European Perspectives A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticis Lawrence D. Kritzman Editor European Perspectives presents outstanding books by leading European thinkers. With both classic and contemorary works, the series ais to shape the major inteectual controversies of our day and to facilitate the tasks of historical understanding For a coplete list of books in the series, see pages V-Vll.
Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius The Secrets the Archive Jaqu Dda Translated by Beverley Bie Brahic
Colubia University Press New York
European Perspectives A Seres Soal Tought a Cultul Crtsm Lawrence D Kritzman, Editor
Columbia Universit ress Pubh New York Copyright © 2003 ditions Galile English translation copyrght © 20 9 Beverley Bie Brahic Originally published in France by ditions Galile, 9 rue inne, 75005 aris rights reserved ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A complete CI record for this book is available from the ibrary of Congress 0-233 978 (cloth) ISBN 0-233 The publishers thank the French Ministry of Culture Culture ational Book Centre C entre for kindly granting a translation subvention.
8
Columbia Universit Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper c 0 9 8 7 5 4 3 2
ua Krtea Stngers to Ourselves heodor W Adorno Notes to Liteture, o. and Rhard Won edtor e Heideer Controversy Antono Gra Prison Notebooks o and aque LeGof History and Memory Aan Fnkekraut Rememberin in Vin: e Kaus Barbie ial and Crmes Aainst Humanity ua Krtea Nations Without Nationalism Perre ourdeu e Field of Cultul Production Perre VdaNauet ssassins emory Essays on the Denial the Holocaust Hugo a Critique the German Intellientsia Ge Deeuze and Fx Guattar Jat Is Philosophy? Kar Henz ohrer Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearnce ua Krtea Time and Sense: Proust and the Experiee Liteture Aan Fnkekraut The Deat of the Mind ua Krtea New Maladies the Soul abeth adnter XY On Masculine Identity Kar L6wth Martin Heideer and Euopean Nihilism Ge Deeuze Neotiations 1972-1990 Perre VdaNaquet ejews: History Memory and t he Present Norbert a e Germans Lou Athuer Writis Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lan abeth Roudneo jacques Lan His Le and rk Ro Guberman julia Kristeva Interviews Key Oer e Portable Kristeva Perra Nora Realms mory: e ConstYUctio of the French Past o Co�icts and Divisi o. aditios o : Symbols Caudne FabreVaa e Sinular Beast jews Christias and the Pi
v
European Perspectives A Seres Soal Tought a Cultul Crtsm Lawrence D Kritzman, Editor
Columbia Universit ress Pubh New York Copyright © 2003 ditions Galile English translation copyrght © 20 9 Beverley Bie Brahic Originally published in France by ditions Galile, 9 rue inne, 75005 aris rights reserved ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A complete CI record for this book is available from the ibrary of Congress 0-233 978 (cloth) ISBN 0-233 The publishers thank the French Ministry of Culture Culture ational Book Centre C entre for kindly granting a translation subvention.
8
Columbia Universit Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper c 0 9 8 7 5 4 3 2
ua Krtea Stngers to Ourselves heodor W Adorno Notes to Liteture, o. and Rhard Won edtor e Heideer Controversy Antono Gra Prison Notebooks o and aque LeGof History and Memory Aan Fnkekraut Rememberin in Vin: e Kaus Barbie ial and Crmes Aainst Humanity ua Krtea Nations Without Nationalism Perre ourdeu e Field of Cultul Production Perre VdaNauet ssassins emory Essays on the Denial the Holocaust Hugo a Critique the German Intellientsia Ge Deeuze and Fx Guattar Jat Is Philosophy? Kar Henz ohrer Suddenness: On the Moment of Aesthetic Appearnce ua Krtea Time and Sense: Proust and the Experiee Liteture Aan Fnkekraut The Deat of the Mind ua Krtea New Maladies the Soul abeth adnter XY On Masculine Identity Kar L6wth Martin Heideer and Euopean Nihilism Ge Deeuze Neotiations 1972-1990 Perre VdaNaquet ejews: History Memory and t he Present Norbert a e Germans Lou Athuer Writis Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lan abeth Roudneo jacques Lan His Le and rk Ro Guberman julia Kristeva Interviews Key Oer e Portable Kristeva Perra Nora Realms mory: e ConstYUctio of the French Past o Co�icts and Divisi o. aditios o : Symbols Caudne FabreVaa e Sinular Beast jews Christias and the Pi
v
Paul Ricoer itiqe nd oniction o;estions it Fois Azoui nd .c de Lun Theodor W Adorno iticl Models nteentions nd tcods Aain Corbn ille ells Sound d Meni in te ineteent-ent Fenc ountside Zygmunt Baman Gloliztion e Humn onsequences Emmanue Levinas nte o JeanLois landrn and Massimo Montanari Food A ulin Histo Aain Finkiekraut n te me ( Humnit Rections on te Tentiet entu Ja Kristeva e Sense nd Sense Reolt Te Poes nd Limits of Psconlsis Rgs Debray nsmittin ultue Syvane Aacinski e Politics te See Catherne Clment and ula Krsteva e Feminine nd te Sced Aan Corbin e e n nnon e Rediscoed Wold lo Me in Nineteententu Fnce Mhel Pastourea e Deil lot A Histo Stipes nd Stiped Fbic Julia Krsteva Hnn Aendt Carlo Ginzbrg Wooden es ine Rectios on Distnce sabeth Roudinesco Psconlsis? Aan Cabantos lspem: mpious Speec in te st fom te Seenteent to te ineteent entu Jia Kristeva Melnie Klein Jia Kristeva ntimte Reolt nd e Fute of Reolt: Te P oes n Limits of Psconlsis, vol Caudia Benthien Sin On te ultul ode eteen Se nd te ld Emmanuel Todd e te mie Te edo of te te Ameicn Ode Gianni Vattmo Niilism nd mnciptio tics Politics nd L ua Kristeva olette Steve Redhead, ed. e Pul iilio Rede Roand Barthes e eutl Lectue ouse t te olle de Fnce (97778) Giann Vattimo Diloue it ietzsce Giles Deleze ietzsce nd Pilosop
V
Foreword
What is cae literature
What is iterature for for Derria? There are numerous texts to whih one ou turn i n orer to answer this questio n eah text perhaps oering ierent (if ompementar) answers. A reent response omes in the essa on the universit universit The Future of the Profession or the Universi without onition (Thanks to the "Humanities what could take place tomorrow) Here Deria states: w a te unontona unvery or te unverst witout onton te prinpa rgt to ay everytng weter t e uner te eang of a ton an te experment of knowege an te rt r t to ay it puy pu y to pus t Te referene referene to pu pae w remain te nk that aates te new umante to the e of VB
Enghtenent. It stngushes the unves nsttuton f ote nsutons foune on te ght o te u to sa evetng fo eape egous confesson an even pschoanatc fee assocaton. ut t s aso at funa enta nks the unves an aove a te uantes to at s cae teatue n te Eupean an oen sense of the te as the ght to sa evethng puc o to keep t secet f on n te fo of cton 2 Lieaue is hen aiae aiae to the moehanctcaeco nstuctveuncontionai of he new umanies b the igt o sa evehing' puc puishe if on n the fom o f a cton' . Lieaue s hus one o f hose ae s paces hch sans in a nonsubss non subssive ive noncop non cop eiive eaion ea ion o he soveeign of powe (he sate capa the meia eigion) The u nconionai o f Liteatue is a space n whch nohing is beon quesionng an commena incung he moe of hnking hnking that takes the fom of ques oning an comena. Lieaue s in ohe wos a space in hch the mpo ssbi of he emocacto come ngh be possibe. t is he even of a econsucion a econstucon as hat hich happens Of couse thee s wha Dea cas esewhee the tea appaatus3 to be eckone wh name a he nsttutona poes which ene a wok as Lieaue' befoe befoe i has eve bee n wien (pubishng houses mea eview bookshops an makes he unves sabus an so on) Howeve o think ie
aue as such an unconionaty is to eimagne he iea fom the goun up fee of eve such posthesis to hich t has b een subona su bonae e n its mo en sense s ense bu bu which ae no necessa to . The iteaue tha Dea efes o hee s a econs ucionasmoehanLteatue ust as he unvesit wthout conion s no eucie to the manageasaion an appopiation of knowege that passes une the name o f he unives toa. Ths uncon tonaiy s not a pue' iteaue o an uncontaminate unive st tha exiss somewhee beon he tante pesent o uie wthin the contaminate now Rathe it s ha Dea efes to in this text Geneses Geneaogies Genes an Genius' fooing Hne Cxous as the Omnipoenceothe' [utpuissanceautre] of teaue. What s cae Leatue . . if on n he fom of con' aws an unecae ne beteen the secet as asoute sece an he phenomena a ppeaance o f he sece as such ieaue oes he secet a he same tme as jea ous guaing he secet (no in he fom of an encpion that s poentia knowae ut as an asoute epivaon of the powe o choose eween ea an cion). Liteatue aows one to ea at he same me as ening the powe to ea (in he sense of a etemnabe o sauabe nepeaton). Lieaue pesens he igh to ea hie simuaneous sconnecng ha gh fom an posion of auhoi that wou eene o goven he eang. t oes a his n he fom of an even in which enie he
V
o ead Cxou o ead whou model o map, nehe ccal, heoeca o by leay peceden Th wha pehap mo heaenng o powe abou Cxou The Cxou hypeex whch Deda' eay aue (h he ex of a ecue gven a he nauguaon of he Cxou achve a he BNF, he Bbohque Naonae de Fance) unmaeabe ke ohe gea eay nveno fniaux uch a Ho me, Shakepeae and Joyce, ay Deda, he Cxou oeuve poenaly ncommenuabe wh any bay uppoed o houe hem, cla hem, heve hem Bgge and onge han he lba e ha ac a f hey have he capacy o hod hem, f ony vually, hey deange al he achva and ndexng pace by he dpopo on o f he po enally nne memoy hey condene a ccodng o he pocee of undecdable wng fo whch a ye no com I pee fomaaon ex (p 15) The donao n of he Cxou achve o he BNF a dan geou gf becaue compel he bay o avow wha canno compehend, o guad wha canno have, o hou e wha canno mae Rahe, he donaon of Cxou' ee, noebook and, above all fo Deda, he deam jounal (fo whch evey connecon and no connecon can be made wh Cxou' novel and play, nvovng cen ue of choaly labou h ex by De da n pa a counegnaue o he book Dream I Tll You whch a colecon of ome o f he houand of deam ex donae d by Cxou o he BNF) epeen an abyal openng
beyond he eye of he bay Th gf he donaon of al he ece o f he Cxou achve, whch eman abolue ece ju a hey ae heved and numbeed n he BN Cxou ha gven he lbay an unconc ou Tha o ay, he ha handed ove o he BNF an apoweful, powee ohe A Deda pu , he copu eman mmeauably vae han he bay uppoed o hod (p 72. A he ame me h cop u ony leaue, ha powele challenge o powe, whoe engh n vey weakne a he even of ubmon o he nonengh/nonene of he ohe The achve ay eveyhng (phoophca, poec, pocal) and ay o pubcy a an aon o he oveegn whou beng of he oveegn can do o b ecaue eaue and he oveegn can oa wh mpoen age bu wl neve mae o p oe he Cxou ex, u a ha ex gve away (whou gvng up) al ece befoe he vey eye of he oveegn f he BNF he guadan and achv of eveyhng ha ha been wen n he Fench anguage hen now pay ho o boh he ev genu and he good gene of Cou, whoe dunal wng foce he achve no wha Deda cal a delum d-lire and fogeng oublire of eadng, an avowal of wha canno be avowed, a eadng of he unavowed, hence of a eadng whou eadng The achval compeence of he BNF and of he Cxouchoaocome powee n he face of h ohene and ucue of he undecdabe Th e be hope of uch eade , a Deda ay, o ony conm,
Xl
Xlll
Notes 1 Jacques Derrida, The Future of the Profession or the University without Condition (Thanks to the "Humanities what could take place tomorrow)" in Jacques Derrida and the Hum anities: A Critical Reader, ed Tom Cohen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 2 Jacques Derrida, The Future of the Profession', pp. 26-7. 3 Jacques D errida, That Strange Institution called Literature, in Acts of Literature ed Derek Attridge (London and New York: Routledge, 992).
