OTOBIOGRAPHIES

The Teaching of Nietzsche a ndthe Poli tics of the Proper Name

JACQ UES DERRIDATranslated IJ} ' I\l'ital Rmlf' ll

Texts and Discussionswith JACQUES DERRIDA

THE EAR OFTHE OTHEROtobiography, Transference,Translation

E,{{,riis1l edition edited b}'Christie v . Mclkmald(B ll.<;tyJ ('}II tile Frrnch ed ition edited b)' Claude

IArsquemul Cl ' ris tir \ '. MclJmurl,IJ

Trunskued JJ) ' I'tX~ ' Kwnllf

SCHOCKEN BOOKS . NEW YOR K

Contents=:....--_----To the memory of Eugenio Donato

First published by Scho(;ken Hooks 1985\0 9 8 76 5 -1 3 2 185868788Copyrijtht 0 1985 by Schocken Books Inc,Origina lly published In French as L'oreille de I'eutre by Vlb Editeur:

e V1b Editeur, Mon treal , 1982All rights reserved

Library of Con gress Cataloging in Publicat ion DateDerride. Jacques .

The ,'ar of the other.Tran slation of: L'oreille de l'a utre.Bibliography: p.I .Autobiogra phy-Congresses.2.Translat ing

and in terpreting-Congresi\oeS. I. Levesque . Claude.II. McDona ld , Christie V, III. Tille ,CT25 .1W713.1985 809 8-1 _16053

n ,'signed by Nan cy nal" Muldoo nManufactured in the Un ited StatesIS":": 0 -8052-3953- 7

-----~- - - ---

Preface

Translato r's Note

Otobiograph ies

Roundtable on Autobiograph y

Roundtable on Translation

Works Cited

vii

xi

1

39

9 1

16 3

Preface".=:...:=---- - - - - - - - - -

Tms BOOK started on its way to Schocken Bookswhen its president. Julius Glaser. happened onto several pagesfrom th e ma nuscript of a n article (deali ng wi th th e tran slat ionof Jacqu es Derrida's Of Grammatology into English) in a postoffice on a sma ll isla nd off the coas t of Maine where he sum ­mers. Sleuthing th e origins of the piece . from whi ch the nam eof th e author was mys tertously missing (having been acc ide n­tall y scattered across an open field. retrieved . and exposed forthe au thor to rec laim). Glaser soon identified the writer andbeca me fascinated with the im pact th at Derr lda's thought wasto have 0 11 American readers. In the curious entanglement ofcha nce a nd neces sity . it now seems no accident that SchockenBooks should publish a boo k in whi ch Derr tda. as one of theleading int erpreters of Friedrich Nietzs ch e. se ts the stage fornew and important readi ngs of this enigmatic and controver­sial philosophe r. and e ngages with a nu mber of interlocut orsin a forn. i 'f active int erp retation .

This boo k is the result of a series of meetings held at theUniversity of Mont real from Octobe r 22 to 2-1. 1979. My co l­league Claude Levesque and I invited Jacques Derrtda to cometo Montrea l to meet across the tab le with several acade micpro fess ionals in philosoph y. psychoana lysis. and literatu reand to discuss their questio ns abou t as pec ts of philosophy.

viii Preface

From the conversutton s. whic h were taped and transcribed ,we sha ped th e book in ils presen t form. making only minormod ification s of wh at had taken place.

The boo k has three parts. whi ch follow the chronology ofthe sessions . Th e first is a lecture by Jacques Derrt da entitled"Otobiographies." In it , Derr ida deals with two import ant butrarely juxtaposed texts : Nietzsche's autob iography. EcceHorne. and On the Future of Our Edu coUo!lu/ Instnuttcn s.

1Through them . he d iscusses the struc ture of the car (as a .per­ceivlng organ) .~hy. anr! inlcrprcli~OW"'Nlet 7. ­

sche defers the "lmmnlng or his texts so that his signature (asthat wh ich valida tes a chec k or docu ment-here a book) ca ncome to be understood. honored as it were. only when areader a llies hi mse lf with him and. as a rece iving car, signsthe text- posthumou sly. " In other words ... it is the car of theother that signs. Th e car of the other says me to me. . . . When.much later. the other will have perceived with a keen -enoughcar what I will have addressed or destined to him . or her. thenmy signa ture will have taken place." And thi s analys is beginsthe cautio us elaborati on of the grounds upon whi ch polit icalread ings of Nietzsche 's pedagogy might emerge, read ings dif­fercnt fro m thoso that have mad e of him pred ominantly aNaz i. The read ings of Nietzsche 's texts arc not finished. Der­rida argues: the same language. the same word s. may be readby actively opposed forces. Such a transform anve view ofreading. as th e incessant rewriting of othe r texts , marks theprolongation of the fundamenta l strat egy of deco nstruction (asdeve loped in ea rlier works: Of Grommatology, Writing an dDifference . Dissemination . and Afargins of Ph ilosophy). inwh ich no text ca n be redu ced to a single mean ing.

The second part of the book is a roundtable of severa l par­ticip ant s di scu ssing notions of what co nsti tutes autobio­grap hica l writing: how the c utes (the self as the subjec t ofbiography) has been det ermi ned in psyc hoanalytic. ph ilo­so ph ical, and literary ter ms. and how it might be restru cturedotherw ise. Th e third part is a similar rou ndta ble on the subjectof translation in a wide range of senses. includ ing the forma -

Preface tx

tion of languages and mean ing (in psychoana lysis. forexample). the kinship of languages. philosophy as the transla­tion of a truth in which univocal meaning is possible. et cet­era. Everything is qu estioned: in the co mplex network ofthought conce rn ing autobiography and translation de velopedhere . no original ever remains anywhere intact : neith er on e'smother tongue. the em pirical sense of life, nor wha t consti­tut es th e feminine.

In addition to 'Otobiographies." two othe r texts served asspec ific points of reference for th e di scussion: "Me-Psycho­ana lysis: An -Introduction to the Trans lation of 'The Shelland the Kernel ' by Nicolas Abraham"; an d "Living On: Bor­de rlines. " La Ca rle postote was in press at th e tim e; allus ionsto it can be found in the discu ssions of destin at ion and sex­ua l identity.

In th e dis cussions. each partici pan t add resses Jacq ues Ocr­rtda. in most cases about his work. and he then responds . li echose th e subjects for di scussion. bu t each of the partici pantspursues the particu lar interests of his own work. Eugenio Do­na to was a professor of comparative literature at the Univer­sity of Californi a il l Irvine; Rodo lphe Casche is a professor ofcomparativ e literature at the Sta te Unive rsity of New York atBuffalo. Seve ral of us teach. or have taught at the University ofMontreal: Claude Levesque is a professor in the Ph ilosophyDepartment: Pat rick Mahon y is a professor in the English De­partment and a practicing psychoanalyst : Christie V. McDon­a ld. a pro fessor in th e Fren ch Depart ment . is currently Chai rof Mod ern Languages and Classics at Emory University;Franco is Peraldl . a professor in the Lingu istics Departm ent . isalso a practicing psychoanalyst: and Eugene Vance. formerly aprofesso r in the Program of Comparative Litera ture. is a pro­fessor of Modern Languages at Emory Univers ity.

Jacques Derr ida was for man y years a professor of the his­tory of philosophy at th e Ecole Normale Superteuro in Paris;ho is now a pro fossor at the Eco le des Hautes Etudes en Sci­ences Sociales . He has wrought his complex and forcefu l cri­tique of wrili ng within the Western tradition by reread ing the

x Preface

works of writers from Plato to our tim e. In thi s vast project,always scrupulo usl y exac ting in ils ana lyses, he has " re­marked " the theoretica l insufficiency of conceptual thinkingand of co nce pts in the way we ordinarily refer to them: one ofthe se is the concept of context. A written sign , he notes, car­ries wit h it a force of breaking with its context, and th is "forceof brea king is not an acci denta l predicate, but the very struc­tur e of th e written." The force of this rupture plays itself ou lrhetor icall y in what Nietzsche ca lled a change of style hedeemed to be plura l. The style of Ihis event is a writ ten dia­logue in many voices . Bec ause of th e di vers ity of the int erestsand backgrounds of the partici pants. beca use (If the part icul arlin guistic character of th e place where the di scussions wereheld (Quebec) , and in keeping wit h the ru les of the genre. iIsee ms that our questions were bound to disp lace the co ntextof Jacques Dcrr ida 's responses-c-as much from the French mi­lieu out of wh ich they grew as from the ongoing Americandebate toward wh ich they are now di rected . Tha t he wasbrought to formulate cer tain argum ents which can be found asyet nowhere else in publlsbod form adds . we bel ieve , to theinterest and the richness of this text.

CH Ri ST I!'; V , M c DoNAW

Cra nberry Islan d . Me ineAugust 19B-I

Translator's Note

WITH VERY few exceptions . the English transla­tion of "Otobtographles" by Jacq ues Derr tda . which was donewith Avital RoneJl. preserves all of th e German included inDerrlda's text. The passages from Ecce Homo and Thus Spa keZarolhustro are taken, wi th only slight modi ficati on . fromWalter Kaufmann 's translations. Th e othe r Nietzsche textquoted extensively. On the Future ofOur Educa lional Instilu­lions, is ci ted here in a frequ ent ly modified verslon of theextant English Iranslati on , f irst publish ed in 1909 , by J. M.Kennedy.

The two rou nd table discussions a lso incl ude frequent refer­ence to other texts and extens ive quo tat ion . Whenever possi­ble. such quotati ons have bee n drawn from published trans la­tions. So as to neither clutie r the bottom of the page wit hreferences to these translati ons nor om it such references . a listof works cited has bee n appended at the end of the volume.All quotati ons from texts by Derrida whic h have yet to appearin English translati on (e.g., Glas} have been tran slated only forthis context.

English readers enco unter ing Derrtde's wrili ng for the firstlime may be disconcerted by the de nse mixing of styles. thedemand ing syntax . and a lexicon thai expands the limits of themost unab ridged di ctionary. Of these lexica l sup plements . the

xii Translalor 's Note

term differonce-wh ich occ urs several times in the followi ngpages-requires spec ial men tion , a lthough the full imp lica­tions of its use within Dernda's thought cannot be su mmari zedhere. (The reader is referred to the essay "Differance" in .\la r­gins of Philosophy (t 9821.) Demda forges thi s word at the inter­sec tion of the spatial and tempora l senses of the verb differer: tod iffer and to defer. The standard spe lling of the noun differenc(!correspo nds on ly to the fi rst. s patia l sense : there is no standardnoun formed from the second sense of temporal de ferral. The-nnce ending conforms to the ort hographies of a midd le voice:ne ither active , nor passiv e, both acti ve and passive (as inresonance). With th e term, Derrida designates the movement ofdifferentiation and deferral, spacing and temporalizationwh ich must be thought of as preceding and comprehend ing anyposition ing of ident ifiable differe nces or oppos itions. Signifi­cantly for Den -ida's deconstruction of the trad itiona l. ph ilo­soph ica l opposition of speech and writing. the difference be­tween difference and differonce is un pronounced.

An occasional tran slator's note punctuates the followingpages when ever it seemed worth the risk of distracting thereader. All othe r foot notes are the author's or edi tor's.

PW GY K AM UF

Miami University

OTOBIOGRAPHIES

The Teach ing of Nietzsche a ndthe Politics of the Proper NaJ11e

JACQUES DERRIDATranslated by AI;tll l R!m('ll

1. Logic of the Li ving Fem inine

"... for there are human bei ngs who lack everyt hing. except oneth ing of wh ich they have too much-human beings who are nothingbut a hlg eye or a big mouth or a big be lly or any thing at all that isbig. Inverse cri pples (umgekehrte " nlppell I call them .

"And wh en I ca me out of my solitude and crossed ever this bridge(or the first timy) di d fKl.! tru st my eyes and looked and looked again .and said at la~ , 'An ear! An ear as big as a man! ' J looked still moredosely--and iild_ l-;- unde meath the ear something was moving,something pitifully small and wre tched and slende r. And . no doubtof it. the trem en dous ea r was attached to a small. thi n stal k-but th isstalk was a hum an bei ng! If one used a magnifying glass one couldeven recognize a tiny envious face; also, tha t a bloa ted litt le soul wasda ngling from the stalk. The people, how ever , told me thai this greatear was not only a hu ma n being. but a great one. a genius. But I neverbelieved the people whe n they spoke of great men: and I mainta inedmy belie f th at it was an inverse cripple who had too lill ie of every­thing a nd too much of one thing."

When Zara thustra had spoken thus to the hunc hback and to thosewhose mou thp iece an d adv ocat e (MundslOck a nd furspreche rl thehunchback was, he turned to his d iscipl es in profou nd disma y andsaid: "Verily. my friends, I walk arnnng men as among the fragmentsan d limbs of men [Hruchstucken uud Gliedmossenj . This is what isterrib le for my eyes, tha t I find man ill ru ins [zerstrummert] andscattered [zerstreu t] as over a bat tlefield or a butcher-field [Schlecht­und Sch liichlerfeld j. ("On Redem pt ion ." Thus Spoke Zarulhuslra)

I wou ld li ke to s pa re you the tediu m , th e w ast e of time, an dth e s ubse rv ie nce that a lways accom pa ny th e cl assi c pedagogi­ca l procedures of fo rging lin ks, re fe rri ng ba ck to p rio r p re m­ises or a rgumen ts , jus tifying one 's own tra jecto ry , method ,sys te m , a n d more ur les s skillfu l transiti ons , re establishing

J

., Otoh iogruphies

continuity. and so on. These a rc but some of the Imperativesof class ica l pedagogy with whic h, 10 be sure. one a m IIC\'crbreak once and for a ll. Yet. if you were 10 submit to themrigorously, they would very SOOIl red uce you to silence. tau tol­ogy, and tir esome repetition.

I therefore propose my compro mise to you. And. as eve ry­one know s. by the terms of academic freedom- I re peat : a -ca­dem-ic free-dam-you ca n take il or leave it. Cons idering thetime I have at my disposa l. the ted ium I ulso wa nt to spa remyself. th e freedom of which I am capable and whi ch I wantto preserve . J sha ll proceed in a mann er th at so me will findaphoristic or inadmissible. that others will accept as law , andthat st ill othe rs will judge to be not quite ap horistic enough.1\11 will bu listen ing to me wit h one or the othe r sort of ear(every thing comes do wn to th e car you am able to hear mewith ) to which th e co herence and co ntinu ity of my traject orywill have seemed ev ide nt from my fi rst words . even from mytit le. In any case. let us agree to hear and understand oneanother all th is point: whoever no longer wishes to lnllnwmay do so. I do not teach truth as such: I do not tra nsformmyse lf into a d iap hanous mouthpiece of ete rna l pedagogy. Isettle accounts. however I can. 0 11 a certa in number of prob­lems: with you and with me or me. and through you. me. andme, with a certain number of author ities represented here. Iunderstand that the place I am 1I0 W occu pying will not be leftou t of the ex hibit or withdrawn from the sce ne. Nor do Iintend to witho ld eve n that which I sha ll ca ll. to save time. ana utobiographica l demon st ration. a lthough I must ask you toshift its sense a li ttle and to listen to it with another ear. I wishto take a certain pleasure in this. so that you 1Jl(1}' lec ru Ihispleasure from me .

The said "academic fre£...tJom," th e car, and autobiographyare~biects-=(or this afternoon . --

A discourse on life/death must occupy a cer ta in space be­tween logos and gm mme. ana logy and program . as well asbetw een the differ ing senses of program and reproductio n.And si nce life is on the line, the trail that relates the logical to

Otobiogrophi es 5

the graph ical must also be working between the biologica l andbiographica l. th e thanatologica l and thalftograph ical.

As you know, a ll these matters arc cur rently undergoin g areeva luation- a ll th ese matters. that is to say, the biograph i­ca l and the a utos of the autobiograp hical.

We no longer consider the biograph y of a "philosopher" as acorpus of empirica l acci de nts th at leaves both a name and asignature ou tside a sys tem wh ich would itself btl offered up 10

an imman ent ph ilosoph ical wad ing-the only kind of wad inghe ld to be philosophica lly legit imate. Thi s academi c notionutte rly ignores the demand s of a text which it tries to controlwit h the most traditiona l de tenni natio ns of what co nstitu testhe limits of the written. or even of "pu blica tion." In returnfor having accepted these limits , one can th en and on theother hand pro ceed to wr ite " lives of ph ilosophers ," thosebiograp h ical novels (complete wit h sty le nourish es and char­acter development) to which grea t historians of philosophyoccasiona lly resign themselves. Such biographical novels orpsycboblograpblcs cla im th ai, by followi ng emp irical proce­dures of the psychologlst tc-c-at tim es even psychoanalyst io-,historicist. or soc lologlstic type. one can give an acco unt ofthe genes is of the phil osophical sys tem . We say no to thi sbecause a new problemati c of the biographi cal in genera l andof the biograph y of philoso phers in parti cu lar must mobili zeother resources. including. at the very least. a new analysis ofthe proper name and the signa ture. Neither " immanent" read­ings of philosoph ical sys tems (whe the r such readi ngs be struc­tur a l or not ) nor ex terna l. empirical-genetic readi ngs have eve rin themselves questioned the dynamis of that borde rline be­tween th e "wor k" and th e " life," th e sys tem and the subject ofthe sys tem . Thi s bord erh ne-c! ca ll it dynamis becau se of itsforce . its power. as well as its virtua l and mobile potency- isne ithe r active no r passi ve. neither ou tside nor insid e. It ismost es pecia lly not a thi n lin e, an inv isible or indivisible traillying between the enclosure of phtlosc phemes. on the onehand , and the life of an author alread y identi fiable behind th ename, on the othe r. This di visible borde rline traverses two

6 O fobiosraphies

"bod ies," the corpus end the body, in accordance with lawsthat we are only l)( ~ginn ing to ca tch sight of.

What one cal ls life-the thing or object of biolugy and btogra­phy-cdocs not stand face to face with something that would bei1s op posable ob-jec t: death , the thanatologtcal or thanato­graphical. Thi s is the first complication. Also, it is pninfullr ·difficult for life to become an object of science, in the sense thatph ilosophy and scie nce have always given to the word "set­once" and to the legal status of sctent ff icity . All of th is-thedifficulty. the delays it entails-is particularly bound up withthe fact that the science of life always acco mmodates a ph iloso­phy of life, wh ich is not the case for all other scie nces , thesciences of no nlife-in other word s. the scie nces of the dead .This might lead one to say tha t all sciences that win their cla imto sc lentlfictty without delay or rosldue aft) sciences of thedead : and, furth er. that there is, between the dead and the sta­tus of the scientific object, a co-implication wh ich Interests us,and which concerns the des ire to know. If such is the case . thenthe so-ca lled living subject of biologica l discourse is a part-aninterested par ty or a parti al interest-col the whole field of in­vestme nt that includes the enormo us ph ilosophical. ideologi­cal. and po litical trad ition, with all the forces that arc at wor kin that trad ition as well as everything that has its potential inthe subjectivity of a biologist or a commu nity of biologists. Allthese evaluations leave their mark on the scho larly signatureand inscri be the bio-graphical with in the bio-Iogica l.

The name of Nietzsche is perhaps today. for us in the West,11m name of sornennc who [with the possible exceptions ofFreud and , in a different way, Kiorkegaard ] was alone in treat­tug both philosophy and life, the science and the philosophyof life "'ilh his na me nnd in his name. He has perhaps beenalone in putt ing his name-his names-and his biographieson the line. running thus most of the risks this entail s: for"h im," fur " them," for his lives, his names and their futu re,and parti cul ar ly for the political future of what he left to besigned.

How can one avoi d taking all thi s into acco unt WIWll read ­ing these tcxts? One reads only by taking it into accoun t.

OtobioSrophies 7

To put one 's name on the line (with everythin g a nameinvolves and wh ich cannot be summed up in a self), to stagesignatures . to make an immense bio-graphical parap h ou t ofall that one has written on life or death-this is perhaps whathe has done and wh at we have to pu t on active record. Not soas to guarantee him a return, a profit. In the first place. he isdead-a trivial piece of evidence. but incredib le enoughwhen you get right down to it and when the name's genius orgenic is still there 10 make us forget the fact of his death . Atthe very least . to be dead means that no profit or deficit. ~o

good or evil. whether ca lcu lated or not. can ever return againto the bearer of the name. Only the name can inherit. and thisis wh y the name. to be distinguished from the bearer. is al­ways and a priori a dead man 's name, a name of death. Whatreturns to the name never return s to the living. Nothing evercomes back to the living. Moreover, we shall not assign himthe profit because what he has willed in his name resembles­as do all legacies or. in French. legs (understand this wordwith w hichever ear. in wh atever tongue you wtll j-c-poison edmilk whi ch has. as we shall see in 8 moment. golte n mixed upin advance wit h the worst of our times. And it did not getmixed up in this by accident.

Before turning to any of hi s writi ngs, let it be said that Ishall not read Nietzsche as a philoso pher (of being. of life, orof death ) or as a scholar or scientis t. if these th ree types can besaid to share the abstraction of the bio-graphical and the cla imto leave their lives and names out of their writ ings. For themome nt. I shall read Nietzsche beginning with the scene fromEcce Homo where he puts his body and his name uut fronteven thou gh he advances behind masks or pseudo nyms with ­out proper names. lie ad vances behind a plurality of masks ornames that. like any mask and even any theory of the simula­crum. can propose and produce themsel ves on ly by return inga consiant yield of protection, a surplus value in wh ich onemay still recognize the ruse of life. However, the ruse startsincurring !OSSt lS as SOUIl as the surplus value docs not returnagain to the living, but 10 and in the name of names , thecom mu nity of masks.

8 OIobioRraphies _

The point of de pa rture for my readi ng wi ll btl what says"Ecce lI omo" or what says "Ecce lIomo" of itself. as well as" \Vie mon wlrd. wus mun is t." how one becomes wha t one is.I sha ll start with the preface to Ecce Homo whi ch is, voucould say. coex tens ive with Nietzsche's entire oe u vre; somu ch so that th e entire oe uvre also prefaces Ecce Home andfinds itself repeated in th e few pages of what one ca lls , in th estrict sense . the Preface to the wo rk enti t led Ecce lIomo. Youmay know these first lines by heart :

See ing that before long I mu st co nfront hum an ity with the must dlifi ­cu lt demand that has eve r been mad e of it, it see ms ind ispe nsable tome 10 say who J am [wer ich bin is itali cized I. Really. o ne shouldknow it, for I have not left myself " without tes timony: ' BUI thedi sproportion be twee n the great ness of my task and the sma llness ofmy contempo raries has found expression in the fact that one hasneither heard nor even see n me. I live on my own cred it II~ alon glivi ng on my own credit. the cred it I establish and give myself : fehIebe {lUf meinen etgenen Kred il hln]: il is perhaps a mere prejud icethat I live I\·ielleich l ble ss etn Voru rte iJ doss ich Iebe].

His ow n identity-the one he mean s to declare and whi ch.being so out of proportion with hi s contempora ries , has no th­tng tu do with wh at the y know by thi s name, behind his nameor rather his homonym, Friedrich Nietzsche-the identity helays claim to here is not his by right of some contract drawnup wit h his co ntem poraries. It has passed to him through theun heard-of contract he has drawn up wit h himsel f. He hastaken out a loan with himself and ha s tmphccted us in Ihistrcn soct ton throu gh whe t. on the force of a slgnuture . remc tnsof his tuxt. ",\ uf metnen etgenen Kredil ." It is a lso o ur bus t­ness, this unlim ited credit that canno t he measured aga inst thecredit his contemporaries extended or refused him under thenam e of F.N. Already a false nam e, a pseu don ym and homo­nym . F.N. dissim ulates, pe rha ps. behind the imposte r. t h l ~

othe r Pned rtch Niet zsch e. T ied up with this shady busine ss ofcontracts. debt. and cred it. the pseu don ym induces us to Ill!

OIob iogrophies 9

immeasurably wary whenever we thin k we are readi ng Nle­tzsche 's signature or "autograph.' and when ever he declares:I. the un dersi gned, F.N.

He never knows in th e present. wi th present knowledge oreven in the present of Ecce Homo, whether anyone will everhonor the inordi nate cred it that he exte nds to himse lf in hisname, but also nece ssaril y in th e name of another. The co nse­quen ces of this are not difficu lt to foresee : if the life that helives and tell s to himself (vautobiography ." they ca ll it) canno tbe his life in the first place except as th e effect of a secre tcontrac t. a cred it account which has bee n both opened an denc rypted . an indebt edness. an allia nce or annulus , then aslong as th e contract has no t bee n honored -and it ca nnot behon ored except by ano the r. for exa mple. by you-Nietzscheca n write th at hi s life is perhaps a mere prejud ice. "es islvie lleichl bloss e in VorurleiJ doss ieh Iebe .' A prejudice: life.Or perhaps no t so much life in general. but my life. thi s " that Ilive," the " l-Hve" in the present. It is a pre judg ment. a sen­tence, a hasty arrest, a risky predictio n. This life will be vert­lied on ly at the moment th e bearer of the name. the one whomwe, in our prejud ice. call liv ing, will have died . It will beverified on ly at some moment afte r or during deeth's ar rest."And if life returns. it will return to the name but not to th eliving. in the name of the livin g as a nam e of the dead.

"He" has proo f of the fact that the " l Iive" is a prejudgment(and thus. du e to th e effect of murder whi ch a pr iori fo llows, aharmful prejudice) lin ked to the bearing of the name and tothe structure of a ll proper names. He says that he has proofevery lime he questions one of th e ranking "educated" menwho come to the Up pe r Engadi ne. As Nietzsche 's name isunknown to an y of them , he who calls himself "Nietzsche"then holds proof of the fact th at he docs no t live presently: "Ilive on my own credit: it is perha ps a mere pre judice th at Ilive. I need on ly speak with one of the 'educa ted ' who come tothe Upper Engad ine . .. an d I am convinced that I do not live

• Arre l dO'! mort: bu lh dea th sentence and rellrieve from death.c-.Tr.

"Rather than attempt 10 tran slate this word as " account" or "storv" or"nerrauon," it has been ["II in French throughcut.c.-Tr.

death of the one who says "I ltvc" in the prese nt : further . letus ass ume that th e relations hip of a ph ilosopher to his "greatnamc"- tha t is. to what borders a sys tem of his signature-isa matt er of psychology, hut a psychology so n~\' el that itwould no longer be legible within the sys tem of phtloscphy asone of its parts, nor within psychology co ns idered as a regionof the philosoph ical encycloped ia. Assumi ng, then , that allthis is stated in the Preface signed "Friedrich Nietzsche" to abook entit led Ecce Homo-a book wh ose fina l words are"Haw; I been understood ? Dionysus vers us the Crucified" [ge­gen den Cekreuztgtenl . Nietzsche. Ecce Homo. Chri st but nutChrist. nor even Dionysus. but rather th e name of th e VNS US.

the adverse or cou ntem ame. the combat called betwee n thetwo namcs-this wou ld suffice. would it not, to plu ralize in asingular fashion th e proper name and the homon ymic mask? Itwould suffice. that is. to lead a ll the affiliated th reads of thename astray in a labyri nth which is, of course, the l abyr i~t h ofthe ear. Proceed , th en . by see king out th e edges . the mnerwall s. the passages.

Between the Preface signed F.N.. whi ch comes after thetitl e. and the first chapter, " Why I Am .So Wise," there is asingle page. It is an outwork. an hors d'oeuvre . an excrgue ora I lyshcct whoso topes. like (its) temporalit y. strangely dislo­cates the very thing that we. wit h our untroubled assurance,wou ld Iikc to think of as the time of life and the lime of life'srec tt." of th e writi ng of life by the living- in short, the timeof autobio gra phy.

The page is da ted . To date is to sign. And to "date from" isa lso to ind icat e the place of the signa ture. T his page is in acerta in way dated becau se it says "today " and today "mybirthday," th e an niversary of my birth . Th e anniversary is themoment when the yea r tums back on itself . forms a ri ng orannulus with itsel f. annu ls itself and beg tns anew . It is here:my fort y-fifth year, the day of th e year when I am forty-five

Otobiogrophi r.s I JJO Otobiographies

[des Ich Iebe ntch t]. Unde r these circum stan ces I have a dut yagain st whi ch my habits, even more the prid e of my instincts,revolt at botto m- namely, to say : Hear me! For 1am s uch andsuch a person [literal ly: I am he and he, ich bin del' und der].Above all , do nol mistake me fo r someone else." All of this isemphasized.

He says th is unwillingly, but he has a "duty" to say so inorder to acquit himself of a debt. To whom ?

Forci ng himself to say who he is, he goes against his naturalhabit us tha t prom pts hi m to dissimulate behind masks. Youknow , of co urse, that Nietzsche constantly affirms the value ofdissimulatio n. Life is d issi mulation. In saying " ich bin del'und del'," he seem s to be going agains t the instin ct of dissimu­lalion . This might lead us to believe that , on the one hand, hisco ntract goes against his nature: it is by doing violence tohimself that he promises to honor a pledge in the name of thename, in his name and in th e name of the othe r. On the otherhand . however, th is auto-presentative ex hibitio n of the "ichbin del' un d der" co uld well be still a ruse of dissimulation.We would again be mistaken if we un derstoo d it as a simplepresent ation of identity, ass uming tha t we a lready know whatis invo lved in self-p resentation and a statement of ide ntity("Me, such a person," male or female, an individual or collec­tive subject, "Me, psychoana lysis," "Me, metaphysics").

Everything that will subsequently be said about troth willhave to be reevalua ted on the bas is of thi s quest ion and thisanx iety. As if it were not already enough to un sett le our theo­retica l certainties about identity and what we thi nk we knowabo ut a proper name, very rapidly. on the following page,Nietzsche appea ls to his "expe rience" and his "wanderings inforbid den rea lms." They have taught him to consid er thecauses of idealization and mora lization in an entirely differentlight. He has seen the daw ning of a "hidd en history" of phi­losophers-he does not say of phiJosophy-and the "psychol­ogy of th eir great names."

Let us ass ume. in th e first place , that the "I live" is guaran­teed by a nom inal contract wh ich falls du e only upon the

12 Otobiogruphies

years old, something like the midday of life. The noon of life .even midlife cris is.' is commonly situated at ahout this age. atthe shad ow less m idpoint of a grea t dav.

Here is how the exergun begins : "A~ diesem voilkommbenTuge. 1\' 0 Alles reifl." "On this perfect day wh en everything isrip en ing. and not only the grape tu rns brown , tho eye of thesu n just fell upon my life (has fallen due as if by chance : fielnur eben ein Sonnen blick a uf mefnen Leben]."

It is a shadowless moment consonant with all the' "mid­days" of Zarathustra . It comes as a moment of affirmation.return ing like the ann ivers ary from which one ca n look for­ward and bac kward at one and the same tim e. The shado w ofall negativity has di sappeared; '" looked back . I looked for­ward , and never saw so man y and such good things at once ."

Yet. this midday tolls th e hour of a burial. Playing on every­day language. he bu ries hi s past forty-four years. But what heactua lly buries is death . and in burying death he has savedlife-and im morta lity, " II was not for nothing that I buri edIbegrub] my forty-fou rth yea r today: I had the righ t to bury it:whatever was life in it has bee n saved, is immorta l. The firstbook of the Revalua tion of AU Values, the Songs of Zcrc th us­Ire . the Twilighl of the Idols, my atte mpt to ph ilosoph ize witha ham mer-all presen ts [Geschenke] of this vear. indeed of itslast qu ar ter. lIow could I fo il to be gruleful I~ my whole li/e?­and so I tell my life to myself" '''Und so er..:dh/e ich mir meinLeben"] .

fi e ind eed says: I tell m}' life 10 mr Sl!// ; I rec ite and recountit thus fo r me. We have come to the end of the exergue on theflysh eet between th e Preface and the beginning of Ecce Homo.

To receive one 's life as a gift. or rath er. to be grateful 10 lifefor wha t she gives , for giving after a ll what is m j - life: moreprecisely, to recognize one's gratitude to life fur such a gift­the gift be ing what has managed to get writ len and signedwith th is name for wh ich I have established my own credi tand which will be what it has become only on the basis of

' '' I.e demon de midi "; Jill·rall y. th n midday de mo n.c-rl'r.

Otobio/lraphi es J J

what thi s yea r has given me (the three works mentioned in thepassage). in the course of the event dated by an annual courseof the sun, and even by a part of its course or recourse , itsreturning- to reaffirm wh at has occurred duri ng these forty­four years as having been good and as bound 10 return eter­na lly, immorta lly: thi s is wh at co ns titutes . gathers, ad joins ,and holds the strange present of this au to-biographical reci ! inplace. " Und so er.ldhle ich mir mein Leben: ' This recit thatburi es the dead and saves th e saved or exce ptiona l as immor­tal is not cu te-biographica l for the reason one commo nly un ­derstand s, thai is, because th e signa tory tells the story of hislife or the retu rn of his past life as life and not death . Rather. itis becau se he te lls himself this life and he is the narratio n'sfi rst , if not its onl y. addressee and destination- within thetext. And since the "I" of thi s rectt only constitutes itse lfthough the credit of the eternal retu rn, he does not exist. ti edoes not sign prior 10 th e reclt quo eterna l return . Unt il then .until now. that I am living may be a mere prejud ice. It is theetern al return that signs or sea ls,

Thus, you ca nnot think the nam e or names of FriedrichNietzsche, you ca nnot hear th em before the reaffirmation ofthe hym en, before the all iance or wedd ing ring of the etern alretu rn . You will not un derstand anything of his life, nor of hislife and works, until you hear the thought of the "yes. yes"given to th is shadowless gift at the ripen ing high noon, be­neath that di vision wh ose borde rs are inundated by sunlight:the overflowing cup of th e sun. Listen again to th e ove rture ofZorolhustro.

This is why it is so difficu lt to determine the do te of such anevent. How ca n one situate the advent of an auto-biographicalrec tt which, as the thought of th e eterna l return . requires thatwe let the ad vent of a ll events come about in another way?Thi s dif ficult y cro ps up whereve r one seeks to make a deter­nun ouon: in orde r to date an even t, of course, but also inord er to identify the beginning of a text. the or igin of life, orthe fi rst movement of a s ignature. These are all prob lems (Ifthe borderli ne.

O lobioRNlphies 15

I shall not read Ecce Homo with you, I leave you with th isforewarni ng or foreword abou t the place of the excrguc andthe fold that it forms along the lines of an incons picuous lim it:There is no more shadow, and all statements. before and after.left an d right. are at once possib le [Nietzs che said it all, moreor less) and necessari ly contradictory (he said the most mutu­ally incompatible things, and he sa id that he said them) . Yet.before leaving Ecce Homo. let us pick up just one hi nt of th iscontradicting du plicity.

What happens right afte r th is sort of excrgue. after th is date?(It is. after all. a dote:" signature, anniversary rem inder. cele­bration of gifts or givens. acknow ledgment of debt. ) After this"date." the first chapter ("Why I Am So Wise") begins . as youknow. with the origins of -myv ltfe: my fath er and my mother.In other words. once again, the principle of contradiction inmy life which falls between the principles of death and life.the end and the beginni ng. the high and the low . degenera cyand ascenda ncy. et cetera. Thi s contrad ict ion is my fatality.And my fatali ty derives from my very genealogy, from myfather and mother . from Ihe fact that I decli ne. in the form of ariddle. as my parent s' identity. In a word. my dead father. myliving mother , my father the dead man or dea th. my motherthe living feminine or life. As for me. I am between the two:this lot has fallen to me. it is a "chance:' a throw of the dice;and at th is place my truth . my doub le truth. takes after both ofthem. These lines are we ll known:

The good fort un e of my existence [Des GlOck metnes Dcse tns]. itsun iquen ess perhaps [he says "perhaps." and thereby he reserves thepossibil ity tha t th is chancy situa tio n may have an exemplary or para­d igma tic character]. lies in its fatality: I am, 10 express it in the formof a ridd le IRiilseJform l. a lread y dead as my father [015 mcm voterbereu s ges tc rbe n]. wh ile as my mother , I am sttllllviug and beco mingold lois metne Mutter ld}l ~ ich noch und "'tm lc (Jill ,

"f'"rom "dutn littem." " II'U,' r given." 11m fit !>1 words or II m" die\'111 formulll

in d icating the li m.. lind plan , 0111 1"1111 1111:1 .- Tr,

Without fail. the structure of the exergue on the borderline orof the bord erline in the cxcrguc will be reprinted wherever thequ est ion of life, of "my-life ," arises . Between a title or a prefaceon the one hand . and the book to come on the other. betweenthe title Ecce Hom o and Ecce Homo "itself:' the structure of thecxcrguc situates the place from which life will be reci ted. thatis to say . reaffirmed-yes. yes. amen, am en . It is life t~a t has toretu rn ete rna lly (selectively. as the living feminine and net asthe dea d that resides within her and must be buried ). as lifeallied to herself by the nupt ia l annu lus . the wedding ring. Th is

. place is to be fou nd neither in the work (it is an exerguol nor inthe life of the autho r. At least it is not there in a simple fashi on .but neither is it simply exte rior to them. It is in th is place thataffirmation is repeated : yes. yes . I ap prove, I sign. I subscribe tothis ack nowledgment of the debt incurred toward "myse lf: '"my-Iife"-and I want it to return . Here. at noon . the leastshado w of all negativity is buried . The design of the exerguereappears later, in the cha pter "Why I Write Such ComlBooks: ' where Niet zs ch e's preparation s for the "great noon "arc made into a commitment. a debt. a "duty." "my dut y ofpreparing a moment of the highest se lf-examination for human­ity. a grea t noon when it looks back and far forward [we slezuriic kscha ut und htnousschc ut l" ("Dawn").

But the noon of life is not a place and it docs not take place.For that very reason. it is not a moment but only an instantlyvanishing limit. What is more. it returns every day. always ,each da y, wit h every turn of the annulus. Always before noon ,afte r noun " If one has the right to road F.N.'s signature on ly atthis instant-the instant in whic h he signs "noon, y(1S , yes , Iand I who recit e my life to myse lf"- well. you can see what animpossible protocol this implies for readi ng and especia lly forteachi ng, as well as what ridic ulous na ivete, what sly, obscure.and shady business arc beh ind declarations of tim type: Fried.rich Nlotzscbe said thi s or thai, he thought th is or thai aboutthis or thai subject- about life, for example, in the sense ofhum an or biological existence-Friedrich Nietzsche or who­ever utter noon . such -an d-such a pHrsull. 1\1£1 . for example.

14 O lobiographies

J6 Otobio1lruphies

Inasm uch as I am nnd fo llow nf ler my fath er, I am Ihe deadma n and I am death . Inasmuch as I am and fo llow ujter mymot he r. I am life that perseveres, I am Ihe living and the livi ngfeminine . I am my father. my mother. and me . and me wh o ismy father my mother and me, my son and me. death a nd life .the dead ma n und tho living femi ni ne , a nd so 011.

Th ere , thi s is w ho I am, a ce rta in masculi ne and a ce rta infemini ne . Ich bin de r und der. a phrase wh ich means all thes ethings. You will not be able to hea r a nd understand my nam eunless yo u hear it with a n ear at tuned to the name of the deadma n and the living femin ine-the doub le and d ivided name ofthe father w ho is dead and th e mother who is living on. whowill moreover o utlive me lo ng eno ugh 10 bury me. Th e motheris livi ng Oil , and Ihi s living o n is the na me of the mother. Thissurvival is my li fe w hose shores she overflows . An d myfather's name. in other words, my pat ronymt That is the nam eof m y death. of my dead life.

Must one not take this unrcp rcsentablo sce ne into accoun teach lime one cla ims to ident ify an y utterance signed by F.N.?The utt erances I have jus t rea d or tra ns lated do not belong tothe genre of au tobiography in the strict se nse of the term. Tobe sure, it is not wrong to say that Niet zsche spea ks of h is" rea l" (as o ne says) father and mo ther. But he speaks of Ihem"in Iidt sclfarm," symbo lically. by way of a riddle: in otherwords. in the form of a proverb ial legend , and as a story thaiha s a lot to leach.

