Perjury and Pardon, Volume I 9780226819181

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p e rj u ry a n d pa r d o n , v o l u m e i

t h e s e m i na r s of jac qu e s de r r i da Edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf

Perjury and Pardon volume i

Jacques Derrida Edited by Ginette Michaud and Nicholas Cotton Translated by David Wills

The University of Chicago Press  ‡  c h i c a g o a n d l o n d o n

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2022 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2022 Printed in the United States of America 31  30  29  28  27  26  25  24  23  22  1  2  3  4  5 isbn-­13: 978-­0 -­2 26-­81917-­4 (cloth) isbn-­13: 978-­0 -­2 26-­81918-­1 (e-­book) doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226819181.001.0001 Originally published in French as Le parjure et le pardon. Volume I. Séminaire (1997–­1998) © Éditions du Seuil, 2019. Portions of Session 4 were published in French as Donner la mort © Éditions Galilée, 1999, pages 161–209. Portions of Sessions 7–­10 were published in French as “Le ruban de la machine à écrire. Limited Ink II,” in Papier Machine. Le ruban de machine à écrire et autres réponses © Éditions Galilée, 2001, pages 43–­147. Portions of Session 1 were published in French in Pardonner. L’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible © Éditions Galilée, 2012, pages 9–­72. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Derrida, Jacques, author. | Michaud, Ginette, 1955–, editor. | Cotton, Nicholas, editor. | Wills, David, 1953–, translator. | Derrida, Jacques. Works. Selections. English. 2009. Title: Perjury and pardon / Jacques Derrida ; edited by Ginette Michaud and Nicholas Cotton ; translated by David Wills. Other titles: Parjure et le pardon. English (Wills) Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2022– | Series: The seminars of Jacques Derrida | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: lccn 2022003727 | isbn 9780226819174 (volume 1, cloth) | isbn 9780226819181 (volume 1, ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Forgiveness—Philosophy. | Forgiveness in literature. Classification: lcc bf637.f67 d4713 2022 | ddc 155.9/2—dc23/eng/20220207 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003727 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso

(Permanence of Paper).

z39.48-­1992

contents

Foreword to the English Edition : vii General Introduction to the French Edition : ix Editors’ Note : xi Translator’s Note : xxiii

First Session  :  1 Second Session  :  44 Third Session  :  65 Fourth Session  :  85 Fifth Session  :  116 Appendix, Fifth Session — ­Discussion Session  :  148 Sixth Session  :  161 Appendix 1, Sixth Session  :  193 Appendix 2, Sixth Session  :  196 Seventh Session  :  198 Eighth Session  :  228 Ninth Session  :  254 Tenth Session  :  284 Appendix, Tenth Session — ­Restricted Session  :  318 Index of Proper Names : 325

foreword to the english edition

When the decision was made to edit and publish Jacques Derrida’s teaching lectures, there was little question that they would and should be translated into English. From early in his career, in 1968, and annually thereafter until 2003, Derrida regularly taught at US universities. It was his custom to repeat for his American audience the lectures delivered to his students in France the same year. Teaching first at Johns Hopkins and then at Yale, he read the lectures in French as they had been written. But from 1987, when he began teaching at the University of California, Irvine, Derrida undertook to lecture in English, improvising on-­the-­spot translations of his lectures. Recognizing that the greater part of his audience outside of France depended on translation proved easier, however, than providing a satisfying ad libitum English version of his own elegant, complex, and idiomatic writing. In the circumstance, to his evident joy in teaching was often added a measure of suffering and regret for all that remained behind in the French original. It is to the memory of Derrida the teacher as well as to all his students past and still to come that we offer these English translations of “The Seminars of Jacques Derrida.” The volumes in this series are translations of the original French editions published by Éditions du Seuil, Paris, in the collection “Bibliothèque Derrida” under the direction of Katie Chenoweth. In each case they will follow shortly after the publication of the corresponding French volume. The scope of the project, and the basic editorial principles followed in establishing the text, are outlined in the “General Introduction to the French Edition,” translated here. Editorial issues and decisions relating more specifically to this volume are addressed in an “Editorial Note.” Editors’ footnotes and other editorial interventions are mostly translated without modification, but not in the case of footnoted citations of quoted material, which refer to extant English translations of the source as necessary. Additional translators’ notes have been kept to a minimum. To facilitate

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scholarly reference, the page numbers of the French edition are printed in the margin on the line at which the new page begins. Translating Derrida is a notoriously difficult enterprise, and while the translator of each volume assumes full responsibility for the integrity of the translation, as series editors we have also reviewed the translations and sought to ensure a standard of accuracy and consistency across the volumes. Toward this end, in the first phase of work on the series, we have called upon the advice of other experienced translators of Derrida’s work into English and wish to thank them here: Pascale-­Anne Brault, Michael Naas, Elizabeth Rottenberg, and David Wills, as well as all the other participants in the Derrida Seminars Translation Project workshops. Geoffrey Bennington Peggy Kamuf marc h 2 019

general introduction to the french edition

Between 1960 and 2003, Jacques Derrida wrote some fourteen thousand printed pages for the courses and seminars he gave in Paris, first at the Sorbonne (1960–­64), then at the École normale supérieure, rue d’Ulm (1964–­ 84), and then, for the last twenty years of his life, at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, 1984–­2 003). The series “The Seminars of Jacques Derrida,” in the collection “Bibliothèque Derrida,” will make available the seminars that Derrida gave at EHESS, four of which have already appeared.1 This corresponds to the period in Derrida’s teaching career when he had the freedom to choose the topics he was going to treat, most often over two or even three years, in seminars that were themselves organized into the following thematic series: “Philosophical Nationality and Nationalism” (1984–­88), “Politics of Friendship” (1988–­91), followed 1. These four volumes were published by Éditions Galilée (Paris): Séminaire La bête et le souverain. Volume I (2001–­2 002), edited by Michel Lisse, Marie-­Louise Mallet, and Ginette Michaud (2008) [The Beast and the Sovereign, vol. 1 (2001–­2), trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)]; Séminaire La bête et le souverain. Volume II (2002–­2 003), edited by M. Lisse, M.-­L. Mallet, and G. Michaud (2010) [The Beast and the Sovereign, vol. 2 (2002–­3), trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010)]; Séminaire La peine de mort. Volume I (1999–­2 000), edited by Geoffrey Bennington, Marc Crépon, and Thomas Dutoit (2012) [The Death Penalty, vol. 1 (1999–­2 000), trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014)]; Séminaire La peine de mort. Volume II (2000–­2 001), edited by G. Bennington and M. Crépon (2015) [The Death Penalty, vol. 2 (2000–­2 001), trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)]. In addition, two courses given prior to these seminars were also published by Éditions Galilée: Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire. Cours de l’ENS-­Ulm 1964–­1965, edited by Thomas Dutoit, with the assistance of Marguerite Derrida (2013) [Heidegger: The Question of Being and History (1964–­6 5), trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016)], and Théorie et pratique. Cours de l’ENS-­Ulm 1975–­1976, edited by Alexander García Düttmann (2017) [Theory and Practice (1976–­77), trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019)].

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by the long sequence of “Questions of Responsibility” (1991–­2 003), focusing successively on the secret (1991–­92), testimony (1992–­9 5), hostility and hospitality (1995–­97), perjury and pardon (1997–­9 9), the death penalty (1999–­ 2001), and, finally, questions of sovereignty and animality under the title “The Beast and the Sovereign” (2001–­3). We will here follow the logic previously established for the final seminars of Jacques Derrida, namely, publishing in reverse chronological order all the seminars given at EHESS, all the while respecting the internal chronology of each thematic series. In accordance with that plan “Perjury and Pardon I” (1997–­9 8) will be followed by “Perjury and Pardon II” (1998–­9 9), and so on up through the fourth volume of the first series, titled “Philosophical Nationality and Nationalism.” We have tried in our editorial work to remain as faithful as possible to the text as Jacques Derrida wrote it and we present it here with as few editorial interventions as possible. With very few exceptions (for example, improvised sessions), Derrida would prepare for each class session not notes but a continuous written text, sometimes punctuated by references to the texts he was quoting, didascalia (e.g., “comment”) indicating a time for improvisation, and marginal or interlineal annotations. When we have been able to locate tape recordings of the seminars, we have also indicated in footnotes the oral comments that Derrida added to his text in the course of a seminar session. It is likely that if Derrida had himself published his seminars during his lifetime he would have reworked them. This practice of reworking was in fact rather common with Derrida, who frequently drew from the vast wealth of material of his courses for lectures and texts he intended for publication. This explains the fact that we sometimes find a partial reworking or adaptation of a seminar in an already published work, highlighting even further the dynamic and coherence that characterized Derrida’s teaching, a laboratory where ideas were tested and then frequently developed elsewhere in a more or less modified form. That being said, most of the seminars that will appear in the “Bibliothèque Derrida” have not been previously published in any form: their publication can only greatly enrich the corpus of Derrida’s thought by making available one of its essential resources. Katie Chenoweth, Head of the Editorial Committee Geoffrey Bennington Pascale-­Anne Brault Peggy Kamuf Ginette Michaud Michael Naas Elizabeth Rottenberg David Wills

editors’ note

The seminar entitled “Perjury and Pardon [Le parjure et le pardon]” was given by Jacques Derrida at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), in Paris, over a period of two academic years (1997–­9 8 and 1998–­9 9). Presented first in French, the seminar was repeated during Derrida’s regular visits as Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, French and Comparative Literature, at the University of California, Irvine, in 1998 and 1999, and at New York University in 2001. The present volume contains the ten sessions constituting the first year of the seminar. We should first note the difference in word order of the seminar’s title from one year to the next. In 1997–­9 8, Derrida’s usual computer file name, and that used on the typescript, is “PAR J/D (Parjure/Pardon),” whereas for 1998–­9 9 “Pardon/parjure” is the systematic title. In the typescript for the seminar given in 1997–­9 8, Derrida himself comments on this matter on two occasions, namely, in the First and Third Sessions;1 he comes back to it also in the First Session of the 1998–­9 9 year, explicitly referring to

1. See 41–42 below: “Every fault, every crime, anything there would be to forgive or to ask to be forgiven for, is, or presupposes, some perjury; every fall, every wrong [mal] is first of all a perjury, namely the breach of some promise (implicit or explicit), the failure of some commitment, of some responsibility before a law that one has sworn to respect, that one is supposed to have sworn to respect. Forgiveness always concerns a perjury — ­and we will (would) then have to ask ourselves what in fact perjury is, what an abjuration is, what it is to break a sworn vow, an oath, a conjuration, etc. And so, what swearing is, taking an oath, giving one’s word, etc. . . . Perjury is not an accident; it is not an event that happens or does not happen to a promise or to a preexisting oath. Perjury is inscribed in advance, as its destiny, its fatality, its inexpiable destination, in the structure of the promise and the oath, in the word of honor, in justice, in the desire for justice. As if the oath were already a perjury . . .” See also 77ff.

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the title “Parjure et pardon.”2 In the descriptions provided for the Annuaire de l’EHESS [EHESS Annual Bulletin], the title for both years reads “Le parjure et le pardon.” Therefore, even though the note for the text “Versöhnung, ubuntu, pardon: quel genre?”3 — ­a published article corresponding to the first three sessions of the 1998–­9 9 seminar — ­refers to “Le pardon et le parjure,” we have chosen to use here the title as indicated in the Annuaire de l’EHESS, which Derrida himself provided, since that seems to us to take precedence for this volume and that to follow.4 The most illuminating presentation of the “Perjury and Pardon” seminar is that given by Derrida himself in the Annuaire de l’EHESS 1997–­1998, where he makes clear what is at stake in the reflection that he intends to develop in the course of the two-­year class: We have continued the cycle of research initiated in past years concerning the current (philosophical, ethical, juridical or political) stakes of the concept of responsibility. Having privileged, as guiding thread, the themes of secrecy, testimony and hospitality, we shall attempt to develop a problematic of lying [ parjure]. It concerns a certain experience of evil, of malignity, or bad faith in cases where that negativity takes the form of renunciation. With respect to the 2. See Derrida, Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, ed. Ginette Michaud, Nicholas Cotton, and Rodrigo Therezo (Paris: Seuil, 2020), 29. 3. The article was revised by Derrida for the “Vérité, réconciliation, réparation” issue of Le Genre humain (43 [2004]: 111–­56), ed. Barbara Cassin, Olivier Cayla, and Philippe-­Joseph Salazar; it also appeared with the title “Le pardon, la vérité, la réconciliation: quel genre?” in Jacques Derrida and Evando Nascimento, La Solidarité des vivants et le pardon. Conférence et entretiens, précédés du texte d’Evando Nascimento, “Derrida au Brésil” (Paris: Hermann, 2016), 61–­120. For references to the seminar title, see 154n and 61n, respectively. 4. We also note that the previous seminar, held over the years 1995–­9 7, was entitled “Hostilité/hospitalité [Hostility/Hospitality].” There the “negative” term also precedes the “positive” term; the title “Le parjure et le pardon” no doubt echoes that symmetry. In a response given during one of the “Religion and Postmodernism” roundtables at Villanova University in 1999 on the themes “Forgiving” and “God,” Derrida commented on the title of the seminar in these terms: “Perjury does not follow from the promise or the sworn oath; perjury is at the heart of the oath. That is why the seminar I am currently giving is not simply on ‘Forgiveness.’ It is called ‘Forgiveness and Perjury.’ I think that perjury is unfortunately at the very beginning of the most moralistic of ethics, the most ethical of ethics” (Jacques Derrida, “On Forgiveness: A Roundtable Discussion with Jacques Derrida, Moderated by Richard Kearney,” in John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley, and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., Questioning God [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007], 67).

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guarantee or performative commitment “before the law”5 (the promise, oath-­swearing, giving one’s word, the word of honor, pledge, pact, contract, alliance, debt, etc.), we will study diverse forms of betrayal (lying, infidelity, denial, false testimony, perjury, unkept promise, desecration, sacrilege, blasphemy, etc.) in different fields (ethics, anthropology, law), and on the basis of various textual corpora (exegetical, philosophical or literary, for example). We have attempted to link these questions of “evil” to that of forgiveness. If forgiveness is neither excusing, forgetting, amnesty, prescription, or the “political pardon,” if the possibility of it is paradoxically measured against the unforgivable alone, how does one think the “possibility” of this “impossibility?” The trajectory sketched out this year works as much through readings (the two works by Jankélévitch on forgiveness and imprescriptibility, certain texts by Kant on the right to mercy, biblical or Greek texts [Plato in particular], works that seem to be more literary — ­Shakespeare [The Merchant of Venice or Hamlet] — ­Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Kafka), as through analysis of scenes of political “forgiveness” or “repentance” such as are today proliferating throughout the world, in France or in South Africa, but in fact on every continent.6

In the typescript for the American seminar one can also find an “Introductory Note” in which Derrida repeats that description, slightly modifying the final sentence: “Although every fault is essentially a perjury (failure of an at least implicit promise or duty), the problematic would concern above all a certain determinate experience of renunciation.” The paragraph then continues to the end without further modification, after which Derrida adds a second paragraph that clarifies further the aims and content of the seminar: “This seminar is expected to continue over several years, 5. Allusion to the Kafka text analyzed by Derrida in his Before the Law: The Complete Text of Préjugés, trans. Sandra van Reenen and Jacques de Ville (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018); “Préjugés: Devant la loi,” in La Faculté de juger (Paris: Minuit, 1985). We wish to recall that the “closed seminar” also given by Derrida at the EHESS was entitled “The Philosophical Institution before the Law.” 6. Jacques Derrida, “Questions de responsibilité (VI. Le parjure et le pardon),” in Annuaire de l’EHESS 1997–­1998 (Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1998), 553–­54. In the description of the seminar “Hostilité/hospitalité,” given the previous year, Derrida announces the “Perjury and Pardon” seminar with this clarification: “The final sessions of the seminar began to deal with work projected for following year (1997–­9 8) on perjury and pardon, by bringing them into relation with our current research (on responsibility and figures of hospitality)” (“Questions de responsibilité [V. Hostilité/hospitalité],” in Annuaire de l’EHESS 1996–­1997 [Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS, 1997], 526).

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similar to each of its predecessors. For the first year, the bibliography that follows will seem both excessive and minimal. But each of these texts will call for reference on my part, beginning this year (sometimes by allusion, sometimes with insistence over several sessions). I will make things clear as we go.” There then follows a three-­page bibliography that contains the main references for the two years of the seminar; for some of those he adds details for clarification.7 7. That bibliography reads as follows: Bible (at least the Flood and sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis; Gospels of Luke and Matthew, and especially the Letter to the Hebrews); Saint Augustine, Confessions (first book at least) and The City of God (Book IX, V); Martin Luther, Seven Penitential Psalms; Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice (at least Portia’s famous “Quality of Mercy” speech [act 4, scene 1]) and Hamlet (passim); Joel Fineman, The Perjured Eye (references to be specified); Rousseau, Confessions and Reveries of a Solitary Walker; Kant, Doctrine of Right (first part of The Metaphysics of Morals, introduction to §50 and following on the right to pardon); Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling; Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil (at least “To the Reader,” “Benediction,” “An Allegory,” “The Denial of St. Peter,” “Reversibility,” “The Irreparable” (and “The Confiteor of the Artist” in Paris Spleen); Kafka, Letter to His Father; Vladimir Jankélévitch, Forgiveness and L’Imprescriptible: Pardonner? (Paris: Seuil, 1986); Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), at least pp. 236, 247 (and the references made to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew); Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading (notably the chapters on Rousseau [“Promises” and “Excuses”]); Le Pardon: Actes du colloque, Le point théologique, ed. Michel Perrin (Paris: Beauchesne 45, 1987); Le Pardon: Briser la dette et l’oubli, Autrement, ed. Olivier Abel (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 1991); Nicole Loraux, The Divided City, especially the chapters on the Oath; Jean Lambert et al., Pardonner (Brussels: Publications des Facultés universitaires Saint-­Louis, 1994); ed. C. Floristan and C. Duquoc, Forgiveness, Concilium 177 (1986); Henri Thomas, Le parjure (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); Hermann Cohen, L’Éthique du judaïsme (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1994) (two chapters on reconciliation: in German, “Die Versöhnungsidee,” and “Der Tag der Versöhnung,” in Judische Schriften, vol. I, ed. Bruno Strauss (Berlin: C. A. Schwetschke, 1924); Leo Baeck, Essence of Judaism (Das Wesen Judenstums [Frankfurt: Kauffmann Verlag, 1922], especially Part 2, chapter 2; Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (end of chapter VI on Spirit [C, c]), Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, vol. III, The Consummate Religion, Early Theological Writings (“The Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate”), Freud, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), (Standard Edition, Vol. VIII, especially pp, 102, 103, 114); Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason (chapter on forgiveness); Retour, repentir et constitution de soi, ed. Annick Charles-­Saget (Paris: Vrin, 1988); Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings (“First Lesson: Toward the Other: from the Tractate ‘Yoma,’ pp. 85b–­87a–­b”); Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom; The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa; Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull; Frank Ferrari, “Forgiving the Unforgivable: An Interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu,” Commonweal (1997); Timothy Garton Ash, “True Confessions,” New York Review of Books, July 17, 1997 (see also Ferrari/Tutu and Ash in Esprit 238, 12 (1997).

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In the “Lesson” that he presents at the 37th Colloquium of French-­ Speaking Jews, dedicated to the question “How to Live Together?” and held in Paris on December 5–­7, 1998, Derrida develops the stakes of the whole “Perjury and Pardon” seminar, which was then ongoing, in a detailed manner: If I have chosen the theme of confession, that is first of all because of what is occurring today in the world, a kind of general rehearsal, a scene, even a theatricalization of confession, of return, and of repentance, which seems to me to signify a mutation in process, a fragile one, to be sure, fleeting and difficult to interpret, but functioning as the moment of an undeniable rupture in the history of the political, of the juridical, of relations among communities, civil society, and the state, among sovereign states, international law, and NGOs, among the ethical, the juridical, and the political, between the public and the private, between national citizenship and an international citizenship, even a metacitizenship, in a word, concerning a social bond that crosses the borders of these ensembles called family, nation, or state. Sometimes accompanied by what one names rightly or wrongly repentance, sometimes preceded or accompanied by what one believes, rightly or wrongly, must condition them — ­namely confession, repentance, requests for forgiveness — ­scenes of confession are proliferating and have even been accelerating for a few years, months, weeks, every day in truth, in a public space transformed by tele-­technologies and by media capital, by the speed and reach of communication, but also by the multiple effects of a technology, a techno-­politics and a techno-­genetics that unsettle at once all conditions: both the conditions of being together (the supposed proximity, in the same instant, in the same place and the same territory, as if the uniqueness of a place on earth, of a soil, were becoming more and more — ­as one says of a telephone and in the measure of the said telephone — ­portable) and the conditions of what lives in its technological relation to the nonliving, to hetero-­or homografting, to prosthesis, artificial insemination, cloning, and so on. Largely exceeding the territory of the state or of the nation, all these scenes of confession and of reexamination of past crimes appeal to the testimony, even to the judgment of a community, and so of a modality of living-­together, virtually universal but also virtually instituted as an infinite tribunal or worldwide confessional.8 8. Jacques Derrida, “Avowing — ­The Impossible: Returns, Repentance, and Reconciliation: A Lesson,” trans. Gil Anidjar, in Elisabeth Weber, ed., Living Together: Jacques Derrida’s Communities of Violence and Peace (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 31. Derrida continues his address by enumerating different examples of those “acts of public repentance.” Cf. Derrida, “Leçon,” in Jean Halpérin and Nelly Hansson, eds., Comment vivre ensemble? Actes du XXXVIIe Colloque des intellectuels juifs de langue

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Beyond that movement of generalized repentance that was taking place at the end of the 1990s, Derrida will, in this first year of the seminar, take on the matter of forgiveness from the perspective of questions of responsibility that he has made his focus, here as an extension of the theme of hospitality previously dealt with in his seminar. Derrida’s reflection starts out from this aporia: “one only ever asks forgiveness for what is unforgivable.”9 Although forgiveness is a notion inherited from more than one tradition — ­as he will say, it concerns several quasi-­triangles among diverse heritages (Judaic, Christian, Koranic, Greek) — ­the process of it also eludes those traditions and disturbs the categories of knowledge, sense, history, and law that attempt to circumscribe it.10 Insisting on the unconditionality of forgiveness, Derrida shows how its complex temporality destabilizes all ideas of presence and even of the subject: “who or what forgives?” he never stops asking. Pure forgiveness is an event that breaks open and exceeds the modalities of “comprehension,” of memory or forgetting, of a certain work of mourning. Forgiveness is neither manifest nor localizable, but instead remains heterogeneous to all phenomenality, all theatricalization, or even all verbal language. Interrupting at once history, right, and politics, it is revealed as what is, for Walter Benjamin, a violent “storm.”11 Unconditional forgiveness is thus tested against the impossible: it is and must remain exceptional, beyond either calculus or finality, outside all exchange and transaction, just like the gift whose logic it shares. Irreducible to repentance, punishment, retribution, or salvation, forgiveness as thought by Derrida is similarly inseparable from, and haunted by, the notion of perjury. It calls into question the inexpiable (Jankélévitch) as much as reconciliation (Hegel) or ethics itself. française (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, 2001), 200–­2 01. The English version cited here was given as the opening keynote lecture of the conference, “Irreconcilable Differences? Jacques Derrida and the Question of Religion,” organized by Thomas A. Carlson and Elisabeth Weber at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in October 2003, which was the occasion of Derrida’s final visit to the United States. 9. See 91 below. 10. See 63–64, 67, 74, 77–78 below. 11. Walter Benjamin, “The Meaning of Time in the Moral Universe,” trans. Rodney Livingstone, in Selected Writings, vol. 1 (1913–­2 6), ed. Marcus Bullock et Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 286–­87; Benjamin, “La signification du temps dans le monde moral,” trans. Jean-­François Poirier and Christophe Jouanlanne, in Fragments philosophiques, politiques, critiques, littéraires, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Paris: PUF, 2001), 107, quoted by Derrida in Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, 54–­55.

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This volume reproduces the written seminar text read by Derrida in the ten sessions that took place at the EHESS in 1997–­9 8. As always, all the sessions were entirely written out. The Third Session includes a thirteen-­ page handwritten manuscript that we deciphered and transcribed with the invaluable assistance of Marie-­Louise Mallet.12 Unlike the already published volumes of the later series of EHESS seminars, which were, to a great extent, previously unpublished — ­as is the case for The Death Penalty (1999–­2 001) and The Beast and the Sovereign (2001–­3) — ­several sessions of “Perjury and Pardon” had already appeared in print. The First and Second Sessions appeared in journals or collective works starting in 1999, whereas other sessions were later used by Derrida in his books, that being the case for the Fourth Session, which appeared in The Gift of Death, Second Edition, and Literature in Secret, and for Sessions 7–­10, which were collected under the title “Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2)” in Without Alibi, published in French in 2001.13 The “Perjury and Pardon” seminar allows one to 12. See 71–78 below. The manuscript is housed in the “Library of Jacques Derrida” Special Collection, Firestone Library, Princeton University (RBD1, Box B-­0 00262, folder 1, “Le parjure et le pardon”). 13. See, for the First Session: “Le Pardon: l’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible,” in Cahier de L’Herne Derrida (no. 83), ed. Marie-­Louise Mallet and Ginette Michaud (Paris: Éditions de L’Herne, 2004), 541–­6 0, republished as Pardonner. L’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible (Paris: Galilée, 2012). Fragments of this session were also reworked in Derrida’s interview with Michel Wieviorka, “Le Siècle et le Pardon,” Le Monde des débats 9 (December 1999): 10–­17, reprinted in Jacques Derrida, Foi et savoir. Les deux sources de la “religion” aux limites de la simple raison (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 103–­33, in particular 109–­14 [“Faith and Knowledge: the Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone,” trans. Samuel Weber, in Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, eds., Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 1–­78], and in “Leçon,” in Comment vivre ensemble, 179–­216. For the Second Session, sections were published as “Qu’est-­ce qu’une traduction ‘relevante’?” in Quinzième assises de la traduction littéraire (Arles, 1998) (Arles: Actes Sud, 1999), 21–­48 (in particular 32–­48), reprinted in Cahier de L’Herne Derrida, 561–­7 6 [“What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?” trans. Lawrence Venuti, Critical Inquiry 27 (Winter 2001): 174–­2 00]. For the Fourth Session, Donner la mort (Paris: Galilée, 1999), 161–­ 209 [“Literature in Secret,” in The Gift of Death, Second Edition, and Literature in Secret, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 117–58]. A first version of the Fourth Session, dated January 14, 1998, is housed in the Fonds Jacques Derrida at the IMEC (“Le pardon et le parjure,” 219 DRR 239.2). The first page has this handwritten notation: “First draft Jerusalem.” The typescript is composed of thirteen typed and six handwritten pages, some of which continue on both sides of the page. Derrida

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reconstruct the original sequence of those different texts and to better understand the coherence of Derrida’s thinking by relating the published work to that developed “live” in his seminar. The reader is also able in this way to compare the first version of the texts and the final, published version. We worked on the basis of the typescript that Derrida used in his seminar, housed at the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC), the corresponding computer file, and the texts appended to them (press cuttings, photocopies of quoted passages). Two versions of the seminar exist. For this edition we used that of the so-­called American seminar, previously housed in the Fonds Jacques Derrida at IMEC and now held at the Princeton University Library.14 There were two different versions of the First Session (in two parts in the computer file): we used the later version, which includes this mention: “I’ll no doubt end here in Cracow.” There was also an earlier version of the Fourth Session, but without noteworthy modification; similarly for the two photocopies of the first page of the Eighth Session. In addition to the thirteen pages already mentioned, the typescript includes several handwritten additions, which we have taken into account unless they relate solely to Derrida’s improvised translation given for his American audience. One also finds certain indications concerning the organization of the American seminar, or relating to omitted passages; we have pointed to those only when they directly concern the 1997–­9 8 seminar. In traveled to Jerusalem on January 5–­6, 1998, giving the Fourth Session as a lecture on January 5 and the First Session on January 6; for the Seventh–­Tenth Sessions, “Le ruban de la machine à écrire. Limited Ink II,” in Papier machine. Le ruban de machine à écrire et autres réponses (Paris: Galilée, 2001), 33–­147 [“Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2),” trans. Peggy Kamuf, in Tom Cohen, Barbara Cohen, J. Hillis Miller, and Andrzej Warminski, eds., Material Events: Paul de Man and the Afterlife of Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 277–­360; and, in a slightly different form, in Derrida, Without Alibi, ed. Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 71–­160]. [Translator’s note:] “Typewriter Ribbon” is not included in the English version of Paper Machine (trans. Rachel Bowlby [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005]), having previously appeared as detailed above. 14. The typescript is contained in a gray folder including the handwritten notation (not written by Derrida) “Parjure Pardon 97–­9 8 / Séances 1 à 10.” It includes the ten sessions so numbered, classified separately in orange folders, preceded by a folder entitled “Parjure Pardon NYU 2001” (including an “Introductory Note” for the American seminar and a three-­page bibliography), and another marked “Parjure Pardon 97–­9 8 (various unplaced texts),” in which are found several photocopies of texts in English for the American seminar. A green folder with the indication “Copy 2” on the cover contains three separate folders, a copy of the second part of the First Session, and “sheets 11–­2 4” of the Fourth and Tenth Sessions.

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rare cases where differences exist between the typescript and the computer file (notably at the beginning of the Eighth Session), we have indicated the same. We also had at our disposal audio recordings of all ten sessions, which allowed us to monitor any variations. As is the case for several of Derrida’s seminars, the present course also included certain sessions called “restricted” (November 19 and December 17, 1997; January 21, February 18, and March 18, 1998), as well as a discussion session (February 4, 1998).15 The final, Tenth Session of the open seminar took place on March 25, 1998, whereas the restricted seminar began again on May 13, 1998, following the “long annual interruption” in April — ­as Derrida liked to refer to it — ­and continued into mid-­June with six additional sessions of presentations, comments by Derrida, and open discussion.16 In conformity with previously published volumes, the restricted sessions and discussion sessions have not been transcribed for the present edition, except for the texts appended to the Sixth Session, which directly concern the content and comprehension of the seminar. We have also transcribed a part of the February 4, 1998, discussion session in which Derrida extemporizes at length in order to mark a transition in the middle of the seminar and to clarify the abbreviated remarks made at the beginning of the Sixth Session. We have similarly transcribed the beginning of the June 3, 1998, session in which he comments on a news item (Germany had just asked the victims of the bombing of Guernica for forgiveness). The reader will find that additional appendix, which announces the second year of the 15. Apart from the session of December 17, 1998, recordings of all sessions are held at the IMEC. “Restricted” sessions included the following contributions: on January 21, 1998, presentations were given by Georges Comtesse (on betrayal and forgiveness in the work of Proust), and by Olivier Dekens (“Initiation à la vie malheureuse: de l’impossibilité du pardon chez Kant et Kierkegaard”) (as stated in the restricted session of June 4, 1998, Derrida requested that participants provide him with the text of their presentation before the event in order to allow him to prepare his remarks); on February 18, 1998, Gabriel Rockhill gave a presentation entitled “Mensonges: impossibilité de les definer ou d’en finir?,” which was followed by a long response from Derrida on lying and evil; on March 18, 1998, there was a presentation by Gregory Katsarov on the excuse in Augustine, Rousseau and Paul de Man (around Allegories of Reading). 16. Presentations: Serge Margel (May 13: “Au désir de Dieu”); Florence Burgat (May 20: “Des conditions de l’impossibilité du pardon des animaux”); Andrés Claros (May 27: “La signification du temps dans l’univers moral de Benjamin”); Safaa Fathy (June 3: “Le parjure d’un travail ou l’oeuvre de Heiner Müller”; Sandrine Martin (June 10: presentation on Chora, Timaeus, The Tomb of the Artisan God by Serge Margel, and evil); Marie-­Claire Boons (June 17: “L’inconscient ne connaît pas le pardon”); Giuseppe Motta (June 17: “Pétrarque et le pardon”).

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“Perjury and Pardon” seminar, at the end of this volume. Finally, we point out that the very last session of the year, on June 17, 1998, has particular importance, inasmuch as it is the moment when Derrida announces his “retirement” and explains how the seminar will operate in subsequent years. He explains, not without humor, in the passage reproduced here, that he has made a decision that is “like him,” neither to leave nor to stay: They call that “retirement”; some say that they are “going [away, partir] into retirement,” or that they have been “struck” [atteint] by retirement age, or that . . . who knows, well that is my case! Which means that, given that in this institution one can do what one wants, you see [Laughter], one can leave, disappear, or else stay as before, on the understanding that, all the same, one’s salary is (that decision is made by the State) seriously reduced. But as for one’s teaching, one can leave or stay. Well, I thought for a long time about a decision that seemed to suit me, and is like me [me ressemble], and I’ve decided that I wouldn’t do either one or the other, that I wouldn’t leave and I wouldn’t stay [Laughter]. And so, between the two — ­I’m saying this for those who are potentially interested in the information — ­I decided that I would continue while lightening the load, that is to say by beginning later in the year and ending earlier in the year. . . . So, next year I won’t begin at the beginning of November as I usually do, but at the beginning of December, and I won’t end in June but at Easter. There, as for the rest, it won’t change, we’ll probably rearrange certain things, I’ll talk about that with those who come back, with those who show me their friendship by coming back, or do me that honor. In December we’ll see how to organize things, but in any case I’ll keep the same topic: perjury and pardon. We’ll begin in December and finish at the end of March, beginning of April.

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We have verified all quoted extracts and bibliographical references (they are most often clearly indicated in the typescript in abbreviated form), and provided any that were lacking. Unless otherwise stated, all notes are added by the editors. In order to ascertain which editions were used, we had recourse to the very volumes used by Derrida, which were assembled in the Princeton Library Special Collection in 2014, along with the inventory of Derrida’s library in his house in Ris-­Orangis, established by Marie-­Joëlle St-­Louis Savoie in 2009–­11.17 We verified and, where necessary, corrected the text of passages quoted by Derrida, rectifying silently obvious errors of transcription, while systematically signaling translations that were modified 17. The Princeton Special Collection holds a version of the seminar that includes handwritten annotations by Derrida, as well as a “Le parjure et le pardon” press kit. That version is the “American seminar” given at New York University.

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by him.18 A certain number of quoted texts were not copied into the typescript: they exist as direct photocopies from books (French texts, translations and texts in their original version), with numerous traces of Derrida’s reading (underlined passages, circled words, various marginal annotations) that were inserted by him into the typescript at the place where he intended to read them and comment on them. As with previous published volumes of Derrida’s seminar, we had recourse to audio recordings of the sessions in order to establish the precise limits of quoted passages and in order to transcribe notations intercalated by Derrida during his reading of the typescript. Those recordings also allowed us to clarify what was in fact said during the seminar, which doesn’t always correspond exactly to the typescript. That is the case for the First Session, November 12, 1997, which is very long, and that of November 26, 1997: Derrida didn’t stop where he had planned to because of time constraints, and as a result he modified the end of that session and what followed at the beginning of the next session. The situation was the same at the end of the Second Session, November 26, 1997, whose final pages (61–­64) were carried over to the beginning of the session of December 3, 1997, as it appears in the typescript. Such changes have always been indicated, though we have preserved the priority accorded the typescript, which is the text published here. In carefully preserving the orality of this text, we also reproduce the various pointers that Derrida inscribes in the typescript, including reminders that he gave himself, such as “(Blackboard),” “slowly,” or “read and comment,” announcing a quoted passage or an excursus that he would develop extemporaneously. Where possible, we have transcribed the content of significant such additions in notes reconstructed on the basis of the audio recordings. As with previously published volumes of the seminar, we have tried to reduce as much as possible our modifications of the typescript. The text of the seminar is complete. Whenever changes were deemed necessary for reasons of comprehension, we have systematically signaled each of those additions or modifications. Missing words are inserted between chevrons (also called angle brackets). Remaining typographical errors, sometimes corrected by Derrida as he read the script, have been corrected. Other variations, such as between Rousseau’s “Reveries” and “Promenades,” have been preserved; names indicated by initials only have been 18. [Translator’s note:] The practice of reverting to existing English translations means that some such details are lost. They have been preserved wherever possible.

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reconstituted. Finally, Derrida had the habit of noting telegraphically, at the end of a session, questions that he planned to take up at the beginning of the following session. We have not reproduced those notes, save for one that is entirely written out at the end of the Fifth Session, and which provides clarification concerning the general argumentation of the seminar.

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We offer warm thanks to Marie-­Louise Mallet for her help in deciphering the handwritten pages of the Third Session, and the preliminary organization of the Fourth Session; Georges Leroux for revision of Greek terms; Jean-­Jacques Lavoie for checking the Hebrew; Eduardo Cadava for assisting Nicholas Cotton’s research at the Firestone Library at Princeton; and Nino Gabrielli for his help in researching certain biblical sources. We thank all those who helped us locate the audio recordings of the two years of the seminar, which turned out to be a difficult task: Eric Prenowitz, who generously made available recordings of some sessions; Cécile Bourguignon, editor at Éditions Galilée, who also provided us with recordings of sessions; François Borde, research delegate, and André Derval, director of collections, at IMEC; and Peggy Kamuf and Derek Quezada (outreach and public services librarian, Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine), who oversaw the electronic transfer of certain recordings. The recordings held at IMEC and at Irvine were not always complete; we were able to fill in those gaps thanks to the valuable assistance of Yuji Nishiyama, professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University and Japanese translator of Derrida’s seminars, who put us in touch with Makoto Asari, former professor at the University of Bordeaux-­Montaigne, and with Takaaki Morinaka, professor at Waseda University, who had collected the recordings in Japan. We also thank all our colleagues on the editorial team, and most especially Pascale-­Anne Brault, Michael Naas, and David Wills, for their close rereading of our work. Finally, and especially, we thank Marguerite Derrida, Jean Derrida, and Pierre Alferi for their confidence in and support for the project from the beginning. Ginette Michaud and Nicholas Cotton

t r a n s l at o r’s n o t e

An obvious question for the translator of this seminar is posed by the words of its title. French has a single word, le pardon, and its cognates ( pardonner, etc.), for the different usages of “forgiveness” and “pardon” in English, even if they coincide in a case such as “pardon me [ pardon]” for either “sorry” or “excuse me.” In general, I have translated the French noun, le pardon, as “forgiveness,” retaining “pardon” for more specific instances, such as a political or divine act of clemency. If one listens to recorded material where Derrida speaks in English about the topic(s) of this seminar, he almost invariably uses “forgiveness.” A similar set of questions concerns the word parjure, as indicated below. Therefore, because Derrida’s discussion in the seminar ranges over differences between French and English, as well as between pardon and excuse, pardon and grace or mercy, lying and perjury, and so on, it is not necessary to detail here all of the nuances that will progressively emerge in what follows. For reasons that are in part explained by comments made in the preceding Editors’ Note, concerning Derrida’s emphasis on the constitutive structure of the “negative” term, I have chosen to keep the transliteration of Derrida’s French title: “Perjury and Pardon.” The most palatable alternative would have been “Lying and Forgiveness,” and my consistent recourse to “forgiveness” rather than “pardon” as the general term throughout the seminar would seem to militate in favor of that more informal translation. Furthermore, translating pardonner as “forgive” transliterally places the question of the seminar within the context of the gift, which, one could argue, is inscribed — ­beginning in the late 1970s, or even much earlier — ­as the paradigm for the aporetic structure of the impossible that remains Derrida’s interest throughout the whole series that, from 1991 to 2003, he entitles “Questions of Responsibility.” Why, then, opt for “Perjury and Pardon”? First, for the rhetorical symmetry it affords, like parjure/pardon in French. Second, for the overlap of

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religious, political, and legal terms allowed by “pardon” in English. But third, and perhaps most important, as Derrida often underscores here, le parjure is not simply “lying” in the sense of stating a falsehood (French mensonge also does that work). Parjure emphasizes the more legalistic sense of going back on one’s formal oath, as instantiated by “perjury” in En­ glish and as instantiated historically by the example that made headlines in the second year of the seminar, namely, the accusation that brought about President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1999. There emerged, therefore, a type of historical vindication of Derrida’s title: on the one hand, a series of revisitings of past wrongs, such as apartheid, with or without apology or forgiveness for them, and, on the other hand, the political staging of a particular American event of perjury that came to close out the post–­World War II epoch, indeed the millennium. The intersecting histories of French and English mean that the verb parjurer echoes within the semantic field of our now outdated “forswear,” which would also provide a tidy parallel to “forgive.” The title could therefore have been translated as “Forswearing and Forgiving,” and that choice would have had the advantage of foregrounding the two important resonances just mentioned, namely, jurer, “to swear” or “take an oath,” and donner, “to give.” However, rather than revert to what seems to me a distracting anachronistic choice, I have made the choice to transliterate the French: Perjury and Pardon.

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The preceding Editors’ Note contains a paragraph (not included here, p. 21 in the Seuil edition) explaining the editors’ respect — ­wherever possible without creating confusion — ­for Derrida’s paragraph breaks; length of sentences; punctuation; use of brackets, parentheses, and dashes; use of italics, and so on. In the transition from French to English usage, those practices have not always been preserved. For example, French systematically begins a new paragraph following an indented quotation, which is not necessarily the case in English; French is more liberal with sentence fragments than is formal English; and contemporary English is less tolerant of very long sentences than is French. The translation necessarily reflects those language differences. Except where it would be misleading, I have followed Derrida’s common use of parentheses rather than brackets for a gloss or foreign word inserted in a quote. In general, brackets indicate either a longer interpolation made by Derrida within a quotation, or, following usual practice, my own inclusion of the French for reasons of clarity.

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A special challenge arises when Derrida switches among an existing French translation of a text that he is quoting, its original German, say, and his own translation of that original. Given that the practice here is to quote from existing English translations, those shifts could not always be conveyed. I have nevertheless tried where possible to give the sense of his reading practice and strategy.

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I wish to record my debt of gratitude to the following colleagues and student participants at the Derrida Seminars Translation Project Workshop, held at IMEC in July 2019, for their invaluable assistance in the preparation of this volume: Eric Aldieri, Matías Bascuñán, Geoffrey Bennington, Pascale-­Anne Brault, Ellen Burt, Nicholas Cotton, Edwige Crucifix, Simon Gissinger, Peggy Kamuf, Andrew Kingston, Kir Kuiken, Bryan Maddox, Ginette Michaud, Michael Naas, Bradley Ramos, and Elizabeth Rottenberg. Special additional thanks are due to Kir Kuiken for the use of his splendid library (and to Vesna Bogojević for attendant hospitality), and to Ginette Michaud and Nicholas Cotton for their generous assistance in answering my queries.

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Editions used by Derrida are identified at the point of their first reference, preceded by, in almost all cases, the English translation I have relied on. For texts used repeatedly, page references thereafter are given in the main text, separated by a slash. The first page reference is to the quoted source (that is, usually the English text), the second to the original. Where Derrida provides page references in his typescript, I have refrained from repeating the information following the quoted passage unless the reader might be confused. In such cases Derrida sometimes adds letters or numbers, or both, presumably as a notation system for locating quotations in his own copy of the text. I have simply repeated those notations in the form in which they appear.

first session

November 12, 1997

Pardon, yes, sorry [pardon].

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1. In the typescript, the description of the seminar precedes the title of the First Session. Derrida modifies it somewhat and adds a paragraph for the version that appeared in the Annuaire de l’EHESS 1997–­1998 (see Editors’ Note, above). Before beginning the session, Derrida outlines in detail how the seminar will be organized and the schedule of open and restricted sessions. He also specifies that “bibliographical references will be proposed as we go,” and that this First Session will be long: “One last remark: this session will be long, longer than normal, because I want this introduction to propose a certain trajectory and developing it coherently will take me some time, which will probably extend beyond two hours. I don’t know how fast I’ll advance, but if at seven o’clock, or ten past seven, I haven’t finished or am far from having finished, we’ll take a short break so that those who have to leave can do so, and then I’ll continue for a bit longer. There you have it. No questions? Well then, we’ll begin.” This session was published by Derrida, with minor syntactic and stylistic changes, as a lecture that appeared with the title “Le pardon: l’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible” in Cahier de L’Herne Derrida, republished as Pardonner. L’impardonnable et l’imprescriptible (Paris: Galilée, 2012). Derrida specifies in a note: “Lecture given at the Universities of Cracow , Warsaw, and Athens , and at the Universities of Western Cape, Capetown (South Africa) and Jerusalem in 1998. Sometimes bearing the title ‘Pardon et parjure,’ it corresponds more or less to the first two sessions of a seminar given at the EHESS, over several years, on ‘Le parjure et le pardon,’ under the general title, ‘Questions of Responsibility.’ ” In addition, fragments of this First Session were redeveloped in Derrida’s interview with Michel Wieviorka, “Le Siècle et le pardon,” published in Le Monde des débats 9 (December 1999): 10–­17; see also “Leçon.” [Translator’s note:] English sources are as follows: “Avowing — ­The Impossible: ‘Returns,’ Repentance, and Reconciliation,” trans. Gil Anidjar, in Elisabeth Weber, ed., Living Together: Jacques Derrida’s Communities of Violence and Peace (Fordham University Press, 2013), 18–­41; “To Forgive: The Unforgivable and the Imprescriptible,” trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg, in John D. Caputo, Mark Dooley, and Michael Scanlon, eds., Questioning God (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 21–­51; reprinted

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I just said pardon, in French.2 You don’t understand anything by this for the moment, no doubt. Pardon. It’s a word, pardon, this word is a noun: one says un pardon, le pardon. In the French language it is a noun. One can find its homonymic equivalent, more or less in the same state, with more or less the same meaning and with usages that are at least analogous, in other languages, English for example (“pardon,” in certain contexts that we’ll clarify when the time comes), although the word is, if not Latin, at least, in its tortuous filiation, of Latin origin ( perdon in Spanish, perdâo in Portuguese, perdono in Italian). In the Latin origin of this word, and in too complex a way for us to tackle it head­on today, one finds a reference to the “gift [don],” to donation. And on more than one occasion we will need to carry over the problems and aporias of the gift (such as I tried to formalize, for example, in Given Time, and notably in the final chapter of that book, entitled “Excuse and Forgiveness [Pardon]”),3 to transfer them, so to speak, onto problems and onto these nonproblems that aporias of forgiveness constitute, aporias that are analogous and, moreoever, linked. But one must neither yield to these analogies between the gift and forgiveness nor, of course, neglect their necessity; rather, one must attempt to articulate the two, to follow them to the point where, all of a sudden, they cease being pertinent. Between giving and forgiving there is at least this affinity or this alliance according to which, beside their being unconditional on principle — ­one and the other, giving and forgiving, giving for giving [don par don] — ­they have an essential relation to time, to the movement of temporalization; even though what seems to bind forin Hent de Vries and Nils Schott, eds., Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 144–­81. My own translation here is greatly indebted to that by Elizabeth Rottenberg, which I follow except for differences existing in the seminar version, and certain stylistic modifications that conform to choices made throughout this volume. 2. A disturbance is heard in the audience as these words are spoken, probably caused by a late arrival who enters and places a tape recorder on Derrida’s table, saying “Pardon me [Pardon],” which produces an outburst of laughter. Derrida comments: “There, the subject of this seminar will be the difference between a serious pardon and this one. So, I just said, and you just said, pardon.” 3. See Derrida, “Chapter 4, ‘Counterfeit Money’ II: Gift and Countergift, Excuse and Forgiveness (Baudelaire and the Story of the Dedication),” in Given Time, trans. Peggy Kamuf (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 108–­72 [“Chapitre 4, ‘La Fausse monnaie’ (II): Don et contre-­don, l’excuse et le pardon (Baudelaire et l’histoire de la dédicace),” in Donner le temps I. La Fausse monnaie (Paris: Galilée, 1991), 139–­217].

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giveness to a past, which in a certain way does not pass, makes forgiveness an experience irreducible to that of the gift, to a gift that is attributed more commonly to the present, to the presentation or presence of the present. I just said “experience” of forgiveness or the gift, but the word “experience” may already seem badly or precipitately used, in that forgiveness and gift have perhaps this in common, that they never present themselves as such to what is normally called an experience, a presentation to consciousness or to existence, precisely because of the aporias that we’ll be required to take into account; and for example — ­to limit myself to this for the time being — ­the aporia that renders me incapable of giving enough, or of being hospitable enough (here I’m linking things to the seminar of previous years),4 of being present enough to the present that I give, and to the welcome that I offer, such that I think — ­I am even certain of this — ­that I always have to be forgiven, to ask forgiveness for not giving, for never giving enough, for never offering or welcoming enough. One is always guilty, one must always be forgiven when it comes to the gift. And the aporia gets more serious when one becomes conscious of the fact that if one has to ask forgiveness for not giving, for never giving enough, one may also feel guilty and so have to ask forgiveness, on the contrary, for giving, forgiveness for what one gives, which can become a poison, a weapon, an affirmation of sovereignty or even omnipotence, or an appeal for recognition.5 One always takes in giving: we have, in the past, insisted at length on that logic of giv­ingt­ aking.6 One must therefore ask, a priori, for forgiveness for the gift itself, one has to be forgiven for the gift, for the sovereignty or desire for sovereignty of the gift. And, pushing it further, irresistibly, to the second degree, one would even have to be forgiven forgiveness, which itself also risks involving the irreducible ambiguity of an affirmation of sovereignty, indeed of mastery. Those are the abysses that await us and for which we’ll always be on the lookout, not as accidents to avoid but as the very ground, the groundless ground of the very thing called gift or forgiveness. So, no gift without forgiveness, and no forgiveness without gift, but the two are not, above all, 4. See unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité [Hostipitalité],” EHESS, 1995–­9 7. 5. During the session, Derrida adds: “and from this point of view the gift implies that I ask for forgiveness not only for what I don’t give but also for what I give, or because I give.” 6. See unpublished seminar, “Donner — ­le temps,” École normale supérieure, Paris; Yale University and University of Chicago, 1978–­79; and, among other places, chaps. 2 and 3 of Given Time, 66ff. and 79ff. [Donner le temps, 90ff. and 103ff.], and The Gift of Death, 45ff. [Donner la mort, 68ff.].

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the same thing. The verbal link between don and pardon, which is marked in Latinate languages but not in Greek, for example, as far as I know (and we will have to ask ourselves about the apparent presence or absence of forgiveness in the strict sense in ancient Greek culture, an enormous and delicate question), this verbal link between don and pardon is also present in English and German: in English, “to forgive,” “forgiveness,” “asking for forgiveness,” and one will contrast “to give” and “to get” (that extraordi­nary word in English to which one would have to devote years of seminar) in “to forgive” versus “to forget”7 (forgiving is not forgetting, another enor­mous problem); in German, although verzeihen is more common — ­Verzei­hung, jenen um Verzeihung bitten: to ask someone for forgiveness — ­and this is the word Hegel uses in The Phenomenology of Spirit (we’ll return to that),8 although one often uses Entschuldigung (more in the sense of an excuse, and entschuldbar in the equivocal sense of the forgivable-­excusable, literally de-­ culpabilizable, relieved of, exonerated from a debt that has been remitted). There is nonetheless a word in German, a lexical family that maintains this link between the gift and forgiveness: vergeben means “to forgive,” ich bitte um Vergebung, “I ask for forgiveness,” but its usage is generally reserved for solemn, even religious or spiritual occasions, less everyday usages than verzeihen or entschuldigen. This link between usages of the word pardon, so-­called common, everyday, casual usages, on the one hand (for example when I say “pardon (me)” when I have to pass in front of someone as I get out of the elevator), and, the serious, considered, intense usages, this link between all types of usages in very different situations, this link will be one of our problems, both a semantic problem concerning the concept of forgiveness and a pragmatic problem concerning the acts of language or pre-­or ultra-­linguistic behavior. More frequently — ­but that frequency and probability is precisely a question of pragmatics, of context and social gesture — ­more foreseeably, then, Verbegung has rather the religious sense (in this case Biblio-­Koranic, therefore) of remission of sins, even though the usage of this lexical family (vergeben, Vergebung, Vergabe) is both flexible and perverse: vergeben can mean a misdeal [maldonne], cor7. [Translator’s note:] “Quoted” words and phrases in English in typescript. 8. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Werke, vol. 3, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), 464ff. [The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 365ff.; La Phénoménologie de l’esprit, vol. 2, trans. Jean Hyppolite (Paris : Aubier-­Montaigne 1941), 168ff.]. See Derrida, Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, First Session (29–­6 5).

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ruption of the gift, sich etwas vergeben: “to be compromised,” and Vergabe is the contract awarded, a tender . . .9 Pardon: pardon is a noun. It can sometimes be preceded by a definite or indefinite article (le pardon, un pardon) and inscribed, for example as subject, in a constative sentence: pardon is this or that, forgiveness [le pardon] has been asked by someone or by an institution, a pardon has been granted or refused, etc. The forgiveness asked by the Conference of Bishops, by the police, by the medical profession, forgiveness that the university or the Vatican has not yet asked for, etc. That is the noun as reference of a constative — ­or theoretical — ­type.10 One can devote a seminar to the question of forgiveness, which is basically what we are getting ready to do (forgiveness then becomes, to that extent, the name of a theme or of a theoretical problem, to be dealt with within a horizon of knowledge), unless the seminar’s actors request or grant forgiveness by treating of it theoretically. And when I opened this seminar by saying pardon, you weren’t to know, you still don’t know, what I was doing, whether I was begging your pardon or whether, instead of using the word, I was mentioning the noun pardon as the title of the seminar. For in the single word pardon, with or without an exclamation mark, one may — ­although nothing constrains one to do so if a context does not require it — ­already hear an entire sentence implied in it, a performative sentence: “Sorry! I beg your pardon, I beg you [vous prie] to pardon me, I beg you [te prie] to pardon me, pardon me, I beg you [pardonnez-­moi, je vous prie, pardonne-­moi, je t’en prie].” I am already marking, I have just marked it as if in passing, beginning with a long digression in parentheses, this distinction between tu and vous in order to situate or announce a question that will long remain suspended, but on which everything will no doubt also hang: if the “you” is not a vous of respect or distance, like the vous that Levinas says is preferable to Buber’s tu, which signifies too much proximity or familiarity, even fusion, and risks canceling the infinite transcendence of the other; if, therefore, the “you” of “I beg your pardon,” “pardonnez-­moi” is a collective and plural “you,” the question then becomes one of a collective pardon, whether that concern a group of subjects, others, citizens, individuals, etc., or whether it already involve — ­and this is even more complicated, but with a complication that is at the heart of pardon — ­a multiplicity of instances or moments, instances or instants, of “I”s inside the “I.” Who forgives or who asks whom for 9. [Translator’s note:] Ellipsis in typescript. 10. In the typescript, Derrida has written and crossed out the marginal annotation “Clinton.” He writes it again a few pages further along. See note 13 below.

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forgiveness, at what moment? Who has the right or power to do that, “who forgives whom?” And what does the “who” signify here? That will always be the almost ultimate form of the question, most often of a question by definition insoluble. For however formidable it be, that question is perhaps not the ultimate question. More than once we will be faced with the effect of a prerequisite question, prior to this one, the question “who” or “what”? Does one forgive someone for a wrong committed, for example a perjury (but, as I will try to argue later, a fault, an offense, a harm, a wrong committed is in a certain sense always a perjury), does one forgive someone, or does one forgive someone something, someone who, in whichever way, can never totally be confused with the wrongdoing and the moment of the past wrongdoing, nor even with the past in general?11 This question — ­“who” or “what” — ­won’t stop coming back to haunt, to obsess the language of forgiveness, in many forms, and not only by multiplying the aporetic difficulties but also by obliging us finally to suspect or suspend the meaning of this opposition between “who” and “what,” a little as if the experience of forgiveness (of forgiveness requested, wished for, whether granted or not), as if, perhaps, the impossibility of a true, appropriate, appropriable experience of “forgiveness” meant the dismissal of this opposition between “who” and “what,” its dismissal and therefore its history, its past historicity. But between the pardon in pardonne-­moi and the pardon in pardonnez-­moi or in “forgive us” (singular/familiar or plural/formal) (four possibilities that are essentially different, four distributions [donnes] of forgiveness between singular and plural that would have to be multiplied by all the alternatives of “who” and “what” — ­that makes a lot), the most overwhelming, most easily identifiable form of that formidable question today — ­and it’s where we’ll begin — ­would be that of a singular plural.12 Can one, does one have the right, does it conform to the sense of forgiveness to ask forgiveness of more than one, of a group, a collectivity, a community? Is it possible to request forgiveness of or grant forgiveness to an other other than the singular other, for a crime or wrong that is singular? We have there one of the first aporias within which we will continually find ourselves caught. 11. During the session, Derrida adds: “In other words, to put it stupidly, does one forgive something, a wrong, or does one forgive someone, or for someone? I say it crassly for the moment, we’ll come to the nitty-­gritty later. 12. During the session, Derrida adds: “as Jean-­Luc Nancy would say.” See Nancy, Being Singular Plural, trans. Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000) [Être singulier pluriel (Paris: Galilée, 2013)].

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In a certain manner it seems to us that forgiveness can be requested or granted only “one on one,” face to face — ­so to speak — ­between the one who has committed the irreparable or irreversible harm and the one who is subjected to it. Only the latter is able to hear the request for forgiveness, and grant or refuse it. That solitude of two, in the scene of forgiveness, would seem to deprive of sense or authenticity any forgiveness that is requested collectively, in the name of a community, a church, an institution, a corporation, a group of anonymous victims, possibly dead, or their representatives, descendants, or survivors. In the same way, this singular, or even almost secret, solitude of forgiveness would make it an experience that is foreign to the domain of law, punishment, or penance, of public institutions, judicial calculus, etc.13 As Vladimir Jankélévitch precisely recalls in Forgiveness, “forgiveness of sin is a defiance of penal logic.”14 Inasmuch as forgiveness exceeds penal logic, it is foreign to all juridical space, even that within which the concept of crime against humanity emerged following World War II, and, in 1964, the French law concerning the “imprescriptibility”15 of crimes against humanity. The imprescriptible is not the unforgivable, and I point very quickly, too quickly here to a critical and problematic place that we will (supposedly) be constantly coming back to. For all public declarations of repentance of which there are today more and more examples in France (the French Catholic church, police or medical corporations, not yet the Vatican itself, or the university, despite several cases reported in that context), declarations that had been preceded by certain analogous gestures in other countries, at different speeds and in different forms (for example

13. Derrida adds the marginal annotation “Clinton” to his typescript. It refers to a newspaper cutting from the beginning of April 1998 inserted in the typescript, probably for the version of the seminar given in the United States (Mimi Hall, “Clinton Ends ‘Powerful’ Africa Tour,” USA Today, April 3–­5, 1998, 1). 14. Vladimir Jankélévitch, Forgiveness, trans. Andrew Kelley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 127 [Le Pardon (Paris: Aubier-­Montaigne, 1967), 165]. Further references will appear within parentheses in text (in the order English/French), preceded where necessary by the mention Forgiveness. Derrida adds the following at the bottom of his typescript page: “See also the little book published with Seuil in the ‘Points Essais’ collection in 1986, with the title L’Imprescriptible, subtitle Pardonner? Dans l’honneur et la dignité, bringing together various essays and lectures from 1948, 1956, and 1971.” [Translator’s note:] See note 21 below. 15. [Translator’s note:] As will be explained further, this is the concept and law that exempt crimes against humanity from any statute of limitations.

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the Japanese prime minister ,16 or Vaclav Havel presenting their apologies to certain victims of the past, the bishops of Poland and Germany undertaking an examination of conscience on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz).17 All those public demonstrations of repentance, by the state or not, most often “asking for forgiveness,” which are very new demonstrations in political history, operate against the historical and juridical background that brought about the institution, invention, and foundation of a juridical concept coming out of the Nuremberg trials of 1945, a concept hitherto unknown, that of “crime against humanity.” Be that as it may, the concept of forgiveness, or of the unforgivable, which is often foregrounded in all these discourses and in the commentaries on them, remains heterogeneous to that judicial or penal dimension that regulates both the time of prescription and the imprescriptibility of the crimes.18 Unless it be that the nonjuridical dimension of forgiveness, and of the unforgivable, to the extent that it comes to suspend or interrupt the usual order of the law, comes to be inscribed, or to inscribe its interruption in the law itself. That is one of the difficulties awaiting us.19 16. During the session, Derrida adds: “I made reference here several years ago, on the subject of lying, to the declaration of the Japanese prime minister that requested forgiveness for Japan’s crimes before and during the war.” Cf. Derrida, “History of the Lie: Prolegomena,” trans. Peggy Kamuf, in Without Alibi, ed. Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 47 [“Histoire du mensonge: Prolégomènes,” Cahiers de L’Herne Derrida, 505]. 17. Derrida adds this marginal annotation to his typescript: “Apartheid (avowal and reconciliation).” During the session he adds, “At the present time, even in South Africa concerning apartheid, there are scenes of reconciliation, attempts at reconciliation, which imply requests for forgiveness, repenting.” 18. During the session, Derrida adds: “In law, there is a prescribed limitation, twenty years in France, I think, and ‘imprescriptibility’ means that ‘there is no time,’ its time can’t be prescribed, not ever. One can be convicted,  forever tried and convicted for crimes against humanity. But ‘imprescriptible’ doesn’t mean unforgivable.” 19. During the session, Derrida adds: “In line with a schema that is familiar to us here, I mean by this that the difference between the unconditional and conditional, or here between the juridical and nonjuridical, between the imprescriptible and unforgivable, isn’t simply a distinction between two external terms. However heterogeneous those two values be, it is possible that one is inscribed within the other, that one comes to interrupt the other. In other words, that in law there is a moment of the interruption of the law, or conversely — ­we’ll examine this possibility when reading Hannah Arendt — ­that in forgiveness, that in the nonjuridical domain of forgiveness, there is a hidden juridical instance, and reference to a penalty, a potential punishment even where that isn’t provided for by juridical legislation.”

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The little book by Jankélévitch that came out after Forgiveness, entitled L’Imprescriptible, has as its epigraph these lines from Éluard, which make the paradoxical, and to my mind usefully provocative, point of opposing salvation, but salvation on earth, and forgiveness. Éluard says: There is no salvation on earth As long as one can forgive executioners.20

Inasmuch as it almost always happens, and in a nonfortuitous way, that one associates — ­we will often return to this — ­expiation, salvation, redemption, and reconciliation with forgiveness, these words at least have the merit of breaking with common sense, which is also that of the greatest religious and spiritual traditions of forgiveness — ­the Judaic or Christian traditions, for example — ­which never remove forgiveness from the horizon of reconciliation, hope for redemption and salvation, through avowal, remorse or repentance, sacrifice and expiation. In L’Imprescriptible, starting from the foreword to the text entitled “Pardonner? [To forgive?]” a foreword that dates from 1971, Jankélévitch in fact himself gives in, without saying it in these terms, to a kind of repentance, since he admits that this text seems to contradict what he had written four years earlier in the 1967 book, Forgiveness.21 In addition, the short polemical essay “Pardonner?” was written in the context of French debates in 1964 concerning the imprescriptibility of Hitler’s crimes and crimes against humanity. As Jankélévitch makes clear: In Le Pardon, a purely philosophical work that I have published elsewhere, the answer to the question, Must we pardon? seems to contradict the one given here. Between the absolute of the law of love and the absolute of

20. Jankélévitch quotes these lines from Éluard as the epigraph to the first part [“Pardonner?”] of his L’Imprescriptible (Paris: Seuil, 1986, republished in the Collec­ tion “Points Essais” in 1996), 11, Derrida’s emphasis. Éluard’s poem reads as follows: “Il n’y a pas de pierre plus précieuse / Que le désir de venger l’innocent // Il n’y a pas de ciel plus éclatant / Que le matin où les traîtres succombent // Il n’y a pas de salut sur la terre / Tant que l’on peut pardonner aux bourreaux [There is no stone more precious than the desire to avenge an innocent, there is no sky more brilliant than the morning when traitors succumb, there is no salvation on earth as long as one can forgive executioners]” (“Les vendeurs d’indulgence,” Au rendez-­vous allemand [Paris: Minuit, 1945]), 47, my translation [DW]. 21. [Translator’s note:] “Pardonner?” is translated as Vladimir Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon Them?” trans. Ann Hobart, Critical Inquiry 22 (1996): 552–­72. Further references will appear within parentheses in text (in the order English/French), preceded where necessary by the mention “Pardon Them?” The translation is often modified.

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vicious liberty there is a tear that cannot be entirely picked apart [décousue] [does he mean recousue (resewn)? Unless knowing how to pick apart a tear already be a way of conceiving of it as faulty stitching, a previous sewing that is therefore open to a certain re-­sewing, to being re-­seamed, darned, something Jankélévitch contests here]. I have not attempted to reconcile the irrationality of evil with the omnipotence of love. Forgiveness is as strong as evil, but evil is as strong as forgiveness. (“Pardon Them?” 553 / Imprescriptible, 14–­15)

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Naturally, these are statements and a logic that we have barely begun to debate, with which we are just beginning to struggle. Nonetheless, the texts of L’Imprescriptible, participating as they do in the debate over imprescriptibility that I have just evoked, and to which we will return, firmly conclude with the impossibility and inopportuneness, indeed the immorality of forgiveness. And in order to do so, in this polemical and impassioned debate, they produce a continuity of meanings that we must rigorously dissociate, and which, moreover, Jankélévitch himself dissociates in what he calls his “purely philosophical work,” namely, for example,  forgiveness, prescribed limitation, and forgetting. “Should We Pardon Them?” begins with this question: “Is it time to forgive, or at least to forget?” (553/17). Jankélévitch well knows that forgiving is not forgetting, but in the spirit of a broad polemical demonstration, and in abject fear of the risk of a forgiveness that would end up engendering a forgetting, Jankélévitch says no to forgiveness by contending that one must not forget. He speaks to us, in short, of a duty of nonforgiveness, in the name of the victims. Forgiveness is impossible. And it must not be done. One must not forgive. One is required not to forgive. We will have to ask ourselves, again and again, what this “impossible” might mean, and whether the possibility of forgiveness, if there be such a thing, is not to be measured precisely against the ordeal of the impossible. Impossible, Jankélévitch tells us in short, forgiveness for what happened in the death camps is impossible. “Forgiveness,” says Jankélévitch, “died in the death camps” (567/50). Among all of Jankélévitch’s arguments to which we will, and would have to return constantly, there are two I would like to emphasize. They are also two axioms that are far from self-­evident. A. The first is that forgiveness cannot be granted, or at least one cannot imagine the possibility of granting it, of forgiving, then, unless forgiveness is asked for, explicitly or implicitly requested, and this difference is not nothing; which would mean, therefore, that one will never forgive someone who does not admit their fault, who does not repent and does not, explicitly or not, request forgiveness. This link between forgiveness granted and

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requested does not seem to me a given, even if here again it seems required by an entire religious and spiritual tradition of forgiveness — ­something we’ll come back to. I wonder whether a rupture in this reciprocity or this symmetry, whether even the dissociation between forgiveness requested and forgiveness granted, is not de rigueur for every forgiveness worthy of the name. B. The second axiom, whose trace we shall constantly encounter in many of the texts that we are going to analyze from here on, is that when the crime is too serious, when it crosses the line of radical evil, or even of the human, when it becomes monstrous, there can no longer be any question of forgiveness; forgiveness must remain, so to speak, between men, on a human scale. That also seems problematic to me, although it is very powerful and very classical. Two quotes to support these two axioms. 1.22 The first presupposes a history of forgiveness; it starts from the end of this history and it dates that end of the history of forgiveness (we might later say, with Hegel, of history as forgiveness)23 from the project of extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. Jankélévitch emphasizes what in his eyes is the absolute singularity of this project, a project without precedent or analogy, an absolutely exceptional singularity that would retrospectively allow a history of forgiveness to be thought. That history would be deployed and exposed, precisely, on the basis of its final limit: the “final solution” would be in sum, so to speak, the final solution of a history and of a historical possibility of forgiveness; all the more so — ­and the two arguments are interwoven into the same reasoning — ­that the Germans, the German people, if such a thing exists, have never asked for forgiveness. As Jankélévitch inquires more than once: how could we forgive someone who does not ask for forgiveness? And here I would repeat my question, a question that should never stop echoing in our ears: is forgiveness possible, with its meaning of forgiveness, only on condition that it be requested? Here then, before discussing them, are some of the strong tenets of Jankélévitch’s argument (pp. 50–­51 of the original edition of L’Imprescriptible, same pagination in the “Points” edition): “Forgiveness! But have they ever asked us for forgiveness? [The “they” and the “us” would obviously call for being determined and legitimated]. It is the distress and dereliction of the

22. This numerical sequence of points is not continued in the typescript. A “first” quotation continues on the pages that follow; a second is introduced on 20. 23. Cf. Derrida, Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, Fourth Session (141–­72).

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guilty alone that would give forgiveness a meaning and a reason for being” (567/50). It is thus clear for Jankélévitch — ­as it is clear for more than one tradition, those traditions from which an idea of forgiveness in fact comes to us, but an idea of forgiveness the very legacy of which conveys a force of implosion whose blasts we will constantly be registering, a legacy that contradicts itself and gets carried away, combusts, I would say more dispassionately “deconstructs” — ­it is thus clear for Jankélévitch that forgiveness can be granted only if the guilty party mortifies themself, confesses, repents, accuses themself in asking for forgiveness, if as a consequence they expiate and so identify themself, with a view to redemption and reconciliation, with the one whom they ask for forgiveness. It is this traditional, certainly very forceful, very constant axiom, that I will be constantly tempted to contest, in the very name of the same legacy, of the semantics of one and the same legacy, namely, that in forgiveness, in the very meaning of forgiveness, there is a force, a desire, an impetus, a movement, an appeal (call it what you will) that demands that forgiveness be granted, if it can be, even to someone who does not ask for it, who neither repents nor confesses, neither improves nor redeems themself, beyond — ­as a consequence — ­every identificatory, spiritual economy, sublime or not, beyond all expiation even. But I will leave this suggestion in a virtual state, we will have to come back to it incessantly, in an incessant way; I’ll now return to my quotation of this very violent text, as if carried away by an anger felt to be legitimate, righteous anger: Forgiveness! But have they ever asked us for forgiveness? It is the distress and dereliction of the guilty alone that would give forgiveness a meaning and a reason for being. When the guilty are fat, well nourished, prosperous, enriched by the “economic miracle,” forgiveness is a sinister joke. No, forgiveness is not for swine and their sows. Forgiveness died in the death camps. Our horror before that which understanding cannot, properly speaking, conceive of would stifle pity at its birth . . . if the accused could inspire pity in us. (567/50–­51)

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There follow remarks of such polemical violence and such anger against the Germans that I do not even want to have to read them or cite them. It is only just to recognize that Jankélévitch himself was somewhat aware that this violence is unjust and unworthy of what Jankélévitch has elsewhere written on forgiveness. He knew he was letting himself get carried away, in a guilty way, by anger and indignation, even if that anger gave itself an air of righteous anger. That he was aware of it comes through, for example, in an interview he gave several years later, in 1977 (it is quoted by Alain

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Gouhier in an article on “The Time of the Unforgivable and the Time of Forgiveness according to Jankélévitch,” published in the proceedings of a remarkable conference dedicated to forgiveness). Jankélévitch writes the following, which I quote, on the one hand, in order to note an expression that might well serve as the title of what I am trying to do here (namely, a “hyperbolical ethics,” or even an ethics beyond ethics) and, on the other hand, in order to underline the more or less guilty tension that, along with Jankélévitch, we must admit to and try to be forgiven for, a tension or a contradiction between the hyperbolical ethics that tends to push exigency to the limit and beyond the limit of the possible and this everyday economy of forgiveness that dominates the religious, juridical, even political and psychological semantics of forgiveness, a forgiveness contained within the human or anthropo-­theological limits of repentance, confession, expiation, reconciliation, or redemption. Jankélévitch says this; he admits this: I have written two books on forgiveness: one of them, simple, very aggressive, very polemical [ pamphlétaire], whose title is “Should We Pardon Them?” [that’s the one I just quoted from], and the other, Forgiveness, a book of philosophy in which I study forgiveness in itself, from the point of view of Christian and Jewish ethics. I draw out an ethics that could be qualified as hyperbolic [my emphasis], for which forgiveness is the supreme commandment; and, on the other hand, evil always appears as beyond. Forgiveness is stronger than evil, and evil is stronger than forgiveness. I can’t find a way out of that. It is a kind of oscillation that in philosophy one would describe as dialectical, and which seems infinite to me. I believe in the immensity of forgiveness, in its supernaturality; I think I have said that often enough, perhaps dangerously, and on the other hand, I believe in wickedness [méchanceté].24

It is obvious that the passage I just read on the finite history of forgiveness, on the death of forgiveness in the death camps, on forgiveness not being for animals or for those who do not ask for it, that this passage obeys the so-­called polemical [pamphlétaire] logic, which the logic of a hyperbolical ethics resists, and resists infinitely, a hyperbolical ethics that for its part would precisely command, on the contrary, that forgiveness be granted 24. The interview is “Entretien de Vladimir Jankélévitch avec Renée de Tyron-­ Montalembert,” La Vie spirituelle 619 (March–­April 1977), 194–­9 5; quoted in Alain Gouhier, “Le temps de l’impardonnable et le temps du pardon selon Jankélévitch,” in Michel Perrin, ed., Le Point théologique, Proceedings of the Conference Organized by the Centre d’Histoire des Idées, Université de Picardie (Paris: Beauchesne, 1987), 270, Derrida’s emphasis.

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where it is neither requested nor deserved, and even for the worst radical evil, forgiveness acquiring its sense and possibility as forgiveness only where it is called on to do the im-­possible and to forgive the un-­forgivable.25 But this polemical logic is not only a logic of circumstance; we must take it all the more seriously and pay it careful attention because it picks up on the strongest, the most strongly traditional, logic of the religious and spiritualist semantics of forgiveness, which aligns it with repentance, confession, a request for forgiveness, the capacity to expiate, to redeem oneself, and so on. Indeed, one of the great difficulties that awaits us derives from the fact that the hyperbolical ethics, which will also guide us, both follows in the wake of that tradition and is incompatible with it, as if the tradition itself carried in its heart an inconsistency, a virtual power of implosion or auto-­deconstruction, a power of the impossible — ­and that will require of us once again the strength to re-­think what is meant by the possibility of the im-­possible or the im-­possibility of the possible. In fact, wherever we find the un-­forgivable as inexpiable, wherever, as Jankélévitch indeed concludes, forgiveness becomes impossible, and the history of forgiveness comes to an end, we will ask ourselves whether, paradoxically, the possibility of forgiveness as such, if there is such a thing, doesn’t find its origin, whether forgiveness doesn’t begin in the place where it appears to end, where it appears im-­possible, precisely at the end of the history of forgiveness, of history as history of forgiveness. More than once we would have to put this formally empty and blunt, but implacably demanding aporia to the test, the aporia according to which forgiveness, if there is such a thing, must and can forgive only the un-­forgivable, the inexpiable, and so do the impossible. To forgive the forgivable, the venial, the excusable, what one can always forgive, is not to forgive. Yet the nerve center of Jankélévitch’s argument in L’Imprescriptible, and in the section of L’Imprescriptible entitled “Should We Pardon Them?” is that the singularity of the Shoah attains the dimensions of the inexpiable; and that for the inexpiable there is no possible forgiveness, or even a forgiveness that would have a sense, that would make sense (because the common axiom of the tradition, finally, and that of Jankélévitch, the axiom we will perhaps have to call into question, is that forgiveness 25. During the session, Derrida adds: “Last year, those who were here perhaps remember, I very quickly described this aporia, formally, bluntly, abstractly. One has to forgive only the unforgivable; forgiving the forgivable is not very difficult! So, forgiveness can be about forgiving only the unforgivable, and, by definition, the unforgivable is forgivable. There, one could leave it at that!” See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/Hospitalité,” EHESS, 1996–­9 7, fifth session.

