This archival technique has commanded that which even in the past instituted and constituted whatever there was as anticipation of the future.
And as wager [gageure]. The archive has always been apledge, and like every pledge
[gage], a token of the future. To put it more trivially: what is no longer archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way. Archivable meaning is also and in advance codetermined by the structure that archives. It begins with the printer.
(Derrida)
on my computer. I asked myself what is the moment proper to the archive, if there is such a thing, the instant of archivization strictly speaking, which is not, and I will come back to this, so-called live or spontaneous memory (mneme or anamnesis), but rather a certain hypomnesic and prosthetic experience of the technical substrate. Was it not at this very instant that, having written something or other on the screen, the letters remaining as if suspended and floating yet at the surface of a liquid element, I pushed a certain key to “save” a text undamaged, in a hard and lasting way, to protect marks from being erased, so as thus to ensure salvation and indemnity, to stock, to accumulate, and, in what is at once the same thing and something else, to make the sentence thus available for printing and for reprinting, for reproduction?
(Derrida)
Well, concerning the archive, Freud never managed to form anything that deserves
to be called a concept. Neither have we, by the way. We have no concept, only an
impression, a series of impressions associated with a word. To the rigor of the concept, I am opposing here the vagueness or the open imprecision, the relative indetermination of such a notion. “Archive” is only a notion, an impression associated with a word and for which, together with Freud, we do not have a concept. We only have an impression, an insistent impression through the unstable feeling of a shifting figure, of a schema, or of an in-finite or indefinite process.
(Derrida)
We only have an impression, an insistent impression through the unstable feeling of a shifting figure, of a schema, or of an in-finite or indefinite process. Unlike what a classical philosopher or scholar would be tempted to do, I do not consider this impression, or the notion of this impression, to be a subconcept, the feebleness of a blurred and subjective preknowledge, destined for I know not what sin of nominalism, but to the contrary, I will explain myself later, I consider it to be the possibility and the very future of the concept, to be the very concept of the future, if there is such a thing and if, as I believe, the idea of the archive depends on it.
(Derrida)
in his or her culture and discipline, whatever it may be, in particular philosophy, medicine, psychiatry, and more precisely here, because we are speaking of memory and of archive, the history of texts and of discourses, political history, legal history, the history of ideas or of culture, the history of religion and religion itself …
(Derrida)
It is thus our impression that we can no longer ask the question of the concept, of the history of the concept, and notably of the concept of the archive. No longer, at least, in a temporal or historical modality dominated by the present or by the past. We no longer feel we have the right to ask questions whose form, grammar, and lexicon nonetheless seem so legitimate, sometimes so neutral. We no longer find assured meaning in questions such as these: do we already have at our disposition a concept of the archive? a concept of the archive which deserves this name? which is one and whose unity is assured? Have we ever been assured of the homogeneity, of the consistency, of the univocal relationship of any concept to a term or to such a word as “archive”?
(Derrida)
In their form and in their grammar, these questions are all turned toward the past: they ask if we already have at our disposal such a concept and if we have ever had any assurance in this regard. To have a concept at one’s disposal, to have assurances with regard to it, this presupposes a closed heritage and the guarantee which is sealed, in some sense, by this heritage. And the word and the notion of the archive seem at first, admittedly, to point toward the past, to refer to the signs of consigned memory, to recall faithfulness to tradition. If we have attempted to underline the past in these questions from the outset, it is also to indicate the direction of another problematic. As much as and more than a thing of the past, before such a thing, the archive should call into question the coming of the future.
(Derrida)
“This condensation of history, of language, of the encyclopedia, remains here indissociable from an absolutely singular event, an absolutely singular signature, and therefore also of a date, of a language, of an autobiographical inscription. In a minimal autobiographical trait can be gathered the greatest potentiality of historical, theoretical, linguistic, philosophical culture — that’s really what interests me.
(Derrida)
In an enigmatic sense which will clarify itself perhaps (perhaps, because nothing
should be sure here, for essential reasons), the question of the archive is not, we repeat, a question of the past. This is not the question of a concept dealing with the past which might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a responsibility for tomorrow. The archive: if we want to know what this will have meant, we will only know in the times to come. Perhaps. Not tomorrow but in the times to come, later on or perhaps never. A spectral messianicity is at work in the concept of the archive and ties it, like religion, like history, like science itself, to a very singular experience of the promise.