Wha t. th en . are the co nseq uences of thi s double ori gin? Th ebirth of Nietzsche, in the double se nse of the word "b irth"(the ac t of being bo rn and family lin eage). is itse lf double. Itbrings so meth ing into th e world and the light (If day o u t of asingular co uple: death an d life, the dead ma n and the livt ngfeminine . the fath er and th e mother. The double hir th explainswh o I am and how I determine my identity: as double andneut ral.

This double descent [Drese doppd le lIl·rkun!II. as it were. from (KIththe highest and the lowest ru ngs on the ladde r of life, at tile same

_________________ Otobiogrophies 17

time decadent an d a ')(~gi lln ing-th i s. if anrlh in" . explai ns that 1It!U .

tra lity. thai freed om from all par tiality in relnt lcn tc the tota l problemof life, that pe rhaps distinguishes me. I have a subtler sense of smell(pay allention to what he repeated I)' says about hunting. trails, andhis nostrfls] for the signs of asce nt and decli ne (Iilerall}' of rising a ndsell ing. as one says of the sun: fu r d ie zetchen von AU!WlIlg undNil ~dergonR ; of that which cli mbs and declines, of the high an d thelowjthan an}' other human bei ng before. I am the master pur excel ­Ience for Ihis-I know both . I am both (ich kenna beides. ieh binbeide s].

I am a master. I am the master, the teacher [Lehre r] " pa rexce lle nce" (the latter words in Fren ch. as is decadent ea rlierin th e pa ssage). I know and 1 am the both of th em (one wouldhave to rea d ·' the both" as being in the singula r). the d ua l orthe double, I know w ha t I a m, the bot h. the two. life the dea d11o vie Ie mortI. Two. and from th em one gets life the dead.When I say " Do not mistake me for so moone else . I am del'und der.' i h is is what 1 mean: the dead the living. the deadman tho living feminine.

The alliance that Nietzsche follows in turning his signatureinto riddles links the logic of the dead to that of the liv ingfeminine. It is an alli ance in wh ich he sea ls or forges hissignatures-and he also simu lates them: the demon ic neutral­ity of midday delivered from th e negative and from d ialec t ic.

" I kn ow both. 1 am both.c-My father d ied at th e age ofthirty-six. fie was de licate . ki nd and morbid . as a being that isdesti ne d me rely to pass by [wie etn nul' zum Voru bergehnbestimmles wesen j-c-more a gracious memor y of life ra therthan life itself." II is not o nly that the son does not survive hisfather after the lat ter's death. but th e father was u trecdy dead:he wi ll have d ied during hi s own life. As a " living" fat her, hewas already only th e me mory of life . of an al read y prior life.Elsewh ere. I have related this elementary kin shi p structure (ofa dead or rather absen t father , alr eady abse nt to himself. andof the mother living abo ve and after a ll , liv ing on 10nRenough10 bury the one she ha s brough t int o th e world . an agelessvirgin inaccessible to all ages) 10 a logic of the death kn ell

18 Otobiu1jraphics

[glus ] a nd of ob sequence. There are examples of th is logic insome of the best families. for example. the fam ily of Chri st{w ith whom Dionysus stands face to face . bu t as his spec ulardouble). There is also Nie tzsche's family. if aile cons iders thatthe mother survived the "breakdown. " In sum and in general .if one "s ets as ide all the facts: ' the logic ca n be found in allfamilies.

Before th e cure or resurrec tio n wh ich he also recounts inEcce Homo . this only son will have first of all repeated hisfather's death : "ln the sa me yea r in which his We went down­ward . mine, too. wen t downward : at thirty-si x 1 reached thelowest point of my vitalit y- I s till lived . bu t wi thout beingab le to see three steps ahead. Then-it was 1879-1 retiredfrom m y professorship at Basel . spent the summer in 51. Me­rit z lik e a shadow a nd the next w in ter. the most sunless of mvlife. in Naumberg as a sha dow. This was my minimum. Th~Wonderer and lfis Sha do w was born at thi s tim e. Doubtless Ithen knew abo ut shadows." A little further. we read : "Mvreaders kn ow perhaps in what way I consid er dia lectic as asym ptom of decadence; for example in the most fam ou s case,the case of Socrates." Im FaJl des Sokrotes: one mi ght a lso sayin his ca sus. his ex piratio n date and his decadence. He is aSocrates. that decaden t par excellence, but he is also the re­verse . This is what he ma kes clear at the beginning of th e nextsection: "Ta king in to accou nt that 1 am a decadent , I am a lsothe opposite." Th e double provenance, a lready mentioned atthe beg inni ng of sec tio n 1. then reaffirmed and exp lai ned illsecttcn 2. may also be hea rd at the opening of sec tion 3: "Thisd ua l ser ies of experie nces . th is access to apparent ly sepa rateworlds, is repea ted in my natu re in every respect : ) am aDoppelganger, I have a 'second ' sight in add itio n to the fi rst.And per ha ps also a thi rd ." Seco nd and th ird sig ht. Not o nly,as he sa ys elsew here, a thi rd ear. Only a moment age . he hasex plai ned to us that in traci ng the pu rtrait of the " well-tu rned ­out person" [wohlge m thner Men sch ] he has just dcscnbndhimself: "Well, the n, I am the oppos ite or il dece den t. for Ihave just described m yself ."

(}lobio1jra ph ie s 19

The contrad iction of th e "double" th us gnes beyond wha t­ever dec lini ng negativity mi ght accom pany a dta lecnca l oppo­sit ion. What co unts in th e final accounting an d beyo nd whatcan be counted is a certa in step beyond" 1am thinking here ofMau rice Blanche t's syn tax lt$s syn tax in his Pa s nu -delc [v'FhcSte p Beyond"}. There. he approaches death in what 1 wouldca ll a ste p-bv-step procedure of overste ppi ng or of impossibletransgressio~. Ecce Homo: "ln order to un derstand anything atall of my Zorolhustro , o ne must perhaps be simila rly cond i­tioned as 1 am-with o ne foot beyond life." A foot: and goingbeyond the opposition between life and /o r death . a single step.

2. The Olograph Sign of S lal e

The autobiography's signature is wri tten in thi s ste p. It re­mains a line of credit opened onto etern ity and refers back toone of the tw o t's, the nameless parties 10 the con trac t, on lyaccord ing to the annulus of the ete rnal return.

This does not prevent-on the contrary, it allows-the per­son who say s " I am noon in the fullness of summe r" (" Why IAm So Wise" ) also to say " I am double. Therefore . 1 do no tmistake myself . at least not yet for my works."

There is here a dttlerance of autobiography , an allo- andthana tography- Within this difference. it is precisely the q ues­lion of the institu tion-the tea ching instit uti un-that gives anew accou nt of itse lf. It is to th is question , to this instit utionthat 1 wished to make an int rod ucti on .

The good news of the eterna l return is a message an d ateachi ng, th e add ress or th e destination of a doctri ne . By defi­n itio n. it cannot let itself be heard or understood in the pres­ent; it is unti mely, d iffera nl. and anachro nistic . Yet, since thi s

' ''PU$ uu .,l eM." both " s!tlJlIM) IM,yond" and " nul b\,ynnd: '- Tr .' T Ilt! d eath ot the lather, hli lltln"M~ . th .. fool; on' ! ma y IM1 wondering w hy I

am nol speaking he re uf ullIUlluH or (l''1li llllM, T h is wa~ i ll t" n tionall ~' hell l inr" M!r Ve fur another rml(lill l( ll irm:tly (:um:urnml with lh t! Nil·,,~~(;h "'lll th f'rIluli c;

of oed ipu s andth.. name (II OI"lipUS.

•

20 Otobiogruphics

news repeat s an affirmation (yes, yes), since it affi rms thereturn , the rebeginning. and a certain kind of reprodu ctionthat preserves whatever comes back. then its very logic mustgive rise to a magisterial ins titu tion. Zarathustra is a master(Lehrer ), and as such he dispenses a doct rine and intend s tofound new institutions.

Instit utions of the "yes:' which have need ofears . But how so?He says. "Des eine bin Ich . dos andre sin d mein e Schriften."

I am one thing. my wri ti ngs are another ma iler. Before I di scussthem one b)' one. let me touch upon the qu estion of their bei ngunderstood or not understood. I'll do it as casua lly as decency per ­~iI S: for the l im~ for th is question certa inly hasn't co me yet . Theli me for me hasn I come yet : some of my wr itings will be born onlypost hu mously.· Some day institutions Ilns rilu rionenl will be neededin. wh ich men live an d teach as I co nceive of livi ng and teach ing: Itmight even happen thai a few chairs will then be set as ide leigene :appropriated ta l for the in terpretation of Zomthusrm. But it wouldcontrad ict my character entirely if I expected ears and hands for my~ru ths .Ioday: that today one doesn 't hear me and doesn't accept myIdeas IS not only compre he ns ible . it even see ms right to me, I don 'twant to be confounded with olhers-this requ ires Iha t I do no r con.fuse myself.

The ear. then . is also at stake in teaching and in its newinstitutions, As you know . everything gets wound up in Nietz­sche's ea r, in the motifs of his labyr inth. Without gelling inany deeper here. I simply note the frequent reappearance ofthis motif in the same chapter ("Wh y I Write Such GoodHooks") of Ecce Homo,' and I right away step back, through

""" ;niRI' w,'rd,m posrhum Rclx:lTlm; Kaufmann translates thi s ph ra.<O! as"Some <HI' burn posthumnusly: '_ Tr.

'Onll example among ma ny: "All of us know, even know from exp.' ri.,nn' .whnt II lunll-I';lrnd b east Ihe ass is Iwus etn Lengobr isl]. Widl then , I da r.,assert that I have thu smallest ea rs. This is of no small interest 10 thu tiu l"ladies jWl"illl" ;nl_il SUllms to me Ihal thuy may feel I understand thum Ill'th~r .

I am the onli·(/ss pur " x(:l!IlencI' a nd th us a world -his tonc al mon stur_ 1am inGwe k and not unly in Gm,·k. the A"l i.Ghrist ." '

Olobiogru ph ies 21

another effect of the labyrinth, towa rd a text altogether at theother end. entitled On the Ful ure of Our EducolionaJ Inslitu­lions (1872).

I have, I am . and I demand a keen ear. I am (the) both . (the)do uble, I s ign do ub le. my writings and I make two. I am the(masc uline) dead the living (feminine) and I am destined 10them. I come from the two of them. I address myself to them,and so on. How does the knot of all these considerations tieup with the tangled politics and policies in Th e Fulure . . _?

Today's teaching establishment perpetrates a crime againstlife understood as the living feminine: d isfiguration disfiguresthe matemal tongue. profanation profanes its bod y.

By nature . everyone nowad ays wr ites and speaks the Gennantongue as poorly and vulgarly as is possible in the era of journalislicGerman: tha t is why the nobly gifted youth sho u ld be taken by forceand placed und er a bell-jar IGlasglocke) of good taste and severelinguistic di sci pline , If th is proves impossible. I would prefer a re­tu rn to spoken latin because I am asha med of a language so dtsfig­ured and so profa ned. . . . Instead of that pu rel y practi ca l method ofinstruction by which the teacher mu st accus tom his pupils to severeself-d isc ipli ne in the langua ge, we find everywhere the ru d iments ofa histcrlco-scho lastic method of tea ch ing the mother-longue: that is10 say. people treat it as if it were a dead language and as if one hadno obligation to the present or the future of this lan guage, ("SecondLecture "

There is thus a law that creates obligations with regard tolanguage, and parti cul arl y with regard to the language inwh ich the law is stated: the mother tongue. Thi s is the livin glanguage (as oppo sed to Latin . a dead, paternal language. thelanguage of another law wh ere a secondary rep ression has setin-the law of death) , There has to be a pact or alli ance withthe living language and language of the living feminine againstdea th. again st the dead . The repeated affi rmation- like thecontract, hymen . and alliance-always belongs to language: itcomes down and comes back to the signature of the matern al.nondcgenerato. noble ton gue. The detour through Ecce Homo

22 Otobiogra ph ies _

will have given us thi s to thi nk about: lli story or historicalscience, which puts to dea th or treats the dead, which dea ls ornegotiates with the dea d, is 'the scie nce of the father. ft occu ­pies the place of the dead and the place of the father. To besure. the master, even the good master. is also a father, as isthe master who prefers Latin to bad German or to the mis­treated mother. Yet the good master trains for the service ofthe mother whose subject he is: he comma nds obedience byobey ing the law of the moth er tongue and by respecting theliv ing integrity of its body.

The histor ical method has become so universal in our time. that eventhe living body of language [der lebendige Leib der Spruchel is sacri­ficed to its anatomical study. But this is precise ly where culture(Bildung) begins-namely, in understand ing how to lreal the livingas living [des Lebendige ols Iebendig], and II is here too that themission of the master of cu lture begins: in suppressing ' historicalinterest' which tries to impose itself there where one must above allelse act (hondeln: to treat or handl e] correctly rather than know cor­rectl y (richtigJ. Our mother-tongue is a domain in wh ich the pupilmust learn to act correct ly.

The law of the moth er. as language, is a "d omain" IGebiel),a living body not to be "sacrificed" or given up [preisgeben ]dirt-cheap. The expression "sich preisgeben" can also mean togive or abandon oneself for a nominal fee, even to prostituteonese lf. The master must suppress the movement of th is mis­treatment infl icted on the body of the mother tongue , thisletting go at any price. He must learn to treat the living femi­nin e correctly .

These cons iderations will guide my approach to th is "youth­ful work" (as they say) on the Future ofOur Educationa l Insu­tutlons. In this place of a very dense cr isscrossing of questions.we must approach se lectively. moving betwee n the issue of thepedagogical institution. on the one hand . and, on the other.those concerning life-death. the-dead-the-llvtng. the languagecontract. the signature of credit. the biological. and the bio­graphieal. The detour taken through Ecce Homo will serve. in

Olobiollroph ies 23

hath a parad oxical and a prudent manner. as our protocol. Ishall not invo ke the notion of an "already," nor will I attemptto illuminate the "youthful" with a teleological insight in theform of a "lesson:' Yet. without giving such a retro-perspec tivethe sense that it has acquired in the Aristotelia n-Hegelian tradi ­tion, we may be able to fall back on what Nietzsche himselfteaches abou t the line of "credit " extended to a s ignature . aboutdelaying the dat e of expiration. about the posthumous differ ­ance between him and his work. et cetera. Thi s of course com­plicates the protocols of read ing with respect to The ~ulure . , . .

I give notice at the onset that I shall not muh tp ly theseprotocols in order to di ssimulate whate ver embarrassmentmight arise from this text. That is. I do not aim to "clear" its"author" and neutralize or defuse either what might be trou­blesome in it for democratic pedagogy or "leftist" politi cs, orwhat served as "language" for the most sinister rallying criesof National Socialism. On the contrary. the greatest indecen cyis de rigueur in th is place. One may even wonder why it is notenough to say: "Nietzsche d id not think that ," "h e did notwant that ," or "he would have surely vomited this.?" that

. , say -vomtt" deli bera tely. x retescbe co nstantly d raws our attention 10 thevalue of learning to vomit. formi ng In thi s way one's teste . distaste . anddisg ust. knowing how 10 use one's mouth and palate. moving one's tongueand IiIlS. ha ving good teelh or bei nt! hllrd-tIMllhed, undt!rSland inll how tospeak an d to eat (but not just anyt hi ng!). All of th is we know. as well as the1.11:1 that the wo rd " Ekd " (disgust , nau......a. wlInli n", to vom it) comes baclagain and aKll in to set the slage lor evaluation . These <I re so m<l ny questions ofstyles. It sho uld now be possib le lor lin analys is of the word " ,.:1(['1: ' as we ll as01 e"('1")1hing thai it carriet down with it. to make way for a ha nd -ta-handcombat between Nietzsche and Hegel wirhin that space so admirably markedout by Werner Hamach er [Plemrnu . 197811)l~twt!t'l\ Fkel and /fl 'gel in Hegel'sI~'r Geis t dl's Chris len tu ms . In the lec tures On the f uture of Our EducotionolInstitution s. it is d isgust thaI conlrols everything-s-and fint 01 all, in democ­r'II:Y, journalism. the Stale and its Un iven ity. For example , follo wing only thelexica l occu rrences 01 ":kel : "Onl y by mean s 01 such disci lllint! can the youngman acquire tha t ph)'s ica l lOil lh ing (Ekeil lor the elegance of style which Is sodllf1n"daled and valued by IhOM! who worl in ioumalism factories and whoscnbble novels: by il alone is he irre \'ocab ly elevated al a stroke above 8

whu le hosl " f absurd questions and scru ples . such. for Instance. as whl,lh" r

,

24 O'o biosrophies

there is falsificat ion of the legacy and an interpretive mysttfi­ca lio n goi ng o n here . One may wonder how and why what isso nai vely ca lled a falsifica tion was poss ible (one ca n 't fal si fyjus t a nyth ing). how and why th e "same" words and the"same" stateme nts-if they are indeed the same-c-might sev­era l times he made 10 serve certa in mea nings and certain co n­texts that are said to be di fferen t. even inco mpatible. One maywo nd er wh y th e only tea ch ing ins titution or th e on ly begin­nin g of a teaching institution tha t ever succeeded in laking asits model th e teaching of Nie tzsc he on teac hi ng will have bee na Nazi one.

First protocol: Th ese lectures do not belong simply to the"posthumo us" state mentione d by Ecce Homo. Had they titleto the pos thumo us . they mig ht have been bind ing on theirau thor. Howev er . Nietzsche expressly said that he would notwant to see the text they constitute publish ed. even afte r hisdeath . What is more. he in terru pted the course of this d is­co urse along th e way. I am not sayi ng that he repudiat ed itentirely or that he repudiat ed those passages. for instan ce, thatwould be most scandalous to a ny contemporary anti-Nazidemocrat. Neverthe less, let' s rem ember that he "swore" not to

[Berthold ] Auerbach lind (Karl I Ouukow lire really poets. for his disgust [Ekel]lit both will be so grea t tha t he will be unable to read them any longer, an dthus the problem will be so lved for him , Lei no on e imagin e that it Is an easym..uee 10 develop thi s feeli ng 10 the extent n_ ry in order to have thisphysical loathing; but let no one hope to reac h sound aesthetic judgmentsalong any other reed than the thorny one of language. and by this J do notm....n philological resNrch , bUI self-disc ipline in one' s mother-to ngue" (-Soc­ond l.el.1ure").

Wllhoul wish ing to e xploit the Germ an word -Sig.nolu r." one cou ld Ny thatNtetasche's hi storica l disgust is eroused liDt of. 1I by the signature of hi s ere--,that by wh ich his era di stinguishes, signifies. c;haracterires. and identifies it-

'10 self: namely, the democratic signature. To this sign ature. Nletzscbe opposesanother one that is untimely, yet to come lind eull enachrontsne. One couldreread the " First LI!CIure " lrom this poi nt of view. ..... ith particular a ttentrcn toth is passage; " But thi s 1>1'101185 to th e signature without value Inich tswilrdillenSignu tur] 01our present cu lture. The fighb of gentus have been d"rno(;ralit.lluso that people may be relieved 01the labor by which one forms oneself, and ofthe personal necesaity of cu ltu re IBildungsol'bt:i1. BHdunllSnotl."

Olob ioBruphies 25

publish these lect ures. On July 25 , 1872, aher the Fifth Lee­ture. he writes to Wagn er that " in the beginning of the comingwinte r, I inte nd to give my Basel audien ce the six th and sev­en th lectures 'on the future of our educa tiona l institutions .' Iwa nt at least to have done wilh it. even in the diminished andinfer ior form with which I have treated th is theme up untilnow. To treat it in a superior form, I would have to becomemore 'mature ' and try to edu cate myse lf." However , he willnot deliver these two last lect ures and will refu se to publishthem . On December 20 . he wr ites to Malvida von Meysenbug:"By now yo u will have read these lectures and have beenstartled by th e story 's abru pt endi ng after suc h a long prelude(he is referring to the narrative ficti on. the imaginary conver­sation th at opens the first lecture], and to see how th e thi rstfor genuine ly new thoughts and propositions ended up losingitse lf in pu re negativity and numerous digressions. Thi s read­ing makes one thirsty and, in the end. the re is nothing todrink! Truthfully. what I se t out to do in th e final lecture-aseries of nocturn al illumi nations filled with ext ravagances a ndcolors-was not suitable for my Basel aud ien ce , and it was agood thing the wo rds never lefl my mouth" (italics ad ded I,And toward the end of the following February . he writes:"You must believe me . .. in a few years I will be able to dobetter , and I will want to . In th e meanti me. these lectures havefor me the value of an exho rta tion: they ca ll me to a duty anda task that are d isti nctly incumbent upon me. . . . These lec­tures are summary and, what is more, a bit improvised. . . . .Fritsch was prepared. to publish them. but I swore no t to pub-­lish any book th at doesn't leave me with a conscience as clearas an angel 's ,"

Olh er protocol: On e mu st allow for the "gen re" whose codeis cons tantly re-marked, for nar rative an d fictional fonn andthe " ind irec t sty le," In sho rt , one mus t a llow for all the waysintent im nizes or demarcates itself , demarcating the text byleavi ng on it the mark of genre . These lectures, given by anacademic 10 academics an d students on the subject of' stud iesin the university and seconda ry school. am ount to a theatrica l

26 Otobiograph ies

infrac tio n of th e laws of genre and aca demici sm. For lack oftime . I will not ana lyze these tra its in th emselves. Howe ver ,we should not ignore the invitation extended to us in thePreface to the lectures whe re we are asked to read slowly. Hkeanachro nistic readers who escape the law of the ir tim e bytaking time to read-all the tim e it takes, without say ing "forlack of time" as I have just done. These arc the terms that wil lena ble one to read between the lines . as he as ks us to do. butalso to read witho ut trying to preserve "ancient ru les" as oneusually does. This requires a medltotlc generis futuri, a practi ­cal med ita tio n which goes so far as to give itself time for aneffec tive destruction of the secondary schoo l and univers ity."What mu st happen between the time when new legislators .in the service of a tota lly new cu lture . will be born an d thepresent time? Perh aps the dest ruction of the Gymnasiu m [theGerman secondary school ]. perha ps even the destruction ofthe university or. at the very least. a transform ation of theseteaching estab lis hments whic h will be so to tal that the ir an­cient ru les will seem in th e eyes of th e future to be the re­mains of a cav e-dwelle rs ' civi lizat ion." In the mea ntime,Nietzsche advises us . as he will do in the case of Zurcthus trc .to forget and des troy th e text, but to forget an d destroy itthrou gh act ion .

Taki ng into account the present scene , how shall I in turnsi ft through this text? And what is to be retained of it?

In the first place . a phoen ix mot if. Once again, the destruc­tion of life is only an a ppearance; it is th e destruction of theap peara nce of life. On e buries or burns what is already deadso th at life, the liv ing feminine. will be rebo rn and regeneratedfrom these as hes. Th e vita list theme of degen eration/regen era­tion is active and ce nt ra l throughout the argu ment. This revi­tali zati on . as wn have already see n, must first of all pass byway of the tongue, that is, by wa y of th e exercise of the tongueor language, th e Ireotmenl of its body, the mout h an d th e car.passing between th e natural, living mother lon gue and thescienti fic, formal. dead paterna l language. And since it is aqu esti on of treat ment , th is nec essarily involves ed ucatio n,

Oto hiographies 27

tranu ng. d isci pline . The anni hi lation [Vemichtu ng] of thegymnasium has to prepare the grounds for a renaissance [Ne u­geburtl. (The most recurr ent theme in th e lect ures is tha t theuniversity. regardless of its op inion in the matter, is nothingbut the produ ct or further development of what has bee n pre­formed or programmed at the secondary sc hoo l. l Th e act ofdestruct ion destroys only that whic h. bei ng al ready dcgcner­atod , offers itself se lec tively to ann ihilat ion. Th e express ion"degenerat ion" designates bo th the loss of vita l, genetic , orgene rous forces and the loss of kin d . e ither species or genre:the Entcrtung. Its freq ue nt recu rren ce cha racterizes cu lture,notably university culture once it has becom e sta te-controlledan d journali stic . This co ncept of degenerati on has-already.you could say- the structure that it "will" have in later anal­yses, for exa mple in The Genealogy of Monds. Degenerationdoe s not let life dwind le aw ay th rough a regu lar an d co ntinua ldecline and according to some homogen eou s process. Rather.it is touched off by an inversion of val ues whe n a hostil e andreactive principle act ua lly beco mes th e act ive ene my of life.The degenera te is not a lesser vita lity ; it is a life pr incip lehostile to life.

The word "degeneration" proliferates partic ularly in thefifth and last lecture . whe re the co ndit ions for the regenerativeleap are defined . Democrati c and equalizing ed uca tion, wo uld­be academic freedo m in th e un iversit y, the maximal extens ionof culture-all these mu st be replaced by co nstra int, d isci­plin e [Zucht], and a process of selection under the d irec tion ofa guide, a leader or Fuhrer. even a grosse Fuhrer. It is only onth is cond ition that the German spirit may be saved from itsenemies-tha t s pirit which is so "virile" in its "seriousness"lmcnn llch ernst], so grave , hard . and hardy; that spirit whichhas bee n kept safe and sound since Luther, th e "son of aminer," led the Reforma tio n. The German univers ity must beres tored as a cu ltural instituti on , and to that end one mu st" renovate and resusci ta te the purest ethical forces . And thi smust always be repeated to th e student's cred it. li e was able tolearn on the fi eld of baili e [18131 what he co uld learn least of

28 Otobiogru phies

all in the sphere of 'acad emic freedo m': that one need s agrosse Fuhrer and tha t all formation IBildun~1 begins withobedi ence." The wh ole misfortunc of today's students can beexplained by the fact that they have not found a Fuhre r. Theyremain j uhrertcs. without a leader. "For I repeat it , myfriends ! All cu lture [Hildung] begins with the very op posite ofthat which is now so highl y esteemed as 'academic freed om':Bildung begins with obed ience [Gehcrscmketrl. subordinat ionIUntero rdn ung), di scipline IZuchtl and sub jection (Diens tbar­keil) . Just as great leaders (die grossen Fuh rer] need followers,so those who are led need the leaders lsc bedurfen die zuFuhrenden der FOh rer)-a certain recip roca l predispositionprevails in the order [Ordnu ng] of spirits here-yes, a kind ofprees tablished harm on y, Th is eterna l order . , : '

This preestablished ord ina nce or ordering of all etern ity isprecisely what the prevaili ng culture would attempt today todestroy or invert .

Doubtless it would be naive and crude s imply to extract theword "Fuhre r" from thi s passage and to let it resonate all byitself in its Hitleri an consonance. with the echo it rece ivedfrom the Nazi orchestration of the Nietzschea n reference, as ifth is word had no other possible context. But it would be justas perem ptory to deny that something is going on here thatbelongs to the same (the same what? the riddle remain s), andwhich passes from the Nietzschean Fuhrer. who is not merelya schoo lmaster and master of doct rine. to the Hitlerran Fuhrer,who also wan ted to be taken for a spiritual and inte llectualmaster, a gu ide in scholastic doctrine and practice, a teacherof regeneration. It wou ld be just as peremptory and politicallyunaware as saying: Nietzsche never wanted that or thoughtthat , he would have vomited it up . or he didn 't intend it inthat manner, he d id n't hear it with that ear. Even if thi s werepossibly true. one would be justified in findin g very littl e ofinterest in such a hypothesis (one I am examining here fromthe angle of a very restricted corpus and whose othe r comp ll­cations I set aside). I say th is because, first of all, Nietzschedied as always before his name and therefore it is not a ques-

Olobiogr ophies 29

tion of knowing what he wou ld have thought , wanted. ordon e. Moreover. we have every reason to believe that in anycase such th ings would have been quite complicated- the ex­ample of Heidegger gives us a fair amo unt to think about inthis regard . Next, the effects or structure of a text are notredu cib le to its " truth." to the inte nded meaning of its pre­sumed author. or even its supposed ly un ique and iden tifiablesignatory. And even if Nazism. far from being the regenerationcalled for by these lectures of 1872, were only a symptom ofthe accelerated decomposition of European culture and soci­ety as diagnosed , it still remains to be explained how reactivedegenerati on could exploit the same langu age, the samewords. the same utterances. the same rall ying cries as the ac­tive forces to wh ich it stands opposed . Of course, neither thisphenomeno n nor th is specular ruse eluded Nietzs che.

The question that poses itself for us might take this form :Must there not be some powerful utterance-producing ma­chine that program s the movements of the two opposingforces at once, and wh ich couples , conjugates, or marries themin a given set. as life (does) death? (Here. all the difficu ltycomes down to the determination of such a set, wh ich can beneither s imply lingui stic, nor simply ht stortco-pol tttcal, eco­nomic, ideological. psycho-phantasmattc. and so on . That is,no region al agency or tribunal has the power to arrest or setthe limits on the set, not even that court of " last resort" be­longing to ph ilosophy or theory , wh ich remai n subse ts of th isset.] Neither of the two ant agonistic forces can break with thispowerful programming machine: it is their des lina tion; theydraw their points of origin and their resources from it; in it.they excha nge utterances that are allowed to pass through themachi ne and into each other, carried along by family resem­blances , however incompatibl e they may sometimes appear.Obviously, thi s " machine" is no longer a machine in the clas ­sic philosophical sense, becau se there is " life" in it or "life"takes part in it, and because it pla ys with the opposition Iifeldeath . Nor wou ld it be correct td say that this "program" is aprogram in the teleologica l or mechanistic sense of the term.

30 Olobiagrophies

Th o "programming mach ine" that interests me here docs notcall onl y for decipherment but also for transformation-thatis. a practical rewriting according to a theory-practice rela­tionship which , if poss ible . would no longer be part of theprogram. It is not enough just to say thi s. Such a transforma­live rewriting of the vast program-if it were possible-wouldnot be produced in books (I won't go back over what has sooften been said elsewhere about genera l writing) or throughread ings , courses, or lectures on Niet zsche's writings. or thoseof Hitler and the Nazi ideologues of prewar tim es or tod ay.Beyond all regional co ns ide rations (histori cal . poltico­eco nomic. ideologica l. et cetera). Europe and not only Europe.this ce ntury and not only this century are at stake. And thestakes include th e " present" in which we are. up to a ce rtainpoint, and in which we take a position or take sides.

One can imagine the following objectio n: Carefu l! Nie­tzsche 's utterances are not the sam e as those of the Nazi ideo.logues, and not only because the latter gross ly caricaturize theformer to th e point of apishness. If on e does more than extrac tce rta in short sequences . i.f one reconstitutes the entire syntaxof the system with the subtle refinement of its articulationsand its paradox ica l reversals, et cetera. then one will clearlysee that what passes elsewhere for th e "sa me" utterance saysexactly the opposit e and corre sponds instead to the inverse. tothe reactive inversion of th e very th ing it mim es . Yet it wouldstill be necessary to account for th e possibility of thi s mimeticinversion and pervers ion . If one refuses the distinctio n be­tween unconscious and deli berate program s as an abso lutecriterion. if one no longer cons iders on ly intent-whether con­scious or not-when readi ng a text, then the law that makesth e perverti ng simplificatio n possible must lie in the struc tureof the text " remaining" (by which we will no longer under­stand the persisting substance of books, as in the expressio nscripta manen !). Even if th e int entio n of one of the signatoriesor shareholde rs in the huge "N ietzsche Corpo ration" hadnoth ing to do with it. it ca nnot be entirely fortuitous that thedisco urse bearing his name in soc iety, in accordan ce with

CJtobiogra phies 31

ci\ · jJ laws and editorial norms, has served as a legit imatingreference for tdoologues. Th ere is noth ing abso lutely conttn­Kent abo ut the fact th at the only poli tica l regimen to haveeffeclh 'ely brandish ed his name as a major and official bannerwas Nazi.

I do not say th is in order to sugges t tha t this kind of "Nie­tzs chea n" politics is th e only one co nce ivable for all eternity.nor tha t it corresponds to the best read ing of the legacy. noreve n th at those wh o have not picked up this reference haveproduced a bette r read ing of it. No. The future of th e Nietz­sche text is not closed . But if. with in the still-opcn contours ofan era. the only poli tics ca lli ng itself-proclaiming itself­Nietzschea n will have bee n a Naz i one. then thi s is necessaril ysignficent and musl be qu estioned in a ll of its consequences.

I am also not suggesting th at we ought 10 rerea d "Nietzsche"and his great poli tics on the basis of wh at we know or thinkwe know Naz ism to be. I do not believe thai we as yet knowhow to think wh at Nazism is. The task remains before us. andthe po litica l read ing of the Nietzschca n body or corpus is partof it. I would say the same is Irue for the Heid egger ian. Marx­ian . or Freudian co rpus . and for so many others as well .

In a word. has the "great" Nietzschean politics misfired or isit, rathe r. still 10 co me in the wake of a seism ic convulsio n ofwhi ch Natio nal Sociali sm or fascism will turn out to havebee n mere episodes?

I have kepi a passage from Ecce Homo in reserv e. It gives us10 unde rstand that we shaJl read the nam e of Nietzsche onlywhen a great politics will have effective ly entered into pla y. Inthe interim . so long as tha t name sti ll has not been read , an yquestion as to whether or not a given politica l sequence has aNtctzschcan character wou ld remain pointless. The name stillhas its whole fut ure before it. Here is the passage:

I know my fate [Jell kenna meln L os]. One day Illy name will beassociated with the memory of scmet h lug mon strou s [Ungcheures j-,il cri sis withou t equa l 0 11 ea rth . the mos t profou nd coll ision of cnn ­science [Cewlssens -Knlliston ]. a dec tstcn IEntschiedu ngl thai was

32 Otoblollraphies

co njured up ogainsl everyt hing that had been believed. demanded.hall owed so far. I am no man . I am dyn amile.- Yet for all that. thereis nothing in me of a founder of a religion-religions are affairs of therabble; I find it necessary 10 wash my han ds afte r I have co me inl ocontact with re ligious peo ple.c-t want no " believers" : I think I am100 mali ciou s to belie ve in myse lf: I never spea k to masses-c. l have aterr ib le Iear that one da y I will be pronounced holy: you wil l guesswhy I publish thi s book hefore; it shall preven t peopl e from doingmischief wi th me.

I do nol want to be a holy man: sooner even a buffoc n.e-Perhaps Iam a buffoon.- Yet in spite of that-or rat her not in spite of it. be­ca use so far nobody has bee n more mendacious than ho ly men- thetruth speaks out of me. .. •

The co ncept of politics will have merged entirely with a war ofspirits: all pow er structu res of the old soc iety will have been ex­ploded--all of them are based on lies: there will be wars the like ofwh ich have never yet bee n see n o n ea rth . It is only beginning withme thai the earth knows great poli lics [grosse Polifikl . '''Why I Am aDestiny" )

We are not, I believe. bound to decide. An int erp reti ve dect­slon does not have to draw a line between two intents Dr twopolitica l co ntents . Our in ter pretation s will not be readi ngs of ahermen eu tic or exegetic sort, but rath er poli tical Interventionsin the poli tica l rewriting of the text and its destin ation. This isthe way it has a lways bee n-and always in a singular man­nerc-for example. eve r since wh at is called the end of phi­losophy. and beginning with the textual Ind icator named "He­gel." Thi s is no accident. It is an effect of the desttnat tona lstructu re of a ll so-called post-Hegelian texts. There ca n a lwaysbe a Hegelianism of th e left and a Hegelianism o! the right . aHeideggerianism of th e left and a Heideggerianism of the right .a Nie tzsc heanism of th e righ t and a Nietzschean ism of the left.and even . let us not overlook it. a Marxism of the right and aMarxism of the left. Th e one can a lways be the othe r. thedouble of the other.

Is th ere anythi ng " in" the Nietzschcan cor pus that couldhelp us comprehend the double interp retation and th e so-

Oroblo1{raphies 33

ca lled perve rsion of the text? The Fifth lecture tells us thatthere must be so mething un hei mJich-unca nny-about theenforced repression (UnterdruckungJ of the least degenerateneeds . Why " unheimlich"? This is anothe r form of the samequestion.

Th e ear is uncan ny. Uncanny is what it is; double is what itcall beco me; large or small is what it can make Drlet happen (asin lalsser-Iai re. since the car is the most tendered and most openorgan . the one that. as Freud remind s us. th e infan t ca nnotc lose]: large or small as well th e manner in whi ch one may offeror lend an ear. It is to her-th is ea r- that I myself will feign to ad­dress myself now in conclusion by speaking sti ll more words inyour ear. as prom ised . abo ut your and my "aca demic freedom ."

When the lectur es appear to reco mmend linguist ic di sciplineas a counter to th e kind of "aca demic freed om" that leavesstudents and teachers free to the ir own thou ghts Dr programs. itis not in order to set cons traint ever against freed om. Behi nd"academic freedom " one ca n discern the sil houe tte of a CDn­straint which is all the more feroci ous and implacab le becauseit concea ls and disgui ses itself in th e form of laisser-faire.Through the said "academic freedom," it is the State that con­tro ls everyt hing. The State: here we have the main defendantindi cted in thi s tri al. And Hegel. who is th e thinker of the State.is also une of the principal proper names given to thi s guiltyparty. In fact . th e au tonomy of the university. as well as of itsstudent and professo r inhabitants. is a ruse of th e Slate. "themost perfect ethica l organis m" (this is Nietzsche quoti ng He­gel). The State wants to aUract docil e and unquestlonlng Iunc­no neries to itself . It does SD by means of strict co ntrols andrigorous constra ints which these functionar ies believe they ap­ply to th emselves in an act of total auto-nomy. The lectures ca nthus be read as a mod ern critique of the cultural mach inery ofState and of th e educationa l sys tem that was. even in yester­day's industr ial society, a fund amen tal par t of the State appara­tus. If today such an apparatus is un its way to being in partrep laced by the media and in par t associated with them. th ison ly makes Nietzs che's crit ique of journ a lism- which he never

34 Otobiographies

d issocia tes from the ed uc ationa l a pparatus-all the mor e strik­ing . No doubt he im plement s hi s crit iq ue fro m a poi n t of viewfro m th at would make any Marx ist ana lysis of thi s machine ry,incl uding the organizing concept of " ideo logy:' ap pear as yetanot her sy m ptom of degeneration or a new form of subjectionto the Hegelian State. But one would have to loo k at thi ngsmore clo se ly: at the se vern I Marxist concepts of Sta te , atNietzsche's opposition to socia lism and dem ocracy (in Th eTwilight of the Idols. he wri tes that "science is pa rt of democ­racy" ), at th e oppositi on scienc e/ideology, and so on. And onewou ld have to look mor e closely at both sides. Elsewhere weshall pursue the develo pmen t of thi s critiq ue of the Sta te ill thefragment s of th e Noc hloss a nd in Zcmthustrc. where , in thechap ter "On the New Idol," o ne read s:

State? What is that? Well, then , open your ears to me. For now I shallspeak to you about the death of peoples.

State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly it tellslies too: and this lie crawls out of its mouth : " I, the State, am thepeople." Thai is a lie! ...

Confusion of tongues of good and evil: this sign I give you as thesign of the state. Verily, this sign signifies the will to death! Verily, itbeckons 10 the preachers of death. . . .

"On earth there is nothing greater than I: the ordering finger of Godam I" - thus roars the monster. And it is only the long-eared lasses]and shortsighted who sink to their knees! . . .

State I call it where all drink poison, the good and the wicked;state. where all lose themselves, the good and the wicked: state,where the slow suicide of all is called "life: '

Not on ly is th e State ma rked by the sign a nd the pa ternalfigure of the dead , it also wants to pass itself off for themother-that is, for life , the peop le , the womb of thi ngs them ­selves. Elsewhere in Zomt h ustm ("O n Great Events"), it is ahypocr itical ho und , which , li ke th e Church , claims that itsvoice comes ou t of th e "belly of real ity ."

The hypocrit ical hou nd whispers in your car throu gh hi sed uca tio na l sys te ms , w hich are ac tually acousti c or ocroa­malic devices . Your ea rs gro w larger and you tur n into long-

Ulobiographies 35

cared ass es w he n, instead of listening w ith small , finel y tu nedca rs and obeying th e best masler and the best of leaders . youth ink yo u arc free and au to nomous with respect to th e State.You o pe n wide th e portals [pa vilions ] of your ca rs to admitthe Stale, not knowing th at it has al ready come under theco ntro l of reactive and degenerate for ces . Havi ng becom e a llcars for th is ph onograph dog, yo u tran sform yo urself into ahigh-fidel ity recei ver, a nd the car-your car which is also th eea r of th e other- begi ns to occu py in your body th e d tspropor­tlonatc pl ace of th e " inverted cripp le ."