U g e q u est-ce que c 'est?1
A genius, whats that?* What o gnius? What o this common noun that claims to name that which is least common in the world? The noun genius, one supposes, names that which never yields anyhing to the generaliy o the nameable Indeed the genius o the genius, i there is any, enjoins us to think how an absolute singularity subtracts itsel rom the community o the common, rom the generality or the genericness o the genre and thus rom the shareable One may readily believe genius generous; impossible that it be general or generic Some would say that it amons o a oneperson genre Bu this is another way o saying that it surpasses all genre o generaliy or the genericit o all genre Another way o indicating that *
Th original txt of this book was th tanscipt of th opning tak of th symposium, 'Hen Cixous: Gnss Geneaogis Gnrs, organ isd by Mirill CallGrub and hld in th Bibliothu National d Franc (Frnch National Library) 22-4 May 2003.
XI
t exceeds all the laws o genre, o that whch one cals gere n the arts, lterary genres, or stance, or what one calls gender, sexual derences Not to mento humanknd n general, or each tme that one allows onesel to say genus, one suspects that some superhuman, nhuman, even monstrous orce comes to exceed or overturn the order o speces or the laws that govern gere h, certaly beore I attempt, my way, much later, ater a great many detours to answer ths queston (whats a genus? or what ogeus?) , I shall rst turn t every whch way, I shal covert t Three or our tmes at least No loger s a geus? ¥ the? ¥ about genus? ut s genus? ¥ then? Then, a second converson, what s genius? ot geus, but genius? Then, ater that, a thrd converson, how ow to dare, overthrowng the masculnt o a French dente artcle ( ge ) , to declne ths noun n the emnne? And lastly, nstead o turnng to the thrd person ( who s ths { }genus?), mascule or emnne, I address mysel, or reasons I shall not mmedately dvulge, n the second person, to the secod perso: 'Geus, who are you {qui tu} ? 3 I am askng you ths queston, genus, hear, do you hear? Certainly everthng I shal say wll be tu'. Here now, bent on honourng the here and ow we
have the uque good ortune to share ths place, I am about, as they say lghtly, to deliver { tenir } 4 a speech to hold orth How rash o me to presume to hold orth ow unconscous I am! Ths ow or dscursve, cursve, urtve and ugtve strdng along that s commonly caed the course o a dscourse how could t ever let tsel be held? Restraed? Contaned? How to mantan a dscourse the here and ow? How not to renounce rom the outset, renng n ths beast, holdng orth? shall, , be unwse eough not to renouce n any case to egn ot to want to renounce and urthermore, holdng to my project o holdng orth, t appears that I am about to do what I can to make my speech contan an utenable word Ths untenable word, that no one these days would stl admt holdng to, s the common noun o genus. Here apostrophsed every genre (hey you, who are you) n the masculne, true, but rst and oremost the eminne. Ths noun, 'genus, as we are all too conscous, makes us squrm And so t has or a log tme One s ote rght to vew t as an obscurantst abdcaton to genes, as t turns out, a concesson to the geetcs o the ingenium or, worse, a creatost natsm, a word, n the language o another age, the dubous colluson o some sort o bologsng naturalsm and a theolog based on ecstatc nspraton An rresponsble
2
3
The geniusness o wom? Wo is it? Who are yo? Though it always marks a birt, a conception and a creation, who would dare, at this point, to inect the name or noun o genius towards the eminnity o an origin o te world? Here is one word { e gnie} in our national language that has not yet been admitted into the dictionary o the French National Academy or into our National Library in the eminine Not even, another gramatical singularit, to reer to a single person, in the plural We should say, peraps, i pushed, o a single person, a man or a woman, that se is a
genius {n gnie} or that she has genius { gnie} . N ever would we say that she is or she has, in the plural, more than one kind o genius {pls ne gnie} The historical, semantic and practical singularity o this noun is thereore such that we have always kept it or the masculine as well as the singular One has never, to my knowledge, recognised, in the eminine, thege ni ses oa woman The uture o this word becomes thereore stranger than the singular ate o its past I this uture is bequeathed to us, we shall have to answer or it This is the responsibility I would venture to address today What is going to happen with genius, that o this word, even? y choosing to write it in my title, I play, you perhaps think, at letting you guess tat I mean to slip a proper noun in under the common one; that is, the eminine rst name and patronyic, Hlne Cixous, towards whom all o us today here now turn More than one {nej } genius in one Certainly certes this warrants detours and justi cation For I elieve that I am up to something other than play here Play at what, besides, and with whom? First o al, one might think, I am playing with the asence o a word, the word genius , to be precise, in the line o substantives belonging to the same amily in g (geneses, genealogies, genres) that Mireille CailleGruber has
4
5
and docile inspiration, a drunken subssion to automatic writing The muses are never ar o In according the least legitimacy to the word genius one is considered to sign ones resignation rom all elds o knowledge, explications, interpretations, readings, decipherings in particular in wat one hastily calls the aesthetics o arts and letters, supposedly more propitious to creation Such resigning is considered mystical, mysticod One is said to be conessing to dumb adoration o the ineability o that which, in the usual currency o the word genius, tends to link the git to birth, the secret to the sacrice ut let us not rush to decry all secrets I mystical in Greek always invokes some secret, we shall peraps need to resort elsewere or this word, mystical.