(Derrida)
In order to make apparent a play that is not comprehended in this philosophical or scientific space, one must think of play in another way. Indeed, this is what I am trying to do within what is already a tradition-that of Nietzsche, for example-but
one which also has its genealogy. On the basis of thinking such as Nietzsche’s (as interpreted by (Eugen) Fink), the concept of play, understood as the play of the world, is no longer play· in the world. That is, it is no longer determined and contained by something, by the space that would comprehend it. I believe that it is only on this basis and on this condition that the concept of play can be reconstructed and reconciled with all of the-if you will-“deconstructive”-type
notions, such as trace and writing …
(Derrida)
Once play is no longer simply play in the world, it is also no longer the play of someone who plays. Philosophy has always made play into an activity, the activity of a subject manipulating objects. As soon as one interprets play in the sense of playing, one has already been dragged into the space of classical philosophy where play is dominated by meaning, by its finality, and consequently by something that surpasses and orients it. In order to think of play in a radical way, perhaps one must think beyond the activity of a subject manipulating objects according to or against the rules, et cetera.
(Derrida)
In very summary terms, then, this is the principle of what I would have liked to set in motion. The fort/da* at the center of “Freud’s Legacy” is also, of course, a discourse on play. And, typically, Freud indeed does propose an interpretation
of the child’s game.
(In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud describes a child’s play with a bobbin on a string. As he casts it away from him, he utters “o-o-o,” which his mother interprets as the word “fort” (away, far): as he pulls it back, he says .. a-a-a,” which according to the mother means “do” (here).-Tr. )
(Derrida)
He piles up hypotheses: the child throws his bobbin. he brings it back in order to say this or that to his mother, and so forth. I won’t attempt to reconstitute here this whole very complicated scene. To be sure, the theme of play is there. However, if one understands the fort/da beyond what it seems Freud intends to say, then one may exceed the limits of the game toward the play of the world where the fort/da is no longer simply the relation of subject to object. It is. instead, that which has absolute command over all experience in general.
(Derrida)
To arrive at such a point-and I think I attempt this gesture. in a discreet manner at least, in the course of that text-one must nevertheless begin by reading Freud in a certain way. If one does, then one realizes that basically he does not stop at any single interpretation of the fort/da.
(Derrida)
He himself is doing fort/da with his own interpretations, and it never stops. His own writing,his own deportment in this text is doing fort/da. Perhaps the performative is in play as well, in a very serious manner. but the game is also very serious and demands great concentration. He plays with this fort/da in his writing: he doesn’t “comprehend” it. He writes himself this scene, which is descriptive
or theoretical but also very profoundly autobiographical and performative to the degree that it concerns him in his relation with his heirs
(Derrida)
I understand that the place I am now occupying will not be left out of the exhibit or withdrawn from the scene. Nor do I intend to withold even that which I shall call, to save time, an autobiographical demonstration, although I must ask you to shift its sense a little and to listen to it with another ear.
(Derrida)
A discourse on life/death must occupy a certain space between
logos and gramme, analogy and program, as well as between the differing senses of program and reproduction.
(Derrida)
To wait without waiting, awaiting absolute surprise, the unexpected visitor, awaited without a horizon of expectation … the messianic as hospitality … the madness of hospitality…
(Derrida)
“… the contradictions (atopical:madness, extravagance, in Greek: atopos) of which we are speaking produces or registers the autodeconstruction in every concept, in the concept of concept: not only because hospitality undoes, should undo, the grip, the seizure, the capture, the force or the violence of the taking as comprehending, hospitality is, must be, owes itself to be, inconceivable and incomprehensible …”
(Derrida)
In the first place, a phoenix motif. Once again, the destruction
of life is only an appearance: it is the destruction of the appearance of life. One buries or burns what is already dead so that life, the living feminine, will be reborn and regenerated from these ashes. The vitalist theme degeneration/regeneration is active and central throughout the argument. This revitalization, as we have already seen, must first of all pass by way of the tongue, that is, by way of the exercise of the tongue or language, the treatment of its body, the mouth and the ear …
(Derrida)
That which returns is the constant affirmation, the “yes, yes” on which I insisted yesterday. That which signs here is in the form of a return, which is to say it
has the form of something that cannot be simple. It is a selective return without negativity, or which reduces negativity through affirmation, through alliance or marriage (hymen), that is, through an affirmation that is also binding on the other or that enters into a pact with itself as other.