Is th is o ur situa tion? Is it a questi on of the same car, aborro wed ea r. th e one that yo u arc lend ing me or tha t I lendmyself in speaking? Or rather, do we hear, do we und erstandeach other a lrea d y w ith another ear?

The ear does nol a nswer:Who is listen ing to whom right here? Who was lis tening to

Nietz sche when. in the Fifth Lecture , he lent h is vo ice to theph ilosopher of hi s fiction in order to describe, for exam ple ,this situation?

Permit me, however, to measure this autonomy [Sefbststdndlgkelt]of yours by the standard of this culture IH i/dung], and to consideryour university solely as a cultural establishment. If a foreigner de­sires to know something of our university system. he first of all asksemphatically: "How is the student connected with [hangt zusummen ]the university?" We answer: "By the ear, as a listener." The foreigneris aston ished : "Only by the ear?" he repeats. "Only by the ear," weagain reply. The student listens. When he speaks, when he sees,when he walks, when he is in good compan y. when he takes up somebranch of art: in short. when he Hves, he is autonomous, Le., notdepende nt upon the educational institution. Very often the studentwrites as he listens; and it is only at these moments that he hangs bythe umbilical cord of the university [on der Nobelschn ur derUni\'ersiftil hangtl.

Dream this umbilicus : it ha s you by the car. It is an ear,however, that dictate s to you wha t yo u are writ ing at thismo me nt when yo u write in the mode of what is ca lled " tak­ing not es." In fact th e mot he r-the bad or false moth er whom

36 Otobiogrophies

the teacher , as functionary of the State. can only simulate­d ictates to you the very th ing that passes through your earand travels the len gth of the cord all the way dow n to yourstenography. Th is writing links you, like a leash in the.formof an umbili cal cord . to the paternal belly of the State. Yourpen is its pen . you hold its teleprinter like one of those Hieballpoint s attached by a little chain in the post office-andall its movements are induced by the body of the father figur­ing as alma mater. How an umbilical cord can create a link tothis cold monster that is a dead father or the State-this iswhat is uncanny.

You must pay heed to the fact that the omphalos that Nietz­sche compels you to envision resembles both an ear and amouth . It has the invaginated folds and the involuted or ificial­ity of both. Its center preserves itself at the botto m of an invisi­ble. restless cavity that is sensitive to all waves which , whetheror not they come from the outside, whether they are emitted orreceived, arc always tran smitt ed by this trajectory of obscurecircumvolutions.

The person emitti ng the discourse you are in the process oflelcprin ting in thi s situation docs not himself prod uce it; hebarely em its it. He read s it. Just as you arc ears that transcribe,the maste r is a mouth that read s, so that what you transcribeis, in sum , what he deciphers of a text that precedes him, andfrom which he is suspended by a similar umbilical cord. Hereis what happen s. I read : " It is only at these moments that hehangs by the umbilical cord of the uni versity. He himself maychoose what he will listen to; he is not boun d to believe whathe hears; he may close his ears if he does not care to hear .This is the acroa mat ic method of teaching." Abstraction itself:the car can close itself off and contact can be suspended be­cause the omphalos of a disjointed body lies it to a dissociatedsegment of the father. As for the professor, who is he? Whatdoes he do? Look, listen:

As for the pro fessor , he spea ks to thes e listening stude nts. Whateverelse he may think or do is cu t off from the students ' perce ption byan immense gap. The professor often read s when he is speaking. As

Otobiographies 37

a ru le he prefers to have as many liste ne rs as possible: in the worstof cases he makes do with jus t a few, an d rarely with just one. Onespeaking mou th, with many ears, and half as many writin g ha nds­the re you have , to a ll appearances, the external acad emi c appa ratus[dusserhc he a kadem ische Appoml ]: there you ha ve the Univ ersity

• culture machin e IBildungsmoschine] in action. The prop rietor of theone mouth is severed from and inde pendent of the ow ners of theman y ears: and this double autonomy is enthus iastically called"academic freedom." What is more. by increasing this freedom alitt le, the one ca n speak more or less what he likes and the othermay hear more or less what he wants to-e-except that, beh ind bothof the m, at a carefully ca lculated di stance , stands the State, weari ngthe intent expressio n of an overseer. to remind the professors andstudents from lime to lime that il is th e aim , the goal. the be-all andend-all [Zweck , Ziel und Inbegriff] of this curious speaking andhearing pro cedure.

End of quotati on . I have just read and you have just heard afragment of a di scourse lent or cited by Nietzsche, placed inthe mouth of an ironic philosopher ("t he ph ilosop her laughed.not altogethe r good-naturedly." before holding forth as hasjust been related ). This philosopher is old . He has left theuni vers ity, hard ened and disa ppointed. He is not speaki ng atnoon bu t after noon-at midn ight. And he has just protestedagainst the unexpected arrival of a flock, a horde , a swarm[Schwarm] of studen ts. What do you have agains t students?they ask him . At first he does not answer; then he says:

"So, my friend, even at midn ight . even on top of a lonely mountain, 1­we shall not be alone: an d you yourself are bringing a pack of mis­chief-mak ing students alo ng with you , although you well know that Iam only too glad to put di stance between me and hoc genus omne. Ido n' t quite understa nd you, my distant friend ... in this place where ,in a mem orable hour, I once came upon you as you sat in ma jesticsolitude, and where we wou ld earnestly deliberate wit h each otherlike knights of a new order . Let those who ca n un derstand us listen tous: bu t why should you bri ng with you a throng of peopl e who don 'tundersta nd us ! I no longer recognize you, my distant friend !"

We did not th ink it proper to interrupt him du ring his di shea rt­ened lamen t: and when in mela ncholy he became silent. we did not

38 O fobiogrophies

dare to tell him how greatly thi s distrustfu l repudiation of student svexed us.

Omphalos

The tempt ati on is stro ng for all of us to recognize ourse lveson the program of this staged scene or in th e pieces of thismu sical score. I would give a better demonstration of this ifthe academic lime of a lecture did not forbid me to do so. Yes.to recognize ourselves, all of us. in these premi ses and withinthe walls of an ins titu tio n whose collapse is heralded by theold midnight philosopher. ("Co nst ructed upon clay founda­tions of Ihe cu rrent Cymnc sten-culture. on a crum blinggrou ndwork. you r ed ifice would prove to he askew and un­steady if a wh irlwi nd were to sw irl up ." )

Yet. eve n if we were all to give in 10 the temp tat ion ofrecogn izing our selves . and even if we could pursue the dem­onstration as far as possible. it wou ld still be. a century later.a ll of us men-not all of us women-whom we recognize.For such is th e profound complic ity that links together theprotagonists of this scene and such is the co ntract that con­tro ls eve rything, even their conflicts: woman, if I have readcorrec tly, never appears at an y point along the umbilicalco rd . eithe r to study or to teach . Sh e is th e great "c ripple: 'pe rhaps. No woman or trace of woman. And I do not makethi s remark in orde r to ben efit fmm that supp lement ofseduc tion which today enters into all courtshi ps or court ­room s. This vulgar proced ure is part of what I propose to call"gynegogy.'

No wom an or trace of woman, if I have read correctly-savethe mother. that' s understood. But thi s is part of the system.The mother is the faceless figure of a jlgurcnt. an ext ra. Shegives rise to all the figures by los ing herself in the backgroundof the scene like an anonymous person a. Everything comesback to her. begin ning with life: every thi ng addre sses and des­tin es itself to he r. She surv ives on the co ndition of remainingat bottom.

ROUNDTABLE ONAUTOBIOGRAPHY

Tra nsla ted h)' p«~. Kamuf

Rodolphe Gasche: The Internal Border

Yesterd ay, listening to "Otoblographies," we heard you,Jacques Derrida, proceed with a revalorization and a reevalua­tion of biography [a ph ilosopher's ; in this case, Nietzsche 's) inrelation to a written corpus. This procedure 011" your partmight at first appear paradoxical. not to say disappointing.That is, if one were to listen to it with the wrong ear, then onecould easil y reinterpret your gesture as sketching out a returnto certain acade mic pos itions-to psychobtography. for ex­ample-all the more so since, inevitably, you make use of thesame language. Is it the same, however? As we will no doubtreturn to th is question tomorrow during our discussion oftransla tion, I will set it as ide for the moment in order to in­qu ire instead into how YD ur approach In the problem of auto­biography differs from traditional ones.

In the first place, autob iography, as you see it , is not to be inany way confused with the so-called lire of the author, withthe corpus of empirical accidents making up the life of anempirically real person. Rath er. the biographical, insofar as itis autobiographical. cuts across both of the fields in question:the body of the work and the body of the real subject. Thebiographical is thus that internal border of work and life, aborder on whi ch texts are engendered. The status of the text­if it has one-is such that it deri ves from neither the one northe other. from neither the inside nor the outside .

You say that Ecce Homo is an autobiographical text becau sein it the signatory recou nts his life. You situate the lift-off pointfor th is account of se lf to self in the case of Ecce Homo (andhere I can' t help thinking of the fantasy of auto-engenderingin "The Case of Philippe," which Serge Leclaire analyzes in

42 Rou ndt ab le on A utobiogra phy

Psychc nclyser 11968 1} in that leaf inserted between the pref­ace and the text " properly speaking" which is neith er thework nor the life of the aut hor. As you put it, it is "between atitle or a preface on the one hand, and the book to come on theother . between the tit le Ecce Homo and Ecce Homo ·itse lf: "Heterogeneous to both the work and the life, this place of the"programming machine" engenders the text of which it is apart to the extent that it is a part larger than the whole,

My questi ons-which are actually a jumble of quest ions­will focus. then . on this localization of an interior borderlinewhich, in principl e. has to cut across the whole work, I willfocus. that is. on that slice or part of the text whi ch. as you sayelsewhere. is not a part of the whole. is not a part at all. *

First question: What is the relation of the heterogeneousspace of the text's engendering. perce ptible in th is leaf in­serted between the title and Ecce Homo "properly spea king,"to the "totality" of the text? Does th is leaf have a pri vilegedstatus precisely because it is empirically manifest? Does theempirical index of its being manifestly situated between thetext " properly speaking" and the title give rise to some sort ofprivil ege (to subvert. to engender. et cetera)? Or is the fact thatit is situated and can thus be located and ap prehended by thesenses perhaps hut one of the manifestations (that is. one ofthe possib le tran slations) of the text's engendering which is at"work" thro ughout the totality of the text . an engenderingwhich. in principle, necessarily escapes conversion into theempi rical? In other words, what is the relation between theengendering place of the text and the em pirical manifestationsof th is place in the text? What is the relati on between thetext' s engendering border and the emp irical given of the text?Can thi s relation sti ll be thought of in terms of op posit ionssuch as em pirical/non-empirical? Does not your notion of textexclude. rather. any relation to the empirical? But in that case,what privileges the status of the Inserted leaf?

' n '"s l pas du tout , une trc nche : n 'es t pa s du lou l un e Irn ncne. St'l' hdllW,PI'. 104 -05, fnr this use of "Irullche."- Tr.

Roundtab le on A utobiography 43

Second question : You say that the heterogeneous space ofthe dou ble programm ing in Ecce Homo. inasmuch as it is aspace of eterna l return and of the auto-affi rmation of life. isone of auto-engendering and autobiography, In that space.Nietzsche in effect proposes to tell himse lf his life, The fol­lowing question then arises: Do the heterogeneous spaces of atext's engendering necessa rily have the structu re of autobiog­raphy? Have they necessarily a relation to auto-biography? Orrather. would not auto-biogra phy be but one of the possibl enames for this border of works and lives. but one of the figures(in the Heidoggerian sense) that can be assumed by the ques­tion about what it is that cuts across these bod ies {of the work,of the man ) at their most intimate level? In sho rt. then. my'question comes down to integratin g the status of autobiogra­phy as such.

Final question: What is the difference between autobiogra­phy as the name of the internal border of text. on the onehand. and the role played by autobiography in academic dis­course on the other? To ask the same question in differentterms: Do not both the affective cecil and the affinnation of aconcrete life set forth by such a red l uncover but the effect ofthe aporias or contradictions of a text's programming ma­chine? Are they anything more than this effect? Do the reflect­able aporias of an enterprise of auto-constitution and auto­biograp hy erect thi s machine at the border of the text theyengender? Is the text anything other than the infinit e unfold­ing of thi s machine? What limit s the play of thi s machine?What determ ines that th is play. which in principl e is unlim­ited . takes the form of a finite life? Is it the empirical nature ofa concrete life that limits thi s play. or are there rather con­straints internal to the play that limit it?

Jacques Der rida : Reply

. In order not to keep the floor too long and restrict the limefor ot her questions, I will not try to give some answer basedon principle to the very necessary and essential questions you

44 Roun dtable on Autobiography

have as ked- because I have no such answers. Rather. I wHl tryto specify why I cannot answer these questions and why theirformu lation is problematic for me. Without going back overthe necessary and thoroughly convincing tra jectory by whichyou led us to th is form ulation . I will skip right away to thefirst qu estion . whic h concerns the relation between the textthat you call "empirical" or "given" on the one hand . and . onthe other. all of that whic h I tried to probJemali ze yesterdayaround the value of the border. The problem is this: If onepu rsues carefully the ques tions that have been opened uphere. then the very value of empiricalness. the very contoursof an empi rica l text or any empirica l entity , can perhaps nolonger be determined . I can no longer say what an empiricaltext is, or the empi rica l given of a text. What I can do is referto a certain number of convent ions-precisely those conven­tions that susta in traditiona l or academic discourse, or evenless tradition al an d less acade mic ones . When we employsuc h disco urses, we think we know what a given text is--atext that we receive in the ed itorial form of an authenticatedcorpus, and so on. We also have a cert ain number of "empiri­cal facts" about Nietzsche's life. Although the re may be anynumber of debates on th is subject. any nu mber of disagree­ments about the content of these givens, the presuppos ition is ,nevertheless , that one knows what one means by Nietzsche's"empirical " life. That is. one assumes that one knows what isat the organizing center of the debate. If one problematizesthings as I tried to do yesterday, how ever. the opposition be­tween. for example. the empirical and the non-em pirical {butthere are other nam es for th is op position} is precisely whatbecomes problematic. I then no lon ger know what this expe ri­ence is that grounds the value of the empirica l. This is thecase whether one is speaking of Nietzsche's life or hiscorpus-his bod y. if you will --or the cor pus called Nietz­sche's works. As I tried to in dicate yes terday . wherever theparado xical problem of the border is posed . then the line thatcould separate an author's life from his work. for example. orwhich . with in this life, cou ld separate an essentialness or

Roundtable on Autobiography 45

transcendentality from an empirica l fact, or, yet again. withinhis work. an emp irical fact from someth ing that is not empiri­cal-this very line itse lf becomes unclear. Its mark becomesdivided; its uni ty. its identity becomes dislocated . When-thisidentit y is di slocated . then the problem of the aulas, of theautobiograph ical, has to be totall y redistri buted.

Fina lly, if one gets around to wondering. as you did in yourlast ques tion, abo ut the status of the autobiograp hica l. then onehas to ask whether one will under stand the au tobiograph ical interms of this internal border and all the rest, or instead rely onthe stan dard concepts prevai ling throughout tradition . Onceagain, one is faced with a d ivisio n of the au tos, of the autoblo­graphical, bu t this doe sn' t mean that one has to dissolve thevalue of the autobiographica l recit. Rather. one must restru c­ture it otherwise on the bas is of a project that is also btographt­cal or thanatograph ical. And what name shall th is red istribu­tion be given in the "Ntetzschean corpus" in general. in"Nietzsche's thought" in general, in "Nietzsche 's signature,"and so forth? II would all come dow n to sett ing Nietzsc he'sautobiogra phy. or Nietzsche 's au tobiographica l thought. on theback. so to speak. of some thought of the eterna l retu rn. That is.the autobiography is signed by something that arises out of thethought of the eternal return in Nietzsche.

Although 1 cannot undertake here an interpretation of thethought of the eternal return in Nietzsc he . I will at least men­tion that the eterna l return is selective. Rather than a repeti­tion of the same. the return must be selective within a differ­entia l relation of forces . That whic h returns is the constantaffirmation . the "yes, yes" on which I insisted yeste rday . Thatwhich signs here is in the form of a return . which is to say ithas the form of something that cannot be simple. It is a selec­tive retu rn without negat ivity. or which reduces negativitythrough affirmation, through alliance or marriage [hymen ],that is, thro ugh an affirmation that is also binding on the otheror that enters into a pact with itself as oth er. The difficult yand th us the risk with the gesture I'm sketching out here isthat it will, once again . rela te the autobiograp hical signature

46 Roundlable on A Ulobiosraphy _

(which one always ex pects to be id iomatic , singular. subject tochance . and so forth) to something as essentia l as the eternalret urn. Th is might lead one to think that once again somethingem pirical, ind ivid ual. et cetera. is going to be related to anessen tia l thought-that of the eterna l return . However. I be­lieve th is risk can be avoided if , preci sely , one thinks in termsof wh at Nietzsche has perhaps made availa ble to thought andwhich he ca lls th e eternal return . Th e point is that the eternalreturn is not a new metaph ysics of time or of the totality ofbeing, et cetera , on wh ose ground Nietzsc he 's autobiograp hi­cal signature wou ld come to stand like an empirical fact on agreat ontological struc ture. (Here. one would have to take upagain the Heid eggerian int erpretation s of the eternal returnand perhap s problemati ze th em.] The etern al return alwaysinvolves differences of forces that perhaps cannot be thoughtin terms of being. of the pair essence-existence. or an y of thegreat metaphys ical structures to wh ich Heidegger woul d liketo relate them . As soo n as it crosses with the motif of theeterna l return. th en the indi vid ual signature. or , if you like,the signature of a proper name. is no longer simply an emp iri­cal fact grounded in something other than itsel£. Given themany d ifficu lt ies in translating wha t I am trying to get hold of,I would say that here per haps may be found not the answe rbut the enigma to wh ich Niet zsche refers when he speaks ofhis identi ty. his genealogy, and so on.

Christie V. McDonald: From On e Genre to the Oth er

What I have to say concerns the question of genre, specifi­ca lly th e one th at is traditionall y or commonly ca lled autobiog­raphy and is itself . in principle , the subject of our discussiontoday. If one may say that genres demonst rate in a particularway what constitutes the soc iety or institution to wh ich th eybelong, then it follo ws that a given society chooses and codifiesthose acts that correspond to its dominant ideology. You ul­ready a lluded to thi s problem when you said that an institutionis more tolerant of ce rta in explicit ly ideologica l express ions

Roundloble on A uto biography 47

(even those having a revo lutionary aim) than it is of a conce p­tion of writing such as th e one practiced . for example. in yourdcco nstru ct lve tex ts . Perhaps it is possib le to approach thi squestio n through the imp lici t slippage in your tit le "Otobiogre­ph tes ." th at is . th e passage from a utobiogra ph y to c robiog ra­ph y, revers ing the chronological order from yesterday to thi safte rnoon.

Let me expla in th is by means of a certain number of detours.It seems to me that the synchronic constdera t ton of genre tends10 make apparent the particu lar elements structuring so-ca lledliterary form. That is. characteristics and techniques of a genreca n be described by those fun ctions that point to the genericsys tem. But the questio n then arises : How is one to place aspecific text wit hin a diach ron ic series. wh ich presu pposesboth vari able and invariab le factors fa tradition. an order, andconventions th at degenerat e before regenerating th emselves insome other way)? Here I am th inking Jess of the externa l historyof wh at has been ca lled autobiography (whe the r one takes itback 10 Rousseau , Saint Augu stine. or other writers) than of thecritica l act that , in its interpretive relation to the text, imposes ameaning on it. In thi s latter context, could one say that th eprinciple of a traditiona l genre is fun damen ta lly that of anorder which, even th ough it does not remai n fixed . makes pos­sible th e produ ction of mean ing and gives rise to herm eneuti cdiscour se as meaningful d iscourse?

As for the so-ca lled modem genres , it has bee n observed (byT. Todaro..' in Les Genres du discou rs 11978)) that one candetect two d ivergent ten dencies in a wr iter like Hlanchot.First , the paradoxica l notion of th e singular book as itself theulti mate genre, wh ere eac h work does not sim ply derive froma genre but a lso interrogates, through its very parti cul arity. th every slatus of literature. Th e second ten dency is a move mentto rep lace past genres (such as the story, dialogue, or diarylwith othe rs that tran sgress or surpass them . It see ms to methat thi s movement closely paralle ls your own (in "Living On :Borderlines ," for exa mp le). Now . the genre we are d iscu s­sing-autobiography-marks the confus ion between the no-

Jacques Derride: Reply

I should not have to rep ly right away to such fully elabo­rated and serious qu estions-and by imp rovising no less. Ouragreement for thi s exchange is that 1should try to improvise aresponse even when I am not sure that I can do so adequately.Well , I am sure that in a few sentences I will not be able tomeet the demands of a qu estion whose elaborations and pre­suppositions are of such a vast scope. Nevertheless. I'll takemy chances with an answer.

First of all . as concerns that obviously deliberate transforma­tion of auto into oto. which has been reversed in a chiasmaticfashion tod ay: Notice that the institution has calculated thisreversal so precisely that today we find ourselves in the GreatPavilion, whereas yesterday we were somewhere else.' Theplay that accompanies th is transformation would be of no in­terest if it were not itself carr ied along by a necessity which Itried. to a certain degree, to make apparent yesterday. If todayI am trying to reformulate it, it is becau se thi s necessity re­qu ires that we pass by way of the ear- the ear involved in anyautobiograp hieal discou rse that is sti ll at the stage of hearingoneself speak. (That is: 1 am telling myself my story , as Nie­tzsche said, here is the story that I am telling myself: and thatmeans I hear myself speak.] I speak myself to myself in acerta in manner , and my ear is thu s immediately plugged into

"Genre a lso means "gender.v-c-Tr.' As in the pavllion of the ear . the visible part of the au ral apparatus.c-Tr.

avoid , so as to make him/her appear in thi s withdrawing andin this red rawing," You have underl ined not only the ano­nymity of the written I lie ecrtt] but also the inap propriatenessof the I write Ii'ecrisl as the "normal situation," My question :In the reading or readings that remaln to be done of Nietzscheby this deciphering ear. and wit hout lelling oneself get caughtin the trap of what you have ca lled gynegogy, does the " I"have a gender [genre]? "

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tion of the author and that of the person, the confusion thatRodolphe Casc he has just evoked and which Nietzsche see msto refuse in Ecce Homo. In this , Nietzsche with you, and youtogeth er with Nietzsche , pose the problem of the text-of itsbeginning and its origin- in terms of a relation between theone who signs (the author) and the one who reads or, as youput it yesterday , who hears.

My question has two part s. First of all, can it be that here­between two texts (Ecce Homo and On the Fut ure of Our Edu­ca tional Inst itutions) and two terms (autobiography and otobt­ography ), and despite the anac hronistic order-one encountersone of those passages from the critical, based on tran sportableunivoca lity and formalizable polysemia. to the deconstru ctive?In other words, is it here that we find a passage to that wh iehoverflows in the direction of di ssemination and seems to con­cern problems of politieal and institutional order in the univer­sity? If so, is it possible to link the deco nstructive to any par­ticular ideological content (of teaching in the institution )?Whether the power struggle be politi cal, religious, economic, ortechnical, how is one to formul ate it in writing when. at acerta in level , writi ng is itself an interpretation of power? Whatdoes one do with the transmission of th is power which is thevery decipherment of the text?

Second , as I decid ed to open with the question of the auto­biographieal genre, that place of a contract signed by the au­thor, I wou ld like to relate the two parts of my question to thepronoun "I," which is not onl y the addresser but the addres­see, the one for whom one always writes, and only in his/herabsence. At the beginning of Speech ond Phenomena , youplaced this passage from Edm und Husser! in exergue: "Whenwe read the word 'I' without knowing who wrote it. it is per­haps not mean ingless, but it is at least estranged from its nor­mal mean ing." You then followed. it seems to me. a programexp licitly la id out in a later text (Pas), where you say that " inorder to accede to another text, another's text. one must as­sume, in a certa in very determined manner. the fault , theweakness , not avoid ing what the other will have managed to

so Roundlable on A utobiosraphy

m}' discourse and my writing. But the necessit y of passingonto and by way of th e car is not just thi s. Nor is it just thenecessit y of the labyrinth motif wh ich , in Nietzs che. plays ana ltogether deci si ve role with the figures of Ariadne and Dtonv­sus . To be more preci se. it is, in the context that interested meyesterday, the d ifference in the ear. First of a ll, the differencein th e ear is, dear ly, the difference in the size of cars. Therearc smalle r or larger cars, Th e larger the car , the more it is benttoward the pav ilion. if you will, and the more un differen tia tedit is, th e more finesse it lacks in its allention to differe nce.

Nie tzsc he prid es himself on hav ing small ears (by implica­tion , keen cars), A keen car is an ear with keen hear ing, an earthat perceives di fferences. those differen ces to whi ch he wasvery attentive. And precisely to perceive d ifferences is to passon the di stin ct ion between appare ntly similar things. Think ofa ll that was sa id yesterday about po lit ica l discou rses andabout ste reotypes that seem 10 resemble each other. Here , pre­cisely, is where the keen ear mu st be ab le to distinguish theactive from th e reacti ve. the affirmative from the negative,even though ap parently they are the same thing: to dec idewith a keen ear in order to perceive differences and in ord er 10sed uce (as wh en Niet zsche says in passing, "I have sma ll earsand thi s is of no sm all int erest to women"). The ear is not onl yan auditory organ; it is also a visible organ of the body.

The most important th ing about the ear's d ifferen ce , wh ich Ihave yet to remark. is th at the signa ture becomes effective­performed an d performing-not at th e moment it apparentlytakes place, bu t on ly later. when ears will have managed 10receive the message. In some way the signature will take placeon the addressee's side , thai is, on the side of him or herwhose car will be keen enough to hear my name, for example,or to understand my signa ture, thai with which I sign. Accord­ing 10 the logic that I tr ied to reconstitute yeste rda y. Nictz­sche's signature does not take place when he writes. li e saysdearly that it will take place posth umously. pursuant 10 theinfinit e line of cred it he has opened for himself , when theot her comes to s ign with him, to join with him in all iance and.

•

____________ Roundtable on AUlobiography 51

in orde r to do so. to hea r and understand him. To hear him.one must have a keen ear. In other words, to abbreviate myremarks in a very lapidary fashion. it is the ear of the otherthat signs. The ear of the other says me to me and co nsti tutesthe au las of my autobiography. When. much later , the otherwill have perceived wit h a keen-enough ea r what I will haveaddressed or destined to hi m or her, th en my signature willhave taken place . Here one may de rive the politica l import ofthis st ructure and of this signa ture in wh ich the ad dresseesigns with hi sJher ear. an organ for perceiving d ifference . Asregards Nietzsche, for exa mple. it is we who have to honor hissignature by interpreting his message and his legacy pol lti­cally. On th is cond ition, the signa ture contrac t and the autobi­ography will take place. It is rather paradoxica l to think of anautobiography whose signature is entrus ted to the othe r, onewho comes along so late and is so unknown. But it is notNietzche 's originali ty that has put us in thi s situation. Everytext ans wers to this structure. It is th e structure of textuaJity ingeneral. A text is signed only mu ch laler by the othe r. Andth is testamentary structure doesn't befa ll a text as if by acci­dent. bu t co ns tructs it. This is how a tex t a lways comes abo ut.

I make a co nnection here to one of the other motifs in yourquestion . Within the university-an institution that institutesabove all th e transmission of what has bee n inherited , the con­servation and interpretation of the archive, and so on-we areconstantly obliged to make the gesture that co nsists in honor­ing. so to speak, the other's signature. In the terms of th is con­text. the gesture consists in hea ring, while we speak and asacutely as possible. Nie tzsche 's voice . But this does not meanthat one simply rece ives it. To hear and understand it , one mu stalso produce it. beca use. like his voice. Ntotzsche's signatureawa its its own form. its own event. Th is eve nt is entrus ted tous. Politica lly an d historica lly (not just politically, un less a ileunderstands "po litica lly" in th e broadest sense of the word ), itIS we who have been entrusted wit h the responsib ili ty of thesignature of the other's text which we have inherit ed. Nor is itlust Ntetzscho's text or Nietzsche's signat ure that we are re-

52 Roundtable on A utobiography

sponsible for. since the borderJess text itself is involved alongwith th e signature and also since. given the questions we haveasked abo ut th e border . th e signature is not on ly a word or aproper name at the end of a text. bUI th e operation as a whole.th e text as a wh ole. the whole of the activ e int erpretation whi chhas left a trace or a rem ainder. It is in this respect thai we have apolitical respons ibili ty. As regard s such responsibility. 1 haveno ans we r of a general sort in the form of a watchword. I have tobe satis fied-and perhaps it's no small matter-with definingth e general space of this responsibility,

The most difficult qu estion ca me at the end of your remarks.It co nce rns th e sexua l gende r (and not simply the literarygenre) of the "I" whose grammatical form is indetermina te. atleast in the languages we are using here, When I say "I" or"[e." "you" or "vcus ." the grammatico-sexual mark is not per­ceptible or audible. This poses many different problems froma lingui sti c standpoint. One may enco unter the probl em oftranslati on . which we are going to address specifically tomor­row. I will therefore set this aspect aside . But going a stepbeyond. if you will , th e logico-grammati cal aspect of the prob­lem, one find s th ai the question of th e ear or the addresseereturns. It co nce rns the oth er to whom . at bottom. I entrust mysigna ture. The question is wh ether th e difference co nstitu tingth e other as other has. a priori. to be marked sexua lly. I don 'tknow. When I say "I don't know." I mean th at in orde r to askth e question as 1 have posed it. one must presu ppose that theadd resser himself or herself is determined before the other'ssignatu re. that the sex of the addresser is itself determ inedbefore the oth er assumes responsibility for th e signature . Well,nothing seems less certain to me. I wi ll go so far as to risk thishypot hesi s: Th e sex of the addresser awaits its determinationby or from the other. It is th e other who will per haps decid ewho I am- man or woma n. Nor is thi s decided once and forall. It may go on e wa y one lime and another way another lim e.What is more , if the re is a mult itude of sexes [because the ream perhaps mere than two) which sign di fferent ly. then 1 willhave to ass ume (I-or rat her whoever says I- will have 10ass ume ) thi s po lysexualtty. Th is is wh at I risk, of course , but I

---- Roundtable on Autobiography 53

take the risk wit h the mom entum we received yesterda y fromNie tzsche 's text wh ere he himself says. I am two. my fatherand my mother. After pursuing its consequences . one findsthat thi s duality is not just any du ality among othe rs. It com­pels an irreducibl e and essentia l plurality. His mother and hi sfathe r. who are of different sexes. who are also life and death .arc two types of law as well and therefore man y other things.He is not only himself . an hei r. and he has not only inh eritedfrom two sexes. two laws. et cete ra . He also writes for them . apoint I think I mad e too rapidly yest erday. (I even wonder ifId idn't skip a sentence in my paper which said that .) The pointis that th e figure of the moth er as it is manifested in thi scorpus is not only th at of survival. But. inasmuch as it sur­vives . it is also that of the ultimate ad dressee in the phantasm .if you wil l. the ultimate addressee beca use he writes also forhe r. If he writes for her as well as for his father. if therefore.one writes not only for those wh o are yet to live but also forthe dead or for the survivors who have gone before us , thenth ings get very complica ted , I'm going to end by going veryquick ly here : 1 think one writes a lso for th e dead . Obviously.these are diffi cult term s to think in, and perhaps we will beable to come back to them . Yet th ey are not so difficult if onetakes int o acount wh at was sa id yeste rday about the propername which . as you reca ll. is not to be confused with thebearer and which . by its struc ture. ex ists and is meant to existwithout th e bearer of the name. Thus. every name is the nameof someo ne dead . or of a living someo ne whom it can dowithout. If th e desti nation of one's own writing is names or ifone writes in order to call up names. then one writes a lso (orthe dead. Perhaps not for the dea d in general. as Jean Genetsays when he writes somethi ng like "I wri te (or the dead " or"My theater is ad dressed to the dead." Rather. one writes for aspeci fi c dead person, so that perhaps in every text there is adea d man or woma n to be sought, the singular figure of deathto which a toxt is desti ned and which signs. Now, if the otherWho signs in my place is dead, that has a cer ta in number ofuonsoquenccs .

I have not answe red your question . II was too difficult.

54 Roundtable on Autobiography

Eugenio Donato: A Third Logic

What I have to say is not a question . Instead, I would like topoint up several landmarks that suggest perhaps a certainpath. I'll begin by reading the passage to wh ich you madeallusion jus t a moment ago. "There. thi s is who I am. a certa inmasculine and a certain feminine. Ich bin der und der. aphrase whi ch means all these th ings. You will not be able tohear and understand my name unless you hear it \..tith an earattuned to the name of the dead man and the living femi­nine-the do ub le and d ivided name of the father who is deadand the mother who is living on, who will. moreover, outliveme long enough to bu ry me. The mother is living on. and thislivi ng on is the name of the mother. This survival is my lifewhose shores she overflows. And my father' s name. in otherwords my patronym? That is the name of my death . of mydead life." Somewhat furth er on in the lecture. one reads :"There is here a dif ference of au tobiography. an allo- andth en atogrephy."

What I would like to extrica te are the different thanetogra­ph ies or scenarios of thanatography. At the very beginning ofyou r work , you informed us that , in some fashion, it wouldalways be a qu estion of a thanatogrephy. The s ign's "value hasthe struc ture of a testament," you said. And. speaking of thespeculative dialectic, you also said, "The dialectic is a theo ry ofdeath: ' First of all, with respect to thanatography, the thenatog­raph y of the d ialectic. which is a thanatograph y of resurrection.of the resuscita ted dea d , of the specu lation that permits resur­rection (from which there follow certain consequences). wouldone be justified in say ing, for examp le, that th is is what docsnot sign (as op posed to Nietzsche, the aile who does sign)?Onemay find a relation between this first thenatograp hy and thefirst logic of deconst ruction in which there was always snme­th ing of the dead that remai ned and that cou ld not be sublatcdby the dialecti cal operation.

RlJundtable on Autobiography 55

At the other end of your work , you proposed a completelyd ifferenl logic which , in fact. totally shatt ered th is dla lecnca lmoveme nt. I am referr ing to the crypt. Is the dlalect tc of thecrypt a different logic from the one you proposed yesterday,insofar as the crypt's logic puts in play the living dead anddocs not perm it any sub latio n of the cadaver? I heard yes ter­day's texl as a thi rd logic in this tha natology . The logic of myfather the dead. my mother the living, my father the foreverdead, my mother the forever living would be a logic thatleads to an irreducible doubleness. You say , moreover. that itwould lead to a sp lit dia lectic of the negative. Here. for ex­ample. one migh t nole the following passage: "As a 'Itving 'father, he was already only the memory of life, of an alreadyprior life. Elsewhere. I have related thi s elementary kinshi pslructure (of a dead or rath er absen t fethor. a lready absent tohimself, and of the mother living above and after all. livingon long enough to bury the one she has brought into theworld, an ageless virgin inaccessible to all ages) 10 a logic ofthe death kncll [gkrs] and of obsequence." Later you add."The contrad ictio n of the 'double ' thus goes beyo nd what­ever decli ning negativity might accom pany a dialectical op­position," Spea king in very general terms, I sec here a tra jec­tory that sets oul from Nietzsche as a reader of Hegel inrelation to the prob lem of the dialectic. However, in thisNietzsche reader-of-Hegel. I also read an autobiograp hicalelement: Derrlda rereading Of Gromma tology today. And inNietzsche's thanatography. I sec the necessity of the signa­ture, the necessary inability to ass ume and sublate in theautobiography the limit -posit ion of the living dead , that is 10say, of the crypt.

Based on what you have wr itten recently on Freud and onpsychoanalysis, one can say that th is logic of the living deadmakes the identification of the Freudian Oedipus absolutelyimposs ible. That is, the father who is always dead and themother who is always living would constitute in fact a move­ment that deconstructs the psyc hoanalytic Oedip us. a move­rnen t thai would ovontual ly red uce Freud 10 Hegel.

56 Round.able on Au.o biogrophy

Jacques Derrida: Reply

These are very, very difficult questions which naturall y con­cern me and seem to me altogether necessary, although onceagain it is going to be hard for me to survey the eno rmous fieldthat you have marked off. To begin with what I can best graspimmed iately, I'll reca ll what you said ebout Hegel and Nietz­sche: the former would be the one who did not sign and theothe r the one who signs Nietzsche. In effect. that appears to bethe case. In Glas , f said that Hegel seemed not to sign; andyesterday I began by saying Nietzsche is someone who wantedto sign. That appears to be the case. Hegel presen ts himself asa philosopher or a thinker, someone who constantly tells youthat his empirical signature-the signature of the ind ividualnamed Hegel- is secondary. His signature , that is , pales in theface of the truth, which speaks through his mouth . which isproduced in his text, which constructs the system it con­structs. This syste m is the teleological outcome of all of w est­ern experience, so that in the end Hegel, the individual. isnothing but an emp irica l she ll which can fall away withoutsubtracting from the truth or from the history of mean ing. As aphilosopher and as a teacher, he seems to be saying basicallythat not on ly is it poss ible for his signature and his propername to disappear without a loss. to fall outside of the system.but that th is is even necessary in his own system because itwill prove the truth and the autonomy of that system. Thus.my excl usion from what I am sayi ng-the exclusion of mysignature from the text produ ced throu gh me-is absolutelyessential and necessary if my discourse is to he a pht losophl­cal. ontol ogical one . It appears, then. that Hegel did not sign.Inversely, it appears that Nietzsche signs and signs more thanonce. He is someone who writes his autobi ograph y, recalls hisname, his genealogy, and so forth. Yet, in fact, HI18el signs justas clearly. One could show, as I have tried to do elsewhere. inwhat way it was difficult to d ispense with the name of Hegel

Roundtoble on A utobiography 57

in his work, to withold its inscription---call it persona l orbiographica l- from his work. It implies a reelaboration of thewhole problemati c of the biographical within philosoph y. In­versely, Nietzsc he has great trouble sign ing. He want s to signbut he is obliged to defer his signatu re, to entrus t it to some­thing like the eternal return which wi ll not sign just once bystating an identity. Rather, it will sign the strongest ind efl­nitely, it will se lect the strongest, and finally it will sign onlyin the fonn of the difference of forces and qualiti es. It will notsign in the form of the patronym. Thus, Nietzsche has a lot oftroub le sign ing. He doesn 't com plain about it, but in any casehe didn't sign in the common sense of the term . He defers hissignature.

The question concerning the crypt is much more difficultbecause , in order to reconstitute th is problematic carefully,one would have to refer once more to the psychoanalytic the­ory of the cry pt elabora ted by the French psychoanalysts Nico­las Abraham and Maria Torok [Le Vernier de I'Homme OUX

loups (1976); L'Ecorce el Ie nc j-cu (1978)). To review veryquick ly, the alterna tive top ical description they have pro­posed came out of their work reelaborating the Freudia n the­ory of melancholia and mourning. They have proposed theconcept of the crypt. Now. what is the crypt in this instance?It is tha t whi ch is constitu ted as a crypt in the body for thedead object in a case of unsuccessful mourning, mourning thathas not been brou ght to a normal conclusion. The metaphor ofthe crypt returns insistently. Not having been taken back in­side the self, digested , ass imilated as in all "normal" mourn­ing. the dead object remains like a living dead abscessed in aspecific spot in the ego. It has its place. just like a crypt in acemetery or temple, surrounded by wall s and all the rest. Thedead object is incorporated in this crypt- the term "incorpo­rated" signaling precisely that one has failed to digest or as­similate it totall y, so that it remains there, forming a pocket inthe mourning bod y. The incorporated dead , which one has notreally managed to take upon oneself, continues to lodge there

1

58 Roundtab le on A utobiography

like somethi ng other and to ventrtlocate through the " living."Th e living dead , to whi ch Eugenio Donato made allu sion , isthe one who is enclosed in th e crypt. For instance, J lose aloved one, I fail to do what Freud ca lls the normal work ofmou rn ing, wi th the result that the dead person co ntinues toinhab it me, but as a stranger. By contras t, in norm al mourn ing,if su ch a thing ex ists, J take the dead upon myself , I d igest it,assimilate it, idea lize it, an d interiorize it in the Hegeli ansense of the term. This is what HCRel calls in ter iorizationwh ich is at the same time memorizati on-an Intertortain g mem ­or izatton (E'rinnerung) which is idealiz ing as well . In the workof mourn ing, the dead othe r (it may be an object. an animal. orsome othe r living thing) is taken into me; J kill it and remem­ber it. But since it is an Erinneru ng, I interi orize it totall y andit is no longer other. Whereas in un successful mourning, thi s .Erinnerung goes only so far and th en stops . What Abrahamand Torok ca ll in trojection (anothe r term for tnterforl zation)reac hes its limit: incorporation marks the limit of intr oject ion .I ca nnot manage to int erior ize the dead e the r so J kee p it inme, as a persecutor perhaps , a liv ing dead .