judiciously selected for the beautiful arms of the symposium I am honoured to have been invited to. No, not only have I noticed a prudent, understandable and doubtless welfounded silence, the lack, the lapse, I shan't say the slip {lapsus} but rather the ellipsis which in its agrant absence cuts, like a fault line, through the semantic landscape of an entire generation of vocables Geneses genealogies genres in the plural that was missing, also in the plura was geniuses. Much later, were I to propose something like a thesis, I shoud try to show in what way the concept of genius if it is one, must extricate itself both from the usual meaning of the word and even from its membership, albeit evident and ikey, in the homogeneous, homogenetic, genetic, generationa and generic series (genesis, genealogy, genre). Extricate itsef and even upset the order of things I have just evoked the line of words belonging to the same family in g to draw your attention without further ado to a multidirectiona phenomenon.6 A sort of crossroads or a chorus, shoud we wish to exercise our Greek memories, from Oedipus to Antigone, from the Eumenides to Helen Such a multivoiced phenomenon must for centuries trouble the wakefu vigilance of readers, interpreters, philologists, cryptol ogists of all ik, psychoanalysts, philosophers, drama 6
tists, historians, archivists, lovers of literature who will bend, as they say, over these fathomess depths, the oeuvre and hors l'oeuvre, or extraneous matter, that Hlne Cixous generously bequeaths to the French Nationa Library generosity, there's another word from the same famiy in g, close to geneses, genealogies, genres and to genius Or rather, as I sha speci in a moment in order to remain close to this enigma, they wi bend over the unfathomed papers Hlne Cixous bestows upon or ends to this no ess generous and enigmatic institution caed the French Nationa Library. Will it indeed prove itself a generous act of giving and giving back? And if yes, or if no, in what way? And aying the donation, and its donor and donees open to what dangers, to what hazardous responsibiities is one of the many questions that await us, and to which my tentative responses will be anything save reassured and reassuring Such questions ought to be prowing around the essence, the destiny, the vocation and the future of an institution as extraordinary as a French National Library, as well as around Hne Cixous's archive (oeuvre and hors loeuvre) on the day of this contracting, with mutual condence, of a binding engagement and a quasiwilllike alliance, which will be my soe topic this evening And my soe theme, for I sha rue out any remarks that do not refer directly and egibly to what is taking place in this pace, 7
r
talics thus keep the realty of what is said to have taken place n realty in suspense, in literature. The italics make us reect upon, even bring into play, the very body of the question: What is reality? What is an event? What is a past event? And what does past' or come to pass' mean, etc.? So many uncertainties or aporias for whoever claims to set a library's contents in order, between the library and what's outside it the book and the nonbook, literature and its others the archivable and the nonarchivable Therein lies literature's secret, the innite power to keep undecidable and thus forever sealed the secret of what it/she {elle} says, it literature, or she Cixous, or even that which it/she avows and which remains secret, even as in broad daylight sheit avows, unveils or claims to unveil it The secret of literature is thus the secret itsel It is the secret place in which it establishes itself as the very possibility of the secret the place it, literature as such begins, the place of its genesis or of its genealogy properly speaking. This is true of al literary genres; and as we are aware, Hlne Cixous has, among all her dierent sorts of genius, that of practising, without exception every kind of literary writing, from the critical or theoretical essay to the novel, to the tale, to theatre in all its forms. We shan't even ention poetry for poetry is her language's eleent most 8
general of all genres at al times the generating force behind her work whatever genre it may be in. Furtherore the genres do not add themseves one to another, with her they are not juxtaposed. t would be easy to come up with a thousand examples to demonstrate that in her ars poetca each genre remains itself, at hoe, while generously oering hospitality to the other genre, to a sorts of others which come along to interfere to haunt it or to take their host hostage always according to the sae topodynamics of the smaest being bigger than the biggest: not only is the theatre in the theatre (the play's the thing . ' ) bt dramas get staged in the novels the Book has the right to speak and turns in turn into ore than one charac ter, even the act or the scene of a play the Tale is eshed out given a capital letter in a prosopopoeic allegory, speaking up in the rst person etc The graft the hybridisation, the migration, the genetic utation is multiplied and cancels out dierences of genre and gener, the literary and sexual dierences. ere we are kept at a respectful distance, within the magnetic eld, but forever at ar's length fro what one must ca the secret of literature the secret of its Onipotenceotherness' or the genius of its secret. Before dening in a more formaly theoretical manner what mean by secret, then by genius before returning after a lengthy detour, to Manhattan prre 9
3. Finally, this will allow us to demonstrate that the secret is not without an anity for the sacred, with the very genesis of that which, in a sacrice, eects the sacred, brings forth or gives birth to the sacred and the secret in a single act of birth. Indeed, in this or that passage, once again in italics, what one must absolutely not lose sight of is the Cixous idiom. I would describe it, this idiom of a signature, as a kind of gift for letting itself be caressed by a genius of the language that cannot get over its utter surprise at the touch that comes out of the blue to move it and that breaks with the genetic liation it respects and cultivates and enriches even as it betrays it. This betrayal out of faithfulness interrupts with an event the genius of the lan guage, an unconscious genius of the language, unaware it was capable of letting itself be thus regenerated by that which seems to grow out of or derive from it I am here envisioning the French language as a genius we often say the genius of the language to designate its grammatical, lexical or semantic treasure, the innite potentiality of its own resources, and I shall come back to this gure but here of a genius of the French language which is served, in a manner both responsible and conscious of its inheritance, and nonetheless violent, unpredictable, i rruptive, heteronomous, trans gressive, cutting, by a completely dierent kind of genius This latter, for the rst time, softly, violently 22
tenderly, opens its eyes to what lies within it, the French language, I mean, as if in sleep or sleepwaling in the innite dream of its unconscious, nding itself there or nding itself back there without ever yet having found itself there ong with the signature of the Cixous idiom, in the passage I am about to read I shall emphasise a literal all usion to dreamng To the law of dreams In so doing I mean to anticipate two moti to my mnd unavoidable in the extraordinary problematics and thus the implacable law that Hlne Cixous brings to bear upon this national institution to which she makes the both blessed and dangerous gift of her archive. A On the one hand, immense and active, the dream's immeasurable invasion of the genesis of her public writing, hence of her literature I know of no more impressive and admirable example in the world of this kind of complicity, Hlne Cixouss indefatigable and unique translation of the innite world, of all possible worlds of the nocturnal dream, into the incomparable vigilance of one of the most calculating of diurnal writings. This dream part does not merely furnish material; it also opens up the abyssal rift of a question everfresh (what is a nocturnal dream { rve}? A diurnal? What is waing { rve}? What time does she wake? And is it daylight when she begins to write? Is she stil dreaming when she notes her dreams? Does she 23
then begin to interpret them and shape them into lterature? What is a consciousness or igilance at work in the writing? But also what is the deam's igi lance, the deam thought? Etc.) B On the othe hand, beliee that Hlne Cixous means to leae a or a part of her dreams, countless notebooks which hae sered, oer decades, to coect her dreams A or a part but which part? Where wi she draw the line? How will she disguise or censor them? refer here to the dreams noted upon waking, tens of thousands of pages, some of which wil be immediately accessible, others much later, other perhaps neer or neer bequeathed, and this will cause the BNF {Bibliothque Nationale de France, French National Library}daunting and, fear or hope, 1m not sure which, insoluble problems, at once hermeneutical, oneirocritical and deontological, technical and ethicolegal The line here would be drawn between literature and the others, between literature, Omnipotence other, and its others, and nonliterature, between the material and the form, priate and public, secret and notsecret, the decipherable and the undecipherable, decidable and undecidable So many conceptual pairs which here dwell in a per petual fog, worse than oppositions, conict, oppressie hierarchy or repression The BNF will pay the piper, but so wil Hlne Cixous, she aboe all, though dierently Now the other of the 24
Omnipotenceother of literature is not only but also dreams
Rve {deam}, theres a ocable that nds itself joined in her work, ia aliance or alloying, to the signicance of syllables and alues bigger and smaer than its own body, at once included and including, such as vel, vnement, even, evenant {wakng, event, to come back, evenant}, and aboe a, Eve, the rst woman and Hlne Cixouss mother n the nglish language, which exerts a constant attraction upon the writings of a foremost interpreter ofJoyce and so many others from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf, in so many British, American and French uniersities, eve is also the hour of igil, of watchkeeping, as in evenng. We might also and even say that evenng is the secret watchingoer an act of writing, which gathers and shapes, dreams and reeals {ve et vle} this quasie uaton this restless equating, this turbulent equalising, evenng, that comes and goes between ve, ve, vnement, vel and vel {deam, Eve, event, wake, wakng} When take the liberty of declaring, as hae just done, what beliee to be true, namely that Hlne Cixous intends to leae a or part of her dream memoirs to the BN do not exaggerate For what, in fact, do we read in the opening of the book that she is about to publish, the one that comes after Manhattan, with the so ery ,
25
by the author, or on the contrary are the dreams the inducers? And if so in what way and how, each time, each time in its own singular and innitely overdetermined way? And what if it were all that at once, inextricably? A huge and daunting task for the centuries of readers to come Of these extraordinary Forewarnings which, in a few pages, provide so much food for thought as regards the givens, the gift and the giving of these dreams, I shall retain here, for the reasons and according to the rules I have announced, but a single paragraph, so as to point out, in three steps, the genius of the secret and the genius of the letter, above all of the syllable g, with which we shall never be done, however it is transcribed (the letter g, the whole word jet', the word fragment g', as in gnie or gnalogie or gnrique; and when the word genre' turns up in the same paragraph, not far from genesis, the paragraph contains all the words of our tite to know it by It must be quoted as an epigraph I'l do it) After having conded her submissiveness to the law of dreams, after having described the scene of the morning's transcription, then the secrets that she in turn discovers', Cixous goes on to te us what she won't be telling us; she declares to customs the secrets she will not be revealing to the customs agents of the curious, the librarians, the critics and general readers A veteran Freudian, she tosses this chaenge to inter 8
pretation, to let the dreams interpret themselves, into t �e faces of the customs agents, not revealing the hdden contents, not revealing the proper names of the goods she's smuggling in. She even publicly swears that, saying what she speaks of, she wil not say of whom. A contagious homonymy stands guard over the secret pseudonyms and metonymies, and over a French language whose idiom could hardy be better protected aganst the bloodless transfusion of translation than by its untranslatable homonymy ee ecret, in thi volu me, I don t give them away I never will ey know too much [If we understand the grammar correcty, it is therefore the secrets, those others, that know, they are the subjects of the knowing: the sec rets know, it is not she who keeps the secrets that keep her. As for her, she nds herself kept in secret, held to the secret by the secret] I repect their reerve, their twit and turn, I admire their diguie. ey had to be well hidden to lip through the cck in my wall when I want in the leat prepared to let them come. And then time paed One day you can look the dead peron 's photo in the face. Jen one had jut died my death you r, jet of boili ng tear kept me from eeing your face The mon th of tear are pat. (p 2)
There's the incredible grammar of those last sentences, their divided meaning, rst of al, multiplied by 29
he unranslaable homonymy o les mois { he monhs} bu also moi, me he sel and les moi {selves egos} or exampe (egos as numerous as weeks in a monh all o i hereore caling or more commenaries han any library could conain: my deah one had jus' she says (bu who one'? died i ransiively died i in my place and my deah is in apposiion yours (who you? and hen up spur he jes o ears' (why jets, why his unusual word? Tears ow hey don' oss hemselves up one doesn' ing hem up like projecions or pro jeciles o block your view (kep me rom seeing your aces'. To whom is she speaking wih hese monhs and me's you tu} and you vous} so as o recoun my deah yours your deah and your aces; your dea can be hers ha o he me who is speaking and who speaks o hersel he one spoken o rom he oher place o he dream or he deah o he you tu} who urher on in he same paragraph wil be disseced we shal see wih all he resources o is unranslaable homonymy ha is o hese irreducibly French homonymies whose language all dreams recal (tu, meaning toi, t, u, tu, ha which is sruck dumb wih he silence o he verb taire and se taire {o hush hush up} Ie tu {he you he silence} o he secre Ie tu as he genius o he secre genius qui est tu { who is you who is silenced} ec Jus as monhs o ear s have gone by like a period o ime and he mulipliciy o 1's or 30
me's who are ohe rs our weeks an d jus so many egos so here is he tu who is you and knows o all silen or impose silence concerning isel. Te mo nths o tears are past . Now I can gaze at the photo o yourace withou tfaring up pitiless dream. I admire the tapestry signers th at give the mask its extravagan t eatu res A whole nht with Handel, and I never suspected that the stately accents are those o the haine d' ele the hat e o her! I admire Freud' extraordinary powefrst and last cartographer these stnge contin ents, the Sh akespeare o the Night : he saw the movements and cosmonautic calculations q the whole geness [my emphasis] and anthropozoology othis world, its wiles and passions, subteuges and sttagems intrigues and plots, games gender [my emphass] , genre [my emphass agan] and species Dreams are the atres which pu t on the appearance oa play in order to slip o ther unavowable plays between the lines o the (pp. 2-3) avowal scenes .
