we shall return to this at length-stems perhaps only from a provisional appearance and from the con srraints of rhetoric, even from some incapacity for naming. The kJora seems to be alien to the order of the "paradigm," that intelligible and immutable model. And yet, "invisible" and with OUI sensible form, it "participates" in rhe intelligible in a very troublesome and indeed aporetic way (aporlal, 5tb). At least we shall not b lying. adds Timaeus, at least we shall not be saying what is f (ou pgudm�/ha) in declaring this. The prudence of this negative formulation gives reason to ponder. Not lying, not saying what is false: is this nC rily telling the truth? And, in this respect, what about testimony, bearing witness [/hnoignag�) ? Let us recall once more, under the heading of our preliminary approach, that the discourse on the khora, as it is pmmud does not proceed from the natural or legitimate logos, but rather from a hybrid, bastard, or even corrupted reasoning (l o notM). It comes "as in a dream" (5lb), which could just as well deprive jt of lucidi£), as confer upon it a power or divination. Does such a discourse derive, then, from myth? Shall we gain access to the thought of the khr by continuing to place our trUSt in the alternative lgos/mythos? And whar if mis thought called also for a third genus of discourse? And what if. perhaps as in the c of the Ihr this appeal to the third genre was only the moment of a detour in order to signal toward a genre beyond genre? Beyond ctegories, and above all beyond categorial oppositions, which in the frst place allow it to b approached or said? k a token of gratitude and admiration, here then is homage in the form of a question to Jen-Pierre Vernant. The question is addressed to the one who taught us so much and gave us so much pause for thought about the opposition mythnllgos, certainly. but also about the unceasing inversion of poles; to the author of "Raisons du mythe" and of Ambigufli �t rml�mnJl: how are we to think that which, while going outside of the regularity of the ls, its law, its natural or legitimate genealog, nevertheless does not belong, strico sensu, to mythos? Beyond the retarded or johnny come-lately opposition of logos and mythoJ how is one ro think the necessity of that which, while giving plc to that opposition as ro so many others, seems sometimes to be itself no longer subject to the law of the very thing which it siruam? What of this plct? It is nameable? And wouldn't it have some impossible relation to the possibility of naming? Is there something to think there. as I have JUSt so hastily said, and to think according to M�¢$;t? The oscillation of which we have JUSt spoken is not an oscillation among others, an oscillation between twO poles. It oscillate be tween twO r of oscillation: the double exclusion (n�ith�rl nor) and the participation (both this ald Ihat). But have we the right to transpOrt the logic, the para-logic or the meta-logic of this super oscillation from one set to the other? It concerned frst of all types of eistent thing (sensible/intelligible. visible/invisible, form I formless, icon, or mimcme/paradigm), but we have displaced it toward types of discourse (mythos/logos) or of relation to what is or is not in general. No doubt such a displaccment is not self�ident. It de�nds on a sort of metonymy: such a metonymy would displace itself, by displacing the names, from types [gmmJ of being to types Igmm] of discourse. Bur on the one hand it is always difcult, particularly in Plato, t separate the twO problem aties: the quality of the discourse depends primarily on the quality of the being of which it speks. It is almost as if a name should only be given to whom {or to what} deerve it and calls for it. The discourse, like rhe relation to that which is in general, is qualifed or disqualifed by what it relates to. On the other hand, the metony my is aumorized by passing mrough gmI, from one genre Î4 (he orer, from the quetion of the genres/types of being to me ques tion of the types of discourse. Now the discourse on the Mora is also a discourse on genre/type (gmos) and on diferent r of t. Later we will get on to genre as g�l, or people (gmos, �thnos), a theme which appears at the opening of the Tima�UJ. In the narrow COntext on which we are dwelling at present, that of the sequence on the /hora, we shall encounter twO frthcr gcnres of genre or types of type. The kJora is a triton gmos in view of the twO types of being (immutable and intelligible/corruptible. in the pro cess of becoming and sensible), but it seems [0 be equally deter- Korn mined with regard to the sexual �: Timaeus speaks of "mother" and "nu($" in regard to this subject. He d� this in a mode which we shall not be in a hurry to nae. Almost all the interpreters of the Tm n gamble here on the reources of rhetoric without ever wondering about them. They spek tranquilly about metaphors. images, simile. I They ask themsdves no questions about this tradition of rhetoric which places at their disposaJ a reserve of concepts which are ver usdul but which are all built upon this distinction betw«-n the sensible and the intelligible, which is precisely what the thought of the khor cn no longer get along with-a distinction, ind«"<, of which Plato unambiguously lets it be known thai this thought has the greatest difculty getting along with it. This problem of rhetoric-particularly of the possibility of naming-is, here, no mere side issue. Nor is its importance limited [ some pedagogic, illustrative, or instrumental dimension (those who speak of metaphor with regard [ the /hora ofen add: didactic metaphor). Weshall be content for the moment with indicating it, and situating it, but it is already dear that, JUSt like the khoraand with JUSt as much necessity, it cannot esily be situated, assigned to a reidence: it is more situating than situated, an opposition which must in its turn be shielded fom some grammatical or ontological alternative betw«-n d"e active and the passive. We shall not speak of metaphor, but not 'in order ro her, for eample, that the /hora i pÎpC/a mother. a nurse, a receptacle, a berer of imprints or gold . . It is perhaps bu its scope g�beyond or flls short of the polarity of metaphoricl sense versus proper sense that the thought of the khora exce the polarity, no doubt analogous, of the mythos and the kgos. Such at least would be the question which we should like here to put to the test of a reading. The consequence which we envisage would be the following: with these two polarities, the thought of the khora would trouble the very order of polarity, of polarity in general, whether dialecdcal or not. Giving place to oppositions, it would itself nor submit to any reversal. And this, which is anorher consequence, would nor be because it would inalterably be itul beyond its name but because in carrying be yond the polarity of sense (metaphorical or proper). it would no Khor 93 longer belong to the horizon of sense. nor Î4 that of meaning as the meaning of being. After these precautions and these negative hypotheses, you will understand why it is that we lef the nae Ihorshehered fom any translation. A translation. admittedly. seems to b always at work, bOlh in the Gr«-k language and from the Greek language imo some other. ut us not regard any of them as sure. Thinking and translat ing here traverse the same experience. Ifit must be attempted. such an experience or experiment [opbmu] is not only but of concern for a word or an atom of meaning but also for a whole tropological texture, lei us not yet cll it a system, and for ways of approaching, in order [Q nnmC nhem, the elements of this "[(opolog." Whemer they concern me word Jhor it$lf {"place." "location," "region," "COUntry"} or what tradition calls the fgures-comparisons, im ages, and metaphors-proposed by Timaeus ("mother," "nurse." "receptable," "imprim-bearertt), the translations remain caught in networks of interpretation. They are led astray by retrospective projections, which can always be suspected of being anachronistic. This anachronism is not necessarily, not always, and not only a wekness from which a vigilant and rigorous interpretation would be able to escape entirely. We shall try to show that no-one ep from it. Even Heideger, who is nonetheless one of the only one never to spek of "metaphor." seems to us to yield to this teleologi c retrospection,2 against which. elsewhere. he so rightly put us on our guard. And this gesture seems highly signifcant for me whole of his quetioning and his relationship to the "histOry-of philosophy." What has JUSt been said of rhetoric, of translation, or of tele ological anachronism, could give rise to a misunderstanding. We must dispel it without delay. We would never claim to propose the exact word. the mot JUJU, for Ihora, nor to name it, il�1 over and above all the turns and detours of rhetoric, nor fnally to approach it. il�1 for what it will have been, outside of any point of view, outside of any anaehronie perspective. Its name is nO[ an exact word, not a mot jusl. It is promised to the inefceable even if what 94 it names, klora, is not reduced to its name. Tropology and anachro nism are inevitable. And all we would [ike Î show is [hat it is Structure which makes them thus inevitable, makes of them some thing other than accidents, weaknesses, or provisionaJ moments. It is this structural law which seems to me never to have been approached Msuch by the whole hisrory of imerpretations of the Tima�. It would be a mancr of a structure and not of some essence of the khora, since the question or essence no longer has any meaning with regard to it. Not having an essence, how CQuid the khara be [u tiedT4iNll] beyond ilS name? The khora is anach ronistic; it "is" the anachrony within being, or bener: the anach rony of being. It anachronizes being. The "whole history of imerprerarions," we have just said. We will never exhaust the immense literature devoted to the Tmams since antiquity. It is our of the question to deal with it here in its entirety. And, above all, to presuppose the unity or homogeneity of this whole, the very possibility of totalizing it in some ordered apprehension. What we shall presuppose, by contrast, and one could still call it a "working hypothesis," is that the presumption of such an order (grouping, unity, totality organized by a ufs) has an essential link with the structural anachronism of which we spoke a moment ago. It would be the inevitable effect produced by some� ting like the khora-which is not something, and which is nOt like anything, not even like what it would be, itsel there beyond its name. Rich, numerous, inexhaustible, the interpretations come, in short, co give form to the meaning of khora. They always consist in giving fnn to it by determining it. it which, however, can "ofer itself" or promise itself only by removing itself from any determi� nation, from all the marks or impressions to which we say it is exposed: from everything which we would like to give to it without hoping to receive anything from it . . . But what we are purting forward here of the imerpretation of the khora-of Plato's text on the khora-by speaking about a form given or received, about mark or impression, abour knowledge as information. etc., all of that already draws on what the text itself says about the khorn, draws on 95 its conceptual and hermeneutic apparatus. What we have JUSt put forward, for example. for the sake of the example, on the subject of "khora" in the text of Pia co, reproduces or simply brings back. with all irs schemas. Plato's discourse on the subject of the khori. And this is true even down to this very sentence in which I have JUSt made use of the word schemi. The skhemat are the Cut-out fgures imprimed into the khorn, the forms which inform it. They are of it without belonging to it. Thus there are interpretations which would come to give form to "khora" by leaving on it the schematic mark of their imprint and by depositing on it the sediment of their comtiburion. And yet. "khora" seems never to let itself be reached or touched. much less broached, and above all not exhausted by these tpe of ttopological or interpretative translation. One cannot even say that it frishes them with the support of a stable substratum or substance. Kora is not a subject. It is not the subject. Nor the support !fUbjmilj . The hermeneutic tpe cannot inform, they cannot give form to khora except to the extem that, inaccessible, impassive, "amorphous" (amorphon. 51a) and still virgin, with a virginity that is radically rebellious against anthropomorphism. it sums to ¯uivCthese types and give plce to them. But if Timaeus names it as receptacle (dkhommon) or place (khora). these names do not designate an essence, the stable being of an eits, since khora is neither of the order of the eids nor of the order of mimemes, that is, of images of the eidswhich come to imprint themselves in it-which thus is not and does not belong to the lwO known or recognized genera of being. It is not. and this nonbeingcannot but be tclred that is, be caught or conceived, via the anthropomorphic schemas of the verb to rece;1 and the verb to give. Khora is not, is above all not, is anything but a support or a subject which would give place by receiving or by conceiving, or indeed by letting itself be conceived. How could one deny it this essential signifcance as a receptacle, given that this very name is given co it by Plato? It is difculr indeed, but perhaps we have not yet thought through what is meant by to rtuiv, the receiving of the receptacle. what is said by dtkhomai, dkhomtnon. Perhaps it is from khora that we are begin- ning to Iearn it-to rCeive it, to rcceive from it what its name calls up. To rdve it, if not Î4 comprchend it, (0 conceive it. You will alrcdy have notic that we now say Mor and nOt, as convention has always rcuimf, th( /hora, or again, as we might have done for the sake of cution, the word, the concept, the signifcance, or the value of "khor." This is for several reasons, most of which are no doubt already obvious. The defnite article presuppose the existence of a thing, the existent khor to which. via a common name {nom commun, or "common noun"-Ed.J, it would be easy to refer. But what is said about khorn is that this name does not designate any of the known or recognizd or, if you like, recdved typcs of existent, ÏuiÏdby philosophical discourse. that is, by the ontolcal wgos which lays down the law in the Timnmr: khor is neither sensible nor intdligible. There is khora; one can even ponder itS phsis and its dynami s, or at Ieast ponder these in a prdiminary way. But what thf( u,there. is not; and we will come back later to what this tl," i Ýgive us to think, this Ihf( i which, by the way. giv(snothing in giving place or in giving to think, whereby it will be risky to ò in it the equivalent of an ( gbl of the ( gibt which remains withour a doubt implicated in every ncative thoology, unlcs it is the Cgibl which always sum· moos nq;ative thoolog in its Christian history. insrcd of lhe khora, shall we be content to say prudently: the word, the common name, the concept. the signifation. or the value of khor? These prCutions would not sufce; they presup· pose distinctions (word/concept, word·concept/thing. meaning/ rcference, signifcation/value. ete.) which themsdves imply the possibility, at least, of a tumin(d existent, distinct from another, and acts which aim at it, at it or its meaning, via acts of language. designations or sign postings. All of these acts appeal to gener· alities, to an ortrof multiplicities: genus, species, individual, type, schema, etc. Now what we can read. it s«ms, of khor in the Timamr is that "something," which is not a thing, putS in question these presuppositions and these distinctions: "something" is not a thing and escapes from this order of multiplicities. But if we say khora and nor thr khora, we arc still making a name out of it. A proper name. it is true, but a word, JUSt like any common name, a word distinct from the thing or the concept. Besides, the proper name appears, as alW Ys, to be attributed to a person, in this c to a woman. Perhaps to a woman; ind�, to a woman. Doesn't that aggravate the risks of anthropomorphism against which we wanted to prorCt ourselves? Aren'[ thc Ïi sk Ï by Plato himself when he seems to "compare," as they say, kbor ro a mother or a nurse? Isn't the value of receptacle also associated, like passive and virgin matter, with the feminine dement, and prCisely in Grcek culture? These objCCtions arc not without value. However. if khir indeed presentS certain attributes of the word as proper name, isn't that only via its apparent reference to some uniquencs (and in the