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must still have a sense, and that this sense must be determined on the basis of salvation, reconciliation, redemption, expiation, I would even say of sacrifice). Indeed, Jankélévitch previously declared that in the case of the Shoah: “[o]ne cannot punish the criminal with a punishment proportionate to his crime, for in relation to the infinite all finite magnitudes tend to be equal, in such a way that the penalty becomes almost indifferent; what happened is literally inexpiable. One no longer even knows whom to put the blame on or whom to accuse” (558/29). Jankélévitch seems to assume, then, like so many others, like Hannah Arendt for example (in a passage from The Human Condition, p. 241; Condition de l’homme moderne, p. 307), that forgiveness, as a human thing — ­I insist on this anthropological trait, which determines everything (for it will always be a matter of knowing whether forgiveness is a human thing or not) — ­is always a correlate of the possibility of punishing; not of taking revenge, of course, which is something else, to which forgiveness is alien, she says, but of punishing. And, I quote:

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The alternative to forgiveness, but by no means its opposite, is punishment, and both have in common that they attempt to put an end to something that without interference could go on endlessly. It is therefore quite significant, a structural element in the realm of human affairs that men are unable to forgive what they cannot punish and that they are unable to punish what has turned out to be unforgivable.26

In L’Imprescriptible, then, but not in Forgiveness, Jankélévitch situates himself within this correlation, this proportionality, this symmetry, this common measure between the possibilities of punishing and forgiving, declaring that forgiveness no longer has a sense wherever the crime, like the Shoah, has become “inexpiable,” disproportionate, out of proportion to any human measure. Indeed, he writes: “Properly speaking, the grandiose massacre [the Shoah, the “final solution”] is not a crime on a human scale any more than are astronomical magnitudes and light years. Thus, the reactions that it inspires are in the first place despair and a feeling of powerlessness before the irreparable” (558/29, Derrida’s emphasis). [The irreparable: interrupting my quote, I underline this word for three reasons: 26. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 241 [Condition de l’homme moderne, trans. Georges Fradier (Paris: Calmann-­ Lévy, 1983), 271], Derrida’s emphasis. Derrida’s page reference (307) before the quote is to the Collection Paris Pocket republication (Paris: Agora, 1994).

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1. First reason. “Irreparable” will be Chirac’s word, in a text we’ll come back to, for describing the crime against the Jews under Vichy (“France . . . on that day,” he declared, “committed the irreparable”).27 2. Second reason to underline “irreparable.” We will have to ask ourselves whether the irreparable means the unforgivable; I think not, no more than does the “imprescriptible,” a juridical notion, belong to the order of forgive­ ness and mean the unforgivable. Everything must therefore be done to discern as subtly and as rigorously as possible the unforgivable on the one hand from the imprescriptible on the other, but also among all the related and different notions that are the irreparable, the indelible [ineffaçable], the irreversible, the unforgettable, the irrevocable, the inexpiable. All of these notions, in spite of the decisive differences that separate them, have in common a negativity, a “[do] not,” the “[do] not” of an impossible that sometimes, or at the same time, signifies “impossible because one cannot,” “impossible because one must not.” But in all cases, one must not and/or cannot go back over a past. The past is past, the event took place, the wrong took place, and that past, the memory of that past, remains irreducible, intractable. That is one of the differences between forgiveness and the gift, which does not, in principle, concern the past. One will never have treated forgiveness if one does not take account of this being-­past, a being-­past that never lets itself be reduced, modified, modalized in a present past or a presentable or re­p­ resentable past. It is a being-past that does not pass, so to speak. It is this im-­ passibility, this im-­passivity of the past as well, and of the past event that takes on different forms — ­which we would have to analyze relentlessly — ­the forms of the irreversible, the unforgettable, the indelible, the irreparable, the irremediable, the irrevocable, the inexpiable, and so on. Without this stubborn privileging of the past in constituting temporalization, there is no original problematic of forgiveness. That is, unless the desire and the promise of forgiveness, indeed of reconciliation and redemption, were to secretly signify such a revolt or revolution against a temporalization, or even against a historicization that makes sense only by taking into account this essence of the past, this being of the being-­past, this Gewesenheit, this essence of the having been as the very essence of being; but also this eventness of being, 27. “La France, ce jour-­là accomplissait l’irréparable.” Derrida is referring to the speech by President Jacques Chirac on July 16, 1995, commemorating the fifty-­third anniversary of the roundups of Jews on July 16–­17, 1942. His speech marked the first public recognition by the French state of its responsibility for the deportation of some 76,000 Jews from its territory. See Marlise Simons, “Chirac Affirms France’s Guilt In Fate of Jews,” New York Times, July 17, 1995, 1.

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the “it has been” [“ça a été ”] thus, “it happened” [“c’est arrivé ”]. Within that horizon we would have to reread all the thinking, which, like that of Hegel or, differently, of Levinas (and, in Levinas, differently at different moments of his trajectory), makes the experience of forgiveness, of being-­forgiven, of forgiving-­one-­another, of the becoming-­reconciled, so to speak, an essential and onto-­logical (not only ethical or religious) structure of temporal constitution, the very movement of subjective and intersubjective experience, the relation to self as a relation to the other as temporal experience. Forgiveness, forgivenness [la pardonnéité], is time, the being of time insofar as it carries with it the indisputable and the unmodifiable past. But this pastness of an eventness [passéité d ’une événementialité], the being-­past of something that happened, is not enough to construct the concept of “for-­giveness” (being requested or granted). What else is needed? Suppose we were to refer to this “being-­past of what happened” by the seemingly simple word “fact.”28 Some fact was done there [Il y a eu là un fait] (past participle, which says that something took place, something that remains indisputable). For there to be a scene of forgiveness, such a fact, such an event as deed done, must not only be an event, something that happens, a neutral and impersonal fact, this fact must have been a misdeed [méfait] and a wrong-­doing done [un méfait fait] by someone to someone, a harm, a wrong implicating an author who is responsible, and a victim. In other words, it is not enough for there to be a past event, a fact, or even an irreversible misfortune for one to have to ask for forgiveness or to forgive. If, a century ago, an earthquake devastated a people or engulfed a community, if this past is a past harm, a terribly unfortunate and indisputable fact, no one will think, however, of forgiving or asking for forgiveness for that past event, for that “fact,” unless one still were to suspect some malevolent design or malicious intent. One would also have to discern, for you know, here as elsewhere, one must never give up distinguishing, dissociating as well, I will say relentlessly and without mercy — ­and the analysis of “forgiveness,” of “pardon,” is interminable — ­one must also distinguish not only between vengeance and punishment but also between punishing or punishment and the right to punish, then between the right to punish in general and the juridical right to punish, penal legality. Arendt could still say that forgiveness is a correlative of punishment without for all that concluding thereby that there is, necessarily, a juridical dimension to it. The example par excellence of an incarnation, I am indeed saying an incarnation, of absolute and sovereign 28. [Translator’s note:] Fait, past participle of faire, hence also “something done,” a “deed.”

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forgiveness as the right to forgive qua right to punish, is the monarch’s right to grant clemency [grâce]. Of course, between forgiveness and grace (just as between gift and “thank you [merci],” “to have at one’s mercy [merci]”), there is this affinity that comes to us from an abyssal history, a religious, spiritual, political, theologico-­political history that should be at the center of our reflection. The only inscription of forgiveness in the law, in juridical legislation, is no doubt the right to grant clemency, the kingly right of theologico-­political origin that survives in modern democracies, in secular republics such as France, or in semi-­secular democracies such as the United States, where state governors and the president (who swears an oath of office on the Bible) have, if I am not mistaken, a sovereign right to “pardon” (moreover, one also says “pardon” in English in this case). The monarch’s right to grant clemency, this all-­powerful sovereignty (most often of divine right) that places the right to forgive above the law, is no doubt the most political or juridical feature of the right to forgive as right to punish, but it is also what interrupts, within the very juridico-­political, the order of the juridico-­political. It is the exception to the juridico-­political within the juridico-­political, but a sovereign exception and a sovereign interruption that found the very thing from which they exclude or exempt themselves. As is often the case, the foundation is excluded or exempted from the very structure that it founds. It is this logic of the exception, of forgiveness as absolute exception, as logic of infinite exception, that we would have to ponder over and over again. One should be able to say “pardon,” request or grant forgiveness, only in an infinitely exceptional way. Moreover, if we listen to Kant (as we must and should often do, especially concerning “radical evil”), if we listen to him on the right to grant clemency, precisely in his Doctrine of Right (first part of the Metaphysics of Morals) when he discusses Public Right, and within that “On the Right to Punish and to Grant Clemency” (Introduction to §50 and following),29 what he tells us still has considerable scope when transferred onto forgiveness. The gist of what he says is this: “of all the rights of a sovereign,” the right to grant clemency to [ grâcier] a criminal (ius aggratiandi, Begnadigungsrecht),30 either by lessening or entirely remitting punishment, is the most delicate, “the slipperiest,”

29. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially 140–­45 [Métaphysique des moeurs. Première partie: Doctrine du droit, trans. Alexis Philonenko (Paris: Vrin, 1979), 220]. 30. Immanuel Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten, in Werke, vol. 4 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1968), 337. During the session, Derrida adds “the right to mercy [ grâce].”

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the most elusive [das schlüpfrigste].31 It shows best “the splendor of his majesty,” the highness of the sovereign, the sovereignty (and we will have to ask ourselves whether forgiveness must or must not be “sovereign”), but the sovereign thereby runs the risk of being unjust, of acting unjustly (unrecht zu tun) in the highest degree. Nothing can be more unjust than clemency. And Kant adds a fundamental caveat here, he marks an internal limit to the sovereign’s right to grant clemency: the latter does not, should not under any circumstances, have the right to grant clemency for a crime that is not committed against his own self; he should not have the right to grant clemency for crimes committed by subjects against subjects — ­thus for crimes among those who for him are also third parties. For that impunity (impunitas criminis) would be “the greatest wrong against his subjects.” The right to grant clemency — ­and thus to pardon — ­should be exercised only where the crime is against the sovereign himself, a crime of lèse majesté (crimen laesae maiestatis). And even in that case, the sovereign should exercise his right to grant clemency only on condition that this clemency does not constitute any danger for his subjects. Thus limited, severely limited, “this right is the only one that deserves to be called [by the name of majesty,] the right of majesty (Majestätsrecht).”32 The least significant lesson that can be taken from this fundamental remark — ­by extending it to forgiveness — ­would be that forgiveness in general should be permitted only on the part of the victim themself. The question of forgiveness as such should arise only in a one-­on-­one [tête-­à-­ tête] or face-­to-­face between victim and guilty party, never through a third for a third. Is that possible? Is such a one-­on-­one or face-­to-­face possible? We will have to return to this more than once. Forgiveness perhaps implies, from the outset, as quasi-­hypothesis, the appearance on the scene of a third party whom it nonetheless must, should, exclude. In any case, according to common sense itself, no one seems to have the right to forgive an offense, a crime, a wrong committed against someone else. One should never forgive in the name of a victim, and especially not if the latter is radically absent from the scene of forgiveness, for example, if the victim is dead. One cannot ask forgiveness of the living, of survivors for crimes whose victims are dead. As are sometimes the authors. This would be one of the angles from which to approach all the scenes and all the declarations of repentance and requests for forgiveness that have been multiplying for some weeks on the

31. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 145 [Werke, 4:337]. 32. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 145 [Werke, 4:337; Métaphysique des moeurs, 220].

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public scene (the Catholic Church, the police, doctors, and perhaps one day, who knows, the University or the Vatican), scenes and declarations that we will have to analyze closely.33 3. Third reason to underline “irreparable”: as I won’t stop repeating, it is only against the unforgivable, and therefore on the scale without scale of a certain inhumanity of the inexpiable, against the monstrosity of radical evil, that forgiveness, if there is such a thing, measures itself.]34 I now pick up my quote from Jankélévitch once more: 49

Thus, the reactions that it inspires are in the first place despair and a feeling of powerlessness before the irreparable. One can do nothing. [A very strong sentence: everything becomes impossible, including forgiveness.] One cannot give life back to that immense mountain of miserable ashes. One cannot punish the criminal with a punishment proportionate to their crime: for in relation to the infinite all finite magnitudes tend to equal one another [what Jankélévitch seems to exclude, with the full sense and common sense of a tradition, is the infinity of human forgiveness, and so that goes all the way to this hyperbolicity of ethics which he seemed, and declared himself to be inspired by in his book on Forgiveness] [for in relation to the infinite all finite magnitudes tend to equal one another]; as a result the penalty becomes almost indifferent; what happened is literally inexpiable. One does not even know any more whom to attack or whom to accuse. (558/29)

Jankélévitch himself underlines the word “inexpiable”; and what he means to mark clearly is that wherever there is something inexpiable, it is unforgivable, and where the unforgivable comes about, forgiveness becomes impossible. It is the end of forgiveness and of the history of forgiveness: “Forgiveness died in the death camps.” For our part, we would have to ask ourselves whether, quite the contrary, forgiveness (both in and against the concept of forgiveness, in and beyond, or against the idea of forgiveness that we inherit — ­and whose legacy we will have to question, perhaps contest the legacy while inheriting from it — ­and this is a reflection on inheritance that we are beginning here), whether forgiveness must not free itself from its correlate of expiation, and whether the possibility of it is not 33. A note follows this paragraph in Derrida’s typescript: “End of first part of first session.” During the session Derrida moves directly on to the rest of his text. 34. We close here the bracket opened earlier, at the beginning of this numbered list (15).

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called forth precisely and only where it seems to be impossible, faced with the unforgivable, and possible only when grappling with the impossible. Since I have arrived at this quotation from a page of L’Imprescriptible, from “Should We Pardon Them?” concerning a forgiveness that would have to be requested and a forgiveness that is said to have died in the death camps, I think we must take an interest in what follows, concerning waiting to be asked for forgiveness. Jankélévitch will tell us that he was waiting for the word pardon, the word with which we began (“Pardon!”) and which can have the value of a performative sentence (Pardon!, I beg your pardon, pardon me [ pardonnez-­moi], pardon me [ pardonne-­moi]), this word that asks for forgiveness. Jankélévitch will tell us that he was waiting, as were others, for forgiveness to be requested, implying thereby that forgiveness must be asked for, that it asks to be asked for. And in a certain way, by saying that he was waiting, as were others, and in vain, for a word of pardon, a request for forgiveness, Jankélévitch admits in short that he was asking for forgiveness to be asked for. (This will be a problem for us, of course, but I wanted to emphasize here the main feature of this scene: it is asked, it is expected that the word “pardon” be uttered or implied, sig­­ nified, in any case, as request for forgiveness. What is essential is not that the word be said but that it be signified, that forgiveness-­requested be sig­ nified, like a plea for clemency [une grâce demandée], a plea for “mercy” [un “merci” demandé], and with this forgiveness-­requested, prior to it, that there be an expiation, remorse, regret, confession, a way of accusing oneself, of pointing at oneself an accusatory and self-­referential, auto-­deictic finger — ­something of which, it is rather summarily said, the animal is supposed to be incapable — ­the mea culpa of one who can beat their breast and, by recognizing their crime, dissociate themself from the guilty subject, from the subject having been guilty. We will have to come back to this structure of temporality, and of temporal specularity.) For the moment, I’ll quote this request for a forgiveness requested in order to associate with it two references. So, Jankélévitch writes (p. 51): “To ask for forgiveness! We have long been waiting for a word, a single word, a word of understanding and sympathy . . . We have hoped for it, this fraternal word!” (567/51, Derrida’s emphasis). [I underline the word “fraternal” — ­this word “fraternal” qualifying a “fraternal word” — ­it must be given a very strong and very precise meaning. It doesn’t only mean sympathy or effusion, compassion; it bespeaks the sharing of humanity, the fraternity of men, of sons recognizing their belonging to the human race, as will become clearer still; and it is hard

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to erase the profoundly Christian tradition of this humanist, familialist, and fraternalist universalism, in keeping with, among other things, the message of Jesus, for example in Matthew 23: “But be ye not called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and ye are all brethren (unus est enim Magister vester, omnes autem vos fratres estis, pantes de umeis adelphoi este).”]35 We have hoped for it, this fraternal word! Certainly, we did not expect that they would beg our forgiveness . . . But the understanding word, we would have received it with gratitude, with tears in our eyes. Alas, as an act of repentance, the Austrians have given us as gift the shameful acquittal of the executioners. (567–­68/51–­52)

52

Because, a little further on, as he often does elsewhere, Jankélévitch violently takes Heidegger to task (for example: “Robert Minder says forcefully that Heidegger is responsible not only for what he said under Nazism but also for what he declined to say in 1945”),36 I would be tempted — ­this is the first of the two references that I mentioned — ­to relate this remark to what many interpreters of Celan’s poem (“Todtnauberg”) — ­which he wrote in memory and as testimony of his visit to Heidegger — ­have read as the trace of a disappointed expectation, of Celan’s expectation of a word from Heidegger that would have signified a request for forgiveness. I myself will not venture to confirm or invalidate that, out of respect for the letter and the ellipsis of Celan’s poem I won’t rush into such a transparent and univocal interpretation. I hold myself back not only out of hermeneutic prudence or out of respect for the letter of the poem, but rather because I would like to suggest that forgiveness (granted or requested), the addressing of forgiveness, if there is such a thing, must forever remain undecidably equivocal, by which I do not mean ambiguous, shady, in shades of gray, but heterogeneous to every

35. Matthew 23:8. Derrida’s biblical references are as follows: La Bible: Nouveau Testament, trans. Jean Grosjean and Michel Léturmy (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1971); La Sainte Bible polyglotte, contenant le texte hébreu original, le texte grec des Septante, le texte latin de la Vulgate et la traduction française de l’abbé Glaire, avec les différences de l’hébreu, des Septante et de la Vulgate, vol. 7, ed. Fulcran Vigouroux (Paris: A. Roger & F. Chernoviz Libraires-­éditeurs, 1908). Compare, for the Latin and Greek, The Polyglot Bible (https://www.sacred-­texts.com/bib/poly/mat023.htm), and for Greek transliterations, Bible Hub (https://www.biblehub.com/interlinear). 36. Robert Minder, “Hebel et Heidegger, lumière et obscurantisme,” in P. Francastel, ed., Utopie et institutions au XVIIIe siècle (Hague: Mouton, 1963), quoted in “Should We Pardon Them?” 568 [L’Imprescriptible, 52–­53].

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determination in the order of knowledge, of determinate theoretical judgment, of the self-­presentation of an appropriable meaning (this is an aporetic logic that, at least from this point of view, of knowledge, forgiveness would share with the gift, but I’ll leave that analogy in progress or just sprouting [en plant] here). What “Todtnauberg” says, Celan’s poem that bears this title, what it says and what its interpreters take as justification for rushing to transform it into a limpid narration (a narration of the type: “Celan-­came,Heidegger-­did-­not-­ask-­the-­Jews-­for-­forgiveness-­in-­the-­name-­of-­the-­ Germans,-­Celan-­who-­was-­waiting-­for-­ a-­word-­of-­forgiveness,-­a-­‘pardon!,’ -­a -­r equest-­f or-­f orgiveness-­l eft-­d isappointed-­a nd-­h e-­m ade-­a -­p oem-­ of-­it-­he-­recorded-­it-­in-­one-­of-­his-­poems”); no, what the poem says, is at least this: Arnika, Augentrost, der Trunk aus dem Brunnen mit dem Sternwürfel drauf in der Hütte die in das Buch –­wessen Namen nahms auf vor dem meinem?–­, die in dies Buch geschriebene Zeile von einer Hoffnung, heute, auf eines Denkenden kommendes Wort im Herzen . . . Arnica, eyebright, the draft from the well with the starred die above it, in the hut, –­whose name did the book register before mine?–­, the line inscribed in that book about a hope, today, of a thinking man’s coming word

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in the heart . . .37 (Improvise commentary)38 54

However one interpret the meaning and testimonial reference of such a poem, it links its signature as poem (and of a poem that signs itself by naming a signature in a book, a name left in a book) to — ­I quote, one must quote — ­the hope for words [ parole], for a word (Wort) that comes to the heart, that comes from the heart, of a thinking being; and because it is a question of a past, of the signature and the trace of names left in the book of another, because what is named is the hope for a word to come — ­or not — ­therefore of a gift and a gift of thought, of a gift to come or not from a place or from a thinking being (kommendes, eines Denkenden — ­and you know how Heidegger is known for having often associated Denken and Danken:39 to thank, to recognize, to express one’s gratitude, the thank you of recognition, and think again of the relation between thanks [le merci] and mercy [la grâce], “to remit [ faire grâce]” or “to beg for mercy [demander grâce]”), for all these reasons the motifs of the gift and of gratitude belong as much to the thematics as they do to the act or essence of the poem, to the gift of the poem; and this poem says at one and the same time the gift, the gift of the poem, and this gift of the poem which it itself is. As much because 37. Paul Celan, “Todtnauberg,” in Lichtzwang (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 29–­30 [Strette & autres poèmes, trans. Jean Daive (Paris: Mercure de France, 1990), 108, 110; Paul Celan, Poems: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Michael Hamburger (New York: Persea Books, 1980), 292]. Derrida adds to his typescript the circled annotation “Celan” opposite the poem. He inserts into the typescript a photocopy of Celan’s poem from Hamburger’s bilingual edition, adding by hand the name of the translator. In the typescript there is a circled annotation with the name “Celan” opposite the poem. During the session he adds, in the context of the word “hut”: “Indeed, there is near Heidegger’s hut a strange wooden sculpted star.” [Translator’s note:] Daive translates as follows: “Arnica, Casse-­Lunettes [euphrasia, euphraise], la / gorgée à la fontaine surmontée du / dé étoilé, / dans la / hutte / la ligne dans le livre / — ­le nom de qui a-­t-­il / accueilli avant le mien ? — ­/ la ligne écrite dans ce / livre d’un / espoir, aujourd’hui, en la / parole / à venir / au cœur / d’un penseur . . .” 38. During the session, Derrida adds: “To translate prosaically: reference is made to ‘the line’ that Celan must have written in the hut’s visitors’ book. He asks who signed before him and then expresses hope for a word that would come into the heart of a thinker.” 39. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Was heißt Denken? in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8, ed. Paola-­ Ludivika Coriando (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), especially 142–­ 47 [Qu’appelle-­t-­on penser? trans. Aloys Becker and Gérard Granel (Paris: PUF, 1959), 144–­50; What is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 138–­46].

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it gives as because it receives, from the past that it recalls and from the hope it calls forth, through its recalling and its calling forth, it belongs to the element of the gift — ­and thus to the element of forgiveness, of a forgiveness requested or a forgiveness granted, both at once no doubt, at the moment it says the poetic experience both as appeal for recognition (in the sense of consciousness, of the recognition that recognizes and admits or the recognition that gives thanks, recognition as gratitude), the poetic experience as gift and forgiveness that are hoped for, requested, granted, for the other, in the name of the other; as if there were no poetic experience, no experience of  language as such without the experience of the gift and forgiveness — ­whether or not they are requested, granted, given — ­the question mark concerning the name that comes before my own in the book (“wessen Namen nahms auf / vor dem meinen?–­”), the name of the one received before mine, with this untranslatable alliteration, “Namen nahms auf,” which evokes hospitality [aufnehmen]), the reception offered to the other, this question mark concerning the identity of the other, concerning the name of the other who will have preceded me and with whom, whether I want it, know it or not, I am bound, bound up in the strange community, the strange genealogy of this book, this question mark clearly marks this anguish or this anxiety over the name of the other, with respect to this other to whom I am delivered blindfolded, passively, even though I sign, the other having signed before me and marking, over-­marking my signature in advance, appropriating my signature in advance, as if I always signed in the name of the other who also signs, therefore, in my place, the other whom I countersign or who countersigns me, who countersigns my own signature, the gift and forgiveness having taken place, or not, having taken place and having been nullified, carried away, without my ever even having made the decision. This abyssal countersignature forms one body with the poem, with the experience of language itself, always as the language of the other, something that Celan knew and recognized so singularly, but which is also a universal experience of language (I must say that I myself signed this book in the hut,40 at the request of Heidegger’s son, with as much anxiety, an anxiety that extended as much to all those in whose following, without knowing it, I signed, as to what I myself scribbled in haste, both things likely to be equally at fault, perhaps even judged unforgivable). Naturally, in order to 40. Derrida visited Heidegger’s hut in 1996, a year before the seminar. See Derrida and Catherine Malabou, Counterpath, trans. David Wills (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 265 [La contre-­allée (Paris: La Quinzaine littéraire and Louis Vuitton, 1999), 261].

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begin doing justice to “Todtnauberg,” we would have to read as attentively what precedes and what follows, each of the words, and the break after each word, for example “Der Mensch,” the man, to designate the driver, deut­ lich to designate, so close to deutsch (a classical and quasi-­proverbial association), to designate, then, the univocal distinction of the words that were uttered following that, after the words Namen and Wort, proper noun and word, had already echoed in the poem, and especially the word viel, many, innumerable, infinitely numerous, which is the last word of the poem and which apparently, or figuratively, refers to what, like tracks or something humid (Feuchtes), is buried in the bog. . . .41 “Todtnauberg” thus remains to be read, to be received — ­as the gift or forgiveness themselves, a gift and a forgiveness that constitute the poem before being, potentially, its themes or the theme of the poet’s disappointed expectation. The other, the second reference that I mentioned, involves an exchange of letters that took place in 1980 and 1981 between a young German and Jankélévitch following the publication of L’Imprescriptible. That exchange is too long for me to read here, but it was published in an issue of the Magazine littéraire dedicated to Vladimir Jankélévitch in June 1995 (no. 333), which you could consult. The young German who writes to Jankélévitch gives as epigraph to his heartrending and upsetting letter words by Jankélévitch (“They killed six million Jews. But they sleep well. They eat well and the Deutschmark is doing well.”), and the long letter begins distressingly as follows: I myself have not killed any Jews. Having been born in Germany is not my fault, or to my credit. No one asked my permission [here, at the outset, there is posed the immense question, which should no longer be elided, of guilt or forgiveness on the basis of heritage, genealogy, the collectivity of an “us,” and which “us”]. I am completely innocent of the Nazis’ crimes; but that hardly consoles me. I do not have a clear conscience . . . and I feel a mixture of shame, pity, resignation, sadness, incredulity, revolt. I don’t always sleep well. I often remain awake at night, and I think, and I imagine. I have nightmares that I can’t shake off. I think of anne frank, and of auschwitz, and of todesfuge and of night and fog: 42 der tod ist ein meister aus deutschland.43 41. [Translator’s note:] Ellipsis in text. 42. Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard) is a famous documentary film by Alain Resnais, released in 1956. 43. “Lettre de Wiard Raveling, juin 1980,” Magazine littéraire (“Vladimir Jankélévitch”) 333, June 1995, this and following translations mine [ER/DW]. The capitals

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[“Todesfuge” is the title, as you know, of another of Celan’s poems clearly referring to the death camps and through which the line “Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland” echoes four or five times (comment):44 guilt without fault and repentance or forgiveness asked for a priori, infinitely, in the name of the other. Mixture of a “forgiveness requested,” without the word “pardon” but that amounts to the same thing, of a forgiveness requested and a protest against what condemns one to confess and to ask forgiveness in the name of the other, for a fault that one has not oneself committed. As for the nightmare, it alerts us to the guilt, and the scene of forgiveness, and the mourning that is inseparable from it; when Wiard Raveling says that he does not have a “clear conscience,” he no doubt knows that he is addressing the author of a book called The Bad Conscience, which includes an entire chapter on “Irreversibility” and some very fine subsections on regret, the irremediable, remorse, and repentance. La Mauvaise Conscience is a book whose first edition dates from 1933, and to which the 1967 book, Forgiveness, is, given all that you know, a kind of sequel.]45 This young German also invited Vladimir Jankélévitch to visit him, thus offering him hospitality46 (hospitality, gift and forgiveness, tears: gift always insufficient, hence forgiveness, or else returning [revenant] and mourning): are in the text. Letters by Wiard Raveling, François-­Régis Bastide and Vladimir Jankélévitch form a group article entitled “Lettres pour un pardon.” See also Wiard Raveling, Ist Versöhnung möglich? Meine Begegnung mit Vladimir Jankélévitch (Briefe, Besuche, Begegnungen, Betrachtungen) (Ollnborg: Insensee Verlag, 2014). 44. Paul Celan, “Todesfuge,” in Mohn und Gedächtnis (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-­ Anstalt, 1952); cf. “Todesfuge / Fugue de mort,” in Pavot et mémoire, trans. Valérie Briet (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1987). The line is repeated four times in the poem. During the session, Derrida translates (or reads the Valérie Briet translation): “Death is a master from Germany.” He comments: “Clearly, what the letter from this German man to Jankélévitch speaks of is, as it were, a guilt without fault. ‘I didn’t kill any Jews, but I nonetheless feel guilty.’ And so the movement of repentance and of forgiveness is therefore a priori in a way, as though it were a matter of infinitely requesting forgiveness in the name of the other. That is why I insisted on the signature in the name of the other.” [Translator’s note:] For English translations of Celan’s poem, see “Death Fugue,” Celan, Poems: A Bilingual Edition, and Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, ed. and trans. John Felstiner (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000). 45. Cf. Vladimir Jankélévitch, The Bad Conscience, trans. Andrew Kelley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014) [La Mauvaise Conscience (Paris: Alcan, 1933)]. 46. During the session, Derrida adds: “Remember what we were saying about hospitality some years back, about hospitality, the gift, forgiveness and tears. Because the gift of hospitality is always insufficient and tied to scenes of mourning and what returns — ­we spoke a lot about that — ­it also concerns tears, and one cannot dissociate

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If ever, dear M. Jankélévitch, you pass through here, knock on our door and come in. You will be welcome. And be assured [this is the painful irony of the entire letter]. My parents will not be there. No one will speak to you either of Hegel, or Nietzsche, or Jaspers, or Heidegger or of all the other great Teutonic thinkers. I will ask you about Descartes and Sartre. I like the music of Schubert and Schumann, but I will put on a record of Chopin, or if you prefer Fauré and Debussy. . . . Let me say in passing: I admire and respect Rubinstein; I love Menuhin.47

Following this long letter, which, once again, I cannot read to you here, and which is both a pathos-­filled complaint, a protest, a confession, a plea, and an accusation [réquisitoire], Wiard Raveling received two responses, which are also published in the Magazine littéraire. The first was from François-­ Régis Bastide, on July 1, 1980, from which I will cite these several lines: Dear Sir, I cannot tell you, for lack of time, the degree to which I was moved by your letter to Vladimir Jankélévitch. . . . I am an old friend of VJ. But his attitude shocks me profoundly. This nonforgiveness is dreadful. It is up to us, to us Christians (even nonbelievers!) to be different. The fanatical Jew is as bad as the Nazi. But I cannot say that to VJ. . . . You are assuredly a French teacher to write so well and so powerfully. I agree absolutely with all the words of your letter that my friend will surely judge too sentimental, tinged as it is with the awful Gemütlichkeit that must seem to him the greatest of vices. But you are right. Do not judge all French Jews by the terrible words of my friend. . . . What is the origin of your last name, and your first name? Hungarian? Viking?48 59

The other response came from Vladimir Jankélévitch himself. The word “forgiveness” is not uttered. But the letter clearly says that what was awaited [you remember these words: “. . . to ask for forgiveness! We have long been waiting for a word, a single word, a word of understanding and sympathy . . . We have hoped for it, this fraternal word!”] has finally arrived: the scene of hospitality from the scene of forgiveness.” See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1995–­9 6, fifth session, and Derrida, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 111ff. [De l’hospitalité, avec Anne Dufourmantelle (Paris: Calmann-­Lévy, 1997), 101ff.]. 47. “Lettre de Wiard Raveling,” 56. 48. “Lettre de François-­Régis Bastide du 1er juillet, 1980,” Magazine littéraire 333 (1995): 56.

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Dear Sir, I am moved by your letter. I have been waiting for this letter for thirty-­five years. I mean a letter in which the abomination is fully recognized, and by someone who had no part in it [n’y est pour rien] [comment].49 This is the first time I have received, from a German, a letter that was not a letter of more or less disguised self-­justification. Apparently, German philosophers, “my colleagues” (if I dare to use that term), had nothing to say to me, nothing to explain. Their good conscience was imperturbable. [Injustice or ignorance on the part of Vladimir Jankélévitch: as if a letter addressed to him personally were the only possible reparation.] . . . You alone, you are the first and no doubt the last to have found the necessary words outside political understatement and pious readymade clichés. It is rare that generosity, spontaneity, and a keen sensitivity find their language in the words we use. And such is your case. There is no mistaking it. Thank you [pardon requested: a gift that calls for thanks]. No, I will not come see you in Germany. I will not go that far. — ­I am too old to inaugurate this new era. Because for me it is a new era all the same. Which has been too long coming [trop longtemps attendue]. But you, who are young, you don’t have the same reasons as I do. You do not have this insurmountable barrier to cross. It is my turn to say to you: When you come to Paris, like everyone else, knock on my door. We’ll sit down at the piano.50

I underline this allusion to music, on one side and the other, on the part of both correspondents, to a musical correspondence, to music played or listened to together, a sharing of music. I underline it not only because Vladimir Jankélévitch was, as you know, a musician, an interpreter of music and a lover of music, but also because between a certain something beyond the word required, perhaps, by forgiveness (a theme I’ll come back to later — ­the theme of verbal language, of discourse as the disastrous condition of forgiveness, which makes forgiveness possible but also destroys it), between a certain something beyond the word required, perhaps, by forgiveness, and music, and even singing without words, there is perhaps an essential affinity, a correspondence which is not only that of reconciliation. And indeed, Wiard Raveling recounts that he paid Vladimir Jankélévitch a single visit, that it went off very cordially but that Jankélévitch always “systematically avoided” coming back to these questions.51 Even in 49. During the session, Derrida adds: “I’ll emphasize that without further comment.” 50. “Lettre de Vladimir Jankélévitch, July 5, 1980,” Magazine littéraire 333 (1995): 57. 51. Wiard Raveling, “J’ai accepté l’invitation exprimée dans la lettre,” Magazine littéraire 333 (1995) : 58.

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the correspondence that followed. But you will have noted in the letter from Vladimir Jankélévitch that I just quoted, which speaks of a “new era” for which “I am too old” (“You do not have this insurmountable barrier to cross”: “the insurmoutable to cross [l’infranchissable à franchir]”), Jankélévitch, in a way that is exemplary for us, has two discourses cross each other, two logics, two axiomatics, which are contradictory, incompatible, irreconcilable, one of them precisely being that of conciliation or reconciliation, the other that of the irreconcilable. On one side, he welcomes the idea of a process, of a history that continues, of the passage from one generation to the other, and thus of a work of memory as work of mourning such that what was not possible for him — ­forgiveness — ­will be possible in the future. Forgive­ness will work [sera bon] for you, for the generation to come, the work will have been done, the work of mourning and memory, history, the labor of the negative that will make reconciliation possible, and expiation, and healing, etc. But at the same time, he makes known, more than he says it, that if this barrier — ­which will perhaps be crossed by new generations — ­remains insurmountable for him, that is because it must and can only remain insurmountable. In other words, history, as the history of forgiveness, is arrested and arrested forever, it will have to have remained arrested by radical evil. It has stopped forever. And one feels this double conviction, both sincere and contradictory, self-­contradictory. Jankélévitch does not doubt, he even hopes, and sincerely, that history will continue, that forgiveness and reconciliation will be possible for the new generation. But at the same time, he does not want that, he does not want that for himself, he therefore does not want what he wants and what he accepts wanting, what he wants to want, what he would like to want; he believes in it but he does not believe in it, he believes that this reconciliation, this forgiveness will be illusory and deceiving; this will not be authentic forgiveness, but symptoms, symptoms of a work of mourning, of a therapeutics of forgetting, of the passage of time; in short, a sort of narcissism, reparation and self-­reparation, a healing that re-­narcissizes (and we will have to study in the Hegelian problematic of forgiveness this logic of identification with the other that is presumed by the scene of forgiveness, on both sides of it, that of the forgiver or that of the one forgiven, an identification that forgiveness presumes but which also compromises and neutralizes, cancels out in advance the truth of forgiveness as forgiveness by the other as such to the other as such). The insurmountable will have remained insurmountable at the very same moment it will have been surmounted. Forgiveness will have remained im-­possible — ­and with it history, the continuation of history — ­even if it becomes possible

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one day. What is it that one senses, that I am underlining, at the heart of Jankélévitch’s letter, for it must remain a great paradigmatic lesson for us?52 One senses the unaltered, unalterable conviction, that even when forgiveness of the inexpiable will have taken place, in the future, in generations to come, it will not have taken place, it will have remained illusory, inauthentic, illegitimate, scandalous, equivocal, mixed with forgetting (even when its subjects are and believe themselves to be sincere and generous). History will continue and with it reconciliation, but with the equivocation of a forgiveness confused with a work of mourning, with a forgetting, an assimilation of the wrong, as if, all things considered — ­if I can summarize here this unfinished development in a formula — ­tomorrow’s forgiveness, the forgiveness promised, will have had not only to become work of mourning (a therapy, or even an ecology of memory, a manner of better-­being with the other and with oneself in order to be able to continue to work and to live and to enjoy), but also, more seriously, to become the work of mourning forgiveness itself, forgiveness mourning the loss of forgiveness. History continues against the background of an interruption of history, in the abyss, rather, of an infinite wound, which, in its very scarring, will have to remain an open and unsuturable wound. In any case it is in that zone of hyperbole, aporia, and paradox that we will often have to stand or move in this reflection on forgiveness.53 Before leaving, at least provisionally, these texts by Jankélévitch, I would like to return to another of the paradoxes of the “inexpiable,” of the logic of the “inexpiable” that he puts to work by means of this word in L’Impre­ scriptible. The word “inexpiable” is used at least twice in a disturbing face-­ to-­face (pp. 24 [556], 29 [558], and again p. 62 [572]). You will remember that Jankélévitch said, as I quoted earlier, that “what happened [namely the Shoah, which defies all judgment, all logic of punishment, and so forth] is literally inexpiable.” (29 [558]). He has previously described the will to exterminate the Jews as a singular, exceptional, incomparable movement of hatred directed against an existence, the existence of the Jew insofar as that existence is felt to be an “inexpiable” sin of existence. In this context, it is more particularly a matter of the human, anthropocentric dimension that structures the problem — ­and that will interest us precisely when it 52. Derrida interrupts the November 12, 1997, session at the end of this paragraph. The remainder of the paragraph will form part of a short recapitulation at the beginning of the Second Session (November 26, 1997). See 44 below. 53. The remainder of the typescript for this session will be read at the beginning of the Second Session.

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becomes a problem, a problematic, contestable and contested by the very idea of forgiveness. Indeed, a little earlier in his text (p. 22 [555ff.]), precisely at the beginning of the chapter that bears the title “The Imprescriptible” (at the very moment of the vote in France on the removal of time limitations for crimes against humanity), Jankélévitch recalls that such crimes are directed against the essence of the human, “or, if you will, against the ‘humanness [hominité]’ of human beings in general.” He continues: 63

The German [hypostasizing in turn, in a way that is problematic, something like the essence of Germanity], the German did not want, strictly speaking, to destroy beliefs judged to be erroneous or doctrines considered to be pernicious. It was the very being of the human, esse, that racial genocide attempted to annihilate in the suffering flesh of these millions of martyrs. Racist crimes are an assault against the human being as human being: in no way are they against such and such a person, inasmuch as they are this or that (quatenus . . .), communist, Freemason, or ideological adversary, for example. No, the racist was truly aiming at the ipseity of being, that is at the human in every human being. Anti-­Semitism is a grave offense against the human in general. The Jews were persecuted because it was them, and not at all because of their opinions or their faith. It was existence itself that was denied them; they were not reproached for professing this or that, they were reproached for being. (555/22)

Here, through some gap in the argument that does not explain why this aggression against the humanity of the human is aimed at the Jew alone (and even Israel, for he extends the same reasoning to the existence of the State of Israel, in a way that is still less convincing), Jankélévitch arrives at a reversal, in some sense, of the logic of the inexpiable. What becomes inexpiable for the Nazis, and this is Jankélévitch’s formulation, is the very existence of the Jew. For the German, for Germans, the Nazis (and Jankélévitch passes easily from one to the other or others): It is not evident that a Jew must exist. A Jew must always justify himself, excuse himself for living and breathing. His pretention to fight for subsistence and survival is in itself an incomprehensible scandal and there is something outrageous about it. The idea that “subhumans” [my emphasis] may defend themselves fills superhumans [my emphasis] with indignant astonishment. A Jew does not have the right to be; his sin is to exist. (p. 23 [555], Derrida’s emphasis) 64

[In passing I extract and underline, removing it a little from its context, the expression, polemical here, “sin of existing”: “A Jew does not have the

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right to be; his sin is to exist.” Implicit in that is: for the German. I am extracting the expression, exporting it out of its context and indicating its potential horizon of generality in order to point out one of the paths of the problematic of forgiveness — ­which will, furthermore, be illustrated quite strongly and classically by thinkers as powerful and as diverse as Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, and no doubt others. It is a question of forgiveness — ­requested, granted or not — ­a priori, and always requested, of a request that is originary and without end, because of a guilt or a debt, an originary liability or imputability, infinite or indeterminate, as it were. As a result, existence, or consciousness, or the “I,” even before any determined fault, is at fault and consequently in the process of asking at least implicitly for forgiveness for the simple fact, finally, of being-­there. This being-­there, this existence, would be both responsible and guilty in a way that is constitutive (“the sin of existing”) and it could constitute itself, persevere in its being, sur-­vive only by requesting forgiveness (knowing or without knowing of whom, or why) and by presupposing forgiveness, if not granted, at least promised, hoped for sufficient to be able to continue. And along with forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption, atonement for this “sin of existing,” something that is supposedly not reserved for the Jew here, unless the Jew, what one understands by this word, were to be once again interpreted as exemplary of the humanity of man, with all the problems that this claim to exemplarity would engender, and concerning which we have often raised questions here.54 In all of these cases, forgiveness can as much be constantly hoped for, presumed to come, as desperately deferred, for if the sin is “the sin of existing,” if guilt is originary and attached from birth, stained by birth, so to speak, forgiveness, redemption, expiation will remain forever impossible. We would all be in that inexpiable state of which Jankélévitch speaks regarding the Jew for the German: if the fault consists in being-­there, only death, only annihilation can put an end to it and feign salvation, mimic atonement or redemption, silence the complaint or the accusation. Naturally, the problem is enormous and we would have to come back to it more than once, for it will be necessary to ask ourselves what relation there may be among all these determinations of the “sin of existing,” 54. Derrida is alluding to his “Nationalité et nationalisme philosophiques” seminar (EHESS, 1988–­8 9) dedicated to “Kant, the Jew, the German.” See Derrida, “Interpretations at War: Kant, the Jew, the German,” trans. Moshe Ron and Dana Hollander, in Psyche: Inventions of the Other, vol. 2, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 241–­9 8 [“Kant, le Juif, et l’Allemand,” in Psyché. Inventions de l’autre, vol. 2 (Paris: Galilée, 2003), 249–­305].

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of an originary scene of “forgiving,” first of all, let’s say, among a Hegelian type, a Heideggerian type, or a Levinassian type in the description and interpretation of this structure; and what relation there may be between this general, universal, and supposedly originary structure — ­aneventful, pre-­eventful — ­and, on the other hand, determined faults, crimes, events of malice or viciousness, actual perjuries for which I must accuse myself and for which I could request forgiveness.] I’ll close here this digression on the expression I extracted. On the next page, under the impulse of the same logic, one therefore finds the word “inexpiable” again, not to describe the crime of Hitler’s Germany but the being-­Jew as being-­human for the Nazis. For the latter, Jankélévitch says, and I quote, “the crime of being Jewish is inexpiable. Nothing can erase that curse: neither political affiliation, nor wealth, nor conversion” (556/24). Conveyed by the same word, “inexpiable” (and it is to an entire history of this word and to the expiatory that we are summoned here: what does “to expiate” mean?), we have two antagonistic and complementary movements: as if it were because the Nazis treated the being of their victim, the Jew, as an inexpiable crime (it is not forgivable to be Jewish) that they behaved in a way that was itself inexpiable, beyond all possible forgiveness. If one takes account of these two occurrences of the word “inexpiable” in Jankélévitch’s text,55 and of their logic, one will say that the crime of the Nazis seems inexpiable because they themselves held their victims to be guilty of the (inexpiable) sin of existing or of claiming to exist as men. And that always takes place around the limit of the human, of the human figure. That is why I emphasized the words “subhumans” and “superhumans” a moment ago. It is because they have taken themselves to be superhumans and have treated the Jews as subhumans, because from one side and the other the Nazis believed they could pass over the limit of the human, they committed these inexpiable crimes against humanity, that is — ­according to the juridical translation and human law, according to the law of man which is here at the horizon of our problem — ­imprescriptible crimes. I insist on this point for two reasons, two programmatic or problematic reasons, two ways of announcing today what should keep our attention as we proceed. Two questions, then. (1) First question. Is forgiveness a human thing, something proper to the human, a power of the human — ­or is it reserved for God, and thus already the opening of experience or existence onto a supernaturality as superhumanity: divine, transcendent, or immanent, sacred, holy or not? We shall 55. As Derrida notes earlier, there are three such occurrences.

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see that, as a rule, all the debates around forgiveness are also debates around that “limit” and the passage of that limit. Such a limit passes between what one calls the human and the divine, but also divides what one calls the animal, the human, and the divine. Later on, we’ll perhaps say a word about “animal” forgiveness. (2) Second question. Because this limit is not just one limit among others, everything that depends on it will also rebound on it, as it will on this difference — ­or distinction — ­which we have already recalled more than once today, between pure or unconditional forgiveness and those neighboring and heterogeneous forms of remission — ­heterogeneous among themselves and heterogeneous to forgiveness — ­that are called apology [l’excuse], regret, prescription, amnesty, and so on, so many forms of conditional (hence impure) forgiveness, and sometimes juridico-­political forms of it.56 We thus dissociated, on the one hand, unconditional forgiveness, absolute forgiveness — ­I am not saying absolution in the Christian sense — ­the absolutely unconditional forgiveness that leads us to think the essence of forgiveness, if there is such a thing, and which at the outside should even be able to dispense with repentance and with the request for forgiveness; and, on the other hand, conditional forgiveness, for example the forgiveness inscribed within a set of conditions of all kinds, psychological, political, juridical above all (since forgiveness is bound up with the judiciary as penal order). Yet (as we noted last year on the subject of hospitality),57 the distinction between unconditionality and conditionality is shifty [retorse] enough not to allow itself to be determined as a simple opposition. The unconditional and the conditional are, certainly, absolutely and permanently heterogeneous, on either side of a limit, but they are also indissociable. There is in the movement, in the motion of unconditional forgiveness, an internal requirement of becoming-­ effective, -­manifest, -­determined, and, in determining itself, of bending to conditionality. That means, for example, and I am saying it too quickly for the moment, that phenomenality, or juridical or political conditionality is both outside and inside the motion of forgiveness — ­which will not make things easy. Even if the “imprescriptible” does not mean the “unforgivable,” the contamination of the two orders will not be an accident that is reducible; and this will be valid for all the distinctions that we will have to make. We 56. During the (November 26) session, Derrida adds: “Amnesty isn’t a pardon, acquittal isn’t a pardon, case dismissed isn’t a pardon.” 57. See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1995–­9 6, fifth session; and unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1996–­9 7, first session.

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are a little familiar with the form of that law in this seminar (cf. witnessing/ proof;58 unconditional/conditional hospitality). Perhaps you still remember where we started out from in order to get involved in what will have been simply a long parenthesis, a long initial, if not introductory digression, for I haven’t yet introduced my subject. We began by considering cases in which the noun “pardon” belonged to a performative utterance (“Pardon [me]! I beg your pardon, we beg your pardon”).59 You will note that in French it can be used alone ( pardon!) in a performative speech act only with the sense of “forgiveness requested,” never in the case of forgiveness granted or refused. That said, we will have to ask ourselves more than once whether it is true that for forgiveness to be granted or even only envisaged, it must be requested and requested on the basis of avowal and repentance (as I see it, that does not go without saying, and it might even have to be excluded as the first fault of anyone who grants forgiveness: if I grant forgiveness on condition that the other confess, that they begin to redeem themself, to transfigure their fault, to dissociate themself from it in order to ask me for forgiveness, then my forgiveness begins to let itself be contaminated by a calculus that corrupts it). We’ll come back to that, but it already sends us along the path of a closely related and no less serious question. As soon as the word “pardon!” — ­the performative of forgiveness as speech act — ­is uttered, is there not the beginning of a reappropriation, a mourning process, a process of redemption, of a transfiguring calculation which, through language, the sharing of language (we’ll read Hegel on that subject),60 rushes toward the economy of a reconciliation that causes to be simply forgotten or obliterated the wrong itself, and hence the unforgivable that is the only possible correlate of a forgiveness worthy of the name, of an absolutely singular forgiveness as unique event, unique but necessarily iterable, as always? The law of iterable uni­ city, promised to repetition, divided by the promise that haunts all forgiveness, this law of iterable unicity means both that there is no sense in asking 58. See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Le Témoignage [Secret témoignage],” EHESS, 1994–­9 5, first session; and Maurice Blanchot / Jacques Derrida, The Instant of My Death / Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000) [Demeure — ­Maurice Blanchot (Paris: Galilée, 1998)]. [Translator’s note:] The French text contains Derrida’s analysis only, whereas the En­ glish translation republishes Blanchot’s novella. 59. [Translator’s note:] Derrida again repeats the formula in familiar (singular) and formal (plural) forms (cf. 5 above): “je te demande, je vous demande, nous te demandons, nous vous demandons pardon.” 60. See Derrida, Le Parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, First Session (29–­6 5).

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for forgiveness collectively of a community, a family, an ethnic or religious group — ­and, at the same time, that multiplicity and the third party and the witness are involved from the outset. That may be one of the reasons, certainly not the only one, why forgiveness is often asked of God. Of God not because he alone would be capable of forgiveness, of a power-­to-­forgive that is otherwise inaccessible to man, but because, in the absence of the singularity of a victim who is sometimes no longer even there to receive the request or to grant the forgiveness, or in the absence of the criminal or the sinner, God is the only name, the name of the name of an absolute and nameable singularity as such. Of the absolute substitute; of the absolute witness, the absolute superstes, the absolute surviving witness.61 But inversely, although the address of forgiveness (I will often say the address of forgiveness to designate both the act of requesting forgiveness, of addressing a request for forgiveness, and the place from which, once the request is received by the addressee of the request, forgiveness is or is not granted), although the address of forgiveness is always singular, singular as to the fault, the sin, the crime, the harm, and singular as to the perpetrator or their victim, it calls forth not only repetition but also, through or as this repetition, a disidentification, a disseminating multiplication, all of whose modes we will have to analyze. Three ellipsis points [points de suspension] before concluding today. (1) Why did I begin with the single word “pardon,” with the noun “pardon” about which it was impossible to know, at the beginning of the seminar, out of context, to decide whether I was quoting, whether I was mentioning a noun, a theme, a problem or whether I was begging your pardon, performatively, not by mentioning but by using the noun (mention/use distinction in speech act theory)?62 I began in that way not only because I have an infinite number of reasons for asking your forgiveness (in particular for 61. During the session, Derrida adds: “Remember what we were saying a long time ago about the witness, the superstes, that is the survivor, the witness as testis superstes, the absolute surviving witness who personally could still forgive in cases where the victims, the perpetrators, and the criminals have disappeared.” See again unpublished seminar, “Le Témoignage,” EHESS, 1994–­9 5, first session; and Blanchot / Derrida, Instant / Demeure, 45 [Demeure, 54]. 62. During the November 26 session, Derrida adds: “The word ‘pardon’ may be a mention, I name, I mention the word ‘pardon,’ or else I may use it to ask for your pardon, you see? You weren’t able to decide if I was mentioning or using the word ‘pardon.’ So, you weren’t able to know whether I was mentioning or using the word ‘pardon.’ ” [Translator’s note:] Words in English as follows: in main text, “mention/use,” “speech act theory”; in additional comment, “mention,” “If I was mentioning or using the word.”

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keeping you too long: this is always a first fault on the part of anyone who requests forgiveness: to think they have the right to interest the other and to hold their attention — ­“Listen to me, I am begging your pardon; wait, don’t leave, I am begging your pardon; pay attention, pay attention to me, I am begging your pardon” — ­that can become an odious strategy for holding the other back, for keeping the other’s attention and presence, or a loathsome and ridiculous calculation of false manic [hystéroïde] mortification that can go as far as tears; and you well know such situations where the person doing that is a pain in the neck, and so you pretend to forgive them in order to change the subject and to interrupt the conversation: “Okay, give me a break,63 I am not even accusing you, screw off, Okay, I forgive you but I don’t want to see you again . . . I have to be somewhere else, let’s move on, I am not even taking you seriously enough to accuse you, so I am not even asking you to ask forgiveness of me, ciao [salut]! ciao!”). No, I began in that way to quote a performative (neither to mention, nor to use, but to mention a use) in order to draw your attention to the question of the word, the performative word as speech, as verb (pardon, I beg your [te-­vous] pardon). Like everyone, like all those who wait and think they must wait for forgiveness to be requested; it is a word of forgiveness, a verb, a verbal-­noun that Jankélévitch was waiting for (“I have been waiting for this letter for thirty-­five years . . . Have we been asked for forgiveness?”) and even, according to his interpreters, it was a word that Celan was waiting for (von / einer Hoffnung, heute, / auf eines Denkenden / kommendes / Wort / im Herzen). Must forgiveness pass through words or must it pass beyond words? Must it pass through word-­verbs or must it pass beyond them, these word-­verbs? Can one forgive or request forgiveness only by speaking or sharing the language of the other, that is to say, by already identifying sufficiently with the other for this, and, by so identifying, rendering forgiveness at the same time possible and impossible? Must one refuse the experience of forgiveness to whoever does not speak? Or, on the contrary, must one make silence the very element of forgiveness, if there is such a thing? This question is not only that of music, which I alluded to earlier; it is also — ­even if not only this — ­the question of the animal and of that which is claimed to be “proper to the human.” Does forgiveness belong to man, or does it belong to God? That question seems to exclude the animal, what one calls by this confused general word “animal” or the animality of the beast or of man. Yet we know that it would be very imprudent to deny all animality access to forms of sociality in which guilt, and consequently 63. [Translator’s note:] Italicized words in English in text.

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procedures of reparation, even of mercy — ­begged or granted — ­are implicated in a very differentiated way. There is no doubt an animal merci. You know that certain animals are as capable of manifesting what can be interpreted as an act of war, an aggressive accusation, as they are capable of manifesting guilt, shame, embarrassment, repentance, anxiety in the face of punishment, etc. I am sure you have seen ashamed animals, animals giving all the signs of “feeling guilty,” thus of remorse and repentance, and animals fearing judgment or punishment, animals hiding or exposing themselves to reproach or chastisement. One also knows that in the often overloaded symbolism of combat or war, of dueling between animals, well, that movements and even rites of reconciliation, of the interruption of hostilities, of peace, even of mercy, of mercy begged and granted, are possible. The moment an animal is,64 I would say, at the mercy of another, it can admit to being defeated and make signs that put it at the mercy of the other who then sovereignly grants it its life unharmed as a sign of peace. Certain animals make war and peace. Not all, not always, but neither do humans. So, without confusing everything and without erasing all sorts of ruptures that arise with the articulation of a verbal language, one cannot deny this possibility, even this necessity, of extra-­verbal forgiveness, even un-­human [an-­humain] forgiveness. (2) We will constantly have to struggle in the snares of an aporia whose abstract and blunt form, whose logical formality is as implacable as it is indisputable: there is forgiveness, if there is such a thing, only of the un-­forgivable. So — ­if there is such a thing — ­forgiveness is not possible, it does not exist as possible, it exists only by exempting itself from the law of the possible, by im-­possibilizing itself, so to speak, and in the infinite endurance of the im-­possible as impossible. That is what it would have in common with the gift; but beside the fact that this enjoins us to try to think the possible and the im-­possible otherwise, the very history of what one calls the possible and “power” in our culture and in culture as philosophy or as knowledge, one must reflect, breaking the symmetry or analogy between gift and forgiveness, whether the urgency of im-­possible forgiveness is not first of all what the enduring and nonconscious experience of the im-­possible gives to be 64. During the November 26 session, Derrida adds: “And I think that Raymond Aron in War and Peace speaks of that, you know, of the experience of seeing an animal begging for mercy and having it granted on condition that it conforms to a certain number of coded gestures.” See Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations ([New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003], 339–­68) [Paix et Guerre entre les nations (Paris: Calmann-­Lévy, 1962), 338–­64].

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forgiven, as if forgiveness, far from being a modification or complication secondary to, or happening to the gift, were in truth its first and final truth. Forgiveness as the impossible truth of the impossible gift. Before the gift, forgiveness. Before this im-­possible, and as the impossible of this latter im-­ possible, the other. The other im-­possible. You understand that this seminar would also be a seminar on the possible and on the “im-­” that comes in front of it, in front of an im-­possible that is neither negative, nor nonnegative, nor dialectical.65 (3) Finally, perjury. I must justify today the articulation (proposed in the title of this seminar) of pardon and perjury. Pardon/Perjury: As you can imagine, if I associate these two nouns, it is not because “with the syllable par thus begin these words [par la syllabe par commencent donc ces mots],” as a certain Ponge would have said, Ponge’s “Fable” which I am parodying here (“Par le mot par commence donc ce texte / Dont la première ligne dit la vérité [With the word with thus begins this text / Whose first line tells the truth]”), “Fable” which would not be without relation, nonetheless, to the scene of forgiveness, since it revolves on the one hand around a judgment, and on the other, around the breaking of a mirror, the interruption of a specular identification: Par le mot par commence donc ce texte Dont la première ligne dit la vérité Mais ce tain sous l’une et l’autre Peut-­il être toléré Cher lecteur déjà tu juges Là de nos difficultés . . . (après sept ans de malheurs Elle brisa son miroir). [With the word with thus begins this text / Whose first line tells the truth / But this silvering under one and the other / can it be tolerated? / Dear reader, already you judge / There our difficulties . . . / (after seven years of bad luck / She broke her mirror).]66 65. Derrida adds to his typescript the following notation here: “I’ll probably end here in Cracow.” This alludes to his December 1997 trip to Poland (see note 1 above), where he will give a lecture corresponding to the First Session of the seminar. See comments in his letter to Catherine Malabou in Counterpath (237 [Contre-­allée, 233]), including reference to the honorary doctorate conferred on him by the University of Katowice at that time (294/288). 66. Francis Ponge, “Fable,” in Proèmes, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, ed. Bernard Beugnot et al. (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1999), 176, my translation [DW]. See

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The reader, apostrophized as judge (“you judge”: performative and constative),67 is being asked to forgive — ­and that is perhaps the truth the text speaks of as the truth of any scene of writing and reading: to ask the reader’s forgiveness by confessing. One always writes in order to confess, one always writes in order to beg forgiveness; I wrote something like that somewhere, forgive me for quoting myself.68 No doubt one always teaches, also, in order to ask forgiveness; this is perhaps why I think I will no longer change, henceforth, the title of this seminar, for as long as it be destined to last. If I have associated le pardon with le parjure, it is thus not to begin with words that begin with par. . . . But for a reason that here again I will state bluntly, I will lay out abstractly, before returning to it later. I will draw the broad outline of it in two strokes. A) Every fault, every crime, anything there would be to forgive or to ask to be forgiven for, is, or presupposes some perjury; every fall, every wrong [mal] is first of all a perjury, namely, the breach of some promise (implicit or explicit), the failure of some commitment, of some responsibility before a law that one has sworn to respect, that one is supposed to have sworn to respect. Forgiveness always concerns a perjury — ­and we will (would) then have to ask ourselves what in fact perjury is, what an abjuration is, what it is to break a sworn vow, an oath, a conjuration, etc. And so, what swearing is, taking an oath, giving one’s word, etc. B) The second trait, even more aporetic, more impossible, if that is possible. Perjury is not an accident; it is not an event that happens or does not happen to a promise or to a preexisting oath. Perjury is inscribed in advance, as its destiny, its fatality, its inexpiable destination, in the structure Derrida’s discussion of this poem in “Psyche: Invention of the Other,” trans. Catherine Porter, in Psyche: Inventions of the Other, vol. 1, ed. Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 7–­21 [Psyché: Inventions de l’autre (Paris: Galilée, 1987), 17–­35]. 67. During the November 26 session, Derrida adds: “When the poet says ‘reader, you judge,’ it is both a constative and a performative. It means: ‘you are in a position to judge, aren’t you, you describe the situation, you judge,’ and then: ‘judge.’ It’s astonishing, you see, already reader you judge, so it is asked of the apostrophized reader as judge to forgive.” 68. See Derrida, “Circumfession” in Geoffrey Bennington and Derrida, Jacques Derrida, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993): “one always asks for pardon when one writes” (46) [“Circonfession,” in Jacques Derrida (Paris: Seuil, 1991), 47]; and “Living On,” trans. James Hulbert in John P. Leavey, ed., Parages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011): “We always ask to be forgiven when we write or recite” (166) [“Survivre,” in Parages (Paris: Galilée, 2003), 176].

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of the promise and the oath, in the word of honor, in justice, in the desire for justice. As if the oath were already a perjury (something of which the Greeks, as we will see, had more than a premonition). That is something I have already spoken of in the wake that follows Levinas but by riskily complicating the trajectory of that Levinassian wake, given that in the face-­ to-­face there are more than two, given that the questions of justice and law arise; given that there is law and three. And there are at least three from the first dawn of the face-­to-­face,69 from the first look, from the crossing of the first look that sees itself looking. So it is justice itself that makes me perjure myself and throws me into the scene of forgiveness.70 I must beg forgiveness — ­pour être juste.71 Listen carefully to the ambiguity of this pour. I must beg forgiveness in order to be just, to be just, with a view to being just; but I must as well beg forgiveness for being just, for the fact of being just, because I am just, because in order to be just, I am unjust and I betray. I must beg forgiveness for (the fact of) being just. Because it is unjust to be just. I always betray someone to be just; I always betray one for the other, I perjure myself as I breathe. And this is endless, for not only am I always begging forgiveness for a perjury but I always risk perjuring myself by forgiving, betraying someone else by forgiving, for one is always doomed always to forgive (excessively, then) in the name of another. Forgive me for having taken so long, and mercilessly [sans merci], so much of your time, thank you [merci]. When one says “thank you,” does one say “thank you,” I am thanking you for what you give me, which I ac­ 69. During the November 26 session, Derrida adds: “I’ll take the liberty of referring you to what I said on this subject last year, or to the little book by the glorious Levinas.” See Derrida, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” 1996–­9 7, first session, where Derrida comments on his Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-­Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 31ff. [Adieu — ­à Emmanuel Levinas (Paris: Galilée, 1997), 63ff.]; and Levinas, Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998), 125 [Autrement qu’être ou au-­ delà de l’essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 200]; Totality and Infinity: Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 50–­52 [Totalité et infini: Essai sur l’extériorité (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), 43]. 70. During the November 26 session, Derrida adds: “Which means that perjury is not an accident that comes to corrupt or interrupt , although it may also do that. We mustn’t ignore that, I am not erasing or covering over the question, covering over every perjury by saying that since perjury begins at the moment there is a sworn oath [ foi jurée], good, okay, not now . . . One must take into account that there is determinate perjury and that quasi-­transcendental perjury began as soon as there was a sworn oath.” 71. [Translator’s note:] Both “in order to be just” and “for being just.”

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k­nowledge with gratitude? Or else “mercy,” I ask for your mercy, I ask you not to be “merciless,”72 I beg your forgiveness for what you give me, I give you thanks [grâce] for mercy [grâce], for the forgiveness that I am still asking you to give me, etc. When it comes down to it, you will never know what I am saying to you when I say to you, to conclude, as at the beginning, pardon, merci. In the beginning, there will have been the word pardon, merci.73

72. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript. 73. During the November 26 session, Derrida makes a short transition: “There you have it, that would have been the end of the previous session had you had the patience. So, sorry, thank you.” He then continues immediately with the beginning of the Second Session.

second session

November 26, 1997

Pardon, merci . . . Having just said merci, a merci that resounds somewhat like an echo of pardon, I would like to pause briefly before setting out again, before setting off more broadly following the end of this introduction, before announcing a working hypothesis for a long-­term undertaking. Merci. In French, before it became the abbreviated phrase by which, as you know, in a performative mode, one marks one’s recognition of a gift, a grace, a favor accorded, a recompense, the word merci, before becoming, then, the performative expression of gratitude, of grace that is reciprocated, hence of a recompense for a grace, or even a recompense for a favor or for a recompense, a recompense to compensate and recompense a recompense, before becoming that abbreviated performative (merci, I say “thanks”), the noun merci, which has its origin in merces, mercedis (which means precisely “recompense, salary, price for something, interest, ratio,” whence market, merchandise, mercenary, commerce, mercantile, etc., mercor means “I buy,” mercimonium merchandise), the noun merci signifies therefore what one gives in exchange, the passing or recognition of the passing of exchange value in an exchange, the sign of what one renders in return, circularly or specularly, what one buys or buys back, the symbol of what one hands over in return, in terms of the circle or mirror of reciprocity, even symmetry. It could even be said that, before becoming the symbol of this or that, merci 1

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1. Before beginning the session, Derrida clarifies the schedule of presentations in the open and restricted seminars, then adds: “So, I’ll continue without any transition to save time, at the point where I had to stop somewhat abruptly last time. You remember that what one sensed underlying Jankélévitch’s letter to the young German, namely, I’ll recall what I was saying at that moment . . .” He then goes back to reading the typescript for the First Session, starting from “One senses the unaltered, unalterable conviction . . .” (see 31 above).

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is the symbol itself [tout court], the symbol of symbol, if one recalls that symbolon is precisely the link, pact, contract, mark, as thing, some thing that signifies the link between the two parts or the two symmetrical parties to a contract, what the contractors [contractants], the two contracting parties share by keeping as guarantee a square of mosaic, tablet, or token. The noun merci signifies that exchange, that symbolization of an exchange, of the market of exchange values, the specular circle of this economy and recognition. From there it gets transferred onto forgiveness, grace, granting of remission [faire grâce] or giving thanks [rendre grâce]. To be without mercy is not to forgive, to be without pity. In English, to be “merciless” is to be pitiless, implacable, like evil that does not forgive; and to be “merciful” is to be both thankful and forgiving, capable of giving a gift in turn or of forgiving, which, from this point of view at least, also inscribes “forgiveness” well and truly within a system of recognition, exchange, redemption, expiation, within the circular and specular economy that will be our whole problem here. Now, is forgiveness indeed, as common sense and “our” “Biblio-­Koranic” religious traditions tend to present or represent it, an economic experience of redemption, giving back, recompense for repentance and for requesting forgiveness? Or must it, should it — ­both in and against those traditions, proceeding within them but against them — ­break with that economy? We are going to slowly dig deeper toward the bottom of that maybe bottomless question, along a no doubt unsure and labyrinthine path. Before beginning, then, both as epigraph and in order to make the link with — ­let’s say — ­the Jewish question of our day and for all time that I raised last time, and which probably demanded our attention not by chance or incidentally, because of all the proceedings and repentances currently taking place, before beginning, then, I would like to quote, resituate, and interpret a passage from Shakespeare’s Merchant of  Venice (which will allow me to extend the discussion on theater that began in the last session of the restricted seminar).2 The idea came to me — ­let me recognize that — ­from a text by Danièle Aubriot that I’ll come back to when we take up the question of “forgiveness,” or rather, this is the whole problem, of excuse and indulgence, of the benevolence (suggnōmē: blackboard: συγγνομη)3 that stood in for it in 2. This discussion took place on November 19, 1997. 3. Thus in typescript. During the session, Derrida writes the word on the blackboard, no doubt reproducing the Greek characters. In the Sixth Session (see 173ff. below), where Derrida comes back to this notion at length, one reads instead συγγνωμη. [Translator’s note:] In subsequent cases (especially the Sixth Session) my transcription of συγγνωμη will follow this more common English spelling: syngnome.

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classical Greece.4 Aubriot quotes this passage from The Merchant of Venice as an epigraph, but does nothing with it, nothing like what I would like to do here, from our perspective. All the more so because this extraordinary play, which I ask you to reread closely — ­for we won’t be able to do so unless we are prepared to spend years on it — ­is not only a theologico-­political treatise on forgiveness, but also, explicitly, literally, since the words are pronounced side by side with “forgiveness” and “mercy,” a play on swearing and perjury; like many other plays by Shakespeare. Moreover, at a given moment, Shylock invokes swearing by means of an oath as his ultimate recourse, following the monologue on forgiveness that I will read a little later.5 He recalls the oath that binds him, binding him to heaven, and which he cannot infringe without perjuring himself. Portia has just offered him three times the sum of money that is owed in exchange for the “pound of flesh,” and Shylock cries, “An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven: Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? / No, not for Venice.”6 And when Portia pretends to accept that refusal7 and so says that the deadline has passed (“this bond is forfeit,” this contract, this bond, this IOU has fallen due), the Jew can legally claim a pound of flesh that he must cut from very close to the merchant’s heart (“Why this bond is forfeit; / And lawfully by this the Jew may claim / A pound of flesh, to be by him cut off / Nearest the merchant’s heart”). Portia, for her part, tries yet again, asking him, Shylock, one last time to forgive the debt by canceling it, putting it off, sparing him: “be merciful” she asks for the last time, take three times your money and tell me to tear up this bond, this contract (“bid me tear 4. Danièle Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions sur le pardon en Grèce ancienne,” Le Point théologique 45 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1987). 5. The following part of the session was repeated by Derrida, with significant additions and stylistic changes, in the keynote address of the Quinzième assises de la traduction littéraire (Arles, 1998), with the title “Qu’est-­ce qu’une traduction ‘relevante’?”; reprinted in Cahier de L’Herne Derrida, 561–­7 6 [“What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?” trans. Lawrence Venuti, Critical Inquiry 27 (Winter 2001): 174–­2 00; reprinted in Venuti, ed., The Translation Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 2012), 365–­88]. 6. Merchant of Venice 4.1.228–­30. [Translator’s note:] Derrida quotes from the French translation by François-­Victor Hugo (Le Marchand de Venise, trans. François-­ Victor Hugo, in Shakespeare, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, ed. Henri Fluchère [Paris : Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959]). At certain points, which generally remain silent in my English translation, he will modify Hugo’s translation. 7. During the session, Derrida adds: “Shylock refuses in the name of his fidelity to the oath. He cannot infringe the promise and perjure himself for anything in the world, since the oath binds him to heaven, thus beyond the human.”