Oher unavowable plays' In his way he heare o h dream he heare o appeaance smuggles in ha which is and remains unavowable even as i is being avowed in he orm and according o he genre o he avowal brings i in clandesinely as conraband Whereupon he readerspecaor is aken aside apos ropised addressed as riend recipienparicipan in 31
reading s can only closest, the most culti v aed of erate n r endering conr m, wor k to war ds and coop e v en mor e e ectiv e. You speak to us The For e war ning s' o Dream I Tll hus but you forge t what . you reade-spectator are aware of this in You connive i n you know so you can be charmed and taken your own eyes Te your own trickery You p ull the wool over en yo u and yourse thinner than a zor blade that slips betwe are a you {T u es un is an impercepti ble vertical hyphen You [It is because of tu} Do you see wha t I mean? Vo is you question genius this qui est t u? that began with the of the dream 5 delicate who are you?'] I am remin ding you el between the letters: work;rst it slips the invisible laser scalp een the signeds t, u, t 'es eu t u, {you ve been had} next betw {you are y ou } that's Siamese twinned by homo nymy tu es tu ined silent} tu ne why, Can t tu {bei ng you/ having rema remain slent} Asfor peux plus te taire {you can n o longer {repeats echo es, all the bistouri { scalpel} il bisse tout ris laughter} . e a t the thought of Id better stop I don 't want people to bristl resources of the lan the philosophical and philosophicomical guage (pp 3-4) .
And indeed she knows o stop on the brink of mere cleverness, when the signer, being mere signier, is 34
no longer signicant But of he Siamese, untransatable homonymy of tu which reduces you you o silence and secrecy, falling silent and being silenced, we know we know nohing: who is he tuyou o whom she says tu est tu', you are, as English puts it, silenced. You �hall not speak and you won' be spoken of, I prose you, you promise me, I promise myself, tu sera tu, you yourself and no one else. The law s yours, it is yours and only yours, t s reserved, desned for you, nurfr dich besti mm t, as it s said of he man before the aw' in Kaka As for hat which mgh, here or there in the Forewarnings', seem excessivey playful and arcial, for example, the bsse tout rs' , you must wat o see the dream of 9 January 1 9 9 5 for he scene wih Faima (the dedicaee of the book, she whom in rea life has transcrbed he dream manuscrpts along wth so many oher exts, and deserves universal gratiude for wha these writngs said o be transcrpions mply, namely, no jus knowledge, conscientiousness and paience, but a way so subtle, so intellgent of beng in une wh he texs). The scene in question s a genesis, a hospa delvey nvolving Eve, the mothermdwfe in real fe, whom he dreamer orders o take her bistouri', whle Thessa (alias Thessie) btes down on a cushon on which one sees a mysterious tiger, srangely ncknamed petgre' { liiger} who mgh this be, one wonders and who seems o know more than i les 35
careful that is, to d quickl y, ot to lose a istat ad ot to let itself be o vertake by what she ds herself dig ev e before she has looked for it, ev e if we kno w sh e has bee lookig for it f or cetur ies ad has always ko w wher e she has looked for what she has just found at the very spot, i the cr ook of this brach. Her had writ ig r emids me of all the squir rels i the world
Thus f rom the star t she writes o wakig , b y had, o the edg e of the bed, o oe of the thousad or te thousa d otebooks the BNF is to iher it She writ es upo wakig i or der to wr ite dow her dreams. B ut of te, as i the paragr aph we ha ve just read, the dream itself comes alog to iterr upt sleep The dr eam wakes Up.23 The dream keeps watch, iexible, e v er read y to
summo up the wakef uless, the cosciousess e v er
vigilat i the memory of the dream - ad what a icredible memor y! I kow of oe to match it The dr eam the g iv es the order to wr ite dow, to ote,
e ve to begi to analy se it, the dr eam Which keeps its
force ad its iitiati ve ad its secret, ev e as it uses
ustitig l y of the po wer it has o v er her , o v er the writig that beds it s wilig bod y to it. 'She wr ites on
wakig ' , so this must be uderst ood not ol y as she writes at the momet of wakig ' , but also just as she writes i pecil, i ik, by had' , she wr ites f uelled b y
the oeir ic eer g of the dr eam, as oe would sa y of a 40
missile that it is propeled, for example, ad drive by atomic eerg. Her writig is set i motion by wakig, at the moment of wakig but also, thaks to the eerg of wakig, she works o wakig, she burs the eerg of a wakig which is the order of the dream as well at the order of the dream but ot of the order of he dream, at the order of the dream which also orders actively ad passively, its ow iterruption The drea � switches itself o. How ca this be? It falls silet while giving itself to be spoke of, i its place It falls silentit is you: il est tu. But the wakig, this rst wakig is already o the lookout, it keeps watch with all its mght, it keeps watch without stit, it supervises, still it keeps vigil over the dream, it dreams of rousing all the powers of the iterrupted dream Of the dream that has just falle silet, for it has just fale silet/it comes to fall silet { il vient de se taire} , it comes from that which it sileces eve as it speaks Wakig is poised o the edge of the silet dream, a s if the dream that had passed might still be comig or comig back (A occasion to touch, too rapidly, i passig, upon the unfathomable eigma of a sort of disaliation, i the great laguage of Frace, betwee two word famlies oe mght have thought related. I refer to a surprisig etmological dissociation betwee the nous rve (rverie rvasserie) or the verb rve on the oe had, apparetly of ukow origi, pure Frech, lackig 41
a situation of heteronomous obedience to the Omnipotenceother of literature Now the caesura of this other waking does not fall between the time of the dream and the rst moments of waking, but leaps in to make an interruption in the interruption that sets in motion the work of the vigilant writing, the diurnal time of the literary act proper. This, while miracu lously keeping the thread of the dream going (this, for me, is the miracle), the gift of the writing, nonetheless cuts it o instanty and knowingly transgures all the givens, taking into account, so as to incorporate as well as surpass them, all the resources of a vast literary experience, an incomparable science of the language, of the thousand and one libraries of universal literature so as to create events totay without precedent, and without imitators, no schools possible, there where, as I shall show in a moment, the genius consists precisely in making the work come, giving it room, giving, period, giving birth to it as event, paradoxicaly breaking with all genealog, genesis and genre This is where , as I shall explain more fully in a moment, the geniusness of a genre of geniuses is no longer part of the homogene ous family of genesis, genre and genealog One could nd an example of this rupture, within the ction itself, in Manhattan, once more, when, following the passage transcribed in italics, on Monday, 2 April 2001 (on the subject of the word sacrifce and the 'force of the 44
Secret'), se continues, in roman t ype: The evening of Certes I noted', etc., words folo wed, as at te very beginning of the book and rst chapter entitled Cer tes a Sacr ice', b y an impressive piece of work on te words cte a ct or aux cts de { coast, hill rib . . beside . at the side alongside } her brother The book opens wit a sentence that oug ht, like so man y other s, to be remembered for eter nit y : I didn't want to go to Cer tes and there I was on my way side by side with m y br other I'm forever doing what I didn't want to do I was tinking . . .' The topon ym Cer tes, in its adver bial for m cer tes' { certainly truly to be su re} once ag ain capital-etter ised, is the anagram or cr ypton ym of S ecret In the title Certes a Sacrice', one cannot tel whether the capital letter marks the rst letter of the phr ase or a proper noun Afterwards, one can under stand, provided one is not too doz y, that Cer tes, capital C, is one of the innumerable cr ypts, the turningintoapr oper noun of an adver b Certes is the Secr et, the anagr ammatic transf ormation of Secret Certes is the tr ope or the Secret place of the story that you wil never r each Cer tes, as place, is one of the most fantastic per sonag es, which is to sa y, in the r hetor ical sense, as gure or tr ope, and as secret destination or secret destinee the somebody wo keeps the f orce Secret, its anag ram Unless it is the force of the secr et that keeps her Each time I have said certes', and y ou may 45
ave noticed tat tis as been often, secretly I was ururing secret, te reverse of a welkept secret Tis waking witin te waking is terefore te extree vigilance of a ost rened and practised liter ary conscience, a ost audacious one as we, but also a igly supervised and supervising one, one skilled like none oter at founding itself on literature's secret, tat is, on te cryptopoetic power tat seals up everyting, sign and seal of universal literature in new Frenc language, everyting one ust not tell Se seals o, se blocks, blocks as one boards up a door or as one sen tences te reader not to read wat e reads or condemns24 i to read wat e doesnt know ow to read To stand before te boardedup door, wile e strolls in te endless labyrint as if te door stood ajar Everyting tat Hlne Cixous gives to te BNF will reain sealed, readable unreadable, tat is, arked wit te sign or verdict of tis boarding up wic not ony as never kept anyone fro reading, but opens on te contrary an innite eld to reading and its pleasures to te love of te Onipotenceoter of Literature Te door is barred but please coe in Make up your own ind. I recal te subtitle of Benjamin a Montaigne: you mustnt tell, and te subtitle, in parenteses, of te most powerful play I ave ever seen, he Story you will never know) . Is wat separates genius, ten, fro everyting tat gt seamlessly connect it to a genesis, a genealogy or 46