Tma(us, more rigorously in a certain passage of the Timaf which we will approach later, there is onl on� khira, and thar is indeed how we understand it; there is only one. however divisible it be), the referent or this reference does not exist. It doe not have the characteristics of an existent. by which we mean an existent that would be rCCeivable in (he ontolc, that is, those of an intelligible or sensible eistent. There is khora but tht khora does not exist. The efcement of the article should for [he moment suspend the determination. within invisible quotation marks (we cite a saying of Plato's in a certain passage of the Tmwicllout knowing yet what it means and how to determine it) and the reference to someming which is not a thing but which insisrs. in irs so enigmatic uniqueness, lets itself be called or cuse irself to be named without answering. without giving itsdf to be seen, con· ceived, determined. Deprived of a ral referent. mat which in faCt resembles a proper name fnds itself also called an X which has as irs property (as its physi s and as its dynamu. Plato's text will say) that it has nothing as its own and that it remains unformed. formless (amorphon). This very singular impropriety, which precisely is norhing, is just what khira must, if you like, kup; it is JUSt , :h � t must b( krptfr it, what M must keep for it. To that end, It IS neccsary nor ro confse it in a generality by properly attributing r it properties which would still be those of a determi � ate exi , stcnt, one of the existents which it/she "receives" or whose Image nfshe Khora receives: for example. an existent of the female gender-and that is why the femininity of the mother or the nurse will never be attributed to it/her as a property. something of her own. Which does not mean, however-we shall return to this-that it is a L here of mere fgures of rhetoric. Khora must not receive for h�r own sak�. so she must not r�ceiv�. merely let herselfbe lent the properties (of that) which she receives. She must not receive. she must receive not that which she receives. To avoid a these confsions. it is convenient. paradoxically. to formalize our approach (to it/her) and always to usc the same language about it/her (tCU"OV CUri!v aEl npoGJTtEOV," sob). Not so much to "give her always the same name." as it is ofen translated, but to speak of it/her and to call it/her in the lame manner. In short. faithfully even if this fith is irreducible to every other. Is this "manner" unique or typical? Does it have the singularity of an idiomatic event or the regulated generality of a schema? In other words. does this regularity fnd. in Plato's tet, or rather in a particular passage of the Timaeus. its unique and best formulation, or rather one of its examples. how. ever privileged? In what regard, in what sense, will it be said of the Tmatus that it is exemplary? And if it is important that the appelltion, rather than the name. should stay the same, will we be able to replace. relay, rranslate khora by other names, striving only to preserve the regularity of the appellation, namely of a discourse? This question cannOt but resound when we know that we are caught in such a scene of reading. included in advance in the immense history of interpretations and reappropriations which in the course of the centuries come to buzz and hum around khora taking charge ofit/her or overloading it/her with inscriptions and reliefs. giving it/her form, imprinting it/her with types, in order to produce in it/her new objects or to deposit on it/her orher sedi· ments [the translation of the French pronoun �'k. referring to khora, includes both "her" and "it." in order to stress that �lcould also be understood as a personal feminine pronoun-Ed.]. This interminable theory of exegeses seems to reproduce what, follow. ing the discourse ofTimaeus. would happen, not with PlatO's text, Khorn 99 but with khora herself/itself. With khora itethtrs�1 if one could at a speak thus about this X (X or khi) which must nor have any proper determination. sensible or intelligible. material or formal. and therefore must not have any identity of its/her own. mUSt nor be identical with herselfl itself. Everything happml a if the yeHo come history of the interpretations of khora were wrirten or even prescribed in advance, in advance reproduced and rcudin a few pages ofthe Tmaeus "on the subject" of khora "herself" ("itself"). With its ceaseless re·launchings, its failures, its superimpositions. its overwritings and teprintings, this history wipes itself out in advance since it programs itself, reproduces itself, and refects itSelf by anticipation. Is a prescribed, programmed. reproductive, refex ive history still a history? Unless the concept ofhisrory b within itself this teleological programming which annuls it while con· stituting it. In saying, in short, "this i show one can glimpse Mora in a difcult, aporetical way and as if in a dream-," someone (Timaeus. Plaro. etc.) would have said: this is what henceforth all the interpretations, for all eternity, of what I say here will look like. They will resemble what I am sayingabout khora; and hence what I am saying about khora gives a commentary. in advance. and de· scribes the law of the whole history of the hermeneutics and the institutions which will be constructed on this subject, over this subject. There is nothing fortuitous about that. Khora receives. so as [0 give place ro them, all [he determinations. bur she/it does not possess any of them as her/its own. She possesses them. she has them, since she receives them, but she does not possess them as properties, she does not possess anything as her own. She "is" nothing other than the sum or the process of what has just been inscribed "on" her. on the subject of her, on her subject, right up against her subject, but she is nor the $bjector the pmmt ¢pportof all these interpretations. even though, nevertheless. she is not reducible to them. Simply this ecess is nothing. nothing that may be and be said ontologically. This absence of support, which can not be translated into absent support or into absence as sUppOrt, provokes and resists any binary or dialectical determination, any inspection of a philosophical t or let us say, more rigorously, of an omofgical t. This t fnds itself both defed and re launched by me very thing mat appers to give it place. Even then we shall have to recall later, insisting on it in a more analytica1 manner, that ifth�i Jp/ or, according to our idiom, plugillm. to give place here doe not come to the same thing as to make a present of a place. The expression togive pludoes not refer to the gesture of a donor-subject, me support or origin of something which would come to be given to someone. Despite their timidly preliminary character, these remarks per mit us perhaps to glimpse the silhouette of a "logic" which seems virtually impossible to formalize. Will this "logic" still be a logic. "a form of logic," to take up Vernant's saying when he speaks of a "form of logic" of myth which must be "formulated, or even formalized"? Such a logic of myth exists, no doubt, but our ques tion returs: does the thought of khr which obviously does not derive from the "logic of noncontradiction of the philosophers," belong to the space of mythic thought? Is the "bastard" loJwhich is regulated according to it /i.e., according to mythic thought Tr.j-still a mythoJ? Let us take the time for a long detour. Let us consider the mannet in which Hegel's speculative dialectic inscribes mythic thought in a teleologica1 perspective. One can say of this dialectic that it is and that it is nOt a logic of noncontradiction. It integrate and Jub/tfi contradiction as such. In the same way, it sublates mythic discourse as such into me philosopheme. According r Hegel, philosophy becomes serious-and we are also thinking af" Hegel and according 10 him, following his thought-only from the moment when it enters inlo the sure path of logic: that is, after having abandoned, or let us rather say 5ublated, its mythic frm: after Plato, with Plato. Philosophical logic comes to its senses when the concept wakes up from its mythological slumber. Sleep and waking, for the event, consist in a simple unveiling: the making explicit and taking cognizance of a philosopheme enveloped in its virtual potency. The mythemc will WI haw km only a prephilosopheme ofered and promised to a dialectical Aufubung. This teleological future anterior resemble the time of a narrative but it is a na ive of the going outside of narrative. It marks the end of narrative fction. Hegel explains it' while defending his "friend Creu7r" and his book, Symbolm and MythofgofAncimt P�opl, npuial/ ofllu Gl(1810-12). The mythological lOJ, of course, can emit the pretension of being a species of "philosophi2ing" (p. to8). There are philosophers who have used myths in order to bring philosophemes closer to the imagination (PhamaJi�). But "the cOnlent of myth is thought" (ibid). The mythic dimension remains formal and exterior. If Plato's myths are "beautiful." one would be wrong to think that myths are more "eminent" (vorhYf{ch�r) than the "abstract mode of expression." In truth, Plato has recourse to myth only to the extent of his "impotence" (Unv�rmigm) to "express himself in the pure modality of thought." But that is also in part becuse he does so only in the introduction to the dialogues-and an introduction is never purely philosophical; you know what Hegel thinks of introductions and prefaces in generaL When he gets on to the thing itself, to the principal subject, Plato expresses himself quite other wise. Let us think of the Pamunit, for example: the simple determinations of thought do without image and myth. Hegel's dialecticl schema here just as much concerns the mythic-the fgurative or me symbolic. The Pannmi is "serious." whereas the recourse to myth is not entirely so. In me formin which, still today. this opposition dominates 50 many evaluations-and not only in so�called Anglo-Saxon thought-the opposition between the se rious and the nonserious overlaps here with that of philosophy aJ Juch and of its ludico-mythological drift [dbiveJ. The lalu� of philosophical thought. which is also to say its J"iOUJn�JJ, is mea sured by the nonmythic character of its terms. Hegel here empha sizes value, seriousness, the value of seriousness. and Aristotle is his guarantor. For after having declared that "the value of Plato, how ever. does not reside in myths" ("der Wert Platons liegt aber nicht in den Mythen," p. 109), Hegel quotes and translates Aris[Qrle. It is appropriate ro dwell on this. We know, let us recall in passing before approaching this problem directly, how great a weight the Aristotelian interpretation of the Tmr carries in the history of Ihe inlerprctations. Hegel translates then. or paraphrases, the MftapIJiC: IEpl �£v trv �uIK� o�l�o�ivOv oU. a�\Ov �ua Glou8T\t GIOIE!V Von dcnen, wdchc mylhisch philosophicrcn, ibÎ T nichl der Mie ¾I, ernsdich zu handeln. Those who philosophi1e with recours< to myth are not worth treating seriously. Hegel s«ms to oscillate between twO interpretations. In a philo· sophical text, the function of myth is at times a sign of philosophi· cal impotence, the incapacity to accede to the concept as such and to keep to it. at other times the index of a dialectic and above all didactic potency. the pedagogic mastery of the serious philosopher in fll possesion of the philosopheme. Simultaneously or suc· cessively. Hegel secms to recognize in Plam both this impotence and this mastcry. These twO evaluations arc only apparently contra· dictory or are so only up to a certain poim. They have mis in common: the subordination of myth. as a discursive fnn, to the contt of the signifed concept, to the mening. which, in itS essence, can only be philosophical. And the philosophical theme, the signifed concept, whatever may be its formal prstnttio,t philosophical or mythic-always remains the force of law, the mastery or the dynasty of discourse. Here one can see the thread of our question passing by: if khom has no meaning or essence, if she is nOt a philosopheme and if, nevertheless. she is neither the object nor the form of a fable of a mythic type, where can she be situated in this schema? Apparently contradictory. but in fact profoundly coherenl. this logico-philosophical evaluation is nOI npplifd to Plato. h derives already from a certain "Platonism." Hegel does not read Plato through Aristotle as if doing something unknown t Plato, as ifhe [Hegel] were deciphering a practice whose meaning would have remained inaccessible m the author of the Timaf. A certain <OJ programme of this evaluation seems already legible in this work. a we shall verif. But perhaps with one reervation, and this supple. mentary reservation could lodge. shelter, and thereby exceed the said programme. First, the programme. The cosmogony of the Timaf runs through the cycle of knowledge on al things. Its encyclopedic end must mark the term, the Ufs of a loson the subjet of everything that is: ".ol 5" Iol tu. nepl tOU novtb vuv -5 tOY AOyov iJi q6�ev fxuv"; "And now at length we may say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its termination" (92C). This encyclopedic los is a general ontology, treting of all the t of being. it includes a theology, a cosmolog. a physiol � . a psychology. a 701og. Mortal or immortal, human an� dl : l � e. visible and invisible things are situated there. By recalhng It Í conclusion, one picks up the distinction between the visible living th.ing. for example. the sensible god, and the intelligible god of which it is the image kikon). The cosmos is the hevens (oumnos) as living, visible thing and sensible god. It is unique and alone of itS race. "monogenic." And yet. half-way mrough the cycle. won't the discourse on khora have opened, between the sensible and the intelligible. be longing neither to one nor to me orner, hence neither to the cosmos as sensible god nor m the intelligible god, an apparently empry space-even though it is no doubt not ) tm � ti ! (? �idn't it name a gaping opening. an abyss or a chasm. !snt It star � mg out from this chasm. "in" it. that the cleavage between the senSible and the intelligible, indeed, between body and soul, Lhave place and take place? Let us not be tOO hasry aboul bringing thiS . chasm named Mora close to that chaos which also opens the yawntng gulf of the abyss. Let us avoid hurling into it the anthropomorphic form and the pathos of fright. Not in order to install in its place t�e securirv of a foundation, the "exact counterpart of what Gata h . . f represems for any creature, since her appearan � e, at t e onglO 4 the world: a stable foundation. sure for a eterntry, opposed to the gaping and bottomless opening of Chaos. ´ We shali ialer en � oun ter a brief allusion of Heidegger's to khor not to the one In the Kora TimaroJ but, outside of all quotation and all precise reference, the one which in Plato would designate the place (On) berween the existent and being,S the "diference" or place berween the rwo. The ontologico�encyclopedic conclusion of the Tma�us seems to cover over the open chasm in the middle ofrhe book. What it would thus cover over, closing the gaping mourh of the quasi� banned discourse on khora would perhaps nor only be the abyss between the sensible and the intelligible, berween being and noth� ingness, between being and the lesser being, nor even perhaps between being and the existent, nor yet berween Igos and mll/hos, but between all these couples and another which would nOt even be th�ir other. If there is indeed a chasm in the middle of the book, a sort of abyss "in" which there is an attempr to think or say this abyssal chasm which would be khora, the opening of a place "in" which everything would, at the same time, come to take pIu and b� rtf(t�d (for these are images which are inscribed there), is ir insignifcant that a mi u tn abm� regulates a certain order of composition of the discourse? And that it goes so fr as to regulate even this mode of thinking or of saying which must be similar without being identical ro the one which is pracdced on th�tdgnof the chasm? Is it insignifcant that this mis� C abm� afects the forms of a discourse on plu [plul, notably political places, a politics of place entirely commanded by the consideration of sites [/i�ux] (jobs in the society, region, rerrirory, country), as sites assigned to types or forms of discourse? II Mi� Labym� of the discourse on khora, site [lim] of politics, politics of sites (Ii�uxl, such would be, then, the structure of an overprinting without a base. At the opening of the Tmatus, there are considerations of the guardians of the city, the cultivarors and the artisans, the