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the bond”). Shylock still refuses and does so by swearing, swearing that he cannot. He swears in truth on his soul that he cannot perjure himself and go back on his previous oath. Having said “An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven: / Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?/ No, not for Venice,” he doubles down on his act of faith, he swears and repeats, swearing on what he has already sworn: “by my soul I swear / There is no power in the tongue of man / To alter me. I stay here on my bond [my commitment, contract, sol­­ emn promise].” What he says, what he swears and promises in this way is that the oath is above human power, and human language (we’ll later see how in ancient Greece an oath (horkos) implied divine power also, and surpassed humanity in very complex and ambiguous conditions that we’ll study). What Shylock says — ­“by my soul I swear / There is no power in the tongue of man / To alter me. I stay here on my bond” — ­is that the oath is a commitment in human language, which human language, as such, as human, is of itself nevertheless unable to undo, dominate, erase, defer to by unbinding it. An oath is a bond in human language that human language, as such, as human, cannot unbind. It is a bond in human language that is stronger than human language, etc. More than human within the human. The oath, a sworn oath [la foi jurée], the act of swearing is transcendence itself, the experience of moving beyond the human, the origin of the divine, or if you prefer, the divine origin of the oath. No sin is more grievous than perjury, and Shylock repeats by swearing that he cannot perjure himself; he therefore confirms the first oath by means of a second one, in the time of a repetition. That is called fidelity, which is the very essence and vocation of the oath: when I swear, I swear that it is not within the power of any human language to make me abjure, to perturb or “alter” me, that is to say, make me perjure myself. I insist on this insistence because we will have constantly to meditate on the possibility of perjury in this seminar. (Concerning the oath and perjury in Shakespeare I recommend to you the very fine book by a friend, who unfortunately died very young a few years ago, Joel Fineman, Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986]. The book doesn’t mention The Merchant of Venice at all, but deals especially with the sonnets.)8 So I’ll begin then, for my part, my quoting from the grand monologue on forgiveness in The Merchant of Venice, a monologue that remains to be read, 8. Joel Fineman, Shakespeare’s Perjured Eye: The Invention of Poetic Subjectivity in the Sonnets (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Fineman (1947–­8 9) was an English professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

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with more consequence than Danièle Aubriot’s epigraph, in order to take the reading in a very different direction. It is in act 4, scene 1, and Portia is in the first place addressing Antonio, then the Jew Shylock. The whole play, then, as you know, is this fabulous story of swearing, contracting, contracting ties (bonds), perjury, the story of a deal [marché], of indebtedness whose exchange values are incommensurable (money/pound of flesh). Portia (disguised as a lawyer, reread the play) addresses first Antonio and asks him to avow, to confess his unpaid or unpayable debt. “Do you confess the bond?” she asks. Do you confess, do you recognize the contract, the commitment, the bond? “Do you recognize the bill [billet],” is the rather flat translation by François-­Victor Hugo (which I’ll follow, although sometimes modifying it): do you acknowledge the acknowledgment of a debt? do you acknowledge the debt? “do you confess the bond?”: do you admit the debt contracted, do you confirm the indebtedness, the signed commitment, the bond, thus what you owe, thus in respect of which you are in debt and in default, or even at fault, whence the word “confess.” Antonio’s reply: “I do” (performative). Yes, I confess, I admit it, I acknowledge, confirm, and sign or countersign. “I do.” A statement as extraordinary as a “yes” in that, in the economy and brevity of the reply, which is as simple and weak as possible, the utterance implies not only the “I” but an “I” who does and says that he does and that he does what he does, but says that he is himself the same one who has already heard, understood, memorized in its integrality the sense of the question asked, in turn integrated into the reply that confirms the identity of the “I” who has heard and the “I” who proffers “yes” or “I do.” But also, to the extent of his understanding and memory of the question, he is the same one who asks the question: I say “yes,” “I do,” replying exactly to what you mean by asking me this or by asking me this question. We think and mean the same thing, we are mirror images to that extent. That structure is presumed to be at work in every “I forgive.” What, then, is Portia’s reply or conclusion immediately following this admission? Her reply comes down like a sentence. It is a reply in six words, six brief words that name in one breath the Jew and mercy, the Jew and forgiveness. This little sentence signs both the economy and the incomparable genius of Shakespeare, for it deserves to be raised over this text as an immense allegory for everything we have been talking about for some weeks, and veritably for some centuries, perhaps summing up the whole history of forgiveness that still awaits us. Portia’s reply in the form of a sentence is: “Then [given that, as a consequence, igitur] the Jew must be merciful” (he must show clemency, be indulgent, certain translations have it; but clearly that means: So, igitur, then, since you admit the debt or the fault, well then

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the Jew — ­this Jew, Shylock in this precise context — ­but the impetus of the sentence tends toward taking on a gigantic symbolic and metonymic value, at the level of time immemorial: “the Jew” also represents every Jew, the Jew in general in his dispute [différend] with the Christian counterpart, with Christian power and the Christian state: the Jew must forgive.) (Allow me this parenthesis here: in rereading this extraordinary sentence, all of whose ruses we shall shortly analyze, this sentence that says, “So the Jew must forgive,” which implies “it is the Jew who must forgive,” “It is up to the Jew to forgive,” I couldn’t help being reminded of the extraordinary sigh from the Pope at the end of the second millennium, when, some weeks back, he was being asked — ­just as he stepped into the plane for one of his transcontinental trips — ­what he thought of the French bishops’ declaration of repentance concerning the Jews. Sighing, complaining a little, feeling a little sorry for Christianity or Catholicity, the Pope said: “I note that it is always we who are asking for forgiveness.”9 “Ah!” with the implication that we are asking Jews for forgiveness (even though some legitimately have in mind also certain Amerindians and the other various victims of the Inquisition). It is always we Christians or Catholics who ask for forgiveness, but why, then? Yes, why? Is it because forgiveness is a Christian thing and because Christians must lead by example, because the Passion of Christ consisted in his taking on our sins on the Cross? Or else because, as it happens, the Church, if not Christianity, will have always had much to reproach itself for when it asks for forgiveness, and first of all to ask it of the Jew of whom forgiveness — ­being merciful — ­is asked: “Then must the Jew be merciful.”) Portia addresses Antonio (her accomplice), and, naming the Jew as third person, says to him, to Antonio, but so that the Jew can hear: faced with your acknowledgment of the debt, your avowal, your confession (“Do you confess the bond? / I do”), well then, the Jew must be merciful, forgiving, indulgent, capable of forgiving, of holding off on punishing you or making you pay, of wiping out your debt, etc. Once the debt is admitted to, 9. Allusion to the address by Pope John Paul II at the Colloquium on The Roots of Anti-­Judaism in Christianity,Vatican, October 31, 1997. See http://www.vatican.va /content/john-­paul-­ii/en/speeches/1997/october/documents/hf_jp-­ii_spe_19971031_com -­teologica.html. One finds in the Derrida IMEC File “Le parjure et le pardon” (219 DRR 240.1) several subsequent articles relating to the Pope and forgiveness. See for example Christian Sauvage, “Le ‘Grand pardon’ du pape. Dimanche prochain, on attend une initiative de Jean Paul II. Un grand théologien explique les enjeux de cette démarche (Interview avec le père Jean-­Louis Bruguès),” Journal du Dimanche, March 5, 2000, quoting Derrida (7).

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acknowledged, it is as if forgiveness or cancelation of the debt had been requested, and, faced with that request, the Jew must forgive, he must grant clemency, he has a duty not to be merciless. Those are indeed the problems of forgiveness that is requested, whether to request it or not, such as we began to raise last time. And it is then that the Jew, who doesn’t understand Portia’s deduction, not understanding at all or refusing to understand in any way Portia’s logic, which would wish him to grant forgiveness and absolve Antonio of the debt simply because it has been acknowledged, it is then that the Jew becomes indignant and puts his question. He asks by virtue of what obligation, by what constraint, by what law should I be merciful, show clemency, be forgiving? The word that is translated by obligation or contrainte or loi is interesting: it is “compulsion,” signifying compulsion in the sense of an irre­ sistible drive, a constraint, a constraining power (Zwang, one would say in Ger­ man, in general, but also, in a Freudian vocabulary, Wiederholungszwang, repetition compulsion), by virtue of what compulsion should I show myself merciful? “On what compulsion must I? Tell me that.” It is in response to this question from the Jew, called upon to be merciful and to grant forgiveness or to suspend the sentence or payment, that Portia begins her grand speech in praise of mercy, of forgiveness, of the power to forgive (I indeed say “power [pouvoir]” because consistently, beginning with Arendt, whom we’ll read later on, “forgiveness” is defined, problematically as I see it, as a power, a faculty, a potentiality [ puissance]).10 And in this long and superb monologue, which I’ll shortly read in its entirety, Portia defines “mercy,” forgiveness, as the supreme power; more precisely as a power that, for being without power, constraint, obligation, as gratuitous, gracious, is a power above power, a sovereignty above sovereignty, a superlative sovereignty, mightier than might [ puissance] given that it is might without might, a rupture within might, a transcendent might that — ­might without might — ­rises above might. That is why it is the attribute of the king, as she will say, like the right to grant clemency, about which we spoke last time; it is the prerogative or absolute privilege of the king, the monarch, here the Doge. But — ­yet another raising of the stakes, another step up the infinite escalation — ­just as this power is above power, because this attribute of a king is that of a might mightier than might, so is it at the same time above the king and his scepter; it is superhuman, depending on God alone. Grace is divine, within earthly power it is what most resembles divine power, it is 10. [Translator’s note:] The English most consistently uses “faculty.” See Arendt, Human Condition, 236–­38.

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the superhuman within the human (the two speeches echo each other here, are mirrored reflections,11 that of Shylock the Jew and that of Portia the Christian or the Christian wearing the robes of the law; both one and the other put something (oath, forgiveness) over and above human language within human language, beyond the order of the human within the order of the human, beyond the rights and duties of man within the law of man). The force of forgiveness, as you’ll hear from Portia, is more than just, more just than justice or law, it rises above law or above what, within justice, is merely law; it is beyond the law of men, the very thing invoked by prayer. And this is also a discourse on prayer. Forgiveness is prayer, it is of the order of benediction and of prayer, on both sides, that of one who requests it and that of one who grants it. In other words, the essence of prayer belongs to forgiveness and not to power or to the law. There is between the elevation of prayer or of benediction — ­elevation above human power, above even royal power inasmuch as it is human, above law, penal law — ­between this elevation of prayer and the elevation of a forgiveness above human power, royal power, and law, there is a sort of essential affinity. Prayer and forgiveness have the same provenance and the same essence, the same highness that is higher than highness, the highness of the Most-­High. At the end of this extraordinary treatise on forgiveness, grace, or mercy, the reading of which I am still putting off for a moment, Shylock, Shylock Shakespeare’s Jew, is terrified by this exorbitant demand, by this exhortation to forgive beyond the law, to renounce his right and his due, to give up on what Antonio owes him; he feels that too much is being asked of him, they are demanding of him more than he is capable of, more than he himself has the right to accord, given the “bond” (Bund, one might be tempted to say) that binds him beyond human ties. Shylock senses that they are taking him for a (boat) ride [mener en bateau], so to speak, in this story of boats and shipwreck; he senses that he, who has been presented as the devil (a figure of the devil, one who resembles the devil — ­“the devil . . . in the likeness of a Jew” [act 3, scene 1]), is in the process of being had, that they are doing a number on him, shaking him down in the name of the sublime transcendence of grace. They are raising him above everything with this story of sublime divine forgiveness, but it is a ruse to empty his pockets while distracting him, to have him forget what is owed him and to punish him cruelly. And so he protests, he complains, he files suit, he falls back on the law, right, punishment. We are going to hear that. In any case, he is not 11. Derrida’s typescript has se renvoient voient en miroir. [Translator’s note:] This may be an error or a play on “echoing/seeing each other as mirror images.”

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mistaken, since in fact, in the name of this extraordinary speech in praise of forgiveness, an economic ruse, a calculus, a strategic plot is being put in place, according to whose terms (you know how it goes, it’s the challenge of cutting out the flesh without shedding a drop of blood — ­read and reread the play) Shylock will lose everything, both his money and his pound of flesh, and even his religion, for once the situation is reversed at his expense, he will even have to convert to Christianity after being required, he in turn, to kneel and beg the Doge for mercy (“Down therefore [Portia will shortly say to him], and beg mercy of the duke”), a forgiveness that the Venetian Doge pretends to grant him to show him by how much his generosity, like his Christian and royal nature, is superior to that of the Jew: “That thou shalt see the difference of our spirits, / I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it. / For half thy wealth, it is Antonio’s; / The other half comes to the general state, / Which humbleness may drive into a fine.” As you can see, the sovereignty of the Doge (in this wily manifestation) mimics absolute forgiveness, grace granted even when it hasn’t been asked for, but it is the grace of life, whereas of everything else Shylock is completely expropriated, one half gained by a private subject, Antonio, the other half by the State (recall Kant and the right to clemency).12 And even then, in exchange for remission of the sentence, and to avoid total confiscation of his goods, the Doge imposes a condition, namely, repentance (repentir is François-­Victor Hugo’s translation for humbleness: if you humble yourself, if you show humility by repenting, we will remit your sentence and you’ll just get a fine instead of total confiscation or expropriation). But as for absolute grace, the Doge’s power over it is so absolute, so sovereign, that soon he will threaten to take it back, to go back on it, to retract his grace: “He shall do this, or else I do recant / The pardon that I late pronounced here.” Indeed, what happens, all told, when the Doge grants Shylock the unasked-­for grace of the latter’s life while at the same time confiscating his goods unless he asks for pardon? A grace that he will feel free to take back if the conditions are not met, such that the Doge places himself above the very law of pardon? Well, at first, Shylock refuses. Portia had protested against the promise to scale back the total confiscation to a fine, on the condition that Shylock repent, saying “Ay, for the state; not for Antonio [that the remission of the sentence of confiscation apply to what he owed the 12. During the session, Derrida adds: “Kant was saying that the king exercises his right to clemency only where he himself is the victim. There would be much to be said here . . .” See 18–19 above.

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state, not to what he owed Antonio].” So Shylock rebels and refuses forgiveness. He refuses to forgive, clearly, to be merciful, but he also refuses to be forgiven, to be pardoned at that price. So he refuses both to grant and to request forgiveness. In short, he declares himself a stranger to this whole phantasmatic story of forgiveness, this whole murky plot concerning forgiveness, this whole Christian and theologico-­political preaching that is attempting to pull the wool over his eyes. He prefers to die rather than to be forgiven at that price, for he has understood or in any case sensed that absolute, gracious forgiveness will in fact cost him dearly, and that an economy is surreptitiously at work behind this theater of absolute grace. (I am insisting on that because it will often be the grand question of the seminar: is there an economy in what, in the name of an incalculable, noncalculating forgiveness, claims or tends to break with economy? With calculus? Not only with calculating and with the economy of financial or market capital, but with the calculus, albeit unconscious, of economy in general, intersubjective and psychic economy, with the economy of desire and of memory in general, with the economy or ecology of all that, the strategy of the oikos, of the proper and of appropriation?) Shylock then says, as a sort of counter-­strategy: okay then, keep your forgiveness, take my life, kill me, since in taking everything of mine, all that I have and all that I am, you are killing me anyway: “Nay, take my life and all; pardon not that: / You take my house when you do take the prop / That doth sustain my house; you take my life / When you do take the means whereby I live.” And you know how things end; if not, reread the play closely, following the extraordinary economy of rings, oaths, which do or do not implicate Shylock, who finally loses everything, and, once the Doge threatens to go back on his clemency, must for his part consent to sign on to total remission of the debt and forced conversion to Christianity: “‘In christening thou shalt have two godfathers; / Had I been judge, thou shouldst have had ten more, / To bring thee to the gallows, not the font.’ [Exit Shylock].” I would have liked to trace that strategy of “forgiveness” and the lexicon of swearing and forswearing throughout the play, but I’ll let you do that yourselves. It happens that, just after the scene that I have just referred to, Shylock having lost everything and having left the stage of history — ­no more Jew on stage, no more of the Jew in the story — ­the profits are distributed, and the Doge supplicates, implores, beseeches [conjurer] (the word used to translate “entreats”) Portia to come to dinner at his place. She refuses, humbly begging his pardon: “I humbly do desire your Grace of pardon” (the fact that one often calls eminent people “your Grace,” “your gracious

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Majesty,” well demonstrates the power we are talking about). She begs His Grace’s pardon because she has business in town. The Doge requests that she, or he, be remunerated (“gratif[ied]”), that she be paid or rewarded for her services (“Antonio, gratify this gentleman, / For, in my mind, you are much bound to him”). That gratification, that reward, is a salary, and Portia knows, she recognizes that, she knows and says that she has been paid for playing so well the scene of grace and forgiveness, like a sly and devious man of the law. She admits, this woman dressed as a man, that she has been well paid as a mercenary of thanking, of mercy as it were: “He is well paid that is well satisfied; / And I, delivering you, am satisfied, / And therein do account myself well paid: / My mind was never yet more mercenary.” No one could better express the mercenary function of merci, in all senses of the word. And for that matter, no one could ever express it better than Shakespeare, he who was accused of antisemitism for this play, which in any case describes and stages with unmatched power all the great driving forces of Christian anti-­Judaism. Finally, still in the same scene, Bassanio replies to Portia as follows, which still works through a logic of forgiveness: “Take some remembrance of us, as a tribute, / Not as a fee. Grant me two things, I pray you, / Not to deny me, and to pardon me.” There you have the context in which Portia will have displayed the eloquence for which she has been paid, like a mercenary man of the law. And the show of bravura, the pièce de résistance that I’ve left for the end, will have been the magnificent monologue on forgiveness that I summed up schematically earlier — ­providing its logical skeleton — ­but which now I would like to quote and comment upon. Just after Portia has said, “Then must the Jew be merciful,” and after Shylock has protested by asking, “On what compulsion must I? tell me that,” this is her response (I am going to quote it in two languages and parse it in stages, interrupting what is an admirably rhythmic raising of the stakes).13 First measure [temps]: The quality of mercy is not strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes 13. [Translator’s note:] In the pages that follow I have taken some liberties with the French text in order to convey Derrida’s switching between Shakespeare’s original and the French translation, or his own transliteration and commentary, and in order to avoid repeating unnecessarily the two versions of Portia’s speech.

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La qualité du pardon n’est pas forcée, contrainte (forgiveness cannot be commanded, it is free, gratuitous; grace is a gratuity). Elle tombe, la grâce, du ciel, comme une douce pluie (in other words, it isn’t programmable, calculable, it comes or it doesn’t, no one, no human law can decide on it; it’s like the rain, it comes or it doesn’t, but a good, gentle rain; forgiveness can’t be ordered, can’t be calculated; it is foreign to calculus and to the law but it is good, like a gift, for grace gives in forgiving, and it fertilizes, it is good, beneficent, benevolent, beneficent like a good deed [bienfait] versus a bad deed [méfait], goodness versus wickedness). Elle tombe, comme la pluie, du haut vers le bas (“it droppeth . . . upon the place beneath”): one who forgives is, like forgiveness itself, above, high above, over and above the one who requests or obtains the forgiveness. There is a hierarchy there, and that is why the metaphor of the rain is not simply that of a phenomenon that can’t be commanded; it is also that of a descending vertical movement, from above to below. Elle est deux fois bénie; elle bénit celui qui donne et celui qui reçoit: there is already, then, a distribution of the good, of good deed, a sharing of the benediction (performative event) and a specularity between two benefits of benediction, a reciprocity of exchange between giving and taking. Second measure: ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself, And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice . . .

Elle est (la grâce pardonnante) le plus puissant ou le tout-­puissant dans le tout-­ puissant (“’Tis mightiest in the mightiest”), the almightiness of almightiness, almightiness in almightiness or the all-­powerful among all the all-­ powerful, absolute grandeur, absolute highness, absolute power in absolute and superlative power, the superlative of the superlative of power, and since it is the most powerful of the most powerful, it is at once the essence of power, the essence of all-­powerfulness, the essence of the possible, but also what — ­being the essence and superlative of power — ­is at the same time the highest point of power and more than power, beyond all-­powerfulness. It is indeed that limit of power and of potency and of the possible that will

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constantly matter to us in this seminar, because we will constantly have to ask ourselves whether the experience of forgiveness is an experience of “power [pouvoir],” of the “capacity-­to-­forgive [pouvoir-­pardonner],” or of the affirmation of power through forgiveness, etc., at the junction of all the orders of “I can,” and not only in the case of political power. Here it is always a matter of more as the most, and as more than, the most powerful as more powerful than, and as more than powerful, and thus as belonging to another order of power [ puissance], of pouvoir or the possible: the impossible more than impossible and hence possible. This is an analogous structure to what, in the Cherubinic Wanderer — ­which I quote and analyze in “Sauf le nom” (On the Name, 43–­44) — ­Angelus Silesius calls überunmöglischste (blackboard), which he says is possible, and that it is God. “Das überunmöglischste ist möglich” (Bk. 6, #153), says Silesius, which can be translated, according as the über is understood in this way: “the most impossible, the absolute impossible, the impossible par excellence is possible,” or “the more than impossible, the beyond the impossible is possible,”14 which both is very different and amounts to the same thing, for in the two cases (one comparative, the other superlative), it amounts to saying that the summit, the very tip of the summit, the peak [cime] (blackboard)15 is of a different order from that of which it is the summit, and so is contrary to or other than what it thereby exceeds: the most impossible and the more than impossible are of a different order from the impossible in general and can therefore be possible (the sense of the “possible,” the range of the concept of possibility having under14. Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler), Cherubinischer Wandersmann, ed. Louise Gnädinger (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1984), Book 6, #153 [Pèlerin chérubinique, trans. Henri Plard (Paris: Aubier-­Montaigne, 1946), 340–­41; The Cherubinic Wanderer, trans. Mary Shrady (New York: Paulist Press, 1986)]; quoted in Derrida, “Sauf le nom,” trans. John P. Leavey Jr., On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press), 43–­4 4 [Sauf le nom (Paris: Galilée, 1993), 33]. 15. During the session, Derrida makes a drawing on the blackboard and emphasizes, pointing to the summit: “What is the most, powerfulness [puissance], mightiest, is at the same time more than powerful. In other words, here, we have the maximum of powerfulness and something that, being at the very tip, is of a different order from powerfulness. It is more powerful than powerfulness, and so is of a different order from powerfulness, it’s beyond powerfulness, it is therefore the most powerful and the more than powerful. It’s that tip right there, forgiveness, that’s it. Is it the greatest affirmation of power or something of a different order, an impossible that belongs to an order foreign to the possible or to powerfulness? On that tip are both of them [Derrida again points to it on the blackboard], superlative and comparative: the all-­powerful and the more than powerful. And that goes through the head of the king, clearly, it’s a relation between the king and God.”

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gone in this interval — ­at the point and limit of the im-­possible — ­what I might call a mutation, and it is that mutation the stakes of our seminar, of course, for a long time): there is no longer any possible contradiction between possible and impossible because they belong to two heterogeneous orders; well then, in the same way, in the “mightiest in the mightiest,” if forgiveness, if mercy, if “the quality of mercy” is “mightiest in the mightiest,” that situates both the summit of all-­powerfulness and something more than and other than absolute power, and we are going to follow, in all its consequence, the trembling of this limit between absolute power and absolute powerlessness [impouvoir], powerlessness or the absolute impossible as limitless power. Elle sied au monarque sur le trône, Portia then says, mieux que sa couronne (in other words it is higher than the crown, more elevated than the attribute or sign of power represented by the crown on the royal head). His scepter shows the force of temporal power (hence, forgiveness is a supratemporal, spiritual power). Son sceptre manifeste le pouvoir temporel, il est l’attribut d’épouvante et de majesté en quoi résident le respect et la terreur devant le roi. Mais le pardon est au-­dessus de l’autorité du sceptre, elle trône dans le coeur des rois. (This all-­powerfulness is different from temporal power, and in order to be capable of being different from temporal, hence terrestrial and political power, it must be interior, spiritual, ideal: the heart of the king and not his exterior attributes. The entire crossing of the limit that we are talking about obviously follows the trajectory of an interiorization that passes from visible to invisible in becoming something of the heart: forgiveness as heartfelt mercy [miséricorde], if you wish, mercy being the sensibility of the heart toward the misfortune of the guilty one, which gives forgiveness its movement, which, as we shall see, is of divine essence: mercy is divine.) In saying that Portia clearly speaks as a Christian, she is already trying to convert or pretending to preach to the converted; by trying, as a Christian, to convince Shylock to forgive, she is already attempting to convert him to Christianity; by pretending to presume that he is already Christian inasmuch as he understands what she means she is turning him toward Christianity by means of her logic and rhetoric. She predisposes him to Christianity, as Pascal would have said,16 she preconverts him, converts him internally, something that he will very soon be forced to do physically, forcibly, as you know. She tries to convert him to Christianity by convincing 16. See Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Baltimore: Penguin, 1966), 155–­61 [fragment 427 in Lafuma]; cf. Blaise Pascal, Pensées et opuscules, ed. Léon Brunschvicg (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1967), 415–­23 (fragment 194).

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him of this supposed Christian interpretation that consists in interiorizing, in spiritualizing, in idealizing what, for the Jews (as is often said, at least, it’s a very powerful stereotype), allegedly remains physical, external, literal (as in the difference between circumcision of the flesh and the Pauline circumcision of the heart — ­moreover, although I won’t do it here, one could certainly look further in the direction of this problematic of circumcision — ­literal circumcision of the flesh or ideal and interior circumcision of the heart, Jewish and Christian circumcision, the debate around Paul, as a way to ask what is happening in the final analysis between the Jew Shylock and the law or legislation of the Christian state in this wager of a pound of flesh before the law, taking an oath, swearing, etc. Let’s leave it there.) For, immediately after we hear that forgiveness lives within the heart of the king and not in his throne, 17 or crown, not in the temporal, terrestrial, visible, and political attributes of his power, the step is taken that allows it to be said that what is, in this way, absolutely interiorized within man, in human power, in royal power as human power, is divine, is as divine (we’ll soon come to this “as,” to this analogy or resemblance: “It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, / It is an attribute to God himself, / And earthly power doth then show likest God’s / When mercy seasons justice”; elle trône dans le coeur des rois, elle est l’attribut de Dieu même, et le pouvoir terrestre [qui] ressemble le plus à Dieu); the terrestrial power that most resembles God is the power that “seasons,” that tempers justice with forgiveness: quand le pardon tempère la justice (“when mercy seasons justice”). Tempère is François-­Victor Hugo’s translation for “seasons”; it isn’t wrong, it means “to add flavor [assaisonner], mix, change, modify, moderate in terms of food or referring to climate, a feeling of taste or quality”; let’s not forget that this speech began by attempting to describe “the quality of mercy.” However, although this translation by François-­Victor Hugo (tempère) is not incorrect, I would be tempted to substitute for it another, which will allow me to make three gestures at once, to tie together three necessities that will be simultaneously bound to each other and to the history of a translation that I had the audacity to employ some thirty years ago, and which has now become canonical in French publications while at the same time, in turn, remaining untranslatable, naturally, into another language. I’ll translate “seasons” by relève (blackboard): “When mercy seasons justice” / quand le pardon relève la justice (justice or law).18 17. The typescript has spectre [“ghost”]. 18. Derrida clarifies this reference in a note to “What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?”: “Curiously, the first time that the word relève seemed to me indispensable for translat-

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(1) First justification, immediate justification based on the play of idiom. Relever has here first of all a culinary sense (like “to season”); it means adding flavor, adding a further taste that marries the first, remaining the same while altering it, changing it, but by giving it more flavor, by giving it still more the flavor of its flavor; that’s what is meant by relever in French cooking. And that is indeed what Portia says: forgiveness adds flavor to justice, the quality of forgiveness adds spice to the taste of justice. That is the first reason for using relève, which retains suitably the gustatory and culinary code of “to season,” assaisonner. Justice retains its own flavor while at the same time having a better taste when it is seasoned, spiced with forgiveness. Seasoned [relevée] in that way it has both a better flavor and a flavor that is more its own. (2)19 The second justification is that relever indeed expresses elevation. Forgiveness elevates justice, draws it upward, to a height higher than the crown, the scepter, and royal, human, terrestrial power, etc. It is indeed a sublimation and an elevation, a further step upward, toward celestial heights, the highest or the Most High that is higher than highness. Forgiveness is an ascension of justice, a transcendence, a movement of justice that transcends itself in elevating itself and, thereby, in lifting itself [en se relevant] above itself. (3) The third justification for translating with relever is that I used it thirty years ago,20 and it has become almost canonical now, even in academic circles and even when the user doesn’t know where it comes from, and even ing (without translating) the word Aufhebung was on the occasion of an analysis of the sign. (See “Le puits et la pyramide: Introduction à la sémiologie de Hegel,” a lecture delivered at the Collège de France in Jean Hyppolite’s seminar in January 1968, reprinted in Marges de la philosophie [Paris: Minuit, 1972], 102; cf. “The Pit and the Pyramid: An Introduction to Hegel’s Semiology,” Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982], 88–­8 9). Most of the so-­called ‘undecidable’ words that have interested me ever since are also, by no means accidentally, untranslatable into a single word (pharmakon, supplément, différance, hymen, and so on). This list cannot, by definition, be given any closure.” See “What Is a ‘Relevant’ Translation?” trans. Lawrence Venuti, Critical Inquiry 27 (Winter 2001): 196 [“Traduction relevante,” Assises, 44; Cahier de L’Herne, 575]. On Derrida’s translation of Aufhebung by relève, see also “From Restricted to General Economy: A Hegelianism without Reserve,” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 257 [L’écriture et la différence (Paris: Seuil, 1967), 375–­7 6]. 19. The December 3, 1997, session begins here. Following a short recap, Derrida takes up almost in toto the following three pages that were read during this Second Session. 20. This passage, from here to “which it seasons” some lines below, was not read during the November 26 session.

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when one doesn’t like where it comes from, I mean from “me,” even when it isn’t to one’s taste. I inaugurated it, then, to translate an untranslatable word of Hegel’s, aufheben, Aufhebung (what negates while preserving, what lifts up while suppressing, etc., a word for which a number of inadequate translations had been tried; well, relever keeps those double senses: replace, interrupt, suppress, negate, come to take the place of, but at the same time by preserving and elevating, interiorizing, spiritualizing, etc.). But here, not only is that sort of relève indeed in question here, from the mouth of Portia (forgiveness sublates, it raises up, replaces and interiorizes the justice that it seasons), but also, especially, and that is especially what I’m insisting on, we will one day find, by reading Hegel,21 that same necessity of Aufhebung, of sublating, at the very heart of his interpretation of forgiveness, of his concept of forgiveness and of reconciliation, toward the end of the Phenomenology of Spirit. Forgiveness is a sublation, in its essence it is Aufhebung. And we will everywhere find, at one and the same time, the necessity but also the difficulties of that dialectical Aufhebung, of that dialectical economy in this history of forgiveness. And when Portia says that forgiveness, grace, above the scepter, where it sits on its interior throne in the heart of the king, is an attribute of God himself and that, consequently, as terrestrial power forgiveness resembles divine power at the moment when it seasons justice (understood here as the law), what counts here is resemblance, analogy, figuration, maximum analogy: forgiveness is that which, within human power, most resembles divine power, is and shows itself to be most like it (“doth then show likest God’s”). But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself, And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice.22 98

Which doesn’t mean, not necessarily, that forgiveness comes solely from a person — ­up there — ­called God, a merciful Father who has his forgiveness descend on us. No, it can also mean that as soon as there is forgiveness — ­if there is — ­one accedes to a zone of divinity within the experience called human; it is the genesis of the divine, the holy or sacred, etc. (Open to dispute:23 21. See Derrida, Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, First, Second and Sixth Sessions. 22. Derrida’s emphasis. 23. During the session, Derrida adds: “That is open to dispute because, at the same time, in Jewish or Christian theologies of forgiveness, it is not only a matter of divinity,

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the necessity of a pardoning or pardoned person, irreducible to the essential quality of a divinity, etc.)24 This analogy is the very site of the theologico-­political, of the hyphen between the theological and the political; it is also what ensures political sovereignty, the Christian bodily incarnation of God (or Christ) in the body of the king, the king’s two bodies (cf. Kantorowicz and Marin, Pascal and Port-­Royal).25 This analogical — ­and Christian — ­articulation of the two powers (divine and royal, celestial and terrestrial) is, inasmuch as it here works through the sovereignty of forgiveness and of the right to grant clemency, also the sublime grandeur that authorizes or on the basis of which are authorized all the tricks and baseness that will allow the lawyer Portia — ­spokesperson for all of Shylock’s Christian adversaries, from the merchant Antonio to the Doge — ­to get the better of him, to make him lose everything, his pound of flesh, his money, and even his religion. Let me be clear: in saying everything negative imaginable about the Christian ruse as a discourse of forgiveness, I am not singing the praises of Shylock when he raises hue and cry over his pound of flesh and insists on respecting the “bond.” I am simply analyzing the historical and allegorical layout of this situation and all the discursive, logical, theological, political, and economic resources of this concept of forgiveness, of the heritage — ­ours — ­of this semantics of forgiveness. Third measure of Portia’s speech, finally: this will be of utmost importance to us because, no longer speaking of the Doge or the state, it will be a matter of weighing and balancing justice on one side (and I again insist that by justice one has to understand law, calculable and “enforced,” applied justice, applicable justice, and not the justice that I have elsewhere distinguished from law;26 justice here means the juridical, the judicial, positive, even penal law), so, no longer speaking of the Doge or the state, it will be a of , but of a person, who is someone; in forgiveness we require not only that the divinity forgive, but that someone, a person, that a who forgive a whom, someone. 24. The November 26, 1997, session ends here. What follows in the typescript of this session will be taken up at the beginning of the Third Session, on December 3, 1997. 25. See Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957); Louis Marin, Pascal et Port-­Royal (Paris: PUF, 1997). 26. See Derrida, “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority,’” in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla Cornell, Michel Rosenfeld, and David Gray Carlson (New York: Routledge, 1992), 3–­6 7 [Force de loi: le “Fondement mystique de l’autorité” (Paris: Galilée, 1994)].

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matter of weighing and balancing justice on one side and salvation on the other; as if one had to choose between one and the other, having to renounce the law in order to gain salvation. And by the same token it will be a matter of giving an essential dignity to the word and value of “prayer,” prayer being that which allows law to be surpassed in the direction of salvation or in the hope of salvation. Prayer is of the order of forgiveness, like the benediction we were talking about at the beginning (you remember: forgiveness is a double blessing, for the one who grants it and the one who receives it, the one who gives and the one who takes). Now prayer is of the order of forgiveness (requested or granted); prayer has no place in law. Or in philosophy (in ontotheology says Heidegger).27 But before suggesting that a calculus and an economy are all the same concealed in this logic, I’ll read first these final lines of Portia’s speech — ­she has just said “When mercy seasons justice [relève the law],” and she or he continues:

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Therefore Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy, And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much To mitigate the justice of thy plea, Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice Must needs give sentence ’gainst the merchant there.

“Ainsi, Juif, / bien que la justice [what is within your rights] soit ton argument [plea: your claim, what you plead, in the name of which you plead, your cause, but also your excuse], considère ceci: / qu’avec [the simple course of the law, simple juridical procedure] nul de nous / ne verrait le salut [in fact we pray for forgiveness, for mercy (“we do pray for mercy”) / et c’est la prière, cette prière, cette même prière (the same prayer)] qui nous enseigne à tous à faire / acte de miséricorde [mercy, to forgive]. Tout ce que je viens de dire est / pour mitiger la justice de ta cause; / si tu persistes, [if you continue to pursue 27. On the subject of the onto-­theological constitution of philosophy and prayer (logos apophantikos), see Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 71–­72 [“Identité et difference,” in Questions I, trans. André Préau (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 306]. Derrida comments on this matter at length in his The Beast and the Sovereign, vol. 2, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 206–­9 , 214–­19, 227–­30 [La bête et le souverain II (Paris: Galilée, 2010), 291–­9 4, 300–­306, 317–­21].

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your cause] le strict tribunal de Venise / [will of necessity have to] prononcer [its judgment against the merchant present here].” So she pretends to conclude by saying: if you adhere to what is within your rights [ton bon droit], the tribunal will apply the law in your favor and against Antonio; and you know that what follows will demonstrate that this law is inapplicable. But what interests me here is that in pretending to put justifiable (calculable) right into opposition to forgiveness, calculating law in opposition to prayer and salvation, Portia insinuates — ­and this insinuation will be the leitmotif of our seminar — ­that another (said to be spiritual) economy is to be taken into account, if I can put it that way, namely, what one can gain by praying, by seeking one’s salvation, by entering into the transcendence of forgiveness (requested or granted), namely, then, salvation, redemption, buyback, through repentance, expiation, sacrifice, etc. The always open possibility of this general economy and its infinite ruse, the infinitization of its calculus that plays on the incalculable, that integrates the incalculable into its calculating, this super-­or trans-­economy, which, albeit working through death, makes forgiveness possible (and therefore impossible, impure), is what we will talk about next time. It is as if salvation through forgiveness had in some way to sign the ruin of forgiveness itself. Next time we’ll have a discussion,28 if you are willing, and I’ll try to put in place, at the same time engaging with the very body of the problem (which we haven’t yet done, remaining on the edge of a series of epigraphs to set the pitch), I’ll try to put in place a working hypothesis, namely what I’ll call the quasi-­triangles — quasi-­triangles because it may be a case of fictions, imaginary or symbolic triangles, simili-­or apparent triangles, but perhaps also mirages or phantasms that are no less necessitated by what will be called the forgiveness effect. These quasi-­triangles are, at one and the same time, on one hand, if you like, that formed by the third party implied in the relation of justice to injustice, and in the relation between swearing and lying (perjury in swearing and injustice in justice), and, on the other hand, that which sometimes seems to distinguish one from the other the three so-­called religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and that which seems to put into opposition a biblical culture (hence Judeo-­ Christian) of forgiveness (our heritage) and its other, beginning with the Greek, the Greek culture that supposedly did not know pure forgiveness 28. This discussion was to have taken place on December 3, 1997, during the Third Session of the seminar. See 67n3 below.

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as such. Why are these triangles both triangles and not triangles? You have there the most abstract, quasi-­geometrical form of a question and a working hypothesis (eminently debatable in and of itself ) that will keep us journeying for a long time through digressions and excursions that remain for me, at the moment I am speaking to you, still unpredictable.29

29. During the December 3, 1997, session, Derrida will continue without transition into the typescript of the Third Session.

third session

December 3, 1997

One can always pass off as forgiveness — ­one can always present as forgiveness (requested or granted) — ­a counterfeit (a surplus value, bidding for a greater profit than what one appears to be giving up: forgetting, better conditions, some sovereignty, a supplement of sovereignty or mastery and subjection of the other, an incentive bonus [ prime de séduction], a better image of oneself, a good conscience, thus narcissistic enjoyment, etc.). Is it possible to forgive, to do what one therefore thinks one must do, and to do it without a “good conscience”? The good conscience that cannot not accompany goodness, good deeds, is always the enemy itself, the most dreaded parasite, the first grimace of a forgery that comes both to imitate and to frustrate, even to thwart what it gains its advantage from. This forgery is not necessarily, is not always the object of a calculation, strategy, or thematic tactic, in the sense of knowing what it is doing; it isn’t necessarily a conscious deceit, a lie, hence a perjuring that would promise a pardon (requested or granted),

1

1. Before beginning the session, Derrida recaps: “You remember that we were in the process of reading, for the reasons that I tried to justify, The Merchant of Venice, in any case a certain scene from The Merchant of Venice, and I was trying to justify my translation for “when mercy seasons justice.” And, instead of the word tempérer [temper], which is François-­Victor Hugo’s translation, which isn’t inaccurate, I proposed relever for three reasons, the first two of which I developed. The first was that it can immedi­ ately be justified by the play of idiom. Relever has here first of all a culinary sense (like assaisonner). Justice retains its own flavor while at the same time having a better taste when it is seasoned and spiced with forgiveness. Seasoned [relevée] in that way it has both a better flavor and a flavor that is more its own, even though it is transformed by the seasoning of forgiveness that spices it up [relève].” Following that recap, Derrida returns to reading his Second Session typescript starting from “(2) The second justification is that relever indeed expresses elevation . . .” to the end (see 59 above). He then leads directly into the beginning of the December 3 session without transition or pause.

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and give in exchange only a simulacrum of forgiveness. Counterfeiting can be unconscious, which is what makes this category of forgetting — ­which is so readily opposed to forgiveness (“I forgive but I don’t forget”)2 — ­so difficult to circumscribe. We’ll come back to it often: the forgetting that stalks forgiveness isn’t only loss of memory in the form of an erasure of the objective representation of the wrong committed; this representation can remain alive and whole without preventing a certain forgetting, a work of mourning, without preventing a therapeutics from affecting the effect of a wrong and the whole scene of the wrong committed, the wicked deed, the misdeed. And if counterfeit forgiveness is able to fall within the ambit of the unconscious, or indeed lodge in the very structure of the forgiveness we call “authentic” — ­that said to be free of forgery — ­then the very idea of authentic forgiveness becomes highly problematic and perhaps deserves to be abandoned, or in any case conceived of differently. Counterfeit would no more even be counterfeit [contrefaçon], that is to say, another fashioning [ façon], a making [ faire] or savoir faire, the crafting [ facture] of what the author of a counterfeit would make, an active and organized forger [ faux-­ monnayeur]; it would do that all by itself, it would secrete itself of its own accord, at the level of the authentic original of true forgiveness, without waiting for any deliberate ruse of a culpable forger. So-­called authenticity, with regard to which one might claim to measure or put to the test all counterfeits, well, that would never present itself [se présenter]. Better, or worse, forgery would be immediately and fatally contemporaneous with the presentation, the putting into presence of forgiveness. A forgiveness that presents itself (forgiveness requested or granted) and says “here I am” would already be a forgiveness contaminated by the said forgery. And yet, it will be objected, what would forgiveness be if it didn’t present itself, forgiveness that didn’t show itself, forgiveness that wasn’t asked for as such, forgiveness that wasn’t granted as such? And how, and why would one look for the trace of it? Who would still be looking, and in view of what, for the trace of a forgiveness worthy of the name? The always open possibility of this general economy and its infinite ruse, the infinitization of its calculus that plays on the incalculable, that bets on 2. See 4 above. During the session, Derrida adds: “forgiveness is the Magna Carta, it’s not forgetting; you remember the declaration by that young Vietnamese woman to which we were alluding.” Derrida refers to Phan Thi Kim Phúc, made famous by the photograph taken by Nick Ut on June 8, 1972, after she was severely burned by napalm from bombs dropped by the South Vietnamese armed forces. [Translator’s note:] Words in parentheses in English in typescript.

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infinite surplus value by integrating the incalculable into its calculating, this super-­or trans-­economy, which, albeit working through death, makes forgiveness possible (and therefore impossible, impure), is what we will be talking about from here on. It is as if salvation through forgiveness had in some way to sign the surrendering of ruin itself. Before opening the discussion,3 if you are willing, I’ll try to put in place, at the same time engaging with the very body of the problem (which we haven’t yet done, remaining on the edge of a series of epigraphs to set the pitch), I’ll try to advance a working hypothesis, namely, what I’ll call quasi-­ triangles — ­quasi-­triangles because it may be a case of fictions, imaginary or symbolic triangles, simili-­or apparent triangles, but perhaps also mirages or phantasms that are no less necessitated by what will be called the forgiveness effect. Of course, in “quasi-­triangles,” the simulacrum or analogy of the “quasi” will count for no less in our eyes than the figure of the triangle, its angles, lines, and especially its triplicity. These quasi-­triangles are, at one and the same time, and/or (both and or, and either or), on one hand, if you like, that formed by the third party implied in the relation of justice to injustice, and in the relation between swearing and lying (perjury in swearing and injustice in justice), and, on the other hand, that which sometimes seems to distinguish one from the other the three so-­called religions of the Book (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), but as well that which seems to put into opposition a biblical culture (hence Judeo-­Christian) of forgiveness (our heritage) and its other, beginning with the Greek, the Greek culture that supposedly did not know pure forgiveness as such. Why are these triangles both triangles and not triangles? You have there the most abstract, quasi-­geometrical form of a question and a working hypothesis (eminently debatable in and of itself ) that will keep us journeying for a long time through digressions and excursions that remain for me, at the moment I am speaking to you, still unpredictable. In order to begin drawing these quasi-­triangles and putting the words “pardon” and “perjury” to the test set by this contrived geometry, I’ll follow a first connecting thread, chosen economically since economy is our question. That connecting thread crosses, in reality is, that of inheritance and hence that of generation. It will be a matter of interpreting the genesis or generation of pardon and perjury (having demonstrated last time in what respect they inhabited, implicated, and appealed to one another, a priori) 3. Based on the recording to which we had access, there was no discussion during the session.

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precisely by following the paths of generation, of genesis and generation, of transgenerational inheritance: for two reasons that are both distinct and, at bottom, inseparable. (1)4 First of all the words and concepts, vocabulary and semantics of forgiveness (and of perjury to be pardoned) belong to one or more of the cultures from which our own inherits. Understanding that vocabulary, questioning it, discussing it, organizing as it were its hermeneutics, presupposes their being found within a language that we have inherited. Even opening a discussion in which no agreement were granted or presupposed, granted or possible, would still require us to suppose that we were speaking of the same thing in the same language, that we were in broad terms aiming at some common nexus of sense about which — ­as is said in speaking of the proverbial hermeneutic circle — ­we would have a minimal precomprehension. We have in mind what we presume to be the same thing when we pronounce the words “pardon” or “perjury.” Moreover, when someone asks for forgiveness and he or she to whom the request is addressed forgives (or doesn’t), an absolute agreement is assumed — ­which works through language or traces — ­an agreement regarding the “word” or sign pardon, regarding the thing to be forgiven, etc. On both sides of forgiveness, one must understand the same thing, the same harm or good, the same harm, especially, since forgiveness implies that one knows and says and is reminded that “harm has been done and is still being done [mal il y a eu et il y a encore].” The expression “no harm done [ y a pas de mal]” can be a response to someone saying “sorry [excuse-­moi],” it can express acceptance of an apology [excuse], but in no case may it or can it signify “forgiveness.” Forgiveness excludes “no harm done” and repeats and confirms on the contrary its contrary, namely, that it must be known that “there is harm done,” inexcusable, indelible, unforgettable, indeed un-­forgivable harm. Even the most radical disagreements about what “pardon” or “perjury” means, even disputes over it presuppose that one at least shares some precomprehension concerning this “vocabulary.” Even if you agree with nothing that I say about “pardon” and “perjury,” that very disagreement presupposes that between us we understand something by those words, albeit nothing more than the fact that, in any case, they do not mean this: the “forgiveness” that we are talking about doesn’t mean just anything at all, it is defined and defines itself — ­even if one hardly knows what or exactly how — ­it is defined at least negatively. It isn’t just any sort of thing, any sort of category of things in nature or culture, or the world. Forgiveness isn’t a thing, a res, in that sense it is “noth4. The numbering begun here does not continue in the typescript.

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ing” (rien [res]); this X is not, strictly speaking, “some thing,” nor even “some one”; neither “what” nor “who.” It isn’t the name of a tree; forgiveness isn’t a musical instrument or an animal either, not someone, man or woman, not a eulogy or theorem. It resembles an act but perhaps isn’t one, no more than it is a power, an experience (verbal or not) that relates to something “bad”; nor does it reduce to an excuse, a forgetting, an amnesty, an acquittal, etc. But what “bad [mal]” means has first to be presumed if we are to have a sense of what “forgiveness” might mean. If it isn’t a thing, a thinglike substance (tree, instrument, etc.), a living animal, a subject, man or woman, but what seems to be done or what seems to happen to someone or to some ones — ­an experience as we were saying — ­is it for all that a predicate or an act, a possibility or a power [ pouvoir]? In order to tackle these questions, which are already more plausible and more significant, but also more difficult, more problematic, it is still necessary for me to refer — ­but with you, so it is necessary for us to refer — ­to a shared precomprehension of the sense of the word “forgiveness.” It is necessary for us to accredit — ­together, as if we were countersigning a contract that is older than us — ­for us together to accredit and confirm a common “sense” for the word “forgiveness.” If I were to find myself in a country with non-­European cultures and languages, in China, Japan, or India, and I were to say “pardon me” to make my way through a crowd by stepping in front of someone, the gesture that I made or the motion that I went through then might remain totally un­ intelligible, hence ineffective, or even create the conditions for the most serious or dangerous misunderstandings (it could be interpreted as ill-­ mannered, violent, insulting, etc.). I am using this example of precomprehension in the usage of the word pardon (an everyday and ordinary usage, which is not the case for the word parjure, which is already scholarly; if you do a statistical survey, in France or in a francophone country, you know in advance that the number of people who think they understand the word pardon is much greater than those who understand, let alone use, the word parjure — ­and this difference is the sign of a very serious problem), I am using this example of precomprehension in the usage of the word pardon to mark a border that we should never ignore, even if we cross it constantly, especially here, where we are claiming to reflect as philosophers. This border is not only that separating everyday, inconsequential usage from thoughtful, speculative, even meditative usage; it also distinguishes effective use value, so to speak, from a hypothetical or virtual semantic foundation that would be an in-­depth justification of it and guarantee its condition of possibility. Each time that one uses the word pardon and it is understood sufficiently for it to have the desired effect, not only does one not need, for

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the purposes of that usage, to reflect deeply and fundamentally, foundationally, on what forgiveness means, should mean, should have meant, but that fundamental and abyssal reflection on the contrary risks interrupting and paralyzing the very usage of the word pardon — ­and of many others. Imagine a situation as banal and everyday as this: someone steps in front of me while getting off the bus or elevator and says, generally in a whisper and without expecting a reply, “excuse me [excusez-­moi]” or “pardon me [ pardon].” There is in fact no possible misunderstanding; I understand exactly what is going on, and I understand without the slightest ambiguity and exactly in the same way as the person who says at that moment, in that situation, “excuse me,” “I’m sorry [  je m’excuse],” or “pardon me.”5 The symmetry or reciprocity is perfect, in exact measure and during the time that the person steps in front of me to alight. Fortunately. For suppose that, being a rigorous and reflective philosopher, seeking to avoid all misunderstanding, I were to ask this person what they meant by that, stopping them to say: “Hold on, just a minute, don’t get off just yet, what exactly do you mean? ‘Excuse me’ or ‘pardon me?’ Because it isn’t the same thing, and besides, forgiveness, which is at its origin a Judeo-­Christian notion, we can’t even be sure that it is possible, just a minute, don’t get off just yet, we must make ourselves clear concerning this question.” The scene could go on, presuming the other were to accept not to alight or to send me packing [envoyer promener] posthaste while calling me a half-­wit [demeuré], it could go on for much longer than a seminar. The two actors in this scene could spend their lives together, marry or sign a civil union or religious contract so as not to interrupt this very conversation without being sure, once they got to the end of their life in common, that they had understood the same thing concerning what pardon should mean or should have meant at the beginning or in the end. They could even get to the end of their life in common without being sure of having forgiven one another for this possible misunderstanding over what “forgiveness,” “reconciliation,” “redemption,” “expiation,” “excuse,” etc., would have meant, for them or in general. Not to mention that the said fundamental questions concerning the essence of forgiveness, “the quality of mercy,” etc. might themselves be counterfeit, ruses to obtain something else.6 We saw that with The Merchant of Venice and Portia’s 5. [Translator’s note:] The everyday formula je m’excuse translates ordinarily into English as “I’m sorry,” but, as Derrida will develop in subsequent sessions, that French formulation, unlike excuse(z)-­moi, does not ask for excuse or forgiveness, but declares one’s own excusing of oneself [“I excuse myself ”]. 6. See 54ff. above.

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speech, but even when I stop someone from getting off the bus or the elevator by asking whether the folds in the semantics of “pardon” or of “excuse” might have escaped them, I might simply be trying to hold the other back, to prevent them from alighting, obliging them to spend a moment with me, for example in order to listen to me expatiating, hence in a way to follow me along the path I want to take; it could also be an operation of seduction, a pick-­up strategy, even if it were to end in an unforgivable marriage. And yet, even if one were to take into account that difference between the so-­called profound, foundational, justificatory sense and current, everyday but more or less effective usage, we couldn’t simply hold that to be a reliable border. That minimal precomprehension presumes at the same time the inheritance of a language or culture, of a language formed, informed by a culture, by one or more of the traditions passed from generation to generation. I am not free to say just anything in response to the words pardon or parjure, or to have them say just anything, precisely because I am bound (and by definition I am not the only one who is bound) to a language that I have inherited, for it was there before me and has bequeathed to me a system of constraints whose sense is to require that they be the same for all those speaking the same language. Take good note, in passing, of the first fold made by the fabric of this tradition, of this nonnatural heredity of language: it is that whoever is not7 |10| faithful to the heritage, and makes a mistake or introduces a misunderstanding into the usage of these words (for example pardon and parjure), is themself already at fault, hence a perjurer, unfaithful to the injunction inscribed in language,8 to the implicit contract they have 7. Derrida indicates in his typescript, in parentheses, that he inserts here twelve manuscript pages: “(starting here, untranscribed handwritten text, from p. 10 to p. 22 [London-­Sussex trip])” (see 71–­78 below). He also indicates the place where the text is to recommence: “follow on after p. 22” (see 78 below). Those handwritten pages, in blue (10–­14, 22) and black (14–­21) ink, with some interlinear or marginal notes, relate to lectures given in London on November 29, 1997, and at the University of Sussex, Brighton, on December 1, 1997. A photocopy of those pages, which we transcribe here, is found in the folder for the Third Session; the original is housed in “Derrida’s Library,” RBD1, box B-­0 00262, folder 1 “Le parjure et le pardon,” Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton). Our transcription includes the original page numbering, marked off by vertical lines, as well as certain interlinear or marginal additions. 8. During the session, Derrida adds: “If by pardon I mean something else, that can happen. In a very perverse or very paradoxical way, I can for example ask forgiveness for some good I have done: ‘I did something good to you: sorry [ pardon].’ But someone who did that would no doubt be betraying language.”

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signed by using a word from language that is supposed to have an agreed-­ upon sense understood by others. That, this perjury, can happen at every instant — ­and each time I request or grant forgiveness by using the word pardon. Every misunderstanding [malentendu] is possible and what is in that case ill understood [ce mal entendu] is an evil [mal]. I can for example think “excuse” while saying “pardon,” to mention only that widespread example. But what we have there isn’t the sole necessary reason for following the connecting thread of filiation, precisely, and of inheritance, or even of patrimony. I’ll underline two other necessary reasons. (1) Pardon and perjury presuppose memory, nonforgetting, that is to say that a present self (a someone, male or female) — ­she or he who requests or she or he who receives the request for forgiveness — ­inherits from themself, says and reminds or recalls to themself, at the same time witnessing, as a third party or before a third party, to this intact identity. Because of the involvement of the third party,9 whose irreducibility was already revealed to us in the movement of justice, and because of this indelible, irreversible reaffirmation of the harm done, of the mis-­deed, of forswearing [  forfaiture], |11| the limit of a life and a generation is immediately, must be immediately transgressed, even though collective guilt and forgiveness seem to have no sense and no legal status [droit]. And that is where the concepts of tradition and inheritance are at once indispensable and, however, in contradiction to the requirement of indelible singularity. One sees there a sort of madness to do with  forgiveness: both whoever asks for forgiveness and whoever grants it must risk, or even sink into a kind of madness. It is perhaps this madness of hyperbole, which Jankélévitch nevertheless recommended before as the very vocation of forgiveness, that he and Shylock rebel against. You’re asking me to forgive? But that’s asking me to be mad! To go mad! Why? Let me present that to you in my own way, which is neither that of Jankélévitch nor of Shylock, whom I am not of course treating as identical. One will easily agree that  forgiveness, as we understand it in our tradition, is not, must especially not mean forgetting. Yet if one accepts not to treat the word lightly, the notion |12| of forgetting is here not only the simple disappearance of an objective and conscious representation of the harm that has been done to me or that I have done. If I keep this mnestic representation (I 9. Derrida’s handwritten script includes this detail in the bottom margin: “and so be­ cause of the triangle as quasi-­triangle (in the very face-­to-­face).”

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remember that on such and such a day so and so betrayed or offended me), but without that representation reviving the harm, as much harm, all the past harm, then there is forgetting. In truth every affective transformation, conscious or unconscious, that comes to attenuate 10 the wound (every cure, every libidinal or affective displacement, every transfiguration) is a forgetting, a forgetting of the harm as such. Thus in order for forgiveness to be pure of all forgetting (on both sides), not only must the memory of the irreversible harm be intact and total on both sides, in all its dimensions (objective, but also affective, unconscious representation), but that memory must be faithful and integral to the extent that it is equivalent to a memory that does more than remember: that memory must keep the integrity of harm’s active presence; it must, in a certain way, so as not to attenuate it with any forgetting, repeat the harm in the quick, in the present. It is as if, in order for forgiveness to be requested and/or granted, it must re-­produce the harm endlessly, in a constant present, repeating the intentional misdeed and the wound that it inflicts, the criminal act, the one who is the victim of the crime, the contemporaneous committing of [l’agir] and suffering [le pâtir] the harm, in the present. That’s the |13| madness: that criminal, perjurer, and victim, in a sort of reciprocal fascination, a quasi-­hallucination, repeat, presently, beyond any kept memory, the harm done and endured in order for the forgiveness not to be contaminated by any attenuation of that harm by forgetting, not to be contaminated by any transfiguration or redemption of the harm by a forgetting that would displace, repress, metonymize, etc.11 Looking at one another face to face, eyes locked, in the process, presently, of doing and redoing harm to each other, and suffering it, that is the madness of forgiveness — ­requested or granted — ­beyond all a-­mnesia. It is the madness of a pure and integral memory that extends beyond memory: memory without memory. The two partners, criminal and victim, must reaffirm: “I am the same as I was at the moment of the offense, no time has passed,12 or in any case, if it has passed, it hasn’t changed anything, it hasn’t rendered the offense reversible.” Whence the call for forgiveness. That madness is thus that of a heritage without heritage. It presumes maintaining, in the same present maintenance [le même maintenant], memory and the beyond-­memory, not in forgetting but in the forgetting of forgetting. It supposes maintaining, in that same present maintenance, history and the interruption of history. |14| (2) The other necessity related to inheritance concerns the inheritance of the sense of the word and the value, the fundamental evaluation of  forgiveness in the memory of a culture. There is said to be a “culture” — ­I’ll use this word for convenience for the moment — ­a memory and a cultural heritage that maintains within its languages (the same culture, the same cultural vein, for example Jewish or Christian, is capable of feeding into one or more languages), but also in its practices, its ethics, and its axioms, that maintains, therefore, not only the sense of pardon but also an evaluation that makes of forgiveness (requested or granted) a good thing, either a recommendable thing or even a duty. That would be the case with Biblio-­Koranic cultures — ­something we’ll come back to — ­but not necessarily the case with so-­called Greek culture. Whence the quasi-­triangles that I announced and about which I’ll be more clear in a moment. But before even dealing — ­as anthropologists, in the end, or as culturologists — ­with these heritages or traditions of forgiveness, one should not fail |15| to mark a certain circumspection, or even a certain reasoned suspicion with respect to this culturalism or anthropology, this history of culture. We inquired previously,13 in an analogous way, into the status of Benveniste’s priceless Dictionary of Indo-­European Concepts and Society, which, moreover, if I am not mistaken, includes no rubric dedicated to forgiveness or to excuse, but conversely does have a rich chapter on the oath, which we’ll

12. During the session, Derrida adds: “The theory of memory is a theory of time. You will see everywhere, in Jankélévitch, in Hannah Arendt, that it’s a question of irreversible time, the irreversible past. Yes, that’s true, but at the same time, time has nothing to do. In forgiveness, time must not have passed.” 13. See Jacques Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1995–­ 96, first and second sessions; and unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1996–­97, first session.

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read when the time comes.14 Must we think that the mere presence, in language, of a word or lexical phenomenon, tied to an established institution, attests to the presence and possibility, in the societies and cultures under examination, of the thing designated by that word? Must we, for example, draw conclusions from the fact that there supposedly isn’t, in Greek, any word that can be rigorously translated as “forgiveness”? Supposing that, through a network of texts, archives, readings, and interpretations, one were to end up thinking — ­as is the case — ­that in Greek culture there isn’t any real equivalent for what is understood as, or is oriented toward, or tends to be recommended by the noun “forgiveness” in Biblio-­Koranic cultures, supposing that were even possible, does one have the right to conclude that no Greek ever forgave or asked to be “forgiven,” in the strongest, strictest, most hyperbolic sense of the word? |16| Such a conclusion would be as imprudent and barely justified as would the symmetrical conclusion, namely, that in the cultures that have borne, thought, and proposed forgiveness as such (let’s again say Biblio-­Koranic cultures), an effective forgiveness has at some point been requested and/or granted. It isn’t impossible to think these two seemingly paradoxical things, namely, that forgiving [du pardon] has not prevented any forgiving [du pardon] from taking place in Greek history and, conversely, that there has never been any possible and effective forgiving in the history marked by Judaism-­Christianity-­Islam (presuming one can treat that triangle as a single set). This double eventuality is all the more significant and must be taken all the more seriously given that the formal, logical, structural analysis of what we call “forgiveness” includes two traits that present so many challenges to cultural, anthropological, and institutional knowledge, to its interest in vocabulary, indeed in institutionalized semantics. Two traits. (1) The first is that forgiveness is given as the impossible. As a result, among the cultural worlds that we have just distinguished, difference would no longer be the difference between impossible (unthinkable, insignificant) on one side (the Greek), and possible (the Biblio-­Koranic) , 14. See Émile Benveniste, Dictionary of Indo-­ European Concepts and Society, trans. Elizabeth Palmer (Chicago: Hau Books, 2016), book 5, chap. 3: “Ius and the Oath in Rome,” 393–­404 [Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-­européennes, vol. 2, Pouvoir, droit, religion (Paris: Minuit, 1969), 111–­22].

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|17| but between two relations to the impossible, two experiences of the im-­ possible. How does one locate an experience of the im-­possible in a culture or in an anthropology?15 I’ll let you imagine the difficulty of the task.16 I don’t know that it has ever been thought or thematized as such by scholars, by sociocultural knowledge, by the social sciences and anthropology in general — ­as such. (2) The second trait, which marks the limit of a socio-­anthropological (also historical) problematic, is that it is in the vocation (I think this is the best word here; forgiveness is a vocation, it supposes either a call, a request, a voice, or an address to the other, even when, like every vocation, it appeals to the voice, even where it is silent, a-­human, etc., it has a vocation to the voice), it is in the univocal vocation of forgiveness to appeal to the absolute interruption of the course of history, of economy, of the linking of causes to effects, of exchange itself, etc.17 It is in the vocation of forgiveness to transcend or exceed culture, languages, the institution, rites, law, etc., and even the anthropological as such (that is why I found it necessary to insist from the outset |18| on this unfurling, on this overflowing of borders of the human, of the anthropological limit in the experience of forgiveness, as forgiveness of the irredeemable, of the unpardonable). To those two traits I’ll add an extra reason for being surprised, at least, for remaining perplexed and circumspect, alert, faced with all the cultural and anthropological knowledge concerning the diverse traditions. I am saying this in advance because in fact we are going, as conscientiously as possible, to appeal to that precious knowledge in this seminar. 15. During the session, Derrida adds: “That is the question. I already announced that this seminar would be a seminar on the im-­possible, on the meaning of ‘possible’ or a ‘nonnegative impossible.’ We see the thing just coming to light, don’t we: how to locate it in a culture, in an anthropology, in a historico-­cultural corpus? How to locate an experience of the im-­possible? What trace does it leave? What documents does it leave? What archive?” 16. During the session, Derrida adds: “That im-­possible is characterized, precisely, by the impossibility of leaving the most minimal archive and, perhaps, pure forgiveness in the sense I am speaking of it here is a forgiveness that is bound not to leave any archive.” 17. During the session, Derrida adds: “What can such an interruption, which is the vocation of forgiveness, leave as trace, as archive? When I ask, purely and simply, for forgiveness, that is to say without speaking of atonement, redemption, expiation, amelioration, or reconciliation, when I ask for forgiveness, I ask for the interruption of history, and when I forgive, I interrupt history, even if that interruption is subsequently, naturally, reinscribed within an historical linkage.”

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This supplementary reason for mistrust comes from our having believed from the outset — ­as I explained — ­having deemed it necessary to associate, as two sides, or like the front and back of the same thing, the same phenomenon, pardon and perjury. I underscored how forgiveness is always about a wrong, a misdeed, or else it presumes failing to keep an at least implicit promise, which therefore means perjury. Every misdeed, every wrong to be forgiven is at heart a perjury. |19| Now this indissociability as a matter of principle cannot be identified by any cultural or anthropological knowledge. For example, we shall note at first glance that in so-­called Greek culture, where forgiveness as such is said not to mean much or to show any sign of its cultural existence in the language, oath-­taking and forswearing [ parjure] are on the other hand massively present, through an abundance of rich linguistic or institutional references, a great logical complexity, etc. Oath (horkos) and forswearing (epiorkos) occupy a considerable, fundamental place in classical Greek culture — ­no doubt quite ambiguous, as we shall see, sometimes undecidable (the oath was sometimes suspected of being the beginning of perjury) — ­but an unavoidable and structuring place. So, how is perjury to be dissociated from pardon? It is true that the link between the two that we believed it necessary to recognize, a priori as it were, concerned a layer of implicitness, a forswearing and swearing implicit in every misdeed, in every wrong, an implicitness that, for being indisputable, cannot necessarily be either confused with or represented by the explicit and |20| determinate figures of what appears explicitly as perjury and is expressly called such. Whence the difficulty, the complexity, the twilight in which we will have constantly to orient ourselves.18 You will perhaps already glimpse what I am trying to call “quasi-­triangles.” The reference made by this word “quasi-­triangle” works not only in the direction of the a priori included third party as irreducible perjury in an oath taken between two, but also in the direction of this variable geometry wherein the Judeo-­Christian-­Islamic quasi-­triangle in turn forms an angle with its others, and first of all with the Greek (Judeo-­Christian-­Greek, Jewish-­ Christian, Jewish-­Greek, Christian-­Greek, Christian-­Muslim, etc.), but in a relation such that what I call the economy of forgiveness (the economic 18. During the session, Derrida adds: “The fact that there is perjury as soon as there is oath-­taking, or else that every forgiveness forgives a perjury, that universal a priori truth does not allow, does not authorize us to confuse such a fundamental perjury with the very determinate forms of explicit perjury or explicit forgiveness. Thus we are in a twilight, but we don’t have to run off just because it’s twilight.”

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ruse of forgiveness, the sublime ruse that passes off a simulacrum of forgiveness, a stratagem for a forgiveness), this economy of forgiveness can appear on all sides of the triangle, with the result that, for example on the Christian side (where the figure of forgiveness has unquestionably found its most |21|19 systematic and explicit figure in repentance, confession, redemption, etc.), forgiveness economizes itself just as precisely in the figures with which it is indissociably associated — ­and as a consequence becomes apparently as unlocatable as in the other cultures. As a result — ­and this is where I wanted to get to by this route — ­we might be led, we the inheritors of these triangular heritages [ patrimoines], not to accept or reject these heritages, this one or that one, as indissoluble, indivisible entities, but to bring to light at the same time the undecidability, the contradiction, the double bind that works over each and all of those heritages, to oppose them as it were to themselves in the name of themselves, to show them to be faulty as it were, at fault inside themselves, perjurers of themselves, a perjury into which they pull us with them from birth — ­as a result, with respect to these faulty heritages that constitute us or institute us, |22| there is also a scene of perjury and pardon in process, between the heritage and us, each heritage and each of us. If that scene of heritage is constitutive, if it marks our language, our logic, our norms, our semantics, etc. in advance, and if one finds there some perjury to pardon or to be pardoned for, a seminar on perjury and pardon cannot be a theoretical seminar, dedicated to an object — ­perjury, pardon — ­through which it would deploy the metalanguage of theorems or mathemes, of knowledge. Such a seminar is not a constative but a performative experience (in the most obscurely abyssal sense of “performative”) of perjury to pardon or to be pardoned for. That is why I began by saying pardon, merci, “thanks” in more than one language.20 What I will propose to you, what I in any case propose to do and discuss with you is in the end a strange gesture, both perjurious and hyperfaithful, perjurious through an extreme demand for fidelity, a gesture that is 19. Derrida has written the following words in the top margin of his handwritten manuscript, drawing a frame around them: “Truth and Reconciliation Commis (Apartheid) + . He will return at length to that Commission in the first three sessions of the second year of the “Perjury and Pardon” seminar (see Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, 29–­139). 20. The handwritten part of the session ends here. Derrida begins his typescript again (see note 7 above).

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both unforgivable and already consisting in asking for forgiveness in order to be just, for the injustice that consists in doing everything in order to be just, which is to say here betraying more than one heritage by turning the heritage against itself in the name of that very heritage; for example, stubbornly tracking down in the Biblio-­Koranic tradition (itself differentiated and self-­contradictory) a logic of economy, an economy, a sublime ruse which, using the motifs of expiation, repentance, redemption, and reconciliation, comes to contradict and undermine a demand for finite-­infinite forgiveness, forgiveness without condition, the aneconomic forgiveness that is nevertheless found at the heart of this same thinking of forgiveness, this theo-­anthropology of forgiveness. It will be a way to demonstrate, to try to demonstrate that the latter, this theo-­anthropology of Biblio-­Koranic forgiveness remains at bottom more Greek, less opposable to this so-­called Greek culture that is said not to know forgiveness. That is why the triangle would be only a quasi-­triangle. But we will also perform the inverse operation, which will consist in showing that on the supposed Greek side, whether or not it possesses the word, the aneconomic motion of forgiveness comes to disorganize the economic logic and “syngnomic” rationality of a so-­called Greek culture or indeed of every culture that is foreign to Biblio-­ Koranic thinking. I am well aware of the grossly schematic character of this outline. It is by means of the patient work of analysis, through numerous examples and corpora of all kinds, that we will be required to refine, perhaps also correct, amend, repair, improve on, that is to say perhaps to expiate and have ourselves forgiven for the excessive authority of this no doubt violent machination. To initiate, but only to initiate this work, starting today, and to specify this first organization of things, I will start from two forms of question and several texts that share the most common presuppositions concerning this distinction between the traditions that we have just referred to. The first question would be more or less this, and it affects the possibility or impossibility of forgiveness: does asking oneself whether forgiveness is possible come down to asking whether or not that possibility is a capacity [ pouvoir], in other words whether the possibility has — ­as good sense and the semantics of the word “possibility” appear to indicate — ­the figure “I can,” “one can,” “he/she can,” “we can,” “you can,” “they can”? The second question concerns the logic of the distinction or difference between forgiveness and everything that, while belonging to the same analogical family, in the same semantic vicinity as forgiveness, seems nevertheless

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heterogeneous to or irreducible to it (and, to begin, syngnōmē,21 excuse, indulgence, amnesty, prescription, acquittal). Does what separates forgiveness (forgiveness properly speaking, properly forgiving, if any such thing exists) from its neighboring experiences, from its questionable doubles, is that separation able to give rise to rigorous conceptual oppositions within a classical logic or a dialectic? Or must we, are we called upon to proceed, think, speak, write quite differently? And so, to engage forgiveness otherwise (by “engage” I mean as much to request forgiveness as to grant it; but that doesn’t yet mean that I think forgiveness comes to be engaged in the logic of the gauge, of language as gauge; perhaps forgiveness should precisely carry experience beyond any gauge). So much for the two forms of the general question that we’ll begin with. As for texts, in a manner that is not absolutely justifiable, proceeding for that matter in a way that is both labyrinthine and ramified, I’ll propose opening, putting on our table at the same time Greek texts and texts on Greek culture on one side, and Biblio-­Koranic texts on the other, but also, first of all, two “modern” texts that I haven’t chosen by chance, for they were written by two thinkers, a man and a woman, a French man and a German woman who, although they were both nonpracticing Jews, both interpreted in very different ways the event that, for one of them, sounded the death knell of forgiveness: I am referring to texts by Jankélévitch on one hand and Hannah Arendt on the other. Both interpreted forgiveness, the commandment to forgive, as a Judeo-­Christian inheritance, although they did so in very different ways, as we shall see. Both of them made interesting — ­though to my mind questionable — ­references to Greek culture, ethics, and politics, around, that is to say very close to, but perhaps outside forgiveness. And above all, both began, without ever suspecting the slightest problem, by defining forgiveness, the act of forgiveness, as a power [ pouvoir]. So, we aren’t going to read them straight through, right off and continuously (that is something you should do yourselves). Instead we’ll more than once interrupt and divert our reading of these two texts in order to examine others, in the Greek or Biblio-­Koranic traditions for example. But I begin and end today by situating, then, two precise sites: (1) In his Forgiveness, at about pages 92–­9 9/122–­31 (the subchapter entitled “To Understand Is Only to Excuse. On the Inexcusable”), Jankélévitch defines the “ ‘sygnomic’ forgiveness of which the Greeks talked, and that 21. During the session, Derrida writes the word on the board and clarifies its Latin­ ized transcription: “it is generally transcribed as ‘s.y.double g.n.o.m.e.’ ” [Translator’s note:] As previously noted, this translation retains the transcription syngnōmē.

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Aristotle defined as krisis orthē [κρισις ορθη],22 a correct discerning of what is equitable” (92/123). Jankélévitch suggests, correctly in my opinion, that this measured, moderate, reasonable, calculated, critical forgiveness is not true forgiveness: [It] hardly has a gift for impulsive generosity, is hardly prepared for universal embraces. Krisis rather seems to announce that we will not forgive everyone for everything indiscriminately, that “selective” criteria will be applied. The indulgent rigor that is just as much rigorous indulgence is in no way disposed to concede blindly the accolade of forgetting and of general fraternization. Sygnomic and critical forgiveness, deliberating the grand amnesty that we expect from it, asks “to see.” (92–­93/123)

That is another way of saying that critical “forgiveness,” which asks to see, is not forgiveness. (Read and comment on what follows, P., pp. 93–­94/123–­25) What the partitive excuse excuses immediately evokes what it does not excuse, what it leaves outside; and it is an excuse only on this condition. . . . As for the inexcusable, restrictive indulgence abandons it to the rigor of laws. It is forgiveness that takes charge of the inexcusable, for the inexcusable can be forgivable even though it is not excusable. . . . On the other hand, the inexcusable, not finding advocates to defend it, has need of forgiveness. If, then, all is not excusable for the excuse, everything is forgivable for forgiveness, all . . . save, of course, the unforgivable, admitting that an unforgivable exists, that is, a crime that is meta-­empirically impossible to forgive. . . . This excuse, that is so justified when it is a matter of an innocent person who has need neither of grace nor of forgiveness, this excuse that is so reasonable is a “hypothetical” excuse, that is, conditional and accompanied by reservations. The excuse is a forgiveness “with conditions.” But a conditional forgiveness precisely is not forgiveness . . . (93–­9 4/123–­25; first, third and fifth ellipses Jankélévitch’s)

Following that, Jankélévitch refers to Saint Paul to sharpen the sense of forgiveness that extends beyond excuse. (Quote and comment on Jankélévitch, pp. 95–­9 6/126–­27 S., 98–­9 9/131 S.) Let us show that the excuse excuses only certain guilty persons, only certain misdeeds, and in these misdeeds, only certain aspects of the act. First of all, it does not excuse everyone. In this, it is in opposition to total intellection and to forgiveness. Notably, forgiveness knows only one thing: that which is universally human without discriminations of any type, ecumenicity 22. During the session, Derrida translates: “right judgment.” He comments on the passage from Aristotle later in the seminar (see 173 below).

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without a “distinguo” or disjoint categories. Forgiveness has no knowledge of what Saint Paul calls prosōpolēpsia; it makes sense neither of the character, nor of the quatenus. It forgives the man insofar as he is a man, and not with regard to this or that. The philanthropic cosmopolitanism of the Stoics, Stoic totalitarianism, radicalism, and maximalism that postulate the equality of misdeeds, the law of all or nothing, are, in the end, equally foreign in another order of ideas to the articulated regime of the excuse. On the other hand, the gnōmē kritikē is very much in the spirit of Aristotelian pluralism. . . . On this point, as with the preceding ones, it is impossible to confuse the excuse with the maximalism of love, and impossible to assimilate it to the expansionism of forgiveness. Just as love tends to invade every aspect of life, to occupy all of the space and the entire duration into which it extends, so forgiveness always forgives to the very hilt [à fond]: one does not forgive just a little or halfway. Forgiveness is like love; a love that loves with reservations or with one single ulterior motive is not love; and so a forgiveness that forgives up to a certain point, but not beyond, is not forgiveness. . . . The relation between excuse and forgiveness is the same, in this respect, as the one between a professional responsibility that is limited in space and time, and a necessarily infinite moral responsibility. . . . Forgiveness inaugurates a vita nuova. It marks the accession of the former person to a resuscitated existence and itself is the celebration of this second birth. (95–­9 6/126–­28, 98–­9 9/131, trans. modified)

(2) Second reference. Hannah Arendt also produces intersections among biblical and Greek references, but according to a different, very complex logic that we shall study in the chapter of The Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, 1958, pp. 236ff.) that I already mentioned,23 and in Condition de l’homme moderne (Pocket Agora, pp. 301ff.). But I’ll point out straightaway the following fact concerning translation. It happens that we are going to put side by side the opening of Jankélévitch’s book on Forgiveness and the beginning of this chapter from Arendt in order to note that, in a significant manner, they both begin (and this is therefore the first question announced earlier) by the apparently neutral, innocent, self-­evident, common-­sense definition of “forgiveness” as “capacity to forgive.” Forgiveness is thought to be a “power,” something one can, must, or must not “be capable of doing.” And it is from that preestablished definition, as if a logical consequence, that everything would or will follow. Before concluding today, I’ll select very quickly from Jankélévitch’s text the way — ­Greek, Christian, and Kantian — ­in which power [ pouvoir] intersects with obliga23. See 15 above.