a genre, not tis absolute event tat marks te undecidabe liit between te secret and the penomenon of te secret, between te absolute secret and te penomena appearing of te secret as suc? Tis is were te genius of inspired events pays along wit Literature, wit its Omnipotenceoter For Literature draws tis undecidable line te instant it wips te secret it keeps fro you into its ciper, out of sigt, true, but tat it keeps {garde} absolutely wile anding it to you to look at again { regarder} , but witout oding out any ope of your grasping it, tat is, wile depriving you of te power or te rigt to coose between reaity and ction, between ction wi c is aways a rea event, like te pantas, and socalled reality, wic ay always be noting but a yperbole of te ction Tat, at east, is ow I interpr et te word oter' in te ter tat Cixous reserves for Literature Onipotenceoter' { (Tut-puissance-autre' } I sal not insist, aving done so at lengt esewere, on wat se does wit te word puissance' in te Frenc language I soud, owever, like to attept to expain te oter, te attribute oter', in te expression Omnipotenceoter' Tis omnipotence {puissance} peculiar to literature consists in giving you (it is a gift, of genius, and generous), in giving you to read at te same time it prevents you {fro reading}, or rater tanks to te power {pouvoir}, tanks to te grace 47
project, objection and abjection, one could add sub jectile) I have just mined in order to make them co municate underground with the name of the father n g as well as with a German idiom also present in �he Cixous genealog through her Germanspeakng mother, thus with the Heideggerian thought of beingthrown as Gewoenheit but also with the translation of Gegenstand of this object that one also used to call, before Kant, Gegenwu( is thrown in front, ahead of, counter to), and thus of all that runs counter to or encounters in the poeticalsemantic chain whose thought elan adjusts and recongures in Te Meridian egen counter, Gegend the region, Gegenwort the counterword of Bchner's Lucile, the Gegenwart the hereandnow, and Begegnung the encounter); we must grant th at this extraordinary threeletter syllable }2 S (n the elds {portees in jet has at least two semant sense of the musical stave, of period of gestation and of litter or brood) or, equally, two extraordinary destinies On the one hand it covers and stirs up the whole history of that which, in thought, philosophical thought or the thought of philosophy in particular, such as it seems to me, in its most original developments, brought into play in this work, nds itself pre congured by the gure of the jet (object, subject, project, objection, abjection, Gegenwu Entwu Gewoenhe it) and by the gure of jeter-lancer {throw .
50
toss} in the toss, the uncertain toss of the dice namely the idea of the event, of the arrivingness of �hateve; or whoever arrives, of the other as that which happens, an idea forever indissociable from the experience in the course of which the dice are tossed But, on the other hand this powerful formaising of the et' which encompasses the greatest generalit of the Cixous library, which forms her eement in the sense of general milieu', is also strewn about like an atomic particle, an a but insignicant phoneme or grapheme, as element, here in the sense of the atomists' stoikheion in the sense of the letter or of the minimal composition of letters in the sylable, word or word fragment. Like a strewing ete} of words for example, and I sha limit my clues to a certain dream of 25 March 1997 from Dream I ll You Without mapping all possible routes through this very dense page, I shal favour the red line of a re, the re of an ardent ove which enames the whole dream and whose re, one might say, catches the word, from the etter to the syllable, then to the vocable, jet jeter je t adore je { I adore you I adore you ad I you} . Here are some fragments of this dream: In this huge fair big as cty sprung up for a day everything keeps us apart and everythng unites us. The miracle, or our luck is that despite everything we 51
how to read, how to read her, I don't believe has hap pened yet, save in some rare instances. There is, certes, an undeniable celebrity quality, Hlne Cixouss aura and global reputation But strangely, these go along with a lack of appreciation, in France above al This state of aairs deserves lengthy, discriminating analyses These would, needless to say, rst of al take into account the writing or the poetics, they would study the language whose untranslatability, although rooted in the French idiom, for that very reason, paradoxical as it may seem, resists the codes and customary usages of French language and lierature It resists them, one might as we say it encounters erce, frightened, threatened, denied resistance. The same analyses should show how these resistances are tied to those of the people and powersthatbe of French culture, its university, its schools, above al its media What Hlne Cixouss work does to these codes is a storm so unpredictable and so intolerable that there is no question of her garnering a folowing The dearth of readers formed by or to this work makes the clearsighted, insightful and premonitory hospitality that the BNF grants her here today all the more signicant We must pay extraordinary homage to this institution We must acknowledge it as the prestigious and sole depository of copyrighted publications, certainly certes and of hallowed archives But this keeper of the pasts noble her -
54
-
itage is also, a s it happens, because of its very tradition ality, the bold and prophetic forekeeper, I dare say, of masterpieces to which, despite al the resistances I have noted, a future is promised Such a forekeeper is vital for the Omnipotenceother of literature, inasmuch as, without being nationalistic, this literature, in this country, is linked in its events to the body of the language called French whose life and survival it ensures: a timetocome in a word I am sure I speak for a of Hlne Cixouss admirers when I express my gratitude to the BN but gratitude is due, above all, needless to say, to MarieOdile Germain Better than anyone, in al its minutiae, she knows the interminable and daunting task she assumes with such generosity, devotion and timetried competence That which I sha try to approach as I attempt to redene genius is not unrelated to this heteronomy that delivers us, in literature, over to what Hlne Cixous calls the Omnipotenceother The hyphen between these two words seems destined to indicate that these three signications, the absolute, the power ful and the alterity, are basicaly one and the same thing, the same Cause ( Ursache as she often species), and the same law as literature We would be wrong to think that this experience of genius is merely a matter of obedient and passive reading; it tries the endurance that throws us into the writing And if this 55
questions in the ethical or deontological sense of the term (what has one the right to classi as literary ction or as nonliterary document? Who authorises whom to unveil what of the secret or of the nonsecret in a public work of literature? Who authorises whom and authorises himself what in order to permit the divulging of such and such identiable iations or relationships in the genesis of the work employing private nonliterary documents (dreams and letters, for instance) it has been legay decided wi never or not for decades enter the public domain, etc?). This is why I had to cut short my rst quotation at the word ibrary', at the words tombstone of a library' These words aow us to conjure up an a but mute institution, dedcated to the deatly silence of a tomb closed up over its genius, that is, over life (for genius, as its name indicates, always bears witness for le) A tomb supposedly closed over genius; that is, ver the life of the secrets it keeps; fo r this alusion to the library of Yae University, as setting of events that reall happened, aready opened, like the abyss at the bottom of a tomb, a the probems of this library we are in, as if the word library, as it stands in the sentence quoted, already contained the space and the future of this library; as if the word were already innitely greater, more abyssal, than the conservatory to which one imagines one condes i t as a particle of the 58
body of ones body of work Everything that is hap pening here today was already foreseen, glimpsed, tod, predicted, even prewritten or prescribed in the Yale Library in 1964 Date, coincidenty, if I may conde in you, when I ha d the astonishing uck to meet Hlne Cixous, who had not yet published a word The nearness of this meeting at the Bazar is archived, moreover, on page 55 of Manhattan, in the list of incipits' I can therefore, swear, attest, certes, that the deed really happened in reality', in a reality stranger than ction, athoug Hne Cixous remains responsible for her apocalyptic evaluation of the thing She indeed wr ites: Like therst time that she had ((seen" [quotation marks at "seen] Derrida at the Caf Balza And similarl when she meets Gregor in the Li rar Apocalpses tha t know not what the are This apocalyptic event in the Yale Library deserves to have been so aptly caled, famed, named primal scene' by Hlne Cixous: The fateful primal scene [ takes place in realit [ ] in the tombstone of a ibrary at Yale.' The atopic, crazy (in Greek atopos aso means mad', extravagant') topologic, the unthinkabe geometry of a part bigger than that of which it part, of a part more powerful than the whole, of a sentence out of proportion with the what and the who of that which contains it and whoever comprehends it, the atopia and the 59
pori o n pprently tomic eement which incudes in its turn, within itse, te eement tht overows it nd with whic it sprks sort o chin rection, veritble tomic explosion, I shnt ony insist on this wen I return to te interrupted quottion I some thing is redy not obvious, it is perhps the beonging to literture o the quoted nd interrupted sentence, te reerence to te librry t Ye nd to the priml scene clled real in the very plce in wich it migt ve been ntsised For I hve excerpted this sentence rom tht wich one cs in French, gin in the strnge grmmr o mscuine genre, the prire d'insrer o Manhattan The publishing house, Editions lile, is but lone tody in not mking do with un quatrie de couverture {bckothebook copy}, yet noter problemtic mscuine, nd in keeping the exquisite trdition o the prire d'insrer ive Let us py homge to one o the privileges nd honours o this extrordinry editori institution, yet nother reson or Michel Deorme to be with us tody The prire d'insrer is one o Michel Delormes precious gits to the B ditions ie pubishes prires d'insrer o type never seen ny more, prires d'insrer signed by the uthors, prires d'insrer tht re not n intrinsic prt o the work they introduce but occsiony hve gr et literry vlue nd constitute genre o their own, works or opuscules in their own right. The prire d'in 60
srer I ve just quoted is mniesty nd egibly signed