division of labor and education. Ler us nore in passing, although it is an analogy whose structure is formal and external: those who are Kiora raised as guardians of the city will not have anything that is properly rheir own (jdion), neither gold nor silver. They "will receive the salary of their rank fromthose they protect" (18b). To have norhing mar is one's own, not even the gold which is the only thing comparable to ir (soa), isn't rhis also the situation of the sire, the condition of khira? This question c be asked, even if one does not wish to take it seriously; however formal it may be, the analogy is scarcely contestable. One can say the same thing abour the remark which follows immediarely (18c) and rouches on the education of women, on marriage, and above alwith the most pronounced insistence, on the community of children. All possible measures mUSt be taken in order ro ensure rhat no�one can know and recognize as his own (idia) the children who are born (t8c-d). In procreation (pai dpoii a), any attribution or natural or legiti� mate property should fnd itself excluded by the very milieu of the city. If one bears in mind the fact that a moment ago the text had prescribed a similar educarion for men and for women, who must be prepared for the same activities and for the same functions, one can still follow the thread of a formal analog, namely, that of the said "comparison" of khora with the mother and, a supplementary sign of expropriation, with the nurse. This comparison does not assure it/her of any properry, in the sense of the subjective genitive or in the sense of the objective genitive: neither the properties of a genetrix (she engenders norhing and, besides, possesses no prop erry ar all), nor the ownership of children, those images of meir father who, by the way, is no more their owner rhan is the mother. This is enough t say about the impropriery of the said com� parison. Bur we are perhaps already in a sire [lieu] where the law of the proper no longer has any meaning. Let us consider even the political srrategy of marriages. It manifests a relation of abyssal and analogous reRexivity with what will be said larer about Mor abour the "riddles" or sieves (seiomma. pe, 53a) shaken in order 10 son or select the "grain" and the "seed"; the law of the better is crossed with a cenain chance. Now fromthe frst pages of the TmatuJ, in a purely political discourse, are described the apparatuses intended to bring abour in secet the arranging of marriages in order that the children will be born with the best possible naturalness. And this does nor happen without some drawing of lots (klos, lSd-e). Let us explain it at once. Thee formal analogies or these mius m abm�, refned, subtle (tOO subtle, some will think), are not consid· ered here, in the frst plcdm pumiu lieu], as artifces, boldness, or secretS of formal composition: the art of Plato (he writer! This an inreretS us and ought to do so more still, but what is important in this very place [jci mim�j, and frst of all, independently of the supposed intenrions of a composer, are the constraintS which produce thee analogies. Shall we say that they constitute a pr gramm�? A lic whose authority was imposed on Plato? Yes, up to a poinr only, and this limit appears in the abyss itself: the being. programme of the programme, itS Structure of pre·inscription and of typographic prescription forms the explicit theme of the dis· course m abm�on khora. The latter fgures the place ofinscrip(ion of aU that u ml r/�d on th� worl Likewise the being. logical of logic, itS esenrial lo!, whether it be true. probable, or mythic, forms the explicit theme of the Tm as we shall yet have occasion to explain. Thus one cannot clmly, with no furmer ado, cl by the name proramm� or lic the form which dictates to Plato the law of such a composition: programme and logic Ü apprehended in it, I such, though it be in a dream, and put m Ibme. Having taken this precaution with regard to analogies which might seem imprudenr, let us recall (he most general trait which both gathers and authorizes these displacemenrs, from one place to the other "in" the "same" place [/iej. It is obvious, too obvious even to be noticed. and its generality has. so tospeak. no other limit than itself: it is precisely mat of the gmos. of the genus in all genders and genera, of sexual diference. of the generation of children. of the kinds of being and of mat triton gmos which Mora is (neither sensible nor intelligible, "like" a mother or a nurse, etc.). We have just alluded to all these genres of genres. but we have not yet spoken of the gmos as race.6 people, group. community. afnity of birth. nation, etc. Now we're there. Still at the opening of the Timl t', there is recalled an earlier conversation. a discourse (los) of Socrate on the poliui ll and on its better government. Socrates sums i[ up. and these are the themes of which we have just spoken. In passing. he uses the word Mora (19a) [0 designate the place assigned to children: you must rear the "children of the good." transport the others in secret to another counrr. continue to keep them under observation. and carry out a further sifing operation in attributing to each his place (kl ran). Afer this reminder. Socrates declares himself incapable of praising this city and its men. In this he feels himself to be comparable to the poetS and imitators. And here is the g�nos or �thno!. Socrate claims to have nothing against the people or the race, the tribe of the poetS (poiitikon gmol). But allowing for the place and the conditions of birth as well as the education. the nation, or race of imitators (mimiti/on �tJmos) will have difculty in imitating what it has remained alien to, namely. that which happens in actions and words (ngoi, lou) rather than in spectacles or simulacra. There is also the genre or the tribe of the sophists (ton sophi slon gmos). Socrates privileges here again the sitl tion. the relation to place: the genus of sophists is characterizd by me absence of a proper place. an economy. a fed domicile; these people have no domesticity. no house that is proper to them (oi/iu idias). They wander fromplace to place. fromtown to town, incapable of understanding these men who, being philosophers and politicians. haw (a) plce [Lnt lieu; from avir li�u, or "to take place" -Ed.j, that is. act by means of gesture and speech, in the city or at war. Poiiti/on geno!, mimiti/on �thnos, ton lophiston gmoJ, afer this enumeration what remains? Well, [hen, you. to whom I am speaking now. you who @ also a gmol (1ge), and who belong to the genre of those who hl� (a) piu. who rake place. by nature and by education. You are thus both philosophers and politicians. Socrates' slfategy itSelf operates froma sort of non place, and that is what makes it very disconcerting, not to say alarming. In starting by declaring that he is, a little Iik� the poets. the imitators. and [he sophists. incapable of describing the philosopher.politicians. Soc· rates pretends to rank himself among those who feign. He afects to belong to the gmos of those whose gmos consists in afecting: in simulating the belonging to a place and to a community, for example. to the gmosof true citizens. philosophers. and politicians, to "yours." SocraiN thus prnd to btkmg to tJu gmus ofthoH who pmmd to btkmg to tht gmus ofost who haw (a)plct, a plct and an t(onomy thai art thtir own. But in saying this. Socrates de· nounces this gtnOS to which he pretends to belong. He claims t speak the truth on the subjea of it: in truth, thee people have no place. they are wanderers. Thlnf" / who rNtmbk thtm, I haw no plctOe n'ai pas de lieu]: in any case. as for me J am similar to them. I do not take place [jt n'i pas litul. but if I am similar to them or if I resemble them. that does nor mean that I am their fellow. But this truth. namely that they and I. if we secm to belong to the same gmos. are without a place of our own, is enunciatcd by me, since it is a trmh, fromyour place, you who arc on the side of thc true logos. ofphilosophy and politics. I address you fromyour placc Iplct] in order to say to you that I havc no place Iplct] , since I am like those who makc their trade 1L of resemblance-the poets. the imitators, and the sophists. the genus of those who have no place. You alone have place and Ýsay both the place and the nonplace in truth. and that is why I à going to give you back the Roor. In truth, give it to you or leave it to you. Togive back, to leave. or to give the Roor to the other amounts to saying: you have (a) place. have (3) place. come. The dupliciry of this self-exdusion. the simulacrum of this withdrawal, plays on the belonging t the proper place, as a political place and as a habitation. Only this belonging to place authorizes the truth of the lgos, that is. also its political efectivity, its pragmatic and praxical [praxiqut] efciency. which Socrates regularly associates with the lgos in this context. It is the belonging of a gmos to a proper place which guarantees the truth of its lgos (efective relation of the discourse to the thing itself, 1 the matter. pro) and of its action (praxis, non). The specialists of the Ilonplace and of the simulacrum (among whom Socrates for a moment afects to rank himself) do not even have to be excluded from the ciry. like pharmakoi; they exclude themselves by them. selves. as does Socrates here in giving back the word. They exclude themselve by themselves. or pretend to do so, also. because they quite simply have no room Ipas d p/et]. There is no room for them in the political place llitu] where a irs are spoken of and dealt with. the agora. Although the word Nalready uttered (19a), the question of khoras a general place or total receptacle (pal1 lhi) is, of course, not yet posed. Bur if it is not posed as such. it gestures and points already. The nOte is given. For on the one hand, the ordered polysemy of the word always includes the sense of political place or, more generally. of ;wNtd place, by opposition to abstract space. Khor "means": place occupied by someone, country, inhabited place. marked place. rank, poSt, assigned position, territory. or region. And in faCt, khOrawill always already be occupied, invested, even as a general place, and even when it is distinguished from everything that takes place in it. Whence the difculty-we shall come to it-of treating it as an empry or geometric space, or even. and this is what Heidegger will say of it. as that which "prepares" the Cartesian space. the tunsio of the rsttmso. But on the other hand, the discourse of Socrates. if nor the Socratic discourse, the discourse of Socrates in this precise place and on this marked place. proefromor afects to proceed fromerrancy [lpui s Imanul. from a mobile or nonmarked place. in any 1 from a space or exclusion which happens to be. imo the bargain, neutralized. Why neutralized? If Socrates pretends to include himself among those whose gmus is t have no place, he does not assimilate himself to them, he says he resembles them. Hence he holds himselfin a third genus, in a way. neither that of the sophists, poets. and other imitators (of whom Ju sp�aks). nor that of the philosopher.politi. cians (to whom Ju sp�aks, proposing only to listen to them). His speech is neither his address nor what it addresses. His speech occur in a third genus and in the neutral space or a place without place, a place where everything is marked but which would be "in itself" unmarked. Doesn't he already resemble what others. later, those very ones to whom he gives the word, will call khora? A mere resemblance. no doubt. Only a discourse of the sophists' rype would be so indecem as to misuse it. But to misuse a resemblance. isn't that to present it as an identity, isn't it to assimilate? One can also ponder the reasons for reemblance as such. We are in the preamble. our preamble on the preamble of the 7¡maeu. There is no serious philosophy in introductions. only mytholog. at most, said Hegel. In these preambles, it is not yet a question of khârn,at least not of the one that gives place to the measure of the cosmos. However, in a singular mode, the very place of the preamble gives place, on the threshold, to a treatmenr of place. to an assigning of their place to interlocutors who will be brought to treat of it later. And this assignation of places obeys a criterion: that of the place of the g¬ot with regard to the ¡ro¡cr¡mcc. Now, one has never, it seems, taken into account, taken particular count of, such a staging [mi:c ¬ SC�nJ. It distributes the marked places and the unmarked places according to a schema analogous to the one which will later order the discourse on khera. Socrates g ohim«qefces in himself all the types, all the genera, both those of the men of image and simulacrum whom he pretends for a moment to resemble and that of the men of action and men of their word, philosophers and politicians to whom he addresses himself while efcing himself before them. But in thus efcing himself. he situates himself or institute himself as a ntiv a, let us say, as a mtptck o[ aUthat will henceforth be inscribed. He declare himself to be " andads for that. disposed to nc;w everything he's ofered. The words kotmo:and cm khom¬onare not far away: "nap£Ij.1 t£ O�Y o� "£"OOI.'I.Evoc £1' (iml K(I 1cvlWY EtOII.0tCloc I v 0Ex£OtQl"j "So here I am, all ready to accept it and fl of drive for receiving everything that you will have 1 ofer me" (lOC). Once more the question returns: what does n~ivc mean? What does dckhomai mean? With this question in the form of "what does X mean?" it is not so much a question of meditating on the unstof such and such an expression as of remarking the fold of an immense difculty: the relationship, so ancient, so traditional, so determinanr, berween the question of sense and the sensible and that of receptivity in general. The Kantian moment has some privilege here, bur even before the ¡nnirudcvauvu: or pure sensibility has been deter. 1 " mined as receptivity, the intuitive or perceptive relation [0 intcq bk sest has always included, in fnite being in general, an irreduc· ible receptivity. It is true a[ru`orifor sensory intuition or percep· rion. Lckhomai, which will determine the relation of kh ra to everything which is not herself and which she receives (it/she is ¡a:+µkhë,51a), plays on a whole gamut of senses and connotations: to receive or accept (a deposit, a salary, a present), to welcome, to gather, or even to expect, for example, [he gift of hospitality, to be its addressee, as is here the case for Socrates, in a scene of gif and counter.gif. It is a maner of returning (a:+m¡odmi) the gif of the hospitality of (the) discourses. Socrates says he is ready to receive in echange the discourses of which he becomes the wei· coming, receptive. grateful addressee (lob-c). We are still in a system of gif and debt. When we get on to kh ra as ¡anJkhe, beyond al anthropomorphy, we shall perhaps glimpse a beyond of the debt. Socrates is nOf khâra, but he would look a lot like it/her ifit/she were someone or something. In any c, he puts himself in itslher place, which is nor just a place among others, but perhaps ¡mcc iucq [he irreplaceble place. Irreplaceable and unplaceable place ftom which he receives the word(s) of those before whom he efce himself but who receive them from him. for it is he who make them r like [his. And us, tOO, implacably. Socrates does not occupy this undiscoverable place, but it is the one from which, in {he 7¡maeuand elsewhere, lu all t hu namc. For as khârahe must always "he called in the same way. nAnd as it is nOt certain that Socrates himself, this one here, is someone or something, the play of the proper names becomes more abyssal than ever: What is place? To what and to whom does it give place? What takes place under these names? Who are you. Khora? I I I The permutations, substitutions, displacements don't only touch upon names. The staging unfolds according to an embedding of discourses of a narrative type, reported or not, of which the origin or the frst enunciation appears to be always relayed. appearing to disappear even where it appears. Their mythic dimension is some� rimes exposed as such. and the mis�m abm�. the puning C abm� is there given to be refected without limit. We no longer know whence comes at rimes rhe feeling of dizziness. on what edges. up against the inside fce of what wall: chaos. chasm. Mora. When they explicitly touch on myth. the propositions of the Tima� all seem ordered by a dubk moti In irs very duplicity. it would constitute the philosopheme of the myrheme such as we just saw it being installed. from Plato to Hegel. I. On the one hand. myth derives from play. Hencr it will nor be raken seriously. Thus Plato warns Aristotle. he gers in ahead of the serious objection of Aristotle and makes the same use of the opposition play/seriousness (paidialspoud), in the name of philo sophical seriousness. 