My review of thi s theorizat ion is obviously 100 su cci nct. Asfor the int erpretati on of Nie tzsche thai I proposed yeste rday. isit in any way forei gn to this theorizati on? Is not the way inwhic h Nietzsche relates himself to his fath er and moth er, forexa mple, so meth ing else ? I don' t know, Obviously whenNietzsc he says, " I am at once the dead man and the livingwoman," he says to himself , I am both of th em. li e has in himso me living dead; he is also th en thi s couple 's crypt (si nce hisfath er and mother are not two but one co uple ), li e has in himthi s living-dead couple, an d this general situa tion cou ld openonto a general space with in which 10 as k th e quest ion ofNietzsche 's crypt. Perha ps, Through hi s father and his moth er.he may be both po inting to and hiding some oth er, far moredeterm inate ghost. I'm not prepared to enalyzo Nietzsche'sghost right now, bUI su ch an ana lysis could he attempted orsitua ted in th e genera l space where he says: '" am my fatherand my mother; I am my dead father an d my living mother. I

Roundtable on Autobiography 59

am the ir crypt and they both speak to me. Th ey both spea k inme so whatever I say, they address it to eac h other."

I don't know if you can te ll from thi s very sca nty summary,but the analysis of a cry pt ca n be done only according toproced ures that arc far from class ical in psychoanalysis. Theforms of the "analytic situation," and even the process oftransference and so on, are unse ttled by Abraham's and To-­rok's theory abo ut the crypt. When it' s a text that one is tryi ngto decipher or decrypt using th ese conce pts and these motifs .or when one is look ing for a ghost or a crypt in a text, thenthings get sti ll more difficult. or let us say more nove l. I say aghost and a crypt: ac tua lly the theo ry of the "ghost" is notexactly th e th eo ry of the "crypt." It's even more complicated.Although it 's a lso co nnec ted to the crypt, the ghost is moreprecisely th e effect of anothe r's crypt in my un consciou s.

Now , as for Nietzsche being a reade r of Hegel: it' s a sta ndardtopic, of co urse. Nietzsche is a reader and a major critic ofHegel. All of Nie tzsche 's affirmatio ns can be interpreted asanti -Hegelia n affirmations . Well . obv iously. as is a lways thecase when one has a great adversary-and HCRel is Nietzsche'sgreat adversary, isn't he?-there will be moments wh en thead versa ries grea tly resemble eac h other. It would be easy toshow tha t there is a d ialectic. II Hegeliani sm in Nietzsc he.

Patrick Mahony: Play. Work, and Beyond

My first qu estion co nce rns the influence of au tobiographyon th eoretical concepts,

Accord ing to the Germa n romantic poet Friedri ch Schille r,man is thorou ghly human only wh en he gives himself over tothe activ ity of play. In paralle l with th is pro vocative notion. Iwill place th e sim ilar position of Donald winnlcott. the Brit­ish psychoanalyst , who writes :

It is in playing lind only in play ing that the individu al ch ild or ad ultis ab le to be cre at ive and to use the whole personality, and it is onlyin being creat ive that the Individual discovers the self. (Bound up

60 Roundtable on A utobiography

with thi s is the fact that on ly in playin g is co mmunica tio n possi­ble.) ... In terms of free associatio n .. . the patient on the couch orthe chi ld patient among the toys on the floor mu st be allowed toco mmunicate a succession of ideas, thoughts. impulses, sensa tio nsthat are not linked except in some way that is neurological or physio­logical and pe rha ps beyo nd detect ion . . . . Perhap s it is to be acce ptedthat there are patients who at limes need the therapist to note thenon sen se that belongs to the slate of the indi vid ua l at res l with outthe need even for the patient 10 co mmunicate th is non sen se, that is tosay , with out the need for the Patient 10 organize non sense. (playingand Reality, pp . 54-56)

Winnicott 's ready acce ptance of the nonsense of free asso­ciation situates him at a certa in distance from the principa lapproach of the orthodox psychoanalysts. such as Freu d.(Sand or) Ferenczt. and [Rudolph] Loewenstein, who insistednot on ly that the patient communicate freely but that freeassociation be comprehensible. Actua lly, Freud's reservationswith regard to free play come to the fore at th is point. One dayhe was asked what a norma l person has to do to keep in goodhealth, and he replied simply: "Love and work" (IErikl Erik­son . Identify. Youth and Crisis (1968)). fie did not include"play." In this way. Freud departs from Schiller and Winni ­cott. A pertinen t remark in this regard is Freud's pronounceddistaste for music. What is more. when one considers certa inof his psychoanalytic concepts. one notices that severa l differ­ent phenomena are repeated ly referred to in terms of workrather than play: Durchorheitung (working through). psy­chische Vemrbeilung (psychi cal working out ), sekun ddreBearheitung (seco ndary elaboration), Troumorbeif (dreamwork) . Trouerorheil (mourning work ), Wilzarbeit (joke work),

Now. play has an enormously important place in your work.play which is nonetheless serious at the same time. Followingthe quotations I am going to read. I can not help thinking thatFreud's superego, which . as he says , casts a shadow over theego, must have incited him to work in di fferent terms.

1. "One could call ploy the absence of the transcend entalsign ified as limitlessness of play, that is to say as the destruc-

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Roundlable on A utobiography 6 1

lion of onto-theo logy and the metaphysics of presence... .Here one must think of writing as the play within language"(Of GrommatoJogy, p. 50):

2. "The presen ce-absence of the trace, whi ch one shouldnot even call its ambiguity but rather its play . .." (ibid.. p.71):

3. "I try to respect as rigorously as possib le the internalplay of philosophemes or epistememes by making themslide-without mis treating them-to the point of their non­pertinence, their exhaustion, the ir clos ure" (Positions. p. 6).

Finally, there is your watchword from Glos: "Let the netfloat, the infinite ly twisted and crafty play of knots."

1 would like to hear you comment on what is an obviousdifference between Winn icott and Freud and on how you situ­ate yourse lf in relation to this difference .

After having carefully stud ied Freud's Beyond the Pleas urePrinciple in the origina l language as well as various commen­taries on it, I can justly say that 1consider the best reading ofit to be your " Freud 's Legacy" ("Legs de Freud"). I havestud ied your text three times, and each time 1better appreciatethe prec ise description it gives of the second chapter ofFreud 's treatise. The chapter is read as a performative dis­course with a mimeti c structure and also as an auto-hetero­bio-thanatography which gives "a more or less vivid descrip­tion of Freud's own writing. his manner of writing what hewrites" (p. 96).

whatever one' s ap proach to autobiography-literary, philo­sophical, et cetera--one must pay constant attention to theunlimited factor of the repetition compulsion. You have es­sentially taken up this idea again in "Freud's Legacy," and Iwould like to explore it further with you. The best way to doso is to usc the specifi c exam ple you have chosen.

Elsewhere in Freud 's prod uction. one may point to an lm­pmsslve number of major texts that consist of seven chapters:The Inte rpretct tcn of Dream s; Jokes en d Their Relolion fa theUnconscious; "The Question of Lay Analysis," "The Uncon­scious," and New Introductory Lect ures on Psycho-Analysis.

1

62 Roundtable on Autobiography

The first two part s of Th ree Essays on the Theory of Sexua lityeach has seven sections , as docs Freud 's favorite text, part fourof Totem and Taboo . Also notice that there are twenty-eigh tlectures in th e Introd uct ion to Psycho-Anolysis-a mu ltiple ofseven . The friends hip between Freud and his great friend Wil­helm Fliess lasted about four teen years, th at between Freudand Jung almos t seve n years. The famous Secret Committeewhich guided the psychoanalyti c movement consis ted ofseven members eac h of who m wor e a ring. Fina lly, the city ofRome, with its seve n hill s, was so off-limits for Freud th at forseveral years he was unable to visit it, and , after he finally didso, he went there a total of seve n times.

Prompt ed by your th eori es about textuali ty. dccentertng.and mise en cbrme;' I would now like to bring to your atte n­tion a certain series of traces in Freud 's work . More precisely,I thi nk we may gain new autobiographica l insight if we com­pare Freud 's treati se on deat h from 1920 to the most famous ofall dreams in the psychoanalytic literature. I am referring tothe so-ca lled Irma dream whic h Freu d had twe nty-five yearsear lier and which, for a ll we know, revealed to him, throughth e ana lysis he mad e of it, the secret of dreams in genera l. Iwant to em phas ize two references in th e dream : first, the pa­tient , Irma. a direc t reference to Freu d's wife wh o was at tha tlime pregnant with th eir daughter Ann a; second, the very im­port ant reference to the nose. I will explain th e latter first.

The counterpart to Freud's autoanalysis was Fliess's aut o­th erapy or his operations on the nose. Earlier, the two of themhad begun, on Fliess 's suggestio n , to keep daily records ofthe ir person al observa tions. These personal observations wereorganized aro un d the nasa l-reflex neurosis, a cli nical categoryproposed by Flless. an otorhinolaryngologist. ,...he was repre­sented in the drea m by Otto . (Hence , Freud 's au toenalysls was

' The abyssal effect by which a represented objl!(;t. scene. et cetera . alrea dyfigures within the frame of the represe ntation . thus precluding the idea of anyoriginal momen t or s pace that is outside the frame . It would btl the effect . forexample. of a pain ting of a gallery wall on which hung the painting of thegallery wall._Tr.

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likewise an otoa nalysts. an d the dream took the for m of anot ography.) The nose was suppose d to be the source of thegreatest variey of symptoms which might appear anywhere inthe body- from migra ines to back pains-all of wh ich couldbe re lieved by nasa l surgery and the nasa l adm inislrat ion ofcocaine . Next, Fll css set out th e pr inci ple of female cycles oftwent y-eight days and male cycles of twenty-three days . andlinked the two in order to determ ine the days of a person 'sbirth and death. Finally, he estab lished a strict relation be­tween the morph ology and functioni ng of the nose, on the onehand , and of the genitalia , on the othe r. As we know, Freudwas de light ed wit h th is diagram which allowed one toglimpse the possib ility of 11 biological basis for psychoa nalysisas well as an effecti ve solution to the problem of birth contro l.

Now, in th e Irma dream. Sigmund (Sieg Mund : victorymout h) looks into Irma 's mou th and throat as an otorhino lar­yngologist wou ld do (thus the dream is a laryngography). Atfi rst Sigmund feels Irma 's case has defeated him. Then , inpursuit of victory. he begins to accuse his friend Otto (Fliess)of having used a dirty syringe to give Irma. who is pregnant,a shot of tr tmethylami n. But here, leI us listen to Freud 'sown association on his dr eam : " I began to guess why theformula for trime thy lam in had bee n so prom inent in thedream . So many important subjects converged upon that oneword. Tr imeth ylamin was an allusio n not only to the im­mensely powerful factor of sexuality, but also to [Fltess ] . ..who had a special knowledge of the consequences of affec­tion s of the nose and its accessory cavities" (Slonrlard Edi­lion , 4:117 ).

For ou r part . when we transcribe the who le of the importantchemical formu la 10 which Freud merely alludes, we noticetha t the symbo l for nitrogen occurs as a heteroatom which isnot in brac kets. The leiter , th e chem ical sign for nit rogen, inits graphic re lation, is th e sa me as the first consonant of theword nose (Nose) while it also rep resents a sound that is in­ev itab ly performed nasally , {The dream is thus a rhi nogre phy.IWn sec that th e n signifies more than this when we recall th at

64 Roundtoble on A utobiography

Freud considered his governess (Kind etjrou) very importanteven though he referred to her by the altogether inap propriateterm "nurse" (Amme). By his ow n avowa l, it was she who wasthe "origina l author " of his neurosis, who talked to him abouthell and initi ated him into sexual matters.

It is on ly nalura l to suppose that she played an impo rtantrole in his infantile masturbation. Yet Freud was extremelyreserved on this subject, and no reference 10 it appears in hisautobiograp hical Interpreta tion of Dreams. In fact, alonepoin t Freud totally deni es that the child has any sexuality, astriking contrad iction wh ich Iung did not fail to notice. Allthe same , several interesting facts turn up on this subject inFreud 's manu script notes on the Rat Man case. AlthoughFreud uses both German word s for masturbation-Masturba ­tion and Onan ie-he had the habit of abbreviating th is refer­ence with the capital initia l. This condensation is quite sig­nificant as a compromise formation, since it remains an iconicsymbol even as it refers to the repressed Nanny. Thus the a isa trace of his Nanny, of infant ile masturbation , and of Fhess'snasal theories. 1 said "trace," but the term Freud used waseither Zeiche n Isign) or Sp ur [scentl-cthe latter, with its olfac­tory reference, frequent ly occurs in Freud 's texts.

What is more, although Freud had broken off relat ions withFliess in 1900, about ten years later, in 1910, traces-Spuren­of Fliess still remained with Freud, In that year, when thefather and sons of the psychoana lytic primal horde foundedthe International Psychoa nalytic Association, there were dis­agreements with [Wilhelm) Stekel and [Viklor) Tausk, theghosts of Fliess. In the same year, Freud wrote his studies ofLeonard o da Vinci and [Daniel Paul) Schreber. in each case achoice motivated by the homosexual elements which Freudlink ed to Fliess . During the same year, he refused to go toInnsbruck , giving as his only reason that it was the re thai hehad had one of his first arguments with Fliess. More impor­tant , it was the year in which the Wolf Man began four yearsof treatment with Freud. Here, there are th ree facts to con­sider: first of all, when the Wolf Man returned to take up his

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treatment with Freud once more, his ado lescent anxietiesabout his nose came out again; second, as [james] Stracheysays (S.E., 17:6), the most importan t clinical discovery in theWolf Man case was the determining role that the pati ent' sprimary feminine impulses played in his neurosis: third , dur­ing the second ana lysis of the Wolf Man, Freud was workingon a draft of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and he felt com­pelled to voice certa in doubts about Flless's theory of femi­nine and mascu line cycles.

Let' s return now to the Inna dream in order to pick upanother thread that can be subtly woven into the textual pat­tern of Beyond the Pleasure Principl e. Recall thai at the timeof the dream, Freud 's wife was pregnant with their daughterAnna, named after Anna Hammerschl ag, a ch ildless woma nand the same Anna Hammerschl ag represented by Irma. whois also identified with Freud 's wife. Thus, thanks to the identi ­fication between mother and fetus, there is no metonymy, nodifference between container and contained, insid e and out­side. Similarly, the subject Anna resists being contained byher father's analysis. As a pali ndrome, Anna's name is revers­ible: its beginn ing is identi cal to its end . What is more, Annaresembles Amme and Onanie , and there is thu s another linkwith Fhess. We alsa know that if the child had been a boy, hewould have been given Flless's first name, Wilhelm. As im­possible as it seems, Freud later tr ied to analyze his daughter.This analysis was carried out between 1918 and 1921, a pe­riod which includes the writing of Beyond the Pleasure Prln­ciple. In fact, one ought to understand Anna 's later book TheEgo and the Mech anisms of Defense (1936) in terms of a de­ferred motivation whose context is her ana lysis and herfather 's approaching death. We have reason to wonde r whatsorts of fantasies occurred to their minds during thts ana lysis.What sort of mourning work did they have to do, these two,ana lyst an d analysand? 1suppose that there must have been awork of mou rning not only in advance of death but also in theface of its fantasized and una pproachable opposite: Freud'simmortalization by his youngest daughter, Anna.

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Let me explain. Freud ident ified death with woman on Iwooccasions: fi rst. in one of hi s first dreams about the ThreeFuries: then , in 1913, in an essay that dea lt with Shakespeareand the Three Caskets. In a letter to Ferencz! from this period,we learn that the rea l subject of the latter text was h isdaughte r Anna. Cons ider the end of this essay, which dealswith Shakespeare's King Lear, and keep in mind that for Freudthe latent subject, Anna, becomes (as in the Irma dream )mother, mother-daughter, and his mother-daughter.

Lear carries Corde lia's dead body on to the stage. Cordelia is Death . Ifwe reverse the situation it becomes in telligible and familiar to us.She is the Death-goddess like the Va lkyr ie in German mythology whocarries away the de ad hero from the battlefield.. .. We might arguethat what is represen ted he re are the three ine vitab le relations that aman has wi th a woman- the wom an who bea rs him , the woman whois his mate and the woma n wh o destroys him: or that thev are thethree form s ta ken by the figure of the mother in the course of a man 'slife--the mother herself, the beloved one who is ch osen afte r herpat tern . and lastl y the Mother Earth who rece ives him once more.(Sta ndar d Edition, 12:301)

The parentheses of the Oedipus com plex together encom­pass inside and outside even unto death. Odd ly enough. eventhough Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and the bookon jokes were written at the same time, there is little erot icmateria l in the latter. This init ia l split turns out to be on a parwit h a later split. Freud later empha sizes the son's matricidaldesire and the castrating mother's desire for her son. Yet,thanks to the split, it is death, rather than aggression , that isaligned wit h the mother-daughter. Ann a is Than atos. the sig­nifier that eludes all ana lysis and anachroni sm.

I have alread y indi cated elsewhere (Freud as a Writer[1981]) that in Beyon d the Pleasure Principle, Freud 's owndescription of his grandson's play with the bobbin. as an un­consciously dete rm ined mastery with regard to the mother'sabsence, is itself unconsciously overde termined. Between thehid den inscription of Freud 's name and the manifest prese nce

____________ Roundtable on A u tobiogr aphy 67

of his grandson Ernst in Beyond the Pleasure Prin ciple, thereis the second generation of ana-logy: a past and present Anna.an ana-chronism of differences, an incomparable ana-logywhich refers on ly to itself . Ana, an antithetical prepositionwhich has the sense in Greek of both progression and retro­gress ion, com prises the movement of both drives described inBeyond the Pleasure Principle where "beyond" mean s some­thing more fundamental than the pleasure principle. that is,both beyond and before , an atop ica l and anachron istic de­centering in which everything is deferred. Thu s. we are caughtin ana , whose difference with Anna is an n. a letter which is apr incipal factor in the Irma dream. Nonet heless, its graphicform as chemical symbol and all the rest shows up in neitherthe manifest no r the latent dre am .

Jacques Derrida: Reply

I don' t kno w that I wou ld go as far as you have in sayingthat Freud was so inatt entive 10 play or that he was moreconcerned with wor k than with play. There are , clearly, Freud­ian word s and concepts-you read a list of them, but a list is alist-that tu rn on the notion of work rather than play. Yet onecould also find evidence of Freud 's int erest in play. More thanonce , he begins a text by tal king about child's play. I thi nkthat if on e beco mes fascinat ed by the classic concept ual oppo­sition of play and work. one may be letting onese lf in for aninfinite series of combinations. Perhaps it would be beller totry to pose the problem d ifferently. I agree wit h you that. ineffect, eve ry time Freud encou nters something ca lled play, heis very anxious to comprehe nd-that is, to com prehend themeaning of the play. lie docs not belie ve that play is insignifi­cant. that it is pu rely a game. lie believes, then . that there is alimit to play. some operation , some desire. the quest for somegain or profit, et cetera, wh ich is at work in it in whateverway. When there is play- well. It's there and he knows it' sthere. for the child obviously. but also for the arti st. His firstconcern is to continue the analysis in the face of play. There is

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another att itude-let us call it obscuranlist- that one mayadopt toward play which consists in throwing in the toweland saying: "Okay. that's a game. Ir s gratu itous. play for thesake of play: it means nothing. it' s pu re expenditure. " I wouldbe very wary of this tem ptation. even though it might fascinateme. I am very wary of it because it would be at th is momentthat one risks falling short of the scientific. theoretical de­mand and failing in one's responsib ility to try to com prehendwhat play signifies. what strategies. interests. and investm entsare at work in play.

In short. what is the economy of play? Freud 's interest in it isan econom ic interest. He tr ies to see what goes on in play inenergetic terms-in terms. that is. of savings and expenditure. Iwill go even furt her in Freud 's defense and say that he is justi­fied in this by his historical, strategic situation. If right away hehad th rown in the towel when faced with play, if he had begunby saying: There is a speci ficity of play. the specificity of man isplay. language is play. period . and that' s all-psyc hoanalysiswou ld have stopped right there. But he had a scie nce to inaugu­rate. that is to say. an endeavor to find the best account forwhatever might appear gratuitous. insignificant. and so forth. Iwou ld thu s begin by granting for as long as possible Freud' sinterpre tive demand within the field in which he had tostruggle to impose an idea of psychoanalysis. When . however­and here I come bad toward your pos ition-at a certain mo­ment he had to suppose that there was meaning and finalit yeverywhere. that everyth ing was part of an economy and. con­sequently. that play was always bordered by something whichcou ld be called work , seriousness , the economica l, et cetera.here there may in fact be a lim it. But the limit is not Freud's. Itis the limit of philosophy and science. One could demonstratethat every time a philosophy or a science claims to have consti­tuted its own coherence in some fashion, it has in fact been ledto reduce the element of play or to comprehe nd it by assigningit a place. to hem it in somehow. Well. ill this S£lIlSU. Freud is aclassical scholar or philosopher .

In ord er to make ap parent a play that is not comprehended,

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in th is ph ilosoph ical or scie ntific space. one must thin k ofplay in another way. Indeed. th is is what I am trying to dowithin what is already a tradit ion- that of Nietzsche. for ex­ample--but one wh ich also has its genealogy . On the basis ofthinking suc h as Nietzsche's (as interpreted by [Eugen] Fink ).the conce pt of play. understood as the play a/ the world. is nolonger play in the wor ld. That is. it is no longer determinedand contained by something. by the space that would compre­hend it. I believe that it is only on thi s basis and on thiscondition that the conce pt of play can be reconstru cted andreconciled with all of the-if you will- "deconstructive"-typenotions. such as trace and writing. to which you pointed amoment ago, Once play is no longer simply play in the world.it is also no longer the play of someone who plays. Philosophyhas always made play into an activity, the activity of a subjectmanipulating objects, As soon as one interp rets play in thesense of playing. one has already been dragged into the spaceof classical philosophy where play is dominated by mean ing,by its finalit y, and conseq uently by something that surpassesand orients it. In order to think of play in a radical way.perhap s one must think beyond the activity of a subject ma­nipulating objects acco rding to or against the rules. et cetera.For a long tim e now. it is this kind of thinking about play(which is no longer simply playing) that has interes ted me.This play is not like a game that one plays with . and . natur­ally. it may be very risky.

In very summary terms. then. this is the prin ciple of what Iwou ld have liked to set in motion . The fort /do" at the centerof "Freud' s Legacy" is also. of course , a di scourse on play.And . typi cally. Freud indeed does propose an interpretationof the child 's game. He piles up hypotheses: the child throw s

'In Beyond the l' lt'{]sure Princip le. Freud describes a ch ild 's play wit h abo bbin Oil a strillJj. As htl cas ts it away from him, he utters "0-0·0," which hismother interprets li S the word "fort" (away. far ]: as he !Julls it hack. he says"iI·a-il." whic h acco rding to the mot her mea ns "de" (herll).- Tr.

70 Roundtable on A utob iosra p hy

his bobb in, he brin gs it back in order to say this or that to hismother, and so forth . I won 't attempt to recon stitute here th iswhole very complicated scene. To be sure, the theme of playis there. However, if one understands the fortldu beyond whatit seems Freud intends to say, then one may excee d the limitsof the game toward the play of the wor ld where the fort/do isno longer simply the relation of subject to object. It is, instead ,that which has abso lute comma nd over all experience in gen­eral. To arrive at such a point-and I think I attem pt thisgestu re, in a di screet manner at least, in the course of thattext-one must nevertheless begin by read ing Freud in a ce r­tain way, If one does, then one rea lizes that basically he doesnot stop at any single interp retati on of the fan /do. He evokesseveral types of int erp retation s which then generally serve asstop ping-points for those who quote and who use Freud.Freud, on the other hand , always ends up finding his interpre­tation s insufficient. One by one , he throws them away an dmoves on to anot he r. He always has to take one more step: hemoves on to another wh ich he also throws away until finallyhe retai ns no single interpretati on . He himself is do ingfortldowith hi s ow n interp retation s, and it never stops. His own writ ­ing, his own deportment in thi s text is doin g fo rt/do . Perhapsthe perform ative is in play as well. in a very serious man ner,but the game is also very serious and dema nds great concen­tration. He plays with this fo rt/do in his wri ti ng; he doesn 't"com pre hend " it. He writes himself this scene, which is de­scr iptive or theoretical but also very profoundly au tobio­graphica l and perfonnative to the degree that it concerns himin his relation with his heirs: his grandson, his da ughter who,in fact. died a short time afte r the experience and before hewrote the text. There is, in other words, an immense autobio­graphica l scene invested in th is ap parent ly theoretical writing.and it is doing fo rt/do . When this becomes ap parent . there isno longer a limit on the fo rt/do. That is, it is no longer adeterminate structure, which Freud is interpreti ng: rathe r, it isthat whi ch has com mand of his own interpretation , whichplays with his text and wit h his own testament. Such. in any

_ _ ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ Roundtable on A utobiography 11

case. is wh at I heve tried to sho w in that text. In writ ingBeyond the Plea sure Principle, Freud is wri ting a textual tes­tament not only as regards his own name and his own family,but as regards the analytic movement whi ch he also con­struc ted in a certa in fash ion , that is , as a grea t inhe ritan ce, agreat instituti on bearing his name. The history of the ana lyticsituation has to deal with that. It is an institu tion that can't getalong witho ut Freud's name. a practica l and theoretical sci­ence whi ch for once must come to terms and exp lain itselfwith its aut hor's na me. Unlike every other scie nce. it cannotset asid e or dispense wHh its found er's name. Math ematics,ph ysics, et cetera, might on occasion celebrate the name of agreat physicist or a great mathe matician , but the proper nameis not a structural part of the corpus of the science or thescienti fic institution . Psychoanalysis. on the other hand , hasbeen inherit ed from Freud and acco unts for itself with thestruc ture of th is inherit ance. I think that one must finall y de­cipher his text by means of these questions: the question ofinheritance, of the proper name. of the fortJda , of the play ofthe fortlda infinitely exceeding the limits of the text.

Claude Levesque: Th aI In credible Terrible ThingWh ich Wa s No l

How does one approach-carefully and withou t deludi ngonese lf too much-the question of aut obiography and, in par­ticular, the more obscure, labyrin th ine, and perilous questionof the au tobiograp hy of (giving full play here to the doublepolarity of that genitive) Jacques Derrida? It is certa inly safe tosay that confession is not the privileged mode of his writing,and he hi mself has not failed to remind us that we must al­ways cons ider the poss ibility that a confession may be a quo­tatlon . a pose, a feint, or a parody . It is noneth eless the casethat, for several years now, Derrida seems to be impli catinghimself mow in his writing, or at least more openly. Certainassertions are mad e in his own name, precisely in the form ofconfessions, These confessio ns, as precious and enig matic as

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they are rare, d iscontinuous, and laconic, are delivered withsuch reti cence that. it seems to me (but one may neverknow). the y shou ld be taken for what they appea r to be. Thi sone, for exam ple, wh ich continues to haunt me: "EverythingI write is terribly autobiographi cal." Why the "terribly" here,which seems strange. surprising, unusual? In this case, theadverb must be given the meaning that comes directl y fromits nominative root- "in a manner that inspires terror" (onewill have to wonder who or what inspires terror . and inwhom)-rather than its more familiar. banali zed meaning,as, for example, when one wants to signify the inten sity ofone 's attachment to someone or something. Yet, notice thateven the latter sense implies excess and extreme. To say,then , that the totalit y of what one has written is autobio­graphical in the extreme, even to excess. means that one hasoverstepped the mark (of discourse and of knowledge) andreached the perilous thre shold. In short. it means that therehas been a cross ing at the limit, a step beyond to whereeverything breaks down and is overthrown, where unkno w­ing fascinates knowledge and discourse, lur ing them outsideof the sys tem, outside of language, into a space that we enteronly if we no longer are. This is the space of disaster whichBlanchot speaks of, the space "which, as the intense, silent,and d isastrous affi rmation of the outside. und oes solitudeand overwhelms thought of any sort" (Van Ve1de, p. 21). It ishere that the "terrib ly" becomes necessary in a certa in way,since anyone who wou ld "speak truthfully of himself " can­not avoid being brough t to the very edge where he en­counters (as he di sappears into) the impossible, "a terriblething," writes Derrida in a text 1 am going to refer to in amoment. Thu s. to tell one 's ow n story is to consort with theterr ifying. But th is non-science is a gay science, an affi rma­tive knowledge whose origin is its ow n impossibility. "Theproof," writes Blanchot, "that a book of autobiography re­spects the center of tru th around which it is com posed maybe that such a center draws it toward silence. Whoever seeshis book th rough to the end has not come to the end of

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himself . If he had , his speech would have been 'cut short.'Yet , the drama-as well as the power-in all ' true' confes­sions is that one begins to speak only with a view to thatmoment when one will not be able to continue. There issomething to be said which one cannot say: it' s not neces­sarily sca ndalous. it may be quite banal-a lacuna , a void.an area that shrinks from the light because its nature is theimpossibility of being brou ght to light, a secret without se­crecy whose broken sea l is muteness itself" (L'Am ttle. pp.151- 52) .

Derr ida multiplies the terms-none is pr ivileged- when hetries to name what Nietzsche , [Georges) Batatll e, Blanchot. andhe himself call the impossib le, that which escapes possibilit yand power, prima rily the power of discourse. This unn ameableis nevertheless what moves him and drives him, what makeshim speak and write: thi s terrible thing, the incredible thingwhich is not. this "secret without secrecy" which lead s allautobiography toward that point where one can no longer sayanything. "I am tryin g to experience in my body: ' writes Der­rida in "[a, ou Ie faux-bond : ' "an altogether other relation tothe incredi ble ' thing which was not.? It's probably not possi­ble. especially if one wants to make of this experience some­thing other than a conso lation. a mou rning, a new well-being. areconcilation with death , although that's not something I sneerat. But thi s impossi bility as regards "the thing that is not" is,finally. the on ly thing that interests me. It's what I call­awkwa rd ly still- mourning's mourning [Ie deuil du deuil). It isa terrible thing that I do not love but that I want to love. You askme what makes me write or spea k: there it is. It's something likethat-not what I Jove but what I would like to love, what makesme run or wait, bestows and withd raws my idiom. And there-bon."t

"The reference is to the Houyhnhnms' language in Gu/li~'er's Trovels: "Hereplied that I must be mista ken. or tha t I 'said Ihe thi ng whi ch was nol.' (Forthey have no words in their lan guage 10 express lying or falsehood .]" Part IV,Chap. III.

"The "good again ," or the rebo und 01 the gnod.- Tr.

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For structural reasons, then, as soon as autobiography at­temp ts to see itself through to the end , it is linked to this" terrible thing" which writ es and which dr ives writi ng, likeplay come of age that consta ntly puts everyth ing into pla y­life, death, speech, writ ing. It or "she" (autobiography is per­haps inflected in the feminine) pulls on the bobbin 's string,bringing it back only in order to send it awa y, infinite ly: fort/do . Th e id iom-or, if you will, the autobiograp hica l- is al­ways but " the effect of a process of ex-appropriation whichproduces only perspectives, readi ngs without trut h, di ffer­ences, in tersectio ns of affect. a whole 'history' whose verypossibility has to be dlst nscribed and rei nscribed." It so hap ­pens that the proper name, the pat ronymic Derrida. inscribesin itself this play of fort/do , its process of disproprialion andplu rali zatio n. In "Freud 's Legacy ," Derr ida translates fort as'derriere" (Ie rid eau - RIDA), whereas elsewhere, in Glcs . heopenly associates his proper name to the word derriere . Thus ,"derrie re le rtdecu " [behi nd the curta in] would be the ana­gram of his name. The Germa n do can a lso be reta ined , and asa result th is doubl e play and dou ble language cut across hisname, a foreign name, linguistically heterogeneous, only semi­translated because it ca nnot be complete ly translated withoutloss. In the inscription of hi s name, Derr ida withdra ws behindthe curta in. He is hidden in the writing, which moves awayfrom Itsel f does not make its ends meet, repeats. unli mits, anddissem inates itself, keeping his name by losing it. "I write inorder to lose my name," as Batetll e has said.

I have not yet really formu lated a question . Here is one: Isthere an evolution of Derrida in his relation to Blanchot? I amthinking of a text on [Anton in) Artaud [" La Parole soufflee"],which goes back to 1964. where you say the following: " Ifcl inica l commentary and crit ica l com mentary everywhere de­man d thei r own aut onomy and wish to be acknowledged andresp ected by one anot her, they are no less complicit ... in thesame abstractio n . the same misinterpretation , and the sameviolence . At the moment when criticis m (be it aesthe tic , liter­ary, philosop hica l. et cetera) alleged ly protects the meaning of

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a thought or th e value of a work again st psychomedical redu c­tions. it comes to th e same result Ithat a redu ction wou ldcome ta l through the op posite path: it crea tes on exa mple.Th at is to say, a case." [Michel] Fouca ult, [Jean] Lapla nche.and Blanchot wou ld offer fina lly but three d ifferent ways toneutrali ze the singula rity of a work, thereby missing thegraph ic in the autob iograp hic. "Blanchet's med itation stopsthe re: without questioning for themselves either tha t whichirreducibly amounts to Artaud . . . or what is 'untamed' in thisexperience." Derrida then concludes with an exe mplanzatlon.an essentia list reduction of Artaud's discourse. Now, after afi fteen-year interval. when he is trying once again to definethe autobiographic , Derrid a shows that one cannot avoid thisexem plartza tton with which he seemed to reproach Blanchot."Autobiography is a lso the work on the pro per name and thesignature. This work must be scientific (it must recognize orelaborate laws, th at is, utterances with a universa l validity)but in a way that each time acco unts for singularit ies that arenot simply cases or examples." No more th an Blanchot, then ,can Derrida avoid th e uni versal law. It is even one of the twosimultaneous exigencies irremedi ably dividing any propername and all au tobiography.

My last ques tio n co ncerns autobiogra phy in its relation towoman. Here I must refer to your deve lopment in Glos on thetransition to ethical sel l-consciousness in Hegel. It is at thepoint at which th e latt er is discussing Sophocles ' Antigoneand the place of femi ninity in this transition to Sill /ichkeil[mora lity] where you write : "Human law. the law of the ra­tiona l community which is instituted over against the privatelaw of the family, always rep resses fem inin ity, rises up againsther, bind s her, presses in upon her, and restra ins her. Butmasculine potency has a limit-an essential and eternal one:the weapon, doubtless an impotent one, the all-powerfulweapon of the impotent, the ina lienable stroke of woman isirony. Woman, ' int ernal enemy of the co mmunity,' can alwaysburst out laughing at the last moment. She knows, in sorrowand in death , how to perve rt the power th at represses her."

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My question is this: If, on the one hand, man 's substantia l.effective life is in the State, in science but also in war and inwork- that is , gra pp ling with the vast external world-s-and .on (he other han d , if woman , wit h her irony , her veils, and herlies, is a llied with the singularity of the unconscious, then canone say tha t autobiography-if it wou ld see itself through tothe end----can be produced only as the autobiography of thewoman, in both senses of that genitive? In autobiography, onlyfemininity would len d itse lf to understanding, only femininitywould lead one to hear and understand the singular secret thatconstitutes it. Onl y a feminine writi ng- in the sense in whichyou speak of it in Spurs--can (even as it cannot) tell its storyas the unrelenting quest of that terr ible thing which openslanguage to its own beyon d.

Jacques Derrida: Reply

I am going to try to answer. Although I would like to avoidgiving in to an auto-explanation wh ich can very quickly turninto an auto-justification , even auto-ce lebration, the situationrequi res somew hat that I do so. Having said that, I am going totry to remain very neutral. Obviously, I agree entire ly withwhat you sa id at the beginni ng about the d isseminated name"derriere Ie rtdec u." which. already in Glas, was the object ofa certain amount of work. And you're right , playing wit h one'sown name, putting it in play, is, in effect. what is alwaysgoing on and what I have tried to do in a somewha t moreexplici t or sys tematic manner for some time now and in ce r­tain texts. But obviously this is not somethi ng one can decide:one doesn 't disseminate or play with one's name. The verystruc ture of the proper name sets this process in motion.That's what the proper name is for. At work, naturally, in thedesire-the apparent desire-to lose one's name by disarti cu­lating it, disseminating it, is the inverse movement. By d is­seminating or losing my own name, I make it more and mort!intrusive; I occ upy the who le site , and as a result my namegains more ground. The more I lose , the more I gain by con-

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cervmg my proper nam e as the common noun "d err iere Iendeeu," and so on . The more , also, I monumentalize my pro­per name. So no w every time you utter the word "derr iere,"you 'll be payi ng a tax to my name, settling up what you owe.The disseminati on of a proper name is, in fact. a way of seiz­ing the language, putting it to one's own use, instating its law.Tomorrow , perhaps, during the discu ssion of translation, wewill come back to th is in tal king about the story of Babel.because that is what Babel is : the story of God's proper name.To lose one's name by transform ing it into a common name orpieces of a common name is also to celebrate it. One takes therisk of losing one 's name by wi nn ing it, and vice versa. Thisalways hap pens as soon as there is some proper name: thescene is in place where one loses what one wins and winswhat one loses. It is one of the scenes of the double bind inGlas , and what I there tried to organize around the propername-not only mine, of course, because I was also con­cerned with other proper names which are subjected to thesame operation, whi ch is naturally differen t and singularevery lime. The ope ration comes into play dif ferently with thenames of [Francis] Ponge. Hegel. Blanchet . et cetera .

Thu s, the proper name is at play and it's meant to play allby itse lf, to win or lose the match without me. This is to saythat, at the furt hest limit. I no longer need to pu ll the strin gsmyself, to wr ite one way or another. It is written like that byitself. When it comes to names, the relation between theproper and the com mon already programs the whole scenario.

In order not to keep the floor too long, I'll get on to yournext qu estion on the subject of Blanchet . There has doubtlessbeen on my part a ce rta in d istance traveled in relat ion to Blan­chat. However, I would not understand it only with regard tothe problem of exemplarity, unicit y, and so forth . The evolu ­tion is so-what shall I say?- so obvious that there's no needto wait len or fifteen years. II is said in the same text, at theend. One must take into account the rhetoric of that text onArtaud. as well as its own logic and the play that is beingplayed out there. At the end of the text, I put in quest ion once

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again the apparent accusation I launch againsl Blanchot bysaying that I myself have given in to the same operation-inother words. that I have in turn fashioned an example and thatthis gesture is inevitable. There is a rotation at the end of "LaParole soufflee" whic h shows that I have done and that I hadto do exac tly what , at the beginning, I seemed to reproachBlanchot, Foucau lt, and Laplanche for doi ng, which is to saythat I have once again made an example and that this gestureis irred ucible. Thus, in a certai n way. this is not an evolution:the move is immediate.