Hne Cixous But it is not rightully prt o Manhattan, the work o ction sid to be utobiogrphicl nd entited Manhattan tht it purports to
present or to metonymise. by itse tereore it rises, reitertes nd symbolises te legl problem o imits tt we hve just evoked Wt is outside nd wt, rom the outside, perchncends tse prt o the inside s wel? I remnd you tht Dedans {Inside} ws the title o one o Hlne Cixouss rst books pubised in 1969 wrded the Medicis Prize, published by two other houses, including Les ditions des Femmes; i I insist upon tese editori dt, it is becuse the coming study o the lie nd work, s o the whole Hne Cixous rchive (oeuvre nd hors l'oeuvre or extrneous mteril) wi hve to mke considerble room or wht is not mere editoril circumstnce surrounding the work, but istory o this countrys editoril politics, ence in trut o its whole cuture, its politicl culture notby, during te pst hlcentury (Prenthesis. In te gret nd incredibe topoogic o te set theory tht I m so doggedly nysing ere, I ve once gin used the expression se trouver {to nd onesel, to hppen, to hppen upon} To point out tt something rom te outside, s outside, 61
trouver of its tropes, of its supposed or haphazard ety mologies, without venturing into the Greek or Latin and German tropes o f encounter (tn), shall imit myself to reading a few sentences, from the very end of Or. The narrator is ecstatic at the fathers letters, everything must be read between the lines 1 have � ec tioned o: 'I never expected such grace [ ] t S beautiful This proud syntax, the uprightness of its beari ng recognise the rhythm, it belongs to the antique armation of being [ . vital assent [ am utterly delighted: it is a high calm vast impersonal space in which I fnd myse [this time in whi�h I f d myse nds itself written, to draw attention to tself, n italics] Without pain, without memory without forgetting without weight without me But as subime joy I nd myself the second time without italics and without indicating the place: it is not there that she nds herself, but simply that she nds herself, she nds hersef for the rst time or nds herself again at last she nds herself, thats a, absolutely, utterly hersel I am adrift on the lips of the letters like a smile hence, if, in the end, she nds herself somewhere, she nds hers elf absolutey, reexively, to be sure, but mean whil e s he nds hers elf in a place, namely, as the following sentence informs us, adrift " on the lips of the letters like a smile] Here is the promise of a text without reproach 64
Thefnds itse thus both site and event, the takingplace of an absoute innocence, of an antique armation of being like a 'vital assnt without faut, before any faut, any guilt, any resentment and any reactivit Yes, I nd myself, yes, here is where and how I nd mysel This is aso, et me say, my own feeling: that it is unique ad I take it as an arming act of grace, an act of conrmation and of consent, of assent, each tine I discover that she has found before me, that which I believe myself to be the rst to have found, this or that, a by mysef, there where I nd mysef, and this is, as is well known, in a place and in the mddle of a history utterly dierent from hers, where I nd myself nding what she, herself, has already found, there where she nds herse And I dont then feel any debt, any guilt, any resentment Whatever she gives me, whatever she nds hersef nding before I nd myself nding it in turn, owe her nothing I beieve this to be exceptional And not just in my own life where I didnt expect any such act of grace I n this same parenthesis, I shall conde another silar experience that remains for me henceforth inseparable from the preparation of this lecture I had already written, I shal even dare to say elaborated, formalised to the best of my abilities, and even printed out everything you heard earier concerning the turbulence of the et, of the g, of the jet, of the letter g etc, of the Gewoenheit and of the Jete when, in the 65
course of rereading Manhattan I come across a passage which, analysing the aleatory combination of omnip otenceothers, notes the secret, again this is her word, of the psychical conductors and navigations along nucleotidic vessels unsuspected by me towards the aleatory meeting point where the accident takes place in my sensibilit' (p. 1 2 1 ) . She makes note of two such accidents, and before the one that leads back to illness at an eary age and death from lung disease, here is what she writes: ' 1 . The letter G the association between the names the tendery loved elements of the Georges and the unrecognised name of Gregor; the impossibility in 1964 sti for me to pronounce the words j' ai and all the other angelwords in j 'ai g jet gel, etc., instinctively I always tried to avoid any disturbing contact with G but it is everywhere in disguise in the French language. Another example of a debt for which I feel not the slightest indebted: after having, all by myself, asso ciated, justiably I believed, initiay, that which in her surpasses oth sexual and literary genre, I came across, as if for the rst time, I swear, a certain italicised passage, in Manhattan again, which says the foowing (but any reading worth its salt would regenerate the entire context a truly endless task): Everything is perhaps already (played) there in the undecidable dnition of the deck chir {la chaise longue} a discrete and 66
al l the more i nsidious gureor t he hermaphrdite: i n the transgression the literary genre; in the transgression osexual genre. I should hae recognised t he demon the deck chai (p 1 27
Whereupon, this also needs to be pointed out, switching to roman type, the story slips the word genius, with more lightness and irony, into the mouth of Eve, the mother: - Lett ers always were your weak point says y mo ther, whereas I the genius who sent e special letters in which he was talking from London, [ J in 1933 while was in Berlin in a trice I sent hi packing (Loc. cit)
Elsewhere, Eve again issues a clearsighted warning against genius: You arent capable of distinguishing between a genius and a liar As for me don't even read the letters of some dubious genius (p 196
There you have Eve, the mother, on the word gen us She keeps it at arms length. Eve is wary of geniuses, she has learned to be suspicious of men of genius. The truth is, these socaed men of genius are nothing but selfsled geniuses, they take themselves for, want to
.
67
love for Literature (I had such love for Literature . .) it seems to put an end, on account of literature, to all hypotheses of genius She has loved him for his counterfeit genius, hence believing blindly in a quality of genius that Gregor has successfully faed (devilish as he is) but he himslf would have lied to be loved as a genius of a countefeiter, thus as a veritable evil genius, succeeding by means of slyness and an admirable as well as amiable devilishness, in passing for a genius and in maing himself love lie an authentic genius, the real McCoy. The evil genius may be he who understands better than others, how to pass for and mae himself loved well and truly lie a genius.) End of this parenthesis that will nonetheless serve as introduction to what I wish to say about genius', wherever we meet up with it, wherever it occurs, if it does, and wherever it sets the scene for an event that, far from tting into the series, into the hmgeneus (the word is apt) sequence or ongoing liation of a genesis, a genealogy or a genre, brings about the abso lute mutation and discontinuity of all others. How can this be? I shall attempt to be more precise about this in my conclusion, from the point of view as always of the library archive but relating it now not only to the incisive occurrence of a rupture but also to the aporia of a gift that gives more than it gives and than it is given to 70
now, both on the part of the giftgiver or giftgivers and on the part of the receivers the gift given without nowing it, unawares, and thus without acnowledgement, a gift that never seems to be one, to have the quality of genius, and which therefore calls for no grat itude nor any conciousness of giving. Genius is a gift that never appears such, lie what it gives. This might be its other secret dimension. Hence the irony that allows a countefeit and countefeiting genius to give us food for thought on the subject of genius. One last return to my quote from the prire d' insrer of Manhattan, at the point where I left o In it, we already saw the multiplication of the toponymcal and topological paradoxes that come along to cplicate this sort of set theory that Hlne Cixouss archivable corpus brings to mind. That which I henceforth name corpus includes wors published under the heading of literature and texts of all inds that are neither dependent on nor independent f the literary oeuvre strict sensu and as such. A set theory of this corpus ought to ca upon what one might consider axioms of incom pletion, a system whose closure remains nonsaturable insofar as the belonging of an element to a set never excludes the inclusion of the set itself (the biggest) in the element that it is supposed to contain (the smallest). The smallest is big with the biggest, the small is 71
bigger than the biggest, the litiger contains the tiger, it can be the tger Jonas is bigger than the Whale, and the corpus remains immeasuraby vaster than the library supposed to hold it The archve alady s this as well As with the law of genre whch, some twentve years ago, in the course of a reading of Banchot's L folie du jour, I attempted to demonstrate, in a text , entitled La loi du genre {The law of genre} that what I was then calling the genre clause' tolls the knell of genealog or genericty' nsofar as the menton of genre cannot simpy be par t of the corpus', and that an axiom of noncosure or of noncompleton makes the condtion of possbility and the condton of mpossibility of a taxonomy overlap'. We have an outstanding example of ths in the remander of the interrupted quotation We are going to note particularly, and emphasise, the plays on letters and syllables n the engendering of proper and common nouns The letters of the syable are or the common noun is gorge, the proper nouns are Gregor and Georges. *
* In Parages (Paris: Gaile 1 986), pp. 264-5 (2003, nw nargd dition): 'La caus ou eclus du gnr declasse c qul prmt d cassr E sonn gas d la geneaogi ou d la genericite auqus l donn pourtant jour { Th claus or lock gat of gnr dclassis what it allows th classication o t tos h knl of th gnaogy or gnricity that it nonthss brings to light}