1. But on the other hand, in the order of becoming. when one cannot lay claim to a frm and stable los, when one must make do � ith the probable. then myrh is the done thing [t rigunlr); it is ngor. These two motifs are necessarily interwoven. which gives the game irs seriousness and the seriousness its play. It's not forbidden and not difcult to discourse (diakgisaslhai. 59C) on the subject of bodies when one seeks only probability. One can then make do with the form ( i tan) of probable myths (Ion �;kOlon my than). In these momenrs of recreation. one abandons reasonings on the subject of eternal beings; one seeks what is probable on the subject of becoming. One can then take a pleasure there (hMII�n) without remorse; one can moderately and reasonably enjoy the game (pai� dn, 59). The Tm� multiplies propositions of this t. The mythic discourse plays with the probable image because the sen sory world is itself (an) image. Sensory becoming is an image. a semblancr; myth is an image of this image. The demiurge formed the cosmos in tht imagCof rhe eternal paradigm which he contem plates. The los which relates to these images. to these iconic beings. must be of the same nature: merely probable (19b-c-d). We are obliged to accept in this domain the "probable myth" (ton Cikota mython) and not to seek any further (19d. see also 44d. 48d, 57d. 72d-e). If the cosmo-ontologic encyclopedia of the Tmatus presents itself as a "probable myth," a tale ordered by the hierarchiz opposition of the sensible and the intelligible, of the image in the course of becoming and of eternal being, how can one inscribe therein or situate therein the discourse on khora? It is indeed inscribed there for a moment. but it also has a bearing on a piu of inciption of which it is dearly said that it tcmlor P"ut. in an order that is. moreover, aogic and achronic, anachronistic tO, the constitutive oppositions of myrha-Iogic as such, of mythic discourse and of the discourse ÛÎ myth. On the one hand. by resembling an on�iric and bastard reasoning, this discourse reminds us of a sort of myth within the myth, of an open abyss i n the general myth. But on the other hand, in giving to be thought that which belong neither to sensory being nor to intelligible being. neither to becoming nor to eternity, the discourse on khora is no longer a discourse on being. it is neither true nor probable and appears thus to be heterogeneous to myth, at least to mytho-Iogic. to this philosopho-mytheme which orders myth to its philosophi cal uus. The abyss does nor open aU at once. at the moment when the general theme of khora receives its name. right in the middle ImilinJ of the book. It all seems to happen JUSt W i-and the W i is important to us here-the fracture of this abyss were announced in a muted and subterranean way. preparing and propagating in advance its simulacra and mi ÅC Cabm�: a series of mythic fctions embedded mutually in each other. ut us consider frst, in the staging of the Tm from the outset. what Marx cl the "Egyptian model."7 Certain motif. which we could call tpomorphic. anticipate there the sequence on the �kma�ion. this print-bearer, that matter always ready to receive lhe imprint. or else on the imprint and the seal themselves. the imprinted relief (�ktupoma)-these are so many tricks for ap proaching the enigma of khara. Fim occrrrn(: to wl fr th� chil Such as it reaches us, borne by a series of fctional rclays which we shall analytt late r, the: sp of the: old Egyptian priest puts (some thing) forward in a way prior lO all writing. He: opposes it to myth, quite simply. You Gree ks, he says to Solon, you are: like childre: n. for you have no written tradition. Afe:r a cataclysm you have: to re invent e: ve rything. He: re: in Egpt ce rything is writren (pant gwammma) since the most ancie:nt times (lk pa/iou) (2)a), and so tOO is c=e: n your own hislOry. the history of you Grecks. You don't know whe re your prese nt city comes from. for those who survive the freque: nt catas. trophes die in thcir turn without having bttn capable of expressing the: msdves in writing (2)c). De: priv«l of written archives. you have rcurse in your ge:nealogies ( "childish myths" (2)b). Since you have no writing. you need myth. This exchange is not without some formal paradoxe: s. As the myth of its origin, the: memory of a city is sttn (0 be e: ntrusted not only to a writing but to the writing of the: othe r, to the secretariat of another city. It must thus bl m other twice ove: r in order to be sav«l, and it is indttd a question of salvation, of sving a me mory (2)a) by writing on the: walls of te mples. The living memory must be eil«l (0 the graphic vestige of another piu. which is a another city and another politicl space:. But the tchno.graphic superiority of the: Egyptians is none: theless subordinat«l to the se rvice: of the Grttk logos: you Gr«ks. "you surpass«! all men in all sorts of qualities. as befts the scions and the: pupils of the gods. Numerous and great were your exploits and those of your city: they are here by writing igegammmaJ and are admired" (24d). The me: mory of a prople inspccre: d. applpriat«l by another people . or ce: n by anothe r culture: : a phenomenon in the hisrory of culrures well known as the history of coloni zation. But the fact appears highly signifcant he re : the me mory W de posite d, e: ntrust«l lO a de: pot on the shores of a people which declares. here at Ict. its admiration, its depcnde: nce. iu subordination. The Egyptian is suppos«l to have appropriate d the: culture: of the Gree k masters, who now depe nd on this hypomm:sis. on this secre:tariat's writing. on the se monuments: Thoth or Hermes. whicheve r you prefer. For this discourse of the priest-or Egptian interpre ter-is uttered "5 hete and interpret«l i n Grck, for the Gr«ks. Will we ever know who is holding this discourse on the dialectic of the: maste:r and the slave and on the {vo memories? Second occurrenu: to 1ceil and perpetau chilhood So Critias reports a tale of Solon, who himsdf reportS the tale: which an Egyptian priest (Old him on the subject of the mytholical founda· don. precisely, in the memory of the Athenians. Still more pre· cisdy: Critias repeats a tale which he had already told the night before and in the course of which he report«l a conversation be{een Solon and Critias, his gret·grandfarher. a conversation which had been rccoumed to him whe: n he w a child by his ancestor Critias, who himsdfhad heard from Solon the account of the talk which the latter had had in Egypt with the old priest, the same one who explain«l to him, in short, why all the Greeks are at the mercy of oral talNelling, of the oral tradition which. by depriving them of writing. dcstin«l the m to �rpetual childhood! So here 1 a tale .relling about oral tale.rellings. a chain of oral traditions by which those who are subjcct to it e: xplain to them· selves how someone dse, coming from a country of writing, e plains to the m. orally. why thc ate doom«l to orality. So many Greek children, the n, ancestors, children and grandchildren, r. .fcting amongst themselves but thanks to the m«liation of some one other, at once foreigner/stranger and accomplice, supcrior and inferior, the mythopocrics of oral tale-telling. But once again, this will not make us forget (since it is written!) that a this is written in thar place which T(uiV(S ce rything, in this case, name: ly. the Tm� and is rherdn addressed to the one: who. as we do, and before us, TuiWJ ce rything, in this theory of receptions-Soc· rates. At the end of th� tales of talcs, afer th� r«ountings that are mutually inscribed in e ach other to the point whe re one ofen wonders who is, after all, holing this discourse. who is raki"g up speech and who is rtu;ving it, the young Critias recountS how he remembers all this. A taie about the possibility of the tale. a proposition about origin, memory, and writing. As I most ofe n do. I quote a current translation (here that of Rivaud, in the Bude , , 6 Korn edition IF M. Cornford's translation. P"loi Cosmolg: 1b� "Tim· au' ofPlto (Indianapolis: Bobbs·Merrill. n.d.) has �en used, and modifed at need, in this English version-Tr.l, modifYing ir or mentioning the Greek word only where oor COntext requires it: Accordingly. as Hermocratcs has wid you, no sooncr had I lef rester· day than I set about repeating the Story Î $MÍ friends a I reled it. and when I gol home I recovered pretty wdl the whole of it by thinking it over : night. How[cue it is, as theysay Ito hq�tvovl thai what we brn in chil dhood ita lliOl }191Ita) haa wonderl hold on the memor [60uJlcov qE\ t\ }vru iMv]! I doubt if! could rll everything that I herd yterday; bUI I should b surrise [6a\l�OallJ' I if I have lost any detail of this 5[ory told me Wlong ago. I listene al the time with much childish delight. and the old man ¾ very ready to answer the questions I kept on asking; so it has remained in me. as if painted with wax in indelible letters [rote otov tyQU�QtQ QV£IAUtOU lp'il l��ova �Ol yV£V J. (26b-c) I n the space of so-called natural, spontaneous. living memory. me originary would be better preerved. Childhood would be more durably inscribed in this Nman me intervening times. Eface· mem would be the fgure for the midk[m;/im; Derrida plays on this word with its sugestion of "half.way place." "something that is only half place," mi·lim-Tr.] both for space and for time. It would afect only second or secondary impressions, average or mediated. The originary impression would be inefceable, once it has been engraved in the virgin N. Now what is ""smud by a virgin N¡ a ¾ mat is always virgin. absolutely preceding any possible impression, always older. becuse atemporal. than everything that seems to afect it in order to rake form in it. in it which rtiw. nevertheless. and in it which. for the same reason. is always younger. infant even, achronic and anachronistic. so indeterminate that it does nOI even juStify the name and the form of wax? Let us leave this question suspended until the moment when there will be grounds for [011 ; y auÏlt dt} renaming /ora. But it w already necessary to show the homology of this schema with the very content of the tales. In Kora "7 Iruth. each narrative content-fbulous, fctive. legendary, or mythic, it doesn't matter for the moment-becomes in itS turn Ihe content of a diferent tale. Each tale is thus the rtetptckof another. There is nothing but receptacles of narrative receptacles, or narra· dve receplacles of receptacles. Let us not forget that receptacle, place of reception or harboringllodging (ho/l). is the most insistent determination (let us not say "essential," for reasons which must already be obvious) of /or W But i /or is a receptacle. ifit/she give place to ali lhe storie. ontologic or mythic. that can be recounted on me subject of what she receive and even of what she reembles but which in fct t place in her, !hor a herself, so to speak, does not become the object of any tu, whether true or fabled. A secret wimout secret remains forever impenetrable on the subject of it/her [a son sujet] . Though it is not a true lgos. no more is the word on /ora a probable myth, eimer. a StOry that is reponed and in which another story will take place i n its rurn. Let us take it up again fromfarmer back. In mat fction which is the wrtensemble of the dialogue entitled Ttmaeus, someone speaks at frst of a dialogue which is said to have taken place "last night" (kbtbc. 17a). This second fction (F2) has a content, the fctive model of an ideal city (17C), which is described in a narrative mode. A structure of inclusion makes of the includd fction. i n a sense me theme of [he prior fction, which is ils including form, its capable container, let us say irs receptacle. Socrates, who. as we have nored, fgures as a general addressee. capable of understanding everything and therefore of receiving everything (like ourselves, even here), then afectS to interrupt this mythopoetic suing of events. But this is only in order to relaunch it even more forcdully: I may now go on to Iell you how I feel aboul the Stale [poluia] we have described. I feel rather like a man who has been looking al some beautiful creatures [da kau], either represented in painting [h gaphh] or really alive but motionless. and conceives a d � ire to wal� them in motion and actively exercising the powers promised by their form. That is juSt what I feel about th� Stat� W� hav� described: I should lik� to her à account of it pMuing forth itS su�ngth in such LntÕtò ¢ a StaI� will �ngag� in aginst oth�rs, going to war in a mann� . r wo � thy of : a� achieving results beftting, th� training and educatIon glv�n to liS cItizens, both in feats of arms and in negotiation with various other States. h9b-c) £in � f S�rates, of the one who receives everything, on� agatn: to gIVe life, to selife and movement given IO a graph!. to see a � ography become animated, in other words. a pictural represen. t � tIOn, the d � cr . iption or the dead inscription of the living. Togive blrrh-but thiS IS also war. And therefore death. This desire is also political. How would one animate this representation of the politi. cal? How would one set in morion. that is, set walking/marching, a dead representation of the polit�ia? By showing the city in relation to other cities. One will thus describe by words. by discursive painting, a State's movement of going outside ofirself. Thanks to a s�cond graphic fctiol, one will go outside of the frst graph! The latter was more dead, less living than the second one to the extent that it described the city in itSelf, internal to itSelf, at peace with its own interiority, in its domestic economy. The possibility of w makes the graphic image-rhe decription-of the ideal city go out. �o . t ye � into the l i � ing and mobile real. but into a bener image, a hVlllg Image of thiS living and mobile real, while yet showing a fnctioning that is internal to the test: war. In all the senses of the word, it is a tcisiw aositiol of the city.! At rhe moment when he asks that one should at last get OUt of � his graphic hallucination to see the image of rhe things themselves 1 movement. Socrates points at. without denouncing them, poets and sophists: by defnition they are incapable of getting out of the simulacrum or the mimetic hallucination in order to describe poli � ical reity. Paradoxically. it is to the extent rhat they are always outside. Without a place of their own and with no fxed abode, that these members of the »dm�/ikol �tlmos, or the gmos 101 sophislon or of the poiilikon gmos remain powerles. incapable of speaking of the political reality inasmuch as it is m�asured 01 Ilu outsid, precisely, in the test ofwar. "9 At the same time, afecting to rank himself on the side of this �tlmos or of this gmos. Socrates confesses that he tOO is incapable of going outside. by himself and of himself, of his myrhomimetico- graphic dream in order to give life and movement to the city. ("I know myself well enough to know mat I will never be capable of celebraring as one should this city and its citizens [in w, negotia· rion, and movement]. My incapacity is not surprising; but I have formed the same judgment abom the poets." 