On the other hand and from anot her point of view, it is truethat the work of Blanchot has been very decisive for me. At fi rst.by attac hing myself especially to Blanchot 's so-called critical ortheoretica l text, I thought I had Introlected . interiori zed , assim i­lated Blan chot's contributio n and had brought it to bear in mywork, although obviously in another language. In a certain way. !thought I had read Blanchot . And then , rather recently, a fewyears ago, I read what I had never managed 10 read in a waywhich was at bottom- how shall I say?-an experience. I beganto read or to reread certain of Blanchet's rectts and to discovercertain of those texts that l thcught I had read but which I had notreally succeeded in reading before. I must say that in relati on 10Blanchet's narrative or fictiona l texts (actually these words areinsufficient and I do n't know what to ca ll them I. there thenseemed to me to be a space opening up which was far less easy todominate and to ass imilate than a certain type of Blanchot'sdiscu rsiveness that I thought I could assi milate from the so­called theoretical/critical texts. In relation to these former texts .the work to be done seems to me in finite. From this point ofview. then. my relation to Blanchot's text has been transformedand I feel far more overwhelmed by tha t text than I thought Iwasat a given moment, for exam ple al the time of "La Parolesoufflee." Th is overw he lming is of another sort tha n the one Ihave already mentioned.

Now , as for femini nity : Here loa , at the risk of being verysuccinct, I will be brief. What you alluded 10 was not exactlypart of that text on Nietzsche (Spurs) but was the answe r to a

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ques tion during the debate thai followed. I asked of my ques­tioner: "Are you aski ng me an autob iographical question?Well, yes, I would like to write, which is not to say that I willwr ite, but that I wou ld like 10 write in a woman 's hand "--orsomething like that.

Having cleared up this point. and in order 10 get back rightaway to the formu lation wh ich you justified by an earlier de­velop ment , I subscribe with litt le difficulty to the formula"autobiography of the woma n: ' However, th is formula be­comes very indeterminate and the way the "of" may comeinto play is what 's int eresting. The autobiography of thewoman : that means that my autobiography. for example , theautobiography of someone whose writing. apparently , is mas­culine, is the autobiography of a woman, as in an emanationDf. which is to say that my autobiograp hy signs itself (andthere is a play of pronouns here) beginning precisely with theaddressee who signs. It is the addressee who signs. So, if Iwant to te ll the story of my life, it is an add ressee, an "I"marked in the feminine. who wiII sign and who will thereforebe-I won't say the author because that word immedi atelydestroys everythi ng- but the place from which something likemy biograph y, my autobiography will be signed . In otherwords, it will not be an autobiography, naturally, bul a hetero­biography in the sense in whic h one also says heterosexuality,and so on. Thus, it will be the autobiography of the woman,hers . or of her(s), from her, descending from her. as if in her­ited if from her. from a woman, Df the woma n. All this doesnot mean thaI she can be iden tifi ed. that there is only one ofher. Rather, each time it is she . it is you who signs the text byreceiving it. When I say "by receiving it," whe n I make use ofthat used-up language of communication (emission, recept ion.address, addresser . addre ssee). I may seem to imply that it'sman who wr ites and woman-csome woman . a woman addres­see-who signs and who is first of all herself an add ressee.Here, then , one wou ld have to make a correction. Let us saythat autobiogra phy is not necessarily the man who writes andthe woman who rece ives. sealing and arresti ng the signature

•

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and the message by her reception . Instead , let us say that shealready wr ites when I write. What in the old terminology iscalled the addressee is here already in the process of writingin my place, and this implies all the possibil ities of combina­tion that such a "lending each other a hand " might have in asituation like that .

Eugene Vance: The Ear of the Heart

In "Freud's Legacy" and here in "Otobtogrephies," you haveanalyzed two thinkers who are singular in that they are, intheir proper names, entirely, person ally engaged in their texts,with all the risks you say that involves. I myself thi nk that wehave an undeni able interest in analyzing as well certain auto­biographical projects from a far more distant past. In particu­lar, I am thinking of autobiographies whose signatories referexp licitl y to a tran scendent and infinite being, and who thusenlist thi s infinite being in their own accounts of themselves.Thus, I would like to say a few words about Saint Augustine 'sConfessions . I want to talk about a problematic of the knowl­edge of truth in relation to the desire of the writi ng subject fora return to an origin without aherity.

First. a word about Saint Augustine's trinitarian theology.There is first the originating Father who gives hi mself to thecreated wor ld, or who bestows creation in the person of hisSon. By his acts and words among men , th is Son inspi red abiographical text- the Gospels-whose profound tru th be­longs not onl y to the Son but also to the Father who is theaut hor and signatory of the world. Man's cognition of thisFather begins wit h a (re)cogniti on of the Son, but it is onlythrough the Holy Spirit that man arrives at an immaterialknowledge of GDd. It is through this same "ear of the heart,"the Holy Spirit. that man accedes to the kern el of hidden tru thbeneath the shell of the evangelica l text.

On an ep istemo logical level, the knowledge of trut h is pro­du ced in the sou l in several disti nct stages. First, we experi­ence an Illu mtnatton . a flash of light which inun dates us. This

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flash , however, is not at a ll lasti ng; it is al ready hidden at thevery moment it present s itself to the mind . Yet it leaves traces(vestigia) or imp ression s (irnpress iones ) in our memorieswh ich constitute a kind of prelinguistic and purely ment alwriting. This writin g is not produ ced by God himself, how­ever, but by and in the mind of the subject visited by theillumination . There is thus a differen ce between the flash oflight and the impressions produ ced in the memDry, but it 's amino r difference. As part of the soul. memory is of a spiritualrathe r than a material nature. and therefore the text producedthere is adequate to the illumination it represents. However.we retain these traces in our memory for only a brief moment,during wh ich we assign verbal signifiers to them, whether ornot these signifiers are voca lized . Here. then , is a second dif­ference: The signons is outside the sfgnctum. and signifies itonly by convention rath er than by nature . But signs uttered bythe voice are themselves also ephemeral, SD that in order to fixthem in time and in space, man invented written signs, letters.These written signs are maximally different from the originaltru th they are summoned to represent.

This, then. is a diagram of epistemic differentiation on sev­eral levels wh ich serves as the matrix for Saint Augustine'sautobiographical project. That account begins with Saint Au­gustine' s earlies t childhood. At th is stage, logos is given to thebaby not as an Instantaneous flash but as mother's milk. It is thepu re gift of life, a life that as yet has neither inside nor outside.Alienation begins very slowly for the baby; smiles proferredduring sleep are the index of a nascent independent will. Thenthe child devotes himself to the acqu tsttton of hu man language,during which time he moves from the mastery of natural signsto that of conventional signs. This is Sai nt Augustine 's first fallinto the abyss, into the "region of difference" (regia dissimilil u­dinis). Saint Augustine's formal ed ucation begins with an ini­tiation into the gm mmoucc . the scie nce both of written signsand of the grammatical laws that are the found ation of lan­guage. But the Latin language and the corpus whic h were theobject of the gm mmc tlcc were surely altogether other for him.

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since we ma y be quite sure that this boy from the North Africa npla ins spoke a patois and no t the cla ssica l Latin he studied.Next, he learned Gree k. a to tally alien language whose appren­ticeship was od ious to him. Who dispensed th is instruction ? Itwas a grammarian whose pedagog}' , like a hor se-trainer's. re­lied on the whip. Th e whip is the institutional legacy of th e sinof Adam-the father of us all-and its justice is di spensed ac­cording to the ancie nt Law of a Fat her wh o is very angry at thesons of Ada m. Thus . for Augustine the liberal arts are a form ofsla very , a spir itua l labor to whi ch man was co nde mned follow ­ing his sin and his exile from pa radi se. From grommatica . thechild moves on to rhe toric. the most vain of a ll the sciences ofdi scourse (or11!Ssermocinules]. Learn ing rhe toric had the effectof aliena ting Augusti ne from the Gospels, whose di scoursesee med to him unworthy of Cicero's, Sp iritual exile from origi­na l truth was now accomplished , rather, nearly acomplisbed.si nce his mot her was a Christian and was prayin g continuallyfor his conversion.

This es trange me nt from the ultimate meaning of everything.th is exile in the exte rna l she ll of language. prepares, however.the co ncl usion of Augustine's autobiogra phy, Tha t autobiogra ­phy does not take the discursive form of a closed cecil; rath er .it takes that of a return to the Fath er in the form of an exegesisof th e biblica l text. Thus, having been reborn to life throughChrist and illuminated by the Holy Sp irit . Augustin e joyfu llyd oses his Confess ions with a long ex plication of the firstverses of Genesis wh ich tell the story of God's creation of theuniverse. His aba ndo nme nt of the narrative of his personalorigins in favor of an exeges is of th e creation story is a " lite r­ary" strategy that imposes preci se limits on the autobiographi­cal en te rpri se, eve n on th e institution of litera ture itself.

I hope that one ma y recogni ze in my improv ised remarkscerta in th em es tha t Jacqu es Derrida has evo ked in "Otobiogra­phles." In both cases, it is a questi on of cred it. of credibili ty.Sa int Augustine says that one must read his autobiogra ph icaltex t charitab ly, with cred it- the reader must give him cred itAs for Augustine himself , his interlocutor is God , Thus God

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gives himself cred it by allowing Augustine to co mpose histext, wh ich God knows a lrea dy beca use God knows every­thing. Here is an attempt to inculcate, to es tablish a meta­physic in an otherwise different-and deficient--d iscourse ofse lfhood .

I would like to concl ude by suggesting that it is probablyjust as diffi cult for someone to construcl an autobiographicaltext that opens full y onto th e metaphysical as it is for us todeconslru ct an autob iographical text in wh ich the metaphysi ­cal is repressed. On e of modernity's distortions, perhaps , is totend to ma ke us disregard any effort toward a pos itive con­struction no ma lter how mu ch lucid ity it displays. One shouldtake th ese remarks as a plea for hi story, though no t at all as adefense of the game of the talented precursor, On the contrary ,my rema rks lire an invitation to read those texts which const f­tute anothe r side of modernity and whi ch give i1--or depriveit of-anothe r meaning.

Jacques Derrid a : Reply

I don 't know what authorizes me more than someone else totake the floor again here. I listened with great interest to thi srich and fascinating analys is. On e is struck by a certain numberof start ling ana logies. How far does th e analogy work? Whatwill prove to be its signi ficance? What will establish the criteriafor making distinctio ns? It's rather difficult to say. Althoughanswers might come quickly, they are surely naive. Thus, forexample , on e could say: In the case of Augustine. it is fina llyGod who is presumed to sign with in the same struc ture; butGod and th e etern al re turn are not the same thing . That's a litt lefacil e. I admit. an d one can 't stop th ere. One must try to gofurther. beca use it ma y be that God and the eternal retu rn­whe n both are though t without faci leness-are not as op posedas they might a ppear to be. But I wo uld not want to force thisargument too far. Th ere is another questi on , however , co ncern­ing the possi ble gene rality of an autobiograp hica l structu re. IImay be that the same program and basica lly the same scene

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recurs regularl y. Within this scene or this relational system, theterms might cha nge. The Judeo-Christian name might be re­placed by another name. which wou ld , however. have the samefunction. Each mome nt or each instance may be variable in itscontent, bu t the law of the relation between the variables wouldremain the sa me. Each time one had an autobiographical sceneto stage. one would come upon the sa me struc ture again . so thatSain t Augus tine , Nietzsche. and a few others-Rousseau. per­haps, or Montaigne-ccould onl y come along and fill in a trell isor a grid which is already in place and which in some waywould not in itself be historical.

Eugene Vance

Can mode rni ty escape that determin ism?

Jacques Derrida : Reply

No. no. As for me. I'm no fan of modernity. I have no simplebelief in the irreduci ble specificity of "modern ity." I evenwonder if I have ever used that word . In any case . I am verymistrustful wh enever people identi fy histor ical breaks orwhen they say. "This begins there." I have never done that.and I believe I have even set down here and there reservation swith regard to thi s type of periodization and distribution .That's wh y I am very interested in work of this type. eventhough my training. my lack of kno wledge places many limit son me. I'm convinced that one could expand this kind ofresearch. It' s not a qu estion of precursors-the notion of aprecursor here would efface all the origin ali ty of the th ing­but of recurrences wh ich would not efface the singularity orthe id iom of each text. Whatever one might say abou t theresemb lan ce between the Nietzschea n autobiography and theAugustinian autobiography, it 's really another language inevery sense of the word. However, nothing of the signature'sidiom is lost when one points to the recurrence, the regular itywith which the scene returns. This is preci sely the paradox of

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the proper nam e or the signature: It's always the same th ing,but eac h time it 's different: each time it 's a different history towhich one must pay close attention . In this way one may seethat, in spite of everythi ng. finall y-and this is where I be­gan- Nietzsche attempted somethin g which . in relation to theChristian un folding of this scene. was. precisely. of a "decon­structive" type.

Now. you asked a qu estion abou t deconstruction which 1am trying to reconst itu te and you will tell me if I do soinaccu rately. You wondered whether. instead of deco nstruct­ing. it would not be interesting to attem pt. well . a more posi­tive gesture. perhaps an autobiographically deco nstru ctivewriting . . .

Eugene Vance

No. I would say that it see ms to me just as interesting tostudy constructions that don't work as it is to practice decon­structions that don't work either. that is. which don 't entirelysucceed .

Jacques Derrida : Reply

Yes. I agree. But here you are referring to a diagram of decon ­struction whi ch would be that of a technical operation used todismantle systems. Person ally. I don 't subscribe to th is modelof decon stru ction , What was said earlier. part icularly byClaude Levesque . dem on strates that what has been called thedecon structiv e gesture (in a moment I will try to say a litt lemore about Ihis) is accompan ied , or can be accompanied (inany case, I would hope to acco mpany it) , by an affirmation . It isnot negative, it is not destructive. Thi s is why the word "decon­struction" has always bothered me. Yesterday. during a sess ionat McGil l University. someone asked me a question about theword "deconstruction." I said that when I made use of thisword (rarely. very rare ly in the beglnnlng-conce or twice-soyou can see that the paradox of the message transformed by the

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in order to see hO\'\1 it is co ns titu ted or deconstuuted . This iscla ssic. What was not so classic. ho wever. was what this force ,th is Abbcu . was applied to: the wh ole of cl assica l on tology. thewhole histor y of West ern philosophy. The word got high­ligh ted in the co ntext o f the period . which was more or lessdominat ed by struc tu ra lis m, The watchword being "structure.structure. s tructure:' wh en someo ne says destructure. destruc­turing, or deconstruction . well . then it acqui res a pert inencewhich personall y I d idn't pay too much alle n lion to. To be sure,I wasn' t al together inattentive to thi s word either. but also I wasnot-ho w shall I sayj-c-involved: J ha d not orga nized th ings tosuch an ex te nt around th is word . When others got inv olved init. I tri ed to determi ne thi s co ncept in my own mann er. that is .according to what I thou ght was the right manner, which I d idby insisting on th e fact th at it was not a questio n of a negativeo pera tion. I don 't lee l that I'm in a pos itio n to choose bet weenan operation tha t we 'll ca ll negative or n ih ilist. an operationthat would set about furi ou sly d isman tli ng systems . and theother ope ra tio n. llove very much everyth ing that I deconstructin my o wn man ne r: the texts I wa nt to read from the decon­structive point of view are tex ts I love. with that impulse ofiden ti fication wh ich is indispen sabl e for read ing. Th ey aretexts wh ose futu re , 1 th ink. will not be ex ha usted for a lon gtime. For exam ple. J thi nk Plato is to be read. and rea d con­stant ly. Plato 's sig na ture is not yel flnlshed -c-that 's the desti nyof signatures-nor is Niet zsch e' s, nor is Sai nt Augu stine's (lik eyou. I'm altogether convinced of that ]. nor are the signatures ofsti ll many othe rs. Thus. if my re lation to these texts is charac­teri zed by loving jealousy and nol at all by nihilisti c fu ry (onecan 't read a ny th ing in the latter condluc n]. then I don 't feel I'min a position to choose accordi ng to the terms in which youhave presented the cho ice.

Pier re Ja cques : Question from th e Floor

You have tal ked abo ut the an terior addressee , which is tosay the dead. as we ll as about the future addressee. But whathappens to the ful fi llme nt and the genre of the sig na tu re whe n

addressees is fu lly in play here). I had the im pression that itwas a word am o ng many others. a secondary word in the textwhich would fade or which in an y case would assume a non ­dom inant p lace in a system. For me. it was a word in a chainwith man y other words-su ch as trace or differan ce*- as wellas with a whole elaboratio n which is not lim ited o nly to alexicon. if you will. It so happens-and thi s is worth ana lyz­ing-that this word wh ich I had written only onc e o r tw ice (Idon 't even rem ember where exactly ) all of a sudden jum ped outof the text and was se ized by others who have since det erminedits Iate in the manner you well know. Faced with thi s. I myselfthen had to jus t ify myself. to exp lain. to try to get some lever­age . But precisely because of the techn ical and-ho w shall I putit?-negative conno tations that it could have in ce rta in co n­texts, the word by itself bothered me. 1do think it is also neces­sary to di sm ant le systems. to analyze structu res in order to seewhat's going on , both when things work and when they don't,why structures don 't manage to close themselves off, and soforth. But for me "deconstruction" wa s not at all the first or thelast word. and certain ly not a password or slogan for everyth ingthat was to follow.

·S."" above. p. xil.

Jacques Derrtda: Reply

Yes. When I made use of th is word . I had the sense oftranslating two wo rds from Heidegger at a poi nt where 1need ed them in the con text. These two words are Dest ruk uon .which Hetdegger uses. exp lai n ing that Deslruklion is no t adestructio n bu t preci sely a destructuring that di sman tles thest ruct u ra l layers in the system. and so on. Th e 0 1her wo rd isAbbnu . w hich has a simila r meaning: to take apart an edifice

Claude Levesque

Doesn 't the word come from Heidegger?

86 Roundtable on A utob iography

88 Roundlable on A utobiograph.1'

the addresser is th e addressee? What happens when Niet zschewrites. fina lly. to himse lf?

Jacq ues Derrida: Reply

What happens? But when you say he writes him self. youseem to assume that he already has his identity, that he isalready himself .

Pierre Jacques

No, I don 't assume it. That's what I'm asking.

Jacqu es Derrida: Reply

No, he is not yet himse lf when he is in the situation. pre­cisely, of distan ce from the othe r, the othe r's distan ce. Whenhe wr ites hi mse lf to himself , he wri tes him self to the oth erwho is infini te ly far away and who is supposed to send hissignature back to him. He has no relation to himself that is no tforced to defer itse lf by passing through the other in the form,preci se ly. of the eternal return. I love what I am living and Idesire what is coming. I recognize it gratefully and I desire itto return ete rna lly. I desire whatever comes my way to com eto me, and to come back to me etern all y. When he writeshimself to himself. he has no imm ediate presen ce of hi mselfto himse lf. Th ere is the necessity of thi s det our through theothe r in the form of the eternal return of that wh ich is af­firmed, of the wedd ing and the wedding ring, of the a llia nce .The motif of th e a ll iance or wedding rin g, of the hymen ormarriage. returns often in Nietzsche , and th is "yes. yes" has tobe thought beginning with the eterna l return . I want it to re­turn by making the rou nd which is the cycle of the sun or theannua l cycle, of the annulus , of the year which annu ls itselfby com ing back around on itse lf. This is why so muc h lmpor­tan ce is give n to the anniversa ry and to the midday sun'sreturn up on itself. From this point of view . there is no diffe r-

____ _ _ _ _ ___ _ Roundtable on A utobiography 89

ence. or no possibl e distinction if you will. bet wee n the letterI write to someone else and the leit er I send to myself . Th estructure is the sa me. Within this common structure, therewould , of course , be a difference. If I writ e myself a lett er ,address it to myself at my add ress. go put it in the mailbox.then wait for it to co me back to me-and plenty of accidentscan occur in the mea ntime-that's not exa ctly the same thingas when I send a letter to someone else in the every day senseof the term. But this is a subdillerence. Th e fundam enta lstructure of the dispatch is the same.

ROUNDTABLE ONTRANSLATION

Cla ude Levesque: Introduction

Th ere are obvious link s between autobiogra phy. the subjectof yesterday's discussion. and tra nslation. our question for to­da y. Autobiograph y-the autobiographica l genre-has some­thing to do with genea logy and with the proper name. Thiswork. on th e proper name. on all that is invested in it. repre­sents an atte mpt to inscr ibe th e uniqu e in th e sys tem of lan­guage . and the narrative account in the co ncept. The point isthat translation cannot hel p meeting on its way the problem ofthe proper na me and the question of idiomatic languagewit hin th e body of writing. When Derrida tells us what heunderstands and intends by the proper name. he almost al­ways appeals to th e motif of translation and most particul arlyto that wh ich res ists any transposition from one language toanot he r. In "Freud 's Legacy," he writ es: "Any signified wh osesignifier ca nnot vary nor let itself be translated into anothe rsignifier without a loss of meaning points to a proper-nameeffect." In fact. there are two si multaneo us demands govern ingthe proper name wh ich one must not be too quick to separatefrom each othe r: on th e one han d. a requirement of untran slat ­ab ility and unreadab lll ty, as if the proper name were nothingbut pu re reference. lying outs ide of signification an d language:on th e othe r hand . a requiremenl of translatability and read.ability , as if the pro per nam e were ass im ilable to the commonnoun. to an y word that is ca ught up in a linguisti c and genea­logical network wh ere meaning al ready co ntaminates non­meaning and where the proper name is absorbed and ex pro­priat ed by the commo n noun.

On the politica l leve l. thi s undecidable double postulationof the particula r and th e unive rsal is tra nslate d in the form ofa contradic tory opposit ion between . for example. nationa lismand uni versalism . Derrida writes in "Living On: Borde rlines" :"Whal this insti tution (the unlverslt y] cannot bea r is for any­aile 10 tamper with language, meani ng both the nationa l lan-

.3

94 Roun d loble on Transtn tion _

guage a nd , paradoxica lly, an ideal of translatabili ty that neu­trali zes thi s nationa l language. Nationalism and unf verscusm .What thi s instit ution ca nno t bea r is a tra nsformation thatleaves intact neither of these two co mplementary pol es."

But now let us ask ourse lves what has bee n happening heresince yesterd ay in thi s double sessi on whi ch redupl icates aca­demic di scourse (scientific as we ll as philosophical ) with awh ole dimen sion wh ich that d iscourse can only reject becauseit und?rmines the ideal of total tra nslatability , the very basisof the Idea of a university. If it is true that the philosoph er andthe sc ho lar share a n ideal of universality wh ich abstracts theproper nam e. the biographical. as well as the corruptio ns ofnati onalism and of di al ect. then it may begin to appear thataround the tabl e he re today there are neither sch olars norphilosophers nor academics. It may appear that an und ermin­ing opera tio n is in process which is perhaps no more than theparod y of the sc ho lar, the philosopher , and the academi c,

Patrick Mahony : Transform ations an d PatricidalDeconstruction

. Heari ng th? word "translation: ' one th inks immedi ately ofIts etymologica l and semantic connec tions wit h metaphor ,transfer . transference, and tra ns po rt. An d, of co urse, the apho­rism "t m d ull ore , tmditore"· may come to mind simultane­ous ly, In th is regard , an d since my approach is of a psycho­ana lytic nature, J ca nnot resist begin ning w ith a somewhathumorous aside which un ites the noti on s of trea son an d tran s­por t. Give n that the di agnosis of sc hizo phrenia is mu ch mo refrequent in America than it is in Europ e , if ever someo ne wereto be d iagno sed here as sc h izophre nic , then the cheapest curewould he quit e simp ly for h im 10 hook pa ssage o n il tran sat­lant ic sh ip. It's a case of tran slati on cur ing tra nslat lon. Butnow, let' s be se rio us .

In an ussuy which atte mpted to give a global classification of

· "T ran slator , trai tor."_ Tr .

Houndlable on Tra nslation 95

tra nslat ion 's linguist ic as pec ts , (Roman i Iakobson di sti n­guished th ree kinds of translati on'-

1 intra lingua l tran slatio n, or paraphrase;2 interlingual translation, or tran slation in the most com­

mon se nse;3 intersemiot ic translation , in which, for exa mple, verbal

signs are reencoded in nonverba l sign system s.The cons erva tism of Iakobson's approach contras ts with the

audac ity of your ow n procedure, which one of your commen­tators. Sarah Kol man. has summarized as follows: "Dernda'sor igina lity is to put an end to a process of tra nslation anddec ision by a formal , syntac tic practice of undecidability"(Ecart s, p. 182).

The first questio n I will as k refers to the use of the specificterm " translation" instead of ..transformation:' which woulddescribe your proced ure in a much more adequate fashion. Iam referring to three of yo ur writings: "Fre ud an d the Scene ofWriting" (1967); your inte rview in Position s (1972); as well asyour in troduction, "Me-e-Psychoanalysis ," to Nicolas Abre­ham's "The Shell a nd the Kernel " (1979). In the first text , yo ushow that ce rta in of Fre ud 's uses of th e term " translation" arereally transformations a nd/or metaphorical uses. Then, in" Me-Psychoa nalysis: ' you comment on Abrah am's theori esas follows: "'Translati on' preserves a symbolic and anasemicrelatio n to tran slati on , to what one ca lls ' translatio n. ' " In fact.in Position s, you propose the term "transforma tio n" as a farmore adequate notion . Thus you say : " In the limits to which itis poss ib le or at least appears possible, translati on practicesthe diff erence bet ween signified and s ignifier. But if thi s dif­ference is never pu re, no more so is translation , and for th enotion of tra nslatio n we wo uld have to substi tu te a noti on oftransformation: a regulated tran sfor mation of one lan guage byanoth er, of a ile text by another,"

It see ms to me , moreover, that !mnsformat ion is more inharmony with your ne ologism trcnch e-jert." the key con cept of

•S'oe Der rtda's rema rks. pp . 104 -05, below, for all ex planation of this 000 10'Ris rn.- Tr.

96 Roundtable on Tr an slation

your essay "Ou tout" ' ''Of the Who le") whi ch justly conteststhe lim its of psychoana lytic transfere nce. Let us recall thatearly on Freud conce ived the latter as a set of "false co nnec­tions" and cons ide red every isolated act and each of theanalysand's associations as a com pro mise (Standard EdWoll.12:103j. Since. moreover. all of the pati en t's ut terances aremore or less closely tied to th e trcnche-jen or the false con­nection . co uld we not co nce ive psychoanalysis as a semioticof approxi mations. or. bette r still . a semiotic of decent eredtransformat ion s? Ind eed . in Fa ts . you show, on the one hand ,that these transformations are operating according to a radi caland interminable deviation (here one thinks of the poss iblecleavage of the crypt in the id and the ego) and. on the othe r.that a written case is but an asy mptotic place of "conver­gences " for a ll th e possible translations and bet rayals . an in­terminable approx imatio n of the idiom.

In ord er to th ink abo ut these decentered transform ationssomewhat differently, one could take as a guide and by way ofa speci fic exa mple th e following co ns idera tion : Throughoutour lives, we acquire a series of names, beginni ng with thenicknames and names of endearment from childhood all theway to the formal titles and othe r names of adulthood . One ofthe characte ristics of cl inica l discourse in the analytic co ntext,which sets it apart from all other forma l or intimate dis­courses , is that one almost never add resses the patient by anyof these names which are so egocentrically bound up withhi m. By setti ng off the di scharge of forgott en material to fillthe void, this narc issistic dep rivation also induces the pati entto let himself go toward multiple transpositions and trans fe r­mations of his names, whose man y vicissitudes ca n he ap­proached on ly by further research.

On a strictly te rm ino logical plane , I have done a thoroughinventory of the word " trans lation"-Ubfl l'Sclzung_ in all ofFreud 's texts. While he considers repressio n to be a rift orfau lt in the trans lation, on severa l occas ions in his writi ngs heimplici tly conceives all of the following to be translations:hyster ical, phobic, and obsessio na l sym ptoms, drea ms, reco l-

Roundtable on Transla tion 97

lect lons. pa rapraxes , the choice of the means of suicide. th echoice of fetish . th e ana lyst's int erp retation s. and the tran spo­sitions of un consciou s material to co nsci ous ness . However.while on occasion Freud specifically uses th e word "transla­tion " as a synony m for "transform ation ," this latter termseems to be used only with reference to the process of libidi­nal development. as one may eas ily disce rn from titl es such as"On Tran sform ation s of Inst inct as Exemplified in Anal Erot­ism " or "The Trans formatio ns of Puberty" (Part 3 of Th reeEssays on lhe Theo ry of Sex ua lity). But it is in the context ofyour very provocative and stimulati ng reflections on sexualitythat I would like to inte rrogate th e notion of transform at ionand the meaning you give it, .

1. In your introduction to Abraham 's "The Shell and theKernel: ' vou writ e: " In 1968 th e anasemic inte rpretation cer­tainly bore primarily on Freudian and post-Freudia n probl em­atics : metapsycho logy, Freud 's 'pansexualism' wh ich was the'anase mic (pansexua lism) of the Kern el: that 'nucleic sex'wh ich was supposed to have 'no relat ion with the differen cebetwee n sexes' and abo ut wh ich Freud is supposed to havesaid. 'again anasemt calty. that it is in essence virile' (tha t itseems to me is one of the mosl enigmatic and pro vocativepassages in the essay) ."

2. In Spurs: Nietzsc he 's Styles . you have written : "There isno essence of the woman because woman se para tes and sepa­rates from herself ."

3. In the same essay in Eccrts. Sarah Kofman note s: "Thevoice of truth is alwa ys that of the law, of God , of the fath er.The metaphys ica l logos has an essentia l virility. Writing, thatform of disruption of presence, is, like the woman, always putdown and reduced to the lowest rung. Like the femini ne geni­talia , it is troubling, petrifying-i t has a Med usa effect " (pp.125 - 26 ). And again : "Perh aps . as well , it is in read ing Der­rlda that one best un derstands certa in psychoanalytic motifs.Derrldean writing re len tlessly repeats the murder of the fath er.The many decapttat ton s of the logos in all its forms have tohave an effect on the unconscio us scene of each reader. More

98 Roundtable on Transla tion

than Freud , Derr ida makes one know what a father means,that one is never th rough 'kill ing' the fath er. and that to speakof the logos as a father is not a simple metaphor" [p. 202).

The passages I have just quoted call up two add itionalremarks:

1. , would like you to comment further on sexual dilferen ­tiation.

2. There are those who openly ad mit to you their inabilityto imitate your style. It seems to me that the imp lications ofthis are far-reach ing. Whatever the filiatio n of your writingmay be. with its in imitable trait of the mu rder of the paternallogos. it is nonetheless the case that, on another level. it bearsthe imprint of the father's attributes.

Such a situation lead s us to the consideration that wr iting isa constantly transformed and transform ing activity.

Jacqu es Derrida : Reply ·

I am going to begin by taking two examples. Fin negan sWake is for us today the major corpus. the great challenge to

ltranslation, although certai nly not the only one. However, aBabelian motif run s from one end of Finnegans Wake to theother. Although this molif takes many different forms. which Ican' t go into now, at a certa in moment, referring to the eventof the Tower of Babel. at the moment wh en Yahweh interruptsthe construc tion of the tower and condemns humanity to the

rj multiplicity of langu ages-which is to say. to the necessaryand impossible task of translation- Joyce writes (and here Iisolate these three word s only for the conven ience of our dis­cuss ion, even though it wou ld be necessary to reconst itute thewhole page, all the pages): "And he war." That's what onereads at a certain moment on one page of Ftnn egnns Woke inall episode concern ing Babel. In what language is this wr illen?Obviously, despite the multip licity of languages , cultural ref-

"Unfortunatel y, the begtnmng 01 Jacques Dcrrtda's reply 10 Palrick Mahon ywas nol recorded .

_____________ Round'a ble on Transla tion 99

erences. and condensations, English is indi sputa bly t~e do mi­nant language in Fln negcn s wok e-c-el l of these refractions andslippages are produced in English or thro ugh Engli.sh..in thebod}' of that language. French would translate the English as:il-guerre [he wars]. he declare s war. And that's ind eed whathappen s: God declares war on the tribe of the Shems. whowant to make a name for themselves by raisi ng the tower andimpos ing the ir tongue on the universe. But obviously the Ger­man word war Influences the English word. so we also have:He was. he was the one who sa id, for example. " l am that Iam," which is the de finition of Yahweh. And then one alsohears the car, whi ch is very present in the rest of the text. Onehears a thou sand thin gs th rough other tongues . _\

I don't want to explore all the poss ibilities that are con­densed in these questions. but I won der what happens at themoment one tries to translate these words. Even if by somemiracle one could tran slate all of the virtual impulses at workin th is utt erance. one thing remains that could never be trans-

_ lated: the fact that there are two tongues here, or at least more-r than one . By tran slating everything into French , at best one

would translate all of the virt ual or actual content, but onecould no! transl!Llc the eve nt which consis ts in grafting severalto;l8u es onto a-single body.

I will take another examp le: (Jorge Luis) Borges ' "P ierreMenard." This text gives the acco unt of a Frenchma n who hasconce tved the mad project of wr iting. for the first time, DonQuixole. That's a ll there is to it : He want.s to ~rite not ~ versi.on.not a repetition or a parod y, bu t Don Quixote Itself. Th ISprojectce r nes out of a mad , absolutely raving jealousy. Borges' text iswritten in Spanish. but it is marked by the French atr~lOsp.herc .

Pierre Menard is a Frenchman. the story takes place III Ntmes.and there are all sorts of resonances that led Borges to write thistext in a Spanish ton gue which is very subtly marked by acerta in Fronchnoss. Once, in a seminar on translation , , had adiscussion with a Hispanist student who said about this text:"In the en d the French translation is perh aps more faithful andthus bette r than the original." Well, yes and no, because what islost in the French translation is th is superimposed Pronchness

IOU Roundtable on Transla tion

or the Frenchncss that inserts a slight di vision with in the Spa n­ish , a ll of w hich Borges wa nted to mark in the or igina l. Transla-

~j.9.Il~"'P _do everyt h ing excep t mark thi s linguistic d iffe rence.nscr~btld i.n the ~anguage. th is di ffereh't~ of language sys temsinscribed III a sin gle to ngue. A~I Ca n get lw r}:: th ingaCIQSS cXlmpl Ih is ' Ihl' fa("Ltbat there are, in one lingu istic SYS-c-Jitcm- IJOrhttjJn ac'/n n l laog'!agc 'ii or ....!f!!!&~es, Scmctlmcs-c-I "1wou ld even say a lwa ys-csovera ltonguos. There is impurity inevery language. This fact wou ld in some ,..-ay have to th reatenevery lingu istic system 's integrity, w hich is presu med by eachof Iak obson's concepts. Each of these three concepts [in tra lin­gual tra ns lat ion , interlingua l or translation " properly spea k­ing." and lntersemlot ic translatio n) pres umes the ex istence ofone language and of on e tran s lation in the literal sense, that is .as the passage from one language into an other. So , if th e unityof the linguisti c system.is netasu rething. all of thi ;[;miC"Cj)iU:a l~~ti on ar2.l;lJl~t t.ransla tio l1 (in the so-ca ll-~d "'i;ro per sense oftrans la tio n) is threatened .

I chose theexampY~-~r Babel becau se I thin k it ca n prov ide anep igraph for all d iscussi ons of tran slati on . What happen s in th estory of Babel? We thin k we kn ow that story, bu t it is alwa ys inour interest , I believe, to re read it closely. Also , one should readit if possible in the language in wh ich it was wr itten , beca useth e singu larity of the story is that a performati ve take s place asa recil in a to ngue that itself defies tra ns latio n. What is beingtold in th is bib lica l rectt is not tran sport abl e in to anothertongu e witho ut a n essent ial loss. I don 't know the or igina l lan­guage thorough ly, but I know eno ugh of it (a few words ) to trvto define with you th is challenge to translation. .

What ha ppen s in the Babe l e pisode, in the tr ibe of theS hems? Notic e th at the wo rd "s hem'' alroadv mean s num e:Shom equa ls nam e. The S bc ms decide to raise a tower-notjust in order to reach a ll the wa y to the heaven s bu t a lso, itsays in the text. to ma ke a name for themselves. Th ev wa nt toma ke a nam e for the mse lves , and they bear the name' of nam e.50 the y wa nt to make a name for themselves-how will the ydo it? fly im posi ng the ir tongue on the en ti re un iverse on the

Roundtable on Tran sla tion 101

bas is of th is sub lime ed ifica tion. Ton gue: act ua lly the Hebrewwo rd here is the word that sign ifi es lip. Not ton gue but lip.Th us, they wa nt to im pose the ir lip on the entire universe.Had their en terprise succeeded. the un iversal ton gue would

[ have bee n a particular language imposed by vio lence . by forcel"by vio lent hegemony over the rest of the wo rld . It wou ld not \ha ve been a universal langua ge-for exa mp le in the Leib­niz ian sense-a transparent language to which everyo newo uld have had access. Rath er , the master w ith the most forcewo uld have im posed thi s language on the wo rld and , by virtueof th is fact. it wou ld have become the universa l tongue . This,the n, is their pro ject: to ma ke a name for themselves by impos­ing their lip a ll the wor ld. God-tha t God who is ca pable ofresen tme nt. jealo usy , an d ange r- become s bes ide himself inthe face of th is incredib le effron ter y a nd says to himself: Sothat's what they wa nt to do , th ey wa nt to make a name forthemselves and impose th eir lip on the world . He then inter ­rupts the edification and in tu rn imposes his name on theirtower [or h is tower). The tex t says : God proclaimed his na meloudl y, th e name which he himself has chose n and which isthus hi s. Already o ne can see that the conflict is a war be­tween two proper names and the one th at w ill ca rry the day isthe one that either im poses its law or in any case preven ts th eother from im posing its own. God say s: Babel. It is thus apro per na me. Volta ire. in the article "Babel " in the Diction­no tre ph tlosophtq ue. sa ys some th ing lik e this: " It seems thatBabe l mean s the na me of th e fath er in th is case, as in Babylon ,et cetera , so it ca n be translated as the name of the father 'sci ty." But a ll the same, Babel can be understood wit hin th elanguage of the ree l! and only w ith in that language. It ca n beunderstood confused ly because it is by virtue of a somewha tfree phonetic associatio n tha t thi s co nfus io n is pos sible. II canbe co nfused ly understood as "co nfus io n"- il is a word tha twil l come to signify co nfusion . He im poses confusion on the mat the sa me ti me as he im poses his prope r name, the name hehas c hosen wh ich mea ns co nfusion. which seems confused lyto mean co nfusion and wh ich the Shems understa nd in their

1Q2 Roundtable on Translation

tongue. co nfuse dly. as confus ion. Hew , nne might concludethai the Iranslation is intra lingual. but that wou ld btl incor rect~ i nce it .is ~, ~uestion of a ~roper name. To trans late Uabel byco nfusion IS alrea dy to give a confuse d and unce rta in trans­

lation. II translates a proper nam e into a common noun. Th us

[a ile sees t l~at God declares war by forcin g men, if you will . totranslate Ius pro per name with a common noun . In effect. hesa~'s to them: Now you will not impose a s ingle tongue: youWill be condemned to the multtpli ciy of tongues; translateand. to beg in with , trans late my name. Trans lale my name,says he. but at the same time he says: You ''''i11 not be able 10trans late my name because. first of ~II, it's a proper name and ,secondly, my name. the one I myself have chosen for thistower. signifies ambiguity. confus ion. et cetera. Thus God inhis rivalry wi th the Iribe of the Shems, gives th em. in a certa inway. an abso lutely do uble command. lie imposes a doublebinA-Pn them when he says: Translate me and what is moredon 't translate me. I desire that you trans late me, that voutranslate the name I impose on you: and at the same time.wha teve r you do, don't tran slate it. vou will nol be able toIran slate it. .