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tion [devoir] and will [vouloir]. I’ll read very quickly, and we’ll come back to it. (Read and comment on Jankélévitch, pp. 1–­3 /7–­10 J.) [F]orgiveness in the strict sense is effectively a limit case. . . . the gesture of forgiving would still be a duty. . . . And not only can one do it, a fortiori one can will to do it, the capacity to will being the only absolutely discretionary, autocratic, and ecumenical capacity that all men possess in virtue of their humanness. For in order to will, it suffices to will. And the will to will, infinitely, depends only on our liberty, and it rests on an instant. . . . What good is it to require what no one can do? Even the apostle writes in Corinthians: God will permit that you are tempted beyond your strength, ouk easei humas peirasthēnai huper ho dunasthe, but along with the temptation he gave us the capacity to endure it, to dunasthai hupenegkein. This capacity (dunasthai), which is the strength to resist, is the role of what is psychological. A fortunate possibility, ekbasis, is thus in store for us in all cases; thanks to it. . . . In fact our abilities are. . . . at this highest point where being touches non-­being, where man, reaching the summit of his volition, is in the same instant stronger and weaker than death, the limit of human possibilities coincides with the superhuman, with inhumane impossibility. Pure love without a change of one’s mind and a pure forgiveness without ressentiment are, thus, not perfections that one might obtain in an inalienable fashion . . . (1–­3 /7–­10)

Now it happens — ­but it doesn’t happen fortuitously — ­that the chapter from Arendt that will also say a great deal about “power,”24 about pouvoir, potentiality, faculty, also has the word “power” in its title: “Irreversibility and the Power to Forgive.”25 Now in the French translation, I was eager to point out, the translator thinks it is possible, and neutral, to skip this “power” and to translate the title quite simply by “L’irréversibilité et le pardon.” The “power to forgive” becomes quite simply — ­and that marks to what extent it indeed seems self-­evident — ­the “power to forgive” becomes “forgiveness.”26 Forgiveness 24. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript. 25. H. Arendt, “Irreversibility and the Power to Forgive,” in The Human Condition, 236–­43 [“Chapitre V. L’action,” subchapter “L’irréversibilité et le pardon,” Condition de l’homme moderne, 265; Pocket Agora edition, 301]. 26. During the session, Derrida adds: “What is forgiveness? Well, it’s being able to forgive. Someone who forgives is someone who has the power to forgive. When I say “I forgive,” well, I am saying “I can forgive you.” So it’s not a mistaken translation. And yet, when we analyze the text by Arendt we’ll see to what extent this word “power” is hard to erase.”

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consists in forgiving, of course, it is an act, a doing,27 and forgiving, the act of forgiving, means and presumes having the “power to forgive.” One must be capable, good sense tells us, of translating “to have the power to forgive” by “to forgive,” and vice versa. There you have, in any case, good sense, common sense, there you have proof — ­a too evident evidence that will leave us a little wide-­eyed. Merci. Pardon me for having kept you so long and thanks for your patience.

27. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript.

fourth session

January 14, 1998

Pardon de ne pas vouloir dire. Imagine that we were to leave this utterance to its fate. Consent for a time at least to my abandoning it like that, alone, really exposed, aimless, wandering, erratic even: “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .”2 Is this, this utterance, a sentence? A phrase from a prayer? A request about which it is still too early, or already too late, to know whether it has simply been interrupted, whether it deserves or excludes an ellipsis at the end? “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .” Unless it be that I found it one day, this improbable phrase, unless it were found, itself, alone, visible and abandoned, at the mercy of every passerby, written on a blackboard,3 readable on a wall, inscribed in a stone, on the sur­ face of a sheet of paper, or saved, in reserve, on a computer disk. Here then is the secret of a phrase: “Pardon for not meaning (to say),” it says.4 “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .” is now a quotation. So the interpreter pores over it. 1

1. This session was published by Derrida in an expanded version with the title “Litera­ ture in Secret: An Impossible Filiation,” in The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, 117–­ 58 [Donner la mort, 161–­2 09]. [Translator’s note:] That translation has been revised here. 2. [Translator’s note:] For reasons already given, pardon de ne pas vouloir dire might be better translated using “forgive” rather than “pardon.” However, English would then require a personal pronoun (e.g., “forgive me for not saying”), which would an­ chor the phrase more than Derrida seems to want here. The reader should nevertheless hear “pardon” in the sense of “forgive.” Vouloir dire literally means “to want to say,” but is also the everyday expression for “to mean.” In order to suggest the semantic silence or secret of dire in the French phrase I have parenthesized “to say” in most cases where the expression is used. 3. During the session, Derrida writes the phrase on the blackboard. 4. [Translator’s note:] Dit-­elle, thus also “says she.”

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An archaeologist might also wonder whether the phrase is complete: “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . . ,” but what in fact? And to whom? Who to whom? There, there is secrecy [il y a là du secret], and we sense that literature is taking over these words, without for all that appropriating them in order to fashion them to its own purpose. A given hermeneut can’t know whether this request signified something in a real context, whether it was addressed one day by someone to someone, by a real signatory to a determinate addressee. Among all those, infinite in number throughout history, who have kept an absolute secret, a terrible secret, an infinite secret, I think of Abraham, at the origin of all the Abrahamic religions. But also the origin of this fund without which what we call literature would no doubt never have managed to emerge as such and under that name. Thus, would the secret of some elective affinity ally the secret of the elective Covenant [Alliance] between God and Abraham with the secret of what we call literature, the secret of  lit­ erature and secrecy in literature? Abraham might have said, as God might have also, “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .” (since we are getting ready, as promised,5 to distin­ guish between an Abrahamic, which is to say Biblio-­Koranic culture of par­ don and perjury, and other cultures — ­for example the Greek — ­which, al­ though they include a semantics, a very determinate semantics of lying, are supposed, so we are told, not to include the strict and hyperbolic meaning of forgiveness). I think of Abraham who kept the secret, speaking of it neither to Sarah nor even to Isaac, concerning the order given him, in secret, by God, an order whose sense remained secret, even to him. All that we know is that it was a test [épreuve]. What test? I am going to propose a reading of it. But I will distinguish this reading from an interpretation. Because I would like to show that this reading, both active and passive, is presup­ posed by every interpretation, by the exegeses, commentaries, glosses, de­ cipherings, infinite in number, that have been accumulating for thousands of years, it would as a result no longer be one simple interpretation among others. Although the reading that I am preparing to attempt has never been proposed, as far as I know, in the form, both fictive and nonfictive, that I am going to give to it, it would all the same have the characteristic of a strange sort of evidence or certainty. It would have the clarity and distinction of a secret experience concerning a secret. What secret? Well, and here is the 5. During the session, Derrida adds: “last year.” See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1996–­9 7, fourth and eighth sessions.

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very simple secret of the reading advanced here, the test imposed on Mount Moriah, hence unilaterally assigned by God, consists precisely in proving [éprouver] whether Abraham is capable of keeping a secret: in short, “of not meaning (to say) . . .” How is that? And what would that mean? Let’s see. It is therefore in­ deed a question of a “test,” indubitably, and the word is agreed upon by all the translators: “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold here I am.”6 (The request for secrecy begins there, I would be tempted to say: I pro­ nounce your name, you hear yourself being called by me, you say “here I am,” and by that response you commit yourself not to speak of us, of this exchange of words, whereby we give our word, to anyone else, you commit to respond to me and to me alone, solely, to respond before me alone, ex­ clusively, in tête-­à-­tête, without a third party. You have already committed to keeping the secret of our covenant, this call and this co-­responsibility, between the two of us. But let us wait a little to see how this test of secrecy involves the sacrifice of what is dearest, the greatest love in the world, what is unique in love itself, one unique against another, one unique for another. For the secret of secrecy about which we shall speak does not consist in hiding something, in not revealing the truth, but in respecting the absolute singularity, the infinite separation of what binds me or exposes me to one as to the other, to the One as to the Other): And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee in to the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-­offering upon one of the mountains that I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt-­offering, and rose up, and went into the place of which God had told him.7

6. Genesis 22: 1. [Translator’s note:] Derrida quotes from La Bible: l’Ancien Testament, vol. 1, trans. Édouard Dhorme (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1972): “. . . il advint que L’Élohim éprouva Abraham . . .” (66, Derrida’s emphasis); cf. Revised Standard Version: “After these things that God tested Abraham . . .” 7. Genesis 22:2–­3. “ ‘Prends donc ton fils, ton unique, celui que tu aimes, Isaac, va-­t’en au pays de Moriah et là offre-­le en holocauste sur l’une des montagnes que je te dirai.’ Abraham se leva de bon matin, sangla son âne, prit ses deux serviteurs avec lui, ainsi que son fils Isaac, fendit les bois de l’holocauste, se leva et s’en alla vers l’endroit que lui avait dit L’Élohim” (XXII, 1–­3, Dhorme, 66).

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Kierkegaard didn’t fail to insist on Abraham’s silence. His insistence in Fear and Trembling is a response to a strategy that would deserve a long and de­ tailed analysis of its own; concerning notably the powerful conceptual and lexical inventions of the “poetic” and the “philosophical,” of the “esthetic,” the “ethical,” the “teleological,” and the “religious.” [Certain8 movements, as I shall call them, in the musical sense, act in concert around this silence: four lyrical movements of fictional narration, all of them addressed to Regine,9 that open the book. These fictional narrations belong to what one no doubt has the right to call literature. They recount or invent the biblical story in their own way. I’ll underline the resounding echo of these silences: “They rode in silence for three days. On the morning of the fourth day Abraham said not a word. . . . But Abraham said to himself, ‘I will not hide from Isaac where this walk is taking him.’ ”10 But he doesn’t say anything to him, such that at the end of this first movement, one hears an Abraham who hears himself speaking only to himself or to God, to God within himself: “But Abraham said softly to himself, ‘Lord God in heaven, I thank you; it is better that he believes me a monster than that he should lose faith in you.’ ”11 Second movement: “They rode along the road in silence. . . . Silently he arranged the firewood and bound Isaac; silently he drew the knife.”12 In the fourth Another translation: “Et c’est après ces paroles: ‘L’Élohim éprouve Abrahâm. Il lui dit: Abrahâm ! Il dit: Me voici. Il dit: Prends donc ton fils, ton unique, celui que tu aimes, Is’hac, va pour toi en terre de Moryah, là, monte-­le en montée sur l’un des monts que je te dirai.’ Abrahâm se lève tôt le matin et bride son âne. Il prend ses deux adolescents avec lui et Is’hac son fils. Il fend des bois de montée. Il se lève et va vers le lieu que lui dit L’Élohim” (“Entête, Genèse,” La Bible, trans. Chouraqui [Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2001], 50–­51, Derrida’s emphasis). 8. The bracket opened at the beginning of this sentence does not close in the type­ script. 9. [Translator’s note:] Regine Olsen was Kierkegaard’s lifelong love, and his fiancée for about a year until he broke off the engagement in 1841. 10. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, and Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, in Kierkegaard’s Writings, vol. 6 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 1983), 10, Derrida’s emphasis [Crainte et tremblement, in Oeuvres complètes de Søren Kierkegaard, vol. 5, trans. Else-­Marie Jacquet-­Tisseau and Paul-­Henri Tisseau (Paris: Éditions de l’Orante, 1972), 106]. 11. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 10–­11/106–­7, Derrida’s emphasis. 12. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 12/108, Derrida’s emphasis. During the ses­ sion, Derrida adds: “he didn’t suspect that his son had seen him at the moment when his face hardened and was almost disfigured by the horror of what he had to do, in his hesitation. Kierkegaard’s insistence is strong.” [Translator’s note:] Cf. “his gaze was wild, his whole being was sheer terror” (10).

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movement the secret of silence is certainly shared by Isaac but neither one nor the other has ruptured the secret of what has happened; moreover, they have well and truly decided not to speak of it at all: “Not a word is ever said of this in the world, and Isaac never talked to anyone about what he had seen, and Abraham did not suspect that anyone had seen it.”13 So the same secret, the same silence separates Abraham and Isaac. For what Abraham has not seen, as the text has made clear, is the fact that Isaac, on his side, saw him, saw him draw his knife, saw his face racked with despair. Abraham there­ fore doesn’t know that he has been seen without seeing himself seen. In this regard he is in nonknowledge. He doesn’t know that his son will have been his witness, but a witness henceforth held to the same secret, the secret that binds him to God. Is it therefore by chance that in one of these movements, within one of the four silent orchestrations of the secret, Kierkegaard imag­ ines a great tragedy of forgiveness? How can one harmonize these themes of silence, secrecy, and forgiveness? In the third movement, after an enig­ matic paragraph where the profiles of Hagar and Ishmael are seen pass­ ing furtively through Abraham’s pensive reverie, the latter implores God. 13. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 14/110, Derrida’s emphasis. During the ses­ sion, Derrida reads the following note, added at the bottom of the typescript page: “Elsewhere, Kierkegaard speaks of a ‘pledge [voeu] of silence’ (21/117). And everything he calls the teleological suspension of the ethical will be determined by Abraham’s si­ lence, by his refusal of mediation, of the generality, of the law of the public (  juris publici), of the political, of what pertains to the state, to the divine which is only the ‘phantom’ of God (68/159), just as the generality of the ethical is but the bloodless specter of faith. Abraham, on the other hand, is not, must not, cannot be ‘as phantom, a showpiece used for diversion’ (53/144).” [During the session, Derrida interpolates: “Second time that the phantom appears. In order to avoid having God be a phantom, in the form of God’s divinity, the divinity of God is merely the ontological phantom of God, and to avoid having Abraham be a phantom requires the experience that we are in the process of describing.”] Derrida’s appended note continues: “ ‘Abraham cannot speak,’ Kierke­ gaard often repeats, insisting on this impossibility or in-­capability [im-­pouvoir] — ­on ‘he cannot’ before his not wanting to — ­for he is as if passive in his decision not to speak (113–­15/198–­2 01, and passim), in a silence that is no longer an esthetic silence. For the whole operative difference here is between Abraham’s paradoxical secret and the secret of what must be hidden in the esthetic order and what, conversely, must be revealed in the ethical order. Esthetics demands the secret of what remains hidden, and rewards it; ethics requires instead manifestation, and punishes secrecy. Yet the paradox of faith is neither esthetic (the desire to conceal) nor ethical (the interdiction against concealing) (cf. 82ff./197ff.). That paradox of faith is what will impel Abraham into the equally paradoxical scene of forgiveness of which Kierkegaard will give us both the fiction and the truth, the true fiction that every scene of forgiveness perhaps continues to be.”

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Throwing himself on the ground, he asks for God’s forgiveness not for hav­ ing disobeyed him, but on the contrary for having obeyed him. And for having obeyed him at the moment when God gave him an impossible com­ mand, a doubly impossible command: impossible both because God was asking the worst of him, and because, in a movement that we will ourselves have to come back to, God will go back on his command; he will interrupt it and retract it, as it were, as if he were seized with regret, remorse, or re­ pentance. For the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as distinct from the God of philosophers and of onto-­theology, is a God who retracts. But we should not be in too much of a hurry to give more contemporary names to the retreat of this retraction that precedes repentance, regret, and remorse. According to this third movement from the beginning of Fear and Trembling, Abraham therefore asks forgiveness for being prepared to make the worst sacrifice in view of fulfilling his duty toward God. He asks God to forgive him for having consented to do what God himself had commanded him to do. “Forgive me, my God, for having listened to you,” is what he says in essence. That is a paradox that we shouldn’t stop reflecting on, in particu­ lar for what it reveals concerning a double secret law or a double constraint that is inherent in the vocation of forgiveness; something that never shows itself as such but always lets itself be understood: I don’t ask your forgive­ ness for having betrayed, wounded, or done harm to you, for lying to you or breaking an oath, I don’t ask your forgiveness for a misdeed; on the con­ trary, I ask you to forgive me for having listened to you, too faithfully, out of too much fidelity to my sworn oath, for loving you, for preferring you, for choosing you and letting myself be chosen by you, for responding to you, for having said “here I am,” and as a result, for having sacrificed the other for you, my other other, my other other as other absolute preference, my own one, my own ones, the best of what is mine, the best of my own ones, in this case Isaac. Isaac not only represents the one whom Abraham loved the most among his own, but also he is promise itself, the child of promise.14 It is that promise itself that he almost sacrificed, and that is why he again asks God for forgiveness, namely, for consenting to put an end to the future, and hence to everything that gives breath to faith, to his sworn oath [  foi jurée], to the fidelity of every covenant. As though Abraham, speaking in his heart of hearts, were saying to God: forgive me for preferring the secret that binds me to you rather than the secret that binds me to the other other, to each and every other, for a secret love binds me to the one as to the other, and to mine.

14. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 18–­21/116–­17.

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This law reinscribes the unforgivable, and fault itself, within the heart of forgiveness requested or granted, as if one had always to be forgiven for forgiveness itself, on both sides of its address; and as if perjuring were always older and more resistant than what one had to be forgiven for as a fault, but what, by already ventriloquizing the fault, lends voice and gives movement to the fidelity of the oath. Far from bringing it to an end, from dissolving and absolving it, forgiveness can then only extend the fault, it can only import into itself — ­giving to it the survival of an interminable final breath [agonie] — ­this contradiction of itself, this unlivable contestation of itself, and of the ipseity of the self itself. Here, then, is the third movement: It was a quiet evening when Abraham rode out alone, and he rode to Mount Moriah; he threw himself down on his face, he prayed God to forgive him his sin [in other words, Abraham does not ask forgiveness of Isaac but of God; somewhat in the way that the French Conference of Bishops didn’t ask forgiveness of the Jews but of God, even as they called upon the Jew­ ish community to witness, in its own terms, the forgiveness asked of God. Here, Abraham does not make Isaac a witness to the forgiveness that he, Abraham, asks of God for having wanted to put Isaac to death], that he had been willing to sacrifice Isaac, that the father had forgotten his duty to his son. He often rode his lonesome road, but he found no peace. He could not comprehend that it was a sin that he had been willing to sacrifice to God the best that he had, the possession for which he himself would have gladly died many times; and if it was a sin, if he had not loved Isaac in this manner, he could not understand that it could be forgiven, for what more terrible sin was there?15

In this fiction of a literary type, Abraham himself judges his sin to be un­ forgivable. And that is why he begs forgiveness. One never begs forgiveness except for the unforgivable. Making his own judgment that his sin is un­ forgivable, which is a condition for asking forgiveness, Abraham does not know whether God has or will have forgiven him. In any case, forgiven or not, his sin will have remained what it was, unforgivable. That is why, in the end, God’s response does not count with respect to Abraham’s infinitely guilty conscience or abyssal repentance. Even if God grants him forgiveness in the present, even if we were to suppose still, in the past conditional, that he would have granted it to him, or in the future anterior, that he will have done so by staying his hand, by sending down an angel and allowing the substitu­ tion of a ram, it changes nothing in the unforgivable essence of the sin such 15. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 13/109.

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as Abraham himself feels it within the albeit inaccessible secrecy of his heart of hearts. Whatever happens in respect of forgiveness, Abraham remains in secrecy, as does God, who in this movement neither appears nor speaks.16 I will keep in mind this Kierkegaardian approach, but my reading does not depend on it in the final analysis. What to me seems simply to require recall here is a type of absolute axiom. Which? Even if Johannes de Silen­ tio’s determined insistence on Abraham’s silence17 responds to the highly original logic, aim, and writing of Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric (and responds also, of course — ­I’m alluding to it already for reasons that will become clearer later on — ­to the grand scene of the engagement to Regine and the relation to the father: as with Repetition by Constantin Constantius, published the same year under a different pseudonym, there is each time a sort of Letter to His Father before the event [avant la lettre] — ­prior to that by Kafka — ­signed by a son who publishes pseudonymously), even if my own insistence on secrecy corresponds to a further decision on my part concerning reading that I am going to try to justify, a factum remains indis­ putable, and founds the absolute axiom. No one would dare dispute it: the very brief narrative of what is called “the sacrifice of Isaac” or “Isaac bound [Is’hac aux liens (Chouraqui)]” leaves no doubt as to the fact that Abraham keeps silent, at least concerning the truth of what he is getting ready to do; as far as what he knows about it, but also as far as what he doesn’t know, and finally will never know. Concerning God’s singular call and command, Abraham says nothing and to no one. Neither to Sarah, nor to his own, nor to humankind in general. He does not reveal his secret or divulge it in any familial or public, ethical or political space. He does not expose it to any part of what Kierkegaard calls the generality. Kept to secrecy, kept in secret, kept secret by the secret that he keeps throughout this whole experience of asking forgiveness for the unforgivable that remains unforgivable, Abra­ ham takes responsibility for a decision. But it is for a passive decision that consists in obeying, and for an obedience that is the very thing for which he has to be forgiven; and in the first place, if we follow Kierkegaard, to be forgiven by the very one whom he will have obeyed. This is the responsible decision of a double secret doubly assigned. First secret: he must not reveal that God has called him and asked the greatest sacrifice of him in the tête-­à-­ tête of an absolute covenant. This is the secret he knows and shares. Second secret or super-­secret: the reason for or sense of the sacrificial demand. In 16. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 13/109. 17. During the session, Derrida adds: “Johannes de Silentio is the pseudonym of the signatory of Fear and Trembling, which is not just any name, is it?”

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this regard Abraham is held to secrecy quite simply because the secret re­ mains secret to him. He is therefore held to secrecy not because he shares God’s secret but because he doesn’t share it. But although he is, in fact, as if passively held to this secret he doesn’t know, any more than we do, he also takes passive and active responsibility, such as leads to a decision, for not asking God any questions, for not complaining, as Job did, of the worst that seems to threaten him at God’s request. Now, given that — ­and this cannot be a simple interpretative hypothesis of mine — ­this request, this test, is at least that of seeing just how far Abraham can go in keeping a secret, up to the point of the worst sacrifice, to the extreme testing point of the secret that is asked of him: that of death given, by his own hand, to what he loves most in the world, the putting to death of promise itself, of his love for the future and the future of his love. Let us leave Abraham there for the moment. Let’s come back to that enigmatic prayer: “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . . ,” upon which one day, as if by chance, a reader might stumble. The reader looks for his bearings [se cherche]. He seeks his bearings by seeking to decipher a phrase which, fragmentary or not (both hypotheses are equally plausible), could well be addressed to him also. For, at the point he finds himself, in suspended perplexity, he might, himself, have addressed this quasi-­sentence to himself. In any case, it “herself ” [elle] also addresses him, also addresses him, given that, up to a certain point, he can read or hear it. He cannot exclude the possibility that this quasi-­sentence, this spec­ ter of a phrase that he repeats and can now cite endlessly — ­“Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .” — ­is a ploy [  feinte], a fiction, even literature. Obviously this phrase refers. It is a reference. A reader can understand all of its words and syntactical movement. The movement of reference in it is undeniable and irreducible, but nothing would allow the origin and end of this prayer to be decided, within the perspective of a full and assured determination. We are told nothing concerning the identity of its signatory, addressee, and referent. The absence of a fully determinate context predisposes this phrase to secrecy and at the same time, conjointly, according to the conjunction that will count for us here, to its becoming-­literary. Every text that is con­ signed to public space, that is relatively legible or intelligible, but whose content, sense, referent, signatory, and addressee are not fully determinable realities — ­realities that are at the same time nonfictive or pure of all fiction, realities that are delivered as such, by some intuition, to a determinate judg­ ment — ­can become a literary object. The reader therefore senses literature coming down the secret path of this secret, a secret that is at the same time kept and exposed, jealously sealed

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and open like a purloined letter. They have a presentiment of literature. They cannot exclude their own potential paralysis, that of being hypno­ tized before these words. Perhaps they will never be able to respond to the question, or even answer for this web of questions (who says what to whom in fact? who seems to be asking forgiveness for not . . . ? for not meaning (to say), but what? what does that mean? and indeed, why this “forgive­ ness”?). The investigator thus already sees themself in a situation that is no longer that of an interpreter, an archaeologist, a hermeneut, in the end that of a simple reader having the full status that such a one is acknowledged to have: exegete of sacred texts, detective, archivist, text-­processor mechanic, etc. Besides all that, they are already becoming a sort of literary critic, even a literary theorist, in any case a reader who is prey to literature, prey to the question that torments every literary corpus and corporation. Not only “what is literature?” but “what relation can obtain between literature and sense? between literature and the undecidability of the secret?” Everything is given over to the future of a “perhaps.” For this little phrase seems to become literature by keeping more than one secret, and a secret that might, perhaps, perhaps, not be one, and have none of that hiddenness that Fear and Trembling was speaking of: the secret of what it signifies in general, and about which nothing is known, as well as the secret that it seems to admit to without revealing it, in that it says “Pardon for not mean­ ing (to say) . . .” Pardon for keeping the secret, and the secret of a secret, the secret of an enigmatic “not meaning (to say),” of a not-­meaning-­to-­say-­ such-­and-­such-­a-­secret, of a not-­meaning-­to-­say-­what-­I-­mean-­to-­say, or of not meaning at all, period. A double secret, both public and private, mani­ fest in its withdrawal, as phenomenal as it is nocturnal. This is the secrecy of literature, the literature and secrecy to which a scene of forgiveness seems now to be added, in a still scarcely intelligible but probably not fortuitous manner. “Pardon for not meaning (to say).” But why “pardon”? Why should one ask forgiveness for “not meaning (to say) . . .”? The fabled [  fabuleux] reader whose spokesman I am being here asks himself if he is indeed reading what he reads. He seeks a sense for the frag­ ment, which is perhaps not even a fragment or aphorism. It is perhaps a whole sentence that wants however not to be sententious. This sentence, “Pardon for not meaning (to say),” simply stays up in the air. Even if it is written in the hardness of a stone, inscribed white on black on the board, or entrusted black on white on an immobile paper surface, captured on the lighted screen (in appearance, however, more airy or liquid) of a gently purring computer, the sentence is still “up in the air.” And by being up in

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the air it keeps its secret, the secret of a secret that is perhaps not one, and which, because of that fact, announces literature, at least that which, for several centuries, we have been calling literature, what is called literature, in Europe, but within a tradition that cannot not be inherited from the Bible, drawing its sense of forgiveness from it while at the same time ask­ ing forgiveness for betraying it. And that is why I am here inscribing the question of secrecy as secret of literature under the seemingly improbable sign of an Abrahamic origin. As though the essence of “literature,” in the strict sense that this word retains in the West, were descended in essence not from Greek but from Abrahamic culture. As though it were living off the memory of this impossible forgiveness whose impossibility is not the same on one side or the other of the presumed frontier between Abrahamic and Greek cultures. On one side and the other forgiveness is not known, if I may put it that way, it is known as the impossible, but — ­this is my hy­ pothesis at least — ­the experience of that impossibility shapes up differently. Untranslatably different, no doubt, but the translation of that difference is what we are attempting here. The perhaps secretless secret of this phrase that remains up in the air, before or after a fall, according to the time of this potential fall, would be a sort of meteorite. This phrase seems as phenomenal as un météorite or une météorite (the word has two sexes).18 Phenomenal is what the phrase appears to be, for in the first instance it appears. It appears, that is clear, it is even a hypothesis or certainty by principle [de principe]. It manifests itself, it appears, but “up in the air,” come from who knows where, in an apparently contingent way. It is a contingent meteorite at the moment it touches ground (for a contingency is also, etymologically speaking, touching, tact, or contact), but without en­ suring a pertinent reading (for pertinence is also, etymologically speaking, touching, tact, or contact). It remains up in the air, it belongs to the air, to being-­in-­the-­air. It has its dwelling-­place in the atmosphere we breathe, it dwells suspended in the air even when it touches. Even where it touches. That is why I call it meteoric. It is still suspended, perhaps over a head, for example Isaac’s at the moment Abraham raises his knife over him, when he knows no more than do we what is going to happen, why God has asked him in secret what he has asked of him, and why he is perhaps going to let him do or prevent him from doing what he has asked him to do without giving the least reason for it: absolute secrecy, a secret to keep as shared con­ cerning a secret that isn’t shared. Absolute dissymmetry. 18. [Translator’s note:] Météorite can be either masculine or feminine in French.

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There is another example, very close to us, but is it another example? You no doubt remember that unheard-­of moment at the end of Kafka’s Letter to His Father. This letter takes place neither inside nor outside litera­ ture. It partakes of literature but is not contained within literature. Now, in its last pages, Kafka addresses to himself fictively, more fictively than ever, the letter that he thinks his father would have been able to, or would have had to address to him in response. This fictive letter from his father, in the semi-­fictive letter from his son, reproaches the son (who therefore reproaches himself ) not only for his parasitism but also both for accusing him, the father, and for forgiving him, and thereby for exculpating [innocenter] him. What in fact does this spectral father say, whom Franz Kafka sees — ­in writing to him, in writing to himself by means of the fictive pen of his father — ­no more than does Isaac see coming or understand Abraham, who doesn’t see God, doesn’t see God coming or see where God wants to get to at the moment he says all these words? What in fact does this spec­ tral father say to the Franz Kafka who has him speak thus, in ventriloquy, at the end of his Letter to His Father, lending him his voice or giving him the floor [la parole], but also dictating to him the words, having him write, in response to his own, a letter to his son, in a sort of fiction within fiction (theater within theater, “the play’s the thing,” and you have understood that I am linking together here within this scene of secrecy, forgiveness, and literature the filiation of impossible filiations of Isaac, Hamlet, and Kafka. Literature would begin wherever one no longer knows who writes and who signs the narrative of the call — ­and of the “Here I Am” — ­between the absolute Father and Son). What then does the Father say by means of the pen of the Son, who remains master of the quotation marks? What I am selecting here, in a passage whose dominant motif is, for Kafka, the impossibility of marriage, by reason of a specular identification with the father, an identificatory projection that is both inevitable and impossible. As in Abra­ ham’s family, as in Hamlet, as in what links Repetition to Fear and Trembling in the prospect of the impossible marriage to Regine, the basic question is that of marriage, more precisely the secret of “taking a wife.” Getting mar­ ried means doing and being like you, being strong, respectable, normal, etc. I have to do it, yet it is at the same time forbidden to me, I have to do it and therefore can’t, such is the folly of marriage, of what Kierkegaard would have called ethical normality:19 19. One could track this for a long time in Kierkegaard. I will note only this sign of it here: the interpretation of Abraham’s “incomprehensible” gesture — ­Kierkegaard insists on what is, for him, the necessary incomprehensibility of Abraham’s behav­

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Though marrying is the greatest thing of all and provides the most honor­ able independence, it is also at the same time in the closest relation to you. To try to get out of all this has therefore a touch of madness about it, and every attempt is almost punished with it (Hier hinauskommen zu wollen, hat deshalb etwas von Wahnsinn, und jeder Versuch wird fast damit gestraft). . . . I must say that I should find such a mute, glum, dry, doomed son (“fallen,” verfallener Sohn) unbearable; I dare say that, if there were no other possibil­ ity, I should flee from him, emigrate, as you meant to do only because of my marriage [we are already, always, within the specular address that is soon to become specular, this from the point of view of the father, whom Franz is now going to pretend to allow to speak]. And this may also have had some influence on my incapacity to marry (bei meiner Heiratsunfähigkeit). . . . The most important obstacle to marriage, however, is the no longer eradicable conviction that what is essential to the support of a family and especially to its guidance, is what I have recognized in you; and indeed everything rolled into one, good and bad, as it is organically combined in you. . . . And now marry without going mad! (Und jetzt heirate, ohne wahnsinnig zu werden!) . . . If you look at the reasons I offer for the fear I have of you, you might answer: “. . . you too repudiate all guilt and responsibility (Zuerst lehnst auch Du jede Schuld und Verantwortung von dir ab); in this our methods are the same [Kafka thus has his father say that they both act specularly, doing the same thing]. But whereas I then attribute the sole guilt to you as frankly as I mean it, you want to be ‘overly clever’ and ‘overly affectionate’ (‘übergescheit’ und ‘überzärtlich’) at the same time and acquit me also of all guilt (mich von jeder Schuld freisprechen). Of course, in the latter you only seem to succeed (and more you do not even want), and what appears between the lines, in spite of all the ‘turns of phrase’ [your ways of speaking, your turns of phrase, your rhetoric, ‘Redensarten’] about character and nature and antagonism and helplessness, is that actually I have been the aggressor, while everything you were up to was self-­defense. By now you would have ior — ­works in particular through Abraham’s silence, through the secret that is kept, even from those closest to him, in particular Sarah, which presumes a kind of marital rupture in this heteronomic instance, at the instant of obedience to the divine order and to the absolutely singular covenant with God. One cannot marry if one is to re­ main faithful to this God. One cannot marry before God. Yet the whole scene of the letter to the father, and especially, within that, the fictive letter of the father (literature within literature), is inscribed within a meditation on the impossibility of marriage, as though the secret of literature itself, of the literary vocation itself, were kept there: write or marry, but also write in order not to go mad by getting married. [Derrida comes back to the madness of marrying in Kierkegaard in the Eighth Session of Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2.]

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achieved enough by your very insincerity (Unaufrichtigkeit), for you have proved three things (Du hast dreierlei bewiesen): first, that you are not guilty; second, that I am the guilty one; and third, that out of sheer magnanimity you are ready not only to forgive me (bereit bist, nicht nur mir zu verzeihn), but (what is both more and less) also to prove and be willing to believe your­ self that — ­contrary to the truth — ­I am also not guilty.”20 142

Such an extraordinary speculation. The son is speaking to himself; he speaks to himself in the name of his father. Taking his father’s place and borrowing his voice, imputing certain words to him while at the same time ceding him the floor, he has his father say: “You take me for the aggressor but I am inno­ cent, you assume your sovereignty by forgiving me, hence by asking your­ self for forgiveness in my stead, then by granting me forgiveness and, by so doing, you score the double blow, the triple blow of accusing me, forgiving me, and exculpating me, so as to finish by believing me innocent at the very point where you did all you could to accuse me, demanding as a surplus my innocence, hence yours, since you identify with me.” But, he is reminded by his father — ­in fact by the law of the father that speaks through the mouth of the son speaking through the mouth of the father — ­if one cannot forgive without identifying with the guilty, neither can one forgive and exculpate at the same time. Forgiving means sanctioning as unforgettable and unforgiv­ able evil the evil that one absolves. And so the same specular identification means that one cannot exculpate by forgiving. One doesn’t forgive someone innocent. If by forgiving one renders innocent, one is also guilty of forgiv­ ing. Forgiveness granted is as faulty as forgiveness requested; it admits the fault. Given that, one cannot forgive without being guilty and therefore without having to ask forgiveness for forgiving. “Forgive me for forgiving you” is a sentence that it is impossible to silence in every case of forgiveness, and in the first place because it guiltily assumes for itself a certain sov­er­ eignty. But neither is it possible to silence the converse sentence: “Forgive 20. Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father / Brief an den Vater, trans. Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), 103, 106, 107, 109–­11/217, 220, 222, 224–­2 6 [“Lettre au père,” in Kafka, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, trans. Marthe Robert (Paris: Cercle du Livre Précieux, 1957), 206–­10]. Derrida notes in the margins of his typescript the page numbers of the different quoted passages. It has proved impossible to identify the German edition of Brief an der Vater used by Derrida. However, in his copy of vol. 7 of Kafka’s Oeuvres complètes, held in the Princeton University special collection (“Derrida’s Library,” Firestone Library Special Collections, RBD1, Box B-­ 000256, Folder 11), we found inserted between pages 206 and 207 a photocopy of the German text, without any identifiable reference, corresponding to what Derrida cites during the seminar.

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me for asking forgiveness of you, which is to say in the first place for re­ quiring you, by means of the identification that I am asking for, to take on my fault, and the burden of the fault of having to forgive me.” One of the causes for this aporia of forgiveness is that one cannot forgive, ask or grant forgiveness, without this specular identification, without speaking in the other’s stead and through the other’s voice. Forgiving by means of this specular identification is not forgiving, because it doesn’t mean forgiving the other as such for a wrong as such. We won’t comment on the end of this Letter to the Son, the fictive moment of an equally fictive Letter to His Father. But it carries in its depths, perhaps, what is essential in this secret passage from secrecy to literature as an aporia of forgiveness. The accusa­ tion that the fictive father will never withdraw, the grievance that he never makes either symmetrical or specular (through the fictive voice of the son according to this legal fiction21 that literature constitutes), is the accusation of parasitism. It runs throughout the letter, throughout the fiction and the fiction within the fiction. In the end it is literary writing itself that the father accuses of parasitism. Parasitism is everything the son has devoted his life to, everything to which he admits having unforgivably devoted his life. He has committed the error of writing instead of working, and instead of mar­ rying normally. In the name of the father, in the name of the father and of the son speaking to himself in the name of the father, in the name of the son denouncing himself in the name of the father, but without the holy spirit (unless literature were playing at forming the Trinity here), everything here accuses parasitism and everything accuses itself of parasitism. The son is a parasite, as is literature. For the accused, of whom it is now asked to ask for forgiveness, is literature. Literature is accused of parasitism and begged to ask for forgiveness by owning up to this parasitism, by repenting of this sin of parasitism. That is true even of the fictive letter within the fictive letter, which therefore sees itself taken to court by the voice of the father inasmuch as that voice finds itself lent, borrowed, or parasited, written by the son: “If I am not very much mistaken [says the son-­father, the father through the son’s voice or the son through the father’s voice] you are preying on me 21. “Legal fiction” is James Joyce’s expression; see Derrida’s reference in The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, 138 [Donner la mort, 183]. [Translator’s note:] Words in English in typescript. See also “Ulysses Gramophone,” in Derek Attridge, ed., Acts of Literature (New York: Routledge, 1992), 304, and his discussion in “The Villanova Roundtable: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida,” in John D. Caputo, ed., Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham Uni­ versity Press, 1997), 26–­27.

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[vivre en parasite sur moi] even with this letter itself (Wenn ich nicht sehr irre, schmarotzest Du an mir auch noch mit diesem Brief als solchem).”22 The father’s indictment (spoken to the son through the voice of the son) had previously developed this argument concerning parasitism and vam­ pirism at some length. Distinguishing between chivalrous combat and that of the parasitic vermin (den Kampf des Ungeziefers) that sucks the blood of others, the father’s voice is raised against a son who is not only “unfit for life” (lebensuntüchtig) but also indifferent to this lack of fitness, to being unfit for autonomy since he transfers responsibility (Verantwortung) for it to his father.23 An example of this is the impossible marriage that is the subject of the letter: the son doesn’t want to marry but he accuses the father of forbidding him to marry “because of the ‘disgrace’ (‘Schande’) this union would bring upon my name”24 — ­so says the father via the son’s pen. It is therefore in the name of the name of the father, a name that is paralyzed, parasited, vampirized by the son’s quasi-­literature, that this incredible scene gets written in this way: as impossible scene of impossible forgiveness, of impossible marriage. But the secret of this letter, as we suggested around Celan’s “Todtnauberg,”25 is that the impossible — ­im-­possible forgiveness, im-­possible covenant or marriage — ­has perhaps taken place as this very letter, in the poetic madness of this event called Letter to His Father. Literature is meteoric. Like secrecy. A meteor is called a phenomenon, what appears in the brilliance or phainesthai of a light, what is produced in the atmosphere. Like a type of rainbow. (I’ve never believed too much in what is said about the rainbow, but neither could I be insensitive, less than three days ago, to the rainbow that arched over the Tel Aviv airport as I was returning, first from Palestine, then from Jerusalem, a few moments before — ­in an absolutely exceptional way, as never happens to such an ex­ tent — ­that city was buried under an almost diluvian snowfall, cutting it off from the rest of the world.)26 The meteorite’s secret is that it becomes lumi­ nous, as one says, upon entering the earth’s atmosphere, arriving from who knows where, but in any case from another body from which it has become detached. Then, whatever is meteoric must be brief, rapid, transitory. As 22. Kafka, Letter to His Father, 113/228 [Oeuvres complètes, 211]. 23. Kafka, Letter to His Father, 111–­12/226–­27 [210]. 24. Kafka, Letter to His Father, 112/227 [211]. 25. See 22ff. above. 26. Derrida traveled to Jerusalem, Tel-­Aviv, and Ramallah in January 1998. See, concerning that trip, his letter of January 11, 1998, in Counterpath, where he mentions giving a “lecture on forgiveness, again, in Jerusalem, another one, but in the end the same as the one in Poland the day before Auschwitz” (263 [Contre-­allée, 259]).

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brief as our still suspended phrase (“Pardon for not meaning [to say] . . .”). A question of time. At the outside of an instant. The life of a meteorite will always have been too short: the time of lightning, of a thunderclap, of a rainbow. Lightning, thunder, or the rainbow are said to be meteors. Rain also. And it is easy to think of God, even the God of Abraham, speaking to us meteorically. He comes down upon us vertically, like rain, or a meteor. Unless he descend by suspending his descent, by interrupting its movement. For example, in order to say to us, “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .” Not that God himself says that, but that is perhaps what the “name of God” means to us. The fabled reader I represent27 seeks therefore to decipher the meaning of this phrase, the origin and destination of this message. This message is for the moment secret, but it does also say that the secret will be kept. And an infinite reader, the reader of infinity whom I see at work, is wondering whether this secret concerning secrecy is not avowing something like litera­ ture itself. But forgiveness, then? Why forgiveness? Why would forgiveness, even fictive forgiveness, be asked for here? For there is this word pardon in the meteorite (“Pardon for not meaning [to say]”). And what would forgiveness have to do with the double-­bottomed secret of literature? One would be wrong to think that forgiveness, presuming already that it functions vertically, is always requested from the bottom up, or is always granted top down. From most high down to earth [de très-­haut en ici-­bas]. If scenes of public repentance and pleas for forgiveness abound today, if they sometimes seem to innovate by descending from the summits of the state, from the head or chief of state, sometimes also from the highest authorities of the Church, of a country or nation-­state (France, Poland, Germany, but not yet the Vatican), this is not something without precedent, even if in the past it remained extremely rare. There was, for example, the act of Peni­ tence28 by Theodosius the Great, and more than once God himself seems to repent, to express regret or remorse. He seems to change his mind, to reproach himself for acting badly, to retract and undertake not to do it over 27. Derrida’s computer file follows here the paragraph opening as published in The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, 140 [Donner la mort, 186]. 28. Thus in the typescript. Derrida is probably repeating the term used in the article by Robert Dodaro, to which he refers in The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret: “In The City of God, Augustine judged this act “mirabilius” [140/187]. See Robert Dodaro, “Eloquent Lies, Just Wars and the Politics of Persuasion: Reading Augustine’s City of God in a ‘Postmodern World,’ ” Augustinian Studies 25 (1994): 92–­93.

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again. And his gesture at least resembles a plea for forgiveness, a confession, an attempt at reconciliation. Restricting ourselves to this single example among others, didn’t Yahweh go back on his error after the Flood? Didn’t he take it back? Didn’t he repent, as though asking for forgiveness, in fact regretting the evil of a curse that he had pronounced, when, faced with the sacrificial holocaust offered by Noah, and smelling the sweet and appeasing savor of the animal victims wafting up toward him, he renounced the evil he had already committed, and the curse preceding that? Indeed, he writes: I will not again curse [maudire] the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.29

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In another translation I would underline the word “curse” [malédiction] again, the noun form of maudire, which is followed by the word “blessing [bénédiction].”30 Follow God; what does he do; what does he say? After con­ fessing to a past curse, one he undertakes never to repeat, after having, in short, asked secretly for forgiveness, in his heart of hearts, as though speak­ ing to himself, Yahweh is going to pronounce a benediction. The benedic­ tion will be a promise, hence the sworn pledge of a Covenant. A Covenant not only with humans, but with every animal, every living thing, a promise that we forget today every time we kill or maltreat an animal. The fact that the promise or pledge of this Covenant took the form of a rainbow, which is to say of a meteorite, is what we should meditate on, always following the traces of secrecy, and of what binds the experience of secrecy to that of the meteor.31 God commits therefore to doing no more what he has done. What he has done will have been the wrong of a misdeed, a wrong to be done no more, and so needing to be forgiven, even if by himself. But can one ever forgive oneself? An immense question. And if God were to ask for forgiveness, of 29. Genesis 8:21–­22, Derrida’s emphasis [Dhorme, 26–­27]. 30. Derrida does not specify to which translation he is referring. 31. [Translator’s note:] Derrida inserts here the Chouraqui translation (30): Je n’ajouterai pas à maudire encore la glèbe à cause du glébeux [Adam]: Oui, la formation du cœur du glébeux est un mal dès sa jeunesse. Je n’ajouterai pas encore à frapper tout vivant, comme je l’ai fait. Tous les jours de la terre encore, semence et moisson, froidure et chaleur, été et hiver, jour et nuit ne chômeront pas. (Genesis 8:21–­22, Derrida’s emphasis)

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whom would he ask it? Who can forgive him for a misdeed — ­or forgive it, itself — ­for having sinned, if not himself? Can one ever ask oneself for for­ giveness? Could I ever ask someone else for forgiveness, given — ­it seems, we are told — ­that I must identify sufficiently with the other, with the vic­ tim, to ask them for forgiveness knowing of what I speak, knowing, in or­ der to experience it in turn, the wrong that I have done to them? the wrong that I continue to do to them, at the very moment of asking for forgiveness, that is to say, at the moment of a further betrayal, of prolonging the for­ swearing [ parjure] that the pledge [  foi jurée] will already have consisted of, its very infidelity? Can one ask forgiveness of someone other than oneself? Can one ask forgiveness of oneself? Two equally impossible questions: the question of God (the question of “who”), of God’s name, of what God’s name might mean (the question of “what”), the question of forgiveness about which we have spoken, dividing as it does between the “who” and the “what,” but discrediting and ruining in advance this distinction, this impossible delineation between “who” and “what.” Two questions to which one must always respond yes and no, neither yes nor no.32 “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .” Can that be forgiven? If one is a French speaker, and if, short of any other context, one won­ ders what to be forgiven [se pardonner] means, and whether it is possible, one retains, in the ambiguity of its grammar, in the expression se pardonner, a double or triple possibility.33 First — ­but I’ll exclude this eventuality as contingent — ­there would be this impersonal passivity of the turn of phrase that gives “this fault is forgiven [se pardonne]” as meaning “one forgives it,” “it is forgiven,” “one can forgive it.” Let us look more closely at the other two possibilities, at the reciprocity between the one and the other and/or the reflexivity of self to self: “pardoning each other” and/or “pardoning one­ self,” the possibility and/or impossibility of these two syntagms that both remain, each in its own way, identificatory and specular. It is a matter of what one might call, displacing the expression a little, a speculative gram­ mar of forgiveness. 32. Derrida inserts in his typescript a note relating to the following part of the ses­ sion: “(to be continued, same session Part (4), T(itle) II),” which corresponds to the com­ puter file for the second part of this session. 33. [Translator’s note:] Pardonner is intransitive in French, hence the passive “to be forgiven” can be conveyed only through the reflexive form se pardonner, which also means “to forgive oneself.”

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In terms of its destinal trajectory, what was Kafka’s letter from [du] his father inscribed within the letter to [au] his father, within the letter by [de] Kafka to the father of [de] Kafka, through all the genitives of this forgiving genealogy? Undeniably, this letter from father to son was also a letter from son to father and from son to son, a letter to self [à soi] whose stakes remain those of forgiving the other by forgiving oneself. Fictive, literary, secret, but not necessarily private, the letter remains, without remaining, between the son and himself. But, sealed deep within the heart — ­in secrecy, or at least in the secretary — ­of a son who writes to himself in order to exchange with­ out exchanging this abyssal forgiveness with him who is his father (who in fact becomes his father and bears that name on the basis of this incredible scene of forgiveness), this secret letter becomes literature, in the literality of its lettering, only once it lays itself open to becoming something public and publishable, an archive to be inherited, yet another phenomenon of inheri­ tance, or a will that Kafka didn’t destroy. For, as in the sacrifice of Isaac, which took place without witnesses, or whose only surviving witness was the son, a designated beneficiary who saw his father’s tortured visage at the moment he lifted the knife over him, it all comes to us only in the trace left, a trace that remains as legible as it is illegible. This trace left, this legacy was also, whether by design or by unconscious imprudence, the chance or risk of becoming a testamentary utterance within a literary corpus, becoming literary through that very abandonment. That abandonment is abandoned to its own drift by the undecidability — ­and hence the secret — ­of the origin and the end, of destination and addressee, of the sense and referent of the reference abiding as reference in its very suspension. All of that belongs to a literary corpus that is as undecidable as the signature of the son and/or father, as undecidable as the voices and acts that are exchanged in it with­ out exchanging anything (Kafka’s “real” father, no more than Abraham, perhaps understood nothing, received nothing, heard nothing from his son; he perhaps was still more asinine [bête] than all the said beasts, the ass and the ram who were perhaps the only ones thinking and seeing what was go­ ing on, what was happening to them, the only ones to know in their bodies who pays the price when men are forgiven, forgive themselves, or forgive among themselves). A corpus as undecidable, then, as the exchange without exchange of a forgiveness that is named, requested, and granted as soon as it is named, a forgiveness so originary, a priori, and automatic, so narcissis­ tic that one wonders whether it really took place, outside of literature. For the said “real” father knew nothing of it. Is literary or fictive forgiveness in fact forgiveness? Unless it be the case that the most effective experience, the concrete endurance of a forgiveness requested or granted, has — ­inasmuch as

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it is part and parcel of the postulation of secrecy — ­its destiny guaranteed in the cryptic gift of the poem, in the body of the literary crypt, as we were sug­ gesting earlier in relation to “Todtnauberg.” Forgiveness, then, is the poem. In se pardonner, in the speculative grammar of Letter to His Father, we recognized a scene of forgiveness both requested and granted, of and by oneself. That seems to be something that is at the same time required and forbidden, inevitable and impossible, necessary and insignificant in the very test of forgiveness, in the essence or becoming-­forgiveness of forgiveness. If there is a secret secret of forgiveness, it is its seeming to be destined at the same time to remain secret and to manifest itself (as secret), but also, by the same token, by means of specular identification, to become self-­forgiveness, forgiveness of self by oneself [de soi à soi], requested and granted between selves [entre soi et soi] in the ambiguity of se pardonner; but also canceled, deprived of meaning by this very narcissistic reflexivity. Whence the risk run by its sublated and sublating [relevée et relevante] nature, by the Aufhebung that we spoke of in citing another literature that seasons the code of speculative idealism with the code of taste and cooking, namely, The Merchant of Venice (“when mercy seasons justice”). One should ask forgive­ ness only of the other, the wholly other, the infinitely and irreducibly other other, and one should forgive only the infinitely other other, which both is called “God” and excludes God, the other name for forgiveness of oneself, of se-­pardonner. As we have noted, after the Flood there was God’s retraction (let’s not call it his repentance), this movement by means of which God goes back on what he has done. So he doesn’t just do an about-­face on the wrong done to man, that is to say, precisely, to a creature in whose heart malevo­ lence dwells from the beginning, and in such a way that God’s misdeed, the Flood, was already presumed to signify a sanction, a response, the retort of a punishment corresponding to the evil in the flesh of this creature, in the creature as flesh. Moreover, the evil in the heart of man would already have had to impel the latter to expiation and to plead for forgiveness: forgive­ ness and counter-­forgiveness [ pardon contre pardon] in the same way that one speaks of gift and counter-­gift. God’s retraction, his promise not to do it again, to do wrong no more, goes well beyond the human, which is the only species accused of malevolence. God retracts with respect to every living thing. He retracts before himself, speaking to himself, but about every living thing and animality in general. And the Covenant he will soon make commits him with respect to every living thing. We cannot become mired here in the immense (semantic and exegeti­ cal) question of God’s retraction, of his going back on himself and on his

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creation, all these movements of reflection and memory that lead him to go back on his shortcomings, as if he were at the same time finite and infinite. These cases of withdrawing into oneself should not be hastily translated as “regret,” “remorse,” or “repentance” (even if the temptation to do so is strong and perhaps legitimate). Let us consider simply the doubling over, the retraction of a retraction, the sort of repentance of repentance that en­ velops, as it were, the Covenant with Noah, his descendants, and the ani­ mals. Between two cases of God’s going back on himself, between two re­ tractions, the one that provokes the Flood and the one that interrupts it, in the mean-­time [dans l’entre-­temps] of these two quasi-­repentances on God’s part, Noah is as it were twice forgiven. On two occasions he finds grace. As though the Covenant between father and son could be sealed only through the repetition, the double coming-­back, the coming back on oneself of this retreat or retraction, which no doubt must not yet — ­investing in it a whole psychology and theology to come — ­be translated by regret, remorse, or repentance. Unless the latter notions were to depend, in their bottomless foundation, upon God’s going back on himself, on this contract with self in which God contracts to go back on himself in this way. The dissym­ metrical contract of the Covenant seems, then, to suppose the double trait of this re-­treat [re-­trait] (Entzug, one would say in German), God’s redoubled re-­traction. If the texts that we are going to read seem, therefore, to mean (to say) something — ­but do they want to say it? or are they asking us for forgive­ ness for not meaning (to say)? — ­it is perhaps something that should be heard even before every act of faith, before every accreditation that would grant them any status whatsoever: revealed word, myth, phantasmatic pro­ duction, symptom, allegory of philosophical knowledge, poetic or literary fiction, etc. It is perhaps something like this: being able to retract (what oth­ ers would call “to repent”), having the power to remind himself that what he did was not done well, not perfect, not without fault or flaw, pertains to what is here called “God,” “Yahweh,” “Adonai,” the tetragram, etc. On the other hand, if one remains content to analyze the semantics of inherited words and concepts, namely the heritage itself, it is difficult to think a re­ traction that doesn’t imply, at least in a virtual state, within the gesture of avowal, a plea for forgiveness. But asked by God of whom? Only two hypotheses are possible there, and they hold for every forgiveness: it can be asked either of the other or of oneself. The two possibilities remain irreducible, it is true, and yet they come down to the same thing. If I ask forgiveness of the other, the victim of my fault, a victim therefore, necessarily, of a betrayal or broken oath [ par-

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jure], this is an other with whom I am identifying myself at least virtually, through a movement of retraction by which I affect, auto-­affect or hetero-­ affect, myself. Forgiveness is therefore always asked, through retraction, of oneself as other, as another self. Here God would be asking virtual forgive­ ness of his creation, of his creature as of himself, for the fault he committed by creating humans who are evil in their hearts — ­which means in the first place, as we shall hear, desiring humans, humans subject to sexual differ­ ence, men meant for woman, men moved by the desire to take a wife. In any case, before it comes to believing in it or not, this inherited text offers this reading: forgiveness is a history of God.34 It comes to pass as a Covenant be­ tween God and God through the human. It comes to pass through the body of man, through the flaw that crosses through man [à travers le travers de l’homme], through man’s evil or failing, which is nothing but his desire and the place of the forgiveness of God, according to the genealogy, inheritance, and filiation of this double genitive. Saying that forgiveness is a history of God, business between God and God, through whom we humans find our­ selves, provides neither a reason for nor a means of dispensing with it. We have to at least know that as soon as one says or hears pardon (and, for ex­ ample, “pardon for not meaning (to say)”), well, God is involved. More pre­ cisely, the name of God has already been whispered. Conversely, as soon as one of us says “God,” someone is in the process of saying pardon. (Although reporting this anecdote is not necessary for what I am developing here, I re­ member how one day on the sidelines of a dissertation defense Levinas told me, with a sort of sad humor and in ironic protest: “Nowadays, when one says ‘God,’ it’s as if one almost has to ask for forgiveness or excuse oneself and clarify: ‘God,’ if you’ll pardon the expression . . .”)35 The first moment of divine retraction arrives when, as humans multiply on the surface of the earth, God sees their desire. He notices that men per­ ceive that “the daughters of men were fair.” “And they took them wives of all which they chose.”36 As always, it is desire that engenders sin, which is failing itself, and therefore governs the logic of repentance and forgiveness. Seeing that men 34. Derrida’s computer file has this as next sentence: “In the name of God.” During the session, Derrida twice repeats: “Forgiveness is a history of what is called God.” 35. The phrase “ ‘God,’ if you’ll pardon the expression” is given as an epigraph for “Literature in Secret” in The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, 117 [Donner la mort, 159]. 36. Genesis 6:2. [Translator’s note :] Cf.: “Les filles des hommes étaient belles. Ils prirent donc pour eux des femmes parmi toutes celles qu’ils avaient élues” (Dhorme, 18).

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were appropriating women for themselves, that they took wives (and, as in Letter to His Father, the whole scene of forgiveness, like that of betrayal and of broken oaths, turns around “taking a wife”), God says (but to whom? he says it to himself therefore): “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”37 So God “repents himself,” as one translation has it (Dhorme’s, and he notes in all seriousness, that “anthropomorphisms abound in the narratives of chapters 2, 4, and 6”); he “regrets” says another (Chouraqui), to render a word that, it seems, or so they told me in Jerusalem, means something like “he reversed himself as if to find closure [  faire son deuil] and to console himself.” And the verb is supposed to have some relation of etymological resemblance, as is often the case, with the proper name of Noah. But in spite of the small difference between “repent” and “regret,” the two translations that I am going to quote from are in agreement in saying, by means of the same expression, that Noah finds “grace” in the eyes of Yahweh. Having regretted or repented for doing wrong by creating such guileful [malin] hu­ mans, God in effect decides to exterminate the human race and to eliminate every trace of life on earth, extend thus the genocidal annihilation to all living species, and to all his creatures, with the gracious exception of Noah, his loved ones, and a couple from each animal species: And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said [but to whom is he therefore speaking? In secret or out loud? Is this not the origin of literature?], I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man and beast, and the creep­ ing thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah.38

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However one interpret the logic of this scene, one will hesitate forever be­ tween justice and perversion, as much in the act of reading as in what is 37. Genesis 6:3. [Translator’s note :] Cf.: “Mon esprit ne restera pas toujours dans l’homme, car il est encore chair. Ses jours seront de cent vingt ans” (Dhorme, 18); “Mon souffle ne durera pas dans le glébeux en pérennité. Dans leur égarement, il est chair: ses jours sont de cent vingt ans” (Chouraqui, 26). 38. Genesis 6:5–­9 , Derrida’s emphasis. Derrida’s computer file adds here the para­ graph ending (a sentence concerning Chouraqui’s translation of the passage [26–­27]) as published in The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, 150 [Donner la mort, 198–­9 9].

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given to read. We know the outcome of the grace that Noah finds in Yah­ weh’s eyes; does one have the right to translate it into “forgiveness”? Noth­ ing, it seems to me, forbids that. God forgives Noah, him alone, along with his loved ones and a couple from each animal species. But in limiting his mercy in such a terrible way, he punishes and destroys every other life on earth. Yet he proceeds with that very nearly absolute pangenocide in order to punish, and in a sudden feeling of regret for, a wrong that, in short, he has himself committed: that of creating humans with evil in their hearts.39 As if he didn’t forgive humans and living creatures for his own fault, for the evil within them, namely desire, whereas it was he who committed the sin of putting it in them. As if, in short, by the same token, he didn’t forgive him­ self for the misdeed, the evil produced by his creation, namely, man’s desire. If one is still wondering how and why, while regretting a misdeed [méfait], a bad-­deed [mal-­fait] for which he consoles himself badly, he allows himself both to pardon [ gracier] Noah and his loved ones, and to punish all other living things, well, let us now take into account two reasons adduced for this sentence. In the first place Noah is said, immediately after this, to be a “just man.” If therefore he is pardoned for being just, and God will rec­ ognize in him a just man, it is in the end because he is more just than God himself, not the God who recognizes him as just (one must be just for that), but the very God who has still to regret an evil from which he cannot ex­ empt himself or for which he has difficulty forgiving himself. As if — ­I often say “as if ” by design, as if I didn’t mean (to say) what I am saying — ­God were asking forgiveness of Noah or before Noah by making the pact or Covenant with him immediately after that. In the second place, by also par­ doning the pairs of animals taken into the ark, by refraining from killing off the promise of life and regeneration, God doesn’t pardon only Noah, his loved ones, and the couples from each : by means of the justice shown to Noah he pardons exemplarily a life to come, a life whose future or rebirth he wants to save. And the Covenant works through this incredible grace, about which it is really difficult to know who grants it to whom, in the end, in the name of whom and of what. Indeed, this punishment, grace and Covenant in the name of whom and of what? Apparently it is directed from God to Noah and his loved ones. But 39. During the session, Derrida adds: “and who covet women. I forgot to quote ear­ lier Chouraqui’s translation for the women passage: ‘Et c’est quand le glébeux commence à se multiplier / sur les faces de la glèbe, des filles leur sont enfantées. / Les fils des Élohim voient les filles du glébeux: oui, elles sont bien [Laughter] [in Chouraqui’s translation, ‘they are fine’]. / Ils se prennent des femmes parmi toutes celles qu’ils ont choisies.’ ”

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God punishes and pardons in order to forgive himself and to have himself forgiven, in order to regret the evil and to pardon himself; then, the mercy accorded to himself through metonymy with Noah, in the name of God in the name of Noah, is now here extended exemplarily, even metonymically to all life, to all life to come, to come back. Just before the Flood, after re­ gretting the evil in creation, God in fact says to Noah: “But with thee will I establish my covenant.”40 Noah the just is then six hundred years old. At the point of commanding him to board the ark, God will say to him: “for thee have I seen righteous before me.”41 The moment of the Covenant is therefore situated within the great abyss of these forty days. Announced, promised at the beginning of the Deluge, this moment is repeated and confirmed when, as Noah is arranging the “burnt offerings”42 on the altar, God announces without regret, granted, but promising not to do it again, that he will no more curse the ground because of man, whose heart is evil, and that he will no more smite every living thing. By blessing Noah and his sons God confirms the Covenant or the pact but also man’s power over all living things, over all the animals of the earth. As though the Covenant and abyssal forgiveness went hand in hand with man’s sovereignty over the other living things. (Read Genesis 9:1 [28]) (Dhorme, pp. 27–­28, Choura­ qui, pp. 30–­31) And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you [La crainte et l’effroi que vous inspirerez (Dhorme)] shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air [Votre frémissement, votre effarement seront sur tout vivant de la terre (Chouraqui). Dhorme, moreover, found the need to clarify in a note: “The fear and the dread that you will inspire, literally ‘your fear and your dread.’ ” As if terror could be inspired only in order first to be felt and shared.], upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things.

40. Genesis 6:18. [Translator’s note :] “J’établirai mon alliance avec toi” (Dhorme, 21); “Je lève mon pacte avec toi” (Chouraqui, 27). 41. Genesis 7:1. [Translator’s note :] “J’ai vu que tu étais juste devant moi” (Dhorme, 21); “Oui, j’ai vu, toi, un juste face à moi” (Chouraqui, 27). 42. [Translator’s note:] Cf.: holocaustes (Dhorme); montées (Chouraqui).

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But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man. And you, be fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein. And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make be­ tween me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.43 43. Genesis 9:1–­17. On the photocopy inserted in the typescript, Derrida indicates the following passage by means of an arrow in the margin: “And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard / And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. / And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the na­ kedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. / And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. / And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had

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When, after so many generations, the Covenant is renewed with Abraham, it still occurs at two moments, before and after the supreme test: first, God announces his Covenant by commanding Abraham to be just and perfect (17:1–­2), then after the said sacrifice of Isaac he confirms the same by swearing that he will bless him and multiply his seed (22:16–­18). Passing in a

done unto him” (Genesis 9:20–­2 4). During the session, he adds: “Well, I won’t read the whole text in Chouraqui’s translation, go and look at that yourselves. Instead of alliance for ‘covenant,’ he has pacte: ‘Voici le signe du pacte / que j’ai levé entre moi et entre toute chair qui est sur la terre.’ I would have liked to read what follows for you, notably the moment, it comes immediately after that, the moment of nakedness, of the sons who see their father’s nakedness. I would have liked to read that, if we had time, in relation to the Letter to His Father that we were speaking of before.” [Translator’s note:] Except where noted, Derrida reads the Dhorme translation: Élohim bénit Noé et ses fils. Il leur dit: “Fructifiez et multipliez-­vous, remplissez la terre! La crainte et l’effroi que vous inspirerez s’imposeront à tous les animaux de la terre et à tous les oiseaux des cieux. Tous ceux dont fourmille le sol et tous les poissons de la mer, il en sera livré à votre main. Tout ce qui remue et qui vit vous servira de nourriture, comme l’herbe verte: je vous ai donné tout cela. Seulement vous ne mangerez point la chair avec son âme, c’est-­à-­dire son sang. Pour ce qui est de votre sang, je le réclamerai, comme vos âmes: je le réclamerai de la main de tout animal, je réclamerai l’âme de l’homme de la main de l’homme, de la main d’un chacun l’âme de son frère. Qui répand le sang de l’homme, son sang par l’homme sera répandu, car à l’image d’Élohim, Élohim a fait l’homme. Quant à vous, fructifiez et multipliez-­vous, foisonnez sur la terre et ayez autorité sur elle.” Élohim parla a Noé et à ses fils avec lui, en disant: “Voici que, moi, j’établis mon alliance avec vous et avec votre race après vous, avec tout animal vivant qui est avec vous: oiseaux, bestiaux, tous les animaux de la terre qui sont avec vous, d’entre tous ceux qui sortent de l’arche et font partie des animaux de la terre. J’établirai donc mon alliance avec vous pour que toute chair ne soit plus retranchée par les eaux du Déluge et qu’il n’y ait plus de Déluge pour détruire la terre.” Élohim dit: “Ceci est le signe de l’alliance que je mets entre moi et vous, et tout animal vivant qui est avec vous, pour les générations à jamais. Je mets mon arc dans un nuage et il deviendra signe d’alliance entre moi et la terre. Il arrivera donc que, lorsque je ferai paraître un nuage sur la terre et que dans le nuage l’arc sera aperçu, je me souviendrai de mon alliance qui existe entre moi et vous, et tout animal vivant en toute chair, pour qu’il n’y ait plus d’eaux pour un Déluge pour détruire toute chair. L’arc sera dans le nuage et je le verrai pour me souvenir de l’alliance perpétuelle entre Élohim et tout animal vivant en toute chair qui est sur la terre.” Élohim dit à Noé: “Ceci est le signe de l’alliance que j’ai établie entre moi et toute chair qui est sur la terre” (27–­2 8).

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single leap over so many cases of forgiveness and grace, such as the one Abraham requests for the righteous inhabitants of Sodom (18:22–­23);44 over so many moments of swearing or taking an oath that should keep our at­ tention, for example the covenant sworn with Abimelech at Beer-­sheba, a covenant made in God’s name (21:22–­23), just before the test of the sacrifice of Isaac, let us come back, all too rapidly, to what I began by calling the absolute axiom. The axiom obliges us to pose or to presuppose a demand for secrecy, a secret asked by God, by him who proposes or promises the Covenant. But such a secret does not have the sense of something to hide, as Kierkegaard seems to suggest. In the test to which God will submit Abraham — ­by means of the impossible command (for which one and the other have, in a way, to be forgiven), by means of the interruption of the sacrifice, which again resembles a pardon, the reward for keeping the secret — ­fidelity to the implicitly requested secret does not essentially relate to the content of something to hide (the command to make the sacrifice, etc.), but rather to the pure singularity of the face-­to-­face with God, the secret of this abso­ lute relation. As if God were saying to Abraham, you are not to speak of it to anyone, not so that nobody knows (and in fact, it is not a question of knowledge), but so that there is no third party between us, nothing of what Kierkegaard will call the generality of the ethical, political, or juridical. Let there be no third party between us, no generality, no calculable knowl­ edge, no conditional deliberation, no hypothesis, no hypothetical impera­ tive, so that the Covenant remains absolute and absolutely singular in its act of election. You will commit not to open yourself up to anyone. (Today we would say: “You will not confide, you won’t have confidence in any member of your family, neither your loved ones, nor your relatives, your friends, even if they are the closest among those close to you, nor your ab­ solute confidants, your confessor, and especially not your psychoanalyst.”) If you did, you would be betraying, committing perjury, breaking the ab­ solute Covenant between us. And you are to be faithful, be so at all costs, in the worst moment of the most extreme test, even if that means having to put to death what is dearest to you in the world, your son, that is to 44. During the session, Derrida adds: “He asks God to pardon them, you remem­ ber that scene, we have already talked about it here.” See Derrida, unpublished semi­ nar, “Hostilité/Hospitalité,” EHESS, 1995–­9 6, fifth session, published in Derrida and Dufourmantelle, Of Hospitality, 153–­55 (for the passage to which Derrida refers) [De l'hospitalité, 135–37].

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say in truth the future itself, the promise of a promise. In order for this request to have the sense of a test, the veritable object of the divine injunc­ tion had to be something other than putting Isaac to death. What inter­ est would God have in the death of this child, even if it were offered as a sacrifice? That is something he will never have said or meant to say. The putting to death of Isaac, which then becomes secondary, is not the thing to be hidden either, the content of a secret that is to be safeguarded. God’s injunction, his command, his request, are directed at Abraham’s capacity to keep a secret under the worst conditions, hence unconditionally, and so to enter into an unconditionally singular Covenant with God. That is the test of unconditionality in love, namely, the oath sworn between two absolute singularities. In order for that to be, nothing must be said and all that — ­at bottom, at the bottomless depths of this bottom — ­must mean (to say) nothing. “Par­ don for not meaning (to say) . . .” In short, the secret to be kept would have, at bottom, to be without object, without any object other than the uncon­ ditionally singular Covenant, the mad love among God, Abraham — ­and what descends from him. With what descends from him, however, the singularity is sealed, but necessarily betrayed by the inheritance that confirms, reads, and translates the Covenant. By the testament itself. What would literature have to do with the testamentary secret of this “pardon for not meaning (to say) . . . ,” with the inheritance of this prom­ ise and this betrayal, with the perjury that haunts this oath? What would literature have to do with a forgiveness [ pardon] for the secret kept that could be a “pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .”? In other words, in what way does literature descend from Abraham, both to inherit from him and to betray him? And in order to ask for pardon for its perjury? “Pardon for not meaning (to say) . . .” Is literature this forgiveness that is requested for the desacralization, what others would religiously call the secularization of a holy revelation? Forgiveness requested for the betrayal of the holy origin of forgiveness itself? I’ll interrupt myself here at the moment when God swears, interrupting the sacrifice by his own initiative and sending his angel a second time. He cries out, he calls Abraham. (Read both translations, Dhorme, p. 67 D, and Chouraqui, p. 51 D): And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,

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And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld the son, thine only son; That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.45

45. Genesis 22:15–­17. [Translator’s note :] “L’Ange de Iahvé appela Abraham une deuxième fois du haut des cieux et dit: ‘Par moi-­même j’ai juré — ­oracle de Iahvé — ­que, puisque tu as fait cette chose et tu n’as pas refusé ton fils, ton unique, je te bénirai et je multiplierai ta race comme les étoiles des cieux et comme le sable qui est sur le rivage de la mer, si bien que ta race occupera la Porte de tes ennemis’ ” (Dhorme, 67); “Le messager de IhvH crie à Abrahâm / une deuxième fois des ciels. / Il dit: ‘Je le jure par moi, harangue de IhvH: / oui, puisque tu as fait cette parole / et que tu n’as pas épargné ton fils, ton unique, / oui, je te bénirai, je te bénirai, / je multiplierai ta semence, / comme les étoiles des ciels, comme le sable, sur la lèvre de la mer: / ta semence héritera la porte de ses ennemis’ ” (Chouraqui, 51).

fifth session

January 28, 1998

Slowly) From the Confessions to the Confessions, from Augustine to Rousseau, from the Confessions to The Flowers of Evil, from The Flowers of Evil to Letter to His Father, to In Search of Lost Time, and always “in fear and trembling” — ­which, I remind you, were words from Saint Paul2 — ­is all writing, is all Western literature presumed to be inscribed thus in a request for forgiveness, in expiation — ­for what sin . . . ? Let’s leave it, let’s suspend, abandon the question there, leave it temporarily neglected there.

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1. Before beginning the session, Derrida invites the public to sign a petition “For Women’s Right to Family,” which seeks to amend the Algerian Family Code of 1984. As a preamble, he offers this clarification: “This law, which I suppose you know of, whose brutality seems to me, and to many, unacceptable — ­across time and in principle — ­is today, with the war that has been unleashed in Algeria, I believe, all the more essential and at the same time to be denounced. That said, I wanted to tell you that some Algerian women, some of whom, what’s more, are elected representatives, have taken the initiative of producing the text that I have before me, entitled “For Women’s Right to Family,” which includes a certain number of propositions, twenty-­two, that they demand be immediately applied. I personally consider — ­because naturally I subscribe to this appeal — ­that this demand is not only legitimate but absolutely vital today, and that anyone wanting to show some solidarity to those who are struggling for democracy in Algeria, for the democratization of the regime, should subscribe to it. So the text in question, which is extremely precise and rigorous and argued from a legal point of view, is too long for me to read here, too long also for you to read it during the session. I’ll make it available here, but I am not asking you to sign with your eyes closed just because signing it is urgent. I’ve indicated to you the general thrust of it.” Derrida adds that he’ll have to delay until next week the period of discussion planned for this session, and then begins to read his text. Because that discussion is in question here and in the next session, we have transcribed it in part at the end of the present session. 2. 2 Corinthians 7:15; Philippians 2:12.

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“Paenitet te et non doles”: “you repent without suffering.”3 Saint Augustine thus addresses God: you are capable of repenting and of doing so without harm, without doing yourself harm. The “and” has a value of “but,” of “and yet”: you repent, you do penance, you punish yourself, without however inflicting suffering upon yourself, without suffering, without submitting to pain: paenitet te et non doles. This is found at the opening of the Confessions (I.iv.4), that is, of a book that should situate for us a moment of utmost, or even inaugural, significance (but in order to specify this inaugurality, which one has every reason to believe in, we would nevertheless have to take many theoretical and historical precautions), inaugural, then, at once in the history of forgiveness — ­if there is such a history, in the history of its Christian heritage — ­and, especially, in the history of this writing of forgiveness or of this writing as experience of forgiveness that we have already been questioning with a certain insistence, most often in a filial and specular scene, more precisely in the filiation between father and son engendered “in the image of the father.” And this question of sexual difference within filiation is also on our agenda. Augustine is always addressing a merciful God in the gesture of confiteor and from one end to the other of the Confessions. The absolute addressee, the infinite reader of this book, is first of all God, of course, addressed in the ascension of prayer and hymns, of the praises that rise up, but a God who is above all merciful, a God who is asked to be what he is, what he has promised to be, merciful [miséricordieux]. Misericordia, in a Latin or Roman pre-­Christian culture, is pity, compassion, sensitivity of the heart toward adversity, misfortune. In the Christian conversion of this word, if that can be said, mercy is a movement that goes from compassion in the face of misfortune to forgiveness for wrong, for the sinner and for the sin, moving through all those different but proximate movements that include pity, the gift, grace, liberal goodness toward one who has sinned or is suffering. I’ll now insist on this word “mercy [miséricorde]” for at least three types of reason:4 3. Augustine, Confessions, I.iv.4. See Confessions, vol. 1, trans. Carolyn J.-­B. Hammond (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 8, 9, trans. modified (Hammond has “you repent without regretting”). Further references to this edition will appear in parentheses in text, preceded where necessary by the mention Confessions I. Derrida’s text is Augustin, Les Confessions (Livres I–­VII), trans. Eugène Tréhorel and Guilhem Bouissou (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1962), 280. He cites the same edition in “Circumfession,” in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida [“Circonfession,” in Jacques Derrida]. 4. Derrida will take up the third type of reason further along.