19d.) A supplementary irony: Socrates is not content to side for a moment with the men of the zoographic simulacrum; he declares that he doe not despise their gmos or their (thlos. This confers on the play between the tet and the theme, between what is done and what is declared, as between the successive inclusions of the "recep- tacles" for themes and theses. a Structure without an indivisible ongln. In this theatre of irony. when: the scene interlock in a series of Î ceptacles without end and without bottom. how c one isolate a thesis or a theme that could be attributed clmly to the "philosophy. of· Plato." indeed to philsoph as the Platonic thing? This would be to misrecognize or violently deny the struCture of rhe tamal scene. to r as resolved all the quetions of topolog in general. including that of the place of rhetoric. and to think one understood what it means [0 receive, that is. to understand. It's a little early. A always. IV Should one henceforth forbid oneself to speak of the philosophy ofPlaro, of the ontOlogy of Plato, or even of Platonism? Not at all. and there would undoubtedly be no error of principle in so speak· ing, merely an inevitable abstract;on. Pltoni would mean, in these conditions, the rhesis or the theme which one has extracted by artifce, misprision, and abstraction from the text, torn out of the written fction of "Plato." Once this abstraction has been supercharged and deployed. it will be extended over all the folds of the text, of its ruses, overdeterl11inations, and reserve, which the abstraction will com(! to cov(r up and dissimulat(. This will be call� Platonism or th( philosophy of Plato, which is neith(r arbitrary nor illegitimate, sinc( a c(rtain for�of th(tic abstraction at work in the h(terogeneous t(xt of Plato can r(comm(nd one to do so. It works and presents itSelf precisely und(r th( name of philosophy. If it is not illegitimate and arbitrary to call it as it is call�, that is because its arbitrary violence, its abstraction, consists in making (h( law, up to a point and for a whil(, in dominating, according to a mod( which is precisely all of philosophy, other motifs of thought which ar( also at work in the tet: for eample, those which int(rest us h(r( both by privilege and from another situation-I(( us say, for brevity, fromanother historical situation, even though history depends most often in itS concept on this philosophical heritage. "Platonism" is thus certainly on( of the efectS of th( t(xt signed by Plato, for a long time, and for necessary resons, th( dominant efect, but this efect is always turn� back against th( text. It must be possible t anal� this violent reversion. Not that we have at our disposal at a given mom(nt a greater lucidity or new instrum(nts. Prior to this technolog or this methodology, a new situation, a new (xperience. a dif(r(nt nknonmust be possible. I leave these thr(( words (sìmn'on. o¸occc, rckn`on) without complement in ord(r nor to determin( th(m tOO quickly and in order to announc( new questions through this reading of kböra.To say, for exampl(, situation or topology of being, expcrienc( o[bcìng or relation tobcìng,would perhaps be to set oneself up too quickly in the space opened up by the question of the meaning of being in its Heidegerian t. Now, it will appear later, a propos the Heidegerian interpretation of kböm, that our quetions are a address� to certain decisions of Heideger and to their very horizon, to what forms the horizon of the question of the meaning of being and of itS epochs. The violent reversion of which we have JUSt spoken is always interest� and interesting. It is naturally at work in this ensemble without limit which we call here thcut. In constructing itself, in being posed in its dominant format a given moment (here that of the Platonic thesis, philosophy, or ontolog), the tet is n(utralized in it, numbed, self�destruct�, or dissimulated: un�ualJy, partially, provisionally. The forces that are thus inhibited continue to main� rain a certain disorder, some potential incoherence, and some heterogeneity in the organization of the theses. They introdu� parasitism into it, and clandestinity, ventriloquism, and. above all, a general tone of denial, which one can learn to perceive by exercising one's ear or one's eye on it. "Platonism" is not only an example of this movement, the frst "in" the whole history of philosophy. It commands it, it commands this whok history. A philosophy as such would hen�forth always be "Platonic." Hen� the necessity to continue to try to think what take place in Plato, with Plato, what is shown there, what is hidden, so as to win there or to lose there. Let us return to the TimatU At the point we have now reached, how Ýwe recognize the ¸uctofthe tale? Who is ¸mctcdthere? Who holds the discourse there? To whom is the spe«h addresed? Still to Socrate: we have already insist� on this singular dissym� metry: but that remains still tOO indeterminate, by defnition. At this point, then, three instances of tetual fction are mutually included in one another, each as content given form in the recepra� de of another: FI, the 1iman itself, a unit{y) that is already difcult to cut up; F2, the conversation of the evening before (1bc Rtpublic, Poliuia? This debate is well known); and F), irs present resume, the description of the ideal ¸o|itc w. But this is merely tobegin (17a-19b). In front ofrhedead picture [tabkau morta pun on tblau vivant-Tr.] Socrates thus demands that one pass on (0 life, to mov(ment and to reality, in order ro speak at last of philosophy and politics, those thing that the mimitikon ctbnos, the ¸oìcìkongco:, and the tön so¸butöngcnos are, somewhat like Socrates, incapable of. He addresses his inter� locutors as a diferent gcnos, and this apostrophe will make them speak while according to them th( necessary right and competenc( for mat. In efacing himself and in rendering up the word, Socrates seems also to induce and to program the discourse of his addressees, 1" whose liSlcner and receiver he afects to become. Who will speak henceforth through their mouths? Will it be rhey. Socrates' ad· dressces? Or Socrates, their addressee? The gcosof most who by nature and by education participate in the tWO orders, philosophy and politics ("&)0 clJlpO'EPWV qOElla1 tp<n )lEtEXOV," loa), sees itself thus being assigned the word by rhe one who excludes himself fromtheir gcosand pretends [0 belong ro rhe gcosof rhe simula· tors. So young Cririas accepts (F 4) to recoum a tale which he had already told the night before, on the road, according ro old oral traditions (�k¡abìasakoo 2Od), In the course of this tale. which, the night before, already repeated an old and ill-determined tradi tion, young Cririas recounts another tale (FS), which old Critias. his ancestor, had himself told of a conversation which he (said he) had with Solon, a conversation in the course of which the latter relates (F6) in his turn a conversation which he (said he) had with an Egptian priest and in the course of which the latter relates (F7) in his turn me origin of Athens: according ÎEgyptian scriptures. Now it is in this last tale (the frst one in the series of narrative events, me last one to be reported in this telling of tellings) that the reference (0 Egptian writing returns. In the course of this frst*last tale, the most mythic in its form. it is a matter of reminding the Greeks, who have remained children. of whar the childhood of Amens was. Now, Athens is a fguration of a ciry which. though it did nor have the correCt usage of writing, nonetheless served as a model to the Egyptian ciry fromwhich the priest came-hence as an exemplary paradigm in the place from which. in short. he advances this tale. That place. which seems to inspire or produce the tale thus has another place. Athens, as irs model. So it is Athens or irs people who, as the apparent addressees or receptacles of the tale. would thus be, according to the priest himself, its unerers. producers. or inspirers, its informers. In fction FI-irsclfwrinen, let us never forget that-there is thus developed a theory or a procession of writing referring, ìn urìtìng, t an origin older than itself (F7). In the center, berween F 3 and F4. is a sort of reversal, an apparent catastophe, and the appearance is that we think we're passing then at last into reality. exiting from the simulacrum. In truth. every* thing still remains confned in the space of the zoographic fction. We can gauge the ironic ingenuiry that Socrates needs in order to congratulate himself here on passing over to serious things and going beyond the inanimate painting to get on to real events at last. Indeed. he applauds when Critias announces to him that he is getting ready to recount what his grandfather told him Solon had told him on the subject of what an Egyptian priest had confded to him about "the marvelous exploits accomplished by thi s ciry" (2OC), one of these exploits being "the greatest of all" (¡antönd bc o_iston)Therefore, we will say (mimiclcing the argument of Saint Anselm, unless it be that ofGaunilon): an event which must have been r� or else it would not have been the greatest of all. That's well said, replies Socrates in his enthusiasm. �ubg�u. And he goes on to ask at once what is this exploit. this qctiv�work (ugOl) which was nOt reported only as a fction. a fable, something said, something one is content to talk about (ougomcon)but also as a high faCt really accomplished (ontös)by that city, in former rimes about which Solon thus heard tell. We ought, then, to speak at last of a fact (egon)veritably, really accomplished. Now what happens? Let u nOte fm thar me essen* tial would come (0 us fromSolon's moum, himself qUoted by rwo generations of Critiases. Now who is Solon? He is hastily presented as a poet of genius. If political urgency had lef him the leisure to devote himself to his genius, he would have surpassed Hesiod or Homer (2Ia-b). Afer what Socrates has just said about pocu, afer the "realist" turn which the texr pretended to take. this is a further excess of irony, which destabilizes even more the frmness of the theses and (hemes. It accentuates the dynamic tension between the thetic efect and the textual fction, between on the one hand the "philosophy" or the "politics" which is here associated with him-contents ofidcn* tifablc and transmissible meanings like the identity of a knowl edge-and on [he other hand a textual drif ,div�] which rakes the form of a myth, in any event of a "saying" (gomcon).whose Khom origin appears always undefned. pulled back, entrusted to a re· sponsibiliry that is forever adjourned. without a fxed and deter. minable subject. From one telling to the next. the author getS farther and frther away. So the mythic saying resembles a dis· course without a legitimate father. Orphan or bastard. it is distin· guished from the philosophical IOJ. which, as is said in the Pha. must have a father to answer for it and about it. This fmilial schema by which one situates a discourse will be found again at work at the moment of situating, if we Ýstill say this, the place [/�u] of any site (Jiu]. namely MOT On the one hand. Mom would be the "receptacle-as it were, the nurse-of any birth" ("roOll< dVol ytvEOEo i)oOOXv cun,v olov n9fvTlv," 49a). k a nurse. she thus drives from that t�Ttium quid whose logic com· mands all that is atrributed to it. On the other hand. a little further on, another suitable "comparison" is proposed to us: ''And it is convenient t compare (proJ�ikll i P"P�i] [he receptacle ro a mother. the paradigm to a fther, and the intermediary nature between the twO [0 a child {�konon]" (Sod). And yet. to follow this other fgure. although it no longer has the place of the nurse but that of the mother. MOTadoes nOt couple with the father. in other words. with the paradigmatic model. She is a third gender/genus (48e); she does not belong to an oppositional couple. for example. to that which the intelligible paradigm forms with the sensible becoming and which looks rather like a father/son couple. The "mother" is supposedly apart. And since it's only a fgure. a schema, merefore one of these determinations which khora receives. Mor is not more of a mother [han a nurse. is no more than a woman. This triton genol is not a genol, frst of all because it is a unique individ ual. She does nor belong to the "race of women" ( genoJgnllikon).' Kormarks a place apart, the spacing which keeps a dissymmetri· c relation to all that which, "in herself." beside or in addition to herself, seems to make a couple with her. In the couple outside of the couple, this strange mother who gives plaee without engender ing can no longer be considered as an origin. She/it eludes all anrhrop<rtheological schemes, a history, all revelation, and all truth. Preoriginary, b4im and ourside of all generation, she no Khor " 5 longer even has the meaning of a past, of a present that is past. &fimsignifes no temporal anterioriry. The relation of indepen dence. the nonrelation. looks more like the relation of the interval or the spacing to what is lodged in it to be received in it. And yet the discourse on Mom, conducted by a basmrd reason ing without a legitimate father (mo tini ,lthi s2b), is inaugu· rated by a new return [TUOIT] to the origin: a new raising of the stakes in the analytic regression. Backward steps [moun m arml give to the whole of the Tima�UJ irs rhythm. Its proper time is articulated by movements which reume from even farther back the things already deal! with frther back. Thus: If (hen, we arc really [Ovt�] tO tell how (heworldwas born, we must bring in also the Erranl Cause ]K(l to tit I).a.w�iv'lt d� oitili] and in what manner its nalUre is LÜ LJmOlion. So we must relUrn upon our steps [leAIV] thus, and take up again, for these phenomena. Üappropriate new beginning [lPloV ttipav «PX V] and stan once more upon our preent teme frm the beginning, as we did upon te theme ofour earlier discourse [vi,oot(l) llPI tct(l)v lQIV ap�£v al' apXlt] ( . Sa-b). We will nO[ begin again at the beginning. We will not go back. as is stated immediately afer. to frst principles or elements of all things (stoikJuia tou pamos). We must go further onward, take up again everything that we were able to consider hitherto as the origin. go back behind and below {m dfil the elementary principles, that is, behind and below the opposition of [he paradigm and itS copy. And when. in order to do this. it is announced that recourse will be made only to probable afrmations ("n,v toV EiKOtll \l ) v Buv (�IV." or again "to toV dlOtll V Oa," 48d-e). it is in order a to propose to "divide further" the principle (48e): "Now let us divide this new beginning more amply than our frst. We then diStin· guished rwo forms [So Eorl of being; now, we must point out a third {tpi¯ov aA YEVoc �Iliv O'lA.wtEOV]." Let us take things up again from farther back, which can be uanslated thus: let us go back behind and below the assured discourse of philosophy, which proceeds by oppositions of princi- pie and counrs on the origin a on a nomzl coupk. We must go back roward a preorigin which deprives us of this assurance and requires at the same time an impure philosophical discourse, threatened, bastard, hybrid. These traits are not negative. They do not discredit a discourse which would simply be interior to philos· ophy, for if it is admittedly nOt true, merely probable, it still tells what is necessary on the subject of necessi£),. The strange difculty of this whole tet lies indeed in (he distinction between these twO modalitie: the true and the necessary. The bold stroke consisrs here in going back behind and below the origin, or also the birth, tOward a n�ctSjt which is neither generative nor engendered and which carries philosophy, "precedes" (prior to the time that passes or the eternal time before history) and "receives" the efect, here the image of oppositions (intelligible and sensible): philosophy. This necessiry (lhora is its sur.name) seems so virginal that it doo not even have the fgure of a virgin any longer. The discourse on khara thus plays for philosophy a role analo· gous to the role which Ihara "herself" plays for that which philoso phy speks of. namely, the cosmos formed or given form according to the paradigm. Neverrheless, it is from this cosmos that the proper-but necessarily inadequate-fgures will be taken for de· scribing khara: recepracle, imprint·bearer, mother, or nurse. These fgures are not even true fgures. Philosophy cannot speak directly, whether in the mode of vigilance or of trurh (true or probable), about what these fgures approach. The dream is between the two, ndther one nor the other. Philosophy cannot speak philosophically of that which looks like irs "mother," its "nurse," its "teceptacle," or its "imprint-bearer." A such, it speaks only of the father and the son, as if the fther engendered it all on his own. Once again, a homology or analog that is at least formal: in order ro think khora, it is nece to go back to a beginning that is older (han the beginning, namely, the birth of the cosmos, just as the origin of the Athenians mUSt be recalled ro them frombeyond their own memory. In that which is formal about it, precisely, the analog is declared: a concern for architectural, textual (histologi cal) and even organic composition is presented as such a little "7 further on. It "call the organicist motif of (he Pha�dm: a well composed los must look like a living body. Timaeus: "Now that, like the builders [uklosinj. we have the materials [by/: material, wood. raw material, a word that Plato never used to qualif khara. let that be said in passing to announce the problem posed by the Aristotelian interpretation of khorn as matter-JDI ready sorted ro our hands, namely. the kinds of cause [necessary cause, divine cause-JDl we have distinguished, which are to be combined in the fbric (!J"JP"anl"�"njl of reasoning [fos] which remains for us to do. Let us go back, then, once more, brieRy, to the beginning [paln �p'rkhinl, and rapidly trace the Sleps thai led u (0 the point from which we have now reached the same position once more; and then attempt to crown our Story with a completion fning all that has gone before [It/turin Ion mytha l�"a/�fI] " (69a). TRANSLATED BY IAN Me LEon Notes Notes Passìoos TRANSLATOR ' S NOTE: I would like μ Ihank Leslie Hill, Pcter Larkin, and Will McNeill fr their considerable help in uprooting errors and suggesling numerous felicitous phrasings and construal!. Without Iheir hdp this lransladon would have 1lrayed considerably greler linguistic eccemriciry. 