I would say that thi s.Q. iut is at wor k in every proper name:translate me. do n't translate me. On the one hand . don't trans­late me, tha t is, respect me as a proper-name. respect my lawof the proper name wh ich stands over and above all lan ­g~~ges...aPd. a ll the othe r hand , translate me, that is, unde r­sta!,d ~e~ preserve me with in the universal language, fo llO\\<my law, andso.on. Th is means that th e division of the propername, insofar as it is th e division of God- in a word. insofara~ it d iYi<l~s God him self-in some way provides the para­digm for this work of the proper name. God himself is in thedouble bind , God as th e deconstructor of the Tower of Babel.He interrupts a construc tion. Th c deconstructlon of the Towerof Babel. moreo ver, gives a good 'i~l ~a-of w-h~ta~(;;}StfUCtj() il

is : an unfi ulshed edifi ce _Whos~ !la l f-co lll p le tmi struc tures arcviaible , lett ing one gu.e~~Uhl}..scaffolding ~_(ihilld th_em. li e

_____________ Rou ndtable on Transla rion IOJ

interrup ts the cons truc tio n in his name: he int errupts himselfin orde r to impose his name and th us pro duces what oneco uld ca ll a "dtssch cminat lon" wh ich means: You will notimpose you r meaning or your tongue, and 1. God, the reforeoblige you to submit 10 th e pluralit y of languages wh ich youwill never get out of.

Yet the origina l text was absolutely origina l: it is the sacredtext. As (Walte r( Ben jam in says, the mod el of all tran slation isthe intralinear tran slation into one 's own language of the sa­cred text [vThe Task of the Tra nslator ," in lIIuminal ions). Asacred lext is untranslatable, says Ben jamin. precisely becausethe mea ning and th e lett er ca nnot be dissociated . The flow ofmea ni ng and the flow of literali ty ca nnot be dissociated-.- thusthe sac red te·xtis un tran:slatable. The a'nl)'- thingone can dowh en tran slating a sacred texl is to read between the lines,between- its Iines·.-Sen jam iTi.-saysthal this read ing or this intra­Iinearve rSiOiiOf th e sacred text is the idea l of all translatio n:pu re translatability. Here, then , we are dealing with a sacredtext in th e se nse that it is irreducibly lied to a language, to aproper name whi ch can belong 10 only one language and candesire its translation into only one language. Babel eq uals~1!.llim~ This is the paradi gm of th e s i tuatiol1Tn~'hichthere is a mult ipli city of languages and in wh ich translati on isboth necessary and impossibl e. At that very moment . it per­forms the situatio n it describes : in other words , the name ofGod here is, at th e sam e lime. th e name of all pro per names.They are all in a state of Babel ; in a ll of them the desire is atwork to impose th e proper name with the demand: "Translateme and don't translate me," If we could read Benjamin's texttogether. we would sec that th is requirement , this demand,this wretchedness of the proper name, crying after its transla­tion even as it makes it impossiblc-"translate me but. wh at-

"Der rida condenses III ltJil sl lour senses in th is Invented wor d: dlssemlna­linn . deschematlza tiun . d l,· " Slwmi t i l l n~ . " lind dero uting lit diverting f W IIl d

[);jIll [Ihe wo rd chemin rn"lln inR pnt h nr rUlIl ll ·-Tr.

IQ4 Roundtable on Tran sla tion

ever you do, don 't tra nslate me"-all of this is of an abso lutelygeneral order. Thi s gene ralized singularity is wha t the Babe laccount describes,

Just a few more words on thi s subject. In the latest Fre nchtran slation of the Babel slory, [Ihe translat or) Chouraqui's lan ­guage tr ies to be poetic and as lit eral as possib le, But therecomes a moment when he is obliged to write : Bevel . Then,however. he hesitates over wh et her or not to translate intoFrenc h the meani ng aud ib le to the Shems in the origina l text.He has to make the Fren ch ear hear tha t it means confus ion,bu t he is unable to do it in a way that is inte rnal to his transla­tio n, tha t is, a way that isn't an analysis or a clarificatio n. Sowhat he does is to wr ite : "Bevel . Confusion." capitalizingConfusion. In the language of the or igina l tex t. there is onlyo ne word. whereas the translation has recourse 10 two words.But the translator rea lizes that without the capi tal letter, heloses the effect of a proper nam e. He thus arrives at th is rnan ­ner of co mpromise . which . natu rally. is insufficient . butwhich has been forced on hi m by God's decon st ru ctio n.

This inscribes the scene of translation with in a scene ofinheritance a nd in a space which is precisely tha t of the ge­nealogy of proper nam es , of the family. th e law, indebt ed ness.Obviously. o ne ca n see th e quest ion of the father . wh ich yo uas ked at the e nd of you r remarks, taking sha pe here . At ace rtain moment yo u made allusio n to the "tmncbe-jert ." but Ifear th is allus io n may have remained un clear for those whoare unfamil iar with the very spec ific context in which thatwo rd was pu t forward . Perhaps I'll say a few words about it sothat it w ill no longer be suc h a secret. The expression tra nche­fert is on e I ventured to put before some French psych oana­lysts during a wo rking sess io n I had w ith th em . what l wa ntedto indi cat e with th is word is what is ca lled the trcnctre. * Idon't know if th e sa me word is used in Quebec. but in Fran cethe tm nche is that ana lys is psychoa na lysts sometimes do for 11

while w ith a co lleague. Tha t is, an ana lyst w ho is sBtt lml in to

'I'j"u ,. slice. fro m tm ucher: 10 slice. sepa rate. decide. Tim pla y Is (Ill till!psvchoanalyt!c term trnnsjert : transf..rence.c.-Tr.

Roun dtable on Tro n slo tion 105

the ana lytic profess ion, who is ce rti fied as an ana lys t and prac­ttces ena lvsis . at some poin t deems it necessary for whateverreason to return for a nothe r litt le bi t of ana lys is wi th a co lleague.This is what is called a tranch e. Well. sometimes th is seCondana lyst-or the th ird or the fourth one-to whom he or she goesbelo ngs to ano the r psychoana lytic gro up . As you know. inFrance there are at least four groups within Ihe ana lyti c es tab­lishment. a nd the fac t of going from o ne a na lyst to another orfrom one gro up to a nothe r-some times also from one sex toanother (fro m a man analyst to a woman analyst or the other wayaround}-poses a certain number of problems on different lev­els wh ich I thin k are im portan t. It was in order to pose theproblem of transference en ta iled in th is situation that 1 playedwith the word " Imnche·fert,·· which Patrick Mah on y referred to .

Before gett ing to wha t you said about the co ncept of transla­tion in Freud-and 1 don' t want to keep the floor too lo ng-Iwould like to ve ntu re a word o n the subject of the history ofnames in one's li fe. As you have already said . we ha ve a seriesof names th rough out ou r lives. We are co nstan tly be ing namedby different nam es which add up, d isappea r. accumulate. an dso on. But what one may well as k o neself is whether. beneaththe proper name o r names that are in one way or ano therpublic kn owl edge , there does not exist a proper name that isunco nscious and secret, a name we are in search of or th at thereader or a na lyst must seek out. For example. to pick up o nwhat Claude Levesqu e was sa ying yesterday. read ing a d is­membered or di sseminated proper na me in a text ca n some­times be an interesting, mow or less d ifficu lt exercise, a moreor less fascinating piecing together of clues, But it can also bea tota l trap. In effect , once one has reconstituted . for exa mp le .the name of Fra nci s Ponge" di sse minated in his text. on ce onehas exp lained all th e ru les of th is d ismembering an d thi smon um entallzatton . perhaps o ne has gotten off on altogetherthe wrong track. And this beca use Fran cis Ponge has pe rha psa secret or un co nscio us name which has noth ing at all to do

· S.oe Sj~n {>fl(lJl,ICp.ISj,ICn~jI()n,l(" w here UtlITlda woeks oul a readtng o f POll ,l(" 'Ss ignat ure in and UII h is wor k.--;Tr.

106 Roundtable on Tran sla tion

with e ither Franci s o r Pon ge. Perhaps a ll of the poetic work hedoes in order to mark his patronym in his text , either in piecesor in a n integral fashion , is a means not o nly of mislead ing theread er or the det ect ives-the critica l detectives-but also oflos ing him se lf. Perha ps he doe sn 't know his proper nam e. Is itpossible not to know o ne 's own name? In any case, this is thequest ion yo u wa nte d to as k: Is it possib le for th e un con sciou sproper name-that to which the other addresses him/herself inus. that - wh ich res po nds in us-to be secret? Can there beunconscious proper names. nam es that are at work in thewhole psyc hic orga nization. the whole to pical structure? Cansuc h a na me exist? It is d ifficu lt a lrea dy to formulate andsuppo rt the hypothesis that there exists su ch a first name,before the na me. a kind of abso lute ly sec ret first nam e wh ichfu nctions all the time withou t our knowi ng it . (All of a sud­den . when a certa in appea l is made either by some voice .some tongue, some gesture , or some kind of scene, I respondto it because it tou ch es my secre t desiro-that is. my properna me.) But let us nevertheless put the hypothesis forward .Let 's suppose I ha ve a secret proper name that has nothing todo with my public proper name o r with wh at anyo ne maykno w abou t me. Suppose also that from time to tim e someother may ca ll me by thi s sec ret proper name. e ithe r by utt er­ing ce rtain words or sy llab les or by making certain gestures orsigns. (The secret proper name , the abso lu te id iom. is not nec­essa rily on th e order of language in the pho nic sense but maybe o n the order of a gesture. a physica l associatio n. a scene ofsome so rt , a taste . a smell . And it is to thi s a ppea l that I wou ldessen tia lly respond , thi s call that would comma nd me abso­lutely.) My proper name may be associated with- ( do n 'tkno w-let's sa y a sce nt. to take the easiest hypothesi s. Itwou ld be eno ugh to present me wit h it in a certain situation inorder to ca ll me by thi s scen t. This, then , co uld be the secretnam e.

Althou gh our hypothesis is a d ifficu lt o ne . I wo uld like toexpress certai n reservation s as to th is hyp othesis itself. ( thin kit' s necessary to formulate it , but ail e mus t also be awa re that ,

Roundtable on Translation 107

however daring it mi ght be. it nevertheless presumes the pos­sib ili ty of some absolu te properness. an absolu te id iom. How ­ever, if an id iom effec t or an effect of abso lute prope rness ca narise on ly wit h in a sys tem of relati on s and d ifferences wit hsometh ing else that is eithe r near or far. then the sec ret properna me is right away Inscnbed-c-structurall y and a priori- in anetwork where it is con taminated by common na mes. Thus.even this secret proper name would be im possible. at least ina pu re state . Th ere may be effec ts of a secret proper nam e. bu tthey cou ld not possib ly occur in a pure state because of thediff erential st ructure of any mark. This secret mark could bewha t it is o n ly in a relation of di fferentiati on and th us also ofcontamination . in a network or common system. It wou ld giveup its sec ret . then. at th e very momen t in wh ich it would havethe best and cl osest hold on it. If th is absolute secret canno texis t in th e st ric tes t pu rity. I ca n never be assured that anappeal is addressed to me. You spoke of the address : you sa idthat in an alysi s there should come a mom ent w hen the analystad dresses th e patient by hi s/her name. This may be very diffi­cu lt , \'ery lengthy. very improbable. but. finally. the ideal po leor concl usion of ana lys is would he the possibility of add ress­ing th e patient using hi s or her mos t proper name , possibl ythe most secret. It is the moment . then, when the anal ystwould say to the patient "you" in suc h a way that there woul dhe no possib le misunderstanding on the subjec t of thi~ " ~ou ."

Well , if what ( ha ve jus t said is at all perti nent. that IS , If themos t sec re t proper na me has its effect of a proper name on lyby risking con taminatio n and detour within a sys tem of re la­tion s, then it follows that pure add ress is im possib le. ( cannever be sure when someo ne says to me-or to you-says tome. "yo u. you:' that it might no-t1m just a ny old "you." I ca nnever be sure that the sec re t address might nut be d iverted.like any message or letter. so that it does not arrive at itsdes tination. This is inscribed in th e most gene ra l struct ure ofthe ma rk. Th e proper na me is a ma rk: someth ing lik e confu­ston ca n occur at any timu becau se the proper nam e bearsconfusion wit hi n itse lf. Tl iP. most sec ret p rop er name is, up to

lOB Roundtable on Transla tion

a ce rtain po int . sy nony mous with co nfus ion. To the extent towh ich it can im med iate ly become common and drift offcourse toward a sys tem of relation s where it fun ctions as acommon name or mark. it ca n send the address off co urse . Th eaddress is a lways deli vered over to a kind of chance . and thusI ca nnot be ass ured that an appea l or an address is addressedto whom it is addressed. Th ere arc. then . aleatory or chanceclements at work in every kind of message. every type of let ­ter. a ll mail. if you will.

I am going on too long. so I will try to acce lerate things a bit .As for psychoa nalys is. everything Freud tells us about transla­tion . all the uses he makes of tran slation . may in part appearto be metaphorica l as regard s th e common conce pt of transla­tio n. which is wh at Iakobson ca lls int erlinguistic tran slation,or trans latio n in the everyday sense. Freud , on th e othe r hand ,very often , as in the examples you gave, a lso spea ks of transla­tion as the passage from one semiotic sys tem to another. Whenone speaks of hysteria , of oneiric or hysteri ca l translation , oneis speaking of tran slation in Iakobson 's third sense. the pas­sage from one se miotic system to anothe r: words- gest ures.words-images. acous tic -visua l. and so forth. but to the ex­ten t that Freud see ms to want to use the word " translation " ina metaphorica l se nse, he cons tantly looks as if he is tak ing theliteral sense (that is, interlinguistic translation) as the mod elreferent for a ll poss ible translation. Here we see how the lin­guls tlcistic temptation ca n inh abit psychoana lysis. I don' tthink Freud gives in to thi s temptation very much: but . with­out a doubt. [Iacques] Lacan gives in to it- that is, he eve ry­where engages in it in th e most forceful and the mos t sys tem­atic manner , which one may jud ge from the fact that it is thelingu istic body or linguistic rhetor ic whic h organizes all theother translati ng tran sformation s. In Lacan. the linguisticcode , the spoken code, has a dom inant role over the othercodes and e the r transformations whic h, in a certa in way, canall be translated into language by means of translation in thelinguistic sense. This is a very serious problem and I can onlyevo ke it here. It is. however. inevitable whenever one speaksof th ese different mea nings of th e word "trans lation."

Roun dtable on Transla tion 109

I want to say a few words on the subject of anasc mla. It is aneasy transition to make, I think. after what has just bee n saidabout Lacan or ltnguistlci sm. and I would a lso add about logo­ce ntrism and ph allogocentrism . You vorv lucid I\' isolated thatone little sentence in my int roduc tion to Nicola~ Abraham onthe subject of the anasemic translation of Freud's statementaccord ing to wh ich the libido is essentia lly viril e . Th e phraseis Abraham's. He tri es to demonstrate that when freud savsthat all libido is essentia lly virile (with a ll the consequencesthat that might have with in his sys tem. bu t we can't go int othat here ). this mus t be heard and understood anasern tcallv.That is, it mus t not be taken literally but un derstood accord ingto wha t Abraham ca lls anasemia: the retu rn toward conce ptswhich are not only originary but pre-or tginary. whi ch are. inothe r words. on this side of mean ing. Briefly. Abraham ex­plains th at when psychoanalysis ta lks about Pleasu re. for ex­am ple, or abo ut Ego, it ca pital izes th ese words in orde r, forone thing. to translate words that. like all Germa n su bstan­tives . are cap ita lized in Freud's text. However, acco rd ing toAbraham. when Freud talks of thi s or that major ana lyt ic con­cept. he does not int end them in th e ordinary sense of thelanguage. Thus. Pleasure does not mean what one understandsby pleasu re. Rath er, Pleasu re is th at on th e basis of which themeaning or pleas ure ca n be determined . This is to say that onemust go bac k to th is side of meaning (thus , the sense or direc­tion of th e word "a nasemia") in order to understan d howmeaning has been formed . On wh at co nditio ns is there plea­sure? On what cond itions does the word " pleasure" have amea ning? On that cond ition wh ich Freud ca lls Pleasure in hismetapsycho logy and which has an anas cmlc se nse: therefore itis capitalized. Thus, it is a ll the basis of thi s sys tem or thistheory of anasemia ( it is , I remind you, Nicolas Abraham 'stheory, and I am only commenting a ll it in my own manner inthe text you cite ) that Freu d's statement accordi ng to which a lllibido is virile . eve n in tho woman. does not signify wha t onemay understa nd in genera l when this statement is mad e ineveryda y language. It do es not signify. th at is, the primacy orthe privilege of the pha llus, bu t rather tha t basis on which

110 Roundtable on Transla tion

there can be a phallus or libido. In my opin ion, the problemremains intact. I cla im no responsibility here. nor can I go intothis probl em because of the lack of time .

I ~'ould say just one final word about patricide. Obviously.the Idea that everything I do is of a patri cid al nature . as thetexts you ci ted say or as you yourself have said. is an idea thaton ly half pleases me. II's not wrong, but if it were essentiallythat or only that. I would be very disappointed. Of course Iagree that there is patricide in it-in a certain ,..'ay patricid e isi n~v i.table-but I also try to do something else wh ich. in myopin ion. cannot be und erstood sim ply with in the scene ofpatricide that is so recur rent and so imitable. Thu s. if you~,,·~re. trying to suggest that what I do might be in some wayIllimitable as . for insta nce. in patricide. well. I would have tosay that noth ing is more imitable than patricide and thereforenothing is more often repeated. If. for the reason I mentionedat the beginning. the manner in wh ich I write-but the samegoes for anyone-has something barely imitable about it (Idon 't believe that there is anything inimita ble. so let's saybarely imitable). it would be to the extent that something werenot of a patri cid al nature. because nothing is more imitablethan patricide. However. 1don't believe in the inimitable anymore than 1 beli eve in the secret and absolutely pure propername.

Rodolphe Gasche: The Operator 0/ Di// erance ·

Before gelli ng to my questions. I want to make a preliminar yremark, The invitation I received to participate in this round­table on translation cannot be explained-c-or at least I don 'timagine that it cen-ccnly by the fact that I translated yourWriting and Difference into German and thus into a languagewhich is not. any more than the other ones I use. my mothertongue. SD that it won't be a secret, I will tell you that mymother tongue is double-cFleml sh and Luxembourgtsh. Two

"See above, II. xii, on thi s word .

Roundtable on Tra n slation J J J

dia lects, therefore. between wh ich , for better or worse. I havehad to and have managed to situate myself. Thus, the fact thatI have been asked to participate in thi s discussion is not com­pletely determined by the tran slation problems that I mayhave encountered with the German transposition of \Vrilingand Difference. It is also . I hope. overdetermined bv th isdouble aspect of my mother tongue as well as by the tr-ans la­tion prob lem whi ch that implies from the very beginning. (Inote here. right away. that thi s bilingualism does not necessar­ily bring with it any kind of mastery in the matter of tran sla­tion. On the contrary . as my translation readily demonstrates.)

Jacqu es Derrid a. I remember that severa l years ago. you sa idto me (permit me th is indiscretion if it is one) that you werewriting ogoinsl the Fren ch language. more precisely again st theinstitutionalized language of the metropolis. which was not .strictly speaking. your mother tongue. Let me then set thisstatement in a bord er alongs ide your life and your "works" (if,once again . I may permit myself such an expression) and openyour texts and your writing to the question of this double rela­tion to you r mother tongue. It is. then , a mother tongue that isyours without really being yours and whose duplicity you takeon. The day before yesterday. you spoke of autobiograp hy inthis strong sense of the term. and it is in this sense that againtoday I would like to interrogate the problematic developed , forexample. in "Me-Psychoanalysis." your introduction to theEnglish translation of Abraham 's "T he Shell and the Kernel." Itseems to me that what interests you first of all in the work ofthis psychoanalyst is the idea ofafissure or a crack in the verynotio n of the materna l tongue (and, thi nking of your text "DuTout" ror the w hole"]. I wou ld add in the materna l languageof the psych oanalytic institution in France as well). You thenremark the dou ble translation that occurs de facio in any mate r­nal tongue. You illustrate th is. on the one han d. with thephenome no logica l reduct ion of language to its intentionalmeani ng carried out by Abraham and, nn the other hand , by theasem lc translation of psychoanal ysis which. from the asemicagency of the unconscious. ques tions the "e ry phcnomenality

112 Roundtable on Tranda lion

[

of meani ng. You then show that th is double translation operat­ing wit hin the same language prece des anyth ing ca lled "t rans­lalion " in a phenomeno logica l sense. Thi s doubl e translationoperating in the very place of the moth er tongue and co ntami­nating it in such a way that it becomes a heterogeneous space isnot only the cond ition of possibil ity for all translation intoano ther language. a fore ign language or the language of theother. In effect. th is double translation di sru pting the unity ofthe mother tongue is not simply a symmetr ica l translation be­ca use. contrary to th e ph enomen ological redu ction. psychoana­lyti c di scourse, accord ing to Abraham , returns to the ascmicposs ibili ty of the very meaning of language ass umed by ph enom­eno logica l di scourse. In othe r word s. psychoanalys is, at itsmost rad ica l. would account in thi s way for the very possibili tyof translation as it operates in its othe r or cou nterpart- here . inph enomenology. However. it accounts for it in a singular fash ­ion by mining. in effect. th e dissymm etry betwee n the twoori gina ry tran slation s. In this dia logue (if that is what it is).only psychoanalys is forces language to speak the non languagecond itions of speech. As you show qu ito we ll, this opens psy­choa na lysis . de jure. to a rea pplication of its corpus juri s. thatis. the set of co nce pts operative in its ow n d iscourse, in psycho­analysis itself . Hence your question in th is case about the l-:ROor the "me" of psychoanalysis.

I'll co nclude rapid ly before asking my questions. Not onlydocs a ll translati on into a foreign language rest on the veryposs ibil ity of th e double translati on already at work in anylanguage. but alltran slalion of wha tever sort is "rooted" in th easemic by the very dtssymrnetry of thi s double translation andtherefore in that which ca nnot legiti mate ly function as a" root": in th e nonlan guage conditions of language. Hence thefollowing three quest ion s:

First qu estion : Wha t has bee n ca lled , ill reference to yourwork. the indetermination of any translati on . you yourse lfhave conceived (I won't say exc lus ively) agai nst Heldegger'stheory of tran slation and of language. I will permit myself tosu mmarize here (but. given the ci rcumstances . it will be an

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Roundtoble on Tran sla tion IIJ

altoge ther im perfect su mmary) the way I understan d Heideg­gcr on th is point. The de na turatio n which takes place betweenGreek and Latin (and . as a later result . German! represent s notonly a distortion or historica l acci de nt. but is also most lmpor­tant ly a historica l destiny. Thi s is because the disto rtin g tran s­lation of Greek conce pts into the Latin tongue derives from an"unthought" of the Greek language itself (that which, for ex­ample, makes possible the adve nt of modern tech nique as we llas the Ge-sleJl [frame], insofar as it is an unthou ght of Gree kthought conce rn ing the not ion of thesis]. This ex plains . more­over. Heid cggor's refusal of a nostalgic return to th e Greeks.For him. it is at most a question of retu rn ing- if it ca n beca lled a return- to something that ca n be envisio ned onlyth rough th e Gree ks and that takes shape as the Heim [horne] tocome. Th us. the Iteid eggerian retu rn cannot be a return to theGreek mother lon gue (and to Greek tho ught). hut to so methingbefore th e Greek mothe r tongue. to so mething already at workin it , crack ing it apart. and which it rende rs onl y imperfectly.It is a return to a mot her tongue that has perhaps never takenplace but that is. for Heldcggcr. the place we already occupy,sti ll without knowin g it. Consequently. my question shapesup as follows: 1I0w do you situate yourself in relation tu Hel­dogger 's at least implicit recognition of a fun damenta l lack inevery mothe r tongue. in this case th e Gree k language, but a lsoin every lan guage in gen era l?

My second qu estion is a question b)' circumlocution . Do youspeak the some Fren ch as th e Fren ch do . or do you rathertra ns late Fren ch in the direction of an asemic kern el wh ich isFrench's othe r within itself? What . then . is the relation- ifthere is one-of this othe r French within French to the Ger­man language?

Finally, my third qu estion. whi ch is more general. H, as youhave indeed shown in "Fors." an y translation . of wha teversort. has its star ting po int in the impossible tran slation of eachlanguage's asomlc kerne l- a kern e l that is obv iously non ide n­tical and nonpresent to itse lf-does translation leave it intactas an unrepresentable kern el or, on the contrary, docs every

114 Roundtable on Transla tion

translation only he lp 10 bet ter d isplace and better de fer theabsolute nonpresence of th is kern el itself? Or to put it sti llmore simply. isn't translation th e operator of differe nce . defer­rin g and di ffering that which makes it possible? And in thiscase. should n't we instead take up the problem again of theconditions of poss ibility of any translation and of its effce t­nam el y. di fferance?

Jacques Derr ida: Rep ly

These very d ifficult questions are very lucidly formulated.there where it is quite certa in and clear that I ca nno t res pond .Therefore. thank you. I am going to see if there is not am ongthem some co mmon kernel. And I be lieve there is one: it is.prec isel y. the " ke rnel." The question is whether there is akernel intact so me where or other. When Heidcggcr. in yourreadi ng of him. ass umes that be hi nd the Greek languageitself- that language wh ich the Roman s. for exam ple . are sup­posed to have forgott en. d isfigu red . and rnist ranalated -e-thereis ano ther lan guage. an "untho ught" for the Greeks themselvesof their own lan guage. he presupposes someth ing like anarchi-originary intactness that has bee n bas ically forgott en inadvance. imm ediatel y covered over with obliv ion from th efirst. for exa mple by th e Greeks. Thi s explains . in effect. ll ei­dc ggce's rem ark th at we should avoid int erp reting his tex t.accord ing to a well -known mot if of Germ an thought . as a nos­talgic return to Greece. Nevertheless . if it is not a question ofretu rning in the direction of the Gree k lan guage. it is at leastnecessary to presu ppose something absolut ely forgotte n andalways d issim ulated in advance behind the Greek lan guage-s­an arch- mothe r tongue. a grand mother tongue. a gra nny of theGree k language who would be abso lutely vi rgina l: an untouch­able . virgin granny. Thi s motif of the unt ou chabl e is not insig­nificant. On e also finds it in Ben jamin's text where we readthat translat ion ca nno t " touc h" or atta in something, There issomething "untouc hab le." something of the orig ina l text that110 translation can at ta in . Two of Benjam in 's metap hors in thi s

_____________ Roundtab le on Translation 115

regard in tersect in a curious fash ion with the centra l meta phorof "The She ll and the Kerne l." The kern el of the original textis untouchable by the tran slation. and this untouchable some­thing is the sac red. wh ich says : Don't tou ch me. Thu s. forlIeidegger there wou ld also be someth ing untouch abl e. Trans­lation . in the sense Heid cggcr gives to thi s word. is no longersimply a lin guisti c ope ratio n that cons ists in transportingmeaning from one lan guage to another. He says somewheretha t it is an operation of thou ght through which we mus ttranslate ourselves into th e th ought of th e other lan guage. theforgotten thinking of the other lan guage. We mus t translateourselves into it and not make it co me into our lan guage. It isnceessary to go toward th e unthought thinking of the othe rlan guage. Let's suppose that there is an untouchable kern eland that we must presume its permanence without hoping tomake it come simply in to our language. When you ask me.coming now to your second qu esti on . if I speak the sam eFrench as the French do. thi s qu esti on presupposes that thereis a French language I circle around. do violence to. writeagains t. transform. and so on. It presupposes that there is abody of pure French wh ich I seck to violate or to appro priateto myself and in relati on to which I will determine myself . Itwo uld be this bod y of pu re French which makes the law andin relation to whose law I defi ne myse lf. Fina lly. the in tactkernel is d irectl y impli ed in your third qu estion.

Well. I can't answer a ll these questions in a serious . analyticfash ion. II seems to me that. if I were ab le to work out aresponse. the diagram I would follow would be rou ghly likethis: The desire for the intact kernel is desire itself . which is tosa" that it is irred ucible. Th ere is a preh istori c. preo rtgmaryre lation to the in tact kerne l. and it is only begin ning with thi sre lation th at any desire wha tsoever can cons tit ute itself . Thus.the desire or the phnntcsm of the inta ct kerne l is irreduclblo-c­des pite the fact that there is no Intact komol . I wo uld opposedes ire to necessit y. to ullClllke. Th e Illlunke is that there is nointact kernel lind there never has been one . Tha t's wha t a ilewa nts to forget. and to forget that one has forgotten it. It' s not

JIB Roundtable on Translation

that someth ing has been forgotten : rather. one want s to forgelthat thoro is noth ing to forget, that there has been noth ing toforget. But one can only forget that there has never been anintact kernel. This phantasm, this desire for the intact kernelsets in motion every kind of desire, every kind of tongue,appeal. ad dress. This is the necessity and it's a hard one . aterrible necess ity. But just as without the desire for the intactkernel which doesn 't exist. the desire for the untouchab le. forvirgin ity (the taboo on virginit y has an esse ntial relation to allthis)-just as wit hout this desire for virginity no desi re wha t­ever wou ld be set movi ng. likewise without Necess ity andwithou t what comes along to interru pt and thwart that desire.desire itself would not unfo ld . I do n't know what else to callthis but Necessity with a capital N. something that no one cando anything about and tha t is not a law instituted by anysubject. Without this Necessity, it's law against law. desireagainst desire. proper name against proper name. But there isa law above these laws. which I am calling cncnke and whichcontrols it all (in th is way. perhaps. I thi nk in Greek. more inGreek than in Jewish). Thus. above the scene of the war be­tween Yah weh and the Shemites, there is cncnke . tha i is. alaw which is not prod uced by any desire bu t which controlsthe struggle betwee n these desires and these proper names.This cnnnke. no less than the desire for virginity. is whatmakes possible the kernel des ire itself-the Intact desire forintactness.

Ch r istie V. McDo nald : The Passage in to Philosophy

In "Plato's Pharmacy," you stated : "To a cons iderable de­gree, we have already said all we meanl to say . . . . With theexception of this or that supplement. our questions will havenot hing more to name but the texture of the text , reading andwriting. mastery and play. the paradoxes of supplementarily .and the graph ic rela tions between the living and the dead ."You add ed that the strange logic of the term "phurmekcn."which is trans lated as both "remedy" and "poison," wou ld

Roundtabl e on Translation 117

from then on be linked to what you called the problem oftranslation in which one wou ld "be dealin g with nothing lessthan the problem of the very passage into phil osoph y."M~' remarks today concern the relationshi p betwee n reading

and writ ing, a relationship which seems to have been takingshape in your work for a long time now in terms of translationconsidered as an enterprise that is at once possible and impos­sible. In Spurs. one finds a single text dis persed across thepage. which is div ided into four columns. each one a trensla­tion into a di fferent language by a di fferent translator. As aresult. any Questi on of translation becomes right away a prob­lem of readi ng. If mean ing remains intact from one language toanother. is transm issible and susce ptible to a legilimate opera­tion of readabi lity (in teaching. for example). it is because itfirst of all conforms to the rule according to which a goodtranslation follows the intern al logic of what is called the"original." At the same time. however . th is mean ing is dis­persed by the excessive play within the historical and seman­tic tran sference of languages. In Glcs. reading is also fracturedby the columns and other elements at play (such as the ety­mologies and the explanations set apart on the page). but thisfragmen tation no longer tran slates a (so-called) same text.

I would therefore like to raise once more the question thatreturns both in the text entitled "Living On" and in its com­panion or mate (its shipmate. so to speak): the log," Thi s ques-

"Here is how this text is laid oUl lypognphically : Allhe bottom 01the pege,running the length ol th e text entitled "living On " and accompanying lt, anot e . anothe r text is inscribed whic h has the mle "Borderlin es" ['ournol debord : sh ip 's jou rnal or log]. Both were wruten by jacqu es Derefda and bothwere mea nt lrom the first to be translated. The wager is the following: Thenote. "Borderlines," wntten in a stenutelegraphic style. tends lby principleand by co ntract] towa rd the greatest polIsib!ll trans!llillbilit y. "Llvlng On ," onthe ethe r hand , whic h is th e ch ief or principa l text , puts int o motion anenigmatic and d is jointed wrUi"K where the "u nr" pl"fls"ntahle" Is In force­an d th is. precisely. by mean s of the redt or 111" perl ormetive . Thesetwo textsplay at th e lim its of the everyda y conce pt of transla tio n: the note cann ot betota lly trans latable ["Iotally tren elata ble.' says the narretc r. " i t disappears liS aI"",t"): just as "Living On " ca nno t remain rxun plutely untranslatable [vtotally

118 Roundtoble on Tronslation

tion is the following: How, in effect. does one text read an­other? By proposed contract, your ship's log- "Borderlines"­promises, just like some translati ng language or translatormetal anguage, to aim for the greatest possible translatability.Be that as it may, it nevertheless tends toward a distortion ofthe initi al contract, and in the end you say as much. You donot keep your promise. since the double band reproduces thesuppleme ntary trait of this structure and gives rise to a lesson(to your tran slators). This lesson is not in the form of a reve la­tion of a parad igm. but rather of a cross-reference to the net­work of texts which are living by means of what you call"Jiving on" [sur-vie], and living on only because they are atonce translatable an d untranslatable. You say that if you arecontinuing to speak of "texts" instead of making reference to adifferential network. an indefinite movement of traces refer­ring back to other differential traces. it is partly for stra tegicreaso ns. I wonder if the force of thi s strategy does not comefrom maintaining divisions that are always both arbitrary andnonarbitrary. I say th is because it see ms to me that writing- inthe sense you give to the term---draws at least part of its con­testatory force from that whi ch it contests: the institution .Benjam in writ es: ''There is no muse of philosophy, nor isthere one of translation . But despite the cla ims of sentimentalartists, these two are not ban ausi c. For there is a philosophicalgenius that is characterized by a yearni ng for that languagewhich manifests itself in translati on s." Just as one could pro­pose , as Claude Levesque did yes terday, that Derrida is to befou nd somewhe re "derriere 1e rldec u" in the fort/do , makingallusion to the text entitled "Freud 's Legacy." couldn't one

umranalatable .. . the text dies immediately"). Although the typographic lron­lter ootwtM!n the nole and the text seems d ear CUI. one comes 10 realize that il15 destined 10 00 cons tantly overrun. The same is true of its corollary: thedivision which Is marked between the criticol (the translallnll metelenguugeor the nOlll) and the ceccnsn ucnve (the play of writing in "Living On," whichoverflows in the direct ion of dissemination). II is. moreover, the coupling ofthe terms "deconstruction" and "criticism" that gives the whole volume listitle.

Roun dtable on Translation 119

also propose the hypothesis that , in the series of coup les("Living On/Borderlines"; The Tri ump h of l.ifelDeath Sen­tence ; the narrator and the woma n in Blanchet's Death Sen­tence ; and, fina lly. the most extraord inar y couple of all. thetwo women separated by the partitioning of the two parts ofthe latter text ). one finds. in a ce rta in manner . the staging ofthe poss ibility and impossibility of wr iti ng in the notion ofread ing as an act of tran slation ? In the same text already men­tioned. Ben jami n writes :

Fra gment s of an am p ho ra wh ich are to 00 glued together mustmatch one an other in the sm allest detai ls, although they need not belike one another. In the sa me wa y a translation. ins tead of re semblingthe meaning of the original. must loving ly and in detail incorporatethe original's mode of sign ifica t ion, thus making bo th th e origina land the translation recogni za ble as fragments of a greater language.just as fragments are part of an amphora .

As an insti tuting ru le. I was taught at school to avoid whatwere ca lled false friends. that is. a word that is the same intwo languages bu t wh ose mea ning is d ifferent. In an altogetherdifferent context, might one not suggest to you the followi ng.slightly mad hypothesis: Your remark in "Living On" abou tthe two women wh o, perhaps. love each other across the parti ­tion of the two parts of the text-these two aphonic voicestelephoning each other, just like your two texts which com­municate only by telegraph- takes up a positi on analogous tothat of false friends doing what one must not do on the basisof an unconsciou s and imperceptible structure of the reclt.Among all these reclts. yours as well as those of Blanchet. thatint errogate so rad icall y the hermeneutic process of interpre ta­lion, what has becom e of that translat ion problem announcedas the program in "Plato's Pharmacy"-the problem of thepassage into philosop hy?

Ja cques Ders-ida: Reply

The program of the passage into philosophy signifies in thiscontext, it seems to me, that the ph ilosophical operat ion, if it

120 Roundtable on Trans/aUon

has an originali ty and specifici ty, defines itself as a project oftran slation . More precisely, it defines itself as the fixation of acerta in concep t and pro ject of tran slation. What does philoso­phy say? Let's imagine that it's possible to ask such a ques­tion : What does phil osophy say? What does the philosophersay when he is being a philosopher? He says: What matters istruth or meaning. and since meaning is before or beyond Ian­guege. it follows tha t it is tran slatable. Meaning has the com­manding role. an d consequent ly one must be able to fix itsunivocality or. in any case, to master its plurivocaltty. J£ th isplu rivoca lity can be mastered , then translation . understood asthe transport of II semantic content into another signifyingform. is possible. There is no philosophy unless translation inthis latte r sense is possible. Therefore the thesis of philosophyis translatab ility in th is common sense, that is, as the transferof a meaning or a trut h from one language to ano ther withoutany essentia l harm being done. Obvious ly, th is project or thisthes is has taken a certain nu mber of forms wh ich one couldlocate th roughou t the history of philosop hy from Plato to He­gel. pass ing by way of IGottfried Wilhelm) Leibnitz. This ,then. was what I thought of as the passage into philosophy,the program of tran slation . Th e origin of philosophy is transla­tion or the thesis of translatability. so that wherever transla­tion in this sense has failed , it is nothing less than phil osophythat finds itself defeated . Thi s is precisely what I tried 10 dealwith in "Plato's Pharmacy" by means of a certain number ofword s such as phormak on. whose body is in itself a constantchalle nge to phil osophy. Philosophical d iscou rse cannotmaster a word meaning two things at the same lime and whichtherefore cannot be translated without an essentia l loss.Whether one trans lates pharmakon as "poison" or "remedy,"whether one comes down on the side of sickness or health.life or death , the undecidabili ty is going to be lost. So, pJHJr­mokcn is one of the limit s . one of the verbal forms-but onecould cite man y others and many other forms- marking thelimit of ph ilosophy as translati on.

I noticed tha t when Benjam in, in the first passage you reed .

_____________ Roundlable on Translation 121

speaks of phil osophical genius, he makes use of a word thatdoes not belong 16 his language: "tngentum.' In the Frenchtranslation of Benjamin. Mauri ce de Gandillac notes at thebottom of the page: .. 'Jngenlum,' Latin word meaning, et cet­era." In other words. he was obliged to trans late a word Beula­min left in Latin . Right after "Ingentum,' there is the [Ste­phane ) Mall arme text in French. which Ben jamin does nottranslat e because he knows that Mell arme is untranslatable.These utterances of Mel larme that say Babel. utterances I can­not reconstitu te by heart. Ihese superb texts speak the Babe­lian situations: "ces tongues imporfailes en cela que piu­sleurs. et cetera ." • Thi s syn tax is untranslatable and Ben jaminknows it, so he leaves Matlerme's language intact in his owntext. The result is that when Gand illac translates Ben jamininto French and leaves Mallarme once again intact, this latterMall arme is no longer the same . Benjam in left it intact in aGerman context. but by reproducing it in the French transla­lion one reproduces another example of the situation men­tioned above .

Since we are talk ing about "Living On" (I don 't knowwhether I will come back to the text to which I gave that title:I would rather insist on what Ben jamin calls "living on" in hisown text and whi ch is a central conce pt there). it happ en s thatBenjamin says substantia lly that the structure of an original issurvival. what he calls " Oberleben," A text is original insofaras it is a thing, not to be confused with an organic or a physi­cal body. but a thing. let us say. of the mind , meant to survivethe death of the author or the signatory , an d to be above orbeyond the physical corpus of the text. and so on. The struc­ture of the original text is surv ival. Here. Ben jamin has re­course to a certa in numbe r of Hegelian -type sentences to ex­plain why one must understand Iife-"Lcben"-not all thebasis of what we know in general about organic. biologicallife, but , on the contrary. on the basis of the life of the mind ,that is. life that rises above nature and is in its essence survi-

"<These impllr fl'!C1 tOll gut!~ ,l mllt.rftl(:t in thet they am seve ral.. ,"- Tr.