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(1) First, as example. In an exemplary way, in fact, this word would call, on our part, for a patient and interminable genealogical, semantic, and philological study of the history of this Latin term and concept within the Christian tradition. Alas, we won’t be capable of that, not directly here, in this seminar. But I needed at least to indicate the necessity of taking that path: for its own sake and as example, for it would be necessary to do the same for so many words and notions that are associated or implied here (such as grace, charity, indulgence, penitence, and above all, confession). (2) Mercy is doubtless the very focus of Augustine’s Confessions and the very essence of the God before whom the signatory of the Confessions presents himself, avows, repents, prays, writes, etc. In the same way, as I was saying last week, we could dedicate an endless seminar on pardon and perjury to Kafka, Proust, Celan, Kierkegaard, Kant, and many many others, as well as to the author of The Flowers of Evil to whom I alluded at the beginning. All of Baudelaire’s work, for example, is a poetic experience (Christian, post-­Christian, anti-­Christian, but Christian through and through in its very revolt) of forgiveness and of confession, well beyond such poems as that entitled, for example, “Confession,” which ends with “the horrible confidence whispered in the heart’s confessional”;5 well beyond the poem entitled “Reversibility” (“Angel of gaiety, do you know that anguish, . . . the remorse . . . the shame”);6 well beyond the poem entitled “The Irreparable” (“can we stifle the old, the long Remorse . . . can we choke the implacable Remorse”) (with “Remorse” in allegorical capitals),7 and while we are on the question of allegory (about which we’ll no doubt speak further today), I would read Baudelaire well beyond the poem entitled “Allegory,” which calls however for our particular attention, where a woman, Woman, precisely, “A beautiful woman . . . the opulent neck,” as the first lines say, goes beyond death and remorse: “She laughs at Death and mocks Debauchery . . .” (Quote the end of “Allegory”):8

5. Cf. Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, trans. Anthony Mortimer (Richmond: Alma Books, 2019): “cette confidence horrible chuchotée / Au confessional du coeur” (90); “And the horrible secret that you whispered / In the confessional of the heart” (91) [Baudelaire, “Confession,” from Les Fleurs du mal, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Yves-­ Gérard Le Dantec (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1954), 120]. 6. Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 87/120. 7. Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 109/118, trans. modified; cf. “Pouvons-­nous étouffer le vieux, le long Remords / . . . / Pouvons-­nous étouffer l’implacable Remords?” (108). 8. [Translator’s note:] Derrida’s text includes the entire poem.

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How beautiful! her long hair trailing down, Over the opulent neck into the wine; Love’s claws, the poisons of the gambling den, Leave not a trace upon her granite skin. She laughs at Death and mocks Debauchery, Monsters whose hands, though made to scratch and flay In their destructive sport, yet still respect, This body’s majesty that stands erect. Resting or roused, she follows pleasure’s lead As faithful as a Moslem to his creed; Her outspread arms expose her willing breasts Where she invites mankind to come and rest. A barren virgin, yet the world that goes Upon its way needs her; she feels, she knows How bodily beauty is a gift sublime That finds a way to pardon every crime. She knows no Hell or fear of purging fire, And when at last the black Night stands before her, Like one newborn she’ll look death in the face And enter without hatred or remorse.9

One should reread Baudelaire well beyond the poem entitled “St. Peter’s Denial,” given that, with perjury and blasphemy, we would have cause to analyze the economy or aneconomy of all these negative movements that are denial, disavowal, disowning, treason, infidelity (“ — ­Jesus, recall the Mount of Olives . . . And when they spat on your pure divinity, Those greasy scullions and scum of the guard . . . [different voice] — ­For me, this world is one I’ll gladly quit, Where dreaming is no sister to the deed: May I both live and perish by the sword! St Peter denied Jesus . . . he was right!”).10 One should read Baudelaire well beyond the first poem of The Flowers of Evil, beyond these “sickly flowers” in the words of the dedication made in all “humility” to the “master and friend” Théophile Gautier.11 This first poem, “Benediction” (benediction, I remind you, malediction, blasphemy, these are performative speech acts belonging to the same family as forgiveness and excuse), has the poet’s Mother speak, a mother who begins by blaspheming. She literally curses the birth of her son, the poet, and conceives of

9. Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 237–­39/185–­8 6 [the Pléiade edition has “Remord”]. 10. Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 249–­51/190–­91, trans. modified. The parenthesis opened above has been closed here. 11. Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 3/79.

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this birth that she has conceived as an expiation. “Expiation” is her word.12 The birth of the poet is cursed and immediately interpreted as an expiation, such that this blaspheming mother, this mother of the accursed poet, this mother who has conceived the poet as expiation herself addresses, as did Augustine, a merciful God who takes or is asked to take pity on her. Without comparing Baudelaire’s or the poet’s mother to Saint Monica, Augustine’s mother, and to other mothers of signatories of all sorts of Confessions, beginning with Madame de Warens or the Mamma of Rousseau’s Confessions, or the mother of In Search of Lost Time (but you see that we are today entering into the question of forgiveness in the mother/son generation and not the father/son filiation: Abraham, Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Kafka), one could, then, without comparing mother/son couples, speak of how this opening to The Flowers of Evil belongs to the Augustinian tradition.13 (I’ll open a parenthesis here concerning Hamlet, since I have just insisted on it with another allusion, inviting you to go and clarify that for yourselves, as I won’t have the time to do it here, I’ll just remind you that unlike the other examples of the father/son relation — ­God, Abraham, Isaac, or Kierke­ gaard’s father and his son, or the Kafka father and son, who have as it were to forgive each other, father and son — ­the spectral father asks Hamlet not to forgive his death, to avenge it, and this injunction to “Remember me,” coming from this revenant Thing that says “I am thy father’s spirit. . . . Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me,”14 this asymmetrical injunction that dis-­joins time orders not to forget, that is to say here not to forgive, but indeed, on the contrary, to avenge. Although the word isn’t pronounced by the father, what echoes throughout the play is indeed “don’t ever forgive.” Forgiveness has died with the death of your father. Forgiveness hasn’t died in the death camps, as Jankélévitch said;15 it died with the death of your father, says the ghost. Don’t ever forgive what, whom, in this forgiving [ pardonnance] by filiation?16 Don’t ever forgive the death, the putting to death of your father, but don’t ever forgive whom? Your mother and my brother. My wife and your mother, your mother and your stepfather, those two perjurers. And 12. Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 8–­9 /83, Derrida’s emphasis. [Translator’s note:] Mortimer has “penance” for expiation. See note 30 below. 13. The parenthesis opened here closes several pages farther along. 14. Hamlet 1.5.8, 91. The French translation of Hamlet, which Derrida frequently modifies or retranslates, is Shakespeare, Hamlet, Le Roi Lear, trans. Yves Bonnefoy (Paris: Gallimard [Folio], 1978), here 60, 62. 15. Cf. Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon Them?”: “Forgiveness died in the death camps” (567). See 10–12 above. 16. [Translator’s note:] On the use of pardonnance, see 127ff. below.

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this spectral “don’t ever forgive,” although it is never uttered literally, is nevertheless signified. It resounds in the disjointed time of the play, and it will find its words in the play on more than one occasion, in structurally interesting situations to which I therefore refer you: for example, when the vocabulary of forgiveness (“forgiveness” and “pardon”) is imposed on the language of Claudius, the murderous brother, in act 3, scene 2. The brother himself, the king’s brother, Hamlet’s stepfather, admits the unforgivable, he admits that forgiveness is refused him as much as is repentance and even prayer: “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; / It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t, / A brother’s murder. Pray can I not [Oh, mon crime est fétide, il empeste le ciel, / La plus vieille malédiction pèse sur lui, / celle du premier fratricide (I have repeated the murder of Cain at the beginning of history). Prier je ne puis].”17 Prayer is forbidden him, and hence repentance for a crime against humanity: the crime is unforgivable because the murderer cannot even ask for forgiveness, he can no longer pray to ask for forgiveness; the malediction (I insist on that: “the primal . . . curse,” says Claudius, I am insisting on it because we are getting to the poem “Benediction,” which opens The Flowers of Evil, and it will be a question of a curse uttered by the poet’s mother), the curse is his being no longer able to turn toward heaven and pray, ask for forgiveness, repent. That is what Claudius will make clear in a passage on the essence of forgiveness, of “mercy,” which resonates, in the mouth of a guilty one, with Portia’s speech, in The Merchant of Venice, on “the quality of mercy.” What does Claudius say in soliloquy, telling himself the unforgivable itself, to himself, admitting to himself what he cannot even forgive himself (I’ll first read it in English):18 “Whereto serves mercy / But to confront the visage of offense?” [À quoi sert le pardon (mercy: from God, Bonnefoy adds, although Shakespeare doesn’t say “God”), sinon à voir le crime en face, de face (“the visage of offense”: so one can’t ask for forgiveness without looking the fault in the face, not forgetting it)], “And what’s in prayer but this two-­fold force / To be forestalled, ere we come to fall, / Or pardon’d being down?” [the word “two-­fold” is magnificent here: Et qu’y a-­t-­il dans la prière sinon cette force, this double virtue, double-­edged or folded in two, divided, bifid; doubly oriented, which can (either)19 hold us back on the edge of failing (before the fall, then, “ere we come to fall”) or else have 17. Hamlet 3.3.36–­38 [Bonnefoy,133]. 18. [Translator’s note:] As Derrida mixes translation (mostly his own) and paraphrase here and below, I have retained the French where it adheres closely to the En­ glish. References to the Bonnefoy translation are as follows: 133, 134, 142, 142. 19. Thus in typescript.

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us forgiven, once we have fallen, once we have sinned, after the fall; prayer before and after the fall, either to hold us back on the edge of the fall, or to ask for forgiveness after the fall]. “Then, I’ll look up; / My fault is past” (once forgiven, I can look up, raise my head, my fault is passed, in the past). “But, O! what form of prayer / Can serve my turn? “Forgive me my foul murder”? / That cannot be [Hélas, quelle forme de prière peut servir mon sort? “Pardonne-­moi mon crime immonde”? Cela ne peut être].” And the rest of the speech follows this logic of the impossible, namely, that he can’t ask for forgiveness given that the crime as it were continues, for he continues to enjoy the profits of the crime: “I am still possess’d / Of those effects for which I did the murder, / . . . May one be pardon’d and retain the offence? [Peut-­on être pardonné alors qu’on retient l’offense, qu’on profite du crime?].” And so Claudius, whose interior, most interior avowal — ­although an avowal must not remain interior — ­is impeccable in its lucidity and devoid of self-­indulgence, cites the suspect cases (which he’ll have nothing to do with) in which profiting from the crime allows pardon to be obtained, in reality allowing a pardon to be bought from the law (“buys out the law”). That’s how it goes in the world, but not in our relations with the one on high, before whom we have to confess, admit our wrongs. What remains then: “What then? What rests? / Try what repentance can: what can it not? / Yet what can it, when one cannot repent? [Alors quoi? Que reste-­t-­il? Essayer le repentir? Que ne peut-­il en effet (repentance is all-­powerful), mais que peut-­il, le repentir, quand on ne peut pas se repentir?” In short, Claudius complains, to himself, for not being able to repent and ask for forgiveness. Not for not being able to be forgiven for the unforgivable but for not being able to pray, repent, and beg forgiveness, hence to find the succor and salvation that all-­powerful repentance would bring him (something he implicitly suspects, then, of being a prevarication, a ruse, a cowardly way out). And nevertheless he will end by falling to his knees, at the end of his soliloquy, just before Hamlet’s entrance; he’ll fall to his knees asking the angels to help him bend his aged knees. Such is the double scene of the unforgivable among father, stepfather, and son, among the two kings and the prince, among the specter of the father, the specter of the specter of the father, his brother, and their son. If you were to take it further, you could put this scene into comparison with the following one (3.4), where another paradoxy of forgiveness is in play between mother and son, when Hamlet, who finds it so hard to forgive his mother, asks her for forgiveness, but asks her for forgiveness not for some wrong but for some good. Indeed, he asks her to forgive his enjoining her to admit, to repent, and ask for forgiveness. He says to her: “Con-

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fess yourself to heaven; / Repent what’s past; [Confessez-­vous devant Dieu, Repentez-­vous du passé] avoid what is to come; [évitez l’avenir de ce qui vient: in other words, in repenting transform yourself, change the course of things to come, and that’s what repentance is, it’s not only something from the past] / And do not spread the compost on the weeds / To make them ranker [that’s really beautiful: et ne répandez pas l’engrais sur la mauvaise herbe pour la rendre plus foisonnante: that is, sterilize evil by means of repentance and requested forgiveness].” And it is at that moment that Hamlet himself asks his mother for forgiveness, forgiveness for asking her to ask for forgiveness. He asks her to forgive his asking her to ask for forgiveness. In other words he asks her to forgive his speaking the language of virtue: “Forgive me this my virtue; / For in the fatness of these pursy times / Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, [Pardonnez-­moi ma vertu, car dans la grasse obscénité de ces temps, these times of full mouths, la vertu elle-­même doit demander pardon au vice, and ask it on bended knee — ­bowing before it — ­to do it good] Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good” (which also reflects perhaps, inverting it, the preceding scene where Claudius gets down on his knees; in any case the time out of joint,20 the time perverted and corrupted, “dishonored”21 as Gide translates it, is the time that is no longer itself, that runs backward out of sin or crime, and makes it so that it is virtue that has to ask vice to forgive it, and here it is the son who must ask the guilty mother to forgive him for asking her to ask for forgiveness). Finally, and then I’ll have finished with this programmatic parenthesis,22 if you reread Hamlet to the end as a treatise on forgiveness, its symmetries and dissymmetries, always within a parental configuration, then you encounter act 5, scene 2, the scene of the duel between Laertes and Hamlet, where the latter begins by asking Laertes for forgiveness (for murdering his father), but — ­and this is a good introduction to what we’ll say shortly, or next time, about the relation between forgiveness and excuse — ­having asked for forgiveness, he also excuses himself, he exculpates himself by explaining that he hasn’t offended Laertes because he isn’t Hamlet, because Hamlet isn’t Hamlet, Hamlet has taken leave of Hamlet. It isn’t Hamlet 20. [Translator’s note:] “Time out of joint” in English in typescript. 21. André Gide translates “the time is out of joint” by “cette époque est déshonorée” (Shakespeare, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 2 [Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959], 633). Derrida comments on this expression and Gide’s translation in Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, & the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 19–­2 0 [Spectres de Marx (Paris: Galilée, 1993), 44–45]. 22. Derrida is still within the parenthesis opened earlier (see note 13 above).

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who acted, but Hamlet’s madness, which is Hamlet’s enemy, of a Hamlet who then disavows what he avows, denies, disclaims,23 deflecting the fault onto his double, Hamlet the madman. In avowing he disavows, asks for forgiveness, excuses himself [s’excuse]:24 “Give me your pardon, sir; I’ve done you wrong; [Accordez-­moi votre pardon, Monsieur, je vous ai fait du tort] / But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman [Mais pardonnez-­le]” (Forgive me, forgive it: a “what,” a fault; and between the “who” and the “what,” between the two, will be the Hamlet who is different from himself. He who has done that, who must then be forgiven, isn’t the real Hamlet; the real Hamlet must be forgiven, the real Hamlet, forgiving him that thing that the other Hamlet, his mad double, has done).25 And in order to “disclaim” (to reject) his fault, Hamlet must “proclaim,” declare, his madness. “What I have done, / . . . I here proclaim was madness. / Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? [Est-­ce Hamlet qui a fait du tort à Laertes?] Never Hamlet: [ Jamais, jamais Hamlet] / If Hamlet from himself be ta’en away, / And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, / Then Hamlet does it not [Si Hamlet est enlevé à lui-­même et s’il n’est pas lui-­même quand il fait du tort à Laertes, alors ce n’est pas lui qui le fait . . . / Who does it then? His madness [Alors qui le fait? Sa folie].” Hamlet will invert things once more and not only exculpate himself, excuse himself for the crime for which he began by asking for forgiveness, but also push the inversion — ­another inversion — ­to the point of posing as the victim of the crime himself, putting himself on the side of those given offense, those who will have been wronged. “If ’t be so, / Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d [s’il en est ainsi, Hamlet (he now speaks of himself in the third person) est au nombre des offensés, he belongs to the faction of victims, among the plaintiffs26 (and this is the movement by which an accused in fact demands to be complainant and plaintiff; it’s Hamlet who files a complaint against Hamlet, against the madness that has divided him, divided his name and responsibility)] / His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy [Sa folie est l’ennemie du pauvre Hamlet] / Sir, in this audience, / Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil [Monsieur, devant cette assemblée, que je 23. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript. 24. During the session, Derrida adds: “s’excuse, as one says,” adding “we’ll often come back to this expression s’excuser: not asking to be excused by someone but excusing oneself, which is very impolite in French. One doesn’t excuse oneself because, when one excuses oneself, well, one is excusing oneself for a wrong. That is something one must not do. We’ll see the terrible machinery of this s’excuser.” 25. Here and below, see Bonnefoy translation, 207. 26. The typescript includes the interlinear annotation “Hamlet” here.

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désavoue tout mal intentionnel, every malicious, bad intention, every premeditated crime].” And at that point he calls Laertes his brother, saying to him “Free me [Remettez-­moi, liberate me, release me — ­this is the biblical expression for forgiveness, remission, the unbinding of the fault] so far in your most generous thoughts, / That I have shot mine arrow o’er the house, / And hurt my brother [Soyez donc assez généreux pour m’acquitter, pour me délier, me libérer de ma faute, comme si, tirant ma flèche par-­dessus la maison (comment on the family),27 j’avais blessé mon frère (accidentally, something excusable therefore)].” So Laertes says he is satisfied, his filial nature appeased — ­the filial sentiment that inspired in him a desire for vengeance — ­and I’ll let you read this extraordinary scene up to the moment where it is accented by reciprocal pardons, by the exchange of forgiveness between two who are thenceforth brothers, two orphan brothers because they have both lost their father as a result of a crime. They become brothers, brothers not by blood but by bond [alliance], following the forgiveness, and through the exchange of pardons, mutual forgiveness for the murder of the father. Following the moment of “poison,” for this scene of forgiveness is a scene poisoned by poison itself, and everyone dies poisoned, all the parents are dead, Hamlet’s father, mother, and stepfather having just died, poisoned, and as he is about to die, Laertes says to Hamlet ,“Exchange forgiveness with me [Échangeons nos pardons, exchange your pardon with me, with mine, then, yours for mine], noble Hamlet: / Mine and my father’s death come not upon thee, / Nor thine on me [Que ma mort ni celle de mon père ne retombent sur toi, ni la tienne sur moi].”28 All the deaths, all the murders are to be forgiven in this exchange. And fraternity owed to a bond, if I can call it that, symbolic fraternity, will be sealed in death, surely; but before that death and as that death, as death, moment of death, it will be sealed in this exchange of pardons for the murder of all the parents, first all the fathers, here the three fathers, one being only a surrogate, the supplement of the other, and, in their substitution and mortal enjoyment turning around the wife, mother, sister, stepsister, 27. During the session, Derrida adds: “this is another family story. Over the house I shot an arrow, and wounded my brother (“I have shot mine arrow o’er the house, And hurt my brother”). In other words, all that has been provoked by madness, and it’s an accident, is as if I’d shot an arrow over the house, our house (it’s the economy of the family), and then that arrow, by accident, has wounded whom? My brother . “And hurt my brother” , mon frère.” 28. Hamlet 5.2 [Bonnefoy 213–­14].

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and stepmother, for when Laertes becomes Hamlet’s brother, his orphan sister (Ophelia) becomes Hamlet’s stepsister, etc. Now what does Hamlet reply to Laertes, as he also is dying? Not “I forgive you,” “I exchange my forgiveness with you, mine for yours,” but “may heaven forgive you! [be forgiven!].” And for reasons that matter to us here, that amounts to the same thing. “I forgive you” must mean “I pray that God will forgive you; be forgiven”: “Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee [I follow you into death].”29 There, abandoning you with Hamlet, I close the parenthesis and come back to the mother’s curse in Baudelaire, at the beginning of “Benediction”: When, by decree of the great powers on high, The Poet comes to this bored [keep in mind this word, which I’ve underlined, we’ll come back to it in a moment] world, his mother Dismayed, aghast, breaks out in blasphemy And shakes her fist at God, who pities her: — ­“Ah, why did I not spawn a nest of vipers Rather than nurse this mockery of a thing! Cursed be the night of my ephemeral pleasures When my belly conceived this penance for my sin!”30

Read what follows up until the reversal, when the poet speaks in turn to oppose a benediction to his mother’s malediction. He also addresses God, like Augustine, and the God he blesses is also a merciful God — ­who forgives and has us expiate to save, redeem, cure (like a remedy) our sins of impurity, to purify the impurity (heilen, heilig, as the German would say: sacredness, holiness, salvation) — ­a God who, in order to save in this way, makes a place for poetic writing, for the poet:

29. End of parenthesis opened on 120. The typescript has a marginal annotation: “Kafka, p. 12” (see 131n38 below). 30. Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil, 8–­9 [Mortimer has “dull” for ennuyé] [Fleurs, 83]: Lorsque, par un décret des puissances suprêmes, Le Poëte apparaît en ce monde ennuyé, Sa mère épouvantée et pleine de blasphèmes Crispe ses poings vers Dieu, qui la prend en pitié:  — ­«Ah ! [dit-­elle] que n’ai-­je mis bas tout un nœud de vipères, Plutôt que de nourrir cette dérision! Maudite soit la nuit aux plaisirs éphémères Où mon ventre a conçu mon expiation!»

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To Heaven, where he sees a shining throne, The Poet lifts his pious arms; the light And the vast flashes of his lucid mind Cancel the raging nations from his sight:  — ­“Be blessed, O God, who offers suffering As heavenly cure for our impurities, And as the finest and the purest essence To train the strong for holy ecstasies! I know that for the Poet you have kept A place among the legions of the holy, Amid the Thrones and Virtues and Dominions, Bidden to share in the eternal feast. . . .”31

I’ll leave you to read what follows, and I’ll pick up on the allusion to a “mystic crown.” What is Baudelaire doing by writing that? What do this poet and this poem do? On the one hand, no doubt, Baudelaire, the poet, signatory of this poem, identifies with this Poet who says to God, “I know that you keep a place for the poet . . .” etc. This poet from a Christian tradition addresses a merciful God, this poet belonging to this profoundly Christian tradition of poetics or of literature, within which poetic writing, the poēma, accomplishes as it were the act of expiation, reconciliation, redemption, forgiveness, benediction, etc. It’s already very complicated — ­and this complication is what counts for us above all else here — ­because this “quasi-­forgiving [quasi-­ pardonnance]” (I’m going to use this word pardonnance from here on, this 31. Baudelaire, Flowers of  Evil, 12–­13 [Mortimer has “blessed” for second occurrence of saintes] [Fleurs, 84–­85]: Vers le Ciel, où son œil voit un trône splendide, Le Poëte serein lève ses bras pieux, Et les vastes éclairs de son esprit lucide Lui dérobent l’aspect des peuples furieux:  — ­«Soyez béni, mon Dieu, qui donnez la souffrance Comme un divin remède à nos impuretés Et comme la meilleure et la plus pure essence Qui prépare les forts aux saintes voluptés! Je sais que vous gardez une place au Poëte Dans les rangs bienheureux des saintes Légions, Et que vous l’invitez à l’éternelle fête Des Trônes, des Vertus, des Dominations . . . »

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middle voice — ­to designate everything in the process including the forgiveness requested, the forgiveness granted, the one forgiven, the one who forgives, along with all the motifs inscribed there: expiation, repentance, redemption, salvation, reconciliation, etc. — ­the middle voice letting it be understood that this forgiving,32 this situation of forgiveness, this effect of forgiveness, can take place where no one, no present subject is any longer presently there to forgive or to be forgiven; and in fact that poses the question of the testament, of spectrality, of the trace, and especially of the becoming-­literary or -­poetic of this testamentary and textual trace that seems to function all on its own, by itself, in the absence of its producers, like a machine), because, as I was saying, this quasi-­forgiving can have its place only in what we’ll here call the “poem” ( poēma and not poiēsis, the poetic act or act of the poetic signature, the act), but what remains, the remaining trace, precarious, finite but surviving, the text that, automatically, like a quasi-­machine, can reproduce forgiveness where neither the guilty party to be forgiven nor the forgiving victim is there any longer, presently living, no longer “being-­there” in the Living Present.33 I’m already insisting on mēkhanē, on the machine, but also on mēkhanē as theatrical ruse of the mechanical in the form of anticipation, in view of the moment when, in the course of a reading of Rousseau, we shall analyze a type of machination, a type of automaticity of excuse or of forgiveness, of excusing oneself, forgiving oneself, exculpating oneself that is tied to writing or to performativity, to textual pragmatics, to the act of writing as well as what remains of it. In confessing, in asking for forgiveness, I excuse, exculpate myself. In excusing myself, I am sorry [  je m’excuse]. . . . But, on the other hand, through the poetic act and experience that I just mentioned, which bears witness to a religious, even mystical, almost liturgical adherence implied by praying for forgiveness, Baudelaire (and you know that Baudelaire is also the author of a prose poem, in Paris Spleen, whose title is “The Artist’s Confiteor,” which ironically mimics and cites — ­parody without parodying — ­the so-­called usual prayer of the Cath-

32. [Translator’s note:] I italicize “forgiving” henceforth where Derrida uses pardonnance. 33. During the session, Derrida adds: “associating Heideggerian language with Husserlian language: Forgiving [ pardonnance] beyond the being-­there and beyond the living-­present.” See Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon: Introduction to the Problem of the Sign in Husserl’s Phenomenology, trans. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2010) [La Voix et le phénomène. Introduction au problème du signe dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris: PUF, 1967)].

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olic liturgy: “Confiteor Deo omnipotenti . . . et vobis, fratres . . . mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa [I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers . . . my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault],”34 etc. (and take particular note of the double destination: the receivers are both God and one’s brothers, and that is the whole history of forgiveness requested and of confessional witnessing as an act turned toward God but simultaneously toward men, and this history is the history both coupled and unjoined of revelation and of literature, of writing having a religious ascendance but which, as supplement to revelation, also liberates itself from revelation, adds itself to it and replaces it, and which must then ask, at least implicitly, for forgiveness for this blasphemous or even desacralizing emancipation). On the other hand, as I was saying, through the poetic act and experience that I just mentioned, which bears witness to a religious, even mystical, almost liturgical adherence implied by praying for forgiveness, Baudelaire designates, or even, in a sort of painfully ironic twist, denounces this still Christian adherence of the poetic or poematic. And you know to what extent Baudelaire remained, as much as a he was a Christian poet, a poet of Satanic revolt — ­or even of revolution — ­against this Christian destination for culture. But that isn’t our topic. So he is caught in an abyssal and automatic forgiving: on one hand, inasmuch as he identifies with the Poet about whom “Benediction” speaks in allegorical terms (“I know that for the Poet you have kept a place . . .”), but on the other hand, inasmuch as, exceeding or transgressing Christianity by his very denunciation of that identification, he analyzes and describes, affirms this figure of the Christian poet, he blasphemes against Christianity, still needing to ask for forgiveness from it, automatically, machinically, for speaking ill of Christian forgiveness. One is always asking for forgiveness when one writes, I wrote a long time ago, I no longer remember where.35 I invite you also to read closely, even before “Benediction,” the very first dedicatory poem entitled “To the Reader.” There you will find everything, everything we are talking about, evil, sin, the Devil and Satan, but while I’ll 34. See https://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=1777 [Bréviaire romain latin-­ français, ed Pierre Jounel (Paris-­Tournai, Desclée & Cie, 1965), 24]. Cf. Baudelaire, “The Artist’s Confiteor,” in Paris Spleen: Little Poems in Prose, trans. Keith Waldrop (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012), 7 [Le Spleen de Paris, in Oeuvres com­plètes, 284]. 35. Derrida, “Circumfession,” in Geoffrey Bennington and Derrida, Jacques Derrida, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 46 [“Circonfession,” 47]. See 41n68 above.

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let you go and see that for yourselves, I’ll have you note two traits or rather two angles and two folds. First fold or rictus (for it also refers to a fold in the lip). Baudelaire doesn’t fail first of all to denounce a terrible calculus in forgiving, an economy that is concealed under the sublime mask of repentance or avowal (“avowal [aveu]” is an extraordinary word that I haven’t uttered until now, but which we’ll very soon come back to at some length).36 There is supposedly in repentance and in avowal a strategy, a speculative machine, a source of revenue or surplus value. One always seeks to gain, one is always looking for profit, and a favor [bienfait] is a profit [bénéfice]; one always seeks to enrich oneself by asking for forgiveness, by avowing and repenting. Listen to these few opening lines, where the figures of labor and nourishing the body resonate — ­in a significant way with what I am here calling the sublating economy of repentance, remorse, and avowal — ­between mind and spirit, as you’ll hear, for this economy is physico-­spiritual, material and spiritual, it is the very spiritualization, idealization, idealizing interiorization of surplus value, and that is why I speak of a sublating [relevante] economy (aufhebend, “mercy seasons [relève] justice”): Folly and error, avarice and vice Busy our minds and sap our bodies’ force; We feed our pleasant feelings of remorse [remorse is pleasant (aimable), we are pleased and complacent in the mirror of remorse, we excuse ourselves in accusing ourselves, we take morbid delight in it, we love remorse, we love to bite ourselves again (nous remordre), to take another bite at evil in remorse, in the narcissistic enjoyment of remorse, etc.] Like itchy beggars nourishing their lice. [earlier there was “feeding,” here “nourishing”: it is a question of making bad conscience live, of maintaining it, maintaining guilt in itself like a vital parasite, an indispensable supplement, a parergonal hors d’oeuvre,37 like lice [vermine]:

36. [Translator’s note:] In fact, Derrida has selectively used the word aveu, which I have usually translated as “avowal,” but sometimes as “confession,” since the beginning of the seminar (see 9, 36 above); and he has already used it in relation to Claudius in this session (122). He uses the verb avouer more commonly than the noun aveu, and I have translated the former as “to admit” or “to confess” where those English words seem to be what we would more readily use, and only sometimes as “to avow.” 37. [Translator’s note:] Hors d’oeuvre means literally “outside the work,” and, in conjunction with “parergonal,” recalls the analyses in Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

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“vermin” is also Kafka’s father’s word of reproach toward his son — ­in the mouth of his son — ­for parasiting like a louse (Ungeziefer).]38 Stubborn in sin and cowards in repentance, We make confession [nos aveux] for a lavish pay Then go back gaily to the muddy way, As if cheap tears could wash out all our stains. On evil’s pillow Satan Trismegist Lulls with long murmurs the enchanted soul,39 [comment on each word]40 (Read right to the end.)

In any case, one finds there the analytical and genealogical denunciation (in a style that could be compared to that of Nietzsche) of an avowal, a repentance, and a remorse, of a moral conscience, which are in fact merely ruses of life, supplementary lies to be cashed in, to be handsomely [ grassement] paid, in order to fatten up [s’engraisser] on repentance and forgiveness. The calculus of this speculation is no more an empirical or material or psycho-­libidinal economy than it is a spiritual or sublime one: this calculus is an idealization, the very spiritualization, interiorization and estheticization, the poetization of evil, the flower, the becoming-­flower of evil. And that is what Baudelaire does by saying it, what he signs in denouncing it,

38. See Kafka, Letter/Brief, 111/226 [“Lettre au père,” 210]. 39. Baudelaire, “To the Reader,” Flowers of Evil, 4–­5, Derrida’s emphasis: La sottise, l’erreur [Derrida’s typescript has aveu], le péché, la lésine, Occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps, Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords, Comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine Nos péchés sont têtus, nos repentirs sont lâches; Nous nous faisons payer grassement nos aveux [During the session, Derrida adds here: “It’s always the same metaphor of “greasing,” isn’t it?] Et nous rentrons gaiement dans le chemin bourbeux, Croyant par de vils pleurs laver toutes nos taches. Sur l’oreiller du mal c’est Satan Trismégiste Qui berce longuement notre esprit enchanté . . .   40. During the session, Derrida adds: “One could comment on each word. On one’s ‘pillow’ then, the soft pillow [l’oreiller molle [sic], mol oreiller], sleep is fed. On one’s pillow one rests from evil, one comes on the pillow of evil with ‘Satan Trismegist’ who ‘cradles for a long time,’ as a mother cradles a suckling child.”

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what he poeticizes in exhibiting it further as poem, in forgiving, beyond forgiving. He isn’t giving away any bouquets [ne fait pas de fleurs]. He doesn’t just devote himself to flowers of evil, he shows and analyzes them. But in order to go after the forgiving of religious spiritualism in this way one has to be ashamed of shame itself, and of repentance and forgiveness; and not only ashamed of that shame, but ashamed of being ashamed of that shame. For as soon as one critiques a logic of forgiveness, a Biblio-­Koranic, and here Christian, logic of forgiveness and mercy, as soon as one speaks ill of that logic, which is a logic of sin and originary shame, one cannot not be required to have oneself forgiven for that aggression, and cannot not find oneself at fault, in a situation of having to be forgiven for not forgiving forgiveness . . . This abyss, this infinite regress is inscribed in the forgiving itself: I can be free of forgiveness, I can abandon forgiveness only by cultivating a supplementary guilt that impels me to ask for forgiveness from the religion of forgiveness for the perjury or betrayal that I have thereby owned up to. Even if by some leap I then clear my name and sing the praises of absolute innocence (in the style of a certain Nietzsche . . .),41 then that innocence will have already registered the memory, the weight of the memory of the fault that it has freed itself from, and for which, once again, it will have forgiven itself. But the opposite is immediately true, for if I can’t find my way out, if even my abandoning biblical forgiving obliges me to ask for forgiveness (at least implicitly) and faults me even before I have lifted my little finger, then I am made innocent by the machine itself, by the fact that guilt is automatic. Since I am accused a priori, even before having done anything and without doing anything, I am then excused by that very apriority: originary innocence is the indissociable correlate of originary guilt. Whence the profound and specular identity of discourses on originary guilt (Augustine, Kant, Kier­ kegaard, and Heidegger, despite their differences, as we saw last week)42 and seemingly opposite ones, such as Nietzsche’s on the innocence of becoming and the affirmative lightness of dance,43 on the light yes of dancing, of an affirmative dance step in opposition to the weight of Christian responsibility and the heavy Ja Ja of the Christian or Abrahamic ass bending under 41. [Translator’s note:] This and previous ellipsis in typescript. 42. Allusion to the restricted session of January 21, 1998. 43. During the session, Derrida adds: “in the Genealogy of Morality.” Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 82–­83 [Nietzsche, La Généalogie de la morale, Oeuvres philosophiques complètes, vol. 7, trans. Jean Gratien, Cornelius Heim, and Isabelle Hildenbrand (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 231].

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the weight of duty.44 In the final analysis perhaps all of those mentioned have the same discourse (at least that of a Protestant or neo-­Lutheran tonality, which is factually true for those I just cited); and that is the case even if none of them sees or takes into account the machine, the machination that programs this specular identification of two seemingly opposite discourses. For this fatal law is also that of a mechanism, an automatism, or even a deus ex machina that implacably and mercilessly reproduces evil and  forgiving. I insist strongly on this expression, at least on the word “machine,” for reasons that will emerge later. And because we are dealing with an appeasing and terrifying machine that both renders innocent a priori — ­washing away our shame and remitting our sins a priori — ­and nevertheless, all the same, however, while doing that impels us, for that very reason, to ask for forgiveness for forgiveness, or, according to a formula from Augustine that we’ll work our way toward, to be ashamed of shame itself (that, in any case, is how it has been translated in a sentence that says precisely: one is ashamed of being shameful, one is ashamed of the shame in the sense that “one is ashamed of being without shame, of being immodest, being ashamed in the sense of immodest [et pudet non esse impudentem]” (II.ix.17).45 It is between these two formulations from Augustine that we are shuttling today: paenitet te et non doles (“you repent without suffering”)46 addressed to God, and that of the guilty man (at the end of a story that we’ll come to); and pudet non esse impudentem. There is the forgiveness machine, and yet there is in the absolute vocation of forgiveness the demand not to cede in any circumstances to a machinal calculation, to any technique, to be the pure spontaneous movement of the heart, of the soul’s intention, before and outside any technical repetition. 2. Second fold. There is something worse than this wrong that gets “economized” in this way in this machine (see elsewhere, in Fusées,47 the critique 44. See Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Adrian del Caro and Robert Pippin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 253–­54 [Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, Oeuvres philosophiques complètes, vol. 6, trans. Maurice de Gandillac (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 335–­38]. On the Ja Ja in Nietzsche see, among other places, “Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce,” in Derrida, Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge (London: Routledge, 1992), 256–­309 [Derrida, Ulysse gramophone suivi de Deux mots pour Joyce (Paris: Galilée, 1987), 118ff.]. 45. Augustine, Confessions I: “it is shameful to be anything but shameless” (86–­ 87/358). 46. Augustine, Confessions I, 8, 9/280. 47. During the session, Derrida adds: “this text that I read in another seminar.” See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Le secret” (“Répondre — ­du secret”), EHESS, 1991–­ 92, first session.

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of progress and money, of American capitalism and Americanization, etc.: “The world will end”).48 What is worse than all these wrongs and the fact that repentance or forgiveness merely capitalizes on, economizes, spirits away the faults or crimes is perhaps the particular evil, the original suffering engendered by our knowledge of this machinal, mechanical, automatic neutralization of the forgiving, of the tradition — ­ethico-­religious, biblical, Christian especially — ­of evil and of expiation, our knowledge of this equivalence between forgiveness and nonforgiveness, of guilt and innocence, of trust and lying, of benediction and malediction, of the malediction of the mother and the benediction of the son. This neutralizing equivalence positions us a priori in hypocrisy, in comedy, in the painful fatality of the actor who wears a mask (which is what “hypocrite” means). Baudelaire gives a name to this suffering, this supreme evil, which would no longer be a fault, which would be worse than a fault. He puts it in uppercase, capitalizes it as if it were an allegory or a person. This name is historical, both because it has a history that began before Baudelaire’s poem and because, after Baudelaire, it will give rise to powerful analyses (for example in Heidegger);49 historical also because it designates a humor, a pathos, a historically marked affect. This isn’t the Romantic scourge of the age [mal du siècle]; it is Boredom [Ennui]. We have to think Ennui, if we are to read accurately this word at the end of the dedicatory poem “To the Reader,” constituting its final stanza. We have to think this Ennui as the absolutely specific, determinate affect that could be engendered only in a Christian European well schooled in the machinery of sin and forgiveness, as the expert and sharpened, cultivated certainty of this general, neutralizing, leveling (and consequently as exhausted as it is exhausting) equivalence. Forgiveness died, even before the death camps (to cite once again Jankélévitch’s terms, unless it be that the death camps belong historically to the same epoch as the Boredom that Baudelaire speaks of, as do Heidegger and several others, which is a hypothesis — ­full of sense concerning non-­sense — ­that could be deployed). It is remarkable that this naming, this appellation “Ennui,” which I am going 48. Baudelaire, Fusées, in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Yves-­Gérard Le Dantec (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1954), 1203ff., my translation [DW]. 49. See Heidegger’s University of Freiburg im Breisgau seminar from 1929–­30, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. William McNeill and Nicholas Walker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) [Les concepts fondamentaux de la métaphysique: Monde, Finitude, Solitude, trans. Daniel Panis (Paris: Gallimard, 1992)]. The theme of boredom will be the subject of extensive discussion in Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, vol. 2, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 64, 69–­73, 111ff. [Bête et souverain, vol. 2, 105, 112–­16, 167ff.].

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to read, belongs within an apostrophe, an address to the reader as to a brother (to be compared again with Augustine’s Christian scene),50 and a hypocrite brother, who is my kindred spirit [semblable] only by sharing not my faith but my hypocrisy. I’ll pick it up a little before the final stanza: In the villainous menagerie of our vices, Is one more ugly, wicked and foul! Who does not shout or make some great commotion, Yet with a yawn would swallow all creation And happily reduce the earth to dust; This is Ennui! With a reluctant tear, He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah. You know him, reader, this fastidious monster  — ­Hypocrite reader — ­kindred spirit — ­brother!51

Always fraternity in the boredom of  forgiving [ pardonnance]. This address itself is blasphemous, it quotes the Christian brother’s address to his fellow man — ­to his brother who is like him as the sons of God are created in the image of the father — ­but by accusing, self-­accusing accusing the other, the kindred spirit, of lying, of hiding behind a mask, of giving in to the sin of hypocrisy. For this Ennui, which is going to mark a new element of writing, a new poetics, a new ethics of the testamentary poem (and this will be the historic element of all of Baudelaire’s oeuvre, 50. In the typescript the annotation “and Hamlet” appears above the word “scene.” During the session, Derrida adds: “when he justifies the fact that he addresses God even though God knows everything: ‘why am I going to confess before you, God, you who know everything?’ Well, when he explains — ­we were interested in that spectacle elsewhere — ­well, he justifies that by the fact that one also has to address one’s brothers who are going to be able to love God more and convert, etc.” See Derrida, “Circumfession,” 3, 8, 16–­18 [“Circonfession,” 7, 11, 19]; and Derrida, “Composing ‘Circumfession,’ ” in John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, eds., Augustine and Postmodernism: Confessions and Circumfession (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005) [“En composant ‘Circonfession,’” trans. Pierre-­Emmanuel Dauzat, in Des Confessions: Jacques Derrida et Saint Augustin, ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlan (Paris: Stock, 2007), 52–­53. 51. Cf. Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, 6 (trans. modified) [Fleurs, 82]: “Dans la ménagerie infâme de nos vices, / Il en est un plus laid, plus méchant, plus immonde ! / Quoiqu’il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris, / Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris, / Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde; / C’est l’Ennui! — ­l’œil chargé d’un pleur involontaire, / Il rêve d’échafauds en fumant son houka. / Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat, /  — ­Hypocrite lecteur, — ­mon semblable, — ­mon frère!” For the first two lines quoted, Mortimer has “The chief among the vices in our zoo / Is one more foul, more vicious than the rest.”

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another literature that begins, that of our time, of Modernity, that painted by “The Painter of Modern Life”),52 the Ennui beyond good and evil, beyond guilt and innocence, beyond forgiveness, expiation, salvation, reconciliation, etc., this Ennui is still a wrong, a vice — ­Baudelaire says it explicitly (quote)53 — ­it is even the worst of all, and so the most unforgivable, the one that, fault beyond fault, must still make us ashamed, but this time for not being ashamed, because boredom goes beyond good and evil. One must be ashamed for being impudent, ashamed for being ashamed, for being shamefully impudent, for not being ashamed of one’s shame, etc. One must be ashamed for going beyond good and evil, even if it is in order to analyze the genealogy of morality; there you have the most perverse of machines. Another literature, another poetics, another testament . . . 54 I am still on my second point.55 You perhaps remember that I announced that I would insist on this word “mercy” for at least three types of reason: (1) First, as example. In an exemplary manner, in fact, this word would call, on our part, for a patient and interminable genealogical, semantic, philological study of the history of this Latin term and concept in the Christian tradition; a study that we won’t be capable of, not here directly, in this seminar. (2) Mercy as the very focus of Augustine’s Confessions and the very essence of the God before whom he is summoned, avows, repents, prays, writes, etc. We will have some examples of that shortly. In the same way, as I was saying, we could dedicate an endless seminar on pardon and perjury to Kafka, Proust, Celan, Kierkegaard, Kant, and many many others, as well as to the author of The Flowers of Evil to whom I alluded at the beginning. That is how I got involved in these long digressions on Baudelaire and Hamlet, whom I had to connect here. I just wanted to indicate that this whole problematic, and the whole reading that it required of us, goes by way of a reflection on forgiveness, on the history and genealogy of forgiveness in and beyond a culture.

52. See Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” in The Painter of Modern Life, trans. P. E. Charvet (London: Penguin Books, 2010), 8–­9 4 [“Peintre de la vie moderne,” in Oeuvres complètes, 881–­920], in particular “Modernity” (31–­38/891–­9 5). 53. During the session, Derrida again quotes these lines: “In the villainous menagerie of our vices . . . is Ennui!” 54. [Translator’s note:]: Ellipsis in typescript. 55. See 117–18 above.

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It is all too evident that Augustine’s Confessions, that book on divine mercy, of divine mercy, should occupy a central place in this library of forgiveness. There again, it is up to you to do the work. I now come to my third point, namely: (3) The work I will take on myself is the following: to locate and interpret the first occurrence of this word “mercy” in the Confessions (what is mercy, as essence of the Christian god? For if the words “confession,” confiteor, and “repent” belong to Augustine’s lexicon, quite clearly, the word “forgiveness” never appears as such as far as I know). On the basis of what never­ theless constitutes, in the Latin noun misericordia, the topos of forgiveness, I propose following some sequences in the Confessions themselves, such as will lead us both to Rousseau’s Confessions, and, in the same movement, to sketch out the first version of a problematic of the difference between forgiveness and excuse, which is also to say the presumed difference — ­I indeed say “presumed,” supposed to be attested to and proven — ­between an Abrahamic culture of forgiveness and a more Greek culture that supposedly overlooks forgiveness, knowing only a syngnomic56 rationality that explains and justifies, closer to excuse. Let’s leave that perspective in the distance of a certain future for the moment, but I did want to announce it, as I wanted to announce that we won’t avoid, when the time comes, reading both the gospels (Luke and Matthew especially) and Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, those fundamental if not founding texts concerning the history of forgiveness. And first, concerning the history of this mercy that is precisely found at the heart, if I might say, of the history of forgiveness, indeed of history qua forgiveness (Hegel).57 For when Augustine — ­in whose case we are going to sketch out a more internal reading, if you will — ­no doubt signs and appropriates the word “mercy,” in order to give it a shape, figure, and movement, or indeed an original doctrine, he is inheriting the word, he is already finding it richly endowed with a history, hence with a memory and an immensely rich archive, constituted by a considerable density of semantic strata like so many bodies and corpora in different languages, and hence corpora of eventful translations from Hebrew to Greek, from Greek to Latin, each of those languages depositing into the semantic memory of the word multiple meanings and hence interpretative decisions the study of which would all by itself demand many years of seminars. 56. During the session, Derrida writes and specifies: “I say ‘syngnomic’ because the Greek word that is going to guide us is syngnōmē; we’ll get to that later.” 57. See Derrida, Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, Fourth Session (141–­72).

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Restricting myself here to some minimal indications, I’ll recall that in Hebrew, for example,58 there would be at least three word families that enter into the composition of what will be stabilized in the gospels of Luke and Matthew as discourses on the divine mercy that is to become the paternal and celestial model of human (filial and terrestrial) mercy: (1) hēn,59 grace, hannāh, grace or request (name of the prophet Samuel’s mother, and of the prophetess Anna who introduced Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem; cf. Luke 2: 36), and the verb hnh means “to show mercy”;60 (2) hesed,61 translated into Greek in the Septuagint as eleos, which in Greek means “pity, compassion,”62 and renders all fidelity among friends, relatives, or allies, but which has come to designate succor (mercies) from God and God’s faithfulness, his Covenant with his people, this term comes to designate the confidence or trust of the man who gives himself over to God, faithful to God’s faithfulness, in response to the divine hesed; the word hasidim derives from it; (3) finally, rāham: to love and show compassion; raḥamim, love, pity (plural of rāḥam, reḥem: the maternal breast; emotion, affection); raḥamim becomes a synonym for hesed in pre-­Christian Judaism, with, as its first sense, “entrails,” which will link up with the “heart” of misericordia; it is supposedly found in Nehemiah, but I couldn’t locate it.63 It is noteworthy for the definition of God as mercy that the Latin translation of the Vulgate uses the verb misereor (miserebor, cui voluero, et clemens ero, in quem mihi placuerit [and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy]: abbreviated to miserebor, voluero, clemens mihi placuerit) to translate, in Exodus 33:19: “And he said, I will make all good58. During the session, Derrida adds: “a Hebrew that I don’t know, but that I am learning to approach indirectly.” 59. For these Hebrew terms, see Pierre Miquel, Agnès Egron and Paula Picard, Les Mots-­clés de la Bible. Révélation à Israël (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996), 125–­126, 128–­129, 222–­223. See also The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, 4 vols., ed. George Arthur Buttrick (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), held in Derrida’s library. 60. In the typescript Derrida writes “hana.” During the session he clarifies: “which is generally transcribed ‘h.a.n.a.’ ” Cf. La Bible: Nouveau Testament, trans. Grosjean and Léturmy, 180. [Translator’s note:] For transcriptions here and below, see sources given at 22n35 above. 61. During the session, Derrida adds: “better known, generally transcribed ‘h.e.s.e.d.’ ” 62. Cf. Septuaginta, ed. Alfred Rahlfs, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1965). 63. Nehemiah 9:17: “but thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness” [Dhorme, 1553].

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ness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.”64 That translates “weḥannōtî ’et ’ašer ’āḥōn” and “weriḥamettî ’et ’ašer ’araḥēm,” paraphrasing what God says to Moses: “Èhiè ashèr èhiè [i am that i am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, i am hath sent me unto you].”65 This movement authorizes the identification of God, of being, and of the being to come with God’s promise to be as mercy. Mercy is not one of God’s attributes among others: God is and will be mercy, he is having to be mercy, his being is, in the future, the promise of the Covenant as Mercy, as merciful grace. All the complex elements composing this semantics are going to enter into the composition of what will be stabilized in the gospels of Luke and Matthew as discourses on the divine mercy that is to become the paternal and celestial model of human (filial and terrestrial) mercy. One finds there a gold mine of sentences that we will read and reread one day: “Be ye therefore merciful [says Luke (6:36)], as your Father also is merciful.” This is where forgiveness for offenses and forgiving one’s enemies find their axiom, but it indeed seems that the imitation of divine mercy in the gospels, then in Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, does not reduce to compassion toward one’s neighbor or to forgiveness for offenses, but calls for reestablishing the Covenant with God planned for by the Old Covenant with Israel, which Jesus renews and humanizes, sensitizes, by becoming, as Paul says, his brothers’ fellow, “that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God” (Hebrews 2:17). (Just as Moses will have had, in the future, to say that he was sent by the (merciful) “I Am.”) And the Latin word misericordia is stabilized on the basis of the Vulgate Latin translation, which renders by misericordia, miseratio Dei, misereri, a whole hive of Greco-­Hebraic senses, notably Greek ones such as eleos, 64. Cf. Chouraqui (179): “Il dit: ‘Moi, je ferai passer tout mon bien sur tes faces, / je crie le nom de IhvH en face de toi; / je gracie qui je gracie, je matricie qui je matricie’ ”; Dhorme (273–­74): “Il dit: ‘Moi, je ferai passer tout ce que j’ai de bon devant toi et je prononcerai le nom de Iahvé devant toi. Je ferai grâce à qui je ferai grâce et j’aurai pitié de qui j’aurai pitié!’ ” 65. Exodus 3:14. Cf. Chouraqui (120): “Je serai, Èhiè, m’a envoyé vers vous”; Dhorme (182): “‘Je suis qui je suis!’ . . . Tu parleras ainsi aux fils d’Israël: Je Suis m’a envoyé vers vous!” (Derrida’s emphasis). During the session, Derrida adds: “And this tautology — ­‘I will be who I will be’ or ‘I am who I am’ will be recalled, as one may note, by the sentence ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.’ There it is: I am gracious to whom I am gracious and I am not gracious to whom I am not gracious. This tautology of divine self-­determination will be at the heart of this mercy, I do grace to whom I do grace.”

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which is clearly foreign to biblical language and designates the emotion felt when faced with another’s misfortune, pity, compassion, condolence. That can be found in Homer,66 and there was a goddess called Eleos, goddess of mercy, at Epidaurus. For now let’s come back to Augustine, whose usage of the word “mercy” seems to represent a relatively late but decisive moment, and who, while inheriting ancient philosophy (notably through Cicero), sets Stoicism aside and, in The City of God (Book IX, V), proposes a concept of mercy [misericordia] that has become almost canonical: “alienae miseriae quaedam in nostro corde compassio, qua utique si possumus subvenire compellimur [fellow-­feeling in our hearts for the suffering of others that in fact impels us to come to their aid as far as our ability allows].”67 (Read City of God, p. 169) 189

No doubt the Stoic practice is to condemn even pity [misericordia], but how much more honourable it would have been for the Stoic described by Aulus Gellius to be deeply moved by pity for a fellow-­creature in order to save him than by fear of being shipwrecked. Far better and more humane, and more in keeping with the feeling of religious men, were the words of Cic­ ero in praise of Caesar: “None of your virtues is more admirable or more welcome than pity.” But what is pity except a kind of fellow-­feeling in our own hearts for the sufferings of others that in fact impels us to come to their aid as far as our ability allows? This impulse is loyal to reason when pity is shown in such a way that justice suffers no encroachment, whether we show it by giving alms to the needy or by forgiving the penitent. Cicero, a man so distinguished for his use of language, did not hesitate to call pity a virtue, although the Stoics brazenly list it among the vices.68

You can easily see that what matters to me, and is guiding me in this barely preliminary phase of this introduction, is already the story of the history of forgiveness, I mean the testamentary text, the archival remaining [restance] of the text that, notably in the figure of the literary, of the becoming-­literary of poetic fiction, diverts and at the same time brings together the biblical in66. See Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), bk. 24, ll. 44–­45: “So Achilleus has destroyed pity [eleos], and there is not in him any shame” (498) [Iliade, vol. 4, ed. Paul Mazon et al. (Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1982), 139]. 67. Augustine, City of God, vol. 3, trans. David S. Wiesen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 169 [La Cité de Dieu (Livres VI–­X), trans. Gustave Combès (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959), 360]. Here Derrida instead quotes and modifies La Cité de Dieu, vol. 1, trans. Louis Moreau (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 379. 68. Augustine, City of God, 169 [Cité de Dieu, trans. Moreau, 379]. Augustine quotes Cicero, Pro Ligario, 12.37.

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heritance, assuring it of a mechanical remaining, a mechanization, a textual automatization. Last time we were hesitating with our translations, as one cannot but do on the threshold of these immense, thorny, and inextricable questions of biblical and postbiblical semantics around forgiveness, and all the rest. We were hesitating over knowing whether or not one had the right to translate as “repentance” the word from Genesis that signified at the very least that God retreated, regretted, went back on what he had done and that he undertook, as it were, before himself, not to do it anymore, which presumed that what he had done was not well done, nor was it perfect, not a good deed [ pas bien fait, ni parfait, n’était pas un bien fait], not something done well, even if it were not necessarily something badly done or a misdeed, even less an offense [un mal fait ou un méfait, encore moins un forfait].69 In the text by Augustine with which I opened this session, paenitet te et non doles, from the opening to his Confessions (I.iv.4), one doesn’t doubt his translators’ right to use the word “repent”: “you repent without suffering.” Saint Augustine is speaking to God: you are capable of repenting and to do so without harm, without doing yourself harm. I said at the beginning that the “and” has the value of “but,” of “and yet”: you repent, you do penance, you punish yourself, but without for all that inflicting suffering on yourself, without suffering, without subjecting yourself to pain: paenitet te et non doles. This paradox of repentance without mourning and without suffering is what distinguishes divine repentance from human repentance. If our human, finite experience of being a sinner defines the concept or sense of repentance in its proper sense, if then repentance doesn’t come without suffering, if human repentance is essentially wounded by suffering, sacrificial expiation, mortification, by the transformation of self through this chastising that the consciousness of fault already represents, if it consists in the at least symbolic self-­punishment that this self-­accusation represents, this mea culpa, then divine repentance will be spoken of by means of an anthropomorphic figure. It will be said: it is as if God repented, it is as if you, God, repented, for in truth, on the contrary, you repent without suffering, hence you don’t repent; you are capable of going back on what you have done, retreating, retracting, without sorely accusing yourself of a weakness or sin. I say “by means of a figure” because the passage from which this paenitet te et non doles is taken belongs to a discursive form whose originality is not to be neglected. The opening of the Confessions, as you know, is not

69. See 108ff. above.

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theo-­logical in the sense of being a discourse on God. It is a discourse to God, an à-­dieu, an address to God, a prayer and a praise, a hymn that moreover begins with praying to God for permission to pray and to praise him, or more precisely with begging God to give one the possibility of knowing whether the first thing to do is invoke and praise God. But this prayer that requests the gift of knowledge, that asks to know whether the hymn’s prayer or praise is primary, that prayer has already begun in the very request. The machine is already running, it works all by itself. The sinner has already addressed God in order to know how and whether he had to praise or invoke God. That circle of praying is described, I indeed say “described,” — ­that’s exactly it — ­by the sinner signatory of the Confessions. The circle is described, that is to say it is thematized, said, made explicit, posited, drawn, objectified, but at the same time described as one describes a movement, as one describes, that is, follows the movement of, the circle that one is drawing: give me (da mihi, says Augustine),70 but all in all give me what you have already given me. Give me for having given me what you have given me. In other words, give me for receiving what you have given me. Let me be worthy [donne-­moi d’être digne] of receiving what you have given me, and hence of knowing, being acquainted with this gift, and its donor who you are, and the gift that he gives me. And because I speak as a sinner (because I need this gift, I, finite creature who am not my own origin), well then, the gift that I ask of you, the gift that I have already received in being able to ask it of you, is already a pardon, a mercy. You, my God, are mercy. (Read Confessions, I.i.1, pp. 272, 273, 274): Great are you, O Lord, and surpassingly worthy of praise. Great is your goodness, and your wisdom is incalculable. And humanity, which is but a part of your creation, wants to praise you; even though humanity bears everywhere its own mortality, and bears everywhere the evidence of its own sin and the evidence that you resist the proud. And even so humanity, which is but a part of your creation, longs to praise you. You inspire us to take delight in praising you, for you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. O Lord, let me know and understand which comes first — ­is it invoking you in prayer or praising you? And again, which comes first — ­knowing you or invoking you in prayer? Yet how can anyone invoke you without knowing you? In ignorance they may invoke something else, mistaking

70. Cf. Augustine, Confessions, I.i.1: “let me [know and understand]” (3/272).

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it for you. Perhaps then you should be invoked instead, so that you can be known? Yet how will they invoke one in whom they have not believed? . . .  those who search, find him; and when they have found him they will praise him. So let me seek you, Lord, while I invoke you in prayer; and let me invoke you while I believe in you. You have been preached to me. That faith of mine, Lord, which you have given to me, which you breathed into me by the incarnation of your Son, invokes you in prayer through the ministry of your preacher. (3–­5 /273–­74)

Starting from there a series of theological or ontotheological type questions gets posed, questions uttered in a theoretical or impersonal mode, but whose response comes in the form of a prayer, apostrophe, or hymn, a direct address to God that speaks to him familiarly. It is indeed an apostrophe, in that the sinner turns away from the theoretical or ontotheological question (“Who is God?” “What is God?”) and turns toward God as toward him who has already responded to that question. God is he who is already there, and who has spoken, who has spoken to me even before I am able to pose that question. That means that I don’t have any real question to ask, I am already in the response to God who has spoken first in me. My prayer, my invocation, my praise is but that response, my way of answering for the response, my responsibility taken when faced with a word that is the first to be addressed to me, in me prior to me. And the name of God first signifies this: one who addressed me before any question and even before I speak, as it were, you who speak to me and have already spoken to me. In a way, failing to acknowledge this anteriority of the divine word in me, this word to which I must begin by responding — ­in that my language implies not only a tongue that is older than my act, but an address that is prerequisite to my own — ­well, failing to acknowledge this absolute originarity of the divine gift isn’t only, even though it is also, a theoretical or philosophical error, a lack of onto-­logical rigor, a logical, ontological, chronological inconsistency; in the first place it is a failure with respect to God, against God, a fault, a sin, even perjury, a failure to honor one’s word, not a failure to honor my word, but with respect to the word given to me, which conditions every word I, for my part, give. What the origin of my word as response to the word given by God signifies, what the origin of my word as word given (received) signifies is gratitude, but gratitude as forgiveness requested and received, as grace received from and grace rendered to divine mercy. At the origin of my word given as response to the word given there is forgiveness, there is the experience of divine mercy, which is to say the experience of God, for God is mercy.

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So, it is in one of those movements that one can read “paenitet te et non doles” (I.iv.4). Augustine was just wondering, or pretending to wonder in an ontotheological mode: Quid est ergo deus meus? quid, rogo, nisi dominus deus? quis [passage from what to who] enim dominus praeter dominum? aut qui deus praeter deum nostrum? [So what is my God? What, I want to know, is God if not the Lord? Who is lord except the Lord? And who is God except our God?]. (7/278)71 Following these questions-­answers (within which one must note the necessity of the passage away from the third person, with nostrum making the transition), Augustine moves from question-­response in the third person to apostrophe in the second person; and starting from the first words of that apostrophe — ­of that invocation, of prayer in the vocative, of hymn or praise — ­the superlative machine of hyperbole is going to produce discursive effects to which I would like to draw your attention. Why? Because the double question of mercy, of the merciful essence of God and his repentance without mourning, will be inescapably imposed. How is that? Let’s read: “Highest, best, most powerful, most omnipotent [summe, optime, potentissime, omnipotentissime]” (7/278–­79). That is the beginning of the address and of the praise, but as it is in the superlative, the superlativity, even the hyperbolicity, well, the very excess of those qualities is going to oblige Augustine — ­in a discourse of an apophatic type, of the negative theology type — ­to place God above every possible attribute, which is to say also to mark that excess by attributing to God apparently contradictory qualities: you are this, but you are also that, which seems incompatible with this (you are very withdrawn, very secret, and yet (but) very present [“secretissime et praesentissime”]),72 where et [and] has the value, therefore, of “but,” “yet,” “all the same”; you are steadfast and inconceivable (“stabilis et inconprehensibilis”), never completely new or young and never old (“numquam nouus, numquam uetus,” etc.) (6–­7/278). But the first of these contradictory attributions, the one that I didn’t quote at the beginning, but which I am coming back to, is that of mercy and justice: “Highest, best, most powerful, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just [summe, optime, potentissime, omnipotentissime, misericordissime et iustissime]” (6–­7/278). Most merciful but most just.

71. During the session, Derrida translates as follows: “Who then is my God? If not the Lord? Or who is God if not our God?” 72. Cf. Augustine, Confessions, 7/278: “most hidden and most evident.”

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The justice that conforms to the reason of duty and right, that retributes according to a just rule, in good measure, is not mercy, it is not the forgiveness that gives over and beyond right and duty, beyond law and debt. Justice isn’t forgiveness, and, for man, it appears contradictory to forgiveness; but God is just and forgiving. We have there, very precisely, very literally, Portia’s argument in The Merchant of Venice, when she says, speaking precisely of the divinity of forgiveness, that “mercy seasons justice”: forgiveness sublates justice, forgiveness is above justice, it must raise justice above itself in order to give it its sense. But that sublation, that elevation is God’s, God alone can be at the same time just and merciful, just although merciful, mer­ ciful while at the same time remaining just. That is the first response of the Confessions to the question “what is God?” when, immediately relayed, replaced, supplanted by the question “who is God?” the question “who?” abandons the question “what?” only to abandon, in the next instant, itself as question, the question, then, giving up on the question and effacing itself in favor of what will have as it were preceded it, the address to you, God, the invocation, apostrophe, prayer, hymn, praise. As if at each step [ pas] in the discourse the question “what?” were effacing itself in favor of the question “who?” and the question “who?” effacing itself in favor of the nonquestion of the hymn, as if, then, the discourse were asking itself for forgiveness for a false step by effacing itself in favor of the other step. “What is God?” — ­pardon, “who is God?” — ­oh no, pardon, “my God, you who” (and you’ll notice that the ‘are’ disappears almost entirely from this praise that takes itself as if beyond being itself as presence, for God presents himself only as secret). Read and comment (insisting on this “pardon” at the moment of self-­effacement) on what comes next from Confessions I.iv.4–­5: So what is my God? What, I want to know, is God if not the Lord? Who is lord except the Lord? And who is God except our God? Highest, best, most powerful, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just, most hidden and most evident, most beautiful and most sovereign, steadfast and inconceivable, unchanging yet changing all things; never new, never old, renewing all things and bringing the proud into decrepitude without their knowledge. Always active, always at rest; uniting and needing nothing, bringing and filling and protecting, creating and nurturing and bringing to perfection, seeking even though you lack nothing. You love, yet do not burn with passion; you are zealous in your love and yet peaceable; you repent without regretting; you are angry yet serene; you change your works yet do not change your purpose; you accept what you find and have never lost. You

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are never poor and you take pleasure in gain; you are never greedy yet you exact interest; you receive more in payment than you ask for so as to put you under an obligation — ­yet who owns anything that is not, in reality, yours? You pay off debts, though you owe nothing to anyone; you remit debts,73 yet suffer no loss. After all this, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What is anyone to say when they speak of you? Woe betide those who stay silent about you, because even the loquacious become like those who cannot speak a word.74 Who will allow me to find rest in you? Who will allow me to let you enter my heart and intoxicate it so that I forget my troubles and embrace my one and only good, namely yourself? What are you to me? Have mercy so that I may speak. What am I myself to you, that you insist on my loving you — ­and, unless I do so, you are angry with me and threaten me with great unhappiness? Is my unhappiness insignificant if I do not love you? Pity me! Tell me, O Lord my God, by your mercies, what you are to me. Say to my soul, “I am your salvation.” (Confessions I, 7–­9 /279–­83)

After that the confessions properly speaking begin, but they don’t begin, in this autobiographic narrative that reaches back to the mother’s breast, without recalling that the mouth that speaks is the same one that sucked its mother’s milk and that always opened to divine mercy in order to receive what it was receiving.75 (Read p. 285, etc.) Still let me speak in the presence of your mercy. I am earth and ashes — ­but let me speak. After all, it is your mercy, rather than some person or other mocking me, to which I am addressing my words. . . . The consolation of your mercies has embraced me. (11/284–­85)

73. During the session, Derrida adds: “this is the expression for ‘forgive,’ ‘remit debts.’ ” 74. During the session, Derrida adds: “So he tries to justify an impossible discourse because one has to speak. He can’t speak because he is required to say contradictory things at each moment, but he must not remain silent.” 75. During the session, Derrida adds: “The mother’s milk was in fact divine mercy. The mouth that opened to speak first opened to suck the milk that divine superabundance, divine mercy, gave to the mother. And I end these quotes there. We studied those texts on milk a long time ago, we’ll come back to that.” See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Politiques de l’amitié” (“Manger l’autre”), EHESS, 1988–­8 9, first session. See also Derrida, Clang, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and David Wills (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021), 219 [Glas (Paris: Galilée, 1974), 219].

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Next time, while continuing to read Confessions (from Augustine to Rousseau), we shall study the machine of excuse, of excusing oneself, in its relation to pardon and perjury, in the supposed difference between an Abra­ hamic culture and a so-­called Greek culture.76

76. In the computer file of the seminar given at EHESS in 1997–­9 8, this session includes an addition that we reproduce here, given its interest and because it is fully written, even though it was not read during the session. In it Derrida clarifies the general plan of the argument that he will develop in the Sixth Session (see 167–­75 below): “To excuse (excusare): justify and exculpate. We have already identified, while deciding not to trust them too much, a certain number of commonplaces and broadly shared convictions. I recall at least three examples, all of which have the same form, that of an oppositional distinction. On the one hand, forgiveness is supposedly not forgetting; forgiveness is not to be confused with forgetting or even to cede, however little, to the forgetting or attenuation of the wrong. On the other hand, forgiveness is supposedly not excuse: if these two concepts refer to a performative and not a constative or cognitive experience, one should rigorously distinguish between the unconditional forgiving of a wrong, misdeed, or offense that is without excuse and without extenuating circumstance, and excuse which, for its part, finds the reasons and excuses for a fault that can be explained and doesn’t involve bad intention. Forgiveness does not exculpate, excuse does. Excusare has always meant “to justify by exculpating, by finding causes, if not reasons for the fault”; the excuse doesn’t forgive, it removes the accusation (this opposition between excusing and accusing was famously illustrated by Cicero in his Letters to Quintus [2.II.1]: “me tibi excuso in eo ipso in quo te accuso [I excuse myself with respect to you for the very thing that I accuse you of ]”). Finally, forgiveness in its strict and strong sense, if there is such a thing, is supposedly an Abrahamic (Biblio-­Koranic) and not a Greek inheritance; Greek culture supposedly knew a manner of remitting the fault or removing the guilt that was closer in appearance to excuse or to indulgence than to forgiveness. We already noted reservations, on principle, with respect to culturalist or anthropological discourses that collaborate in affirming that absence of absolute forgiveness in the Greek world — ­and we’ll come back to that — ­but that does not mean there is nothing to be learned from them, especially if one reinterprets differently the precious knowledge that they give to us.”

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Welcome. I’m going to keep my promise.1 It so happens that I don’t keep my promises on time, but I do all I can to keep them and I promised on repeated occasions, then, a discussion or free speech session, and the moment has arrived. So I asked you to prepare questions and points for discussion. We can either begin with some questions, or else I could offer some remarks that will serve as a transition between last week’s session and next week’s, and explain myself in a somewhat more informal way, I think that it’s clearer in that case. [Laughter] I am clearer, I think, when I don’t prepare. I’d like to explain myself somewhat concerning the project of the seminar or concerning certain traits that are already outlined in the figure of the seminar.

So, I’ve brought some things to improvise on and to provide a transition between what I said last week and what I’ll try to say next week. Naturally I won’t be able to deal with everything, but I’ll at least tell you the headings for the things that I thought of. As we always do here, we shall try to articulate — ­as is inanely said — ­the fundamental questions relating to news of a journalistic type, and so, this morning, while reading Libération, I see this headline: “Repentance in Exchange for Forgiveness. For Grand Rabbi Sitruk, ‘Courage means recognizing that one was wrong [qu’on s’est trompé].’ ”2 So, I wanted to discuss that, perhaps I’ll say a word about it later. 1. Derrida had asked participants to prepare questions for the February 4 session. This discussion session was announced on January 21 and again on January 28. For the occasion Derrida also prepared the long remark transcribed here, which will be referred to at the beginning of the February 11 session. 2. Pascale Nivelle, “Maurice Papon devant ses juges. Le repentir contre le pardon. Pour le grand rabbin Sitruk, ‘Le courage, c’est de reconnaître qu’on s’est trompé,’ ” Libération,

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I also wanted to take on the question of what is going on in the United States regarding the death penalty, as you know, and not simply to deal with the case in question3 nor even the case of America per se, but to ask ourselves — ­this is the big question around forgiveness today, clemency [la grâce] — ­how one could read the state of the world today by modeling it on the distribution of countries or regimes where the death penalty is retained and those where it is not, where it has been repealed. How is one to decipher that ? It happens that within what one calls the major Western democracies, the United States is the single example, as far as I know, a massive, impressive example among so-­called advanced democracies, etc., etc., where not only has the death penalty not been abolished, but where sixty-­five, seventy percent of the American population is in favor of capital punishment, where several thousand prisoners wait on death row, where seven or eight forms of execution are practiced, and where executions are regularly carried out, in some states more than others. . . . How to February 4, 1998, 16. See http://www.liberation.fr/societe/1998/02/04/maurice-­papon -­devant-­ses-­juges-­le-­repentir-­contre-­le-­pardon-­pour-­le-­grand-­rabbin-­sitruk-­le-­courage -­c_228864. The Papon trial was in progress at that time. Maurice Papon (1910–­2 007) was secretary-­general for the Gironde police district, which included Bordeaux, during the Nazi occupation. Between 1942 and 1944 he authorized the deportation of 1,690 Jews, including 223 children. Grand Rabbi Joseph Sitruk testified during Papon’s trial, and also during that of Paul Touvier (1915–­9 6), a former collaborationist functionary in the Vichy regime who was condemned to death in 1946 and again in 1947. He was accorded clemency by President Georges Pompidou in 1971, having his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Derrida returns to that question in the Second Session of Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2. [Translator’s note:] The headline formulation qu’on s’est trompé means more literally “that one was mistaken, deceived.” Derrida draws attention to the rabbi’s choice of words below. Translations from the Nivelle article are my own (DW). 3. Karla Faye Tucker Brown (1959–­9 8) was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, on February 3, 1998. She was condemned to death for a double murder and became the first woman to be executed in Texas since 1863. George W. Bush Jr., governor of Texas since 1994, was then campaigning for reelection. He was reelected with a solid majority in November 1998. Known for his intransigence regarding application of the death penalty, he refused to exercise his right to clemency and held the record (152) for the number of capital executions in the United States during his six years as governor. Notably, he refused to grant a thirty-­day delay to allow a review of the decision of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which had refused Karla Faye Tucker’s appeal for clemency. See Patrick Sabatier, “Karla Faye Tucker a été exécuté cette nuit au Texas. ‘J’envisage ma fin sans peur’ expliquait hier la jeune femme,” Libération, February 4, 1998, 10, https://www.liberation.fr/planete/1998/02/04/karla-­faye-­tucker-­a-­ete -­executee-­cette-­nuit-­au-­texas-­j-­envisage-­ma-­fin-­sans-­peur-­expliquait-­hier-­la-­_228908.

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decipher that? And it is indeed a matter — ­I want to deal with the question of the seminar — ­of the right to clemency, because in the United States, naturally, the last recourse is what is called “pardon,” clemency shown by the state governor. What happens when a governor like George Bush Jr. refuses clemency by claiming that at the moment he was elected he promised, he made a commitment to his voters, never to use his right to pardon — ­which is in contradiction with the very idea of the right to pardon?4 [Laughter] One cannot, one should not be able to commit, before one’s electorate, never to use one’s right to pardon. What happens in a democracy when things come to that? And there are cases in the United States that are as tragic, as moving and distressing as the one that is being talked about today, I talked to you about it yesterday, I could speak about it myself and give you several examples. The young woman who was executed had herself requested a pardon at the last moment, and, according to what witnesses and all those talking about it say, had changed: “she’s no longer the same,” as one says. What does that mean, “she’s no longer the same”? She who killed, she who was judged, and she who is being executed, she’s no longer the same: how to analyze that story of identity, of memory, etc.? That is another question that I would have liked to raise with you. Another question — ­since, as you can see, I am listing the questions, next we shall see what to do with them — ­another question depends on this insistence, this recurrence of the Judeo-­Christian duel that we haven’t been able to avoid since the beginning of the seminar. Not only that forgiveness, the concept of forgiveness, the sense of forgiveness was a Jewish or Christian inheritance, that’s something that we are dealing with in any case, but that this concept puts the Jew and Christian into opposition in a traditional and recurrent way, and you’ll remember, one of the examples was the scene from The Merchant of Venice that we read together and where it is in the name of Christianity that the Jew is to be converted by teaching him forgiveness. The Jew is someone 4. See the statements by Governor Bush reported by Patrick Sabatier in Libération, February 5, 1998: “When I was sworn in as the governor of Texas I took an oath of office to uphold the laws of our state, including the death penalty. . . . Like many touched by this case, I have sought guidance through prayer. I have concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority. . . . I will not grant a 30-­day stay. May God bless Karla Faye Tucker and may God bless her victims and their families” (“Polémique après l’exécution. Karla Tucker, martyre à l’américaine. Malgré la mobilisation d’une partie de la droite chrétienne en sa faveur, la grâce lui a été refusée,” https://www.liberation.fr/evenement/1998/02/05/polemique -­apres-­l-­execution-­karla-­tucker-­martyre-­a-­l-­americaine-­malgre-­la-­mobilisation-­d-­une -­partie-­_2289480; my translation [DW]).