1. What does tJ narratrsuggesl on the subjecl of (he analysis and (e analyst in Ti Prlinn ut but esp«ially in the frst page of TI Murn in t R. Morut? To give the greatesl sharpness to the un n&bound concept of the analys[, he suggets ,hal the analyst would have to prt beyond calculation. even without rule: "Yet μ calculalc i not in itself to analyz . . . . But it is in maners beyond the limits of mere rule thai the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in si/et [my empha sis-JOlt a host of oiser:ions and inferences. So, perhaps do hi s companions . . . . II will be found, in fa, (hat the ingenious are always fnciful, and the truly imaginative never Otherwise than analytic." Se Edgar Allan Poe, Pom a"d ri (New York: Library of America). pp. 388-89. In Tht Prl;"td Lttttr (ibid., pp. 69[-92), Dupin quotes Chamfon and denounces Ø "folly" the (O"wnt;Of by which mathemati c reason would be "th� reason par n;ullnct," and Ø a perfectly Fnch "scientific trickery" the application of the term "analysis" only to "al gebraic operations." Note already, since this will be our theme, that [hese e)changes between (he narrator and Dupin take place in scml, in a "SfC[ place." Like them, with them, we arc WM 3C Í [isola[ed. shut , )2 Notc toPa gc6-p away-Tr.]. as we say in French, and "in the secret," which does nOI mean Ihat we know anything. II is al least and predsdy what the narrator, in a form wriuen and published by P, ull{us), twice the secret is fol (even the addrtss supplied: "a[ an obscu� library in the rue Montman�," then "in a rtlircd and deolate portion of the Faubourg 51 Germain," then Min his little back library, or book closct, No )3. Rue Dunot. Faubourg SI Germain" (ibid., p. 680]) wilhom for all that the same secret ever being penetrated at al. And this is bus il is al a maHer of ttace, both in the trace of discourse. and in the discourse of inscription, of transcription or, if one wishes to fllow convention. of writing, both in the writing of liter:luf, and in the liter-nuTe offction, Inh in the fction of narration, and placed in the moulh of a narrator, to whom, for al thee reasons, nothing requires us t give credit. That a secret cn be announced without being revealed, or, aher:llivdy, thai the secret is manifest, this is what there is [il y aJ (n gibt) and will always remain to translate, even here, etc. 2. ' was deeply interested in the little fmily history which he detailed to me with al the cndor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere s is the theme" (Edgar AJlan Pex, T� Mur in t� RJ Moru�, in Itry and ri p. 40). "Je fls profnd�ment int�resse par Å petite histoire de fmille, qu'it me raconta minutieuscment avec cene cndeur et cet abandon-ce sans-f�n du moi-qui est Ie propre de tout Francis quand il parle de b propres afires" (Poe, Tht Murr in t/J Rut Morgut, trans. Charle Baudelaire in his Ov comp/us: fistoim ardinaim [Pris: Louis Conard, 1932], p. 6). Is it enough to speak French, ÎL have leed to speak French, to be or ÎL have become a French citizen 1 appropriate for oneself; to appropriate oneself to, what is. according ÎL Baudelaire's translation. so strictly personal-a transla tion more appropriating than appropriate-"Ie propre de tout Francis" (the property of al French people)? 3· One ought nor to have, On dnait W pas dir, even for re0ns of economy. 10 dispcnS with here [firt id I'tmomit tJ a slow, indirect, uncenain analysis of that which, in cmail determined linguistic and cullUml regions [aimJ (cmain, hence not all nor all equally), would root duty in debt. Even before getting involved in that, ¾ cannot detach ourselves from a feeling, one whose linguistic or cultural conditioning is difcult to Ü . It is doubtless more than a feeling (in the most common sens of the term, that of the sensibility or the "pathological" of which K spke), but keenly ft/this paradox: a gesture remains NoutoPage 9 'JJ a-moral (it fls shorr of giving afrmation, unlimited, incalculable. or uncalculadng, without any possible reappropriation, against which one must mesure the ethicity or the morality of ethics), if it was accom plished Out of dut in the sense of "duty of retitution," Out of a duty which would come down to the discharge of a debt, OUt of such a duty a having to return what has been lent or borrowed. Pure morality must exceed al calculation, conscious or unconscious. of restitution or rep propriation. This feeling It/I us, perhaps without dicÎlinganyÎhing, that we must go beyond duty. or at least beyond duty a dbt: duty owes nothing, it must owe nothing, it ought at any rate to owe nothing [f. d ir ntdit rim, i/ dlt n� r dooir, il dumit CMca nt ritl dirJ. But U there a duty without debt? How B ¾ to understand, how translate a saing which tells us that a du£' ought to precribe nothing [un dir dil nt ritn t/irJ in order t be or to do what it should be or should do, namely, a duty, its duty? Here a discrete and silent break with culture and language announces itself, and it is, it would be. thi s duty. BUI if debt, tiN «nomy of tbt continues to haunt al duty, then would we still say that duty insists on being carried beyond duty? And that btn these Î duties no common mesure should reist the gentle but intractabf. [intraitbf. ) imperative of the frmer? Now, who will ever show that this haunting memory of debt can or should ever cease to disturb the feeling of duty? Should not this disquiet predispose us indefnitely against the good conscience? Does it not dictate t us the frst or the last duty? It i s here that conscience and etymologico-semantic knowledge & indispensable, even if as such they must not have the lat word. We must be content I with indictive refrences {� provide the rule: a place, a certain limited number of page. a certain time, a dnt (English in original-Tr.J, yes, time and space ruled by a myste� rious ceremony). One would have t cross-reference between them, and try, if possible. to link them up in a network. One very accidental trajectory would follow the movements back and forth (al tt moun: also "return tickets"; "outgoing and returns" would prhaps capture a more fnancial idiom-Tr.), fr example, between the determination of duty in Tht Cn'tiqut of Pactical Ron or Tl FoundtiofIJ of tiN Mta pbic of Moral, the determination of debt and of culpability in the Kantian metaphysics of law, the meditation of Eing and Timt on the Kanestalion" (luugung), cll (Ru/), and on originary &/uligstin (being-guilty), and (for tample) the second e ay of Tht Gtntal of MÜrauon "guilt" (StJ/, "bad conscience" (&hkchtwm) and the ' 34 Nou to Pi1 g�9 like (und Vtrwandrt). in which Nietzsche begins (seclion 2) by rcalling "the long history of Ihe origi n of rponsibilt� ("die lange G(SChichte \'n der Herkunf der VeÏonlichkei,") and asks (section 4) whether "these genelogiru of moraliry had ever had the binlcs( suspicion that, for example, ,he central moral concepi of guilt [zum li spit/ jm" moralic,Hauptbtif"Schul" J dwilS origi n from the ,cry mal:rial concept of'dd>t' (Shulj." In the same movemem. Nierzsche recalls (section 6) the crud aspect (Gmusamkrit) of "old Kant'S" categorial imperative. Freud would nOI � f away, the Freud of Toumand Tbo on the religions of the fther and the religions of Ihe son, on the origin of remorse and of the moral conscience, on the sacrifces and the pUllings 10 death thai they require, on the accession of the confraternal law (let us say, of a urtain eonapt of democracy). Accidental back and forth movements [alkru moun-s above, Tr.), comings and goings, then, between althese already canonical texts and meditations of a rype apparently diferent bUi in faCt very dose-and doser to our rime, for example, the most recent proposals of Emile Benveniste (-Euro�anLa"guag�and Socity, trans. Elizbeth Palmer [Miami: University of Miami Press, 19731, ch. 16, "Lending, Borrowing and Debt") or of Charles Malamoud (Lim t vito notud montl: Ln Rmtntrions d f d m Chi, au Japon ( dns k mond indim [Paris: EHESS. 19881). Two quotations will eplain bener, if more obliquely, the direction which I ought to pursue here. but cnnot. One from Benveniste (pp. 148-49), the other frm Malamoud (pp. 7. 8, I). 14). Each quotation fnds ample epansion, of cou�, in the work of thee Îauthors. Benveniste: "The sense of the Latin thto 'owe' s«ms to result from the compsition ofthe term t ¬ hahro, a compound which is not open to doubt since the Ltin archai c perfct is still thihui (for instance, in Plautus). What docs tbto mean? The current interpretation is 'to h:ve something (which one keeps) fm somebody': this is very simple, perh:ps too much so, because a difculry presens itself immediately: the construction with the dative isinexplicable, tbtrtalquidafieui. "In Latin, contrary t what it might seem, dbLrtdocs not constitute the proper expression for 'to owe' in ,he sense of 'to have a debt.' The technical and legal designation of the 'debt' is ats altnum in the expres sions '10 have debts, to seule a debt, in prison for debt.' lLb�"in the sense of 'to have debts' is rare, it is only a derived usage. "The sense of dtbtrt is diferent, although it is also translated by 'to Nou to Pagt 9 '35 owe.' One can 'owe' something without having borrowed it: for instance, one 'owe' rent fr a hoU5, although thi5 does not involve the retur of a sum borrowed. Buof its formation and construction, tbto should be interpreted according to the value which pertains to the pref t, J wit: 'taken, withdrawn from'; hena: ¹ ÍW hold [1m,""} something which has been raken from ld] somebody. "This literal interpretation corresponds to an actual ¼. tl is u in circumstances in which one has to give back something belonging to another and which one keeps without having literally 'borrowed' it: tbtrt is to detain something taken from the belongng or rights of others. D�but is used, for instance. 'to owe the trOOpS meir pay' in speaking of a chief. or the provisioning of a town with corn. The obligation 10 give results from the fCt that one holds what belong ÎM another. That is why dbto in the early period is not the proper term for tbt. "On the other hand, there is a close relation between 'debt,' 'loan,' ad 'borrowing,' which is called mutua ptcunia: muruam p«uni am sofwrr 'pay a debt.' The adjective muruus defnes the relation which character izethe loan. h has a dear formation and etymolog. Although the verb muto has not taken on thi s technical sense, the connection with muruusis certain. We may also cite munu and so link up with an extensive fmily of Indo-Europen wors which, with various sufxes. denote the notion of 'reciprociry.' . . . The adjective muruus indicate either 'loan' or 'brrowing: according to the way in which the epression is qued. It awy has to do with money [p«unia) paid b:ck CXcdy in the amount that w received." Malamoud: "In the modern Europen language to which ¾have jut alluded. mere appears to be a direct relationship between the frms of the verb d ir, which deal with obligation properly speaking or with ob l iga tion as probability, and those which mean 'being in debt [t).' T relationship appers at one time in the fact that 'duty [tirj' u absolutely is the equivalent of'being indebted, being in debt,' wim, when appropriate, a substantive complement indicating what debt consists of ('lowe [di s] a hundred francs'); at other times, in the very name of debt, which, in a more or less perceptible fashion for the speaker who is not an erymologist, derives from the verb dvoir [should. ought, must-Tr.]: the debt, is what is dû [owed, due). what is carried into 'debit', the French term d [debt). derives from the Latin tMtum, which itself, past participle of db�rt, tvoir, i s used in the sense of 'debt.' Note to Ptg� 9 "In debt are combined duty and ful! [fUl(; also lack]: a connection for which the history of the Germanic languages provides evidence: the German &hulmeans both 'deb,' and 'fult' [fu¾], and schuligmeans both 'guilty' and 'debtor.' But Schul derives from the Gothic skul which itself is connected with a verb simin 'to have an obligation', 'to be in debt' (it translates, in the Gospel, the Greek verb ophril, which has these two acceptations) and also 'to be at fault.' On ,he other hand, from the same Germanic radical, 'skal but with another rreatment of the initial letter, derives the German verb solun 'should (do)' [tir (i")] and the English shall which, although enjoying a specialist usage today in the expression of the future, meant, at a much older srage of the language, 'dut' in the full sense. "Groups of this t, more or less dense, more or less articulated, appear in a great number of Indo-Europen languages. They do not always delineate [he same confgurations, and each particular situation would demand a cf study . . . . "The linguistic analyses of Jacqueline Pigco[ for Japanese, of Viviane Aleton for Chinese, show, with althe requisite nuances, that the sphere of moral debt 1 clearly distinct from that of material debt, and that neither is connected with the morphemes corresponding to the word toir[ought/should] as an auxiliary of obligation or of probability. The confgurations that we notice in the languages that we have mentioned cnnot b detected either in Japanese or Chinese. It is not quite the same for Sanskrit: there is no word toir in Sanskrit, and there is no ety mological connection between the diferent names fr moral obligation and the name of debt. On the other hand, debt, named by a term which refers just as well t economic debt (including that which reults from borrowing money with interest) as it does to moral debt, is presented, in Brahmanism, as the prototype and the principle by which debts are explained . . . . "However, the notion of ctanu [belief, credence, credit, also debt, claim!-Tr.) can also lend itself 1 polysemic games: one only has 1 recall that in French cranu [belief] and manu are originally one and the same word, that in German GlubigCmeans both crant [believer] and manrier [crediwr]. But the connection between firt mdit [to give credid and croirt [believe] is less fecund, ideologically, than that which binds doir [duty/oughtl to ;m C tt(being in debt) . "That man, according to Brahmanism, is born 'as debt', that this debt is the mark of his mortal condition, docs not mean that human nature is Nom to Page /0 ' 37 determined by original sin. A the Sanskrit word ra tne, ¢some times be colored by fuu(fault, lack), the German philologists of the last century, infuenced perhaps by the ambiguity of the word Schul as both 'debt' and 'fault', sugested making 7W derive from the same Indo European radical as Latin: 7) 'accused', 'culpable: The etymolog is erroneous, as would be a similarity between fundamental debt and original sin. Debt is neither the sign nor the consequence of a fl, nor, moreover, of any such occurrence. It does not reuh frm a contract, but directly places man in the condition or the status of debtor. This stams itself is made concrete and is diversifed in a series of duties or of partial debts, which arc invoked, in the Hindu laws, to justify the rules of positive law which organiz the administration of material debt. . . . "The most concrete example, and if we may say so, the best illustration of this 'connection and drawing together {coli gmu} of heven and earth' which would b debt, was provided for us by Hou Ching-lang, who shows us excellently how man buys his destiny by pouring into the celestial treasury the bad money of a true sacrifce." 4. On this "problematic" of the semantic confguration of cap, of capit� of the capital of font (in the double sense of "front" -for example, a military front or fi" fom [to fce somene} as in aJme mmt (fce, brave, rackle], or confonttion [conrontation]-and the prominence of the fce, the f"lad [English in original-Tr.)), of the frontal and of the frontier, I would refer the reader paf[icularly t my L/um Cap. fllowed by L Dnocratit ajour'e (Paris: Minuit, 1991); in English, The Orhtr Htadn (cans. Pascle-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 199:). 