•

J22 Roundtable on Tra nslation

vc E.JJLI,I ndejstand a .toxLali3n.....Qrigi[l.',lL l$_lQ....UfldcJstan<l j L_ Indepen dently, oUJsJ.ivi ng condi tions-the cond itions. obvi­

ous IY:.!Jf its author·s_.!ife-and to understand it insteadJ!1J.ts __ su,:".iving structur:£:...At times he says " Uberleben" and at other

times "Fcrt teben." These two words do not mean the sameth ing l"Uberleoon" means above life and therefore survival assomething rising above life; "Fcrtleben" mean s survival in thesense of something pro longing life). even though they aretrans lated in French by the one word "survl vrev lto survive. tolive an i. wh ich already poses a problem . Given the survlvtngstructure of an origina l text-always a sacred text in its ownway insofar as it is a pure original- the task of the translator isprecisely to respond to thi s demand for survival wh ich is thevery structure of the original text. (Notice Ben jamin does notsay the task of tran slation but rather of the translator. that is.of a subject who finds himlherseU immediately indebted bythe existence of the original, who must submit to its law andwho is duty-bound to do something for the origina L) To dothis. says Benjamin. the translator must neither reprodu ce.represent. nor copy the original. nor even, esse ntia lly. careabout communicoling the meani ng of the or iginal. Translationhas noth ing to do wit h rece ption or communication or ininr­mation. As Christie McDon ald has just pointed oUI.J he)ra l!!:­lator must assure the survival. ~~hichjs.JV(JLl~JP'QI~l h. ofthe...,g.dginaL.. Tran slation augments and mod ifies the origina l.wh ich . insofar as it is living on. never ceases to be tran s­formed and to grow. .1t modifies the original even aa.It .alsc

_ l!!!Ldifics.J hc.Jranslating language. This process- transform ingthe original as well as the translation-is the translat fcn con­tract betw een the origina l and the tran slating text. In th is con­tract it is a ques tion of neither represe ntation nor reprodu ctio nnor communication; rath er. the contract is destined to assure asurvival. not onl y of a corpus or a text or an au thor but oflanguages. Benjamin explains that translation reveals in someway the kinshi p of langueges-,-a kinship that is 110 1 In btl U )Jl­

celved in the man ner of histor ical linguislics or 0 11 the basis ofhypotheses about language famili es. lind so forth . It is a kin-

_____________ Roundt able on Tr anslation 123

sh ip of another ord er. as Ben jam in explains several times. Onemust not th ink about the life or the survival of a wor k on thebasis of what we beli eve to be life in general. nor about thekinsh ip of the famili es of lan guages on the basis of what webelieve to be kinship or fami lies in general. On the contrary. itis on the basis of languages and relations among languagesthat one must begin to understand what "life" and "kinshi p"mean. How. then. can trans lati on assure the growth- what heca lls " the hallowed growth"--of languages and the kinsh ipamong languages? By trying to fulfill that imposs ible contractto reco nstitute. not the original. but the larger ensemble that .precisely. is gathered together here in the metap hor of theamphora- the "m etamphora." That is. as in any symbolon. asin any symbolic system. it is a question of reconstituting awh ole on the basis of fragmen ts that became separated at themoment of the agreement. both of the parties taking a piece ofthe symbolon into their keeping. What one must try to do is torecon stitute a symboJon. a symbolic allia nce or wedding ringbetween languages. but reconstitute it in such a way that thewhole of the sym boJon will be greater than the original itselfand. of course. than the translation itself. However . th issimple growt h of languages. wh ich aims to complete and ex­tend each lan guage. supposes its own limit: the sacred text.

Thi s im possible possibility nevertheless holds out the prom­ise of the reco nci liation of tongues. li enee the messianic char­acter of translati on. The event of a translation. the performanceof all translati ons . is not that they succeed. A translation neversucceeds in the pure and abso lute sense of the ter m. Rath er. atran slation succeeds in prom ising success . in promising recon ­cili ation . There are translations that don't even manage to pro­mise, but a good tran slation is one that enacts that performattveca lled II promise with the result that th rough the translationc ue sees the coming shape of II possible recon ciliation amon glanguages. It is then that one has the sense or the presentimentof what language itself is-"d ie reln e Spmche." Pure language.says Benja min . is not one which has been purified of anything:rather. it is wh at makes a language II language. what makes for

124 Roundtable on Translatio n

the fact that there is language. A translation puts us not inthe presence but in the presentim ent of what "pu re lan­guage" is , tha t is, the fact th at there is language. that len­guage is language. This is what we learn from a translation .rather than th e mean ing contai ned in the translated text.rather than this or that part icular meaning. We learn th atthere is language. that language is of lan guage. and that thereis a pluralit y of languages wh ich have that kinship with eac hother coming from their being languages. This is what Benja­min ca lls pu re language. "di e reine Sprcche." th e being-lan­guage of language. The promise of a translation is that whichannounces to us th is being-language of language: there is lan­guage, and beca use there is something like language. one isboth able and un able to translate.

One more remark , but it is neit her an answer nor a commen­tary-just a freestyle gloss on Deet h Sentence. It hap pens thatin Death Sen tence one of the two women d ies. As you know.the book is divided int o two absolutely or ap parently indepen­de nt reclts. In each case, the narrator (but it is not eve n certainthat the one who says "I" is th e same in both parts ) hasfanned a couple-s-a very curious couple-with a woman. Let'sjust leave it at that. In the second case . the woma n happens tobe a tran slator. and he has a relatio n to her that is cur ious inman y respects, only one of wh ich I need mention here. She isa transla tor whose mother tongue is a foreign language---aSlavic language-that he doesn't know very well. When, fromtime to time. he wants to say irres pon sible th ings to her.things that . as he says, do not pu t him under any obligation­when he wants to have fun or say fooli sh things to her that arenot bind ing on him- he speaks to her in her language, At thatmoment he is irrespons ible , because it is the other 's language.He can say anythi ng at all. since he does nol assume responsi­bil ity for what he says . (Or , to come back to RodolpheCasche's quest ion , let' s say that when I speak French . I amperhap s washing my hands of everything I say because it isn'tmy tongue; if one is not responsible when aile spea ks theother's tongue, one is let off the hook in advance.) One finds

Roundtable on Translation J25

oneself in th e followin g paradox ica l situation. which alsoseems to me to be paradigmatic : You can on ly enter into acontract. a hy men. an esse ntial alliance. if you do so in yourown tongue. You're only responsi ble. in other words. for whatyou say in you r own mother tongue. If, however, you say itonly in your ow n tongue. th en you're still not committed ,because you mu st also say it in the other's language. An agree­ment or obligati on of wh atever sort-a pro mise. a marr iage, asacred alliance-<:an only take place, I would say. in transla­lion , that is. only if it is simultaneously utt ered in both mylongue and th e other 's . If it takes place in on ly one tongue.whether it be mine or th e other's, th ere is no contract possible.When the narrator speaks to her. a translator. in hor language,Slavic, he is not responsible: he can say anything whateverand it is not bi nding on him. If he wanted to speak only in hislongue, she would not be bound either, and she would notacknowledge receipt. In orde r for th e contract or the allia nceto take place, in order for the "yes. yes" to take place on bothsides. it must occ ur in two languages at once. Now, one maythink of these two languages "at once" as being two nation allanguages , for example French and Slavic. and that's the easi­est way to understand it. But it ca n also be two tongues withinthe sa me language, for example you r French and my French ,wh ich are obvious ly not the same. Thu s, the agree ment. thecontract in general. has to imply the d ifferen ce of languagesrather than transparent tran slatability. a Babelian situationwhi ch is at th e sa me time lessened and left intact . If one cantrans late purely and simply. there is no agree ment. And if onecan't tran slate at all , there is no agree ment either. In order forthere to be an agree ment. there has to be a Babelian situation,so that what I wou ld call the translati on contract- in the tran­scende ntal sense of th is term , let' s say- is the contract itself.Every contract mu st be a tran slation contract. There is no con­tract possible-no soci al contract possible-without a trans­lation contract, bringing with it the paradox I have justmention ed , To continue, th en, in Deat h Sentence the extrac r­dinary situation of these two women , who perhaps draw up a

126 Roundtable on Transla tion

secret contract between the mselves and not only with the nar­rator. is at wor k in the contract as I have just described it. Thiscompli cates the situa tion in finite ly. but I thi nk one mus t referto it.

The expression "false friends." which you cited. exists inFrench as well. but there is another expression in the everv­day code of translation. In school. as one says. one had 10 beon one's guard also against "belles infideJes" (beautifu l. faith­less ones). These belles infideJes are the same as false friends.that is. apparently correct tran slati ons that in fact lay a trap.

Euge nio Donalo: Specular Translation

I am somewhat at a loss follow ing my colleagues RodolpheGasch e and Chr istie McDona ld , who have already covered thegrou nd of the several rema rks I wa nted to propose to you . Thus.I will be extremely brief. In fact. I am not going 10 ask a ques­tion, but rather will simply propose severa l signposts for a pos­sib le iti nerary by mea ns of ce rta in quotations from Derrida .

Have we not in a certain way always thoug ht-and for thoreason that Jacques Derrida just gave in res ponse to ChristieMcDonald-that a perfect Iran slat ion . if possible. has its onlyposs ibility in the ph iloso phic text wh ere the text is effaced 01its own accord, and that the philosopher, in the Hegeliansense , is the horizon of the literary text? The very const itutionof meaning in the text wou ld im ply that there is a horizon ofposs ible translation with a subject. In fact , I beli eve oneshould also put in qu estion the tran slator- subject. We alwayspostulate an ideal subject who will one day perh aps masterthe two languages and make them communicate with eachother in an identity that would efface the path of the sign (orthe path of the trans lation as the path of the sign). Hence. thewhole problematic of the ground covered by translutton lif itis isomorphic wit h the path of the sign) should fall within thecritique Derrida has do ne of the sign in the relatio n of ph iloso­ph y to literature and of thai remainder which must alwaysremain and in habit every text.

_____________ Roundtab le on Translation 127

From th is. then . I postulat e, on the one hand . that the neces­sity of poss ible translati on is the necessity and the impossibil ­Itv at the same time of the autotrans lation of each text by itself;and . on the other hand , that tra nslation is only the possibility oftranslation, on ly the possibility or im possibility of every text'sself-specu lation by itself. It will not surprise us tha t Hegel. forexam ple, says in The A estheucs that poetry is defined by beingalways translatable. It' s not sur prisi ng, after Derri da's ana lysesof Hegel. that it would be Hegel who sa id that. If ph ilosophy istranslatable, poetry is all the more so, because poetry. as hedefines it. is subordinated to ph ilosophic meaning. 10 a "Be­deutung" already comprehend ing itself.

The second stage I wanted to propose was once again on thesubject of Heidcgger. I want to come bad: to a lext of Heideg­ger's in order at least to suggest that . in Heideggcr. the Hegeliangesture remai ns all the same, perhaps in spit e of everyth ing .insc ribed in this problem of translation. Unfortunately, I don 'thave the text here, but I was thi nking of that first paragraph in"Ocr Spruch des Anaximander" ("The Anaximander Frag­ment"], where Heid egger says more or less that, in order tospeak th is origina l speec h. the origi nal speech which speaksthe origin . we mus t do an "Dbersetzung," a tran slati on, et cet­era. It is inte resting to note here that the word "Dbersetaung"has a double etymology in German and thu s a somew hatstronger semantic fi eld , since one of the senses of "Uberset­zung" (trans lation. metaphor, transfer ) is to leap over an abyss .Thus it poses both the abyss dividing things in two and at thesame time the possibili ty of leaping over the abyss. The textcontinues and in the same paragraph. begin ning with thi s pos­sible translati on, the opposition appears betwee n language andthought. This op position , which is perhaps still an echo of aHegelian prob lemat ic, is always there to the extent to which hesays , "Dlchten Ist denk en" ]"!« make poet ry is 10 think "]. If oneverifies the etymology of the word "dlcht en" in Ding's dict io­nary (wh ich is justi fi ed insofar es Heldeggcr ventures intoetymological considerations), O IlC realizes thai "dtchte n" alsomeans "to th ink ," and thus one remains within the circle of the

128 Roundtable on Translation

opposition betwee n "d ichten " and "d enken," wh ile at thesame time it comes down to the proposition "denken is!denken ." Beginn ing with the problem of translation , Heideggerposes a necessary and irrec onci lable doubleness , but at thesame time he maintains an ambiguity in the terms that createthe opposition engendering this doubleness.

Returning to the thought of Jacques Derrida, one becomesaware that the problem has been radi calized . In "Borderlines,"we read;

"One never writes either in one 's own language or in a foreign lan­guage.... Dbersetaung and "translation" overcome, equ ivocally, inthe course of an equ ivocal combat, the loss of an object. A text livesonly if it lives on, and it lives on only if it is at once translatable andunt ranslatable {always "at once ... and . . .': hama , at the same time}.Totally translatable, it disapp ears as a text, as writing, as a body oflanguage. Totally unt ranslatable, even within what is believed to beone language, it dies immediately. Thus triumphant translation isneithe r the life nor the death of the text, only or already its living on,ils life after life , its life after death. The same thing will be said ofwhat I call writin g, mar k, trace, and so on. It neither lives nor dies; itlives on. And it "starts" only with living on (testament , ilerabilit y,remain ing [restcnce], crypt, detachment that lifts the strictures of the"living" rect io or direct ion of an "author" not drowned at the edge ofhis text).

I would thus propose quite simply that ther e is perhaps workto be done here if it is true th at th e concept of translation,such as it has been thought of in a certain philosophic tradi­tion , is still marked by the concept of speculatio n. In fact , onecan un derstand Derrlde's mistrust with regard to certain con­cepts such as the mise en ubtme" (in "Freud's Legacy," yousay that you mistrust the mise en abfme), since it remainswithin th e specu lativ e movement. Translati on ca n be thou ghtof as a speculative mise en cbtme of each text. Conversely, itwou ld be necessary to think about translation's topology in

"See above, p.6 2.

Roundtable an Tran slation 129

th e complete ly different ter ms that Derr ida proposes to us,that is, the possibili ty of inva gination, in which nothingwould remain but edges or borders.

If I may, I will concl ud e with a piece of whimsy. I am goingto try to tran slate the pro blem of tran slation in function of theproblematic of the dead fath er. the living mother, and so on . Ifthe problem of tran slation is lin ked to the probl em of thematernal tongue, thu s to the living language, wou ldn 't thedead father in this tableau occupy the place of cons titutedmean ing, wh ich wou ld only be constituted by the loss of theobject . th e murder of the object in that typicall y Hegelian ges­ture? If so, th en, trans lati ng invagina lion in fun ction of theprob lematic of the living mother and the dead father, I wonderwhether the following formu lation wou ld not be possib le: Thetear in the mother 's living bod y must always give bir th to andmust always abort the memory of the father who is alwaysdead.

Jacques Derrida: Reply

You'll have to give me time to take in that last formu lat ion. Iwill simply converse with the motif of the Hegel-Hetd eggerdia logue. I too am aware of the possibilit y of a Hegelian repctl­tion in Heldegger's d iscourse, but, paradoxically, instead ofsee ing it from the angle of ph ilosophica l translatab ility-orrather. instead of pu lling Heidegger in the dir ection of Hegel­per haps inversely one cou ld pu ll Hegel in the direct ion ofHeidegger . That is , one cou ld remark certain utterances inHegel concern ing precisely the possibility of speculation, ofspecu lative language and a certa in nu mber of words in theGerman language wh ich Hegel says arc naturally specu lativeand , in a certa in way, untra nslatab le. (There's a whole list ofwords that Hegel used in decisive passages and abou t whichhe remarks tha t they belon g to the good fortune of the Germantongue, which is, in these particular words, naturally "specu­lative.") Thus, when Hegel says "Aufhebung'' or "Urte H" or"Beispiel," he is clearly markin g a certain untranslatability of

130 Roundtable on Translation

these words. The word "o ufheben ' mean s at once to conserveand to suppress . and thi s do uble signification can not be trans­lated by a s ingle word into other languages. One can interpret.one can find analogues . but one cannot translate purely andsimply. At the point where the word "Aufhebung" is pro­duced in the German tongue. there is something untranslat­able. and far from being a limit on specu lation . it is the chancefor speculation. Thus. when lIegel writes " Aujhebung." whenhe makes use of "Aufhebung" as a word in a natura l languagewh ich is supposed to be naturally specu lative . at that momentone is dealing with something that goes toward Heideggerrather than Hcidegger moving toward Hegel.

On the subject of "Dlch ten -Denken." Heidegger of courseassociates them. as you have said . But there are also textswhere he says very precisely that. whil e "Dicht en-Denken "go together and fonn a pair. they are parallels that never meet.They run para llel one beside the other . They are really otherand can never be confuse d or tran slated one into the other.Yet. as para lle l paths. "d tchten " and "denken' neverth elesshave a relation to each other whi ch is suc h that at places theycut across each othe r. They are parallels that intersect . as para·doxica l as that may see m. By cutt ing across each other. theyleave a mark . they cut out a notch . And th is language of thecut or break is marked in the text of Heidegger's I'm thinkingof: Unterwegs zu r Sprcche (The \Vay to Lcnguoge]. They donot wound each other. but each cuts across the other. eachleaves its mark in the other even though they are absolutelyother. one bes ide the other. para llel. There is also. therefore. atrend in lIeidegger emphasizing the irreducibility of "Dich­ten -Denk en" and thus thei r nonpermutebillty.

Forgive these remarks. If I may say so. your remarks did notcall for an answer, I can on ly add thai I will try to let yourfinal sentence reso nate .

Frunccis Peraldi : False Sense

Three remarks occu rred to me as I was reading your intro­duction to Nicolas Abraham's "The Shell and the Kernel." I

Roun d table on Transla tion 131

want to share them with you with out knowing whether theywi ll constitute a question in the proper sense or no t. In effec t,they tend perhap s to constitute a kind of interrogative sup po ­sition and to remain on thi s side of a question .

First remark: In a nice litt le text that has already been men­tioned here. Jakobson defines the th ree aspects of translation:intralin gual tran slation . interlingualtranslation (or trans lationprope rly spea king). and tn tersemiottc translation . I ca n't helpthinking that psychoanalytic tran slation works like a kind ofintralingua l translation whose function would be the em pty.ing out of meaning. Thus. in the passage from. or the transla­tion of. pleasure into " pleasure " into Pleasu re. whi ch youpoin t out in your text. the same word . pleasure. returns and"is translated into a code where it has no more mean ing:' thesignifier remaining un changed except for the capita l letter(which is not insigni fican t). I was reminded here of the role ofthe capita l letter in Charles Sanders Peirce.

Second remark: In anothe r text where he shows how thephonetic sys tem beco mes constituted for the child accordingto a rigorous and quas i-universa l order of impli cation [lebtals,den tals . posterior occlusives. fricatives. and-the emblem ofvirile speech-the apical r], Iakobson demonstrates-if that'sthe word-the validity of his litt le ed ifice by remarking that incerta in cases of aphas ia. the destruction of the phonic ed ificefollows the inverse order of its acquisition. That is. it follows akind of reversal of the original order of implication that endsup at an ultimate and last word. the last that the aphasic canutter . a kind of "rnmma-mmma, ma-rna." before sinking intothe gurgling s ilence of complete aphasia.

Third remark: Read ing your introduction. therefore. I fol­lowed with interest the order of heterogeneous conversions ofthe same word in the same language that arrives finally at thepsychoa nalytic tran slation. This translation itself ends up at adiscourse that "u sing the same words (those belonging to ordi­nary language and those. bracketed by inverted commas. be­longtng to phenomenology) quotes them once more in order tosay something else. something else than sense." As I read. itoccurred to me that there existed in the psychoanalytic world a

132 Roundtable on Translation

process that is just the reverse of this one. That is. just as apha­sia manifests itself by a kind of dissolution of the phonic ap­para tus. a destructuring reversal of the order of imp licationprevailing in the acquisition of phonemes. one could say thatthere exists a kind of aphasia or ideological destruction of psy­choanalytic d iscourse . This destruction . which proceeds underthe auspi ces of what Lacan has named the SAMCDA (Mutual AidSociety Against Analytic Discour se). follows a reversal of theorder of those conversions that . start ing out from ordinary d is­course. end u p at psychoa nalytic discourse. passing by way ofphenomenology. This reversal is a kind of turning insid e out ofthat tran slating operation which ends up at the anasemic orantisemantic terms of psychoa na lytic discourse. Basically whatyou have then is a rephenomena lization of the di scourse. aresemanti cization and a reconstruction of what the psychoane­lytic translation had-perhaps-deconstructed.

I would like to give an example of thi s process and . of course.it comes from a text by the famous "New York Trio": Hein zHartman . Ernst Krts. and Rudolph Loewenstein. The trio. forreasons it would surely be fascinating to study. has found itselftaking on the role of the collective agent (or agents) of thi sresemanti cizing operation of the Freud ian discour se at theheart of the North American psychoanalytic establishment.

In an article written in 1949 and entitled "The Theory ofAggression." the th ree authors confide that they don 't knowwhat to do with the Freudian theory of the death instinct.which- in other words- makes no sense in their reading ofFreudia n metapsychology. In effect. they say (and they aregoing to be playing on the register of interlingual tran slati onin a man ner that is at the very least equ ivocal), the instincts.which they distinguish from drives. are an object for biology.whereas drives and only drives constitute psychoanalytic no­ttons. They op pose aggressive dr ives to the deeth inst inctwh ich . beca use it is an instinct. they leave to biology and toFreud 's biologizing spec ulations.

There is a surprising tran slation mistake here. a false sense.to be precise. In Beyond the Pleasure Princi ple. where he in-

Roundtable on Translation 133

troduces the question of death in a new form. Freud does nottalk abou t a death instinct (whi ch in German would be TodesInsttnk t). but of Tode Trtebe. which. strictly spea king, couldonly be translated as "death drives" in English . Thu s. by keep­ing only the external manifesta tions (the aggressive drives ) ofth is anasem ic concept par excellence. our three aut hors have.one may say. rephenomenalized . rescmantlctzed the psycho­analytic di scourse at the very point where Freud was leadingthem towa rd one of those anasemic terms that arc essential tothe constitution of th is psychoanalytic discourse. Thi s diver­gence in the translati on . this false sense . is all the more inter­esting in that. several pages later. the authors are careful toemphasize the difference between drives. which is the transla­tion of the German Triebe . and Insu nct. wh ich translates theGerman Instinkt.

The destiny of psych oanalytic discourse is being played outin this sleight of hand . thi s complex playing of translationeffects and of meaning attr ibuted to the translating operation.The survival of that di scou rse de pend s on what meaning wi llbe assigned to the trans lation confli cts traversing it . But inwhat di rection or what sense?

Jacques Derrida : Reply

Here. once again. I can acknowledge receipt but I have noresponse. So I'll begin by the freest association on the subjectof what you said about an eventual deconstitution or a regres­sion of psychoanalytic discourse toward a kind of aphasia,according to the well-know n motif of regression: pathology asregress ion that reverses the orde r of acquisition and ends up atthe mere proterrtng of "mama." the word that in some waywould be at once the first to be acquired and the last in theregress ion. In the Joyce text I made allusion to here ear lier.there is a long sequence of two very rich pages where. at theend of the terrib le story of Babel. the last word is somethinglike "mummummum . .." (I can 't vouch for the spe lling, butit's someth ing like that) . It mean s mama. mutism. the murm ur

134 Roun dtable on Trans/orion

that will not come out. the minimum of voca llzatlon. And .obvious ly. it confronts the oth er counterpart in the pa tern alwar. One has both the struc tur ing of language. beginning withthe fath er 's name. and then the final . ap has ic regression or thefirst word "mummum . . ." This is a free association on Finne­guns Wake. It may be that the worldwide psychoanalytic (J5 -

tablt sbment is on its way toward "mummum . . .' .Anothe r association. which is a bit more than an association.

conce rns what you said about psychoanalytic translation as anintralingual ph enomenon in th e Iakobsont an sense. Yes. it' svery tem pting to say. for exa mple. in the context in whichNico las Abraham ta lks about anesemla (that is. in the co ntex t ofmetapsychology or the discourse of analytic theo rization}. thatthe word Pleasure or Unconsci ous is an Intr allngua l trans lationof th ese words as they arc commonly used. One translates plea­sure into a homon ym. Pleasure. bu t the homonym is already atranslati on of the hom onym and a translating interpretation .Things no longer work quite so sim ply. however. wh en onereca lls tha i th e hypothesis of anase mia claims to return to thtsside of meani ng. In an intra lingual in terpretat ion or translatio n.on tho other hand . the two words or two equiva lent s havemeaning; one explains. ana lyzes. or clarifies the other. hut bvgoing from meaning to moani ng. It is thus a semantic operation.an operation of semantic transform ation or equivalence. In ana­semi a. however. the ca pitali zed word is in some way withoutmea ning. It is before meaning. if th at is possibl e and if Abrahamis correct . The anasemic word has no meani ng and does notbelong to the se mantic order; it is asemanlic or prcsemanttc. IIis not rea lly par i of lan guage in the sense in which the word s ofan intra lingual transform ation are all equally part of language.Moreover . accordi ng to Abraham . there is in anasemla. in ana­lytic translati on . and in the ana lytic usc of language a kind ofshift or departure from th e eve ryda y ord er of language whic hcons tantly disloca tes the normal order of language. B}' mea ns ofthe sam e wor ds . the anascmtc shift would say. not somethi ngutt erl y different . but rather that condi tion on whi ch the every­day words of language acquire mean ing. It would btl a very

Roundtoble on Tra nsloUon 135

irregular type of translation. since it would be an interp retationgoing back to the cond itions of possib ilit y. not of such-and­such a meaning. but of meaning in general. This anasemic reas­cent mu st he Involved in order for the re to he mean ing. Goingbac k toward wha t is preoriginary-not in the phenomenologi­ca l sense of going back to the origina l mea ning of a word . aconcept. et ce tera . bu t in thi s case toward the preoriginary- inthi s sense. it would be the fundament al translation beginni ngwith wh ich meaning in genera l could be produced . However. itwould he intralingual in appearance only. that is. only accord­ing 10 th e hom onymic disguise.

Eugene Vance: Trans lation in the Past Perfect

Duri ng yesterday' s discussion . Jacques Derrida spoke sev­eral limes of hermeneutics in the "class ical" or " tradit ional"sense of the term. 10 usc his words. J have the impression thatDerr ida meant by th at a herm eneutic tradition going back onlyto a relative ly rece nt period. th e one that saw the inaugura­tion . in [Friedrich) Schleiermacher and [w llhelml Dtlthcy. ofa grundoi sc project of un derstandi ng Understa nd ing itself .vcrs tehcn in all its majesty.

In Dllth ey. Versl eh en is th e systematic return either to akernel of ori ginal meaning occulted by the effects of lime. orto a sublime meaning that ca n he expressed on ly wi th d iffi­culty in " lite ral" terms. Th e privileged instrument of thi s her­meneutic is th e science of philology.

Dilthey's reflections are situated at the davvning of the mod­ern un iversity . a roma ntic insti tution whose "recuperative"mandate remains more or less unchan ged with two excep­tions : The movements of regression have now become un ­thinking habit s sus ta ined by a vague feeling of nostalgia. andthe quest for "o rigins" has come to be rep laced by the queslfor inert kinds of eru d ition. Phil ology. except in Germany andItaly. has lost its former specu lative di mension .

To thi s degraded hermeneu tic . Dcrr tda wa nts to oppose akeen sense of hea rin g-that of the "li ll ie ear"--opcni ng ont o a

136 Roundtable on Tra nslation

new, affirm ative productiv ity. He has made it d ear to us thatth is is what he meant to say w hen in the past he used the term"deco nstruction: ' a term he now seems to have more or lessrepudiated .

Everyone knows that the term " hermen eutic" has had diff er­ent connotations throughout its lo ng history, As lean Pepinhas pointed out ('"L'Hermeneutique ancienne ," Poeuque 231,in Greek thought the term hermen eio sign ified not so mu chthe ret urn, by way of exeges is. to a kernel of hidden meaningwithin a she ll , but more the act of extro vers ion by the vo ice .the natural instrument of the so ul. It is a n ac ttvc and pro­pheti c producti vity which is not conno ted by the Latin termlnterpretnuo . For the Gree ks. the poetic performa nce of rhap­sodes was a " hermeneutic" pe rfo rmance .

Likewise , Sa in t Paul wi ll sa y to the Christia ns thai it is noteno ug h for th e faithful who ar e possessed by God 's truth to"s pea k in tongues: ' This truth must be uttered in a hermen eu ­tic act (d ierme neue in l that will make it com pre he ns ib le evento the uninitiated ,

I a m insisting on th ese se mantic nuances in order to unde r­score my co nv iction that. when we try to delimit the motif of"tran slation: ' we are dea ling with a term that has becom egrea tly impoverished today, Amo ng the remed ies we have atour d isposal is that of reinstating a semantic hor izo n whichwas much more vas t at other moments of West ern culture, I'ma ll for trying to ex te nd as far as possib le the modern con ce ptof translat ion. However. our langu age is but the wak e of a longhistory, And if we do not take thi s hi stor y int o acco unt, thenthe deba te among "modern th inker s" may become sti fling,

Accordi ng to Gta nfra nco Folena . the French word tmd uc­lion as we ll as the Italian troduzi one arc neo logism s of civ ichuman si m at th e beginning of the fourteen th cen tury,* Thisterm d isp laced the terms Interpret nuo a nd truns/olio prevalent

." ' Vu l~<lri1.1.l1rfl'S' IJ ' t rad urre' " in La Iro<luz iOill': SU,lIJ( i t' stud i. I'(\. centroper 10 stud io dellInsegnumentc all'est..ro dellItallann. lJniv"l'liitil \ 1,,~ 1i shuliti ll T r illsl lJ [Trieste: Lint. 1973). PI). S9 - 120.- T r.

Roundtable on Tra nslaUon J37

during the period . It see ms to me that thi s new term re tncor­po ratcd the notion of an act ive productivity that had bee n leftbehind when the Greek wo rd hermenem was translated byin!erprefolio a nd then later neglected by sc holast lctsm-cex­ccpt perhaps in the "art s of preaching" from the end of theMiddle Ages .

This humanist neo logi sm . mo reover, was the sign of pro­found ideological revisi ons. Th e old post-Ro man and medi evalnotion of history as a tragic process of th e " translation ofem pires" was replaced by a much more affirmative notion oftemporality. Thus. th e translator who brings to his vernacularlan guage treasures from the past-wheth er it be a Bibl e or anencyclo ped ia- now offers hi s fe llow citizens Iingui s~ic n;­sources adeq ua te to initiate pos itive ac tio n in a dynamic urn­verse. The translat or promulgates a politica l becoming , even amaterial prosperity, which is th e natural goa l of the polis. Ifmeaning is supposed to enrich man's mind by circu lating freel yand abundantly in the langua ge of present. lived ex pe rie nce,likewise gold and o the r mat erial goods are supposed to circu ­late-thanks to co mme rce and lmnsportolion- just as bloodhas to ci rcu late in th e body (a frequ ent metaphor in the se ven­tee nth cen tu ry), Isn 't the colo niza tio n of the New World basi­call y a form of trans lati on?

On the level of human psychology, th is process of transla­tion had to take subtler but no less important forms . Th an ks tothe energe ia of speech (a word's ca pac ity to make the image ofa th ing present to the mind ), language can act on ma n 's willan d ind uce him to ac t. Energelc ca n also incite ma n to trans­late anger (iro ) into a lib id inal fo rm (concupiscen tio}. Thispos itive appet ite transport s ma n toward woma n in hymene.a llow ing for a tran slat ion of semen, thanks to which the formsof life succeed each other. Thanatos becomes Eros. Thro ughlibid inal translation , nat ure ma nifests itself. over t ime , in itstota lity .

To refuse translation is to refu se life ,During the Renaissance . tran slators acqui red thei r own Hod.

li e was ca lled Prot e us, Pro teus was the so n of Oceanu s and

J 38 Roundtab le on Transla tion

Neptune. and from the latter he received the gift of proph ecybecau se he kept close watch over the monsters of the sea.Proteu s is the very principle of mutabilit y and transformation ,two pow ers that arc also the glory of man. Through transla­tion , one lived experience is tran slated into another, Proteuscontains Pan. the god of nature, whi ch means that the totalit yof nature \ \-,i11 not be exp ressed otherwise than in diversity.

Yet. Ihis tran slati on of nature into itself. however violent itmay be. is not a redundancy or a simple repe tit ion . It is abecoming, giving rise to the futu re: it is the principle of abun­dance and not of redundancy. In the ci ty. this abundance issu pposed to begin in the princes' di scourses. thereby makingposs ible many other kinds of abundance . Thus. the term copia("abunda nce") rep laced a more peiorat ive termc-cmphfi­ccttoc-ln the rhetorical theory of Erasmu s. author of a rhetori ­ca l manual wh ose title begins with the words "De copia . . ."COpiD is that figural capaci ty of discourse wh ich allows manto express the di versit y of his nature. as well as that of sur­round ing natu re. and even to inaugurate mutations in its be­ing. Withou t cc plc. there is only repetition . Erasmu s says thatrepetition without di versity can be avoided if we acquire thecapaci ty to tran slate a thought (sent entia) into new formsmore num erous than tho se ass umed by Proteus himself.

Jacqu es Derrida said a moment ago tha t the ph ilosoph icaloperation is a process of translation . During the Renaissance.poets considered themselves also to be "translators," not on lyof a poetic legacy from past antiquit y. hut translators whosepoeti c performance was prop hetic in the sense tha t it tnau gu­rated a future. 11 seems to me that the philo sopher JacquesDerrida aspires to something similar. If, however, during theRenaissance, rhetoric and poetry were considered to be thepr ivilege d instrumen ts of human speculation. it was al 11mexpense of philosop hy. If Socrates is a good philosopher . it isbecause first of all he is eloquent : that is. the art of rhetoricmakes Socrates' philosop hical discourse effect ive. For a longli me now in Derrlda's wr itings, there has boon a fascinati onwith the poetic in the broadest sense. In "Plato's Pharmacy,"

Raundlabl p- on Transla tion J 39

poetic di scourse is formally marked, and we cannot avoid be­ing struc k by its intrusion into phil osoph ical d iscourse. If Ginscan be considered a rep resent ati ve work. thi s trail is becomingmore and more pronounced in Derrlda's wr itings.

All of whi ch leads me finally to my question: If poets. likephilosophers. think they arc the best translalors, I would liketo ask wheth er Jacques Dcrrtda the poet is the master or thetra itor of Jacques Dern da the philosopher!

What gives the philosophic message its specificity?

Jacques Derrid a: Reply

Before gell ing to your final questions, I want to say that Isubscribe en tire ly to the necessity you have signa led of reread­ing the history of the words "translation: ' "h ermenetc." andso forth . Thus , I can only subscr ibe to what cons titutes thetotali ty of your present ation up to the end, thank you. and tellyou I am in comp lete agreement. With respect 10 your finalques tions. there may nevertheless be some misunderstan ding.As to whet I was say ing abo ut Ihe relation between philoso­phy and translati on , I did not- -

Eugene Vance

I meant to say, between philosop hy and poetry as translat­ing performances.

Jacques Derrida

Yes , but I did not say that philosoph y was a translati ngperfor mance. I said that the philo sop hic project was the pro­ject of a certa in typo of translation- translatio n interpreted ina certain manner. Tha t's what I meant 10 say in "Plato's Phar­maey" and what I reitera ted just a moment ago. That is, theph ilosophica l act does not consisl in a translati ng perfor­mance in that transformativo or producti ve sense to whic hyou have just referred. Rath er, I was point ing 10 the idea of the

'40 Roundloble on Tra ns la tion

fixation of a certa in concept of translat ion : the idea that trans­lation as the transportation of a mean ing or of a tru th from onelanguage to anot her had to be possib le. that untvocalt ty ispossib le. and so on-the whole class tcal topos. you see. WhenI said that philosophy was the thesis of translatabilit y. I meantit not in the sense of translation as an active. poet ic, produc­tive. transforrnative "h ermenem ." but rath er in the sense ofthe tran sport of a uni vocal meani ng. or in any case of a con­trollab le plurtvoca llty. into anot her linguistic element. In thisregard. I was not at a ll passing myself off as a philosopher. Itwas. rath er. an analysis. One cou ld have done a critique of theph iloso phica l clai m to wh ich I referred rather than praisinganythi ng whatsoever abou t the philoso pher quo translator.This is where there has perha ps been a misunderstand ing.Likewise. I wo uldn't say that I am not at all a philosopher. butthe utte rances I pro liferate arou nd this problem are pu t for­ward from a position ot her than that of philosophy. This othe r 'pos ition is not necessarily that of poetry either . but in anycase it is not the position of philoso phy . I ask questions ofphilosophy. and naturally th is supposes a cer tai n identi fica­tion . a certa in translat ion of myse lf into the body of a ph iloso­pher . Out I do n't fec i that that's wh ere I'm situa ted.

Euge ne Vance

Allow me to rephrase my question . What is the place of aman ifest ly poetic performance in a text such as Glos or"Plato's Pha rmacy "? Do you consider poet ry to he subord i­nated fi nally to phil osophical di scourse, as Paul Rlcoeur. forexample. would cla im?

lacques Uerrid a : lleply

Yes, well, here I wou ld say: Neither one nor the ot her. And Idon', say that to evad e your quest ion easily. l th ink that it textlike GIns is neither philosophic nor poetic. It circulat es be­tween these two genres, trying mean wh ile to produce another

Roundlable on Tra nslation '4'

text which wou ld be of another genre or without gen re. On theother hand . if one insists on defin ing genres at all costs, onecould refer histor ically to Meni ppean satire. to "anatomy" (asin The Ano lomy of Melan choly). or to something like philo­soph ic parod y where all genres-poetry. philosophy, theat er,et cetera-are summoned up at once. Thu s , if there is a genre ,if it is abso lutely necessary for there to be a genre withinwhich to place the likes of Glcs . then I thin k it is someth inglike farce or Menip pean satire . that is , a graft of several genres.I hope irs also someth ing else that doesn 't simply fall undereit her ph ilosoph y or what is ca lled the poetic as both of theseare class ically understood . To do this. of course. I had to inte­grate into thi s corpus lots of limbs and pieces taken from thephilosoph ical discourse. There is a whole book on Hegel: it'sfull of philosophy and literatu re. Mallarme and Genet. Yet Imyse lf do not read the genre of this body as either philosophicor poetic . This means that if your questions were addressed tothe philosopher. I would have to sa}' no. As for me. I talkabout the ph ilosopher , but I am not simp ly a philosop her. Isay th is even though. from an instit ut ional point of view, Ipractice the trade of phil osophy professor (under certain con­di tion s which would have to be closely analyzed) and eventhough I believe that in a given histori cal. politica l situation ofthe university , it is necessary to fight so that somethi ng likephilosophy remains possible. It is in thi s strategic context thaton occas ion I have spoken of ph ilosop hy's usefu lness in trans­lating or deciphering a certa in number of th ings. such as whatgoes on in the med ia. and so on. .

I will add just one more th ing. It' s a min or point in compari­son with the essential part of your presenta tion to whic h, as Isaid, I totally subscribe and whose necessity I believe in . Yourremark about "repud iati ng" deconstruction is a somewhatbruta l tran slat ion of what I said yesterday. I said. with outreally insisting on it. that that word had been some what am­plified beyond the point that I might perhap s have wished. Inspite of that. I have not repudiated it. Moreover, I never repu­diate anything, th rough either strength or weakness. I don't

142 Roun dl oblc on Tro n d a tion

know wh ich : hut . whethe r irs my luck or my naivete, I don 'tthink I h<\\'I1 ever repudiated any thing. What I meant to sayyesterday on the subject of deconstru ction is that the fortune.let' s say . of the word has surprised me. If I had been left a ll tomyself. if 1 had bee n left alone with that word, I would nothave given it as much importance. But fina lly. rightly orwrongly. I sti ll believe in what was bound up with thisword-c-l am not agains t it.