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who doesn’t know how to forgive. The basic Christian axiom is that the Jew doesn’t know how to forgive and that Christianity is a revelation of the essence, the real vocation of forgiveness that the Jew is still ignorant of. So, thinking about that and rereading randomly — ­I never reread myself, but in this case I received the republication of something that made me think, that made me come across a text again, one that I had quoted, not one I had written, that I had quoted, and that is why I’ll allow myself to quote it again — ­in Given Time, I quoted Baudelaire (since we were talking about him), and I quoted two texts. In Given Time there are two chapters, one of which is called “Excuse and Forgiveness,”5 and the two texts are, on the one hand, a text by Baudelaire, which I want all the same to quote in order to link up with what we were saying about Ennui last time. That text isn’t very well known, I don’t know who else — ­apart from me, if I can say that — ­has picked up on it and commented on it; this is it. Here is what Baudelaire says in Mon coeur mis à nu. Before quoting Baudelaire’s sentence I’ll quote the passage with which I opened that note: Who would dare to laugh at Baudelaire’s anti-­Belgian xenophobia, indeed racism? And who will rush to neutralize this genocidal passage from Mon coeur mis à nu [this is to make the transition from what we were saying about Ennui and the death camps the week before. I quote Baudelaire]: “A nice conspiracy to organize for the extermination of the Jewish Race. [Baudelaire speaks of “the extermination of the Jewish Race.” And he continues:] Jews, Librarians and witnesses to the Redemption. (Oeuvres complètes, 706)? [“Librarians” is an insult, they are archivists and “witnesses to the Redemption.” So he speaks of an “extermination of the Jewish Race,” and I add:] Benjamin is ready to see in this passage a “gauloiserie” or a prank [  facétie] [since Benjamin is one among the very small number of people who have come across this sentence — ­that nobody knows what to do with, right? — ­this antisemitism, this “extermination of the Jewish Race,” at the end of the last century. Benjamin says]: Gauloiserie . . . Céline continued in this direction (Facetious assassins!)” (Das Passagen-­Werk, ed. Rolf Tiedemann [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982], 380). Which confirms [I then added] that Céline was already excusable and forgivable, sheltered by literature and language [I am saying what is said by those who find that what Céline did is, at bottom, given that it is literature, not so serious], for having done and said worse things than so many others whom numerous prosecutors today do not allow to get away with anything, for 5. See Derrida, Given Time, chap. 4 (“Counterfeit Money II: Gift and Countergift, Excuse and Forgiveness [Baudelaire and the Story of the Dedication]”), 108–­72 [Donner le temps, 139–­217].

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reasons that can be analyzed. Claude Pichois [I am quoting Pichois, annotator, editor of Baudelaire’s Oeuvres complètes] admits that “this passage is not very easy to interpret.” Which does not prevent him from concluding with confidence: “Any [charge of ] anti-­Semitism is to be dismissed.” [Laughter]6

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There you have it, Pléiade edition. Difficult to interpret . . . [Laughter] Here is the sentence again: “A nice conspiracy to organize for the extermination of the Jewish Race.” Difficult to interpret! [Laughter] In any case, “any anti-­Semitism is to be dismissed.” He can’t interpret, but he is sure that in any case this isn’t antisemitism. Okay . . . Well, that’s something. I refer you to what follows if you wish to read the context, it’s pages 130–­31 of my little book. But I wanted to follow on, in relation to forgiveness, with another text that I quote, another French text that I quote, where the word pardon appears and where it is a question of the Jew who is incapable of forgiving. What I write is this: . . . to recall that only a problematic of the trace, and thus of dissemination, can allow the question of the gift and of forgiveness [ pardon] to arise is to displace the concept of writing [a sacrifice, as we were talking about just before]. It is to signal toward something altogether other than the traditional opposition between a (living) speech and a (dead) writing. As is well known, it is on this opposition that a Greco-­Christian tradition will have often ordered its interpretation of the duel between Christian and Jew. [In other words, the interpretation according to which the Jew does not know how to forgive — ­and you are going to have another example with a text by Léon Bloy — ­is naturally a Christian interpretation.] The gift, forgiveness — ­if there is any — ­and the trace that there always is would thus be something altogether other than the themes of an opposition passively received and precipitously, compulsively credited — ­by a Léon Bloy, for example, when, in his customary, diabolical, and sometimes almost sublime ignominy, he writes: It is through them [the Jews] that this algebra of turpitude called Credit [capital letter, italics] has definitively replaced the old Honor, which was all chivalrous souls needed to accomplish everything. 6. Given Time, 130n14/166n1. [Translator’s note:] For the Benjamin reference see Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 300 [Paris, Capitale du 19e siècle: Le Livre des passages, trans. Jean Lacoste (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1989), 314]. See also Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, ed. Claude Pichois (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1975), 1511n5.

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And as if this strange people, condemned, come what may, to always being, in a fashion, the People of God [and you know that Bloy — ­if you read this man, who deserves to be read — ­naturally had an infinite respect for the Hebrew people, the “People of God,” whom he naturally, he also, like the whole world, condemned to hell, but because the Jews betrayed, naturally, the divine mission. So he venerated the “People of God.” “And as if this strange people, condemned, come what may, to always being, in a fashion, the People of God,” that reminds me of something I recently read in the papers, it was Guitton7 saying, it was quoted by I don’t know whom, when someone reproached him for his antisemitism, he would say something like this: that he loved the Hebrews, but was sorry that they were Jews, something like that. [Laughter] I don’t remember any more . . .], could not do anything without letting right away some reflection of its eternal history appear, the living and merciful word [all uppercase] of the Christians, that used to suffice for fair transactions, was once again sacrificed, in all the commerce of injustice, to rigid writing [uppercase again] that is incapable of forgiveness.8

I’ll reread this sentence where you are going to see the equivalence made between, on one side, the living merciful word that founds confidence, promise, that does without “Credit,” therefore, in the banking, financial sense, and, on the opposite side from this living word (right?), this merciful word that belongs to Christians, there is writing, credit, banking, money, all of which are on the side of the Jew to the extent that he is incapable of forgiveness. In other words, forgiveness is on the side of the living word (right?), merciful, and, on the side of writing, credit, banking, money, there is the incapacity to forgive. I’ll reread this sentence: And as if this strange people, condemned, come what may, to always being, in a fashion, the People of God, could not do anything without letting right away some reflection of its eternal history appear, the living and merciful word [in other words the Jews, whatever they do, even when they do the worst, they bear within themselves the reflection of this living word, that’s why he respects the “People of God”] of the Christians, that used to suffice for fair transactions, was once again sacrificed, in all the commerce of injustice, to rigid writing that is incapable of forgiveness. 7. Jean Guitton (1901–­9 9), French Catholic philosopher, member of French Academy, disciple of Bergson. We were unable to locate the quote to which Derrida refers here. 8. Derrida, Given Time, chap. 3 (“ ‘Counterfeit Money’ I: Poetics of Tobacco [Baudelaire, Painter of Modern Life]”), 101n18 [Donner le temps, 131n1]. See also Léon Bloy, Le Salut par les Juifs (Paris: Mercure de France, 1949), 192–­93.

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There, that is from Le Salut par les Juifs by Léon Bloy, and if you want to read the context, I refer you to p. 101 of my little book. So, what do you want us to do? Shall we talk about the death penalty, Papon, or Saint Augustine? We have half an hour. [Laughter] Papon? Okay, on that, I have to . . . it’s an interesting choice. No way around that. I’ll first read you some quotes that left me, for my part, naturally, in a daze [rêveur]. You know the history, the current historical situation: the strange lawyer who is talking about suspending the proceedings because the president supposedly .9 It is in that context that the following development emerged: “What my community [says Rabbi Sitruk] has never recovered from is this terrible feeling of having been betrayed, of having understood that, with Vichy, France betrayed herself. Jews were no longer able to recognize their relatives, they did not immediately assimilate the fact that what was wanted was their marginalization, then their humiliation, before it came to their extermination. “I am proud of my country for going back over its past . . . but no French person may be proud of what was done under Vichy.” For him, this trial is “the challenge of knowing whether we are capable of shedding sufficient light on this terrible shadow.” “By weighing the truth,” he adds, “you are not only members of the jury or judges in an ordinary court. You are the court through which the future of our country will pass. . . . This is not a Jewish trial. No, these are French people who are fighting with their compatriots to bring the truth to light.” Then he comes to his essential point, addressed this time to the accused: “I cannot accept that people say today ‘I received orders,’ or ‘I simply carried out orders.’ But recognizing one’s fault [“recognize one’s fault,” because that’s it, the weight of it, the political import, here] is not a crime in and of itself . . . [that sounds strange, no?]. Courage consists in recognizing that one was wrong. . . . We are in an era of forgiveness.10

9. The trial of Maurice Papon, accused of crimes against humanity in 1983, began on October 8, 1997, following seventeen years of judicial wrangling, and ended on April 2, 1998, with a sentence of ten years’ imprisonment for complicity in crimes against humanity. On January 27, 1998, Arno Klarsfeld, the lawyer representing the Association of Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France (FFDJF), one of the civil litigants involved in the case, published a communiqué revealing that the presiding court judge, Louis Castagnède, was related to some victims of the December 30, 1943, convoy, which could call into question his impartiality and cause the trial to be halted. But Maurice Papon’s defense team did not request that the judge recuse himself. 10. Nivelle, “Papon devant ses juges,” 16.

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So, there we have a Grand Rabbi, charged with heavy responsibilities, saying that “recognizing one’s fault is not a crime in and of itself,” a phrase that — ­how to say this? — ­without lacking respect for that eminent authority, I don’t see in what way recognizing one’s fault could or could not be a fault in and of itself. “Courage consists in recognizing that one was wrong”: already, he is confusing fault and error. One doesn’t reproach a criminal for making a mistake! And “we are in an era of forgiveness”: this sentence is really, I have to say it, historic, because, naturally, we do see what he means, he means: “Today there are acts of repentance everywhere, in France and elsewhere” . When someone who represents a major faith says: “We are in an era of forgiveness,” it makes your head spin. So what is more interesting now is what the journalist says in describing the scene:

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Maurice Papon stares at the witness with no expression other than an intense attention. A sentence spoken from the box, in January, comes back to mind: “If you’re expecting repentance from me don’t count on it,” Maurice Papon had exclaimed.11

In other words Papon understood that forgiveness is in fashion right now, if that can be said: “We are in an era of forgiveness,” as M. Sitruk says, well then, Papon says, “Yes, they can go for it, it’s in fashion, but as for me, don’t count on me, I won’t be repenting.” Yesterday, the “spiritual leader” of the Jews proposed that Papon repent in exchange for forgiveness.12

It’s the journalist who says that — ­“repentance in exchange for forgiveness” — ­as if, moreover, one could dissociate the two in a concept of forgiveness that has always implied, as we’ve already seen, that forgiveness must be requested, in principle, and that it can be requested only on the basis of repentance, that is, on the basis of a situation in which the guilty one, the accused, the criminal, says: (1) “I am the one who did that,” and so “I assume responsibility,” “it is I who handed over children for deportation”; (2) “because it was wrong, I’ll never do it again,” “it was wrong,” “I admit that it was wrong,” and therefore “I am the one who did it but I am no longer the one who did it.” That is what “I repent” means. I am no longer exactly the same because I recognize that I did wrong and, as it’s wrong, I won’t do it any more, whence the implicit promise not to start again that we have 11. Nivelle, “Papon devant ses juges,” 16. 12. Nivelle, “Papon devant ses juges,” 16.

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already talked about a lot. Therefore, “I am the same and I am no longer the same.” And that, that is the movement of repentance. And there is no classic scene of forgiveness without forgiveness requested through repentance. So, already, to say that the “spiritual leader of the Jews” is proposing to us repentance in exchange for forgiveness, that’s already strange. Quote from the rabbi: “What is missing in the story is avowal. . . . An avowal of recognition,” he specifies, “for only one who recognizes that he was wrong [qu’il s’est trompé: why does he always say trompé. That makes two times, he doesn’t say “qui a fait le mal (who has done wrong)” but “qui s’est trompé (who has been mistaken, deceived),” “seul celui qui reconnaît qu’il s’est trompé (only one who recognizes that he was mistaken),” one who finds himself lacking in the rigor of those who should be in charge of rigor in that domain, right?] can be released from his responsibility [ peut être relevé de sa responsabilité].13

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First of all, forgiveness has never consisted in releasing someone from their responsibility; on the contrary it is a question of confirming responsibility. If I repent, it’s that I assume responsibility. I repent, I avow, and, since he is speaking of avowal, to avow is to admit one’s responsibility and not asking to be released from that responsibility. And second, forgiving does not consist in exculpating — ­soon, in speaking of excuse, we are going to refine those things a little — ­but forgiving doesn’t consist in exculpating, it doesn’t consist in saying to someone “you aren’t guilty.” Not at all. Forgiving consists in saying “you are guilty, you were guilty, you remain guilty, but I forgive you,” that is to say, “I unbind you, in a way, from your fault”: but that doesn’t mean “I exonerate you,” or “I erase” or “I forget” or “I do away with” your fault, and especially not “I release you from your responsibility.” An avowal of recognition . . . for only one who recognizes that he was wrong can be released from his responsibility. [And he continues:] Death exists . . . whether it be an administrative order or a hand cracking a skull. . . . [The Grand Rabbi speaks in the name of ] one and a half million children who did not live, because men were cowardly enough to perform their tasks.14

After that I don’t think there is anything of interest for us. In other words, the scene comes down to this: the statutory spiritual leader of the Jews of this country addresses the accused by saying to him: “Recognize that you were mistaken and at that point you will be” — ­I am quoting his words — ­“released from [your] responsibility,” which amounts 13. Nivelle, “Papon devant ses juges,” 16. 14. Nivelle, “Papon devant ses juges,” 16.

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to a misrecognition, a radical confusion of what is in question. Even from the juridical point of view it is not a matter of knowing whether M. Papon was mistaken or not. Because if his lawyers demonstrate that he was mistaken, it’s all over: he was deceived, he didn’t understand or didn’t know where it was leading, where the children were going, or else he didn’t know how to interpret the order, etc. — ­being mistaken, getting it wrong has nothing to do with , one is never guilty of making a mistake. And consistently — ­which is why I am reading this not only for its intrinsic interest but also because it is going to follow us when we are trying to understand the at least conceptual difference between forgiveness and excuse — ­excuse consists precisely in justifying by explaining what appeared as a fault but is not in fact a fault. It was a causal type mechanism that, once reconstituted, dissolves as it were the wrong. So, excusing another or oneself is in a certain way to exonerate another or oneself, which precisely means taking away responsibility for a fault, and forgiveness is totally heterogeneous with respect to excuse from that point of view. Of course, you remember that at the beginning of the seminar, we indeed marked, first by quoting Jankélévitch, but also from another point of view, that the “logic” (in quotes) of forgiveness was irreducible to penal logic, that is to say, that the order of forgiveness was not the order of the juridical. In other words, in that scene, in the end it should never be a question — ­in a purely judicial setting — ­either of repentance or of forgiveness. I well know that the word pardon doesn’t exist in law, it exists in the exception to the law that is the royal right to grant clemency, for example, or in the case of the American “pardon,” but the figure of forgiveness is not a juridical figure. By contrast, it is true that in sentencing, in the everyday experience of doing justice, repentance is sometimes taken into account by the jury. When the guilty person’s behavior can be interpreted as transformation, repentance, etc., at that point a mechanism like extenuating circumstances can inflect the judgment not to remove the fault but to moderate the sentence. Moreover, all those who pleaded for a suspension of the execution order, last night, relating to the American woman, used that argument: she is no longer the same, she has repented, she is transfigured, etc. etc. That didn’t consist in saying “she wasn’t guilty,” but “now she is no longer the same, we are going to take into account her repentance.” But note closely that the judicial, juridical, penal consideration of repentance is not the essential sense that one gives to this word “repent” in general, it is reinscribed in an economy that is as it were social and related to security, that is to say, in a pragmatics. Because the accused woman has become better, repented, and so no longer identifies with the terrible person she was, well then, we can grant her life, spare her,

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or else free her, release her because she is no longer the same person and so society won’t be endangered. When so and so (I forget their name) was sentenced in France to life in prison, it is because he was considered incurable. There were experts who said “if he is released, not only will he not repent but the fact that he doesn’t repent means that if he is released he will do it again,” whereas repenting is interpreted — ­and therefore employed according to that interpretation — ­as the guarantee that he won’t be a repeat offender. So, it is not a religious understanding of repentance, it is simply an ecology, a therapeutics, an economy that serves to say: “Now it’s no longer the same source of wrongdoing, it’s no longer the same danger for society, so he or she can be freed.” The woman who was executed last evening, I think, well, those who pleaded for her were saying: “We now know that she won’t do wrong any more, that she is no longer capable of wrongdoing.” So there . . . so already, the concept of repentance is interpreted from the point of view of society’s interest. Okay, I would also have liked, naturally, to read with you, to go back over with you the texts by Augustine that I started on last time. Yes? You know, that is a difficult question, however sharp the conceptual arrises, the conceptual definitions of forgiveness and excuse that are given, and we’ll do that, we’ll come back to that again, notwithstanding that, in fact, in current, everyday language, not only as it is spoken but as it is practiced everywhere in newspapers, in political rhetoric, and elsewhere, things are often confused. It often happens that excuse and forgiveness are confused, we’ll even see that in texts such as that of Rousseau where excuse signifies forgiveness, along with the confusion that that entails. In principle, in the most serious sense of the term, “reconciliation” is tied, like repentance and redemption, to the experience of forgiveness according to the prevailing interpretation of it in theology and even in philosophy, including in Hegel and Levinas. After avowal and repentance, forgiveness leads to remitting the fault, to redemption and to reconciliation between criminal and victim, between executioner and victim, between the wrongdoer and their victim. For there to be true reconciliation — ­dare I say between souls, between freedoms? — ­it must work through forgiveness: I know that you sinned, that you committed radical evil, that you intended harm, and it is indeed you who intended it; you repent — ­so you are the same without being the same — ­and I reconcile with you; that means “I forgive you.” We reconcile in forgiveness. There you have an authentic reconciliation that should retain the memory of the wrong as wrong — ­the wrong took place, it isn’t forgotten, it isn’t erased, it isn’t inscribed in a therapeutics, you see — ­and nevertheless I reconcile

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with you who did wrong or you reconcile with me who did wrong. From that point of view reconciliation has nothing to do with excuse. Moreover, when one is in the domain of excuse in the strict sense one doesn’t have to reconcile because one doesn’t harbor hatred or hostility or fault. “I got here late because there was a delay in the subway, I am sorry [ je m’excuse], excuse me.” That isn’t your fault. Or else, then, it can go much further: “I didn’t know what I was doing, I pushed him around a bit too much, I grabbed him by the throat and I no longer realized . . . It wasn’t me anymore, and then he died or she died, it wasn’t me, I am sorry.” Because there is a chain of causalities, like that, that explains, and so excuse exonerates from that point of view. And if I ask for forgiveness in conditions such that — ­we’ll get to that, I am somewhat announcing what we are going to do with de Man on the basis of Rousseau — ­if I ask for forgiveness in conditions such that my way of asking for forgiveness excuses me, thus exonerates me, then there is no longer reconciliation to be sought because “no harm done [ y a pas d’mal].” For there to be reconciliation, there really has to be rupture, hence harm, there has to be wounding, but where excuse holds sway there is no reconciliation because there is no rupture, no wounding, no harm; excuse isn’t concerned with evil, radical evil. It is a wrong that could always be explained, hence one can account for it, one can give a reason for it — ­there was this wrong, there was this crime, there was this death because there was a series of causalities — ­the experts or psychiatrists are going to be able to account for it, or else all sorts of experts, people with knowledge, are going to be able to determine which causality led to such and such a wrong, such and such suffering, such and such wounding, to whatever one interprets as suffering or wounding. But since knowledge gives an account of that causality, wrong is no longer wrong, the evil is an effect, the effect of a cause. At that point, it is excused and there is no wound, therefore there is no reconciliation. So reconciliation belongs to the order of forgiveness and not excuse. As one says, naturally there can be many ruses and resources within the scene of forgiveness to make the logic of forgiveness tilt over into the logic of excuse, to exculpate oneself, and perhaps that’s inevitable, irrepressible, that tilting movement. To come back to the example, because I don’t want to avoid the example that you referred to, that of France after Vichy, to that reconciliation, well it’s a vast history, it would take ten seminars for that. It is evident that following the Occupation, and the Liberation, there were naturally movements of purging, tribunals, a certain number of guilty people were condemned, quite quickly, quite harshly. De Gaulle was not very gracious or merciful [graciant] in certain cases, true, but at a certain moment he said, “That’s enough, stop,” France has to reconcile with

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itself, the great body of the nation has to close this parenthesis . . . Well, at that point, this as it were hygienic reconciliation, which is the condition for the health of the nation — ­which can be interpreted as such because that hygiene might, on the contrary, be very unhealthy, because it might bear within itself, naturally, along with repression, all sorts of deferred pathologies, we’ve experienced that — ­but in any case, it is in the name of the health of the national body that at a certain point we said “reconciliation.” After the Algerian War, at a certain moment there was an amnesty, the amnesty movement — ­generals involved in the putsch were amnestied15 — ­that is the logic of the state, of the nation-­state, to be implacable as long as its body requires it, and then, at a certain point, in the name of the same imperative of the health, integrity, or functioning of the nation-­state, in the name of that same imperative, it is decided that there will be national reconciliation. And often that is a good policy; one cannot be against reconciliation. In Algeria, if there could be a reconciliation, if there could be a process of reconciliation today, who would dare say no, even if it were something warped that means that the guilty remain free? But at least that reconciliation would be something better, there would be less ferocity, terror, and crime. So, in the life of all nation-­states, there are properly political imperatives for what is called “national reconciliation,” but clearly it is by semantic abuse that one then speaks of reconciliation in the order of forgiveness, which is something quite different: again, it is a question of a therapeutic hygiene, an organic-­ type treatment — ­one can compare the nation-­state to a body here — ­so that one can carry on. Of course one will always be able to suspect, outside the political history of nation-­states, one will always be able to suspect even in the inter-­individual relation between two singularities, one will always be able to suspect a very serious scene of forgiveness and of reconciliation of just being a reflex action [d’être encore un sursaut], a ruse of life to continue enjoying life, preferring life to death. One reconciles because if one doesn’t reconcile, it’s death. We’re not going to continue shooting each other or judging each other. No, reconciliation is all the same the reflex of . . . it’s survival.

15. Allusion to the attempted military coup in Algiers in April 1961, a plot hatched by four retired generals at the time of secret negotiations between the French government led by Michel Debré and the provisional government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA), which was linked with the National Liberation Front, aimed at ending the Algerian War.

sixth session

February 11, 1998

I want to come back briefly to two points raised last week in the restricted seminar1 (but not the question of “national reconciliation” as a process of reparation or restitution; nor the declarations by Grand Rabbi Sitruk concerning Papon, repentance and forgiveness; nor the two statements by Baudelaire and Léon Bloy, — ­Baudelaire on the “extermination of the Jewish race,” and Bloy on the people of Writing and of Credit who don’t forgive, quoted in my Given Time — ­statements that I recalled in order to put them into relation with (1) what we said about Baudelaire and historical Ennui (Heidegger, etc.);2 and (2) what we said about Abrahamic “pardon” as a scene between Jew and Christian, something we continue to insist on, whether it be a matter of the Shoah, crimes against humanity or the imprescriptible, and going back to The Merchant of Venice). No, instead I want briefly to come back to two other questions that in the end have in common putting to death, more precisely the death penalty or sacrificial killing.3 (1) Bush Jr., and his commitment to his constituents concerning the exercise of the right to pardon (complicated: “electoral” sovereignty, different from Kant? go back to Kant’s text;4 contradiction of modern democracy, elected sovereign, and right to pardon? public or private pardon (political category or not?); Abraham and ethical generality).5 1. See Appendix to Fifth Session, above. 2. See 148–57 above. 3. During the session, Derrida extemporizes on the basis of the following notes. See Appendices to this session. 4. See 18–19 above, and Appendices 1 and 2 to this session. 5. See 88ff. above, and Appendix 2 to this session.

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What does the “death penalty” signify in a democracy — ­in particular, as a geopolitical symptom — ­in the United States? (2) In spite of what I said concerning the “exemplarity” of the scene of secrecy in the “sacrifice of Isaac,” Abraham would be “criminal,” is (would be) mercilessly judged as such today. What consequence can be drawn if the exemplarity (“ordinariness”) of that scene remains irrefutable? Given that crime is everywhere? Yes, virtually, except where it has been put to the test (as in the story of Abraham . . .).6 Still, before beginning, I’d like now to revive, so to speak, a current expression, one that is almost proverbial and automatic. It adheres closely to French idiom, to spoken French, as one says, solely to what is spoken. It belongs to everyday speech, which would mean that it has little chance of being easily translatable, translatable without remainder (but I don’t want to take that further, some of you will be more competent than I in confirming or disproving this hypothesis of the untranslatability of such an idiom). This everyday expression is y a pas de mal [no harm done, don’t mention it].7 “Y a pas d’mal.” “Y a pas d’mal” will be our refrain for today. I say “refrain” because it will be as much a question of singing, of the choir [choeur] at the heart of the chorus, of the voice that sings until it is hoarse, out of breath, or losing its voice, as much a question of pure chanting and of the neume as of mechanics, of a stuck needle, of the archive, of the record that keeps and makes suffer the heart’s memory. When a person excuses themself or offers apologies, when they beg pardon ever so slightly for a trifling fault, for an awkwardness caused in passing, for a superficial inconvenience, the other often replies “no, no harm done [ y a pas d’mal].” One never gives that response in the case of something serious, when the forgiveness turns solemn and tragic; for then, even if forgiveness is granted, one will not say “no harm done.” You’ll say “no harm done” if someone jostles you accidentally, steps on your foot inadvertently, takes your chair by mistake. I indeed say “accidentally,” “inadvertently,” “by mistake,” which signifies that the harm will have been or is supposed to be unintentional, accidental, empirical. There won’t have been any ill will, malignant will, free and deliberate will to do harm for harm’s sake. That is why there was no need to ask for “forgiveness” in the serious sense of the term, but simply to excuse oneself or say pardon in the superficial sense of 6. [Translator’s note:] Ellipsis in text. 7. [Translator’s note:] As discussed, Derrida will prefer the (strictly speaking agrammatical) contracted form [y a pas d’mal], which effectively reduces to four syllables.

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“sorry,” “excuse me.” Then, saying “no harm done” so as to reassure the other can signify two things (and this duality is what makes the expression so interesting). It can first mean: “Please, be reassured, don’t worry, no harm came to me; you indeed stepped on my foot, but you know, it didn’t hurt much, it’s not serious, it’s over, there is no hurt on my side.” But it can also mean, by the same token: “be reassured, I beg you, I know and you know that there was no hurt on your side either, I well know that you didn’t intend any harm, you didn’t do it on purpose, it is clear that you had no intention to hurt me; and that’s why there is no reason to ask to be excused and to exculpate yourself. You are not at fault.” Nevertheless, in these two cases, which are forms of politeness and good manners, marks of respect for the other, but not cases of pardon granted, which are scarcely cases of excuses accepted (since one implies “you didn’t even need to excuse yourself,” somewhat as if, when saying “don’t mention it,” one is implying “you didn’t even have to thank me”), in both cases, then, the formula exonerates not by forgiving or excusing, by canceling the fault, by releasing the other from a fault that was in fact committed, but (and this is perhaps the supreme generosity, beyond excuse and forgiveness), the formula exonerates by annulling or claiming or pretending to annul even the very existence of the fault and the harm. “No harm done” signifies, then means, as in the future perfect, “ ‘there will not have been any harm,’ all things considered the harm will not have taken place, neither as suffering on my side, nor as malice, ill-­intentioned will, or malevolence on yours. There is no harm, on either side. I am not suffering and you are innocent. I won’t have suffered because it didn’t really hurt, and you will have remained innocent because you didn’t wish, not consciously, not deliberately, to do harm. You didn’t intend me any harm.” But in being taken beyond both forgiveness and excuse, the same formula, “no harm done [y a pas de mal],” refers at least mimetically, by simulacrum or because the other has pretended to ask for indulgence or forgiveness, to the scene of culpability that it obscures or by the same token denies. Hence the future perfect and the implicit “but” or “yet”: there could have been harm done, but, however, all the same, nevertheless, there was none, neither on your side nor on mine. You didn’t have to, you shouldn’t have, you will not even have had to ask for forgiveness or indulgence: there will not have been any reason to do that: “no harm done.” It isn’t an acquittal that makes you quits with the fault; in legal terms it would be case dismissed, no case to answer [un non-­lieu]. There were no grounds to pursue or to judge, even to acquit, excuse, or forgive; no harm done. The wrong will not have taken place. But this expression that says non-­harm, non-­suffering,

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innocence, non-­sin, is anything but neutral and innocent; it does and gives what is essential. It acts, it performs. It grants. What it does is what counts, beyond excuse and forgiveness. It can be a lie, even perjury. I can in fact be really hurt and suspect the worst intention, the worst perversity on the part of the other at the moment I tell him, nevertheless, so that he or she doesn’t have to make excuses or ask for forgiveness: “Be reassured, you are not at fault, you didn’t do it on purpose, it didn’t hurt me, look how I’m walking normally, we don’t even have to go into any scene of culpability, avowal, excuse, or forgiveness, no harm done.” This “no harm done” can slip out, almost whispered, a practically unvoiced intonation, like a throwaway everyday phrase, in the subway or elevator (“no harm done”). But beneath these words or others, it can also — ­solemnly, although according to a discreet solemnity, a very reserved solemnity or holiness — ­translate the most sublime gift, the gift without counter-­part,8 the unconditional gift: “you don’t even have to make excuses or ask for forgiveness, you are innocent, you have done me no wrong. We are prior to sin, even original sin.” At that moment, the little phrase, the supposedly untranslatable little expression “no harm done” orchestrates, but almost silently, hardly even whispered, without raising one’s voice, a still, small voice, powerful also like an immense, sublime, concerted aphoristic motto about being in the world: there is no harm [y a pas de mal], no wrong in the world for us, there is no evil [il n’y a pas le mal], no Evil, evil doesn’t take place, it hasn’t taken place, there will have been no place for thinking about evil, there will have been no place for evil in the world. Between us Evil does not take place, evil will have been a superficial and passing illusion, just as if you had stepped gently on my foot, almost something pleasant . . . No harm, really. Not the slightest harm, not the slightest in the world, not the slightest evil in the world. No radical evil in any case. There, just like that, Evil eradicated. Imagine someone dying (and who is not dying?), imagine someone who, mortally wounded this time, by a weapon, or the poison of perjury, by the slow-­release venom of a lie or some treachery, says to the other in a whisper “no harm done [y a pas d’mal].” Imagine that this dying person says, barely breathes to the murderer or liar, but with the necessary force of conviction, doing everything therefore in order to be believed, but without waiting for a response: “no harm done.” Would we have there, perhaps, an absolute and holy figure of the forgiving gift, of forgiveness as absolute paradigm of the unconditional gift? Or would we — ­perhaps — ­have already left, with life, on the edge of life, would we have left the very sphere, the atmosphere, the 8. Hyphen in typescript.

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respiration from which what we continue to call “gift” or “forgiveness” draws its breath? Would this “no harm done” be absolute forgiveness or already something else, perhaps more and better, younger and infinitely older than forgiveness, the good death of a forgiveness that didn’t die in the death camps? I consistently say “perhaps” because what counts and perhaps is most marked in this experience is the suspense that must remain, the unfinished state that must render indeterminate the interruption itself, on the edge of which is always death, interruption on the edge of interruption, in the still withheld expiring breath. That is why I always say murmur, whisper, barely audible declaration, still, small voice; for if there wasn’t that gentle interruption, that endless interruption, what is said would become a position, a declaration, a statement9 full of sense, and it would reintroduce us into the economy of exchange or of giving-­giving, forgiving-­forgiving. The event, if there is one, leaves its trace, it operates only in the place of interruption, of breathlessness. The best is here closest to the worst, to its opposite, perhaps as always, and the most alive speech is closest to immaculate silence, that of absolute muteness or automatic grammar — ­or the recording of a message machine — ­or the machinic trace — ­or the record10 of a CD. Subtitle of the seminar, perhaps: what is the heart? Record and misericord, memory (recordatio), trace of evil and evil of the trace, forgiveness of the heart and the archive machine. I just said that this declaration, “no harm done,” this declaration that seems to hang on11 a single untranslatable and almost inarticulate word — ­noh ­ arm-­done [y-­a-­pas-­d’mal] — ­a declaration on the edge of being articulated, a declaration that, clearly, must remain audible but almost inaudible, immediately withheld so as not to insist and weigh on the other like a cumbersome gift, perhaps points toward an experience prior to evil, outside evil, and thus foreign, anterior, or heterogeneous to the functioning of excuse and forgiveness, when one hasn’t yet entered, when there is no need to enter into the scene of forgiving [pardonnance].12 Or when one has already been able to leave it. But of course, by reason of an irresistible and indestructible analogy, a resemblance and a semblance13 that introduces the perversity of 9. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript. 10. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript. 11. In the typescript there is a marginal annotation: “(n)’ na.” See also the beginning of the Eighth Session (229 below). [Translator’s note:] Those fragments seemingly refer to the linguistic contraction, and the pardon “negated” by perjury that Derrida develops here. 12. [Translator’s note:]: See 128n32. 13. In the typescript there is an interlinear and marginal annotation here: “similitude, simulacrum, semblance.”

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perjury everywhere, as soon as one opens one’s mouth, the declaration “no harm done” can also, perhaps, then be determined as the very formula, the very discourse and reason of forgiveness and of excuse, the logos, I might almost say the logo, of excuse and forgiveness. To say “I excuse you or grant you forgiveness,” “I excuse you or forgive you,” is also to say “no harm done,” it is a way — ­a trope, a figure, determinate this time, but completely different — ­of saying “I exonerate you,” “I release you from your fault,” with the result that there is no wrong between us and one can again say “no harm done.” But between the first instance of “no harm done,” which would come back to breathe, perhaps, on the eve of every scene of forgiving, and the second, which supposes on the contrary that scene to have played, to have been effected, kept in memory, like the very memory of wrong and crime [ forfait], there is a whole world, an infinite world, hence an abyssal limit. Both infinite and undiscoverable. Everything we are talking about hangs between these two infinitely different figures of “no harm done,” each of which tries in its own way to erase even the memory or archive of their “no,” of their negative grammar, their “not,” one step too far [leur “pas” de trop]. I’ll leave this enigmatic motto, then, suspended above our heads like an epigraph [exergue], an hors d’oeuvre, for we are now going to talk about oeuvres. For I said that in the two regimes of “no harm done,” both times, despite the infinite difference, the formula operates: it is in operation, at work, it creates, it does something, it makes and leaves a work behind itself. It is that work that we are trying to read, as you know, through so many works that are at the same time avowals, confessions, requests for forgiveness or cases of forgiveness granted to oneself, salutes [saluts], treatises, memoirs, histories or chronicles of pardon and of perjury. You know, one could hear this very French expression extending along so many other frequencies! Among so very many possible utterings or listenings there would be, still, perhaps, perhaps, this or these: in another inspiration, another respiration, I’ll perhaps say the sigh of another expiration, the radically desperate thinking, or rather than desperate, the thinking beyond hope that, anyway, since there is neither any freedom nor will that holds up, but simply the blind necessity of cause and effect, an ahuman, nondivine ananimal14 necessity, neither living nor dead, and since what happens must happen, well then, there is no harm, no more evil than there is good, no radical evil in any case, hence no evil, no harm done, simply the finite event of what comes and comes again, for life for death, in life as in death. 14. Thus in typescript.

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But finally since “y a pas de mal” can be said in this way — ­untranslatably, in untranslatable polysemy or dissemination, dissemination without self-­ gathering, without gathering with itself and without syn, without being with oneself, without analogy of sense, without synonymy, without synthesis, synergy, synagogue of these frequencies — ­in the (French)15 language alone, the (French) language being the only gathering place for its disseminal event, then this quasi-­phrase would remain, as text, merely a homage to idiom, a salutation made to the French language as possibility for the un­ translatable idiom, a hymn, a praise, a tribute to the French language. To some remaining trace of the French language — ­such as I assign today, at least, such as, in assigning, I sign it here, risking thereby to make of the French language the debtor, the indebted instance, therefore liable for the deals that we clinch under it [des traites qu’on tire sur elle]. But everyone knows that a language never racks up debt, no more here than anywhere else, because one begins by getting into its debt by means of the debts that one imputes to it. Language is impassive, it never responds, it is not responsible for its debts, it will never recognize them as such. It has no need to acquit itself, to settle, to ask for forgiveness or excuses. Impassive, imperturbable behind the figures that are projected onto it, it neither lends nor gives anything, it doesn’t forgive either, it remains void of forgiveness, both merciless and unforgivable. Unforgiving and unforgivable. For language, for ever, “no harm done.”16 We already identified a certain number of commonplaces and broadly shared convictions, even while deciding not to trust them too much. I’ll recall at least three examples of them. They all have the same form, that of an oppositional distinction that is both untenable and yet irreducibly necessary, inflexibly required both by the semantics of inherited concepts, their meaning, and what, in our most thoughtful desire, takes sense to its limit, to its bordering on nonsense. What are these three essential distinctions or oppositions? Where would these decisive yet in fact undecidable frontiers be drawn? On the one hand, it is said, forgiveness is not, it should not be forgetting; forgiveness must not be confused with forgetting, or even cede, even just a little, to forgetting, or to the attenuation of evil. A rigorous conceptual opposition in fact (if I forget the wrong, if the victim, who alone is qualified to 15. This and following parenthesis added in handwriting. 16. During the session, Derrida pauses and says: “So, I’ll leave this prolegomenon [exergue] suspended like this and begin.”

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forgive, forgets the fault or no longer suffers from it, presently, at present, fully, in the very present of the presumed forgiveness, to the same degree, in the same way, according to the same modal quality, as though suffering the same evil, then forgiveness is but a verbal simulacrum), but if one takes into account or into consideration a differentiated enough, fine enough, and rigorous enough concept of forgetting in all its forms (including that which would no longer depend on forgetting by the conscious self, or affecting only objective forms of representations), if on the other hand one takes into account or into consideration forms of attenuation of evil that are differentiated by displacement, spiriting away, mourning, or even only by that essential distancing that distinguishes memory from what there is a memory of, and distinguishes memory from perception, which makes of memory itself a figure of forgetting, the last alibi of the most subtle anamnesia, etc., then one can easily see that the forgetting or attenuation of evil can always, cannot help but slip into the experience of forgiveness and compromise its purity, even where one thinks that one hasn’t forgotten or attenuated in its affect, in its sufferance, the fault or presence, the duration of the evil. There are thousands of cunning ways to compromise the purity of this distinction between forgiveness and forgetting, a conceptual distinction that is however rigorous and indispensable to every consequential discourse on forgiveness — ­and hence to every experience worthy of the name. But what compromises that rigor in this way is not an empirical accident that could always befall it, or not, in a contingent way, from outside. In the dominant, religious and spiritual interpretation of forgiveness, which we have nicknamed Abrahamic or Biblio-­Koranic, that which includes the essential implication of avowal, repentance, or recognition of the fault within the possibility of forgiveness, hence a certain condition, a certain conditionality of forgiveness (claimed sometimes, however, to be absolute, infinite, and unconditional), in that dominant religious and spiritual interpretation that we have nicknamed Abrahamic, it must be the case that, if not forgetting, at least some movement like an essential displacement of the self (I indeed speak of myself, on the one hand of the self who consciously committed the fault and who, in a movement of repentance, asks for forgiveness, and, on the other, of the self, moreover in the process of co-­identifying, who suffered the wrong and of whom forgiveness is being asked: the scene of requesting forgiveness, the act of avowal and repentance, whatever form they take, constitute already a transfiguration of the mnestic relation to the past evil, on both sides, and thus include already a wave of forgetting), it must therefore be the case, I was saying, that if not forgetting, at least some movement like an essential displacement, a distancing of the self has taken

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place, in the very heart of the heart of forgiveness, of mercy. Given that, the presumed conceptual and rigorous difference no longer even holds, it isn’t assured, it becomes problematic, undecidable, in the very place where it remains rigorously required. Given that, there is nothing fortuitous, accidental, or sometimes incorrect when certain writers (Jankélévitch for example, to whom we’ll return), who well know that forgiveness is irreducibly heterogeneous to forgetting, nevertheless use one of those words in the place of or in contact with the other. (I’ll read later on17 or next time another text by Jankélévitch where, while seeming to say things very close to what I have been advancing here from the beginning, namely that forgiveness must do the impossible, that it must be ready to forgive the un-­forgivable, if it is to be forgiveness (and that would be what distinguishes it from excuse), well, while seeming to admit that and to take it to this infinite point, Jankélévitch finally places on it a condition (which we saw coming into view at the beginning of the seminar in a text by him),18 namely, the repentance or request for forgiveness that, in my view, reinscribes a conditionality within forgiving, a “since,” a “given that” (forgive me since I am asking you, since I am no longer the same as the one who betrayed you, lied to you, violated, wounded you, since I swear to you that I no longer forswear), a conditionality that is incompatible with the infinity of forgiveness, and which, in spite of what Jankélévitch says, finally folds forgiveness back onto excuse. And includes some forgetting even if repentance, avowal, contrition, the request for forgiveness seem to reassume, reaffirm, or reactualize the memory of the fault. Forgetting is here memory itself, the reaffirmation of the memory in the avowal or in the repentance: forgetting is inevitable, fatal, because it is that memory itself, it is confused with what it is opposed to, what is called confession, avowal, request for forgiveness. We’ll read that shortly, or next time, when we begin to deal with that other formidable frontier, between forgiveness and excuse. For, on the other hand, another essential distinction: forgiveness is supposedly not excuse. If each of these two concepts refers to a performative experience (“pardon me,” “I forgive,” “excuse me,” “I am sorry [ je m’excuse],” “you are excused” are performative speech acts, or, beyond discursive language, acts of a performative type, supposed to produce events rather than to describe or state them), if these two concepts, then, forgiveness and excuse, share this performative, rather than a constative or cognitive modality, they 17. The parenthesis opened at the beginning of this sentence does not close in the typescript. It could be closed at the end of the paragraph. 18. See 11ff. above.

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do not do so in the same way and they above all retain, in their very performativity, a structurally different relation to knowledge, to knowing, to cognitivity. And it is that difference between two performatives that, while they both cancel a reproach, a complaint, or even an accusation concerning the fault (which is what forgiveness does as well as does excuse: both are performatives whose object is a presumed fault, whose author they absolve in a certain way of responsibility for it), it is that difference in the relation to knowledge, knowing, explicative analysis that should allow us to identify them as one or the other and to distinguish between them (presuming one could do that, presuming one could then isolate their difference in its purity). One should distinguish rigorously between unconditional forgiveness for a wrong, a misdeed or crime lacking in excuse and extenuating circumstance, and, on the other, the excuse that — ­however performative it also be — ­for its part finds or accepts, or finds acceptable reasons and causes, explanations concerning a fault, that explains itself in this way and involves no ill will. Excuse renders an account of the fault, it gives the reasons for the fault, it obeys the principle of reason ( principium reddendae rationis). It gives reasons even if it does not concede [ne donne pas raison]. And consequently it exonerates. Forgiveness doesn’t exculpate, excuse does; forgiveness forgives the fault qua fault, the fault having remained at fault; it maintains the guilt as such (even if, in the way that the religion and religious tradition maintained by Jankélévitch posit that the fault that remains at fault, guilt as such, can be forgiven only where the mea culpa of repenting comes to season it, must sublate [relever] it — ­I am attached to that verb, you now know why — ­in order to allow it to be lifted [levée] by forgiveness), forgiveness maintains guilt as such even if it is sublated, whereas excuse, by explaining the determinism of the fault, erases the fault itself, the responsibility for the fault, the freedom responsible for the ill will. Excusare has always meant “to justify by exculpating, by finding causes if not reasons for the fault”; excuse, for its part, doesn’t forgive, it doesn’t release the guilty party from a fault that remains a fault, it removes the accusation (this opposition between excusing and accusing was famously illustrated by Cicero in his letters Ad Quintum Fratrem (2, II, 1): “me tibi excuso in eo ipso in quo te accuso [I excuse myself with respect to you for the very thing that I accuse you of ].”19 Of course, like the conceptual distinction between forgiveness and 19. Derrida’s translation. Cf. “I want to excuse myself and accuse you on one and the same count” (Cicero, Letters to Quintus and Brutus, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, in Jeffrey Henderson, ed., Cicero XXVIII [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002], 85). Derrida translates into French [cf. Cicero, Correspondance, vol. 2, Lettres LVI–­

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forgetting, the conceptual distinction between forgiveness and excuse, quite rigorous though it appear, risks becoming impracticable at any moment, for two types of reason that I’ll indicate cursorily, abstractly, for the moment, but which will remain on the agenda for everything that we say from here on. The first reason pertains to reason, rationality, ratio (as reason and as account, account rendered, calculation, calculability), to the enigmatic relation that these two scenes, forgiveness and excuse, maintain — ­each in their own way, granted — ­but which both maintain with respect to knowledge, reason, intelligence. Even if neither one nor the other is a theoretical or cognitive operation, even if they are both performatives, as I was saying just now, they both imply an act of knowledge, of comprehension; that is patently obvious in the case of excuse, as I just recalled, but forgiveness also implies that I know what and whom I am forgiving and for what; and, in a way (which way we shall see), I know that the one doing the forgiving understands the one forgiven: what it forgives and whom it forgives, whose freedom it freely forgives. Conversely, although excuse is essentially bound — ­conditioned by the explicative and determinist operation that consists in rendering an account, in calculating, through a determinate chain of reasons, in the sense of causes and effects — ­to the mechanism that has produced the fault (however subtle, overdetermined, refined, conscious or unconscious, individual or collective that mechanism be), it is indeed necessary that that knowledge concern at least the irreducible phenomenon, the apparition or appearance of a fault (and there you have the troubling kinship between excuse and forgiveness). A simple explanatory operation is not equivalent to an excuse (an expert who is analyzing — ­scientifically, rationally — ­an etiology, a behavioral determinism, well, he has neither to excuse nor accuse; he describes, he makes known, he knows, explains, describes, states, period. He is not in the position of a victim who, aided by the same knowledge, may exonerate the offender’s offense, excuse them of what still retains the appearance, the phenomenality of an offense; such that cognitivity, if it is essential to excusing as distinct from forgiving, is not sufficient to exhaust the essence of excuse). Conversely or reciprocally still, the act of requesting forgiveness, if it is at least held to be essential, along with the repentance and therefore the recognition, avowal, and transformation that it implies, this act of requesting forgiveness can affect or contaminate forgiveness with excuse since it introduces into it not only the acknowledgment of a causal operation but the essential deployment of a focused knowledge CXXI, trans. Léopold-­Albert Constans (Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1950), 133]. [Translator’s note:] See also note 76, Fifth Session, above.

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concerning the transformation of the two — ­let’s say — ­“subjects” involved in the forgiving. That means that, in a statement that I am reducing here to its simplest expression, but whose thousand modalizations we shall soon encounter even if they don’t change its kernel, if in that nuclear statement I say: “I did wrong, I know, I appear before you, I admit it, and in order to admit it — ­for otherwise there is no avowal — ­I am going to tell you how and why it must be known that I have done the wrong that you reproach me for and that I reproach myself for,” well, based on that statement it is impossible to distinguish between forgiveness and excuse, among “I am asking you for forgiveness” and “I am asking you to excuse me,” and most of all “I excuse myself [ je m’excuse],” that so-­called impolite form of excuse20 that is nevertheless lodged inside the seemingly purest request for forgiveness, the self-­exoneration, self-­exculpation of one who avows and accuses themself, or even repents. There would be a je m’excuse in the heart of requested forgiveness or in the depths of the soul of the forgiveness requested by the most humble and most repentant mea culpa. It is that machine, that mekhanē, which we are going to see in operation, always stronger, like the very law, a law above the laws of faith and knowledge, laws of determinism and of freedom, like the very law that uncompromisingly requires this distinction between excuse and forgiveness at the very moment when it grinds them up, contaminates them, infects one with the other. Finally (third distinction), forgiveness in the strong or strict sense, if there is such a thing, is supposedly an Abrahamic (Biblio-­Koranic) inheritance, not a Greek one; Greek culture supposedly knew a way of remitting fault, or releasing from blame that was related more to excuse or indulgence than to forgiveness. We already noted our reservations on principle regarding the culturalist or anthropological discourses that are in agreement in attesting to this absence of absolute forgiveness in the Greek world — ­and we’ll come back to them — ­but that doesn’t mean that there is nothing worth retaining in them, especially if one reinterprets differently the precious knowledge they have given us. On the subject of the difference between excuse and forgiveness, as on the subject of the reference to Greek culture and semantics, I would have 20. During the session, Derrida adds: “One must never say je m’excuse. You know, in French, it is very impolite to say je m’excuse [‘I excuse myself’], one should say excuse-­ moi [‘excuse me’] or je te présente mes excuses [‘I offer you my excuse(s)’], but there is an indelible “I excuse myself” in every request for excuse and every request for forgiveness. I start by excusing myself. That impoliteness is indelible in every scene of forgiveness and of excuse.”

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liked, had I the time, to read in close detail with you at least two chapters of Jankélévitch’s book Forgiveness, and I therefore invite you to read them more closely yourselves, namely, chapter 2, “The Excuse: To Understand Is to Forgive,” and especially certain sections within that chapter — ­II, III, IV, V, and VII — ­dealing with excuse, as well as the final chapter of the book, “The Unforgivable,” which I’ll come back to in a moment. Jankélévitch refers several times to the Greek word συγγνώμη, and to the way in which the Greeks, Plato and Aristotle in particular, understood it to designate an act composed at the same time of sympathy and intelligence, of comprehension, thus of knowledge. As the word indicates, syngnōmē presupposes gnōmē, that is at once the faculty of knowing, judgment, spirit, reflection, sometimes also sense, good sense, correct reasoning, krisis orthē (as Aristotle says, cf. Nicomachean Ethics VI, 11, 1143a):

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What is called discernment (gnōmē), in virtue of which we say that people are sympathetically discerning (syngnōmōnas) and have judgment (gnōmē), is correct judgement (krisis orthē) of what is equitable [tou epieikous: equitable, just, in the right measure]. This is indicated by the fact that we say the equitable (epieikē) person is especially sympathetically discerning (syngnōmonikon), and that it is equitable (epieikes) to have sympathetic discernment [indulgence, kindness: syngnōmē] in certain circumstances. Sympathetic discernment (syngnōmē) is correctly [orthē: justly, rightly] discerning judgement (gnōmē) of what is equitable; and correct discernment is that which judges what is true (syngnōmē gnōmē esti kritikē tou epieikous orthē orthē d’ē tou alēthous).21 (Comment)22

So, gnōmē is not knowledge but a faculty, an aptitude, or even a disposition that orients toward knowledge; and syngnōmē is this disposition toward knowing correctly, equitably, inasmuch as it attunes [accorde] us to the other; it is the disposition to comprehend with what or who is other: what conjoins (syn) my judgment to the other, to that of the other. What, through intelligence, but also beyond pure and simple intelligence, makes me the partner [conjoint] of the other: I understand you. Syngnignōskō is to share the same opinion, consent, agree, understand also in the way that when I 21. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. Roger Crisp, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 112 [Éthique à Nicomaque, trans. Jules Tricot (Paris: Vrin, 1967), 303–­4 (1143a, VI, II)]. 22. During the session, Derrida adds: “So, you see that in this idea of syngnōmē, gnōmē syngnōmē there is both the idea of knowledge, theoretical, critical judgment, and at the same time comprehension with respect to the other, benevolence, positive disposition, just disposition with respect to the other. That’s what equity is.”

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say to someone “I understand” or “I understand you,” I signify to them not only “I understand what you are saying” or “what you mean” or “what you are thinking,” but also “I concur, I am thinking along the same lines, I am in agreement with you” (which is of a different order, no longer that of simple judicative knowledge, but already that of alliance and friendship, etc.). And syngnōmē is often translated by “forgiveness.” You’d find in Greek-­French dictionaries thousands of references to syngnōmē that propose as its conventional translation “forgiveness,” and there lies the problem. What does one say to someone when one says to them “I understand you,” “I understand you, I hear you [va]”? There is an “I understand you” (thus in a certain way I know you, I recognize you, I know what you did and what happened), an “I understand you,” an understanding of the other as much in excuse as in forgiveness. Syngnōmē allies two senses of “understand” and thus an “understand me” in the request to be excused (“excuse me,” “you’ll have to excuse me”) as much as in the request for forgiveness. Knowledge and knowing are thus called up by the two scenes, forgiveness and excuse. And although that ambiguity can probably be present in all languages, it is particularly well marked in the French word comprendre [understand], in a certain unstable and undecidable usage of the French word comprendre. When I say “I understand you” or “understand me” at the moment of a fault, the comprehension in question implies as much intellection, explicative and theoretical knowing, intellectual knowledge as it does affective participation, the movement of the heart or identification, agreement, accordance of the heart that at least sets in train the deliverance from fault that occurs as much in excuse as in forgiveness. “I understand you” indeed signifies “I know,” “I explain,” “I can explain to myself what you did and what you couldn’t avoid doing,” but also, already, beyond that intellectual act although functioning through it, I do more than know: I attune myself to you, I attune you. It is in the twilight of this knowing that, in agreeing, the “agreed,” the alliance does more than know, with a knowing that goes beyond knowing and, as beyond, arises as much in excuse as in forgiveness, it is in the twilight of this beyond of knowledge that there is housed, perhaps, this other difference between forgiveness and excuse that we are going to try to discern. I insist strongly on this twilight, because it concerns of course nothing less than the limit between faith and knowledge, between knowledge and its other (such that a seminar on pardon, excuse, and perjury is indeed a seminar on evil, and on radical evil, on will and freedom, etc., no doubt, but first of all on faith and knowledge, on the sworn oath [ foi jurée] and scientific reason — ­nothing less — ­and not only on the relations between pure practical reason and pure speculative reason); and then also

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because, once we get to the Rousseauist moment or example of confession and excuse (Rousseau speaks more often in the code or with the vocabulary of excuse, of what is excusable or inexcusable, than in that of forgiveness and the unforgivable) we will have to read and interpret a certain usage by de Man of what he himself calls the cognitive element in Rousseau’s scene; and you will see that we have not reached the end of our difficulties; but I’ll hold off that moment for little longer yet.23 On this ambiguity concerning the comprehension that is both common and not common to forgiveness and excuse, I would like to clarify further this passage from excuse to forgiveness and vice versa, if I might say, this “becoming-­one-­another of excuse and forgiveness.” I shall do that in the margins of two passages by Jankélévitch, but in order to draw from them consequences that are not exactly those, that are even opposed to those Jankélévitch himself draws from them in his remarkable analyses. I’ll begin, but no doubt I won’t get to the end of my remarks today. Those consequences all concern what I will call a certain identification. First, there would be the identification of one with the other, identification of excuse with forgiveness, or if you prefer, their indissociability; and second, the identification, the process of identification of one subject with another (the one requesting and the one granting the excuse or forgiveness). These two identifications, these two indissociabilities would be both different and indissociable one from the other, like two indissociable modes of what is indissociable, of being-­with. And as this enigmatic “with” of “being-­with” is marked in the syn, in the conjugality of this syngnōmē, which conjoins one and the other in excuse, indulgence, forgiveness, the logic of the indissociable being-­with between one and the other (such as you and me), but also the other “one and the other” (such as forgiveness and excuse), contrary to what is often said, it will inevitably conjoin also, in the same being-­with, the same logic, the same syllogistics — ­Abrahamic and Greek — ­the forgiveness of mercy and syngnōmē. There you have the vast program that it is incumbent upon us to put to the test from here on. The first passage that I’ll select, in Jankélévitch’s Forgiveness, surrounds (pp. 118–­2 0 in the chapter “To Understand Is to Forgive”) an elegant formulation that I want to foreground and analyze: “excuse become forgiveness.” At one moment in the analysis Jankélévitch declares: “We may now say: ‘To forgive is to understand!’ Certainly forgiveness, as we shall see, is more drastic gesture than cognitive relation . . .”

23. See 247ff. below.

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(Forgiveness, 88/118, Derrida’s emphasis).24 I underline “drastic” and “cognitive.” Jankélévitch is here putting into opposition in a classic way action and knowledge, acting and knowing, praxis and theory. “Drastic,” from draō, means that which acts, does, or operates energetically; thus forgiveness does something, that is what is called its performativity: it is therefore not sufficient to cognize or recognize wrong to forgive it, nor is it sufficient to recognize it, if one is its author, to avow or repent or request forgiveness. Hence forgiveness is basically not an act of knowledge; if I were to pursue that beyond what Jankélévitch does with the value of the drastic, it would be to make clear the fact that this doing, this draō, this drastic, dramatic doing — ­it’s the same word — ­this dramaturgy of a forgiveness or excuse that is a doing, and is not content to have known, to reveal, to bring to light, this dramaturgy is both an act and a work [oeuvre]; it does, it operates by leaving a trace of what it does. It isn’t only a performative speech act that comes to an end in coming to an end: it remains, it continues to do work, at least virtually, it perseveres by continuing to trace its trace, to leave and to trace its trace of memory and forgetting. Forgiveness is an action and a work, it changes things and begins a history; and, given that, it operates its oeuvre, its opus, its work and the remainder of its work as opus that continues to work, to work all by itself, of itself, like a machine beyond the first moment of its advent or its decision, such that this first instant gains its sense as first instant only retrospectively, by the force of repetition that takes it beyond that first instant, which is to say also beyond its origin or its author, its signatory. That is why, let it be said or recalled in passing, I am here tying our problematic to that of the work and of testamentary remaining [restance], and of the becoming-­poetic and -­literary of this testamentary remaining of confession, which seems to me indissociable from it. Jankélévitch continues: We may now say: ‘To forgive is to understand!’ Certainly forgiveness, as we shall see, is more drastic gesture than cognitive relation, more offering [give: forgive] than knowledge, more sacrifice and heroic decision than discursive knowledge [I won’t comment on these words, to save time, although they call up many reservations, but we’ll return to them later: once forgiveness is inscribed in sacrificial logic and heroic decision, it risks being compromised also, but let’s leave that, it will become clear later]. Forgiveness is an act of 24. The typescript has annotations in English on the back of the page, no doubt relating to the seminar given in the US: “South Africa / Nation healing / atonement reconciliation committee / Desmond Tutu: / want a revenge / But all the people want to know what happened / to know what happened / so they will be satisfied.” See Derrida, Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, first three sessions.

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courage and a generous proposition of peace [same thing: reconciliation? reparation? See what we said last time . . . Comment]25 For intellection, there is nothing to forgive, but there are a multitude of delicate mechanisms, of cogs and springs to dismantle, of motives, of previous histories and of influences to understand. (Forgiveness, 88/118)

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Starting from this word “understand,” which will be found at the confluence of knowledge and a certain action — ­albeit passive — ­Jankélévitch is going to refine his analysis, an analysis whose art he has cultivated and whose logic or concept he has formalized as a kind of “almost nothing” and “I don’t know what.” We have an exemplary example of that here, making it, then, I think, more than a fine example. He has just said, “For intellection, there is nothing to forgive,” etc. He picks up on that: And conversely, for forgiveness, there is everything to forgive, and there is almost nothing to understand . . . Almost nothing, and yet I do not know what simple and indivisible thing: we understand this global presence of the guilty person in front of us, this malevolence that is never an object but that is rather an intentional quality and an undecomposable movement; and we understand it by intuitive comprehension. Forgiveness, which renders wickedness venial, discovers in the wicked intention a dimension of profundity. To forgive, indeed, is to understand a little bit! (Forgiveness, 88/118)

You can well see how this “little bit” — ­this “little to understand,” this “almost nothing, and yet I do not know what . . . indivisible thing: we understand this global presence of the guilty person in front of us” — ­has shifted us from understanding as pure theoretical intellection to understanding as participative, affective, sympathetic comprehension — ­“intuitive” says Jankélévitch — ­penetrating or occupying the place of the other on its inside. From intellectual understanding to the understanding of thinking along the same lines as the other, from the understanding of rational analysis to the understanding of agreement, of an attunement of the heart, or even of mercy [miséricorde] and of recordatio. In a certain way, one has to understand at least a little to forgive, but with a comprehension that isn’t only that of theoretical intelligence. Before pursuing Jankélévitch, or accompanying him in the difficulty that he will analyze in his own way, I would like to underscore one of the thorniest issues concerning this problem of “understanding.” Faced with evil, radical evil, in the very place where it appears incomprehensible, monstrous, 25. Allusion to the discussion session of February 4, 1998. Derrida doesn’t add commentary here.

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unintelligible (“how could anyone do that?” I won’t give any examples, there are too many of them in recent memory or practically in front of our eyes), this unintelligibility itself calls for an effort to try to understand, to render an account, to explain, whether or not that is done with a view to forgiving. “How is that possible?” one asks oneself. Before even rendering an account — ­objectively, scientifically, analytically, etiologically — ­of this radical evil, even before calculating, computing, or reckoning with causes and effects, if only to realize, to take note of it, I must minimally begin to understand what has happened. Whether I forgive or not, the experience of “realizing what has happened” is a first stage in comprehension. But following that, faced with this radical evil, against the background of this primitive proto-­comprehension that is the experience, the perception of the wrong that has been done, the encounter with or perception of the crime, the taking account of what has taken place, whether or not I am its direct victim, one could well imagine that the so-­called most worthy reaction would be to refuse to understand — ­but in another sense, precisely, of understanding. In a sense that is irreducible to the former. Some months back, when certain academics organized not only a research program but also a conference at the Sorbonne26 in order to understand (that is to say also to compare, albeit to compare things that are incomparable, unique) this century’s enterprises of extermination, in particular the Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, writing in Le Monde,27 didn’t just violently take to task these academics who were in his eyes suspect for comparing the incomparable and for neutralizing, relativizing, in the name of knowledge and scientific comprehension — ­in an almost negationist and revisionist manner — ­the very object of their scientific research. He said especially — ­and this is what I want to recall this evening, in this context — ­that, for his part, he didn’t want to understand, he prohibited himself from wanting to understand what the exterminators had done and wanted to do. Wanting to understand, he seemed to imply, is doubly culpable and unworthy, it is a double fault or double crime. That is what he had already explained at greater length in his text, “De l’Holocauste à Holocauste” (at the end of Au sujet de 26. Derrida is referring to the conference “L’Homme, la langue, les camps,” which took place at the Université de Paris IV-­Sorbonne and the Université de Reims, May 15–­19, 1997. See Catherine Coquio, ed., Parler des camps, penser les génocides (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999). 27. See Jean-­Michel Frodon, “Le long voyage de Shoah à travers l’actualité et la mémoire,” Le Monde, June 12, 1997, https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1997/06/12 /le-­l ong-­v oyage-­d e-­s hoah-­a -­t ravers-­l -­a ctualite-­e t-­l a-­m emoire_3788709_1819218 .html?xtmc=shoah&xtcr=28.

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Shoah. Le Film de Claude Lanzmann [Paris: Belin, 1990], p. 314), where all in all the “hiatus,” the “leap,” the “abyss” that he speaks of separates two sorts of comprehension, two modes of understanding, one of which consists in remaining blind to what is to be understood, which is to say not to be understood. When one understands in the sense of the rational intelligence of causes and effects, one doesn’t understand what is to be understood, evil itself, which is to say not to be understood in the first sense. (Read Au sujet de Shoah, pp. 314–­15 CL.)28 Up until now, all cinematic works seeking to deal with the Holocaust have attempted to explain its engendering from the perspective of History and chronology: they begin in 1933, with the Nazis’ rise to power — ­or even earlier, by exposing the various currents of German antisemitism in the 19th century (folkish ideology, formation of the German national consciousness, etc.) — ­and they seek to arrive, year after year, stage by stage, almost harmoniously as it were, at the extermination. As if the extermination of six million men, women and children, as if a mass massacre on that scale could be engendered. For the destruction of six million Jews, there are quite clearly reasons and explanations: Adolf Hitler’s character, his relation to the Jew considered to be the “bad father,” the defeat of 1918, unemployment, inflation, the religious roots of antisemitism, the function of Jews in society, the image of the Jew, the indoctrination of German youth, the enrapture of Germany by the charming rapist Adolf Hitler, Germanic discipline, the Jewish spirit seen as the absolute negative of German spirit, etc. Taken one by one, or all together, all those domains of explanation (psychoanalysis, sociology, economy, religion, etc.) are both true and false, that is to say perfectly unsatisfactory: if they amount to the necessary condition for the extermination, they are not for all that its sufficient condition; the destruction of European Jewry cannot be deduced logically or mathematically from this system of presuppositions. Between the conditions that allowed for the extermination and the extermination itself — ­the fact of the extermination — ­there is a break in continuity, a hiatus, a leap, an abyss. The extermination cannot be engendered, and to want to do so is in a certain manner to deny its reality, to refuse the emergence of violence, to want to clothe its implacable nudity, 28. During the session, Derrida adds: “Here is what he said in this text, which I am going to read very quickly, and the substance of which he returns to in an article in Les Inrockuptibles that appeared some time back, on the occasion of the television screening of Shoah. See “Claude Lanzmann: témoin de l’immémorial (interview with Serge Kaganski et Frédéric Bonnaud),” Les Inrockuptibles 136 (1998): 15–­21; and the second part of the interview, “Claude Lanzmann: cinéaste, de notre temps (interview with S. Kaganski et F. Bonnaud),” Les Inrockuptibles 137 (1998): 36–­41.

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adorn it and thus to refuse to see it, to refuse to look at it in the face in all its aridity and incomparability. In a word, it is to dilute it. Every discourse that seeks to engender violence is an absurd dream of the non-­violent.29

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On the one hand, as intellectual act, as causal explanation, to understand is both to compare the unique, to make it part of a series within a relativizing set, and to dissolve pernicious freedom along a causal chain, along an etiological fatality, to reduce to naught responsibility for evil, that is to say, evil itself. If it can be accounted for by analyzing a situation in which the Nazis, for example, could not do otherwise than what they did, the causes being what they were — ­historical, political, economic, phantasmatic, unconscious [pulsionnelles] — ­well, their guilt dissolves, moral judgment is impossible, etc.; in a sense one is obliged to say, faced with the worst, with all the most unfigurable figures of the worst: “no harm done [y a pas d’mal].” That is a classic schema that can be translated in Kantian terms, when the analysis of phenomenal causality and of the laws of nature leaves no room for freedom. Hence, if one wants to judge evil (that one subsequently does or doesn’t forgive), one must not understand, one must not understand in the sense, in any case, of explaining, one must do something other than “understand” in the sense of explaining by means of the principle of reason and by causality. That is one of the interpretations of what it means to say “I don’t want to understand” the executioners, if I want to judge them or even forgive them. To judge or to forgive is to not understand. But, on the other hand, the same utterance, “I don’t understand and I don’t want to understand,” can mean something else. What? Well, not that I don’t want to explain in the sense of accounting for and reasoning why, but I don’t want to identify, I don’t want to and cannot put myself in the place of the exterminator or traitor or criminal. For if I were to put myself in their place, I wouldn’t be able to judge or condemn them. But by the same token, I would add, I couldn’t forgive it or them. Yet again, if I were to condemn the crime, either I couldn’t forgive it, for I would have understood what was unforgivable about it, or the forgiveness that I granted it would be suspect, for it would be as if I were granting it to myself: one must forgive the other and not oneself, and that is where the greatest difficulty lies, that of identificatory comprehension, and we are far from being done with that. 29. Claude Lanzmann, “De l’Holocauste à Holocauste ou comment s’en débarrasser,” in Bernard Cuau, Michel Deguy, Rachel Ertel, Shoshana Felman et al., Au sujet de Shoah. Le film de Claude Lanzmann (Paris: Belin, 1990), 314–­15 (Lanzmann’s emphasis, my translation [DW]).

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I think that we can now pursue our reading of the text by Jankélévitch, which will become more clear, I hope, but also more problematic, up to the point where he speaks to us of “excuse become forgiveness.” (Read and comment pp. 118–­2 0, PJ) To forgive, indeed, is to understand a little bit! — ­But conversely, could we say yes or no that to understand is to forgive? To understand is either to exonerate an innocent person, recognizing that there was nothing to forgive, or to become sometimes more indulgent and sometimes more severe with respect to the accused depending on the circumstances. And yet comprehension sometimes prepares us to love and to forgive. If love understands a fortiori what it loves (for that which is capable of the most is capable of the least), comprehension loves with less reason that which it comprehends. Love, by dint of loving, finishes by understanding, and by dint of understanding, finishes by loving. By virtue of a veritable circular causality, sympathy is at the same time the consequence and the condition of intellection. One sympathizes by dint of understanding, but in order to understand, it is already necessary to sympathize, the two at the same time; intellection, effect and cause of love, is wholly penetrated by love. In the word syngnōmē the Greeks unify at the same time the judgment of the eugnōmones, which is to say, the critical judgment — ­gnōme kritikē tou epieikous orthē, says the Nicomachean Ethics — ­and the sympathetic agreement with the Other suggested by the prefix syn and which makes us think of gnōsomenoi kai syngnōsomenoi of Alcibiades’ speech. Certainly, gnōnai and syngignōskein have gnosis, which is knowledge, in common. But syngignōskein, being the act of coming around to the opinion of the partner, of giving him one’s consent, of siding with his point of view, already implies a community, even though this community is cognitive. . . . Obeying the vertiginous auction, and the “frenzied” and, so to speak, totalitarian crescendo that govern all our inclinations, indulgence transforms itself at once into sympathy, and even beyond sympathy, into love and personalized dilection. In one fell swoop, it slips down the incline of amorous hyperbole. The indulgent person forgives by dint of excusing. The excuse passes “to the limit,” or better yet, to the absolute, and it engages the total person in the comprehensive act. The excuse, going beyond the simple, negative recognition of the innocence of an innocent person, the excuse that has become infinite, the excuse that has become forgiveness, is henceforth indiscernible from gracious venia. Thus a lawyer finishes by marrying the accused that he has just got acquitted. The accused did not commit the crime that we imputed to her, or the crime was, if not justified, at least understandable, explicable, excusable, and mitigated in a thousand ways by the context of the circumstances . . . But this is still not a reason for marrying! But to go from there to marrying her! Between the pleading and the marriage, there

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is a vertiginous step to surmount. Yet one surmounts it. By dint of fighting for the accused, by dint of putting oneself in the place of the accused, the defender ends up identifying with him. The one who refutes the accusation is carried to side with the camp of the accused person in front of us, to rejoin his party, to embrace his interests, to sign on under his flag. (Forgiveness, 88–­8 9/118–­21, trans. modified)

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It would now be necessary, still on the path that will lead us back toward Augustine and Rousseau, toward excuse and the inexcusable in one and the other, to mark two further pauses. (A) First pause.30 The first, as regards the simple referencing of our work, concerning the συγγνωμη, what Jankélévitch calls the syngnomic. I pointed out to you at the beginning of the year, among many many other possible ways into this, the article by Danièle Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions sur le pardon en Grèce ancienne” (in Le Pardon [Paris: Beauchesne Éditeur, 1987]). You’ll find there many precious references — ­which, for that matter, the author most often doesn’t develop or explore herself — ­showing in a convincing way that syngnōmē had a sense that was weaker than excuse, and weaker especially than forgiveness, the sense of indulgence, or comprehensive compassion, leniency [mansuétude] I would say (that isn’t the author’s word, but I think it is indeed what she is talking about, leniency — ­mansuetudo — ­being a sort of domesticated solicitude, aimed at toning down, an aptitude for reassuring, consoling, a sort of gentleness [douceur], douceur being the translation chosen by Mme de Romilly in her book La Douceur dans la pensée grecque,31 in which she pays a lot of attention to syngnōmē). Danièle Aubriot draws on a good number of occurrences of the word that I’ll let you study on your own, and believes she can advance a quite strong thesis, namely, that in a good number of practices, pragmatic situations in the course of which the word syngnōmē gets uttered by the Greeks, especially in the mouths of rhetoricians, guilt “vanishes [se volatilise],” “responsibility disappears”: Συγγνώμη, a form of intellectual adhesion to excuses founded on a reasoning can, in extreme conditions, get to the point of being no more than a sort of jaded resignation to a wrong that has been committed, colored by the bitter sentiment that the fault can always happen again. If for us [! I underline 30. Derrida will come to his “second pause” in the Eighth Session. 31. Jacqueline de Romilly, La Douceur dans la pensée grecque (Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1979; reprint, Paris: Hachette, 1995). See in particular chap. 4, “La suggnomè et les fautes excusables” (65–­7 6).

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for reasons that will appear more clearly a little later] forgiveness implies graciously remitting a deliberate fault, whereas for the Greeks, when that fault is willingly avowed, no quarter is given, it is clear here that we [my emphasis again] can indeed be in the domain of excuse, indulgence, clemency, but not in that of forgiveness. (pp. 17–­18)32

Elsewhere Aubriot insists on “the difference that separates the indulgence issuing willingly from a sentiment of solidarity (συγγνώμη), and the grace that is as it were transcendent, by means of which an offended person remits the fault of their offender (which can be expressed by άϕιέναι).”33 Now aphienai is the word for “remit” — ­remit a penalty, release from guilt, in truth forgive — ­a word that is readily used to translate biblical texts, for example in the translation of the Septuagint. But the word is a source of embarrassment, it should be a source of embarrassment for Danièle Aubriot, for it is also present in texts of Euripides that she is required to cite (I refer you to p. 19), where it is moreover a question of forgiveness between son and father, following motifs that we could have analyzed as the continuation of what we have done up until now. Well, what does Danièle Aubriot do to demonstrate nevertheless that, as she says, for the Greeks “there is no place for forgiveness”? (What is more, the latter formula finds its energetic echo a little farther along: “It isn’t very surprising,” she says, “actually, that forgiveness doesn’t really have its place, as such, in Greek society: the gods don’t provide any examples of it. Mythology is too full of divine punishments whose irreversibility seems to us cruel for there to be any need to insist on that” [Niobe, Arachne, Marsyas, Oedipus!].)34 And that series of embarrassed precautions35 (actually [de fait], really [vraiment], as such: if forgiveness doesn’t have its place (besides, what does “have its place” mean for a thing such as forgiveness?) — ­“actually,” “really,” “as such” — ­it is perhaps because it has its place otherwise than “actually,” “really,” “as such”; and that would incite me to suggest, as I have done elsewhere for the gift36 or for hospitality37 (and for good reasons, according 32. Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions,” 17–­18 (Derrida’s emphasis). [Translator’s note:] All translations from Aubriot are my own. 33. Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions,” 20. 34. Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions,” 23, Derrida’s emphasis. 35. This sentence continues in the following paragraph. The parenthesis opened here is not closed in the typescript. 36. See, for example, Derrida, Given Time, 14–­15 [Donner le temps, 27–­2 8]. 37. See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1995–­97, and Of Hospitality [De l’hospitalité].