(Derrida)
“(A deconstructionist reading) would mean respect for that which cannot be eaten—respect for that in a text which cannot be assimilated. My thoughts on the limits of eating follow in their entirety the same schema as my theories on the indeterminate or untranslatable in a text. There is always a remainder that cannot be read, that must remain alien. This residue can never be interrogated as the same, but must be constantly sought out anew, and must continue to be written.”
(Derrida)
” Narcissism! There is not narcissism and non-narcissism; there are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming, hospitable narcissism, one that is much more open to the experience of the other as other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the other would be absolutedly destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the other – even if it remains asymmetrical, open, without possible reappropriation – must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of oneself for love to be possible, for example. Love is narcissistic. Beyond that, there are little narcissisms, there are big narcissisms, and there is death in the end, which is the limit. Even in the experience – if there is one – of death, narcissism does not absolutely abdicate its power.”
(Derrida)
The point is that the eternal return is not a new metaphysics of time or of the totality of being, et cetera, on whose ground Nietzsche’s autobiographical
signature would come to stand like an empirical fact on a great ontological structure. (Here, one would have to take up again the Heideggerian interpretations of the eternal return and perhaps problematize them.) The eternal return always involves differences of forces that perhaps cannot be thought in terms of being, of the pair essence-existence, or any of the great metaphysical structures to which Heidegger would like to relate them. As soon as it crosses with the motif of the
eternal return, then the individual signature, or, if you like,the signature of a proper name, is no longer simply an empirical fact grounded in something other than itself.
(Derrida)
To be just: beyond the living present in general-and beyond its simple negative reversal. A spectral moment, a moment that no longer belongs to time, if one understands by this word the linking of modalized presents (past present, actual present: “now,” future present). We are questioning in this instant, we are asking ourselves about this instant that is not docile to time, at least to what we call time. Furtive and untimely, the apparition of the specter does not belong to that time, it does not give time, not that one: “Enter the ghost, exit the ghost, re-enter the ghost” (Hamlet).
(Derrida)
Without writing, un-writing, the unwritten switches over to a question of reading on a board or tablet which you perhaps are. You are a board or a door; we will see much later how a word can address itself, indeed confide itself to a door, count on a door open to the other.
(Derrida)
With a confident obedience, with a certain abandon that l fed here in it, the plural seems to follow: an order, after the beginning of an inaudible sentence, like an interrupted silence. It follows an order and, notice, it even obeys; it lets itself be dictated. It asks (for) itself.
(Derrida)
This concept of a ghost is as scarcely graspable in its self as the ghost of a concept. Neither life nor death, but the haunting of the one by the other. The “versus” of the conceptual opposition is as unsubstantial as a camera’s click. Ghosts: the concept of the other in the same, the completely other, dead, living in me.
(Derrida)
To write—to him, to present to the dead friend within oneself the gift of his innocence.
(Derrida)
An analysis which is not merely a theoretical analysis, but at the same time another writing of the question of Being or meaning: deconstruction is also a manner or writing and putting forward another text. It is not a “tabula rasa”, which is why deconstruction is also distinct from doubt or from critique. Critique always operates in view of the decision after or by means of a judgment. The authority of judgment or of the critical evaluation is not the final authority for deconstruction. Deconstruction is also a deconstruction of critique. Which does not mean that all critique or all criticism is devalued, but that one is trying to think what the critical instances signifies in the history of authority. Deconstruction is not a critique. Another German word of which deconstruction is a kind of transposition is “Abbau,” which is found in Heidegger, and also found in Freud.
(Derrida)
Without either showing or hiding herself. This is what took place. She had
already taken her place “docilely,” without initiating the slightest activity,
according to the most gentle passivity, and she neither shows nor hides herself.