5. The child is the problem. A always. And the problem is always childhood. NO[ that I am distinguishing here, as we used t do in my student days, and in the tradition of Gabriel Marcel, between prbkm and mysty. The mystery would rather depend here on a certain prob lematicity of the child. Later I will t perhaps to distinguish the I fromboth the mystery and the probum. In the Sophoclean tragedy which b his name, Philocterus makes this supplementary J of the word problma: the substitute, the deputy, the prosthesis, whatever or whoever one puts frUardto protect oneself while concealing oneself whatcver or whoever comes in the place or in the name of the other, delegated or divened responsibility. It is at the moment when, abandoned by his friends after a serpent bite had lef a fetid wound on his body, Philoctetus still keeps [he secret of the Heradean bow, an invincible bow from which ' 38 Noto toPagcs 2"J they will lcmporarily separate him. Right now, they ÜÏC in need ofbOlh the wepon and the þÏJ. Acting always indil'tly. aer many detours and Slrtt:gcms, wilhout ever fcing him [f;rt font]. Ul� gives the order th:u the bow be seized. PhiloctClus accuses, protests, or complains. He is astonished at the ojrintl. he no longer recognizes a child and b his hands: uHands of mine [0 .eirlJ. quarry of Od�us' huming. now sufr your lack of the 10\00 bowstring. You who have never had a healthy thought or noble, you Odyseus, how you havt humed me, how you have stolen upon me with this boy [Neoprolemusl Ü your shield [lb" problma salllOll paidiaJ; because I did not know him (hat is no mate 10 you but wonhy of me . . . now to my sorrow you hvc me bound hand and f t, intend to take me away. away from Ihis shore on which you cst me once without friends or comrades or ciry. a dead man among the living . . . . To you all I have long been dead. God hated wretch, how is it that now I am not lame and foul-smelling? How can you burn your sacrifce to God if! sail with you? Pour your libations? This ¾ your ocuse fr casting me away" (1008-)5; trans. David Grene in David Grene and Richmond Lttimore, e., TIN Compklt Gk Tag«in. Sophock / (New York: Washington Square Press. 1967]). 6. I refer to the related treatment of the secret. the ttrctur, the Passion. and the Eucharist in Gl (Paris: Galilee, 1974), pp. 60-61; in in English, GI, trans. John P leavey, Jr., and Richard Rand (Lincoln: Universiry of Nebrasb Pres, 1986), pp. SO-Sl. 7. I have made use of the word obliqu�very ofen, 100 ofen and for a long time. , no longer remember where, nor in what COnteXL In Margins 0/PhiI10ph, certainly (the lxo10f"Tympan"), and in Gi, in any \, Very recenc!y, and in a very insistent way, in "Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authoriry' " (in "Deconstruction and the Posibi liry of Justice," Crz Lw Rrj�w II, nos. 5-6 (1990J: 928. 934, 944-47; reprinted in Drucilla Cornell, Mark Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson, e., /construction and th� POlSibilit 0/ JUltiet (New York: Routledge, 19921. and in Du droit a I Philsophi � [Paris: Galilee, 19901, ep. pp. 71f). On the oblique indination of cinamm, cf. "Me chance: Au rendezvous de quelques sterrophonies epicuriennes," in Confonttion (Paris, 1988) (previously published in English in Taking Chanw (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Universiry Press. 1984}). 8. Without asking his approval, I think I may quote cenain fragments of the letter which he wrote Íme on : May t991. I leave it to the reder to decide how f this lener (including the entry for "oblique" from the Nou toPag� 12 ' 39 Oxr Engli sh Dictionary, which did not fil to accompany the consig ment) will have prescribed the logic and the lexicon of this tOt. Perhaps I had already, an, uttered the word obliqur in the course of an earlier conversation to which David Wood was thus referring. Fragments 10 share OUI, therefre, in the course of the ceremony, and David ventures 1 spek of "passion," Ü he ventures elsewhere to distinguish (pcrhaps ro a ociate, aut . . . autor vl and without doubt to cll up Shakesp and the ghOSt of Marc Amony), pt2ise and murder, praising to the skie and burying, "to praise" and "to bury." (It remit," he says of the book, ¼ neither to praise nor to bury Derrida, but . . . " bUt what, exactly?) Here, then, is the fragment of the leuer of 18 May 1991, and his "germ of a passion": "Dear Jacue, A you will b , I have taken you at yourfmy word, using my phrase 'an oblique ofering' to decribe what you ae would be the only appropriate mode of entry into this volume. It is hardly suprising, perhaps, that the most oblique entry into this collection of alredy oblique oferings would be the most venica1 and traditional auto-critique, or confesion, or levelling with the reder (b e.g. S. Kierka 's ' Fr and Lst Declaration' at the end of Concuding Unscimtifc P1tcript: 'Formally and for the sake of regularity I acknowl edge herewith (what in fCt hardly anyone can be interested in knowing) that I am the author, Ü people would cll it of . . . ' . . . This (and the whole sequence of thematil.tions of the interleavings of texts that you have ofered us) sugets to me that the problem of an oblique enty might not simply be a problem, but a stimulus, the germ of a passion. Obviously, I would be equally happy (?) with something not yet pub lished in English that would fnction in ris text in an appropriate way: Ü a problematiting (or indeed reinscription) of the very ide of critique, as a displacement of the preumed subject of the collection (,Derrida'). as something that will fi" rrtmbkr [French in the original, an allusion to Derrida's use of this expression in Dr J grammatologi� (1967)-Tr.) the 'on' of writing on Derrida." The allusive refrence to Kierkegaard is very imponant to me here, because it names the gret pat2doxical thinker of the imitation of Jeus Christ (or of Socrates)-of Ihe Passion, of attestation, and of the secret. 9. If elsewhere it has ofen forced itself upon me, the French word i"traitabJr is doubtless difcult to translate. In a word, it cn mean [dir) at one and the same time (I) what cnnot be trair [treated, dealt withl (this is the impossible. or the inacces ible, it is also the theme of an impossible discourse: one would not know how to tlmatiz� it or to Not t Page 2) formalize it, one would not know how co treat it 1m tiuJ); and (1) something whosc imperative rigor or implacable law allows for no mercy and remains impassive before the ffiuired sacrifce (for example, thC severity of duty or the categoricl imperative). Which is as much as to say that the word inITaitabk is itself inITaitbk (for examplC, untranslatable) -and (his is why I sid that it had forced itself on me. 10. OthCr tide for this aporetic paradox: mimesis, mimicry, imita tion. Morality, decision, responsibility. etc. ffiuire that one aCI withoul rules, and hence withom Cple: thai one never imitale. Mime, rimal, identifing conformity have no place in morality. And yet, Ihe simple respect for the law, as (well as) for the olher, this frsl duty, is il not to accept this iterability or this iterative identifcation which contaminates the puC singularity and untranslatability of the idiomatic socret? Is it by chance that, touching on this logic, K qUOtes, but against thl! 1amplt, the very eample of passion, of a moment of the sacrifcial passion of Christ, who provides the best example of what it is necessary nOI to do. namely, to ofer oneself as an example. Because God alone-the besl and only possible example?-remains, in Kant'S eyes, invisibly secret and must himsclf PUt his eemplary value to the test of moral reason, that is, to a pure law whose concCpt confrms to no examplC. The refeCnce to Mark to: 17, and to LukC 18: 18, lies behind thC passage in Kam's Foundtions of the Meaphic of Moral which comes not long afer thC condemnation of suicide ("t preserv one's lifC is a duty"; "scin Lben Zu erhalten, ist Pficht" [Berlin: dC GruyterJ), 4: 397; trans. Lewis While Bk [New York: Bobs-Merrill, 1959J. p. 14; hereafer, page numbel of thC English u"anslation will be in italicJ; it is, in short. what one would like to Cply to someone who invites you, directly or indirectly, to commit suicide or to sacrifce your own lifC): "Nor could one give poorer counsel to moraliry than to auempt to derive it fom example [vn &i spitknJ. For each example of morality which i s exhibited to mC must itsclfhave been previously worthy co sere a an original Cple. i.e .• as a model lob ¹ au¿h wirdig le, zum urspronn &ispirl, ( zum Musur, :u ditntn J. Sy no means could it authoritatively furnish [ofer. an dit Hand 7J gtbtn] lhe concept [tn 8grilJ of moraliry. Even the Holy One of ,he Gospel must be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before He is recognized as such: even He says of Himself. 'Why call ye me (whom you sceJ good� None is good [the archctype of the go, d UrbiltJ GuunJ except God only [whom you do not seeJ .' BlIt whence do ¾ ¢have the concept of God as the highet good? Solely from the idea Nom to Page 24 ' 4 ' of moral perfeclion which reason formulates a priori and which it inseparably connects with the concepl of a frtt will. imilation h no place in moral matters, and Cple serve only for encouragement Inur �ur Auum�rungJ. That is, they put beyond question the practicability of whal Ihe law commands, and Ihey make visible that which the practical rule epre moC generally. SOl they can never justif our guiding ourselves by examples and our setting aside their true original [ihr wahr Original] which lies in reason" (4: 408-9; 2j' Elsewhere, in connection with the imperalivC of moraliry (Im/Krati d Sinlkeit): "But it must not be overiookCd that it cannot be shown by any Cample [dureh ktin &i spit/] [i.e., il cannot be empirically shown] whether or not there is lob tgthe] such an imperativC'' (4: 419; 17). This is a most radical claim: no Cperience can assure us of the "there is" al this point. God himself cannot therefre serve as an example, and ,he concept of God as sovereign Good is an idea of reason. It remains that the discoursc and [he action (the passion) of Christ demonstrates in an nir way. sin gularly. par excellence, the inadequacy of the Cample, the secret of divine invisibility and Ihe sovereignty of reason; and the encouragement, the stimulation, the exhortation, the instruction (AuflnttrUng) is in dispensable fr all fnite, that is to sy, sensory being, and for all intuitive singularity. The example is the only visibility of the invisible. TherC is no lcgislamr that can be fgurCd [gurabkJ outsidC reason. Put another way. mere Üonly "fgures" of Ihe legislator, never any legislator prprio sm in particular any legislator to sacrifce (Mos, Christ, Ctc.). But no fnite being will C'Cr provide an economy of Ihese fgures, nor of mimeis in general, nor of anything that iterabiliry contaminate. And passion i always a matter of example. On the motive which act in secrel (insgtJlim), duty, sacrifce. exam ple, and respect, it is necesary above all to return, of course, t the third chapter of K'S Critiqut of Practical Rlon ("The Motive of Pure Practical Reason"). Ï1. Apophasil: 11657' "a kind of an Irony. whereby we deny [hal we say or do that which we especially say or do" (Oxrd Englisb Dietionar) T,_ 12. Gehtimnis, gtJJim. II is precisely in respect of duty that Kant ofen evoke the necessity of penetrating behind secret motives (hinuÌ dit gthtimtn Tritbm), to sec if thcre mighl not be a secret impulse of self- 10\'e (ktin gtJximCAntritb dr &Ibltlitbd behind the greatest and most moral sacrifce (Aufpfmmg), the sacrifce that one believes cn be Nota to PagN26-29 ;chicvrd properly byduty (dtlich aus PiLh/), by pure duty (aus rrinrr Pichtl, when one ;ccomplishe it ina manner solely in confrmity Ù duty (pfiehl ig). This distinction is equivalent in Kant'S eyes Ù that which oppose the [e([er (Buhtll to the spirit (Gris/), or lety (Uga/lif) to moral lcgis[ation (Grrtmiig/uitl (cf. further the begin ning of ch. J of the CritiqofPanicil Rrason). But if, as Kant then recognized, i( is "absolurely impossible to et;blish by experience with complete certainty a single L in the world in which one could elimin;te the suspicion th;t there is a secret (that is to 5y, that which would allow us to distinguish betw«n "out of duty" and "conforming to duty"), then (he secret no more ofrs us the prospect of some interpreta tion [dif mrl, cvCn infnite, {han it allows us ÎÜhope fora rigorous decontamin;tion between "in confrmity with duty" ;nd "OUt of pure duty." Nor to fnish with mimesis, whose principle of iterability will always connect the constitutive mimesis of one (the "in conformity with duty," pjichtmisig) to the non mimesis constitutive of the other ("out of pure duty," aus r;nlr PidJl). as nonduty to duty, nondebt to debt, nonresponsibility to responsibility, nonreponse to response. The decon tamination is impossible not byvirtue of some phenomenal or empirical limit, even if indelible, but precisely because this limit is not empirical; itS possibility is linked stcturlto the possibility of the "out of pure duty." Ablish the possibility of (he simul;crum and of external repeti tion, and you abolish the possibility bor of me law and of duty (hem selves, that is, of their recurrence. Impurity is principally inherent in the purity of duty, i.e., itS iterability. Flouting all possible oppositions: ti" would be the secret [I ðair k suerl. The secret of pa ion, the pas ion of the seerer. To this secret th;t nothing could confne, as Kant would wish, within the order of "pathological " sensibility. no 5crifce will �r disclose it precise meaning. Iuse there is none. I). In this p;ragraph 1 have translated histoi" mostly as stor {though historwa usually also possible) except in thrc L where historwas clearly more appropriate-Tr. 14. J attempt elsewhere this "de-monstration'· of the secret in connec tion with B;udd;ire's LA FaunrMonnair{in Donnrr I umps, Ï. fA FausS( Monna;r, [Puis: G;li[ee, 1991]; Giln Timl. J. Counurit Monr, trans. Pegg Kamuf [Chiego: University of Chic;go Press, 1992]). A for the rrmplrysecret ofliteramre, allow me to ;dd this nOie before conclud ing. Something of [ilera!Ure will have begun when it is not possible to decide whether, when I speak of something, I am indttd speaking of Nouto Pig�29 '43 something (of the thing itself. this one, for itself) or if 1 am giving an example, an ex;mple of something or ;n eample of the fa mat 1 c spek of something, of my way of speaking of something, of me pos sibility of speking in general of something in general, or again of writing thee words, etc. For examp[e, suppose I say "I," that I write in the frst person or that 1 write a text, as they say "autobiographically." No one will be able seriously to contradict me if I claim (or hint by ellipsis, without thematizing it) that I am not writing ;n "autobiographical" text but ; tet on autobiogaphy of which this very tex( is an example. No one wl seriously be able to contradict me if I 5y (or hint, etc.) that I am not writing about myself but on "I," on ;ny I ;t all. or on the I in general, by giving an eample: 1 am only ;n cx;mple, or I am exemplary. 