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to a law that is analogous), that forgiveness can have a place only where its truth does not appear, is not given, doesn’t present itself, in fact, actually, really, as such, does not exhibit itself as such, presently, in fact, in an intuition or perception. As for the remark that “the gods [the Greek gods] don’t provide any examples of it. Mythology is too full of divine punishments whose irreversibility seems to us cruel for there to be any need to insist on that,” this argument at least makes one smile: as if the God of the Bible didn’t provide any example of cruel and irreversible punishments and as if there were not, in the biblical tradition, any sublime economy reestablishing the logic of syngnōmē instead of pure grace, but let’s leave that for later. This series of embarrassed precautions must indeed, then, signal or repress something else. And to demonstrate, therefore, that “there is no place for forgiveness” “in Greek society,” Danièle Aubriot has to assign it a foreign place or origin, or better still, the place of the foreigner in Greek culture. In order to account for those cases of sovereign grace that one finds in Euripides or Herodotus, she says that there the “forgiveness behooves princes, which is to say from the Greek point of view, foreigners; the emulation of eminence on which it is founded seems to make its usage inappropriate to an egalitarian community. In Greece, by contrast, when one finds syngnōmē, it is more in the neighborhood of indulgence than forgiveness, that is to say closer to an ambiguous quality apt to degenerate into permissive license than to a virtue stamped with grandeur.”38 That is no doubt largely true, but also insufficient. First, one may wonder whether forgiveness, absolute forgiveness, isn’t always, structurally, in the situation of being foreign, of an event with a structurally foreign origin, heterogeneous in relation to this or that economic inside of culture or politics, like the foreign itself, foreign to the same, the wholly other itself, necessarily incarnated by some transcendence coming to break open the economic inside of a city, a culture, a nation, a family, and even a history, etc. In any case, for Danièle Aubriot it is a matter of showing — ­and this is perhaps what counts most for us from the political point of view — ­that the idea of democracy implies equality in the face of punishment and so seems barely compatible, for the Greeks, with this law of exception that goes hand in hand with grace and forgiveness. As she says: The Greeks could scarcely conceive (for themselves) of a so to speak vertical grace, outside of justice as it were, an “act of the prince”; for if in Greece, there is not necessarily democracy, there is at least equality. Among equals 38. Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions,” 21.

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one looks for excuses, but forgiveness is out of place. Given that it puts its practitioners above laws and justice, and reduces its beneficiaries to the rank of the grateful but duty-­bound, even submissive, it would have perhaps posed for Greek society more problems than it would have allowed it to resolve. (p. 27)39

That remark is still interesting and pertinent, but it at least allows us to suppose that “we,” as Danièle Aubriot often says, existing in a culture of forgiveness and open to something that the Greeks did not know, live neither in a democracy nor in a society making equality of subjects before the law a sacred principle. What of democracy, then, in a culture of the Judeo-­Christian-­Islamic tradition? In any case, these remarks interest us to the extent that they remind us of the difficulty of politicizing forgiveness, the very difficulty of making it a res publica, also the difficulty of forgiveness in a democratic state, and in particular of this political specification of forgiveness represented by the right to grace accorded the sovereign, the governor, or the head of state. We are not done with this difficulty, but it is in this perspective that we must take into consideration this other remark by Danièle Aubriot (p. 22), namely, that, in classical Greece, when one chose remittance of a punishment, one didn’t make of it a point of glory; one was a little ashamed of it and tended to hide it. Syngnōmē is more readily practiced in the private domain than in the public sphere (an important distinction that we should meditate on, whether it be proven or not: is every remission of a sentence a pardon? Is every pardon the remission of a sentence, a punishment that is commuted? And is forgiveness subject to the distinction private/public as having any pertinence? Is there any sense in granting in private a forgiveness that has been refused in public? For example, forgiving someone or asking for forgiveness of someone being sent to the electric chair? An enormous hive of questions that I can only signal here). Before leaving this text by Danièle Aubriot, and still within the first pause I announced (the second will be for next time), I’ll draw your attention to two awkward places [lieux de malaise] in this cultural or anthropological analysis dedicated to “those Greeks” as opposed to “us” (non-­Greek).40

39. Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions,” 27. 40. Derrida develops this argument in “We Other Greeks,” trans. Pascale-­Anne Brault and Michael Naas, in Miriam Leonard, ed., Derrida and Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) [“Nous autres Grecs,” in Barbara Cassin, ed., Nos Grecs et leurs modernes: Les stratégies contemporaines d’appropriation de l’Antiquité (Paris: Seuil, 1992), 251–­7 6].

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First awkwardness: I’ll situate it in the oppositional usage of “them” and “us.” What is going on when the anthropologist or culturologist of forgiveness and excuse, of syngnōmē, says “them” and “us?” And when she is indeed obliged to temper her opposition by adding “and yet” and “by analogy”? The stakes of this page, punctuated by an alternation of “them” and “us,” will allow us to formalize what we could call a principle of economy that comes to confuse all the oppositions and breach all the frontiers that we are talking about here. (Read and comment S pp. 25, 26, 27)

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In sum, if one had to move toward a conclusion, it could be said that the Greeks indeed knew the compassion, pity, indulgence, clemency, equity that takes into account extenuating circumstances. A strong sentiment of human solidarity caused them in particular to experience compassion at all periods, in almost all circumstances, in almost all their authors; the consideration of the omnipotence and absolute ataraxia of the gods, as much as the bitter recognition of their indifference, were able to nourish that sentiment. But wherever one tracks forgiveness, it seems to slip away. In fact, each time that something resembling forgiveness comes into view, one is dissuaded from accepting it as that for one reason or another. Sometimes it is a matter of an indulgence founded on excuses whose reasoned nature is incompatible with the notion of “grace” that is for us contained in forgiveness: if one can really speak of forgiveness granted in a just manner, it is because it is no longer really about forgiveness. Sometimes grace is indeed present, but for biased motives: it is to the advantage of a person or a people, for their renown or for reasons of immediate utility, to “close their eyes”; or else it is prudent not to show oneself to be an inflexible judge, according to the hypothesis that one will oneself in turn have to be judged one day. This “grace,” presenting itself as a down payment that one expects to recoup later, seems to us to imply something shocking. And yet, when Bourdaloue says: “He who does not exercise mercy throughout time will have no mercy to hope for in eternity” (8 e dim. après la Pentec. Dominic., t. III, p. 110), the expectation of reciprocity is also present, even if, on the strictly human plane, forgiveness seems to be gratis [ gracieux] and without compensation. The perspective seems to us different, given that there are two levels: one on earth, and one after that. But isn’t there some calculus also, and is it really appropriate to accentuate the difference that separates this attitude from the Greek mentality, rather than accentuate the analogy? If one were to be inclined in favor of analogy, one would have to consider that forgiveness has its place in ancient Greece. All the same, it would remain the case that, if “gentleness” receives more and more votes, indulgence, for its part, never stopped being controversial, whereas forgiveness, supposing that it was really practiced, would have always appeared suspect.

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It in fact seems that for the period that concerns us one may roughly oppose true forgiveness, inscribed in a despotic or feudal context, to the domain of excuses, pleading by argument, which is the mainspring of justice, even if it aims at nuance in the sense of equity. The Greeks could scarcely conceive (for themselves) of a so to speak vertical grace, outside of justice as it were, an “act of the prince”; for if in Greece there is not necessarily democracy, there is at least equality. Among equals one looks for excuses, but forgiveness is out of place. Given that it puts its practitioners above laws and justice, and reduces its beneficiaries to the rank of the grateful but duty-­bound, even submissive, it would have perhaps posed for Greek society more problems than it would have allowed it to resolve. Oscillating between condescendence toward an involuntary harm, and being loath to conceive of harm as the fruit of a deliberate will, Greek thought seems not to have fulfilled the necessary conditions for being disposed toward exalting the virtues of forgiveness.41

That is the awkwardness of the conclusion; the second awkwardness, can, I think, be detected in the introduction, starting with the opening rhetoric in the form of captatio benevolentiae. In pretending to solicit the indulgence of her listeners (for this was first of all a lecture), Danièle Aubriot recalls with the playful tone of a distinguished academic address the scene in the course of which, at the beginning of the Critias, Critias solicits the indulgence, the syngnōmē precisely, of his listeners at the moment of broaching a difficult task. On the part of Danièle Aubriot it is just a small phrase — ­the first — ­of four lines that are immediately abandoned, as is this reference to the Critias ἢ ΑΤΛΑΝΤΙΚΟΣ,42 which as you know follows and pursues what is in the Timaeus. If one goes looking there, as I had the urge to do, things are much more interesting and troubling. I don’t think I need to take the time to dedicate to this passage all the philological and rhetorical analysis that it would deserve, but I would like, taking it a bit further than did Danièle Aubriot, to put you on the track so that you can go and see for yourselves should you wish to do so. One day we shall perhaps come back to this extraordinary scene of oath-­taking that closes this unfinished dialogue43 (it’s a 41. Aubriot, “Quelques réflexions,” 25–­27. 42. Thus in typescript. Cf. “or Atlantis” according to the Luc Brisson translation, “Critias ou l’Atlantide: genre politique,” in Plato, Oeuvres complètes, trans. Luc Brisson (Paris: Flammarion, 2011). 43. Derrida comments on this passage from the Timaeus in “Color to the Letter,” trans. Laurent Milesi, in Ginette Michaud, Joana Masó, and Javier Bassas, eds., Thinking Out of Sight: Writing on the Arts of the Visible (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021), 156–­74 [“De la couleur à la lettre,” in Ginette Michaud, Joana Masó, and

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sacrificial scene that brings together the ten kings of the island of Atlantis, the domain of Poseidon, when they are engraving on a stela, or column, the text of an oath (horkos) that proclaims the most terrifying anathemas, the most extreme threats against those who might violate it. Then they swear to judge in accordance with the laws so inscribed in stone, to punish anyone who has broken them in the past, swearing, undertaking that they themselves will never in the future transgress the literal formulations of the inscription (tōn grammatōn), that they will themselves command and obey only in conformity with the laws of their father44 (kata tous tou patros nomous)).45 And at the end of the Critias, at the moment when the dialogue is interrupted (I keep insisting on interruption, I explained why at the beginning), but interrupted as if accidentally, without our knowing whether the interruption is deliberate or not (one commentator, Luc Brisson, says: “With these words the narrative of the Critias ends very suddenly. Did Plato abandon his writing of the narrative? Has what follows been lost as a result of the deterioration of the manuscript [the damage done, therefore, to a “record,”46 to an “archive”]? For the moment we have no idea.”),47 so, just when the text of the Critias breaks off, where are we? Well, at the moment of the decline of the island, its inhabitants — ­when their divinity wanes and humanity regains the upper hand, when they seem happy and satisfied, full of good conscience although they have become unjust and venal, then the God of Gods, theos ho theōn, Zeus, wants to inflict on them justice in the form of a punishment (dikēn, and let’s not forget that dikē, such an enigmatic word, can mean in Greek both justice, the proceedings, the pleading, Javier Bassas, eds., Penser à ne pas voir. Écrits sur les arts du visible (Paris: Éditions de la différence, 2013), 231n19]. On the Timaeus in general see Derrida, “Khōra,” in On the Name, trans. Tom Dutoit (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 87–­127 [Khora (Paris: Galilée, 1993)]. 44. Cf.: “and making libation over the fire swore to give judgment according to the laws upon the pillar and to punish whosoever had committed any previous transgression; and, moreover, that henceforth they would not transgress any of the writings willingly, nor govern nor submit to any governor’s edict save in accordance with their father’s laws.” Plato, Critias, 120A, in Jeffrey Henderson, ed., Plato, vol. 9, trans. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 301–­3 [Critias, trans. Albert Rivaud (Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1956), 120b]. 45. We close here the parenthesis opened above in this paragraph. 46. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript. 47. Luc Brisson, “Notes à la traduction du Critias,” in Plato, Timée, suivi du Critias, trans. L. Brisson (Paris: Flammarion, 1992), 392n196, my translation [DW].

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the judgment, and the consequence of the judgment, namely, the penalty, the punishment). The God of Gods wants, then, to judge them, to have them stand trial, and so most likely punish them. He brings together all the gods, to make the law and impose justice, he assembles them in their most noble economy, in their most noble hearth, their most noble house (eis tēn timiōtatēn autōn oikēsin), in the center of the cosmos, where one can see everything that participates in genesis, in becoming, as the French translation says.48 Having assembled them, he says to them (kai sunageigas eipen,49 in this synagogue of the gods, having had them come into a place that “synagogue” means, a place of assembly for steps, where all gather, their coming, their synagogal convention, their circumference), he says to them: What? What does he say to them? The text is interrupted there. . . . One will never know, perhaps nothing, nothing that is not destined to remain silent or secret. . . . 50 He convokes them to impose justice, punish them or not and he says to them . . . 51 what? One will never know. Everything is possible. To all of them — ­all the gods whose steps [ pas] have assembled them in this synagogue of Greek gods — ­Zeus, the God of Gods, could have said everything or not [pas] said, said nothing, or perhaps said “y a pas,” “there is not,” “no grounds to judge,” “no harm done [y-­a-­ pas-­d’mal].” One will never know, it’s another record, another one of Plato’s interrupted postcards. But it is back to the beginning of the Critias that I wanted to lead these steps, and from the synagogue of the gods to the syngnōmē of men that, you will see, still concerns the genesis, and even the genesis of God, the birth of God. The dialogue itself begins, also, a little like the Confessions of Augustine (but the comparison ends there), with a prayer by Timaeus. Timaeus addresses God, that God who, he says, “has recently been created by our speech (although in reality created of old).”52 It is about a God who is born one fine day. Addressing this God who has his birth and rebirth date, 48. [Translator’s note:] Cf. Critias, trans. Rivaud, 121C; and “Wherefore he assembled together all the gods into that abode which they honour most, standing as it does at the centre of all the Universe, and beholding all things that partake of generation; and when he had assembled them, he spake thus” (Critias, trans. Bury, 307). 49. Critias, trans. Bury, 306 [trans. Rivaud, 121c]. 50. A line joins these words to a handwritten line at the bottom of the page whose words are difficult to decipher. They perhaps say “Pardon for not meaning (to say)” (cf. Derrida’s extensive commentary on this sentence in the Fourth Session). 51. [Translator’s note:] This and previous two ellipses in typescript. 52. Critias, trans. Bury, 259 [trans. Rivaud, 106B].

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singing his praises, a hymn, Timaeus begs him to save, to assure the salvation (sōtērian) of, the words that have come to us and will have been harmonious, just in their melodic accord, in the melos. But he also asks him, in case of any false note, to punish, to chastise, to apply dikē, the justice that can be a punishment. But what is justice, dikē, just punishment, for someone who sings a false note? Well, it consists in repairing. And what is repairing by punishing justly? Well, it consists in reestablishing the harmony (emmēlē), the correct measure. It is to tune [accorder],53 reconnect [raccorder]. Punishment or pardon, divine justice consists in repairing, reconnecting by bringing back the just measure. And that is the homogeneity between justice and knowledge, between punishment or pardon, salvation and knowledge, science, epistēmē, comprehending as knowing. But this comprehending as knowledge, this knowing is already itself a gift, a gift from God. Timaeus prays to the God who was born one day to give him the gift of that knowing; and what indeed confirms that this knowing, that this “epistēmē” (this will be his word) is a gift, a gift able to repair, cure, save, restore the good, to reharmonize [ré-­accorder] it, is the fact that Timaeus speaks of it as a pharmakon,54 an ambiguous and mysterious remedy, a “potion [ philtre]” says this or that French translator (Rivaud, Budé), a “remedy” says another:55 “we therefore pray to God himself to make us a gift of the potion ( pharmakon) that is the most perfect and best of all potions [ pharmakōn ēmin auton teleōtaton kai ariston pharmakōn], knowledge [epistēmēn].”56 He prays God to guarantee his word in this way, to save it thanks to a pharmakon, by granting [en accordant] the pharmakon (I am choosing and privileging the word accord here, like record and miséricorde, not only because of the reference to the heart but because in it there is precisely an accord between two heterogeneous meanings, that of the gift — ­accorder is “to offer,” “to give” — ­and that of calculable harmony, the science of the correct proportion, balance, the calculable rule, knowing: faith and knowledge again), he prays God to guarantee his word in this way, to save it thanks to a pharmakon, by granting the pharmakon at the very moment when it is a matter of proffering a 53. [Translator’s note:] Accorder is also a common word for “to grant,” as in accorder un pardon. 54. During the session, Derrida adds: “That was one thing I missed a long time ago. [Laughter].” 55. During the session, Derrida specifies: “Luc Brisson.” 56. Derrida quotes Critias, trans. Rivaud (106b), my translation [DW]; cf.: “we pray that he will grant to us that medicine which of all medicines is the most perfect and most good, even knowledge” (Critias, trans. Bury, 259).

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discourse on the gods, a sort of theology, theogony (that is also analogous, I don’t say identical, to Augustine’s gesture in praying to God, addressing him, thanking him and praising him in advance, in truth begging him to guide his word at the moment of speaking no longer to God but about God, here about the birth and generation of the Gods). To quote the other translation (Brisson, published by Aubier): “To be sure to see to the end what remains for us to say concerning the generation of the gods, we thus pray to this god to give us the most perfect and best of remedies, science.”57 And it is then, echoing this prayer to God that he grant dikē (a justice that is a restorative and helpful judgment, a justice of clemency and salvation), it is then that Critias takes the floor, beginning a speech that he will continue almost without interruption, it is then that he addresses the same request to his interlocutors:

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And I accept the task, Timaeus; but the request which you yourself made at the beginning when you asked for indulgence (syngnōmēn) on the ground of the magnitude of the theme you were about to expound, that same request I also make now on my own behalf [the one you were addressing to God: be indulgent with me as God was with you: pardon me as you asked God to pardon you (forgive us as we forgive those that trespass against us: analogy of analogy: merely formal)], and I claim indeed to be granted a still larger measure of indulgence in respect of the discourse I am about to deliver. . . . But what I must somehow endeavour to show is that the discourse now to be delivered calls for greater indulgence (pleionos syngnōmēs deitai) because of its greater difficulty.58

The word syngnōmē and the same request will be recalled again at the end of his speech: It is because I wish to remind you of these facts, and crave a greater rather than a less measure of indulgence for what I am about to say, that I have made all these observations, Socrates. If, therefore, I seem justified in craving this boon [this gift (dōrean), this gratification], pray grant it willingly.59

In his response Socrates picks up on those words; he says that he will grant him the gift without hesitation, in advance, as he will for the third orator, Hermocrates. And one of the translators even translates this gift as 57. “Critias ou l’Atlantide: genre politique,” in Plato, Oeuvres complètes, 106b, my translation [DW]. 58. Critias, trans. Bury, 259–­61 [trans. Rivaud, 106c–­107a]. 59. Critias, 263/108a.

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“grace.” The word syngnōmē is again on Socrates’s lips when he concludes that “the former poet won marvellous [public] applause from it, so that you will require an extraordinary measure of indulgence [an infinite syngnōmē: pampollēs] if you are to prove capable of following in his steps.”60 An infinite syngnōmē, a limitless benevolence: what can that mean, what can “infinite” mean here?

60. Critias, 263/108b.

appendix 1, sixth session

Page 161 and note 4 First question: I alluded last time to what had just happened in the United States when Governor George W. Bush Jr., refusing clemency, refusing par­ don, recalled that it was because of a commitment that he had made to his voters during his electoral campaign, by means of which he refused on principle to exercise his right to pardon, which is however inscribed consti­ tutionally in his position as governor. The question that I wanted to begin to develop — ­but we’ll come back to it again, I hope, in the course of sub­ sequent sessions — ­concerns this complication. Clearly there is a seeming contradiction in making a commitment to one’s potential voters, within a democratic electoral process, not to exercise in any circumstance a right to pardon [ grâce] that frees him from every commitment of every type (what grace means, whether it be grace as forgiveness, or gracious grace, the gra­ tuitous gift, whether it be the grace of a dancer or of any movement at all, grace means precisely what costs nothing, no labor, no process, no discus­ sion, what is given without justification and without prerequisite labor). As a consequence, one does not have to justify a right to grace and one certainly doesn’t have to commit before one’s electorate on the subject of sovereignty itself, the absolute sovereignty that a right to grace constitutes. So, clearly, from that point of view one can consider the right to grace — ­a right upheld in the exercise of it, in the concept of sovereignty such as is granted to every chief of state in numerous Western democracies, to every state governor in the United States — ­such a right to grace is naturally contradictory to elec­ toral democracy. Nevertheless, I suggested right at the beginning of the seminar, when reading a text by Kant on the subject of the right to grace,1 that that exception, 1. See 18–­19 above.

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which the right to grace constitutes in the fabric of political democracy and of political commitments, that exception which is therefore metapolitical, transpolitical, is at the same time what founds the political itself. And that is why it is maintained, just as the place of the king is maintained even in republics and parliamentary democracies, and thus there is indisputably a tension between the order of the political and what, foreign to it, founds it, namely, the right to grace and absolute sovereignty. Remember Kant’s text, so prudent, so interesting, concerning the right of grace not in a democracy but in a monarchy. Kant was saying that the right to grace, which was naturally intangible, had to be reserved for the king’s exercise of it only where he was himself the victim of the wrong that had been punished, but that in no case did the sovereign have the right to exercise his right to grace where that exercise of sovereignty risked harming his subjects, where the sovereign was not himself the victim of the crime. So clearly, Governor Bush could say: “I won’t exercise my right to pardon inasmuch as doing so causes virtual harm to my subjects, to the citizens of the state that I govern.” And consequently, that is a way — ­naturally, with a certain consistency and certain consequences — ­of recalling that the state of grace must be exercised only in cases where the sovereign himself, in his person, is a victim. Nevertheless, the whole question remains of knowing to what extent that right to grace, which is transpolitical and yet founds the political, is compatible with political democracy. In that, there is a particularly difficult dimension to the question that one can treat dispassionately without trying to accuse, or for that matter justify, Mr. Bush Jr. and those who resemble him. Another dimension to this question concerns — ­and I alluded too briefly to this last time — ­the overwhelming fact that today the United States is, it seems to me, the only so-­called major, advanced, parliamentary and modern democracy in which the right to the death penalty is retained, not only in numerous states of the United States, but also on the federal level for what are called federal crimes. It happens that on the map of democracies of the European type or tradition, in so-­called advanced industrial, etc., societies, the United States represents a massive exception, all the more massive because, as you know, not only is the principle of the death penalty maintained on the federal level, maintained in numerous states, etc., etc., but there are thousands of people condemned to death, a great number of executions carried out in the conditions that I recalled last time; it is a question of knowing how to interpret that without rushing to conduct a moral, juridical, or political trial of the United States, how to interpret today’s geopolitical situation, where the world’s greatest power, upon which depend what one calls the world order, the economic order, the military order, etc.,

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etc., retains the death penalty in a context where all so-­called democratic countries, conforming to the model of democracy, consider that a democ­ racy must abolish the death penalty. That is a fact to be interpreted, to my mind a fragile and problematic one even in Europe, but it is a fact, in any case, a juridical fact, that the death penalty has been abolished in all the countries of Western Europe. And the question is that of knowing how to interpret that not only from a point of view that would be that of moral­ ity, but from a point of view that would be that of a state of civil American society, a state of that society such that not only is the death penalty retained there, but a large majority of the population is in favor of it, and it will be a long long time before the death penalty is abolished in the United States. Naturally, this enormous problem should be broached here only from the point of view — ­which is already a lot — ­of what interests us, namely, the question of forgiveness and of grace. Is forgiveness or grace a political category or not? Does it pertain to things public or private? In the case of Abraham, the relation between Abraham and ethical generality, does everything we have said about forgiveness apropos of the sacrifice of Isaac pertain to ethical or political space or not? That is the direction in which I would have liked to develop things.

appendix 2 , sixth session

Page 161, note 4

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When I said too quickly last time1 that the scene of the secret on which I insisted so much in relation to the sacrifice of Isaac —­­ ­the sacrifice of Isaac which, precisely, was removed from ethical generality, hence from public, family, national, civil, etc., space —­ ­when I said that that scene of secrecy was exemplary and that it was therefore in appearance only that it was confined to this paroxystic and hyperbolic and almost monstrous situation constituted by the sacrifice, by his father, of a favorite son (the son of a promise because Isaac is the promise of the future), I would like to go back over that while still maintaining what I said. It must not be forgotten that, notwithstanding however exemplary that scene be within its universal, universalizable structure, Abraham would today be considered —­ ­Kierkegaard said it so well —­ ­an absolute criminal. He would be put on trial, but if he had only begun to do what he did and had been surprised in the act of doing that, isn’t it true, it is certain that he would be judged without pity as such a criminal not only in Europe but in the United States! [Laughter] Well, the question is perhaps this: what consequences are to be drawn from the fact that he would be judged without pity, tried, and sentenced, if the exemplarity —­ ­which I would call “ordinary” —­ ­of this scene, this scene about which I have spoken at length these past few sessions, remained indisputable, namely, that it is exemplary, it always takes place, it is a fact of most ordinary life, and nevertheless, the fact is monstrous and calls virtually for prosecution by the law? In other words, wherever absolute secrecy is asked for in a radical way, as is the case in this scene, well, it is naturally punishable by the most lengthy sentences and all the way to capital punishment. 1. Derrida is alluding to the discussion during the restricted session of February 4, 1998.

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Which means that crime is everywhere, that this crime, this request for secrecy that I tried to analyze, is virtually criminal and liable under the law wherever there is a law, wherever there is right, wherever there is political right. That means what? It means that this request for secrecy, for respecting absolute secrecy, about which we spoke, must remain absolutely secret in its experience and especially in its consequences, must remain invisible, failing which, naturally, it is liable to the harshest punishment. That is the death penalty. When it comes to requesting absolute secrecy, it is inscribed in the structure of the juridico-­political in which we live that the harshest punishment must be required. And the consequences must be drawn from that, virtually, except where, naturally, one has been put to the test, as in the case of Abraham where finally the angel arrived and suspended the crime, remember, except in that case, but virtually, virtually, because no one could be sure that the angel was going to descend, virtually, the request for absolute secrecy renders liable to the heaviest sentencing and is intolerable for a juridico-­political order in the strict sense. There you have the points that I would have wanted to go back over briefly, and which we can take up again next time, for example during next week’s restricted seminar.2

2. See, concerning this restricted session of February 18, 1998, the Editors’ Note above (xixn15).

seventh session

February 25, 1998

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Je m’excuse. I began this seminar by saying in a word, pardon, a single word, isolated, lonely, insular, a word whose solitude, situation, status, pragmatics, and place of utterance were very uncertain. Everything said since has followed from that uncertainty, unfolding it in as consequential a manner but also as free a manner as possible. That which — ­appearing undecidable, undecided between the performative act through which I supposedly asked pardon, requested forgiveness of you, and the act through which I took or gave the example of a name, a sentence, a scene that we were going to deal with, thematically, problematically, programmatically, theoretically, philosophically, in a seminar — ­that which, appearing undecided appeared thereby suspended, was also what keeps the seminar in movement, each, each of you, myself, each finding both inside and outside a dramatic space, a drastic dramaturgy in which it is not known who is the actor, who the subject, and “who” or “what” the object, theme, the idea even. One is not even sure, with this indecision, of dealing with a paradigm — ­and yet, even if that paradigm remains always inaccessible and lost, we do not stop re-­iterating its path and necessity. We shall do it again today. Today I begin the session, I have already begun it, by saying  je m’excuse. What does one say and what does one do in saying je m’excuse? And what does one imply in that formula, which, as one knows, in good French, according to French decorum, is said to be incorrect, impolite, at bottom immoral, guilty therefore? Saying je m’excuse is guilty, at fault, therefore guilty. Saying “I excuse myself ” is inexcusable: inexcusabilis.1 1. Augustine, Confessions, X.vi.8. During the session, Derrida adds: “to quote Augustine in advance.” See Augustine, Confessions, vol. 2, trans. Carolyn J.-­B. Hammond

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Only the other can excuse, the other of whom one must, without excusing oneself, ask for excuses, or to whom offer excuses, while leaving that other to decide freely whether to grant them, those excuses, or not. And yet, one sometimes says je m’excuse. Perhaps one always does. Excusing myself toward you for the long detour, and especially for the zigzag or slalom of a trajectory, perhaps even the delirious trajectory (you know that délirer, delirare, means “to get out of the furrow,” move away from the straight line, extravagate aberrantly — ­and forgiveness is perhaps a delirious hyperbole), excusing myself then toward you for the long detour, and especially for the zigzag or slalom of a trajectory, for the perhaps delirious itinerary without itinerary that I am imposing on your patience, I am going to plead extenuating circumstances by indicating where this apparently errant course is heading, this planetary course (you know that the word “planet” means “errant star,” from a Greek word for “erring” that we’ll meet up with in Plato at the end of the session), errant course, then, perhaps in truth delirious or mad; I am going to indicate the provisional heading for these detours — ­zigzags, digressions, errings, deliria, mad panics — ­by means of two fixed landmarks, two pickets, two stable references. Saint Augustine and Rousseau will be those two “pickets.” For that matter, they have for a long time been among my favorite crazies, my very own madmen [mes piquets préférés, mes fous à moi].2 For we are going to privilege provisionally reference to two authors, then, both of them authors of Confessions, who speak most frequently the language of excuse, speaking in one case, for example, of what is “inexcusable [inexcusabilis],” in the other of “excusing himself.” Concerning Augustine and Rousseau,3 I don’t know whether it has ever been noticed (in any case, I have just noticed it myself for the first time, even though I have been interested in these two texts that I have written

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 78. Further references to this edition will appear in parentheses in text, preceded where necessary by the mention Confessions II. Derrida’s text is Augustin, Les Confessions (Livres VIII–­XIII), trans. Eugène Tréhorel and Guilhem Bouissou (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1962), 152. 2. [Translator’s note:] Derrida’s wordplay appears to lead from piquet (picket) through piqué (crazy) to fou (madman). 3. This session was partly reworked, with important additions, for Derrida’s lecture “Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2),” trans. Peggy Kamuf, in Derrida, Without Alibi, ed. Peggy Kamuf (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), particularly 80–­97 [“Le ruban de la machine à écrire. Limited Ink II,” in Papier Machine (Paris: Galilée, 2001), 33–­147].

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elsewhere),4 I don’t know whether this striking analogy has ever been noticed, so striking that one begins to suspect whether there isn’t on Rousseau’s part some additional fiction or literary composition (you know that he said of fiction that it isn’t a lie), I don’t know if attention has been paid, then, to the striking analogy in the fact that both of them confess — ­and both of them in the second book of their Confessions, in a decisive, even determining and paradigmatic place — ­both of them admit to a theft. That isn’t all: both of them admit to a theft that is, in fact and objectively, anodyne, but which has had the greatest psychic repercussions throughout their life, and what’s more, a theft that they both committed when they were precisely sixteen, and in both cases a futile theft, a theft whose finality is not the use value of the stolen thing (pears for Saint Augustine, Marion’s famous ribbon for Rousseau), but, instead of its immediate use value (about which they both insist on saying that it was for naught or secondary; Augustine says this: “I stole what I already had in plenty, and of far better quality. I had no desire to enjoy what I had aimed to steal; rather, what I enjoyed was the theft and sin themselves” [II.iv.9; Confessions I, 73/345]. Rousseau, as we’ll hear, says something analogous), instead of its immediate use value — ­nor are they interested in the exchange value of the stolen object, at least in the banal sense of that term — ­it is rather perhaps, in any case, that of the very act of stealing, which thus becomes the object of desire, or the equivalent of that object’s metonymic value for a desire that we are going to talk about. One of them, Augustine, confesses, in Book II.iv.9, to having stolen some pears, and in the long flow of that avowal and the prayer that takes over from it, he addresses the theft itself: “I was pathetic! What was it that I loved about you (Quid ego miser in te amaui), my theft (o furtum meum), my deed of darkness done in the sixteenth year of my age (o facinus illud meum nocturnum sexti decimi anni aetatis meae)?” (II.vi.12; Confessions I, 76–­77/351). Saint Augustine, then, himself speaks of his age at the moment of the theft. He declares his age at the moment of the theft, and he declares his age to the theft itself. He addresses the theft to tell it his age at the moment of the theft. O theft, know that I have committed you, that I loved you, like a crime (  facinus), O theft, how I loved you and perpetrated you at night when I was sixteen. Rousseau, for his part, doesn’t speak of it, of his age, 4. On Augustine see, among other places, Derrida, “Circumfession,” and “Composing ‘Circumfession’ ”; on Rousseau, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), and “Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2)” [“Circonfession,” “En composant ‘Circonfession,’ ” De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967), “Le ruban de la machine à écrire”].

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at least not in direct reference to this theft at the precise moment when he writes, “only this ribbon tempted me, I stole it . . .”5 But a simple calculation allowed me to deduce without risk of error that he also was just sixteen when, in 1728, through summer and autumn he spent three months as a lackey in the house of Mme de Vercellis, where the affair of Marion’s ribbon took place, something about which we are going to speak a lot, a great deal. The year 1728: Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, son of Isaac Rousseau, was born in 1712; he is sixteen. Very disturbing isn’t it? Sixteen years old, then, exactly like Augustine, and a theft that is, it too, admitted to in the second book of his Confessions, as we shall see, a theft determining, a theft structuring for life, if I can put it that way, structuring for access to the experience of culpability and for the writing of the Confessions, as we’ll verify, even if the experience and interpretation of guilt is radically different — ­at least in appearance — ­in each case. As if (fiction concerning a possible fiction) Rousseau had played at performing an artifice of composition by inventing an intrigue, a narrative knot, knotted like a ribbon around a basket of pears, a plot,6 a dramaturgy destined to be inscribed in the history of a new quasi-­literary genre, the history of confessions entitled Confessions, as autobiographical stories inaugurated by a theft, a theft each time paradigmatic and paradisiac, that of a forbidden fruit or a forbidden delight, as if it were a matter of inscribing himself in this grand genealogical history of confessions entitled Confessions (the genealogical tree of a literary lineage that would begin with a theft, from some tree, in the literal or figurative sense, a theft of some forbidden fruit) by inscribing in it — ­as in the economy of a palimpsest, by means of quasi-­quotations taken from the palimpsestuous and ligneous density of a literary memory, of a clandestine or encrypted literary lineage — ­a testamentary cryptography of confessional narration, a secret between Augustine and Rousseau, the simulacrum of a fiction in the very place where both Augustine and Rousseau lay claim to a truth, to a veracity of witnessing that supposedly never gives ground to literary lying (even though fiction is not a lie for Rousseau who explains himself in that regard in clear and meticulous terms all through his refined discourses on lying, 5. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes, trans. Christopher Kelly, ed. Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters, and Peter G. Stillman, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 5 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995), 70. Further references to this edition will appear in parentheses in text, preceded where necessary by the mention Confessions. Derrida’s text is Rousseau, Les Confessions, in Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, eds., Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959), 87. 6. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript.

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especially in the Fourth Promenade precisely, at the point where he recalls the story of the ribbon). Of course, Rousseau had already stolen, before he reached sixteen, forbidden fruits at that, like Augustine, Rousseau had already stolen apples rather than pears, he avows that with delight, mirth, and abundance in the first book of the Confessions: he stole constantly, moreover, in his early youth, first asparagus, then apples. He recounts that copiously, I refer you there, and he insists on the fact that in proportion as he was beaten for it, he began — ­and I quote — ­to “steal more calmly than before. I said to myself, ‘What will come of it in the end? I will be beaten. So be it: that’s what I am made for’ ” (29/35). As if punishment, automatic and justly retributed physical chastising, would exonerate him of all guilt, all remorse. He steals more and more, and not only things to eat but tools, which confirms his feeling of innocence (Rousseau will have spent his life, as you know, protesting his innocence and so excusing himself rather than trying to have himself forgiven): “At bottom these thefts [the master’s tools] were quite innocent, since they were committed only to be used in his service” (30/35). But naturally, all these thefts prior to the theft of the ribbon at the age of sixteen engender no feeling of guilt, they have no repercussions and no common measure with the trauma of the ribbon story, at sixteen, an episode that is like the credits [ générique] or matrix for the Confessions, as will be seen, an episode that is less serious as theft than it is as a lie, as a dissimulation by means of which he allowed someone else to be accused, an innocent girl who doesn’t understand what is happening to her: he allowed her to be accused in order to excuse himself (as we’ll see). I’ll come back in a moment to this story of being sixteen. I don’t know whether one has access to this story of the ribbon through sources other than Rousseau’s writing (Book II of the Confessions, and the Fourth Promenade of the Reveries), but if Rousseau is the sole testimonial source of the event, every hypothesis about the pure and simple invention of the episode of the theft based on compositional concerns is supposedly permissible (although I’ll abstain here) (7at the age of sixteen and in the second book of the Confessions just like the great ancestor of Confessions, Augustine, whose letters patent he wants to share along the ligneous lineage of the same genealogical tree of forbidden fruit. Moreover, Rousseau had read Augustine, for he at least alludes to him, for example in the same second book of his own Confessions, saying not that he had read him — ­Saint Augustine himself in the text of his grand corpus — ­but that he had retained

7. The parenthesis opened here does not close in the typescript.

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many passages from the latter: “He [an old priest]8 thought he could beat me over the head with St. Augustine, St. Gregory, and the other fathers, and with unbelievable surprise he found that I handled all those fathers as nimbly as he did; it was not that I had ever read them, nor perhaps had he; but I had remembered many passages drawn from my Le Sueur [author of Histoire de l’Église et de l’Empire . . . jusqu’à l’an mille]” (Pléiade, p. 66) (Confessions, 55/66).9 It would remain to be seen what is meant by this “knowing by heart” certain passages that were quoted secondhand, and whether the second book of Augustine’s Confessions were part of that. Those who want to write a thesis on that subject will take the trouble to read Le Sueur (whom I admit to being completely ignorant of ), but in any case one must still take Rousseau at his word when he declares that he knows Augustine only through Le Sueur. In everything we are debating here it all comes down to the trust one can have in someone’s given word, whether it be that of an avowal or a confession. Another superficial reference to Saint Augustine appears at the end of the Second Promenade and there Rousseau names him in passing in order to oppose him. And the place of the passage that I am going to read (at the end of the Second Promenade, then) is highly significant. Rousseau has just referred to the “common plot” of humanity against him, the universal conspiracy that he calls the “universal agreement” against him, too universal and “too extraordinary to be purely fortuitous,”10 a plot from which not a single accomplice is lacking, for the absence of a single accomplice would have caused the entire plot to fail. It is therefore at the moment when he evokes this “wickedness of men,” such a universal wickedness that men 8. In “Typewriter Ribbon” Derrida corrects the record and specifies that it was a young priest. The confusion comes from Rousseau’s references, in the same paragraph, to two different priests (cf. Confessions, 54–­55/65). 9. During the session, Derrida adds: “which was a sort of book that Rousseau consulted a lot, he speaks of it a lot elsewhere, often quoting it. So, he had read some Le Sueur, the Fathers, and notably Saint Augustine, and learned certain passages, but he never read Saint Augustine directly, so one can’t know.” See Jean Le Sueur, Histoire de l’Église et de l’Empire depuis la naissance de Jésus Christ jusques à l’an mille, 8 vols. (Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1730). 10. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Botanical Writings, and Letters to Franquières, trans. Charles E. Butterworth, Alexandra Cook, and Terence E. Marshall, ed. Christopher Kelly, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 8 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2000), 15. Further references to this edition will appear in parentheses in text, preceded where necessary by the mention Reveries. Derrida’s text is Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, in Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, 1010.

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themselves cannot be responsible for it, but God alone, a divine secret, it is, then, just when he has written this: “I cannot prevent myself from henceforth considering as one of those secrets of Heaven impenetrable to human reason the same work that until now I looked upon as only a fruit of the wickedness of men” (15/1010). (Comment:11 this work [oeuvre], this fact, these crimes, this plot, this misdeed by the will of men does not depend on the will of men, but is God’s trade secret, a secret of the heavens that is impenetrable to human reason: such a work of evil that heaven alone can answer for it, but since one can’t accuse heaven as one could accuse human wickedness — ­and we have just seen that Rousseau can no longer accuse human wickedness for a work of such extraordinary evil, this “universal agreement . . . too extraordinary to be purely fortuitous” (necessity of a machination) — ­then he has both to turn toward God and to trust God in the dark, in the secrecy of God beyond the evil that he is accusing him of.) That is where he makes a brief allusion to Saint Augustine, so as to put himself in opposition to him (I’ll quote it, then, it’s the final paragraph of the Second Promenade): (Read and comment on each word, underlining the apparent dechristianization of Augustine and of the Confessions.) I do not go as far as St. Augustine who would console himself to be damned if such had been the will of God. My resignation comes, it is true, from a less disinterested source [Rousseau’s admission],12 but one no less pure, and to my mind, more worthy of the perfect Being whom I adore. God is just; He wills that I suffer; and He knows that I am innocent [the polar opposite of Augustine, whose confessions are made, in principle, to ask for forgiveness for a fault that is avowed — ­God knows that I am a sinner — ­whereas Rousseau admits nothing other than to excuse himself and to exclaim his radical innocence, and that will already mark, to begin with at least, the difference between the theft of the pears and that of the ribbon]. That is the cause of my confidence; my heart and my reason cry out to me that I will 11. During the session, Derrida adds: “In other words, this human wickedness against me is so universal, so concordant, so perfect in its collusion, that men themselves would not be capable of it. Only God can be responsible in the final analysis for what he calls this ‘work.’ ” 12. During the session, Derrida adds: “In other words, given that he can be damned if God wills it, Augustine consoles himself, it is God’s will. Rousseau, for his part, is going to resign himself to it also, we’ll see, but in a less disinterested way, then, it involves a calculus. He says: ‘as for me, I am going to explain to you my calculus, I am going to explain my economy.’ This isn’t the only time, we’ll shortly find another wager, what I’ll call a wager made by Rousseau. He is going to exculpate God as it were, through a calculus, in any case through a sublime calculus, in any case a nondisinterested economy.”

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not be deceived by it. Let me, therefore, leave men and fate to go their ways. Let me learn to suffer without a murmur. In the end, everything must return to order and my turn will come sooner or later. (Reveries, 16/1010)

This “sooner or later,” which signs the final words of the Second Promenade, is extraordinary, as are other “last words” that await us: “in the end, everything must return to order and my turn will come sooner or later,” this “sooner or later,” this patience that stretches out time beyond death and promises survival to the work, through the work as self-­justification and faith in redemption (not only my own but that of men and of Heaven, of God who will reestablish his order and justification, his unimpeachable justice), this act of faith and patience that comes as it were to sign the time of the work, of a work that will operate by itself, that will accomplish its work of working beyond, and without the living assistance of its signatory, and taking whatever time will be needed (for time itself no longer counts in the survival of this “sooner or later,” it matters little how much time it will take, the time is given, therefore it no longer exists, it no longer costs anything, and as it no longer costs anything, it is given graciously in exchange for the labor of the work that operates all by itself,13 almost like a machine and so without any labor by the author, as though, contrary to what one often thinks, there were a secret affinity between grace and the machine, between the heart and the automatism of the puppet, as though the excusing, exculpating machine were working all by itself; we’ll come back to that): it is Rousseau’s grace that is forgiven in advance there, excusing itself by giving itself the time it needs in advance, the time that it therefore annuls in a “sooner or later” that the work bears like a machine for killing time and redeeming the fault, the fault being as a result only apparent, whether that appearance be men’s wickedness or Heaven’s secret. Sooner or later grace will operate in the work, through the work of working at work [ par l’oeuvre de l’oeuvre à l’oeuvre], like a machine, and Rousseau’s innocence will break through; not only will he be forgiven (like his enemies themselves), but there will not have been any harm, not only will he excuse himself but he will have been excused.

13. During the session, Derrida adds: “I indeed say, and this seems contradictory, ‘graciously in exchange for the labor,’ but as this labor of the work is a labor that operates all by itself, where the work operates all by itself [où l’oeuvre opère toute seule], it practically isn’t labor, in any case it isn’t labor effected by Rousseau. The work labors for him, you see, and so, as time is given, ‘sooner or later,’ the justification, justice will be bestowed on him graciously. It won’t cost anything.”

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Since I am at the point of quoting this allusion to Augustine at the end of the Second Promenade, I’ll take advantage of that by making a very quick associative excursion, veering by another slalom or zigzag toward a passage that is found some fifteen pages farther along, toward the beginning of the Fourth Promenade. It is an allusion to the theft of the ribbon, to the lie that results from it, and the story of her whom he will later call in the same Promenade, “poor Marion” (Reveries, 35/1033). In the passage that I am going to read, I’ll underline the act of swearing (swearing to Heaven to proclaim one’s innocence), the delirium, the word délire that will interest us more and more, and especially the extraordinary coincidence between the extreme self-­accusation, for an infinite crime, incalculable in its actual and virtual effects (the “sooner or later” of these conscious or unconscious, known or unknown effects), the extraordinary coincidence, then, between this sentiment of properly in-­finite guilt, avowed as such, and, on the other hand, the just as irreproachable certainty of absolute, virginal, intact innocence, the declared absence of any “repentance,” of any “regret,” of any “remorse” for the fault, for the lie — ­“repentance,” “regret,” “remorse” are Rousseau’s words, in the same passage, when he speaks of what he himself calls an “inconceivable contradiction” between his infinite guilt and the absence of any bad conscience (“repentance,” “regret,” “remorse”) — ­as if he still had to avow the guilt that exists, and that remains, for not feeling guilty, even better, for saying he is innocent, for swearing his innocence at the very moment that he admits to the worst. As if he had still to ask for forgiveness for feeling innocent (remember the scene between Hamlet and his mother: “forgive me my virtue”;14 and perhaps this is also, on Rousseau’s part, another address, within the same speech regarding his innocence, made to his mother): (Read and comment on the beginning of the Fourth Promenade, pp. 1024–­25 C.) The following day, having set off to carry this resolution, the first idea which came to me when I began to collect my thoughts was that of a dreadful lie I told in my early youth, the memory of which has troubled me all my life and even comes in my old age to sadden my heart again, already distressed as it is in so many other ways. This lie, in itself a great crime, must have become an even greater one because of its consequence — ­of which I have always been unaware, but which remorse has made me suppose as cruel as possible. However, considering only how I was disposed when telling it, this lie was simply an effect of mortification; and far from originating from an intention to harm her who was the victim of it, I can swear by Heaven that in the very instant this invincible shame tore it from me, I 14. Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. See 122ff. above.

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would joyfully have shed all my blood to turn the consequences on myself alone. This is a delirium I can explain only by saying, and this is what I believe I feel, that in that instant my timid natural temperament subjugated all the wishes of my heart. The memory of this unfortunate act and the inextinguishable regrets it left me have inspired in me a horror for lying that should have preserved my heart from this vice for the rest of my life. . . . What surprised me the most was that in recalling those fabrications, I felt no true repentance for them. I, in whose heart nothing offsets the horror of a falsehood, I, who would brave torture if it were necessary to lie to avoid it — ­by what bizarre inconsistency did I thus lie with gaiety of heart, unnecessarily, without profit, and by what inconceivable contradiction did I feel not the least regret, I, who for fifty years have not ceased to be afflicted by remorse for a lie? I have never become inured to my faults. Moral instinct has always guided me well; my conscience has preserved its initial integrity; and even if it had been altered by bending to my interests, how — ­having preserved all its rectitude on those occasions when a man, forced by his passions, may at least excuse himself for his weakness — ­does it lose its rectitude only with regard to indifferent matters for which there is no excuse for vice? (28–­2 9/1024–­25, Derrida’s emphasis)

Some months before the theft of the ribbon (admitted to, that is, in the second book of the Confessions) — ­I note this so as not to forget it, without having much idea what to do with it, except that it is indeed on the agenda for our seminar with the oath, the act of swearing, as we have just said, the act of perjury also, and the act of abjuration — ­some months before the theft of the ribbon, then, Rousseau abjures, he abjures Protestantism and converts to Catholicism. Some pages before the story of the theft, which will occupy us for some weeks, he recounted, I refer you to it, how he was, and I quote, “led in a procession to the metropolitan Church of St. John to make a solemn abjuration there” (Confessions, 58/72). On the matter of this debate between Protestantism and Catholicism that tormented this citizen of Geneva for his whole life, he notes, in the same book of the Confessions (p. 62), “the aversion particular to our city [Geneva] for Catholicism, which is presented to us as an abominable idolatry, and whose Clergy are depicted under the blackest colors” (52/62–­63).15 Then, noting that he did not “precisely form the resolution to make myself a Catholic” (p. 64) (54/64), he adds almost 15. During the session, Derrida adds: “I am insisting on that a little because since the beginning of the seminar — ­I’ll say it rather quickly and summarily — ­we both attributed to the idea and to the heritage of forgiveness a (let’s say) Abrahamic, that is to say Biblio-­Koranic origin, and at the same time recognized a scene that opposed Jew and

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immediately after (p. 65): “Protestants are generally better educated than Catholics. This is as it should be: the doctrine of the former requires discussion, that of the latter submission. The Catholic ought to adopt the decision he is given, the Protestant ought to learn to decide for himself ” (54/65). Still remaining on the edge of things, on the barely preliminary threshold of what is going to interest us, since we are currently erring or digressing [délirer] in this type of notation that I don’t know what to do with, but that seemed to me inevitable in a first rereading of these scenes, I also picked out, on the question of Catholicism, and the debate, within Rousseau himself, between his Catholicism by conversion and his Protestantism by origin (his Catholicism by conversion and by confession — ­for private confession and Protestantism are incompatible; the word “confession,” which signifies as much the avowal of a fault as the profession of faith, and has an enormous textual, semantic, and social history in the Bible, only came to designate a Catholic — ­and not Protestant — ­institution well after the time of Augustine), I also noted, then, while remaining on the edge of it, its threshold, its seeming margins, for we won’t be looking into the inside of this text, so to speak, until next time, I noted that the ribbon theft story begins just after the story of the death of Mme de Vercellis, a Catholic, in whose house the young Rousseau was both lodged and employed, his “principal employment” as he himself says, consisting in “writ[ing]” letters “under her dictation” (67/81). In the text “Excuses (Confessions)” collected in his Allegories of Reading (a text that we’ll also come back to at great length), Paul de Man dedicates a note to the placement of these two stories, to this sequential linking of these two stories (that of the death of Mme de Vercellis, then that of the theft of the ribbon). At the moment when de Man is looking for, as he says, “another form of desire than the desire of possession” to explain “the latter part of the story,” that which, I am still quoting, “bears the main performative burden of the excuse and in which the crime is no longer that of theft”16 (but is indeed, as we’ll see, that of lying — ­and we’ll see in what sense, in particular for de Man), de Man excludes, then, two forms of desire,

Christian in many instances, not only in The Merchant of  Venice. Here we see the outline of a tension, within Christianity, between Catholicism and Calvinism or Protestantism.” 16. Paul de Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 285n8. Further references to this edition will appear within parentheses in text, preceded where necessary by the mention Allegories. The French version is Allégories de la lecture, trans. Thomas Trezise (Paris : Galilée, 1989), 341n2.

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simple desire or love for Marion, or, second, a hidden desire of the Oedipal type. And he adds this in a note (p. 341 of the translation): The embarrassing story of Rousseau’s rejection by Mme de Vercellis, who is dying of a cancer of the breast, immediately precedes the story of Marion, but nothing in the text suggests a concatenation that would allow one to substitute Marion for Mme de Vercelllis in a scene of rejection. (Allegories, 285/341) (I underline “nothing in the text”: reread)

We’ll no doubt have to come back to that also. No doubt de Man is right to be wary of a crudely Oedipal schema (but there are more refined Oedipal schemas); no doubt de Man is right to be wary of a crudely Oedipal schema, and I am not going to rush into that in turn; he is no doubt also right to say — ­I quote his note again — ­that “nothing in the text suggests a concatenation that would allow one to substitute Marion for Mme de Vercellis in a scene of rejection,” but what does “nothing” mean here? “nothing in the text”? How can one be sure of a “nothing” suggested in a text? of a “nothing in the text”? And if there is really “nothing” to suggest this Oedipal substitution, how do we explain the fact that de Man thought of it? And dedicates a footnote17 to it (for that matter I would say, somewhat jokingly, isn’t every footnote Oedipal? Isn’t a footnote a symptomatic swelling, the swollen foot of a text that is hobbled in its progression [marche]?)? How to explain that de Man dedicates an embarrassed footnote to it, in which he excludes the possibility that this “embarrassing story,” as he says, suggests an Oedipal substitution of Marion for Mme de Vercellis, that is to say in the first place, of Mme de Vercellis for Mamma? for Mme de Warens whom Rousseau met some months earlier — ­she also being a recent convert to Catholicism, like the Calvinist Jean-­Jacques? (18It is moreover soon after that meeting that he leaves on foot for Turin and finds himself staying in the Holy Spirit hospice where he abjures (an episode recounted at the beginning of the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, a text that we should reread closely, in particular because it includes, at the end of chapter 7, an interesting comparison of the respective deaths of Socrates and Jesus19 — ­about which we’ll speak from another point of 17. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in text in this and three subsequent usages. 18. [Translator’s note:] This parenthesis closes after the penultimate sentence of the paragraph. 19. Jean-­Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or, On Education, trans. Christopher Kelly and Allan Bloom, in Christopher Kelly, ed., The Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 13 (Han­ over, NH: University Press of New England, 2010), 473–­75. [Translator’s note:] Derrida quotes “The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Priest” in the version included in

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view shortly — ­each of whom differently, according to Rousseau, grants his executioner his blessing in one case and his forgiveness in the other, the first conducting himself as a man, the second as God);20 and then, in the middle of the conclusion to the book, you might find these lines that recommend wagering on staying in the religion of one’s birth, I indeed say “wager,” in an almost Pascalian sense, because it is a better calculus, in case one is mistaken, for obtaining God’s excuse or pardon. Here is the argument; I underline the vocabulary of excuse and pardon (comment): “You will sense that in the uncertainty in which we dwell, it is an inexcusable presumption to profess a religion other than that in which we were born, and a falseness not to practice sincerely the religion which we profess. For if we go astray, we deprive ourselves of a great excuse at the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge.21 Will He not pardon the error on which we were weaned sooner than the error we dared to choose ourselves?”)22 I now come back to my question for de Man. Supposing there is “nothing,” as de Man claims, “nothing” positive in the text to suggest positively this substitution, “nothing” in the content of the stories, well, the simple juxtaposition, the absolute proximity in narrative time, the simple linking of places — ­where de Man says that “nothing in the text [what does “in” the text mean here?] suggests a concatenation that would allow one to substitute Marion for Mme de Vercellis in a scene of rejection” (moreover, I don’t see why de Man speaks of rejection: there is no simple rejection, by one no more than by the other) — ­the linking of places alone, the sequential juxtaposition of the two narratives is not nothing, should one wish to psychoanalyze things; the juxtaposition of two narratives — ­even if nothing seems to justify it other than a chronological succession — ­is not “nothing in the text.” Even if there is nothing else posited, nothing positive, this topology of sequential juxtaposition alone can have a metonymic force, the very one that will have suggested to de Man’s mind the hypothesis of substitution that he nevertheless excludes. In order to be Emile. The stand-­alone English translations differ from that version. Derrida’s reference is Rousseau, Profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard, in Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, ed., Oeuvres complètes, vol. 4 (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1969), 625–­27. 20. We close here the parenthesis opened after the word “abjures.” 21. During the session, Derrida adds: “In other words, if you are deceived in good faith, but remain with your religion, well, in that case, you will be excused, but you won’t be excused if you make the mistake of changing religions. That’s the calculus, the wager.” 22. Rousseau, Emile, 273 [Oeuvres complètes, 631], Derrida’s emphasis.

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excluded, it would still have to present itself to one’s mind with some seductive force. It must still have been tempting. And temptation is enough. So, even if there were nothing in the text of these two narratives, their simple topographical or sequential juxtaposition is “in the text” and can be interpreted (it is interpretable, I don’t necessarily say in an Oedipal way, but it is interpretable: one must, and one cannot not interpret it; it cannot be simply insignificant). To that I’ll add two series of arguments to confirm that interpretability. One concerns the content, this time, of the two narratives; the other, once again, their form and place, their situation, their localization. Regarding the content, I won’t insist, but there are a very great number of traits that you wouldn’t fail to notice, on page after page, in the description of Rousseau’s filial and at the same time amorous attachment to Mme de Vercellis, whose appearance follows his meeting Mme de Warens in the second book of the Confessions (Mme de Vercellis, widowed and childless, as he repeats on several occasions, suffering from “breast cancer,” as he also notes, the sickness of the maternal breast that “made her suffer very much, did not permit her to write by herself any longer” [67/81]); and Rousseau becomes her plume, he holds her pen like a secretary and writes in her place; he becomes her pen, or her hand, or her arm, for, says he, “she loved to write letters” (69/83); and I’ll let you follow the letter-­and will-­writing scenes that we could gloss ad infinitum, in order to arrive again at a topography of bordering, of substitution from selvage to selvage, of parergonal composition in which we are going to find again en route both the memory of abjuration, hence the “Protestant-­Catholic” frontier as passage from childhood to adulthood within a sort of internal history of confessions, of confession, and what I’ll entitle the last word of the other and of self, the double silence over which the double episode closes, that of the theft-­lie that wrongs Marion and that of the death of the stepmother, the widowed and childless stepmother, the death of Mme de Vercellis of whom Rousseau speaks ill while at the same time singing her praises, criticizing also her insensitivity, her indifference, and more precisely her lack of mercy, of “commiseration”: as though she had no miséricorde, no heart or, for a mother, no breast; and she will moreover die of that, of the sickness that is called, that Rousseau also calls “cancer in the breast [cancer au sein],” which will devour her breast. (“She always appeared to me as little sensitive to others as to herself, and when she did good for the unfortunate, it was to do what was good in itself rather than out of a genuine commiseration” (p. 81) [68/81].) Moreover, the breast is the heart, and the place of mercy, in particular for Rousseau. Two pages after these allusions to “cancer [of the] breast” (those are Rousseau’s words, are they not?) and the double expiration of a Mme de Vercellis who

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lacks commiseration, Rousseau writes this, and I’ll underline a certain “not even”: (Read Confessions, p. 86 S.) Nevertheless, I have never been able to take it upon myself to unburden my heart of this admission in the bosom [sein] of a friend. The closest intimacy has never caused me to make it to anyone, not even to Mme de Warens. All I was able to do was to admit that I had an atrocious action for which to reproach myself, but I never said what it consisted in. Thus this weight has remained on my conscience without relief up to this day, and I can say that the desire to free myself from it in some measure has contributed very much to the resolution I have made to write my confessions. (71–­72/86, Derrida’s emphasis)

Two times a final word, I was saying, and a double silence comes irreversibly to seal an end. Here is the first final word: (Read and comment on Confessions, p. 83 V.)

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She loved to write letters; it was an amusement for her in her condition; they made her dislike it and caused her to be diverted from it by the doctor persuading her that it was tiring. Under the pretext that I did not understand service, they employed two fat boors of chair carriers around her instead of me: in sum, they acted so well that when she made her will it had been eight days since I entered her room. It is true that after that I entered there as before, and I was even more assiduous than anyone else: for that poor woman’s suffering tore me apart, the constancy with which she bore it made her extremely worthy of respect and dear to me, and I shed very sincere tears in her room, without it being noticed by anyone. Finally we lost her. I saw her expire. Her life had been that of a woman of intelligence and sense; her death was that of a sage. I can say that she made the Catholic religion lovable to me through the serenity of soul with which she fulfilled its duties, without negligence and without affectation. She was naturally serious. At the end of her illness she acquired a sort of gaiety that was too even to be feigned, and that was only a counterweight given by reason itself against the sadness of her condition. She kept to her bed only for the last two days and did not stop conversing peacefully with everyone. Finally, no longer speaking, and already in the throes of agony, she made a big fart. “Good,” she said turning over, “a woman who farts is not dead.” These were the last words she pronounced. (69–­70/83)

Here is the second, and last, last word. Following that fart, that last breath, that agony, and those “last words she pronounced” like a double expiration, a fart and a testamentary metalanguage on a next-­to-­last breath, here is the last last word, right at the end of the story of the ribbon, which itself follows without transition the double expiration of Mme de Vercellis

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who, after it is said of her “finally, no longer speaking,” still farts and adds a living, surviving gloss to this after-­the-­last word, the fart. Here then is the very last word, after the respect due to Marion has, like the young girl herself, been violated by theft and lying, that is to say by perjury, by the false witnessing that accuses Marion in order to excuse itself. I read this conclusion starting from an allusion to age that shows well that, even if Rousseau, at least at this point, does not say like Augustine “I was sixteen,” he underscores the feature [trait] of his age as an essential trait of the story, a trait that both accuses and excuses him, accuses him and charges him, weighs him down terribly but at the same stroke exculpates him. I’ll read: (Read and comment on Confessions, p. 87 A.) I had hardly left childhood, or rather I was still in it. In youth genuinely heinous acts are even more criminal than in maturity; but what is only weakness is much less so, and at bottom my fault was hardly anything else. Therefore its remembrance afflicts me less because of the evil in itself, than because of the one it must have caused. It has even done me the good of protecting me for the rest of my life from every act tending to crime because of the terrible impression that has remained from the only one I have ever committed. Furthermore I believe I feel that my aversion for lying comes to me in great part from the regret of having been capable of committing such a black one. If this is a crime that can be expiated, as I dare to believe it is, it ought to be by so many misfortunes that overwhelm the end of my life, by forty years of uprightness and honor in difficult circumstances; poor Marion finds so many avengers in this world, that however great my offense against her might have been, I am not very afraid of carrying off the guilt with me to the next one. This is what I had to say on this article. May I be permitted never to speak of it again. (72–­73/87)

He will of course speak of it again, as if in a second breath in turn in the Reveries. And there again he calls Marion “poor Marion” (p. 1033) (Reveries, 35/1033). Still, on the question of his being sixteen, what is to be said? If, of course, Rousseau doesn’t indicate how old he was at the time of the ribbon story, you could check, as I myself did in retrospect, to find that not only did Rousseau multiply to a really obsessional degree remarks about his age in the first two books of the Confessions, but, since we are speaking of substitutions (Marion, Mme de Vercellis, to whom one can add Mme de Warens), that several months earlier in the same year, in April 1728, some months before the death of Mme de Vercellis and before the theft of and lying about the ribbon, Rousseau met Mme de Warens and so began the special passion for Mamma of which you are aware. Now, almost within the

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sentence where he notes the first meeting with Mme de Warens, well, like Saint Augustine, he notes his age, sixteen: “Finally I arrive; I see Mme de Warens. This epoch of my life determined my character; I cannot resolve to pass over it lightly. I was in the middle of my sixteenth year. Without being what is called a handsome boy, I had a fine little figure; I had a pretty foot . . .” (p. 48, Pléiade) (Confessions, 40/48). It is thus one and the same year that decides his life twice, in the same Book II of the Confessions, a single sequence of metonymic transitions in which, as in the same almost substitutive chain, one sees, following one after the other, Mme de Warens, Mme de Vercellis (her death), and the theft-­lie of the ribbon, the accusation against “poor Marion.” We’ll come back to it — ­and I wouldn’t want to overdo this chain of Maries involving three women to whom he is bound by a desire without desire as to the breast of a virgin mother, “poor Marion” being but a diminutive figure or a metonymy in a scene of passion and martyrdom, for what Jean-­Jacques suggests to us (in the text that I quoted just now, and which seemed to dechristianize Augustinian discourse) is nevertheless that he has been made to suffer and expiate as an innocent person for men and by wicked men who know not what they do. You perhaps remember, then, that I made, with this first digressive zigzag, references to two authors who, both being authors of Confessions, speak most often the language of excuse, and in one case, for example, of the “inexcusable (inexcusabilis),” and in the other of “excusing himself.” Where does Augustine say “ut sint inexcusabiles?” In Book X of the Confessions, v.7 to vi.8 (Confessions II, 78/152). That ut sint inexcusabiles, which I am going to read, is a palimpsestic quotation, as is often the case in Augustine’s Confessions. It is a quote from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1.2.20)23 where it is a question of knowledge of God. In this passage from the Epistle to the Romans, Paul says to the Romans that he is “not ashamed of the gospel”24 (a strange remark. Why should he be ashamed of the gospel? Why would he have to feel guilty and be forgiven for the gospel? Yet he indeed says: “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (as Rousseau will speak so often of shame, of what he has done out of shame)). Paul says “I am not ashamed,” “I don’t blush for the gospel”: Non enim erubesco evangelium, I am not embarrassed about the gospel (moreover it will be a question of seeing and knowing, whence the reference to shame): “I don’t blush for the gospel,” 23. Thus in typescript. Derrida corrects the reference in “Typewriter Ribbon” (Without Alibi, 295 [Papier Machine, 64]). 24. Romans 1:16 [La Bible: Nouveau Testament, 465]. Derrida often modifies the translation in his text.

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in Greek ou gar epaiskhunomai to euaggelion,25 I don’t have to be ashamed, to present excuses for the gospel: it is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed” and one doesn’t have the right (one is, then, without excuse) not to see, not to know what God has manifested “from the creation of the world . . . by the things that are made [dans ses oeuvres]” ( per ea quae facta sunt: by his facts, by the things that he made and worked [opérées]: tois poiēmasin).26 His works are knowable and they let themselves be known. God’s anger (ira Dei, argē theou) is unleashed, then, against those who don’t want to see his works, that is to say, the manifestation of his invisibility, and who are therefore without excuse. For in his works one sees the invisible; such that — ­hence God’s anger — ­those who don’t want to know, who don’t want to see the visible invisible in his works, those ones are inexcusable. It is this link between knowledge and excuse that is going to count for us more and more. “As a result,” says Paul, “those who don’t want to want to see and know what the works of God give invisibly to be seen, those are without excuse (ita ut sint inexcusabiles, eis to einai autous anapologētous).”27 I’ll let you read everything that follows, which is magnificent and where one sees God condemn to death, judge worthy of death (digni sunt morte, axioi thanatou) those who, by their idolatrous behavior, refuse to see the invisible.28 Paul then even turns toward the man who wants not to want to see and know the invisible work of God, and says to him directly, in an apostrophe: “Propter quod inexcusabilis es, o homo omnis qui judicas”: “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest,”29 etc., “Dio anapologētos ei, ō anthrōpe pas ō krinōn” (inexcusable and sans excuses are also Chouraqui’s words in his translation). And what will be judged particularly inexcusable, in what follows immediately in the text, is not recognizing that the goodness, “the benevolence of God [bonitas, benignitas Dei] leads you to penitence [ poenitentia, which is sometimes translated as “conversion” (metanoia in Greek), or turning back on 25. Romans 1:16 [La Bible: Nouveau Testament, 465]. For the Greek and Latin here and below, see https://www.sacred-­texts.com/bib/poly, and for Greek transcriptions, https://www.biblehub.com/interlinear. Cf. La Sainte Bible polyglotte, vol. 8:12, 13. 26. See Romans 1:16–­2 0 [La Bible: Nouveau Testament, 465–­6 6; Bible polyglotte, 12]. 27. Cf. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20 [La Bible: Nouveau Testament, 466; Bible polyglotte, 12]). 28. See Romans 1:32 [Bible polyglotte, 14]. 29. Romans 2:1 [La Bible: Nouveau Testament, 468; Bible polyglotte, 14].

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oneself ],”30 a conversion that cannot happen without this turning back on oneself of penitence or repentance. So, let’s go back to Augustine. What impels him to inscribe this quote from Paul on the inexcusability of man (and first, of the Jew or the Greek)? He inscribes it in his palimpsest, in the course of a demonstration; it is a matter of an argument at whose heart the concept of knowing — ­I would even say a certain absolute knowing, an absolute seeing-­knowing — ­plays a decisive and paradoxical role. Let’s read it, it is a passage that follows quite soon after that in which Augustine explains why, in X.iii.20, “etiam hominibus coram te confiteor per has litteras [in these writings I also make confession to other people in your presence]” (Confessions II, 72–­73/146), which I have interpreted elsewhere (notably in “Circumfession”):31 (Quote Confessions, Book X, pp. 151–­53 I.) 281

I am only a child but my father is eternal, a fit and proper guardian for me. He is the very same who begot me and watches over me and you yourself are all that is good in me, you are almighty; you are with me even before I am with you. To such people as you command me to serve I shall explain not who I once was, but the kind of person I now am, and who I shall remain. Even so, I do not judge myself. This is the way I should be heard. After all, Lord, you are the one who judges me. Even if no human individual knows what is proper to that individual except their spirit (which dwells within them), nevertheless there is a part of each person that not even that person’s spirit within them can know. You, though, know everything about that person, Lord, for you made them. Certainly even though I count myself nothing in your sight and consider myself to be earth and ash, I nevertheless know something about you that I do not know about myself. To be sure, now we see through a mirror in an obscure mystery, not yet face to face. Therefore although I journey away from you, I am more present to myself than to you; and besides, I know you cannot be harmed in any way. But I do not know what temptations I may have the strength to resist, or to which I may succumb. My hope is that you are faithful, and you do not let us be tempted beyond what we are able to endure, but provide — ­alongside the temptation — ­a way out of it as well, so that we are able to withstand it. So let me confess what I know about myself, and let me confess what I do not know about myself; since even what I know about myself I know because 30. Cf. “not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance” (Romans 2:4) See La Bible: Nouveau Testament, 468; Un Pacte neuf: Le Nouveau Testament, trans. André Chouraqui (Brussels: Brepols, 1997), 344, 345; and Bible polyglotte, 14, 16. 31. See Derrida, “Circumfession” (Period 33), 171–­72, 174 [“Circonfession,” 161, 163].

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you enlighten me, and what I do not know about myself I go on not knowing, until my shadows become like the noonday in your sight. I love you, Lord: not with doubtful but with sure awareness. You have struck my heart with your word, and I have fallen in love with you. But as for the heaven and the earth and all that is in them, see! — ­from every quarter they tell me to love you, and they never stop saying to every person that they are without excuse. But your pity upon those you do pity is the more profound, and you offer mercy to those toward whom you are merciful: otherwise heaven and earth are speaking your praises to those who cannot hear! So what is it that I love when I love you? Not the beauty of outward appearance . . . (Confessions II, 77–­81/150–­53)32

Two movements of love at the origin of the fault. Rousseau’s Confessions (Book II, p. 86): “when I accused that unfortunate girl, it is bizarre but true that my friendship for her was the cause. She was present to my thought, I excused myself on the first object that offered itself ” (Confessions, 72/86). Zigzag. Let’s come back to Greece. Even the Jews and even the Greeks, Paul was saying, must open themselves to the divine revelation that grants knowledge. Jews and Greeks would be without excuse if they didn’t give themselves over to that revelation of justice. We stopped short — ­that was the end of the previous session — ­facing this thought dedicated to an infinite syngnōmē ( pampollēs), to an unlimited indulgence, a hyperbolic benevolence. A sort of madness, transgression, an excessive, errant, and delirious overflowing of the limit. And you remember that this word syngnōmē was translated sometimes by “indulgence,” sometimes by “benevolence,” sometimes even by “forgiveness.”33 Here and there it even had as its equivalent, if not its translation, the gift of a grace — ­but always with an implied comprehension, a comprehensivity, a knowing and a judgment, an intelligence, a gnōmē, an aptitude for understanding, seeing and knowing how to see, a disposition shared by those who are therefore on the same wavelength [sont “d’intelligence”], as one says. To be on the same wavelength, like sharing the same indulgence with the other in a “panic” I might say — ­“panic” to translate both pampollēs, which means “unlimited, absolute, total,” and the disturbance, or even extravagance, the panic, like the god Pan, this over­ flowing syngnōmē risks engendering. How could a syngnōmē exceed every limit and still remain a form of excuse, of indulgence, of a clemency that is inferior and exterior, as a Greek thing, to Abrahamic forgiveness? You can perhaps still hear the sentence 32. Italics indicate biblical quotations or paraphrases. 33. See 173–75 above.

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that Socrates throws back at Critias as a challenge concerning the gift of comprehensive indulgence, the gift of syngnōmē, a gift (dōrean) that Critias had asked to be granted like a grace, a “gift” that one translator, for his part, rendered moreover as “grace.”34 We mustn’t forget that this slightly crazy language of excess is, once again, that of Socrates, a thinking that is a little drunk, delirious, errant, inebriating. I didn’t underline, as I perhaps should have if I had had the time at the end of the session, the fact that the almost delirious challenge made by Socrates consists in giving to Critias the almost inaccessible model of a poet. It is even in order to surpass a poet that one should obtain a syngnōmē pampollēs, a benevolence that is limitless in comprehension: “the former poet won marvellous applause from it, so that you will require an extraordinary measure of indulgence [an infinite syngnōmē: pampollēs] if you are to prove capable of following in his steps.”35 I won’t insist unduly on what, in this unlimitizing (itself difficult to interpret: is this overflowing of the limit an indefiniteness or a positive infinite? Etc.), comes to disrupt the order of the concept and the good sense of sense. Syngnōmē pampollēs may compromise the rigor of conceptual oppositions: first, between excuse and forgiveness, then between different modes of understanding, finally, between a supposed Greek culture that is foreign to forgiveness and a culture of revealed religion, an Abrahamic culture of the Book favorable to the forgiveness of mercy and in truth the foundation of every thinking of grace and forgiveness. I won’t make too much of the fact — ­which, besides, I am not sure of being able to interpret — ­that this allusion to limitless syngnōmē is signed by Socrates in the Critias. I won’t make too much of this already canonical analogy that canonizes Socrates, and especially since his death sentence, which would be compared to that of someone who was like him (and later like Rousseau according to Jean-­Jaques,36 denounced, accused, judged by a political tribunal as expiatory victim or pharmakos, and who let himself be 34. Cf.: “Si donc il vous paraît que j’ai droit à cette faveur, accordez-­la-­moi de bonne grâce” (Platon, Critias, trans. Émile Chambry, in Oeuvres complètes. Tome V. Sophiste, Politique, Philèbe, Timée, Critias, ed. Émile Chambry [Paris: Librairie Garnier Frères, 1950], 108a). 35. Plato, Critias, trans. Bury, 263 [Critias, trans. Rivaud, 108b]. 36. [Translator’s note :] Certain early editions used the spelling “Jean-­Jaques” in the title Rousseau juge de Jean Jaques. Derrida follows that spelling at times here. Cf. Rousseau, Judge of Jean-­Jacques: Dialogues, trans. Christopher Kelly and Judith R. Bush, Collected Writings of Rousseau, vol. 1 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2012) [Rousseau juge de Jean Jaques, in Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1].