The possibility of this impossibility derails and shatters all unity, and
this is love; it disorganizes all studied discourses, all theoretical systems
and philosophies. They must decide between presence and absence, here
and there, what reveals and what conceals itself.
(Derrida)
Yes, to whom and of what would we be making a gift? What are
we doing when we exchange these discourses? Over what are we keeping
watch? Are we trying to negate death or retain it? Are we trying to put
things in order, make amends, or settle our accounts, to finish unfinished
business? With the other? With the others outside and inside ourselves?
(Derrida)
I would like to describe, patiently and interminably, all the trajectories of
this address, especially when its reference passes through writing, when it then becomes so virtual, invisible, plural, divided, microscopic mobile,infinitesimal, specular even (since the demand is often reciprocal and the trajectory easily lost), punctual, seemingly on the verge of the zero point
even though its exercise is so powerful and so diverse.
(Derrida)
Why do I now underscore that expression: “what is happening?” Because
for me this belongs to the order of the absolutely unforeseeable, which
is always the condition of any event. Even when it seems to go back to
a buried past, what comes about always comes from the future. And it
is especially about the future that I will be talking. Something happens
only on the condition that one is not expecting it. Here of course I am
speaking the language of consciousness. But there would also be no event
identifiable as such if some repetition did not come along to cushion the
surprise by preparing its effect on the basis of some experience of the
unconscious. If the word “unconscious” has any meaning, then it stems
from this necessity.
(Derrida)
the unwritten switches over to a question of reading on a board or tablet which you perhaps are , a door open to the other , i lay down my life – only to take it up again , i have power to lay it down, and i have power to take it up again , this commandment i have received from my Father , One who sees me in all, and sees all in me , the word Om is the imperishable , in his eyes the person you take yourself to be does not exist , whatever you think yourself to be is just a stream of events , Separate the observed from the observer and abandon false identifications …
(Derrida)
Once play is no longer simply play in the world, it is also no longer the play of someone who plays. Philosophy has always made play into an activity, the activity of a subject manipulating objects. As soon as one interprets play in the sense of playing, one has already been dragged into the space of classical philosophy where play is dominated by meaning, by its finality, and consequently by something that surpasses and orients it. In order to think of play in a radical way, perhaps one must think beyond the activity of a subject manipulating objects according to or against the rules, et cetera.
(Derrida)
In order to make apparent a play that is not comprehended in this philosophical or scientific space, one must think of play in another way. Indeed, this is what I am trying to do within what is already a tradition-that of Nietzsche, for example-but
one which also has its genealogy. On the basis of thinking such as Nietzsche’s (as interpreted by (Eugen) Fink), the concept of play, understood as the play of the world, is no longer play· in the world. That is, it is no longer determined and contained by something, by the space that would comprehend it. I believe that it is only on this basis and on this condition that the concept of play can be reconstructed and reconciled with all of the-if you will-“deconstructive”-type
notions, such as trace and writing …
(Derrida)
In very summary terms, then, this is the principle of what I would have liked to set in motion. The fort/da* at the center of “Freud’s Legacy” is also, of course, a discourse on play. And, typically, Freud indeed does propose an interpretation
of the child’s game.
He piles up hypotheses: the child throws his bobbin. he brings it back in order to say this or that to his mother, and so forth. I won’t attempt to reconstitute here this whole very complicated scene. To be sure, the theme of play is there. However, if one understands the fort/da beyond what it seems Freud intends to say, then one may exceed the limits of the game toward the play of the world where the fort/da is no longer simply the relation of subject to object. It is. instead, that which has absolute command over all experience in general.
(In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud describes a child’s play with a bobbin on a string. As he casts it away from him, he utters “o-o-o,” which his mother interprets as the word “fort” (away, far): as he pulls it back, he says .. a-a-a,” which according to the mother means “do” (here).-Tr. )
(Derrida)
He himself is doing fort/da with his own interpretations, and it never stops. His own writing,his own deportment in this text is doing fort/da. Perhaps the performative is in play as well, in a very serious manner. but the game is also very serious and demands great concentration. He plays with this fort/da in his writing: he doesn’t “comprehend” it. He writes himself this scene, which is descriptive
or theoretical but also very profoundly autobiographical and performative to the degree that it concerns him in his relation with his heirs
(Derrida)