Cla ude Levesque: Th e Exile in Language

It is diffi cult for me to let pass in silence and avoid under­scoring a fact that in itself may be ins ignificant: I am, today asyes terday. the on ly Quebecois who is participating in thisroundtable d iscussion on trans lation. [Isn't Quebec a pr ivi­leged place wh ere an interm inab le case of translati on is beingtr ied and played out, a process of one-way mean ing which. forthat very reason, is a case of do mina tio n and appropriation?This. at least. is not insign ifica nt.) I am also one of the on lyones here (along with Francois Peraldi and perhaps JacquesDerrid a as we ll- I don't kno w) whose maternal tongue isFrench. Yet . as we belong to such different milieux. is it reall ya question of the same language for each of us? Is there such ath ing as the identity of a language? Docs French usage some­where confo rm to the pu rity of an essence or an ideal? Whatcan be said of th e life and death of a language in language?

By underscoring thi s fact , this posit ion of solitude-which.by the wa y. I pu t up with rather well-my so litude at thistab le but more broa dly a solitude at the heart of th e mass ivelyanglophone North Amer ican milieu , I am not trying to claim aprivilege (solitude is ne ither a privilege nor a catastrophe).Nor am I trying to attract an easy, far too easy. sy mpathy orpity for our fntc as Quebecois. for peo ple who speak a lan­guage that has been hu miliated . contam inated , dom inated .and colonized, (wen tho ugh rece nt ly, pe rhap s foreve r. it hasbeen peremp toril y affirmed in its differen ce, its singularity ,and its sove reignty. Rather, I simp ly wa nt to ask a question

Houndlable on Tra ns/a lion 143

that takes int o account a positi on that is perhaps unique, per­hap s unive rsal. and perhaps a lso at once the one and theother.

Several Quebecois poets. as well as noveli sts and essayists,have tirelessl y and tragically sta ted their dista nce (rom thematerna l tongue. their nom adi sm and th eir di scomfort in th elan guage. Some have gone so far as to den y the very prese nceof a matern al tongue. as if the Quebec oi s writer (as well asthe Quebecois peo ple th emselves) spoke-spoke to them­selves-only from a posi tion of ex ile in a foreign languagethat is irreducibl y other and im possible to appropriate. as ifthey spoke only out of the ap proximation. incompleteness.injustice. and empti ness of a tran slation language. Thu s, likeanyo ne wh ose language has bee n expropriated . the Quebecoisco ntinues to cher ish a nosta lgia for a language that is his. aproperly Quebecois language. a materna l tongue that will re­fash ion an identity for him and reappropriate him to himself.It is a dream of fusion with th e mothe r. with a tongue that islike a mother. th at is, nearest at hand . nourishing. and reas­su ri ng. It is a dream to be at last joined in body with th emother language. to recognize himself in her who wou ld re­cognize him . with the transparency. spontaneity. and truth oforigins . without any risk. co ntami na tion. or domination.

This. the n, is my question : What ca n one say of this cur iousrelation to the maternal tongue wh ere the laller never appearsexcept as a translation language. one th at is co nstantly beingdeported from a so-ca lled ori ginal language that is itself . more­over, inaccessible and impossibl e to sit uate? Is this relat ion tolanguage-let's ca ll it "sch izoid"- thc norma lly abnormal re­lation to any language? Can language get us dear of any dis­tancc and any foreignness? I know that , for you, in ord er foran y language to be a language. it can only be-cstr ucturally-c-aplace of ex ile . a mediu m where ubscnce. death , and repet itionru le without exceptio n. A language can only consti tute itselfas such by vir tue of an origina l catastrophe. a violent separa ­tion from natu re. a morta l and infinite fall putting us foreverand since forever at a distance from the mothe r-any

144 Roundtable on Translation

moth er-destining us to the strangeness of that which has nohomeland, no assigna ble limit s, no origin , and no end .

If thi s is th e way it is , one ca n s pea k th e matern al tong ue onlyas ano the r's lan guage. As you ha ve written in "Living On": "Atongue can never be appropriated : it is only ever as the othe r'stongue that it is mine. and reciprocally." The matern a l tonguecou ld therefore only be th e langua ge of the bad moth er (butthere woul d be no good one) . that is, of th e mother wh o hasalways already weaned her ch ild. who keeps her d istance , faroff (fort) , and whom one woul d vain ly an d repeated ly try toma ke come back (do) . The figure of the mother cou ld only bed isfigured, fragmented. and d ismantled in lan guage, figu ringonly that wh ich is no t or that which is baseless and facel ess.Language wou ld be always already aba ndoned to its ow n de­vices , bas tardized. bet rayed , contaminated, and fore ign . Thepurity of lan guage (of any lan guage and thus also of the so­ca lled Quebecois lan guage) receives here a mortal blow. Thecris is arises. Mall arme said. from the fact that "on a louch e ouvers ...• Here. let us say . lan guage has been tampered with . andas a result its whole system has been sha ken. in particu lar theill usion . as far as language is co ncerned. of a ppro priation.specu lertza t ton, mastery. an d identification .

For the Qu ebecois writ er , this es trangeme nt in relatio n tolanguage. th is lack of mother ton gue in a tongue that neverthe­less lacks for nothing. is a torment, to be sure. and an unten abl econtradiction. It can lead to silence. paralys is, and eve n mad­ness. Yet . it mu st be said. this expropriation and ex patriationarc also perhaps a chance: the possib ili ty (and impossibilit y) ofreinventing lan guage as if from the beginnin g. We should notIorget that the curre nt of everyday lan guage hu rries by and goesbeyond. To be sure. it holl ows ou t its riverbed. but it a lso over­flows it constan tly. No shore. no limit can hold back its break­ing waves. It is a ques tion, the n. of widening language , of cas t­ing it off and sending it back out to the wide open sea. of

' ''P(lll lry has been tamp ered wilh," but also it has bl!t!ll "to uched upon.""reached." "o\loined ."- Tr.

Roundtable on Translation 145

releasing its safety catches so it can ventu re forth beyon d itslimits int o abso lute danger , in the di recti on of the fascinatingunknown wh ich is forever out of reac h. Doesn 't the writer be­gin writing at the moment words escape him, when familiarwords become once again unknow n? Doesn 't he write in orderto tran slate silence-wit ho ut breaking it- int o writin g, in ord erto bring to ordinary lan guage th e d ign ity of a translated lan­guage (tha t lan guage we lack wh ich al ways appears more melo­dious. more sonorous. more co ncrete, rich er in its images th anou r own. an d therefore sacred. so to speak)? Whoever reinventsthe tongue. the maternal tongue , doesn 't he break with both themateriali sm of language and the patern al law that kept him at adistance from it? This is a questi on I urn asking yo u-e-el you.with you . and almost in you r own terms. What is to be said ofthe situa tio n of the (Q uebecois) writer in his/her language?

Jacq ues Derrida: Rep ly

I agree that it is tim e for us to take our bearings from thelinguistic place in wh ich we find ourse lves . this strange lin­guistic pla ce th at is Quebec where, afte r all, the problem oftrans latio n is posed in forms and with a force , a characte r. andan urgen cy-in part icular a politica l urgen cy-that are alto­gethe r singular. I think tha t if any thi ng in thi s colloq uium co n­sti tu tes an event, it is in relatio n to the linguisti c pos ition ofQuebec. whe re . at every momen t. at every step. texts arrive notonly in trans lation-that's ob vious ly the case eve rywhcrc-c-butin a tra nslati on that is remarked and unde rscore d. On e has onlyto walk down the street or go to a cafe and right away onereceives utt eran ces in seve ral d ifferent languages (such asFrench or Engli sh on pub licit y posters, ct cetera). Or else sev­era l Iangua ges-c-scmottm es there art: threc- intersect eachothe r within the same utterance. For the last two or three days.!have ex perienced uttera nces in three languages in a stng lc scn­tcncc . and it is thi s, after a ll. that ma kes for the singularity ofwha t is going on for us right now. as well as the fact th at thepartici pants at this rou ndtable are them se lves in a very pa rticu -

J 46 Roundtab le on Translation

lar linguistic situation. By going arou nd the table, we couldremark the fact that not one of us is like a fish in water in thelanguage he or she is spea king. Unless I am mistaken, not one ofthe subjec ts at this tab le spea ks French as his or her maternaltongue, exce pt perhap s two of us. And , even then, you [Pereldi]are French : I'm not. I come from Algeria. I have therefore st illanother relation to the French tongue, But still, it would beamus ing to analyze the complexity , the internal translation towhich ou r bodi es are continuously submi tting, here. at thi smoment.

Donald Boucha rd : Question from the Floor

I wan t to come back to the idea of the double bind whi chyou have introduced. II seems to me that in the end what thedouble bind indi cates is a closed system from which one can.not esca pe, Madn ess is a Babelian idea which does not teachus an}1hi.ng about God's power. the history of the logos, andthu s the Idea of power. Yet power encloses individuals. Oneway of as king my first question would thus be: Is it possib le tofind a way out of madness? One can und erstand mad ness onthe bas is of the "capacity" to get out of it-and is there a wayout of it? I would also like to as k another question aboutW~lter Ben jam in .. It concerns the way in which one generallythin ks of trans lation. tha t is, the idea that an origina l is alwayspresum ed and that the "something" coming after is never asgood as what comes first. It is in this manner that you haveintrod uced words such as "sac red" and "nostalgia."

Jacques Derrida

I'm not the one wh o int roduced them.

Dona ld Bouchard

My second question is this : Is it necessary to have sacredtexts and is a perfect translation possible? I thin k thatl ransla-

_____ ________ Ruundtable on Trans la tion J ,I7

lion is always a man ner of introducing an imperfection . Canone regard translation as the intruduction of an imperfectionfrom one cu lture to anot her?

Jacques Derrl da

To respond, or rather not to respo nd but to resona te withyour first question: 1 don't know if one can get out. I don'tthi nk there is any se nse in always wanting to get out. One canget out for a moment. but actually I don't know wheth er mad­ness consists in not bei ng able to get oul or in wanting to getout. Basicall y. what form does an exit take? All one can sa}' istha t in every dosed place. there are thin gs ca lled "exits ," andthat's wh at defines it as a closed place. To this first type ofqu est ion-s-and I am nol sure 1 have unders tood very wellwhere it was going-I cannot repl y.

Concerning your allus ions to Benjamin and the questionabout the necessity of sac red texts. I am going to be very pru ­dent-and not ani}' by refusing to take responsibility for Ben­jamin's text. It' s true that there are things in that text whichcan make one uncomfortab le and which begin with the sacredtext . insist on the messian ic character of translation . and soon . Yet. a sac red text. if there is such a thing, is a text thatdoes not await the qu estion of whether or not it is necessarythat there he such a th ing: if there is a sacred text. then there isa sacred text. You arc wondering wh ether or not the sacredtext is necessary: thi s is a question wh ich that lext couldn' tcare less about. The sacred text happens, it is an event. if thereis such a th ing, and it doesn't wait for anyone 10 accept theidea that there may be such a th ing. It's an event, and that'swhat Benjam in means. One alwa ys has to postu late an origl­nal. This may look likea very classical position and basicallylike a disti nction between the original and the translated ver­sian. This appearance is very reassur ing, but at the same time,in a less classical and less reassuring manner, Benjamin oflensays thai one recognizes the difference between a translationand an original in that tim or iginal can be translated several

J48 Roundlable on Tra nsla tion

ti mes but a tran sla tion cannot be retranslated . Despit e the factthat we know of examples of tran slations that have been re­translat ed . when th is occurs-when . for example . one trans­lates [Frtednchl Hold erltn's trans lation of Sop hocles- the firsttran slation . if it has the force of an event. becomes an origina l.There is a lways a structure of "original tran slati on" evenwhen translation s are retrans lated . This does not mean thatBenjamin knee ls before the existence of sacred texts. that hebases what he says on the dogma of the existence of the sacredtext. Perhaps what he is say ing to us is this : Every time theevent of an untrans latable text occurs. everv ti me there is atext that is not tota lly tran slatable. in other words. cverv ti meth ere is a proper name. it gets sacralized. It is this process ofsacraliza tion that has to be explained . Ben jamin te lls us thatsacraliza tion or the sacred is the untranslatable. and everytime there is some pro per nam e in the language that does notlet itse lf beco me tota lly common. that cannot be translated .one is deali ng with a text th at is begin ning to be sacra ltzed .One is dealing with poetry. Thi s is why Ben jamin refers li tera­ture or poe try to a religious or sac red model. beca use heth inks that if there is something untranslatable in literatu re(and. in a ce rta in way. literature is the untranslat able ]. then itis sacred. If there is any literatu re. it is sacred: it entails sacral­tzat ion . This is surely the relation we have to literature. inspite of a ll our denegations in thi s regard . The process ofsac ra lization is underway wheneve r one says to oneself indealing with a text: Basica lly. I can't transpose thi s text suchas it is into anothe r language: there is an idiom here: it is awor k: all the efforts at translation that I might make. that ititself calls forth and deman ds. will remain. in a ce rtain wayand at a given moment. vain or limited . Th is text . the n. is asacred text. Thu s. per haps Ben jam in docs not begin with reli­gion . that is. with the posited existence of such-and-such asacred text by the history of reli gion s. Perh aps he wants toexplain what a sacred text is . how one sacrallzos a text. andhow any text. to the extent th at it brings with it it proper-nameeffect. is un its way to beco ming sacred. At th is point. then,

Roundtable on Trans /alion J49

one doesn 't have to wonde r whether sacred texts are neces­sary. There is sacred ness : and if there is sacredness. then itlooks like this . In th is sense. that text one is reading is bot hunique and a paradigmat ic exam pic wh ich gives the law andin which one read s the law of sacralizat lon-c-that's how italways is. There is Babel everywhere. Every lime someonesavs his or her own name or creates a literary work or imposesa s ignature. even though it is translatable and untranslatable.he or she produces something sacred , not just some prose likeMonsieur Iourdain" who makes prose. On the contrary. wh enone does something poetic . one makes for sacredness and inthat sense one produces the untranslatable.

Now. to be sure . th e problem becomes more serious andmore acute in the type of answer I am giving you. tha t is.when I say th at there arc processes of sacraliza tio n and toaccount for them one mu st begin with these problems of trans­lation. of language. and of the limits on tran slation. My dis­course here is one that is not vel'}' respec tful of the sacredbeca use it says: We're going to explain how sacraliza tion.which is everywhere . happens: here is how it comes abou t. etcetera. On th e other hand. som eone who rece ives the sac red asan event and before trying to explain it says: Okay. I believeon faith that thi s particular text-s-either the Gospels or the OldTestament-is not an example in wh ich to study the pro­cesses of sacra ltzat lon: th ese texts arc absolute events whichlook pla ce only once and I am answerable to them. T his issomeone who wou ld say: No, one docs nol begin with th eprocesses of sacra liza tion in order to study the sacred: onebegins with the sacred . whi ch has already taken place andwhose event is exp lained only wit h reference to itself. in orderthen to better un derstand history, I don't know if what I amsay ing is clear. My point is that th ere arc two apparen tly in­compatible alt itud es with regard to the sacred . One tries tounderstand the genes is of the sacred and sacrah za tlon. II he-

"Mol iere's bourgeuls gentlernan whu. upon It'ilrn ing thut every tblng whlchis nu l poetry is prose, exd aims : " Su. 1am SIH'll kinR prcsel't-e-Tr.

150 Roundtable an Tran d a tion

gins with sac ra lization in order to und ersta nd th e sac red . TImother says: No. th e sac red is not sa cral ization: it hegin s byhappening: fi rst there were th e prophets. Babel. or the Cos­pel s. and Hum th ere is sac ra liza tion. Th us. everyth ing I've re­counted here can lake on another meaning if one believessac ral izat ion has its meaning in the sac red rather tha n th eothe r way around. The debate here is ope n-e nded : the o nlyresponse -is the event. Also . don't forget that for Benjamin thelimit on translation (the sacred text in which the sense and thelett er ca n no lo nger be d issociated) is bot h the untran slat ableand the pure tra nslatable . the place and the appea l for transla­tio n. th e model IUrbild) of all translation-lhe "l n tre lin eartra ns lated version" of the sacred text. It tran slates withouttranslating; it tra ns lates itself in the o riginal. I don't kno w if Ihave a nswe red yo ur qu esti on.

Monique Bosc o: Qu estion f rom the Floor

I have been struck bv someth ing. Since you have spo ken agood deal abo ut psychoa na lysis, I wo uld lik e to ta lk a lillieabo u t re pression. I received a sheet d istributed by the De pa rt­ment of French St ud ies that as ked anyo ne who wan ted topa rticipate in these round table d iscu ssion s to read certa intexts which were to se rve as the basis for the tw o sessio ns .On e was a very beautiful text by Derrida I"Living On: Border­lines"] which he has not yet publi shed - -

Ja cques Derrfda -

Yes, it ha s been publi shed in translati on. II's a text that waswritt en in French but which I kne w wou ld appear first inEnglish. so it is marked by this pa rticular address. It appea reda few days ago in the United States.

M onique Bosco

The ot hers are very important , very d ifficult texts by Ulan­chot: Death Sen tence and "The Madness of the Day." This was

.',

Roundtable an Trunsl ution 15 1

an o pport un ity to ha ve a tran slat ion or an in terpretation ofthese two Blanch ot text s by Derrida. I notice. however (is it bycha nce or as a result of re press ion?), th at no one has mentionedth em . Th ese text s interest me very much, part icularl y the pas­sage on the rose or the gypsum flo wer inscribed in the text ,wh ich, in my opin ion, is somethi ng fundamental. I wa nted toas k about the problem of translating poe try , a problem thatHenri Meschonntc already rai sed se vera l yea rs ago when hetalked about "trad ucia Celan." Once aga in, it is a qu esti on ofsomeone who has to d ie for h is work to be made ava ilable to us.This, in a nutshell. is the problem of the translati on of a poet.Th e [French ] tra ns latio n of Niema nd srose [The No-One's-Bose]ca me out for the first time this year. The work of Paul Celan.who was also ex iled in his language. is an extremely di stu rbingproblem . I think, o ne that co uld concern all of us. How doesone translate these sacred texts-since a poetic text is almos talways sacred---especia lly the text of someo ne exiled fro m hisown language. jus t as IFra nz) Kafka was? Give n that we are.after a ll, in those di sciplines that ar e concerned with th e sacredtext which is poetry , I wa s wondering how it is th at it has beenpushed as ide, avoided. repressed ? Isn't it the case that . evenwhen one transl ates , in tegrally or by extracts . o ne ado pts aparticular wa y of translating, but in an absolute fashion ?Doesn 't the problem of translation pass by way of the tra ns la­tor 's sex? In this case , the Fre nc h translation of Niema ndsrosewa s done by a woman . In another case, that of the Am eri canpoet Sylvia Plath. both women a nd a man have translat ed herwor k. . . . In Dee th Sentence. th e woman lover is a translator (asin the case of Kaf ka and Milone) ." Must th e woman a lwa ys benot only the poet's serva nt but the poet's translator as well? It 'sa problem that' s been arou nd for a long tim e. since I noticedwhile readi ng about Ste nd hal tha t he also sa id to women: Don 'twrite, translate , and you w il l earn an honorable living, Th us it'sa w ho le politica l ques tio n.

' Milena l e~en ~U·Po l il k . wh o lnm slah·d some ,,( Kafka's works IntoC:r.ech.- Tr.

152 Round' able on Translation

Jacques Derrid a

If one refers to a certain concept of translation Ihat prevailedup until Benjamin perha ps, the conce pt according to whichtranslation is derivative , or in a position of derivation in rela­tion to an original that is itself seminal, the n the fact thatwomen are often translators or that they are inv ited to do so(objectively. statis tics would show that they are often in theposition of translators ). th is fact. in effect, comes out of asubordination wh ich pose s a political problem. I don't want toinsist on thi s-it's obvious to everyone. If . however, one dis ­places somewhat the concept of translation on the basis . forexample. of what Eugene Vance did just a moment ago. orfrom a perspective that wou ld see translation as somethingother than a secondary ope ration, at that moment the positionof the woman translato r would be something else, eventhough it would still be marked sexually. One must not fail tonotice that Benjamin uses the term "translator" in the mascu­line and not in the femin ine . I believe thi s is consonant withthe whole system of his text. He speaks of the translator. not ofthe woman translator. and the translator in general can beeither a man or a woman. It is in this general sense that Benja­min presents the translator. If one displaces this classical per­spective, one beco mes conscious-from within that classicalperspective and from withi n the text I'm talking about- that'the so-called original is in a position of demand with regard tothe translation . The original is not a plenitude which wouldcome to be tran slated by accident. The original is in the situa­tion of demand . that is, of a lack or exile . the original is in­debted a priori to the translation . Its survival is a demand anda desire for translation , somewhat like the Babelten demand:Translate me. Babel is a man, or rather a male god, a god thatis not full s ince he is full of resen tment, jealousy, and so on.He calls out, he desi res. he lacks, he calls for the complement

_____________ Roundtable on T'1JRs/a t;on 153

or the suppleme nt or, as Benjamin says. for that which willcome along to enrich him . Translation does not come alongin addition . like an accident added to a full substance;rather , it is what the original text demands-and not simplythe signatory of the original text but the text itself. If thetranslation is indebted to the original {this is its task. itsdebt (Au/gobell . it is because already the or iginal is in­deb ted to the coming translat ion. This means that transla­tion is also the law. There is a d issymmetry here but it's adouble dissymmetry. with the result that the woman transla­tor in th is case is not simply subordinated. she is not theaut hor's secretary. She is also the one who is loved by theauthor and on whose basis alone writing is poss ible. Trans­lation is writing; that is. it is not translation on ly in thesense of transcription . It is a productive writing called forthby the origina l text. Thus. as in Blanchot's texts (Death Sen ­tence as well as "The Madn ess of the Day"). woman is onthe side of the affirming law rather than only in that deriva­tive situatio n you have spoken of. And, in effect. thi s iswhat is going on and what one can read in Death Sen tence:the woman translator can be translated as secondary, subor­dinated. oppressed femin init y. but one can also translate heras absolutely desirable. the one who makes the law. tru th.and so forth. This possibility can be read in Death Sentence,in "The Mad ness of the Day"-it can be read even in Benja­min if one makes a special effort. All of th is mean s that thepolit ical problem. which see ms to me inevitable and real.has a very com plex strategy. All of its terms must be laidout again ; one must rethink translation- -

Monique Bosco

Yes. that' s clear. On the other hand. however, do you agreethat there is a problem of sexual d ifference which enters in atthe level of translation? Only one of my books has been trans­lated by a man, and it was a completely d ifferent book.

154 Roundtable on Translation

Jacques Derrida

And that's because a man translated it?

Monique Bosco

I'm beginn in g 10 th in k so . [Laught er.]

Jacques Derrida

It' s altogether possible. I'm con vinced you' re right to ask thequestion . but the analysi s of th e effects rema ins very tri cky.When you raised the question of sexuality in translati on . I wasthinking of somethi ng else. I was thi nking of what hap penswhen one has to translate sexed personal pronoun s with un·sexed ones . Let me ex pla in what I mean . At th e end of DeathSentence. there is a passage where Blanchet says first of all "10pensee." and it is clear that he is talking about "thought," Thenthere is a slippage which takes one to the last line of the textwhere he writes: "1-;, aelle, je dis 'vlens ' et eternelle ment elleest 10 ("And to that thought I say eternally, 'Come: and eter­nally it is there"]. From the grammatica l point of view (and onecan follow the grammatica l and rhetorical order of the textleading to the grammatica l point of view), the feminine pro­noun "elle" unquestionably refers to "Ic pensee" or "thought: 'Yet. obviously Blan chot has played on the "eire,' or he has letit play. let it slip toward "elle" or "she.v In English , naturally, arigorous tran slation must relate "elle" to "pensee" so that itbecomes "it." At that moment, the text totall y caves in, More­over, in the existing tran slation of Deeth Sentence, this is justwhat happened: the "elle" at the end- which is a sublime"eUe"- is crushed , broken dow n by the necessity for a gram­matically rigorous tran slation , There are problems like this allthe time in translating from French to English as well as be­tween German and French , When the translator becomes aware

""-- -~

___ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ Roundtable on TranslaUon ISS

of the problem. he can of course add a note* or else put wordsin brackets. but what he is doing at that poin t is not an opera­tion of translati on: commentaries, analyses. warn ings are nottransla tions, Thus , one also has to consider the economic prob­lem of translation , Basically, to produce an ideal trans latio n,which would be only a translati on and nothing else, one wou ldhave to translate one word by one word, As soon as one putstwo or three words in the place of one, translation becomes ananalytic explicitation; that is, it is no longer strictly speaking atran slation, To translate "elle" by " i t ." then, without losing toomuch, one must add a note, thereby giving in to a work ofinterpretation which spoils the economy of translation strictlyspea king-linguistic translation . This is the quantitative prob­lem of tran slati on, which we haven 't talked about very much oreven at all , Yet it is, I think, a central problem ,

Andre Beaudet : Question f rom the Floor

I have severa l questions, The one I will ask first is bana l andsimple: Do we or do you always translate by ear? In what wayis a translation an autotranslation which consists in tu rningsomething uncan ny or unfa miliar around in order to makeoneself understood as in a familiar context but still otherwise?1would assim ilate th is autotra nslation to something I've heardfor the last three days-certain effects of a thi rd ear, (or ex­ample, a third mouth , a th ird tongue, or a th ird position be-

" But ca n an y note la ke u p the slack here, in this situalionr In his essay onBenjam in 's "The Task 01 the Tra nsla tor ," Blanchol writ~ : "The tran slator isindeed a strange, nostalgic man : he experiences in his own lan gualtO, bUI inthe manner of so met hi ng missing . everyth ing promised hi m in the way ofpresent affirma tions by the original work (the wo rk wh ich rem ains more 'over- he can't quite reech it since he 's not at home. at r"51 in its language butis an eternal guest who doesn 't live th ere ]. Tha I's why, oif we ca n believe thetesti mony of speclelists, he is always in more d ifficulty as he tranaletes withthe language to which he belo ngs than et 1I loss wit h the nn e hu doesn'tpossess" ("Tradu im," ln VAm it;e , p . 72; my trllllsla ti"n).- Tr.

lot on thi s theme. and I am doing it once more: I have tried towrite texts that don 't return and don 't allow for rctrans lation . Ican't retranslate any more than anyone else can, so I'm notextolling wha t I do . I don't believe one can retrans late one'sown utterances in an exhaustive fashi on . It's better to produ cetexts that leave and don 't come back altogether, but that arenot simply and totally alienated or foreign. One regulates aneconomy with one's texts , with other subjects. with one'sfamily . children, desire. Th ey take off on their own, and onethen tries to get the m to come back a little even as they remainoutside, even as they remain the other's speech. Thi s is whathappens when one writes a text. Mutn u s muland is, it's like achild-an old topo s which has its historical patent of nobil­ity, But a child is not only that toward which or for which afather or mother remai ns; it is an other who starts talking andgoes on talk ing by itself, withou t your help , who doesn 't evenanswer you except in your fantasy. You thin k it' s talking toyou. that you are talking in it, but in fact it talks by itself. Onthi s basis, one constructs paternity or maternity fantasies: onesays that. after all , it's still one's own, that life is sweet, etcetera . Finally. however . if one is sti ll a littl e attentive to thecnunke that we were talking about earlter, one knows thatchild ren don 't belong 10 us but we conso le ourse lves with thefantasy that they do. Like everyone. then, 1 have fant asies ofchildren and of texts. That's how I work things out with theuncanny. I don 't know if I have met your questio n.

Roundtable on Translation 157

Jacques DerridaWhat docs that mea n: "on the basis uf ' ''~ On the basis of

means starting from, which is to say going away from. As towhat you called an echo: There are, in effect, echoes. It would

If your own text comes back as a kind of echo, I was wond er­ing whether it was possib le for someone else to plug into yourwork. Is it possibl e to writ e on the basis of )'our work?

Andre Beaudet

' In English in th .. urigin"l.-Tr.

156 Roundtable on Translation

Jacques Derrida

, I am h~ving . troub l o translating your last quostton to myself.I ve rece ived II, bu t I have not understood it very well , if byunderstand ing one means bein g able 10 reprodu ce and trans­late it. Like everyone, I always try. I thin k, 10 translate or totranslate myself- to eutotranslate-c-which includes that ges­ture of appropriation that is part of tran slation. However. ifyou have see n or noticed or heard a th ird ear for the last fewdays, then it may be that this operation of autotranslation isimpo ssible. I am conscious of it in part . It is less a question ofautotranslation turned back in on itself, Irving to master theUn~e!m liche ~r .the uncanny so that it beco mes simply thefamiliar. than It ISof the opposite movement. But thi s is not tosay that one has to tu rn oneself over. bound hand and foot. tothe Unheimliche, because I don 't believe in that. In otherwords, I don 't believe in seeking out absolute risk. absolutenonreappropriation, alie nation, and madn ess for their ownsake , and, besid es, I don 't want to have anything to do withthat. I'm too afraid of It. What I was trying to do was work outa kind of economy with the means at hand , an econ omy thatwould not be one of a maniacal and "self-centered:" au to­tran slation. Let's say I was trying also to produce texts thatproduce other ears, in a certain way-s-ears that I don 't sec orhear myself, things that dan" come down to me or come backto me. A text, I believe , does not come back, I have insisted a

tween phil osophy and poetry. It is a question here not ofsimple listening but of an attention thai has a cutting edge tothe extent that , as Nietzsc he says in Beyond Good and Evil ,with thi s th ird ear one "handles his language like a suppleblad e an d feels from his arm down to his toes the peril ousdelight of the qu ivering, over-sharp steel that want s 10 bite.hiss. cut. " These three words-bite. hiss, cut-already com­prehend some of the opera tions that you have tran slated intoyour work.

J58 Roundtable on Translation

be interesting 10 ana lyze close ly what ha ppens when a textyou wr ite comes back to you in one form or another. Whaldons it mean : "10 come back"? II means that ano the r makesusc of it or d ies it. I've had thi s hap pen to me. Ta king th esitua tion here for the las t two days as one to ana lyze , I'vefuncti oned a litt le like the "original." (It's tru e----one mu stn 'ttry to hide suc h things from oneself.) Each of you has takenthe f loor. the n I have s poken after each of you has, and . afterall , I'm the one who has bee n quoted most often, so that thesethi ngs have come back to me. But it wou ld be necessary toanaly ze very closely the experience of hearing so meo ne elseread a text you have alleged ly written or signed . All of a sud­den someone puts a text right in front of you again, in anothercontext, wit h an intention that is both some what yours andnot simply yours. Each time it happens, it' s a very curious ,very troubling expe rience. I can't analyze it here. What I ca nsay is tha t it is never the same text. never an echo, that comesback to you . It ca n be a very pleasant or a very un pleasan texpe rience. It can reconci le you with wh at you've done, makeyou love it or hat e it. Th ere are a thousand possibili ties. Yetone thing is ce rta in in all this diversit y. ami that is that irsnever the same. What is more, even before so meo ne cites orreads it to you. as in the pres ent situat ion , the text's identityhas been lost. and it's no longer th e same as soo n as it takesoff. as soo n as it has begun , as soo n as it' s on the page. Dy theend of the sentence , it 's no longer the same sentence that itwas at the beginni ng. Thu s. in this sense, there is no ec ho. or ,it there is , it's a lwa ys distorted . Perha ps the desi re to write isthe desire to launch th ings that come back to you as much aspossible in as many forms as possib le. That is, it is the desireto perfect a program or a ma trix having the greatest potent ia l.variability, undecidabi lity. plurivocalt ty. et cetera, so thateach ti me someth ing return s it wil l be as different as possible.Thi s is also what one docs wh en one has child ren- talkingbeings who ca n always outta lk you. You have the llluslon thatit co mes back to you, that it co mes from you- that these un­pred ictable words come out of you somewhat. Th is is what

Roundlable on Translation 159

goes on with texts. When I saw, for exa mple . that it was apiece of "Living On" tha t Donato was quoting, I was readi ng itthrough Dona to's text: it was something very strange whichreturn ed ull erly without me. I th ought: Th at' s not bad , bu t it'snot the same , It' s never the same in any case, and it neverreturns. This is both a bad thing and a good th ing. Obvi ously,if it came back. th at wou ld also be terrible. On e wants it toreturn exactly like it is , but th en one also knows very well thatif it did come back exactly like it is , one wou ld have only onewish an d that is to ru n away.

Nicole Bureau: Question from the Floor

Does n't the work of Blan chet seem, in some way, to be a"fictional" practi ce of translation? Th e ti t les never seem de­finitive. The "mood,' the s pace, and the rhythm of his speechare co nti nua lly transformed, as if in order to prevent writingfrom fixing its object (or sett ling on its objective) . There is no"first" text. bu t there is also no definitive----or unique-versionwhich would have the force of law by gua rantee ing th e writ­ing 's seal. Th e on ly th ing " proper" to Blanchot 's writing is theunflagging search for his language. his "genre" (theory? fie­tion?). or his na me.

Would it be possib le to see a relation betwee n "reci tat ton 't--.to which you have a lready alluded , most no tab ly in Pas-andtranslation? Doth of them are linked to the work of repeti tion,and both of th em are also undone by repeti tio n.

Doesn 't this gene ralize d pract ice of d ivid ing lan guage in twoma nifest itself in a singular fashion in Deeth Senten ce? Cer­ta in names, which arc first fragmented or red uced to thei rini tia ls, sudde nly co me back up to the sur face of the recttwhere they already dist urb the read ing of the narrati ve text;others have no speci fi c iden tit y an d am dressed now in th,efeminine. now in the masculin e (I am thin king of Simon/Sf­mane, among others).

What do you think of these var ious manifestation s of Blan ­cha t's wor k?

160 Roundtable on Tran slation

Jacques Derrida

I completely agree . Indeed. all he has don e is to translatetranslation in the most enigmatic sense. He does this not onlythrough mul tiple versions but sometimes by very small modi­ficat ion s. Sometimes it is the mention of the word "rectt" or"novel" that simply di sappears; or else he del etes one lilliepage from the end. leaving the rest of the text intact; or stillother times there are massive mutations. as with Thomas theObscure. wh ere. of the 350 pages crammed into the first ver­sion. he retains someth ing very econo mical, 120 or 150 pages.for the seco nd vers ion . What is remarkable is that. in spite ofeverything. this tran slation and this transformation . evenwhen they erase somethi ng. keep the memory or the trace ofwhat they are erasing. The version is not a translation thatcomes from the original and-how to put it?-from wh ichcomes the original as if there was here an original and there atranslati on . No; there is an increa se. The seco nd translation ofDeath Sentence keeps the trace of the erasure in the erasu reitself. The memory of all the versions is archived . as in theLibrary of Congress. It is a still larger language. as Benjaminwoul d say: it is an increased corpus which has grown from theoriginal to the translation . from the first to the seco nd version.

As for proper names in Blanchot. they are at once apparentlyinsigni fi can t names which are then loaded with a thousandpossible translations and meanings. I ment ioned Thomas. Well.there is an immense implicit discourse on Thomas' prop ername. One has to interpret the rectt as the transla tion of theproper nam e in to the story wh ich transfor ms it into a commonname. One finds there a translat ion of Thomas' proper namebeginning with the bibli cal references . the character of thedouble Th omas. of Dldyme. ofThomas the Obscure . Since Tho­mas' su rname-the Obscu re-is a common noun qualifier. onecan see the who le rect t as a tran slation. in a certain way. of thepropflr name. One could also talk about the in itials in Death

Roun dtable on Tra nslation 16 1

Sentence . The 1can be translated right away into Jesus and theninto a num ber of other th ings. Natalie can also be translatedinto Jesus. since it signifies Noel. Nativity. Thus. in a certa insense the proper name is pregnant with the recn. whic h can beinterp reted as a translation of the proper name.

Cla ude Levesque

We must necessaril y bring to a close this exchange which .all the same . is infini te and thank Jacqu es Derrida verywarml y. His passage amo ng us will have been an even t. butthe kind of event that is much more ahead of us than alreadybehind us. I speak as the interp reter- the translator-for eachone of us wh en I say to him: Thanks for many things-forcoming. for hi s generosity wh ich each one of us has so clearl yfelt. for the total and careful atte ntion he has brought to eachof us. Finall y. we than k him for being what he is. A questionstill rema ins in the end : Who is he? Who is Jacques Derrida?Perha ps we may vent ure to answer by say ing that he is uniqueand innumerable. like all of us. differen tly than all of us.

Jacques Derrfda

I too want to thank you for your presence. your attention.your patie nce. This is not just a polit e formula on my part. buta real sign of gratitude . Thank. you.

Works Cited

Abraham. Nico las. "T he She ll and the Kern el." Translated by NicolasRand. Dia critics. Spring 1979 .

Abraham. Nioolas. and Maria Torok. Cryp lonymie; Le Vernier de"Homme cux lou ps. Paris: Aubier-Ffarnman on. 1976.

___ _ L'Bcc rce et Ie DOyOU. Paris: Aubie r-Flammarie n, 1978.Ben jamin. Walter. "The Task of the Translator." In Illuminations.

Tra nslated by Hany Zohn. New York : Schoden Books . 1969.Blanchot. Mau rice . L'Amil ie. Pari s: Galli mard. 1971.___ . Death Senfence. Translated by Lyd ia Davis. Barrytown,

N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1978."The Madn ess of the Day." Trans lated by Lydia Davis.

TriquQl1erly 40 (Fall 1977).____,. Le Pas au-delli. Paris: GaJlimard . 1973.Demda. jacques. La Corte posto le. Paris: Aubler-Pla mmanon . 1980.

(Incl u des th e essays "Du lout," and " Legs de Freud .")_ _ _ _" "Fore.' Translated by Barbara johnson . The Georgia He­

view, Spring 19 77.___. " Freud and the Sce ne of Writing." In \\'r il ing end Differ ­

ence. Translated by Alan Bass. Chtce go: Untverstty of ChicagoPress , 1978,-==='Glas. Paris: Ga lilee , H174.

_ , " Ia . ou le fau x-bond ." Digmphe 11 (April 1977).___ , " Living On : Borderl in es." Translated by lames Hulber t. III

Decons truct rc n nn d Critici sm . New York: Seabury Pross. 197 9._ _ _ , Malllins uf Philosuphy. Tra nslated by Alan Bass. Chicago:

Un iversit y of Chtcagn Press, 1982.

163

164 Works Cit ed

___. "Me--Ps)'choanalysis: An Introduction to 'The Shell andthe Kerne l' by Nicolas Abraham." Translated by Richard Klein.Dtccrtucs. Spri ng 19 79 .

_--,-_ . Of Grom motology. Translated by Gayat ri Cha kravorty Spt­vak. Baltimore: Joh ns Hopkins University Press , 19 701 .

_ _ _ . "La Paro le soufflee." In Wriling and Difference. Translatedby Alan Bass. Chicago: Un iversity of Chicago Press, 1978.

_ _ _ " Pas. Gromma 3/4 (1976)._ _ _ . "Plato' s Pha rmacy." In Disseminat ion . Translated by Bar­

bara Johnson. Chicago: Univers ity of Chicago Press, 1981.___ . Posilions. Tran slated by Alan Bass. Chicago : Universi ty of

Chicago Press, 19 78 .___ . Signeponge/Signsponge. Translated by Richard Ran d. New

York: Columbia University Press , 1984 ._ ___ Speech and Phenomen a. Translated by David B. Alli son.

Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press. 19 73 ._ _ _ . Spurs: Nie tzsc he 's Styles. Translat ed by Barbara Harlow.

Chicago: Universi ty of Chicago Press, 1979.Freud, Sigmund. The Complele Psychologica l \\Iorks: Siondord Edi · I

lion . 24 vols . Edited and transla ted by James Strach ey. New York: JW. W. Norton. 19 76.

Kolm an. Sarah. "Un Phil osophe 'Unheimlich: " In Ecc rts: QualTeEsso is " propos de lacques Derrida . Paris: Fayard , 19 73.

Nen esche . Fried rich . Ecce Homo. Tra nslated "by w elter Kau fmann.New York: Vintage Books . 1969 .

___ _ The Porta ble Nietz sche. Trans lated by Wall er Kau fmann.New York: Viking Press, 1954 .

___" On the Fu ture of Our Educolio na l Insl ilulia ns. Translatedby J. M. Kennedy. In The Complete Works of Friedrich Nielzsche.vel . 3. Edited by Oscar Levy. New Yor k: Russell & Russe ll. 1964.

Winnicott . Donald . Plo}'ing on d Rea liIY. New Yor k: Basic Boo ks .19 71.