1 am speaking of something (''1') to give an example of something (;n "I") or of someone who speaks of something. And I give an example of an example. Wat 1 have JUSt said about speaking on some subject does not require utterance [I parll , i.e., ; discursive smement and irs written transcription. It is ;I ready valid for every trace in general, whether it is preverbal, for example, for a mute ddctic, the ges!Ure or play of < ;nimal. Because if there is a dissociation betwttn myself [moil and "I" (�moi·J, betw«n the reference to me and the «frence to (an) "I" through the eample of my "I," this dissciation, which could only mrmbl Ü difference betwttn ¼ and "mention" (bor in English in orignal-Tr.l, is still a pragmatic diference ;nd not properly linguistic or discursive. It hanot nCily to be muked in words. The sme words, the same gramar, can stisfy Í functions. Simultaneously or sue· ccs ivdy. No more th;n in irony, and other similar things, doe the diference betwttn the tO f.ctions or the twO value need to be thematized (sometime it must notand that is the secred. neither eplained eestly, nor even marked by qUOIation muks, visible or invisible, or other nonverbal indices. That isbecause literature 1alme time play economically, elliptically, ironiclly, with these marks ;nd nonmarks, and (hus with the exemplarity of everything th;( it says and does, because reading it is at the same time ;n end[ess interpretation, a pleasure [joui ssanu] and an immeasurable frustration: it can always mean, teach, convey, more than it does, or;t any rate something e. But I have sid, literature is only exemplary of what happens everywhere. each time that there is some trace (or grace, i.e., each time that there is something rather th;n nOlhing, each time that tl" is (rs gibt) and ech time th;{ il gives Ira dnnr] without re!Urn, without reason, freely, and i ª.. Nou10 Pag�jD tl i swhat there is then. i.e., utimofl. waringwimru) and even berce every rpuchact (English in original-Tr.] in the snici sense. The "strict" sense is, morwver, always etended by the StfUClUte of eemplaity. It is beginning fromthese und«idabi l i[ies or fromthese aporias, across them, thai one has a chance ofbdng able to accede to the rigorous possibility of UtimoM" if there is such a thing: to its problematic and Îthe experience oril. I am always speaking about myself, without speaking about myself. This is why one cannot coum the guestS who speak or who squeeze around the rable. Are they twelve or thineen, or more or less? Each can be redoubled ad infnilUm. A this last nme is a nQ[e on the lm notes 10 which it could respond, lei me add here: it i s owing to t structure of eemplarity [hat each one can say: I em speak of myself without furrher ado [sans fron; also directly, without ceremony[ , the secret remains inract, my politeness unblemished, my reserve unbreched, my modesty more jealous than ever, I am reponding without responding (to the invitation. to my name, to the word or the all [ap�/l which says "I"), you will never know whether I am speaking about myself, about this very self or about another self, about any self or about the self in general, whether these statementS concern [rlnt tJ philosophy, literature, history, law, or any other idenrifle institution. Not that the institutions can ever be assimilaud (it has b«n said ofen enough, and who could contradict it?), but the distinctions to which they lend themselve become rigorous and reliable, statutory and stabilizble (through a long history, certainly) only so as to master, order, arrest this turbulence, to be able to make decisions, to I abl tOUt court. It is of this, and for this, that literature (among O[her thinp) is "eemplary": it always is, sys. does something other, some thing other th itself, an itSelf which moreover is only that, something other than itself For example or par excellence: philosophy. Sufklom Î. "lkn jenen Mystikern gibt es einige Stellen, die aulrordentlich kuhn sind, voll von schwierigen Metaphern und bcinahe wr GOII losigkeit hinneigend, SO wie ich Gieiches bisweilen in den deutschen-im ubrigen schonen-Gedichu:n cine gewisscn Mannes bemerkt habe, der sich Johanne Angelus Sileius nenm" (Lcibni1, letter to Paccius, 18 January 169S, in L. Outens, ed., uibniti; o�ra [Geneva, 17681: 6:S6). Nomto Pag�19-44 "., Cited by Manin Heidegger, lr SI UO Grund (Pfullingen: Ncke, 1957), p. 68; Tn Pncip/of&ason, trans. Reginald u l ly (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), p. H [ttanslation modifed]. z. Aurelius Augustine, Confruionum, ed. Martin Skutella (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1981); Tu Omfssioru ofSAugusti'�, t.tans. Rex Warner (New York: New American Libtary, 1963). pp. 243, 2ÎÂ) 257, 110 (tnms1adon modifed). 107, ZÎÂ, IS7 respectivciy-Tntns. l Angelus Silesius Uohannes Schefer), Chmtbinisdur Wna mann, ed. Louise Gnadinger (Stuttgart: Philipp Rcclam, 1984); TJ Ch�rubin;c Wnr, trans. Maria Shrady (New York: Paulist, 1986). The tnnslation by Shrady, which is a selection, does nOl comain althe maims dted and h b«n modifed in the ttanslations cited. Concer ing the editions he M; Derrida state: ..L Rs t 1m pourquoi [extractS fromPllmn Chbub;niqu�, trans. Roger Munier (Paris: Arlren, 1988)]. I nearly always modify the translations and reconstitute the original mnscriplion in Old German, as it is found published in the complete cdition of Clxmbinisch" Wandmnn, by H. Plard [Paris: Aubier, 1946, bilingual ed.]. Some of the maxims cited �fer to this edition and a not found in the ettaCtS proposed by Roger Munier." In this English translation I have fllowed Gnadinger's critical edition and indicated rhe one signifcant diference of versions in btackeu in maim 4; 21-Ts. 4. Mark Taylor, "nO nOt nO," in Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, c., lr d and Ntgatw Th�ol (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 176 and 186. 5. See, notably, ). Derrida, "Psyche: Invention de I'autre," in Pchl: Inwntio, t l'utr (Paris: Galilee, 1987), notably p. 59; "Psyche: Inven tions of the Other," [tans. Catherine Poner, in Lindsay Waters and Wlad Godzich, cds., &ading dMan &ading (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (989), p. 60. 6. Numerous references 1 this subject are gathered in J. Oerrida. Donn" k umps, Ì. L FaU� Monnai� (Paris: Galilee, 1991); Giwn 1iO�, Ì+ CQum"it Mont, PegKu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 7. Martin Heideger. &in lind hit, 16th ed. (Tubingen: Niemeyer. 1986), §50, p. ISO; &ingand Tmr, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper, 196z), p. 194. On this Heidegerian theme, c Aprn (Paris: Galilee, 1994); Apra, (tans. Thomas OUlOit (Stanford: Stanford University Pre , 199}). Notes to Pages 45-92 8. "Comment ne pas parler," in Phl. 9. For eample, s ibid., pp. 168 and 187. 10. S J. Dcrrida, "The Politic of Friendship," [rans. Gabriel Mon ki n, ThejourlofPhilsoph8s, II (November 1988): 631-44. Tha[ is the very schematic reume of ongoing rc on the history and the major or canonic trailS of the concept of fiendship. ÏÏ. Pp. 174 and 175. 11. Cf. "Nombre de oui," in Pchlj "A Number of Yes," trans. Brian Holme, Qui Park 1, no. 1 (1988): 110-33. 13. On Plotinus, s above, p. 70. On Heidcger and Lacn, cf. Donntr I tnnps, pp. 11-13, n. I. Klarn T$¯Î . The frst version of this text appeared in Pikila: Eofrtl f jtan-Pitrrt Vtmanr (Pis: cole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, 1987). I. We hope to come bc to this point, one of the most sensitive ones of our problematic, ofen and at length, in particular by sketching a history and a typolog of the interpretations of Ihra or rather, when w shall try ÎL describe the law of their paradoxe or of their aporias. L us note for the moment only that in thee t works-which, in the French language and sepante by an interval of seventy y, propose a synoptic table and conclude with a general interpration of all the past interpreta tions-the meta-linguistic or mea-interpretative reourse to the values of metaphor, of comparisn, or of image U never quetioned fr what it i. No quetion on interpretive rhetoric i posed, in particular, no que lion on what it nccs ly borrows from a ccruin Platonic ftdition (metaphor is a sensory detour for acceding to an intelligible meaning), which would render it little suited to provide a metalanguage for the interpretation of Plato ad in particular of a text a mange as some passages of the 7imalU on Ihra Rivaud speaks rhus of a "crowd of comparisons and metaphors whose variety is surprising" (p. 196), of "metaphors" and of "images" brought back to an "idea," thaI of the "in what" (p. 198), even if, against Zeller, he refses to "see only metaphors in Plato ' s formulations" (p. 308). ("La Theorle de la khora et la cosmogonie du limit," in u Prob/�mtdu dniTI I notion d matiht, 1905, ch. S). Luc Brisson in turn speaks of "the metaphor of Ihe dream used by Plato to iIlwUte his description" (LL mimt I l'um dm f JÎ LT Nou to Pagl93 '47 onoliqlt au limIt r Pltn, 1974. p. 197, cf also pp. 106, 107). He even systematizes operati\'e recourse to the concept of metaphor and propose clasifying all the said metaphors at the moment of determining what he calls "the omological nature of the "spatial milieu" (w shall come back later to this title and ÎL the projecl it decribe): "Thi s [determining the "ontological nature" of the "spatial milieu"] p a considerable problem, for Plato only speaks of the spatial milieu by using a totally metaphorical language. which gcu aWY from any technicl quality. That is why we shall frst analyze twO sequences of image: one of them bering on sexual relations, and the other on artis activity" (p. 208, cf. also pp. Â+ ÂÂÂ) 214, 21], 222). Of course, it is not a question here of criticizing the us of the words mltaphor, comparison, or imagt. It is ofen inevit;ble, and for ÎM which w shall tfy to explain here. It will sometimes happen that we too will have recourse to them. But there is a poim, it seems, where the relevance of this rhetoricl code meets a limit and must be questioned as such, must become a theme and cease to be merely operative. It U precisely the poim where the concepts of this rhetoric appear to be consuucted on the bais of "Platonic " oppositions (intelligible/sensible, being as tlimage, etc.), oppositions from which Ihora precisely C cpe. The apparent multiplicity of metaphors (or also of mythemc in general) sigife in thee places not only that the proper mening cn only become intelligible via thee detOurs, but that the opposition be teen the proper and the fguf1live, without losing all value. encounters here a limit. Ý. Heidegger docs this in particular in a brief pas , in fa a parentheis, in his IntTduction to Mnaphic L us do no more t quote here the translation, and w shall come back to it at length in the last part of this work: "(Ibe reference to the passage in limI [so-el is intended not only to clarify the link betwttn the parrmphainon and the on, between also-appearing [t Miunchinmsl and being as perma nence. but at the same rime to suggest that the transformation of the barely apprehended essence of place Itopol; Orml and of Ihora into a "space" IRalm] defned by extension IAusdhmmg] w prepared IlIr btrtim] by the PlalOnic philosophy, i.e. in the interpretation of being as idta. Might khr not mean: that which abstracts itself from every particular, that which withdraws. and in such a Wy precisely admits a�d 'makes place' [Piu macht] for something else?") (Pp. SO-Pj nghsh trans. by Ralph Manheim. Martin Heidcgger, An lutducion t Mna- Nom to Pagn 101-lj p/pie [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961], p. SS' t.m.) Among all (he questions posed for us by this text and its COntext, the most serious will no doubt bear upon all the decisions implied by this "is prepared" (vorbtrdu). l Vorm uhr dit &hichu tr Phitlophit, Einiitung, 8, lb. Vrrhinil dtr Philsophit zur Rttn, W"kt 18 (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhr leamp), p. 103. 4· ar d Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, In R t linttUigmu, f mhl dn Grt', p. 66. Gaia is evoked by the Egptian priest of [he Tmln in a discourse: to which we shall return. It is at the moment when he recognizes the greater antiquity of the city of Athens, which, howe: ver, has only a mythic memory and whose written archive is located a if on deposit in Egpt (13d-e). Cf also Heidcgger, Ninuclu, Ì. 350: "Chaos, . k"os, �h � int, signifes the: yawning [d Gdhnr], the gaping. that which IS split In two [AuSinlntrklf t], We: understand kaolin close connection with an original inte: rpretation of the essence of the ait inasmuch as it is the abyss which opens (cf. Heiod, Tlony). The representation of Chaos, in Niensche, has the function of prevent ing a 'humanization' [Vttlclmngl of existence in iu totality. ThC 'humaniztion' includes as much the moral eplanation of the world on the basis of the resolution of a Creator, as its technical eplanation on the basis of the activity of a geat anisn IHandwrkuJ (the Demiurge)." 5· "A interpretation decisive [masgtht DutungJ for Wester thou�t is that given by Plato. He says (hat bcrwcen beings and Being therC is IbnulJ the klrismos; the k/ora is the locus, the site, the place {OrJ. Plato means to say: beings and Being are in diferent places. Particular beings and Being B differently placed (lind vchit' gror IttJ. Thus when Plato give thought to the fwrm to the diferent location of beings and Being, hC is asking for the totally diferent placC {nac/ t ganz anu"n On) of Being, as against the place of being." (Wa hds Dmkm? {Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1954], pp. 1]4-75. En glish trnslation by J. Glenn Gray, Martin Heidegger, What I Calid Thinking? (Nc: York: Harper & Row, 1968J, p. 217, t.m.) Later we shall return at l�gth Í this passge and iu COntext. 6. This is one of the motif which link this essay to the one I wrote on Gtschlht in Heidcgger. Cf. the introduction to that essay, "Gnchirht, dif�rence scudle, difrence ontologique," i �hl: Ifw1tioIU t t'u Í(Paris: Galilh, 1987). 7· Cpjtl� fourth section, '4, S. In another comcxt, that of a seminar NotN /0 Plgn 118-24 '49 hdd at the Ecole NormalC Superieure in '970 (Theory of Philosophical Discurse: The Conditions ofInscription of the Text of Political Philoso phy-the Example of Materialism), these reRections on the 7ima intersected with other questions which here remain in the background and to which I shall retur dsehere. Other ÎCÎ were studied, in particular those of Marx and Hegd, for the question of their rdation to the politics of plato in general, or of the division of labor, or of myth, or of rhetoric. or of mauer. etc. 8. The possibility of ¾ breaks imo the ideality, in the ideal descrip tion of the ideal city, in thC very space of this fction or of this representa tion. The vein of this problematic, which we cannot follow here, seems to be among the richest. It might lead us in particular roward an original form of fction which is On tbt Scial Cont According ÎL Rousseau, thC state of war berwccn State cannOl give rise to any pure, that is purely civil, law like the one which must reign inside the State. Even ifit ha its original law. the law of the people (gmos, race, people, ethnic group), war makes us come back to a sort of specifc svagery. It bring the so ial contrct out of itsdf. By this suspension, it also shows the limits of the social contract: it throws a certain light on the frontiers of the social contrct itself and of the theoreticl or fbulous discourse which de scrioo it. Thus it is at the Cnd of the book of [his ideal fction that Rousseau in a f lines gets on to the problems which he is not going to deal with. We would have ro analyze closely this conclusion ad thee considerations on war. the singular rdation which they maintain with tl i,if of the soial contrct at the moment where they open OntO its outside. It is both a thematic rdation and a frmal rdation, a problem of composition: Rousseau seems to rub his e so as to perceive the outside of the fble or of the idel genesis. He opens his eye, but he close the book: "Chap. X. Conclwion. Afer having set down the true principle of political law and tried to found the State on this basis, it remains 1 suppon it by its external relations: which would include the law of nations, commerce, the law of ¾ and conquest, public law. league, negotiations, tf�aties, etc . BUI all that forms a new object tOO vast for my short sight: I should have fxed it ever closer 1 me." 9. Cf Nicole Loraux, "Sur la race des femme," in L Enfnt d'tblna (Paris: 1981, pp. 7Sff). In the context which we arc here ddimit ing, see a, in the preceding chapter. "LAUIOChtonie: Une Topique ath�nienne." that which concerns Athens in particular: "nurse (tropl), fatherland, and mother al the same time" (PWntgricof Isocrates) and the Nou to P4g� 124 �rival and complementary poles, WOI and mythol" which "share ,he theatrici stage, in mutual confromation bU[ also in compliciry" (pp. 67- 72). A for the race of men (gmos anthrop6n), the Eptian pricst of Ihe 1im4�US asigns "place" ro it: me are ,he places propilious for memory, for the conseration of archives, for writing and for tradition, these 'cm�ltc umnwhich provide protection fromdestruction by excesses of heat and cold (22e-23a). ME R IDIAN Crossing Aesthetics Jacques Dcrrida, On tmName David Wills, Pst/u Mauri� Btanchot, Th� Worko/Fi" Jacques Derrida, Points . . . : Inu i�ws. 1974-1994 J. Hi llis Miller. Topoaphit Philip� Lacoue-Labanhc. Mui caFiCa (Figumo/Wagntr) Jacques Dcrrida, AporiAs Emmanuel Lcvina, Ouru t� Subm Jean-Fran�is Lyotard. Lom on tm Analtic o/tmSublmt Percr Fcnve, ·Chatter"· Languagt and Huro , in Ktrktaard Jean-Luc Nancy. Tht Etrimct o/Frum Jean-Joseph GOU. Oedipus. Philsopher Haun Saussy. Tht Problm 0/a Chinm Amhttic Jean-Luc Nancy. The Birth to Pmmu LibrrofCong Cualoging-in-PubJiation Dua Detrida, Jacques, [Sdcclions. English. 199s1 On the nameI JacqueDerrida; eciledby ThomaDuloil. p. em. -(Meridian) IncludebibJiphicl rnc. ComenlTluingthe nae? I by ThomasOutoil -P n Saufle nom(P-scripnun) _Kor IUN 0-8047-1SH-' (d.) : IS8N 0-8047-1m-I (pbl) : 1. EOlior(Philsophy) 2 Name. ,. Pl. Tmc. 4- D«rumJon. J. DUIOil, Thoma. II. Dmida. Jacque. Pior. English. IIJ. Derrich,Jacque. Sauflc nom. English. I Dcrlda.lacue. Kor English. V TItle. V. Serie: Meridian (Str, CiE) 814}.D,US I99S 194-d 94-41109 c"' 8 This bo k is primMon 3cid-frtppcr. It ½II in AdobeGar:mond:d L,O by KeysloneT )ning. J nco Original prinling I99S last fgureblowindiclCy ofIhis priming: � � � � � m m 00 9 _