72
Among all t he Jonases in search of the Whale in whose belly to perform the ri tes ofbanishment in those days was a Gregor, the truly fabulous and uninterpretable charac ter of this attempt at a tale One day in 1964 in Manhattan at the turn of a destiny young but already marked by the repeated deaths of loved ones for once and for all called Georges between the young woman who loved literature more than anything in the wold and the young man whose nind was a copy of the Library's most spellbinding works, the mortal Accident ccurs. This fateful primal scene, the evil eye' scene, takes place in reality ust as ifit had b een written by Edgar Poe) in Yale Universi ty's tomb stone o f a library Som etimes for a mote in your eye, the world is lost Afterwards everything happens at top speed for like the Lovers the taxi of the crazed rushes down the slope to H ell faster than water throwing itself into a gorge Liteture as Omnipotence-other . (Prire dJinsrer, p 2)
In this passage, the syllabe or orchestrates and organises, starting from the same ovule of sonorous wrting, from the same strand of DNA the relationshp Georges Gregor and g0e Frst gote: at once oracular origin, orality of the uttered sound and deep orice into which the abyss {mise en ab£me} rushes, trows tsef, 73
plunges and loses the world (the world s lost, and the mortal Accdent occurs ) Next, , a tny syllable condenses, there agan {ence (hanc hm and Cxous s a great wrterthnker wrter about tme and the hour), yes, ence, a lttle nugget ncommensurably greater than eerythng, for ts addedalue remnds us not only of an extraordnary book that bears that tte (O Les lettes de mn e 1997) and whch s al �eady an mmense poem of the recently exhumed arche (a complete lbrary) of the letters of the father, Georges to her mother { god} also names the alchemcal force of a substance that, at once, undecdably certes the unrepresentable unsubsttutable alue, beyond a ny knd of fakery of that whch I should lke to call genus and smultaneously, n the same alloyage and the same allance, soders t apparently seamlessly to the homo gensng seres of geness, genealog and genre Ths s what I should lke to expan, as schematcally as possbe n my concludng words Gnie qui est tu. Slent genus 27 I belee one must cetes dssocate slent genus { Ie gnie qu i est tu from
the homogensng powers of geness, genealogy and genre, but also from the generosty of the gft when t appears as such One often says that genus s a gft and that t ges generously n the act or at of a creaton But f ths were so, the gft would be promptly can 74
ceed out n economc crcularty It would reapproprate tself wth or wthout delay Genus that s a gft of nature s not genus Genus that ges out of natural generost ges nothng A gft that knows what t s gng to someone who knows what t s he s receng s not a gft It repossesses tself and cances tself out n awareness and n grattude, n the symbol, the contract, economc crculaton, n the symbolc Slent genus { le gnie qu i est tu} surpasses both the sym bolc and the magnary t grapples wth the mpossble Genus ges wthout knowng t, beyond knowledge, beyond the awareness of what t ges and of the fact, of the performate eent that consttutes the gft f there s one And those who recee from hmt (ndduals or nsttutons) do not know, must not now what t s they are receng, and whch s aways more always somethng other older and more unforeseeably new, more monstrosly unheard of and nexhaustble less approprable than anythng one s capable of representng hat I hae so far tred to suggest s also that n the gft to the BN whch the BNF solcted, receed cultated, gae n return, the ger s ncapable of knowng and of measurng what t s that she s gng ndeed een that she ges or entrusts and the BN for ts part wth a ts dstngushd competences, wth the ncomparable knowledge of ts readershp for centures to come ll 75
forever be essentay ncapabe of deternng, and a takng possesson of, that whch t wecoes, fortiori
one nds therein a text entited Views ofmy ands'; * one might dream of geogeneaogy or geotropism and speak of a comprehensive geography of her work her genius is be cause o f its many languages roed into one, and Algeria into France in ageriance geographica] whose disappearance is sti so cose and aready so distant with what remains of the trembing assurance proper to orphaned mothers who make beieve they don't fear being swept o their feet with regret Then right away I ceased turning back I got up I headed for the Library. (pp. 89-90)
sheters, safeguards, that whch t has the sgna vrtue of oerng hosptat to. And ths s good. Theren may e some quaty of genus, f there s any, a genus gven and gvng. There at the heart of ths aance, ths aoyage, ths seb�nce and resembance of homogenety, the thread s cut,28 and t s the cut of a genus, aong a the Gs. Instead of proposng a ong theoretca deonstraton, I prefer once agan to quote a few nes from Manhattan: I didnt look at him. I was struck by the onomastic resembance between his name and that of my son the dead b ut I immediatey pushed away this sembance of resemblance what coud be phoneticaly more removed from Georges than Gregor, thats when he drew my attention to the anagram saying that up until now theyd been caled Georges from father to s on in th e family, meaning his an d that he had been born to cut the cord I am he one who sees to the cutting of the cord says he. He was missing a tooth on the side on top, you hardy noticed it Gregor? I must have ooked at him. thought of my son whose name is of the earth [Georges a georgic or geotropica name: Hne Cixouss corpus constitutes her eds and 76
On the subject of these few nes, so as to cut short n turn, I sha restrct ysef to two na reveres or two suppostons {supputations}. The rst, certany - certes the ost rsky, goes o n two drectons at once both towards a stuatng of genus and towards the everparadoxca ste of ts expresson. In other words towards ts address, towards the 'thou { t u } of ts address By a secret rasng of the stakes, by a hyperboe of rony that akes matters even ess decdabe, that whch surey ponts, to y way of thnkng, towards a sharpy nongenetc, nongeneaogca, nonhoogeneous understandng of
In Heln Cixous. Croises d'un ouv (Paris: Galie, 2000). 77
geius is't this escibe pobaby without his beig awae of it by the most coutefeit a coutefeitig geius of them a; that is Gego? Thee's y eveie. My suppositio. Gego the socae geius a ua waes tes of geius As if it fe to the coutefeit coi to show us heas o tais the authetic the pue go of geius i a homage of vice to vitue that eaves us foeve i the ak so fa as kowee a theoeti ca statemet ae cocee about the tue essece of geius As Eve sai you ca't te the ieece betwee a geius a a ia' Whe Gego states i a emak epote fomuate itepete by the aa to that he is te oe who ses to the utting oj the ord (i itaics) is he ot thikig i his eams at est of the ieucibiit of geius to atue to physis, to ife to geetics to geaogy to the homogeeous to aageeaogy to iatio eve a this uig evets of absoutey sigua iaugua cuttig without past a without ay possibe iitatio? With eithe fathe o mothe? Without chi without ame a without iheitace without schoo eve if evey thig fo which he cuts himsef o whose thea he thus cuts gets stitche back up agai i the eve befoesee a ueciabe evet? Geius is ot a subject o a iagiay subject o a subject fo aws o fo syboism a possibe subject geius is what happes Geiusess is the uiqueess of a impossibe 78
aivigess {arrivane} to which oe aesses oesef which is oy to the impobabe estiatio of the aess a it is aways tu. A siece { t u } istat the istat of the etea etu Futhemoe the gue of the cut thea o co o ie whose iitiative is hee ctivey attibute to Gego by a aato who kows what she is sayig a what she makes othes say a what she aows to be sai this cut thea seems i its vey ettes l}, the piviege eatioship the passwo passkey betwee the aatogeius a the coutefeit coutefeitig geius She hesef spoke of this cut thea ages ago pages ago Betwee them is both the cuttig of the thea a a oubig of ietit G she says I ea he who I have aways cae Gego I cou't ca him [thus the oe she cas Gego _ she ca't ca him but i fact this efes to a teephoe ca a wieess ca whose wie ca aways be cut g uativey a this teephoe as I have show ese whee is pat a pace of a of the stokes of geius i He Cixous's wok as we as i he ife] betwee two Cities a o phoe the ie ow o oe sie o the othe I iagie his state I thought I was puttig mysef i his shoes ' (p 4 1) . My seco eveie my utimate suppositio so as to cocue ay o the e { enfn s ur la fn} of the 79
1
matchboxsized cake of soap still ivorywhite no doubt stil packed in its glossy jaundiced paper vest with the logo of the Kings Crown Hote. Why have never thrown out the 'incriminating bits , wonder, I wrote this question as it came, noted the expression incriminating bits and didnt touch it. This is a question, this is a fact. Or perhaps I ought to have aske d myselfwhy I had kept or have kept the 'evidence? This would require scrupu ous reection, an analysis to which we should devote ourselves some other time To say have kept would be an overstatement, have not saved, protected, the idea has never crossed my mind On the other hand, Ive never had the idea of discard ing This is a fact: in the little room in the form of a tunnel that sometimes we cal a cellar sometimes a storeroom someimes an archive a few cardboard boxes con taiing the remains, vestiges, proof pieces of evidence, boxes oce led with win bottles that end up contain ing terrible secrets A matter of many, many letters, draw ings, a number of audio tapes , dating from the spring of 1 965 as well as a few casset tes Might there also be some objects? Dinky little boxes for which would have given ten years of my life, the las t ten? That the evidence should still be there is in its elfnote worthy. (pp 745) 82
My last sUppo Ston revoves around the genesis of Man hattan, its ti e, its length of concep tio n and birth date, its genealog and genre, if you like The impa tient patience of its writing was, I rec kon , haunted by the BN it dwelt in truth in the arcane pa sts of French literary g enius that s leep no ore and over which the BNF watches, and over which in particuar the BN F's future, beyond its past, keep s watch. The BN F's tasks to come are already turning up to torent the Manh attan archive. On this top ic, allow e, in passing, to make a conj ecture, another name for speculation or supposition. I sha assue, probably outrageously, its responsibiit This is that rst of a, given to or depo sited in the B N the Cixou s co rpus , i f its deposi ting or donation i s to be meaningful, that is, if it is to have a future, should be at the heart of an ac tive research centre, of a new kind, open to scholars from all parts of the word. As for my aforeentione d supposi tion, naely that the past and future of the BNF is one of the m otifs of Manha ttan , I sha back up this supposition, this supputation, what a word, with a sngle example. It s o happens that a recent, and thorough re-reading of Remembrance Tings Past for a recent and unprec edented seminar course led Hlne Cixous to write the folowing, excerpted from a long reverie on the destiny' into which, she caims, Proust fel'. Fell 83
tomb is he wo, it is not just any wo. Poust is suppose to have fallen into o stumble onto his estiny. As in al genius stoies, its about the ineluc table chance wheeby the ice fall on this sie an not that. Between the veb to fall, moeove, to fal hee o thee, to fall upon, to fall upon this one o that one, to fall upon a estiny, an the veb s trouvr {happen upon, n onesel, thee is a common mak of con tingency which always ceates a special case. The cas, as it happens, is casus, that which falls as it falls. It is chance o chanc { ate on which a payment fals ue, tem } . Often both at once fo bette o fo wose. O ne falls, fo bette o o wose, upon this o that, him o he, as the l uck an the cossing of paths woul have it. ust as Stenhal, Cious ecals, owne up to anothe tumble o his hose, to having falen o his hose again, tough luck fo his hose no oubt, so Poust, accoing to the epession I mae use of to begin with, foun himself in place of someone else, an lne Cious says Poust also fell into a estiny, at least, as naato, in place of someone else. As fa as betine was concene he was sue it might have not been he he love, it coul have been { ut pu someone else. (Supu c ut pu he wites in his manu scipt in the BN) ll it took was . . (p 45) Whethe Cious ea this Supu in a manuscipt of Pousts at the BN as she claims, o whethe its 84
anothe bight iea of he ction, I havent the means to vei an inee it mattes little. This is witten in a novel an is st an oemost novelistic. But it is sig ncant that the ction s houl have put this Supu in a manuscipt suppose to have been happene upon in the BNF achives. The Supu { ighthavebeen} , (SUPU) in he shot han, supposes anothe possible encounte, anothe possible love, anothe po ssible stoke of estiny. lne Cious has not only evoke, sinceely o not, it mattes little, he access to the BNF achives, to Pousts manu scipts, she also points to the fact that Poust stumble onto a estiny (an al of Manhattan an he entie oeuve consists in showing, in not a few pimal scenes, the estiny she heself has stumble onto, an onto what and onto whom, unening is the list of the singu laities that she has eithe stumble onto o com across as an Englishspeaking Poustian woul have it) . S he ha� especially been stuck with amiation, by the abbevi ating an playful an leane an pecious an viillFnc contaction of cet pu (SUPU fo shot) in place of c ela auait pu ; an even ifshe mae it up, this comic wo that, in fou so vey oveeteine lett es, SUPU, simultaneously busts out laughing, phoneti cises the witing an above all fomalises, via this con itional past which thus meets its algeba, eveything one might have to say about any contingent event 85
Translator's Not es
I am grateful to Hlne Cixous Laurent Miesi and Eric Prenowitz for reading the translation-in-progress and providing corrections clarications and nspira tion. I am solely responsible for the aws that remain. My ambition has been to stay as cose as possible to Derrida's syntax, which with its use of parataxis frag ments de ay double negatives asides and afterthoughts in or out of parentheses grace notes ( certes . ') and digression (etc. ) would in itself be worth close analy sis for what it might reveal about the saping of his argument Jacques Derrda's intertextua comm ents are in parenteses ( ) and brackets [ ] as they are in te orig inal text; the transators comments and alternative readings are in braces { } where such proximit is usefu and not too distracting; oterwise they are reegated to '
89
endnotes; these are in no way exhaustive they merey point to some of the more obvios word pays.
Trans Beverley Bie Brahic, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005
Works Cied
Jacques Derra
Hlne Cxous
Parages Paris: Gaie, 1986; 2003, new enarged edition. Hlne Cxous. H. C pour a ve c' est a re Croses 'une oeuvre Paris Gaie, 2002 H C. Fo r Le Tha t s Say. Trans. Stefan Herbrechter and Laurent Miesi, Stanford: Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2006
Deans. Paris: Grasset, 1969 Re-edited 1986 Paris: E ditions des Femmes Inse. Trans Caro Barko, New York: Schocen Bo oks, 1986 La Paris: Gaimard, 1976 L' ange au secret. Paris: E ditions des Femmes, 1991. Beethoven a jamas. Paris: E ditions des Femmes, 1993 Messe Paris: E ditions des Femmes, 1996. Or. Les letters de on pre Paris: E ditions des Femmes, 1997 Osnabrck. Paris: E ditions des Femmes, 1999 L jour o je n' ta s pas la Paris: Gaie, 2000 The Day I Wasn 't ere. Trans Beverey Bie Brahic, Evanston, IL : Northwestern niversity Press, 2006 Benjamn a Montagne I ne fau t pas e dre. Paris: Gaie, 200 Manhattan Lettres de a prhstore Paris: Gaie, 2002 In trans, New York: anhattan-Fordham University Press, forthcoming Rve je te s. Paris: Gaie, 2003 Dream I ll You. o
90
Notes 1 Un gnie: Der rida's qestion insists upon the fact that the Fre nch word gne is invariaby singuar in number and mascuine in genre, despite its femi nine e' ending 2 certes: Derrida scatters this adverb throughout his speech, ike a trai of white stones' , as Cixous said when we were muing over how best to transate it Certes is an adverb, meaning certainly', to be sure', it is true', and Certes un sacrce is the tite of the rst chapter in Cixous's Manhattan; much 91
later in his talk Derrida wil draw his audience's attention t o his frequent use of this word and point out that certe is an anagram for ecret We decided to leave certe in the text, translating it, now an again, as certainly'. 3 tu: the second person singular/familiar pronoun in French; it is also the past participle of the verb tare (to fall silent) Thus gne qu et/e tu can mean genius who is you', genius who are you?' and/or genius who has fallen silent'. Throughout this lecture Derrida plays on al the meanings of tu 4 tenir (to hold): in French one does not make or give a speech, n tent un dcur Derrida plays on variations of this expression mantenr for instance , means maintain or hold by hand (man +tenr) and mantenant means now, making for a largely untranslatable compression of meanings in this passage S How rash of me: in fact what Derrida says, Ce qu 'l faut d' ncncent , means, literally, how much unconscious' - in the Freudian sense is needed to presume to hold forth. 6 multiirectional a plu eur e in French e (ways, roads, paths) is a homophone of x (voices), hence the shift from roads to chorus. 7 liation: cals to ind l (threads) as well as l (son or sons); hence in this passage and elsewhere 92
in te bo ok tropes of weaving and t ropes of famly relationships will overap. 8 intriguing plot: in French ntrgue eans plot'; Jacques Derrida writes n ntrgue la plu ntr guante 9 as it happens : in French, e true is literally it (he) nds itself' as well as it happens ' . The many meanings of this French expres sion are played upon again and again in the text; soetimes in English it will be translated as it happens'; at other times by the more literal it ( or she) nds it/ herself ' . 1 0 n ouns names nm in French means both (or either) noun' and nae'. Thus, further down, when acques Derrida writes un prnm prper one must hear the overlapping' of prnm (rst name) and nm prper (proper noun). 1 the prire dinsrer: a (loose) page or two of text inserted in a book and which summarises, in a style between that of an author 's foreword and that of a blurb, the book's contents. 12 Omnipotenceother: Derria explains later in the text and in greater detail in his book H C pur a e cet a dre . . (Paris Galile, 2002), that the word puance as Cixous uses it, is, perhaps, formed from the subjunctive pue (may, might, let it . .) Its se nse therefore is that of po tency. In this translation, puance wi be translate as 93
2 the crying out of the sacric e: n he Frenc of Manhattan Cxous wres a re: l { cres son } wc has he same sound as sacrce 2 1 s 'entend a: an idiom w ic uses the v erb entendre o hear reexvey (o ear onesel us eray someone he ars oneself keepng he secre 22 with the help of waking: n French he expres son au rveil ends self o e varous nerprea ons Derrda develops n s se con of s ex 23 The dream wakes up: s passage connues and develops he pay on e vocable rve, found n rve (dream) rveil (wakng) rveiller (o wake) veille and veller (reaed o keepng or beng vglan) and sueiller (supervse overlook) Here rve rvelle may be ransve or nransve; ha s he dream sef wakes up or he dream wakes (er) p
omnpoence' and mgh' whle pouvoir wll be ransaed as power' 1 3 given place led to or provided the occasion: n Frenc donner lieu may mean all hee hngs 4 One has no more eyes: n Frenc plus d'yeux du tout, n whch one may also hear plus deu (no more god) 5 capital-iterature: Derrda plays on he homophony of he lee r 'L and e word elle (she) 6 issu e from tissu e of iterature: Derrda wres 'A mns que Dieu toutpusant ne soit issue de Littrature e ou tPuant tisue de Littt ure, n whch one hears boh ne ot su and ne ot-issue. God comes from s born of engendered by ler aure bu s also he su of leraure 7 L'Ange au secret . the secret angel: n Frenc au secret s an expresson wh a mulpc of meanngs some of wh c are unfolded n he fol lowng nes of he ex 18 stubbornly hushed up: n French ttu crypt et tu crypttu { subborn cryped and hushed up } w pays on all e possbe meanngs of he varous co mbnaons o f sounds and syllables 9 delirium: n French dlire a combnaon of he negave prex d and lire (o read) n he nex sen ence Derrda plays on oublire, a combnaon of oubler (o forge) and lire.
in every case the verb Derrida uses is con dam ne wc can means al hese hngs 25 two semantic elds: Derrda uses he word porte, whch can mean musca save and ler or brood among many oher hngs 26 stroke of genius a trumpedup one: Derrda s playng on he phonc coseness of e French expresson avoir un coup de gnie (ave a brlan dea) o e coup du gne (he srokeblow of he gens) whc s muc more ronc
94
95
24 seals . . . blocks . . . se nten ces . . . condemns :