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put to death without protesting . . .),37 someone who one day said “forgive them, for they know not what they do,” or, as it is sometimes translated (Luke 23:34): Père, remets-­leur, car ils ne savent pas ce qu’ils font (Grosjean and Léturmy translation [Pléiade], 258). Remets-­leur is also Chouraqui’s translation for what is translated into Latin as Pater, dimitte illis; non enim sciunt quid faciunt, and in Greek by pater, aphes [this is aphienai, which we spoke about last time]38 autois; ou gar oidasin ti poiousin39 (40a very enigmatic and divisible formulation, undecidable perhaps, preoccupied perhaps by the very subject of the undecidable, to which I would like to return one day at least to open its double virtuality: (1) “Forgive them, because, not knowing what they are doing, they don’t intend harm and so have not done harm as such”; or else, (2) quite the opposite, and in an apparently more sophisticated, more laborious way, but which I would be tempted to take more seriously: “Forgive them because they have done harm; and whom could one forgive otherwise, if not one who has done harm?” But they could do harm as such and commit sin only in nonknowledge, because to do, to do harm or good, remains foreign to knowing, to the deployment of knowledge: the act, doing, decision, responsibility, freedom are heterogeneous to knowledge. One never knows what one is doing not because one closes one’s eyes or remains ignorant or unconscious of it but because the doing and the decision to do presuppose a rupture and a heterogeneity, a hiatus between knowing and acting, between knowledge and freedom, etc. As a result, one who does wrong doesn’t know what he is doing: he must therefore be forgiven both because he is doing wrong (and one has never forgiven anything other than the wrong that has been done) and because, in doing wrong, he wasn’t able to know it. But we will have to complicate further this axiomatic in another way later, by explaining that not only doing wrong but also doing good presupposes that one knows the evil and thinks it, if not intending it [on sache le mal et pense le mal, sinon à mal]. Now not only will I not make too much of the fact of the canonical analogy between the death of Socrates and the death of Christ — ­and the martyrdom or passion of Jean-­Jaques — ­but, by means of a first chiasmus (for a second will quickly follow), I shall draw your attention, quite the contrary, to another place in the work of Plato where, curiously, it is Socrates again, 37. [Translator’s note:] Ellipsis in typescript. 38. See 183 above. 39. See Un Pacte neuf, 258; and Bible polyglotte, 384. 40. The parenthesis opened here does not close in the typescript.

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always him, who speaks of syngnōmē, a word that Croiset translates in the Budé edition once by indulgence and once by pardon.41 (Syngnōmē is today, it needs to be made clear, the modern Greek word by which one intends forgiveness in general. There is no other word for “forgiveness” in modern Greek.) We are talking about a passage in which a somewhat stiff, somewhat cut-­and-­dried interpretation would have Socrates say, would have a certain madness of Socrates’s say — ­he is going to present himself a little like a mental case, off on a delirious tangent [comme un errant délirant] — ­exactly the opposite of what Jesus seems to say, that other madman who asks for forgiveness for those who are putting him to death. Socrates is going to seem to mean not “forgive them for they know not what they do,” but, taking the opposite tack from the son of God, “forgive them for they know what they do.” This passage is found in the Lesser Hippias (“hē peri tou pseudous”: on lying, but difficult to translate).42 It is a passionate, major, and very complicated debate about lying and veracity. I can’t reconstitute it in all its intricacy here (I am bringing it up here because we’ll again be talking a lot about lying in relation to Rousseau soon), but I’ll start from the moment when Socrates affirms that in the Embassy scene of the Iliad (en Litais)43 — ­Achilles and Ulysses often being presented as the sincere and truthful man (Achilles) in opposition to the deceiver and liar (Ulysses) — ­it happens that, as Socrates says at the end of a first intense exchange, “the same man has been found to be false and true,”44 both truthful and deceitful ( pseudēs kai alēthēs), which means that the two characters, far from being different and opposite (enantioi), are alike (homoioi) (369b). And after Hippias has tried to object that when Achilles speaks against the truth, he doesn’t do so voluntarily (ouk ek epiboulēs), whereas Ulysses, in lying, does so voluntarily and with bad intent 41. Cf. Plato, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, trans. Maurice Croiset (Paris: Société d’édition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1953). 42. Maurice Croiset (Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1) and Émile Chambry (Premiers dialogues [Paris: Flammarion, 1967]) both translate the heading as Sur le mensonge [lying], whereas Francesco Fronterotta and Jean-­François Pradeau translate it as Sur la tromperie [deceit] in the new edition of Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Flammarion, 2011); cf. Plato, Lesser Hippias, trans. Harold North Fowler, in Jeffrey Henderson, ed., Cratylus. Parmenides. Greater Hippias. Lesser Hippias (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), “On Falsehood” (429). 43. Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), IX.307–­429, pp. 224–­27 [Iliade, vol. 2, IX.308–­429]. 44. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 449 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 369b].

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(hekōn te kai ek epiboulēs) (370e),45 Socrates leads Hippias onto ground that is at first glance very paradoxical, and slightly crazy, and that is what I want to draw your attention to because it is precisely a question of syngnōmē. In fact, Socrates suggests, the intentional liar Ulysses seems better than Achilles; and because Hippias protests, Socrates insists: “Were not those who utter falsehoods voluntarily (hoi hekontes pseudomenoi) found to be better (beltious) than those who do so involuntarily?”46 New protestation from Hippias, who is scandalized, beside himself; outraged objection by Hippias who then uses the word syngnōmē; one should grant syngnōmē (benevolent comprehension, excuse, or even forgiveness) only to those who inadvertently do wrong, without knowing it and without wishing it:

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And how, Socrates, could those who voluntarily do wrong (hoi hekontes adikōuntes) and voluntarily and designedly do harm (epibouleusantes kai kaka ergasamenoi) be better than those who do so involuntarily? And there seems to be good reason to forgive (syngnōmē) a man who unwittingly does wrong or speaks falsehood or does any other evil. And the laws surely are much more severe towards those who do evil and tell falsehoods voluntarily, than towards those who do so involuntarily.47

That is both the logic of good sense and evangelical logic as it is conventionally interpreted: it is easier, more normal, to grant indulgence or forgiveness to those who don’t know what they do when they do wrong than to those who do wrong voluntarily, knowing what they are doing — ­knowing and willing seem here indissociable. Yet here we have Socrates, in an incredible scene, incredibly crafty and convincing, in the course of a somewhat extravagant sally, going to take the opposing view vis-­à-­vis this pseudo-­obvious fact by affirming that one who does wrong while knowing it and wishing it is better than one who does wrong without knowing it and without wishing it. Socrates, of course, does not advance that thesis as a satanic challenge, or even as the diabolical, demonic, or sadistic perversity that it could resemble. He even goes so far as to claim modesty, humility, and innocence, all the way to presenting himself — ­with what always makes one suspect him of perverse irony —  ­precisely as someone who, clearly, knows nothing, is not sure of himself, even asks to be treated for the confusion he is suffering from: 45. During the session, Derrida translates: “he doesn’t do it on purpose, he doesn’t do it deliberately.” 46. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 457 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 371e]. 47. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 457 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 372a].

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I am all wrong about facts [things, pragmata], [he says,] and do not know the truth about them (kai ouk oid hopē esti). And it is to me sufficient proof of the truth of this, that when I come into contact with one of you who are famous for wisdom (sophia), and to whose wisdom all the Greeks bear witness, I am found to know nothing; for there is hardly a single thing about which you and I have the same opinion; and yet what greater proof of ignorance (amathias) is there than when one disagrees with a wise man?48

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But what saves him, he then says, what ensures his salvation (sōzei), is the fact that he consents to learn, to question, to ask. For the moment, he affirms that the truth appears to him to be contrary to that held by Hippias, on the side of common sense. And he maintains that “those who injure people and do wrong and speak falsehood and cheat and err voluntarily, not involuntarily, are better than those who do so involuntarily.”49 One must take account of the peculiar structure of the scene constructed by Socrates and of his manner of self-­presentation, of staging himself, of including himself in the scene of forgiveness and syngnōmē that we appear to be concerned with in a metalinguistic mode. Apparently, a certain number of themes, concepts, meanings (lying, knowing, willing, indulgence, understanding, syngnōmē, etc.) are currently under discussion. But the actors on this stage aren’t able (and Socrates is doing everything to prevent them) to dominate those concepts and that language from an elevated metalinguistic and neutral vantage: they are themselves living a staged scene, in their very discussion, they are implicated, body and soul, in a scene of lying, wrongdoing, injustice — ­and forgiveness or syngnōmē. For, by advancing this scandalous thesis and this challenge to consensus, to the dominant doxa of those who know or are supposed to know, Socrates not only sings the praises of knowledge — ­of willing as knowing-­how-­to-­will and willing-­to-­ know — ­as the supreme quality such that those who do wrong following willing-­to-­know and knowing-­how-­to-­will are better than those who do wrong without knowing it or wishing it; Socrates presents himself not only as someone who does not know but also as someone who does not know what he wants, but who, wanting to know what he wants and therefore wanting the knowledge of his willing, can’t manage that — ­and who, as a result, is unstable to the point of being ill, suffering from his pathological instability and asking that he be treated for that, and asking for forgiveness for that. He says “help, sorry” in presenting this extravagant, errant, delirious thesis. 48. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 457–­59 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 372b–­c]. 49. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 459 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 372d].

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For immediately after advancing his thesis (those who do wrong while wanting to, and knowing what they do, are better, etc.), he adds that he often also thinks the opposite. He wanders, therefore, from one sentiment to the other, which proves his ignorance, that he doesn’t then know what he is saying and doesn’t know what he is thinking when he sings the praises of knowing in this way, nor does he know what he wants when he sings the praises of willing. He is unstable and divided; it’s as if he were saying, confiding in, avowing, confessing to his interlocutors so that they might analyze him as they treat him: you see, I am analyzing in a compulsive and deviant way because I am schizo, because I have a multiple personality. (“I am a multiple personality,”50 something I saw and heard said one day on American television an obese young woman who couldn’t stop herself from compulsively reaching for cookies; she kept repeating, as if to have herself forgiven for the cookies51 and the obesity: “I am a multiple, I am a multiple personality, I am a multiple”: isn’t that the very formula of anyone who excuses themself: “it’s not my fault, I am double, it’s the fault of the schize that divides me — ­that’s what Hamlet said to Laertes, you’ll recall52 — ­I am more than one, more than a one, it’s not me, it’s the other in me who is doing wrong, I know, “I am a multiple”; this “I am a multiple” can be sincere, but it cannot be purely and simply so, for in order to say and have heard, in order to be heard saying “I am a multiple,” one has to gather oneself sufficiently — ­even if only in an Ich denke, “I say I, and I think that I am I,” in a synthetic apperception of the transcendental ego, Kant would say — ­to give a meaning or ask that a meaning that is one be ascribed to that utterance, to the signature of that statement.)53 Socrates, for his part, also says “I am a multiple”; he presents himself or — ­we’ll never know — ­pretends to present himself as a mental case; he says he is undergoing a sort of crisis, as if suffering from a weakness, a psychasthenia, a katabolē, he says, a pathological debility, for which he asks 50. [Translator’s note:] This sentence and subsequent repetitions in English in typescript. 51. [Translator’s note:] Word in English in typescript. 52. Hamlet, act 5, scene 2 [Hamlet, trans. Bonnefoy, 241–­51]. See discussion in the Fifth Session, above. 53. See Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, ed. Raymund Schmidt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1956), 140; cf. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), §16 (On the original-­ synthetic unity of apperception), 246 [Critique de la raison pure, trans. André Tremesaygues and Bernard Pacaud (Paris: PUF, 1963), 110].

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to give him treatment, to treat him and to forgive him, and that’s somewhat the same thing. For that matter, might one not be tempted to show that every forgiveness tends to treat, to cure, to recuperate by saving, by redeeming by means of a reconciliation with the other, and first of all with oneself, which is a cure, a care (cure and care, and charity)? A redemption and a salvation, an atonement of self that pays the cost of a soteriological cure? Let’s leave this economic point for the moment. But now at the present moment [says Socrates] a sort of paroxysm (katabolē) of my disease has come upon me, and those who err in respect to anything voluntarily appear to me better than those who err involuntarily. . . . So please do me a favour and do not refuse to cure my soul (iasasthai tēn psukhēn mou).54

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Note that Socrates doesn’t present himself as a mental case because he is defending this seemingly satanic thesis according to which doing wrong voluntarily would be better than the opposite (which would impel one always to prefer the organized butcher, knowingly and in all conscience [en science et en conscience], and to be more indulgent toward such a one than toward the involuntary criminal). No, Socrates presents himself as someone whom he himself suspects of being a psychopath by reason of the instability of his positions, theses, opinions, subjected as he is to the discourse of the other and to the last one to speak. I am in thrall to the last word, he seems to say. He is ill not because he thinks that the voluntary evildoer is less evil and more merits syngnōmē that the involuntary evildoer (besides, in fact, syngnōmē, as shared, granted gnōmē, precisely supposes a relation to knowledge). No, he sees himself as ill because he changes his mind all the time, doesn’t keep still and doesn’t hold to one of two theses. What follows in the scene is unbelievable; read it. The others listen to Socrates’s delirium as he confesses his illness, they look at one another, heads spinning, for there they are led along by the tricks or versions or perversions of this vertiginous structure, there they are, heads spinning, ready to suspect Socrates not of being a confused nutter but of purposely inducing this confusion, of deliberately creating disturbance, disorder in the arguments, as he always does (aei tarattei en tois logois), and so, and so,55 of trying in that way to do harm voluntarily. It is in order to do wrong voluntarily that he says that it is better to do wrong voluntarily; it is in doing harm voluntarily and deliberately that he posits that it is better to do harm volun54. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 459–­61 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 372e]. 55. Thus in typescript and in the session.

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tarily, knowing it, doing it deliberately. Hippias calls on Eudicus as witness: “Hipp: . . . but Socrates, Eudicus, always makes confusion in arguments (aei tarattei en tois logois), and seems to want to make trouble (kai eoiken hōsper kakourgounti).”56 Playful protest from Socrates and appeal to syngnōmē: but no, I am not deliberately saying these disturbing things, but as you yourselves say that one has to be indulgent with those who do wrong but not on purpose, well, forgive me (that’s the translation of syngnōmē) and grant me your syngnōmē, since it is not on purpose that I defend this thesis. It is without knowing and without wanting to that I say that knowing one is doing wrong, and wanting to do wrong, is better than doing wrong without knowing and wanting to. So, by reason of your own logic, forgive me the wrong that you reproach me for saying and doing: Most excellent Hippias [O beltiste Hippia: the word beltiste is the one that Socrates uses regularly to say that one who does wrong voluntarily is good, or better than one who does so involuntarily], I do not do these voluntarily at all (outi hekōn ge tauta egō poiō) — ­for then I should be wise and clever [and terribly intelligent, terrible on account of intelligence: sophos kai deinos, which means both intelligent and terrible], according to you — ­but involuntarily (alla akōn), so forgive me (hōste moi syngnōmēn ekhe); for you say, too, that he who does evil involuntarily ought to be forgiven (hos an kakourgē akōn, syngnōmēn ekhein).57

Following that, Eudicus, half-­convinced, says to Hippias: you must concede Socrates’s reasoning and reply to his questions if you are to keep your promises. Then there begins the very lively, rapid-­fire dialogue (led by Socrates’s questions), the ping-­pong exchange that will last until Socrates brings Hippias back, implacably, to the proposition that he alone is good (agathos) who commits a fault or is in default voluntarily, who conducts himself in a shameful and unjust way. Hippias of course does not concede, he doesn’t consent to that. Besides, to say so, he uses a word that isn’t far from syngnōmē (which also means, as you know, agreement, consent, comprehension). Hippias says to him: “Ouk ekhō hopōs soi synkhōrēsō, ō Sōkrates, tauta [I can’t grant you that, I can’t agree with you about all that, I can’t concede that].”58 Synkhōrēsis is a concession (a little like syngnōmē), consent, 56. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 461 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 373b]. 57. Plato, Lesser Hippias, 461 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 373b]. 58. Cf. 376b:“I cannot agree with you, Socrates, in that” (Lesser Hippias, 475 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 376b]).

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the movement that consists in making an effort to give one’s consent to the other, to be in agreement with the other (syn), to join and combine with the other; and one sometimes translates synkhōrēsis by “forgiveness,” and synkhōrētikos by “inclined to concede or forgive.” Synkhōreō (the verb used by Hippias) means to “remit a debt” in Diogenes Laertius, and straightforwardly “to forgive” in ecclesiastical writers. As a result, at the end, when Socrates seems to insist, when he refuses to budge, defending and maintaining that only the good man can do wrong voluntarily, then Hippias retorts at one and the same time: no, I can’t follow you, I can’t make you that concession, grant you that, but also I can’t forgive you, acquit you, put you in the clear. I hold what you say to be unacceptable, it is false and a fault; but it isn’t only a fault, it is a fault that is to my mind unforgivable. I won’t grant you my synkhōrēsis, which one could also translate by “my forgiveness”: I don’t forgive you. Socrates’s response: “Nor I with myself.”59 I can’t forgive myself either, nor can I excuse myself, I can’t grant myself that, I can’t agree with what I myself say. I can’t bring myself into agreement with myself, stabilize myself, I can only err. So Socrates says, “I can’t agree with myself,” but since the verb that he thus uses again is synkhōrēsō, which means grant, consent, but finally also forgive, grant forgiveness by granting, by giving, one’s accord to the other, what Socrates is saying is also “I cannot forgive myself, I cannot agree with myself, nor then grant myself forgiveness, reconcile with myself ”; reconciliation impossible. But, in my case, Socrates specifies ironically, that’s normal, as I don’t know anything. There is nothing surprising in the fact that I err (and the word for “err” is planē: erring, meandering course, planēs, off course, like a planet, an off-­course star, planēs also means “intermittent,” “irregular”: the verb used by Socrates is planōmai,60 which means “to err by going astray, by leaving the straight path”: ramble on in aimlessness or aberration, not necessarily error but aberration, literally delirium: I am aberrant, Socrates says in short, I am delirious, but that’s normal, there’s no surprise there (ouden thaumaston), there is nothing to marvel at in the fact that I, like any other ignoramus, idiōtēs, am errant or in aberration). But that you, you who are wise (sophoi), that you also err ( planēsesthe) — ­for you do err, you are also delirious — ­that is something terrible (deinon) for us. What is terrible, terrifying, is that those who know and think that doing wrong knowingly and deliberately is worse, more unforgivable, more inexcusable than doing wrong without knowing it and without wishing 59. Lesser Hippias, 475 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 376b]. 60. In the typescript the verb is active: planaō.

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it, those, they cannot get their argument straight [arrêter leur thèse], get to agree with themselves, forgive themselves, and err thus endlessly, all the way to the end of the discussion. For that is Socrates’s last word and the last word in this dialogue on lying: what is terrible is that your knowledge won’t find us a way out of this planē, this errant, delirious course, this straying off course or aberration in which we can’t even excuse or forgive ourselves, unable to reconcile either with the other or with ourselves. Next week, through a movement that is less symmetrical than chiasmic, I am going instead to appeal to this equivocal thinking of the infinite in order to analyze, from the other side, as it were, a movement that always comes to affect this infinity of finitude and hyperbolic grace in its economic calculus. For that, in line with what I announced last time61 (if you still remember) as a second pause on the path that would bring us back to the Confessions (Augustine’s, but especially Rousseau’s), the first pause having kept us close to this concept-­word syngnōmē, I’ll start out again from a passage in Jankélévitch, from a certain “and yet” (“Forgiveness does not know impossibility; and yet . . .”) (p. 204) (Forgiveness, 157/204). Jankélévitch is moreover correct in recalling (p. 91), which doesn’t help simplify things, that: Socrates, although persecuted, is tempted neither to hold a grudge against nor to forgive his persecutors: he only shows by refutation that the guilty person is an ignorant person [a claim that seems to contradict what we were just looking at]. He does not say to Anytus and Meletus, who condemned him to death, “I forgive you.” He only says, with full objectivity and without addressing anyone in particular: oudeis hekōn hamartanei, “no one does evil knowingly.” That is all there is to it: these people apparently do evil but they do not know what they do. (66/91)

61. See 181–82 and 185 above.

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March 4, 1998

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— ­Pardon, excuse me [ je m’excuse]. — ­No, no harm done [y a pas de mal].1 (Repeat) That seems like a last word. What is a last word? What does a last word say? Does it mean, does it still mean, the last word? Does it still mean something? The last word can be, but it is not only, or necessarily, the last word that I utter before dying, a testament, a will, or “I forgive,” I forgive you (formal or plural, familiar or singular), I ask for forgiveness, a testamentary 1. The beginning of the computer file for this session does not correspond to the printed typescript. In that version Derrida writes: “Pardon, excuse me. / No, no harm done (it’s nothing), then adds the following paragraph: “Mimic and repeat in all different tones: a whole seminar could have restricted itself to the theatricalization of the different tones with which those utterances could be pronounced, exhausting itself in the system of (almost infinite) combinations, the “gestures” of those utterances, the gestural intonations, that is to say the “pragmatics” of that “ordinary language,” etc.).” Starting from the paragraph that begins “That seems like a last word,” the two versions coincide. The first page of this session has two photocopies: on the first, numbered by hand “1,” Derrida adds these handwritten notes: “text altered on disk,” and “repeat in all different tones,” followed by a note relating to the ad hoc translation for the American audience; that note is also found on the second photocopy, numbered by hand “2.” During the session, Derrida repeats “Pardon, je m’excuse. Mais non, y a pas de mal” with several different intonations and makes this remark: “Well, one could reproduce almost all the tones, in many different tones, and theatricalize as it were the pragmatics, that is to say the gestures, the intonations of these speech acts [words in English, DW]: pardon, je m’excuse, y a pas de mal. I can imagine a seminar that would have consisted simply in varying for a year [Laughter], in a theatrical, dramatic way, a ‘drastic’ way as we said, all the possible gestures, the combinatory system of all these possible gestures for pardon, je m’excuse, mais non, y a pas de mal. With good actors on this stage that would have been enough, everything would have been said. Since I am not a good actor, I am explaining, but for a good actor it could have been sufficient to repeat those sentences.

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pardon, “no harm done,” for example, no harm done in my past life,2 in the wrong that, it seems, has been done to me, or in the wrong that, it seems, I have done. No harm done can be the last word before the end, before death, before expiring and the last sigh.3 I always, and deliberately, prefer to say “no harm done [y a pas d’mal]” rather than “there is no harm done [il n’y a pas de mal].” In that way I erase “il n’[y],” (he denies [il nie]). For, on the one hand, by eliding thus il n’, I restore by the same token the way that things are often pronounced on the run [en courant], in current everyday French: one says most often “y a pas d’mal” rather than “il n’y a pas de mal”; and, on the other hand, with this ellipsis or elision of il n’y, I erase somewhat the negation affecting il y a; I eliminate the ne of the negation, at least as it concerns il y a, as if I were to say “yes, il y a, yes, ya, yes, y a,” but what? Y a “pas de mal.” No harm, yes, there is, ’sno harm done [ya pas d’mal], pas d’mal y a: yes, y a. I thus transform, with an ellipse, negation into affirmation, which, you will agree, is not nothing. It’s not nothing, that’s the least one can say. And that affirmation seems to be gathered in y a as if this y a — ­which is also the first breath of the unpronounceable name of God — ­were a single word, but in what language already, a double word welded [soudé] to itself, paid off [soldé], indissolubly, absolutely, absolved in one. Is the “no harm done” pronounced by one who grants excuse or forgiveness, or better, by one who at least feigns, who even feigns exempting the other from having to ask for forgiveness or having to offer his excuses, is that “no harm done” the last word? Last week I deliberately played, I played a little without playing at having these “last words” respond to each other, so to speak, as though “last words” could still respond, as though the last word didn’t interrupt language forever. How could a last word still respond to a last word? Yet that does happen. You’ll still remember those last few words, more than one: the double expiry of Mme de Vercellis (“These were the last words she pronounced” [70/83] says the author of the Confessions), then Rousseau’s last word at the end of the chapter of the Confessions, and following the confession of the stolen ribbon (“May I be permitted never to speak of it again” 2. In the typescript Derrida writes “nor in my past life.” 3. In the typescript Derrida adds a sentence by hand at the end of the paragraph on both pages numbered “1”: “Forgiveness always stands, in essence, at death’s door, at least as figure of that event.” During the session, he says instead: “And forgiveness always stands, in essence, at death’s door, at least as figure of what is ultimate or irreversible. In a way, the scene in question is always a scene of the last word before death.”

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[73/87] — ­a sentence that I recall here in announcing that later, in reading de Man, we will have to ask ourselves whether everything doesn’t precisely get displaced when Rousseau speaks of it again, precisely, and, according to de Man, in a quite different way in the Reveries, such that the avowal of the theft and lie is and is not the last word in the Confessions); finally, Socrates’s last word at the end of the Lesser Hippias when he declares that he himself can neither be in agreement with himself nor grant himself forgiveness. He can no longer forgive himself.4 If I am insisting on this paradoxical instance of the “last word” that, by definition, seems destined to interrupt history irreversibly, along with discourse, exchange, address, but also to make possible, beyond the end, a re-­start, it is because the word “forgiveness,” or “excuse,” the remission or annulment of the fault, absolute absolution, forgiveness granted, and even the excuse granted, all that is always posited within the figure, so to speak, of the “last word”: “forgiveness” granted is always — ­that is at least what is presupposed — ­the last word, something that cannot be called into question (every forgiveness seems to be enacted under the seal of the at least implicit oath that commits one not to go back on forgiveness: forgiveness is beyond any possible appeal, beyond any possible annulment, so to speak; saying “I forgive” amounts to saying “let’s not go back over that any more, neither your fault nor the forgiveness or excuse that I am granting you, let’s not talk about it anymore, let’s stop discussing it, negotiating, retelling also, let’s interrupt the discussion, the explanation, the narrating, and especially the confession, the avowal, the repenting, you are excused, you are forgiven, no harm done”).5 It is always a “last word.” A forgiveness that didn’t offer itself as the assurance or promise of — ­didn’t signify, in any case — ­a last word, or even an end of history, wouldn’t be forgiveness. We find there a troubling proximity that forgiveness maintains to judgment, or even to the Last Judgment — ­which it nevertheless isn’t. Forgiveness doesn’t judge the criminal, it transcends all judgment, penal or nonpenal, it is foreign to the tribunal and to the Last Judgment, and yet

4. See Plato, Lesser Hippias, 475 [Oeuvres complètes, trans. Croiset, 376b]. 5. During the session, Derrida adds: “Translated in the French judicial code, for example, when a verdict is pronounced, especially if it is an acquittal or case dismissed, public reference to it is even forbidden. One no longer has the right to mention it again, that is forbidden. When someone is acquitted one doesn’t go back over the verdict, one must not even mention the matter.”

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it also remains as close to the verdict, the veridictum, as possible, precisely through its irresistible force as “last word.” If we had time, of course, but we don’t, we would read and analyze together (as we began to do, I think, some years back)6 Blanchot’s “Last Word” (one of his first texts, written, I think, as far back as 1935). It is a sort of narrative whose narrator, among other things, avows, avows. What does he avow? He avows his shame, he admits with shame not this or that fault but the fact that he is a judge. He isn’t ashamed of having committed a fault; he is ashamed of being a judge. For example (but I encourage you to reread the whole thing), he says: When I went down the stairway beside the river, some large dogs appeared on the opposite bank. They were similar to mastiffs and their heads bristled with crowns of thorns. I knew that the justice department used the dogs from time to time and they had been trained to be quite ferocious. But I belonged to the justice department as well. That was my shame: I was a judge. Who could condemn me? [My shame, then, is that as a judge I can’t be judged, I am above all suspicion, all judgment, and so also, because I can be neither judged nor sentenced, I am also, paradoxically, perversely, un-­pardonable.] Instead of filling the night with their barking, the dogs [which are therefore instruments of justice] silently let me pass, like a man they supposedly didn’t see.7

That avowal, this shame that is avowed — ­for the crime of belonging to justice, to the judicial body, and of being a judge8 — ­presumes justice to be a ferocious, bestial violence, which thus likens men, this man who is a judge, to those ferocious mastiffs that pretend not to see him, as a man, “like a 6. Derrida is perhaps alluding here to his commentary on Blanchot’s text on Paul Celan. See Blanchot, “The Last to Speak,” trans. Charlotte Mandell, in A Voice from Elsewhere (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007) [Blanchot, Le dernier à parler (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1984]; and Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Le témoignage” (“Répondre — ­du secret”), EHESS, 1992–­93, second session. 7. Maurice Blanchot, “Vicious Circles: The Last Word,” trans. Paul Auster, The Station Hill Blanchot Reader, ed. George Quasha (Barrytown, NY : Station Hill Press, 1999), 41–­42, trans. modified. Derrida’s source is Blanchot, Le Dernier mot, in Le Ressassement éternel (Paris, London and New York: Éditions de Minuit and Gordon & Breach, 1970). The text is dated “1935, 1936” by Blanchot; first published in the review Fontaine in 1947. 8. During the session, Derrida adds: “In another text, you perhaps remember, I marked in what respect justice was perjury in itself. Before any act and any fault, justice was perjury; I won’t go back over that.” See Derrida, Adieu — ­to Emmanuel Levinas, 33ff. [Adieu — ­à Emmanuel Levinas, 67ff.].

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man they supposedly didn’t see.” That ferocious, bestial justice is terrifying inasmuch as it echoes or has echo through it, as its verdict, its judgment, its sentence, the last word. Now, what is the last word? It is “there is [il y a].” I’ll read what follows: . . . like a man they supposedly didn’t see. It was only after I had walked some distance that they began to howl again: trembling, muffled howls, which at that hour of the day resounded like the echo of the word there is. “That is probably the last word,” I thought, listening to them. But the word there is was still able to reveal the things that were in this remote neighborhood.9 302

(Read all the rest, p. 118.) You will have indeed understood both that this il y a is heard as a single word, since it is the last word, and that its unicity, this singularity of the indivisible word as last word (the last must be indivisible), is therefore also a sort of cry. It cries an almost inarticulate cry (for the indivisible is nonarticulated), an inarticulate cry between animal and man, common to man and beast, the ferocious howling beast. It is, as the text says, the resounding echo of howls (“trembling, muffled howls, which at that hour of the day resounded like the echo of the word there is”), “of the word there is [du mot il y a],” says the narrator: “il y a” is one word, it is one and just one word, a single word, a last word; but as an echo reverberating the howls of the dogs, it retains something bestial. Not only are these three words, il y a, one and only one word, but since they form only one, bestial word, the word is not really a word; this term that is not a word is a cry. But at the same time, less than a word, it is more than a word; for this word, as one sometimes says of a word, is the concentrated state or metonymy of a sentence and a judgment, a whole discourse (in the expressions “wordplay [un mot d’esprit],” “I’ll send you word,” “I am going to have a word with him,” the word “word” is more than a word, more than a term, it is a whole speech act, a whole history or judgment). As a result, unpronounceable either as cry or as howl, it is uttered as an end word, that is to say a judgment, a sentence, a verdict. For what unites man with beast here is the fact that they both belong to justice and are types of judge. It is the Last Judgment of the last word, the act of justice that is both too human and yet bestial.

9. Blanchot, “Last Word,” 42, trans. modified [Dernier mot, 118].

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[10I note here, too quickly, in parentheses, or brackets, concerning this passage from Blanchot — ­which says that il y a (three words, then) is “probably the last word,” three words in a single word — ­that one might be tempted to pursue three developments that I will merely point out. (A) In the first place (we are in 1935), a more or less secret link with all that Levinas will later write on the subject of there is [il y a] in numerous texts, the first of which, it seems to me, dates precisely from 1938.11 (12These are lectures collected in Time and the Other, and in which, following the trace of Heidegger, but also without him or against him, what’s more also interested precisely in the “word,” Levinas defines there is as an “existing without existent,” an existing that “cannot be purely and simply affirmed because one always affirms a being [étant].”13 But [he adds] “it [this il y a, this “existing”] imposes itself because one cannot deny it.”14 There is no possible negation or denial [dénégation] of this there is, precisely because it is nothing and signifies nothing determinate, nothing determinable. “Behind every negation [says Levinas] this ambience of being, this being as a ‘field of forces,’ reappears, as the field of every affirmation and negation. . . . because of this I call it anonymous” (pp. 26–­27).15 Levinas will pursue this meditation on the impersonal there is in Totality and Infinity, notably in the chapter on “Sensibility and the Face” (p. 160ff.), where there is is also the anonymity or originary impersonality of “facelessness,” of a void that is not 10. The bracket opened here closes on 238. 11. The notion of il y a appears for the first time in an article by Levinas published in Deucalion 1 (1946): 141–­54, then in the book written during his years of captivity, Existence and Existents (trans. Alphonso Lingis [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001]) [De l’existence à l’existant (Paris: Vrin, 1964)]. See Emmanuel Levinas, “Existing without Existent,” in Time and the Other (and additional essays), trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987); “L’exister sans existant,” in Le Temps et l’autre (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1979). In his preface, Levinas emphasizes (29) that Time and the Other is a series of lectures from 1946–­47, first published in French in 1948. See Cahiers du Collège Philosophique 1 (1948): 125–­9 6. 12. The parenthesis opened here does not close in the typescript. 13. Levinas, Time and the Other, 48 [Le Temps et l’autre, 25–­2 6]. During the session, Derrida adds: “so, since one always affirms some thing, a being, here it is a matter of an ‘existing’ before and outside every being, an ‘existing without existent [exister sans étant],’ then. He doesn’t say an ‘être’ sans étant, he says an ‘existing without existent [‘exister’ sans étant].’ That’s the there is. The experience of there is is the experience of the fact that y a, there is, ’ris existing [‘y a’ de l’exister], but that there is is still positing itself, it isn’t determined by a relation to any determined thing, any étant.” 14. Levinas, Time and the Other, 48 [Le Temps et l’autre, 25–­2 6]. 15. Time and the Other, 48 [Le Temps et l’autre, 26–­27].

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nothingness.16 Even if there is has no referent, though it name, affirm, deny nothing determinate, though it be void of reference, there is, says Levinas, “does not exist by virtue of a play on words. The negation of every qualifiable thing allows the re-­emergence of the impersonal there is, which, behind every negation, returns intact and indifferent to the degree of negation. The silence of infinite spaces is terrifying. The invasion of this there is does not correspond to any representation. We have described elsewhere its vertigo” (p. 165).17 Given that, the vision that always presumes a horizon (“To see is . . . always to see on the horizon,”18 to see coming) is “a forgetting of the there is.”19 To see anything at all is to forget there is. As a result Levinas denounces both the forgetting of there is and there is itself, the neutrality that is “impersonal” and has “no face,”20 the machine of “faceless gods”21 that invade the finitude of man. But the expression “faceless god” is itself assigned a double value (anonymous God and pagan force, but also God whose face does not appear to me, whom I don’t see face to face: “I do not struggle with a faceless god, but I respond to his expression, to his revelation” [p. 171]).22 That same meditation continues in Otherwise Than Being (“Subjectivity and Infinity,” §4, “Sense and the There Is” [p. 207ff.]) where this time the question of there is is articulated with that of justice and expiation.23 Moreover, this there is also echoes, as in Blanchot, it is almost animal, it makes noise, it resounds, but without a word, beyond the word; it therefore has something inarticulate in it, a little like the cry that one attributes to beasts. But Levinas does not speak of howling mastiffs, like Blanchot, he instead evokes the sound of buzzing. Buzzing is the language, or sonorous, if not phonic, manifestation of another beast, the bumblebee [bourdon], which is at the same time: a furry hymenopteran, like a bee (what is called a “false bourdon” is a male, drone bee); in music, a drone [bourdon] is a sort of continuous bass sound (produced by instruments such as the hurdy-­gurdy or bagpipe; it is also the fourth violin string or a bell with a low-­pitched sound). You know that avoir le bourdon or avoir le cafard means “to be down in the dumps.” 16. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 187–­93 [Totalité et l’infini, 160–­6 7]. 17. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 190/165, trans. modified. 18. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 191/165. 19. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 191/166. 20. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 298/274. 21. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 197/171. 22. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 197/171. 23. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 162ff. [Autrement qu’être, 207–­8].

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That basso continuo sound, especially during insomnia, in the vigil or vigilance of insomniac consciousness — ­and insomnia is a theme of continuous meditation in Levinas — ­the buzzing, the “incessant buzzing” of insomnia, he says, or again the “incessant buzzing[, the buzzing] of the there is” is: Essence stretching on indefinitely, without any possible halt or interruption, the equality of essence not justifying, in all equity, any instant’s halt, without respite, without any possible suspension, is the horrifying there is behind all finality proper to the thematizing ego. . . . the incessant buzzing that fills each silence, where the subject detaches itself from essence and posits itself as a subject[, and] in face of its objectivity. A buzzing intolerable to a subject that frees itself as a subject. . . . The buzzing of the there is is the nonsense in which essence turns, and in which thus turns the justice issuing from signification. . . . The incessant buzzing of the there is strikes with absurdity the active transcendental ego, beginning and present.24

Now, against this ever-­receding background [ fond sans fond] of anonymous absurdity, against the background of what he also calls elsewhere “the incessant bustling of the there is, the horrible eternity at the bottom of essence” (p. 223),25 or again “the excessive or disheartening hubbub and encumberment of the there is” (p. 209),26 Levinas will understand this insignificant “there is” as signification, as the signifier of the insignificant, as what, in the insignificant, not only still signifies, but better, signifies by assigning; by assigning, which is to say by enjoining me, by assigning me my place as subject subjected to the other, to the whole other in ethical responsibility and election (one who is elected is assigned), and, as we saw last year,27 what binds election to substitution. And this movement within Levinas’s trajectory, whose decisive character cannot be exaggerated, is decisive precisely because it indicates the place where transcendence transitions between being and otherwise than being. Now that place, passing through the signifier of the insignificant there is, has another name, which is important to us here: it is expiation, substitution as expiation of one for the other.28 As you know, 24. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 163–­64, trans. modified [Autrement qu’être, 207– 8]; Derrida modifies Levinas. 25. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 176/223. 26. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 164/209. 27. See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1996–­9 7, eighth session. 28. During the session, Derrida adds: “where I have to expiate not only for the fault I have committed, but for the other, in place of the other. And it is in the there is, against

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there is in Levinas a whole thinking of expiation, in Totality and Infinity and in Otherwise Than Being or Beyond Essence. Here I wish simply to latch onto the moment where expiation as signification is inseparable from the insignificant and from the neutrality (a neutrality that, for my part, I’ll here call, although Levinas doesn’t, “machinal”) of there is. Levinas writes it thus (pp. 208–­9): But the absurdity of the there is, as a modality of the-­one-­for-­the-­other, signifies. The insignificance of its objective insistence, recommencing behind every negation, overwhelms me like the fate of a subjection to all the other to which I am subject, is the surplus of nonsense over sense, through which, for the self, expiation is possible, an expiation which the oneself indeed signifies. The there is is all the weight that alterity weighs supported by a subjectivity that does not found it. But one must not say that the there is results from a “subjective impression.” In this overflowing of sense by nonsense, the sensibility, the self, is first brought out, in its bottomless passivity, as pure sensible point, a dis-­interestedness, or subversion of essence.29

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In other words, only a certain beyond of sense or of being can make a self-­accusation possible. A self-­accusation, and hence the beginning of an avowal and of an expiation, hence of the responsibility assumed by the subject for what he is or does, a self-­accusation — ­a judgment of oneself turning around on oneself before the other — ­that is possible only where nonsense overflows sense and the sense of being, and where that excess gives rise to an experience. If everything possessed sense, self-­accusation, self-­judgment, turning in on oneself as guilty and responsible wouldn’t be possible. The name or correlate of that experience — ­the strange and singular experience of what exists without existent (to take up again the old formula from 1938),30 that neutrality that is insignificant, incessant, overflowing, etc. — ­is there is, the experience of there is, there is as experience, because one cannot speak of the experience of there is as experience of something, inasmuch as there is is nothing that is, neither object nor subject. There is nothing called there is outside of the experience that I have of it, because there is is nothing. There is is the experience of there is or experience as there is.

the insignificant background of this there is that substitution is possible, and hence the election that assigns to me my responsibility in that I have to expiate not only for myself or for my faults, but for the other. What we analyzed last year concerning Levinas on substitution is found, localized here.” 29. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 164/208–­9 . 30. See note 11 above.

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You’ll read these pages, from which I quote further only this, in order to close provisionally on this point: “Signification [here, signification signified in assignation, through the insignificance of there is] is the ethical deliverance of the self through substitution for the other. It is consumed as an expiation for the other.”31 I have privileged this passage for reasons that I hope are obvious: every thinking of forgiveness is taken over by the experience of expiation, of course, but precisely where the whole process, in its most problematic and enigmatic aspects, is organized by identification with the other and substitution of one by the other, of one for the other, of the unique one in place of the other unique one, of the other in itself in place of the self. (B) I announced, still within brackets, three possible linkages between there is as last word in Blanchot, and the nonnegative, affirmative or neutral y a that I myself had underscored. The second linkage, where y a is also an animal cry, the howling or buzzing of the last word that is also — ­as only a last word can be in analytic regression — ­a first word, a word both eschatological (last) and archaeological, an-­archic or pre-­archic, a first word, the second linkage, echoing or resounding there, would be, in another language, with the German ja, but especially the repeated ja, “Ja Ja,” that Nietz­ sche, in his Zarathustra, hears between two registers, so to speak. On the one hand it is that of the Christian ass that says, that doesn’t say but brays (“Ja Ja,” “Hee-­yaw”) in assuming its humiliation and burden of responsibility, braying “yes, I accept it, I take it on myself, I don’t exonerate myself,” as it is burdened or lets itself be burdened with the onerous weight of all faults, as it expiates its own faults, but especially the heaviest faults and responsibilities of others, as does Christ who expiates for others (and that is the Christian substitution that we studied last year in reading Massignon),32 to which Nietzsche opposes on the other hand the “Ja Ja,” “yes, yes” of carefree, winged innocence, and of dancing affirmation, delivered from Christianity and its burden of guilt.33 One day we’ll come back to all of that, when we’re

31. Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 164/209. 32. See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Hostilité/hospitalité,” EHESS, 1996–­ 97, fourth session (English translation: “Hostipitality. Session of January 8, 1997,” trans. Gil Anidjar, in Derrida: Acts of Religion [New York: Routledge, 2002], 356–­420), and eighth session. See also Louis Massignon, Parole donnée, précédé d’entretiens avec Vincent-­Mansour Monteil (Paris: Seuil, 1983); and Jacques Kervell, ed., L’Hospitalité sacrée (Paris: Nouvelle Cité, 1987). 33. See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 252–­55 [Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra, 335–­38].

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rereading Nietzsche, we’ll indeed have to, especially The Genealogy of Morality (in particular the second essay, on promise and grace).34 (C) Finally, third possible linkage, still within brackets, the impossible translation of “il y a” (an untranslatable French idiom, especially with this reference to place, its y, which, as I see it, would not be without some relation to the khōra in the Timaeus as I interpret it), the impossible translation of the French idiom il y a — ­not so much by the English “there is,” but rather by “es gibt,” and through this reference to the gift that Heidegger, as you know, has profoundly explored, meditated on, and interpreted. On the basis of the given of the gift [la donnée du don] of es gibt, there is movement to surrender to forgiveness, to its economy or aneconomy, to its rupture or nonrupture from economy and calculus such as concern us here. Is the il y a that Blanchot and Levinas speak of retranslatable as es gibt, as anonymous and impersonal given of being and of time? My response would be yes and no, but I don’t have the time to develop that or justify it for the moment. I close my brackets around the linkages of there is as last word.]35 So we were saying that il y a — ­unpronounceable either as a cry or as a howl — ­is pronounced like a word coming at the end, that is, a judgment, a sentence, a verdict. For what unites man and beast here is the fact that all these living beings belong to justice and are sorts of judges. This is the Last Judgment of the last word, the act of justice that is both too human and too bestial, too much alive. If you had to read and reread Blanchot’s “Last Word” word for word, as I think that you ought, and if — ­although it is impossible for me to do that here with you for lack of time — ­I were to allow myself to indicate to you a certain scansion of it from the point of view of what is preoccupying us here at the moment, then I would privilege the passages where, in the context of a watchword [mot d’ordre], this is said: “ ‘Since the watchword was done away with,’ I said, ‘reading is free. If you think I talk without knowing what I’m saying, you are within your rights. I’m only one voice among many’ ” (p. 122);36 or again, the moment when the same “I” proposes “cross[ing] out all these words and replac[ing] them with the word not”;37 or again, that extraordinary moment when the judge, before a girl’s “veiled nakedness” about which he says that it “wasn’t the sort of nakedness that called for the axe,” speaks of “join[ing] together with the guilty person” (does forgiveness, we might wonder, consist or not in joining 34. See Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality, 38–­71 [Généalogie de la morale, 73–­140]. 35. End of bracket opened on 233. 36. Blanchot, “Last Word,” 43 [Dernier mot, 122]. 37. Blanchot, “Last Word,” 44/124.

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together with the guilty one? Does it command or exclude uniting with the guilty one? Identification? Substitution?), the judge says, then, “ ‘Even at the point of death,’ I said, ‘a judge can’t join together with a guilty person without some minimal ceremony.’ ‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘but the evening is so dark’ ” (p. 131);38 and especially, following scenes that belong to the same configuration as The Madness of the Day39 and The Instant of My Death,40 here to finish is a page that I would like to read: (Read and comment on “The Last Word,” pp. 138–­40.) Death, I thought. But then, something terrible happened. At the core of my sightless eyes the sky opened up, and it saw everything, and the vestige of the smoke and tears that had obscured them rose up to infinity, where it dissipated in light and glory. I began to stammer. “What do you mean,” the girl shouted. She slapped me in the face. “Why do you have to speak?” I woke up completely. “I must explain things clearly to you,” I said. “Up to the last moment, I’m going to be tempted to add one word to what has been said. But why would one word be the last? The last word is no longer a word, and yet it is not the beginning of anything else. I ask you to remember this, so you’ll understand what you are seeing: the last word cannot be a word, nor the absence of words, nor anything else but a word. If I break apart because I stammer, I’ll have to pay for it in sleep, I’ll wake up and everything will begin again.” “Why so many precautions?” “You know very well — ­there’s no more watchword. I have to take on everything myself.” “Farewell, then,” and she held out her hand to me, then withdrew to the back of the room.41

38. Blanchot, “Last Word,” 46/131, trans. modified. 39. See Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day, trans. Lydia Davis (Station Hill Press, 1995) [La folie du jour (Paris: Gallimard, 2002)]; first published in French with the title “Un récit? [A narrative?]” (Empédocle 2 [1949]: 13–­22). See Derrida, “Living On,” “Title to Be Specified,” trans. Tom Conley, and “The Law of Genre,” trans. Avital Ronell, in Parages [“Survivre,” “Titre à préciser,” and “La loi du genre” in Parages]. 40. See Blanchot, The Instant of My Death, in Blanchot/Derrida, The Instant of My Death / Demeure, 1–­11. During the session, Derrida notes that he has spoken of this text at length in his seminar (see Demeure, and unpublished seminar, “Le témoignage,” EHESS, 1994–­9 5, first and second sessions). 41. Blanchot, “Last Word,” 48 [Dernier mot, 138–­40]. On the photocopy of these quoted pages included with the typescript, Derrida notes in the margin: “primal scene.”

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Let’s not forget that “The Last Word” finishes on the end of the word, as at the death of Mme de Vercellis (“These were the last words she pronounced”), as the end of this book of the Confessions (“May I be permitted never to speak of it again”).42 Ultimate, extreme end, eschatological conclusion of Blanchot’s “Last Word”: “But he reassured her with his calmness, and when the tower collapsed and threw them outside, all three of them fell without saying a word.”43

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Without a word. Not a word. Without saying a word: is this “without saying a word,” this “not a word,” a moment of forgiveness, that moment of forgiveness that I’ve often suggested needed to elude language even though it necessarily passes through language? In order to follow up on that question we are now going to proceed, by which I mean continue to set out in the direction of the second pause that was announced, toward a passage from Jankélévitch on “The Unforgivable” (title of a chapter in Forgiveness, p. 203: “The Unforgivable: More Unfortunate Than Wicked, More Wicked Than Unfortunate”), a passage that also turns, so to speak, around the “last word.” I say “turns around,” because it is a matter of what comes before and after the last word, the penultimate word and the postultimate word whose status is therefore difficult to grasp. Apropos of what he names a “hyperbolic Unforgivable,” an absolute sacrilege and limitless radical evil (hence, I would say, a limitless and properly infernal perjury), Jankélévitch sees a figure of Hell itself. He has just named a “hyperbolic Unforgivable” (p. 210) and he adds (I’ll quote while commenting): “If in becoming petrified this unforgivable were to remain ultimate and definitive [comment],44 then it would be nothing other than Hell [Jankélévitch doesn’t say for whom . . .]: the Hell of despair. Is not the idea of an irremediable evil and one that would have the last word literally an ‘impossible supposition’?” (Forgiveness, 162/210–­11) After that Jankélévitch twice says “fortunately”: “Fortunately, nothing ever has the last word! Fortunately, the last word is always the penultimate word . . .” 42. See 212ff., 229–30 above. 43. Blanchot, “Last Word,” 50 [Dernier mot, 146]. 44. During the session, Derrida adds: “In other words, let’s suppose that there is an unforgivable and that that unforgivable remains, abides, hence that it is repeated, at the same time the ultimate, thus last word, I won’t go back over that, and a last word that remains, remains in the unforgivable, without recourse, without hope.”

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This double “fortunately” signs Jankélévitch’s optimism; for that matter it seems to me to contradict what he replied to the young German who invited him to come to Germany. (I’ll open a parenthesis here: recall what Jankélévitch said to the young German . . . :45 moreover, the last word, forgiveness as the last word, can have two contradictory effects as regards history. On the one hand, as forgiveness and as last word, it interrupts or accomplishes history, as an end of history or an absolutely revolutionary caesura in the ordinary course and sequence of history; it is also for Hegel, as the end of the history of spirit, the advent of absolute spirit, at the entry into religion and absolute knowing that, in The Phenomenology of Spirit, forgiveness, remission, and reconciliation are produced, what Hegel also calls — ­we’ll come back to this one day46 — ­“das versöhnende Ja,” the “reconciling yes.”47 Those are the last words of the great chapter on spirit, the last word of “absolute spirit,” the moment in the becoming of spirit as judge, as “judging consciousness (beurteilende Bewußtsein),”48 the moment when, after confession, “the wounds of the Spirit heal, and leave no scars behind (Die Wunden des Geistes heilen, ohne daß Narben bleiben).”49 On the other hand, forgiveness as the last word is only the next-­to-­last word because, thanks to reconciliation, it allows history to begin again or continue (remember, that is indeed what Jankélévitch was saying).50 Given that, absolute forgiveness 45. See First Session, 28–­2 9 above. [Translator’s note:] Ellipsis in typescript. 46. See Derrida, Le parjure et le pardon, vol. 2, First Session. 47. G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, in Werke, vol. 3, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 494 [Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Terry Pinkard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 389; Phénoménologie de l’esprit, vol. 2, 200 (§671)]: the Hyppolite translation has le Oui de la réconciliation. 48. Hegel, Phänomenologie, 489 [Phenomenology, 385; Phénoménologie, 195 (§666)]. 49. Hegel, Phänomenologie, 492 [Phenomenology, 387; Phénoménologie, 197 (§669)]. During the session, Derrida adds: “That’s it, the reconciliation at the end of the becoming of spirit. The forgiveness that allows the wounds to heal without there remaining even a trace of harm, without scarring, that’s it, ‘absolute spirit,’ at the end of this process. So forgiveness is indeed a certain end of history at that moment, either as interruption, revolutionary caesura, or as the fulfillment of spirit reconciled with itself.” 50. See 28–­2 9 above. During the session, Derrida adds: “History can continue only where there is pardon, otherwise it stops. If, following slavery, whose abolition we are celebrating today, the slave trade, which was a kind of horrifying genocide, or after the Shoah, and we could add to those examples, if no process of reconciliation had begun, history would have stopped. So pardon, or reconciliation, as last word, is also the penultimate word because it is what allows history to continue. So, on one side, pardon stops, and, on the other side, it allows to continue, to start up again.” Derrida is referring to

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puts an end to history as much as does absolute nonforgiveness. I close this parenthesis.) Rather than continue the reading of this page, where you will find Jankélévitch’s choice among three possibilities that he formalizes with the greatest rigor: (1) the equivocation of the wicked-­miserable; (2) forgiveness for executioners that risks forever extending their reign; (3) thirdly, “in order that the future be saved and that essential values survive . . . to prefer violence and force without love over a love without force” (Forgiveness, 163/211), to prefer nonforgiveness, then, to preserve the future. “Such was, as we know, the heroic choice of the Resistance” (Forgiveness, 163/211) (and it was also the choice of Jankélévitch); so, rather than continue the reading of this page, I wanted to approach his text from a different point of view, in another place, at the beginning of the same chapter. So I’ll start out from the fact that, in Blanchot’s “Last Word,” the narrator is a judge, the judge, a “judging consciousness” Hegel would say, and we’ll come back toward this question of judgment and justice. We’ll often have to stand on the edge of this vertigo: is forgiveness a judgment? And is it just? In the grand tradition of Abrahamic forgiveness, of so-­called infinite forgiveness, forgiveness is just; but it is also a mercy that is more than just, more elevated than justice (it sublates justice, “mercy seasons justice”), a mercy that is therefore beyond justice, from a beyond next to which justice appears both too human and animal. Forgiveness (and we have seen other aspects of it in the matter of grace and the right to pardon interpreted by Kant) is both just and above justice. Just and nonjust, more than just, even unjust. One can say as much of judgment, and the same ambiguity spreads into all the concepts that, so to speak, touch on the question of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not, it must especially not be, a judgment (when I forgive, I don’t judge, I abstain from judging or raise myself above judgment): the pardoner is not a judge, neither a judge in the sense of one who pronounces a judgment based on knowledge, an ontic judgment of the type S is P, nor a judge who declares a verdict, a judicial sentence. And yet forgiveness cannot remain totally foreign to judgment in both those senses: in forgiving one must know who has done what, and what is being forgiven whom; on the other hand, even if forgiveness rises above penal judgment or evaluation, it must be pronounced as a final word concerning a wrong, as a moral judgment that remains lodged in the heart of forgiveness even if forgiveness does not consist in such a judgment. That is why pardon at least the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in France and its colonies, decreed on April 27, 1848 by the provisional government of the Second Republic.

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resembles the judgment of a judge, even if it doesn’t sentence, acquit, or sanction; even in saying “no harm done,” it implies “there has been,” there could have been,” “there will have been harm.” A comparable ambiguity affects the “understanding” of syngnōmē, or of synkhōrēsis, of synkhōrēma: those are both acts of cognitive judgment (“I understand you” in the sense that “I understand what happened on your side, I understand what you think, I know you, I know as you do, I know how you are and how that happened,” etc.) and acts of practical or psychological agreement, consent, acquiescence, comprehension, “yeses” of sympathy, compassion, or even of commiseration: “yes, I understand you, that’s why I excuse you or pardon you.” But forgiveness itself can either be justified by such a comprehension (I understand you and therefore I forgive you), or not even have to be justified, placing itself essentially beyond that comprehension (where I don’t understand, where I don’t even want to have to understand or judge you, I forgive you, etc.). In that extraordinary set of possible permutations, which we’ll never have done with, forgiveness always comes in the place of the last word, it belongs to the time of the final word, the word of ultimate decision that one will return to no more (“May I be permitted never to speak of it again,” says Jean-­Jacques after having as it were explained, excused, or forgiven himself for the worst thing in his life). That is why one will always be able to suspect the signatory of this last word that forgiveness constitutes of wanting also, by the same action, to guarantee that they are able to have the last word, to remain sovereign inasmuch as the sovereign has the last word, the ending word, the one that sums up, recapitulates, and gives the final sense to what has just occurred — ­being also able to abide as the bottom-­line word [le fin mot] of history and of the process that thus reaches closure, the bottom-­line word, that is to say the key, the meaning of history, the ultimate teaching, the lesson to be held on to, the absolute truth — ­and here the absolved truth — ­of history. One can always turn against one who forgives, accuse them in turn of seeking, by forgiving, to conclude sovereignly, to have the end word, the last word, without response or retort, history’s bottom line, and to confirm thus their absolute power, or even their absolute knowing from a vantage point of indifference or inaccessible impassivity. “I forgive you” has the structure of the last word. As does “no harm done” also. “No harm done,” or the “but no,” “but no, no harm done” that is always implied, clearly marks two things: on the one hand, it is a response — ­it cannot be otherwise, it can only be a response, the response to that to which one always responds: either a request or a question. On the other hand, that response has a negative or denying [dénégative] form whose grammar

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is strongly marked (“no harm done,” often surcharged with a non, “but no, no harm done [mais non, y a pas d’mal]”), and the analysis of that negation, of that subtle negative modality, is the very task of this seminar. So let’s not hasten to conclude or simplify when it comes to negativity, to this negation or denial that disowns, disavows, or disclaims. For this negativity, in whatever form it be announced, complicated, or dissimulated, is indeed what is working, what is at work as much in excuse as in forgiveness. This negativity is what, in one way or another, removes the fault or pertains to the fault (“no harm done,” “but no, no harm has been done,” “no wrong has been done”), and, canceling or washing away or erasing the fault, sublating or recovering from the fault, operating the remission of the sin, this obscure negation is to all appearances the logic and very grammar of excuse or of forgiveness. Can one imagine forgiveness or an excuse that consists in saying yes, “ja,” and not no? Can one emancipate excuse and forgiveness from negativity? Is that negativity (negation, disavowal, or denial) purely formal, as the exterior and phenomenal manifestation of what would be in essence affirmative, like the gift, for example? If forgiveness is a gift, must it not elude — ­in its basis, at the heart of its mercy — ­this negativity that nevertheless provides it with its language? Must it not deny that negation by removing even the dialectical economy of this sublation and of this negation of negation? Leaving these questions on the horizon, I’ll first of all pull back toward a remark or a hypothesis: the negativity of “there is no harm done” can also mean and be translated as “there is no harm that is not excusable or forgivable” (for the moment I am treating these two notions as a couple): so there is nothing inexcusable or unforgivable here. “[T]here is no unforgivable [il n’y a pas d’impardonnable]” is a quotation (Forgiveness, 156/203). Where will it lead us? Toward that other page from Jankélévitch that I announced just now. Within the time that I defined, two sessions ago, as a second pause,51 I proposed, then, as you’ll perhaps remember, to parse differently the figure of the chiasmus between, on one hand, the so-­called Abrahamic culture of infinite forgiveness (with all its internal divisions, of course, between Judaism and Christianity, between Catholicism and Calvinism; later, we’ll have to come, at least schematically, to Lutherism and to Islam), and, on the other hand, so-­called Greek culture with its supposed finitude of a syngnōmē strictly tied to knowledge. Although I did try last week to show to what extent Greek syngnōmē could diverge deliriously [délirer] and exceed itself 51. See 182, 227ff. above.

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infinitely, today, before coming back to Rousseau, I would like to bend in the inverse direction, mark the inverse fold of the Chi,52 fold the chiasmus the other way, in a direction according to which the supposed infinity of Abrahamic forgiveness still and always risks submitting its absolute to an economy, to an infinitesimal calculus, to a finitist calculus so to speak, one that tries to integrate the infinite in the finite of an exchange, a circulation, or a reappropriation. I could conduct that operation logically, formally, and without relying on a text, but, as always — ­because it is more enriching and out of respect for those who have been writing for millennia on this subject, and precisely to the extent that what they have thought, suffered, written, bequeathed keeps us in suspense, that is to say, in the race among inheritors who are fulfilled but fretful, unsatisfied — ­as always, then, for all those reasons, I prefer to read, that is to say to recognize the debt and heritage precisely where my interpretation of that heritage consists always in betraying it in order to be more faithful to it than should be necessary, that is, as though it were my law or destiny to perjure myself in the name of faith. To perjure oneself in the name of faith, is that more forgivable or more unforgivable? Is it the worst or the most innocent of blasphemies? Is it the least or the greatest perversity? Does one ever have the choice? “[T]here is no unforgivable” is, I was saying, a quotation. Where will it lead us? It will lead us to a fold, the moment of a fold or internal objection, a concession, that of a “but” or an “and yet.” This “and yet” is the logical and rhetorical instance of an argumentation through which Jankélévitch, after unfolding the law of infinite, hyperbolic forgiveness, of unconditional forgiveness, of a forgiveness that does not know the unforgivable, as it were — ­because everything is supposedly forgivable, even the worst, and first of all the worst of radical evil — ­is however (“and yet”) going to set a condition for this unconditional and as a result bend the unconditional and the aneconomy of a gift to the economy of a condition, circulation, commerce and exchange. Yes to unconditional forgiveness, he’ll tell us, but on condition that the guilty one repents, avows, and asks for forgiveness — ­and so enters into the process of identification, expiation, redemption, which always could, it seems to me, not be required by infinite or unconditional or

52. In the typescript Derrida underlines “inverse fold of the chi” and writes in the margin: “(Board ϰ).” During the session, he traces the Greek letter on the board and adds: “you know that the chi is written like that. In the Timaeus Plato says that the chiasmus is folded the other way” (cf. Timaeus 36b–­c, in Plato, Collected Dialogues, 1166).

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hyperbolic forgiveness, which is, according to me, the sole absolute dimension of forgiveness as such. The page that I am going to read and comment on now will be found again a little later, with the same argument, in the passages from L’Imprescriptible that we read at the beginning of the seminar.53 But I prefer to read it here, because its formulations are stronger and because they respond better to the chiasmus that we are analyzing. (Read and comment on Jankélévitch, p. 203, A, A’.)

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In one sense, forgiveness extends to infinity. Forgiveness does not ask if the crime is worthy of being forgiven, if the atonement has been sufficient, or if the rancor has continued long enough . . . Which amounts to saying: there is an inexcusable, but there is no unforgivable. Forgiveness is there to forgive precisely what no excuse would know how to excuse: for there is no misdeed that is so grave that we cannot in the last recourse forgive it. Nothing is impossible for all-­powerful remission! Forgiveness can in this sense do everything. Where sin flows, Saint Paul says, forgiveness overflows. In spirit, if not in letter, all offenses are “venial,” even the inexpiable ones. The more mortal they are, the more venial they are! For if there are crimes that are so awful that the criminal who commits them cannot atone for them, then the possibility of forgiving them still remains, forgiveness being made precisely for such hopeless or incurable cases. And as for misdeeds that we readily call “venial” in the current sense of the word, they do not have need of our forgiveness, forgiveness not being made for these insignificant matters; indulgence suffices. Forgiveness forgives everyone for everything for all times; it protests madly against the evidence of the crime, not by denying this evidence, not even with the hope of redeeming the criminal after the fact, nor out of defiance or out of a taste for scandal, but rather by opposing the paradox of its own infinite freedom and gratuitous love to the abominable crime [ forfait]. And since the crime is inexcusable and unforgettable, at least let the victims forgive it; this is all that they can do for it. — ­Forgiveness does not know impossibility; and yet we still have not mentioned the first condition without which forgiveness would be devoid of sense. This elementary condition is the distress, the insomnia, and the dereliction of the wrongdoer; and although it is not up to the person who forgives to require this condition, this condition is nevertheless that without which the entire problematic of forgiveness becomes a simple buffoonery. To each person belongs a task: to the criminal belongs desperate remorse, and to the victim belongs forgiveness: but the victim will not repent in the place of the guilty person. It is necessary that the guilty person 53. See First Session, 31ff.; and Jankélévitch, “Should We Pardon Them?” 558, 567 [L’Imprescriptible, 24, 29].

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work toward this himself; it is necessary that the criminal redeem himself all alone. As for our forgiveness, this is not his concern; it is the concern of the offended. The criminal’s repentance and in particular his remorse, by themselves alone, give meaning to forgiveness, just as despair alone gives meaning to grace. What good is grace if the “desperate person” has a good conscience and a good mien? Forgiveness is not aimed at contented people with clear consciences, or at unrepentant guilty people, who sleep easy and eat well. When the guilty person is fat, well nourished, prosperous, and takes advantage of the economic miracle, then forgiveness is a sinister joke. No, forgiveness is not made for that; forgiveness is not made for swine and their sows. Before there can even be a question of forgiveness, it is first necessary that the guilty person, instead of protesting, recognize himself as guilty without pleas or mitigating circumstances, and especially without accusing his own victims; that’s the least one can expect! In order for us to forgive, it is first necessary that one comes to us to ask for forgiveness, is it not? Has one ever asked us for forgiveness? No, the criminals do not ask us for anything, and what’s more, they have nothing for which to reproach themselves. The criminals have nothing to say; this matter does not concern them. . . . Expiation, it is true, also removes the raison d’être for forgiveness: expiation, but not repentance! (Forgiveness, 156–­58/203–­5)54

End of the second pause. Why have I insisted so much, in this last session and, a week ago, in the next-­ to-­last session, on the last and next-­to-­last word, and on this strange difference between the last word and the next-­to-­last? Yes, a strange difference, for it is as much a difference that separates consecutively, sequentially, the last word from the next-­to-­last word, as it is an internal difference separating — ­without consecution, without successivity, without sequence or consequence — ­the last word from itself in order to make of it both a last and a next-­to-­last word. I insisted55 on that, on that double difference, then, between the last and next-­to-­last word for many reasons first of all, reasons that I hope have been speaking for themselves. But I did it also in order to introduce a patient, perhaps interminable rereading, based on all those premises, of the story of Marion’s ribbon to which I have made several allusions. It is therefore the highly charged story of an avowal and a procedure of excuse, an “I am sorry [ je m’excuse]” in the both incorrect and fatal sense that we have already spoken of, Rousseau’s or Jean-­Jacques’s je m’excuse, a complex self-­excusing 54. [Translator’s note:] Translation modified, first ellipsis Jankélévitch’s. 55. A revised version of this part of the session was included as part of the lecture “Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2),” in Material Events: Paul de Man and the Afterlife of Theory, 277–­360; and in Without Alibi, 71–­160 [Papier Machine, 33–­147].

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procedure concerning a lie (on that basis it indeed pertains to the problematic of this seminar), concerning the overloaded history of a lie — ­I indeed say “overloaded” — ­weighed down with a heavy burden because it doesn’t concern only a theft (which is already, like every failure of presumed duty and of the implicit promise or implicit commitment that relates to it, perjury in the broad sense); it also concerns a lie, the lie of a witness (when Rousseau, being questioned, accuses Marion) and the lie of a witness is perjury in the strict, narrow sense this time. Rousseau admits having committed perjury [ parjure] and thus having been, as one can say in French, himself a perjurer [ parjure] at the very moment when, as we shall see, he excuses himself. It is an overloaded history also — ­and here things become more obscure and problematic — ­the capitalized history of a lie that multiplies and augments itself perhaps infinitely because another perjury is perhaps added to the previous two, in a nonfinite series of others, another perjury that proliferates, is more subtle, more fundamental also, namely (but that remains to be demonstrated) a continuous lie within the very avowal that Rousseau makes, for the first and the second time, in the Confessions and in the Reveries. It is at that point that I would like to read together, in order to put them to the test one against the other, Rousseau’s text and the reading Paul de Man devotes to it, in particular — ­I gave the reference to it — ­in the chapter of Allegories of Reading entitled “Excuses (Confessions).” For — ­I am getting there — ­if I have insisted so much on the double (internal and external) difference between the last and next-­to-­last word, it is, among other reasons, because one of the sinews of de Man’s subtle, complex, very elaborate demonstration passes (this sinew passes) between the last word of the Confessions (“May I be permitted never to speak of it again”) and the postultimate word of the Reveries, which, going back on the same avowal, changes everything according to de Man, and so transforms the last word of the Confessions into a next-­to-­last word. To take in this respect just one initial point of reference, let me situate it at this already advanced moment in de Man’s demonstration, where, after analyzing numerous possibilities that we’ll go back over (in fact two broad series of possibilities), de Man explains that it is following a certain failure of confession in the Confessions (begun, I recall, in 1764–­65, the second part completed in 1767 at the latest, and the whole thing in 1770) that Rousseau will be compelled to write the “Fourth Reverie”56 (in 1777, then, at least ten years later). For 56. In the typescript Derrida writes “Fourth Reverie” instead of “Fourth Promenade” here and below, using the title modified by de Man in the passage from Allegories of Reading that he quotes.

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de Man, it is the failure of the last word of the Confessions (“May I be permitted never to speak of it again”), the failure of this last word to be a last word, the failure to conclude in an other than illusory way, that would have compulsively motivated the writing of the “Fourth Reverie” and the return — ­let’s not say the repentance — ­the rewriting of the avowal and of the excuse. Here, for reference, the paragraph from de Man that gathers things together in this point: (Read and comment on English p. 286 D, French p. 342. D.) The structure of desire as exposure rather than as possession explains why shame functions indeed, as it does in this text, as the most effective excuse, much more effectively than greed, or lust, or love. Promise is proleptic, but excuse is belated and always occurs after the crime; since the crime is exposure, the excuse consists in recapitulating the exposure in the guise of concealment. The excuse is a ruse which permits exposure in the name of hiding, not unlike [how] Being, in the later Heidegger, reveals itself by hiding. Or, put differently, shame used as excuse permits repression to function as revelation and thus to make pleasure and guilt interchangeable. Guilt is forgiven because it allows for the pleasure of revealing its repression. It follows that repression is in fact an excuse, one speech act among others. But the text offers further possibilities. The analysis of shame as excuse makes evident the strong link between the performance of excuses and the act of understanding. It has led to the problematics of hiding and revealing, which are clearly problematics of cognition. Excuse occurs within an epistemological twilight zone between knowing and not-­knowing; this is also why it has to be centered on the crime of lying and why Rousseau can excuse himself for everything provided he can be excused for lying. When this turns out not to have been the case, when his claim to have lived for the sake of truth (vitam impendere vero) is being contested from the outside, the closure of excuse (“qu’il me soit permis de n’en reparler jamais”) becomes a delusion and the Fourth Reverie has to be written. The passage also stakes out the limits of how this understanding of understanding then is to be understood. (Allegories, 286/342)57

This relentless passage that bears and transports and deports beyond the last word of excuse, from the Confessions to the Reveries, for example, is explained, according to a de Manian argumentation that we shall study next time, by what has indeed to be called, and that de Man himself calls a logic of supplementarity between excuse and guilt, whereby excuses, far from erasing guilt, far from leading to “faultlessness” or “defaultlessness,” engender and 57. [Translator’s note:] De Man’s translations from Rousseau are his own.

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enlarge the fault. “No more fault” (innocence) immediately becomes “more fault” (bottomless guilt). The more one excuses oneself, the more one declares oneself and feels guilty. For excusing oneself. In excusing oneself. The more one excuses oneself, the less one exonerates oneself. Guilt is indelible [ineffaçable] (I underscore this word, which will also be de Man’s)58 because the excuse that is written (and I insist on this word also, on this reference to the work as event of a written text) produces it, generates and capitalizes on it, archives it instead of erasing it. I underscore “erase [effacer],” which is de Man’s word, and indelible guilt, then, for two reasons of unequal importance. But before giving those two reasons, I’ll quote the most cohering passage in this regard (we’ll reconstitute the context next time). De Man writes (French translation pp. 356, 357, English p. 299):

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Excuses generate the very guilt they exonerate [effacent, my emphasis (JD)], though always in excess or by default. At the end of the Rêverie there is a lot more guilt around than we had at the start: Rousseau’s indulgence [lorsque Rousseau s’adonne: I underline s’adonne, “gives himself,” “dedicates himself to”] in what he calls, in another bodily metaphor, “le plaisir d’écrire” (1, p. 1038 [Reveries, 39–­40] [it’s the end of the “Fourth Promenade,” we’ll come to that]), leaves him guiltier than ever. . . . Additional guilt means additional excuse. . . . No excuse can ever hope to catch up with such a proliferation of guilt. On the other hand, any guilt, including the guilty pleasure of writing the Fourth Rêverie, can always be dismissed as the gratuitous product of a textual grammar or a radical fiction: there can never be enough guilt around to match the text-­machine’s infinite power to excuse. (Allegories, 299/356–­57)

(A word on this expression “text-­machine” in a moment.) I said that it was for two unequal reasons that I was underlining the verb effacer and the figure of an indelible culpability that excuse aggravated rather than erase it. The first reason is objective, the other is as it were, for me, auto-­biographical. The objective reason is that de Man wanted to show (we shall see how) that from the Confessions to the Reveries the guilt (about the same event, of course, the theft of the ribbon) is displaced from the written thing to the writing of the thing, from the referent of narrative writing to the act of writing the narrative, from the written avowal to the writing of the avowal. It is no longer the theft and lie themselves, like the thing itself, the fault itself, the perjury itself that become culpable, but the writing or the narrative of the thing, the pleasure taken in writing: the fault 58. [Translator’s note:] Here and below Derrida refers to the French translation of de Man’s book, Allégories de la lecture, trans. Thomas Trezise (Paris: Galilée, 1989).

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attached to that pleasure cannot be erased, because it is reprinted and rewritten in avowing itself, and so grows worse and capitalizes on itself, becomes large with itself [s’engrosse d’elle-­même] in avowing itself. De Man says, for example (p. 346, English p. 290): The question takes us to the Fourth Reverie and its implicit shift from reported guilt to the guilt of reporting, since here the lie is no longer connected with some former misdeed but specifically with the act of writing the Confessions and, by extension, with all writing. (290/346)

Farther along he will say that not only does the excuse accuse, but it also passes sentence: “Excuses not only accuse but they carry out the verdict implicit in their accusation” (293/350). I think that the weight of this sentence has to bear on “carry out,” on this execution of the verdict, this performance of judgment and of its application, its “enforcement.” There isn’t only accusation and judgment in the avowal or in the very excuse, there is also the executioner, there is the realization of the punishment — ­but here in pleasure itself, in the ambiguous pleasure, the terrible and severe pleasure of writing. Given that, structurally indelible guilt does not depend on this or that fault, but on avowal itself, on writing, that is to say, on the public implementation [mise en oeuvre] of the avowal, of self-­justification, self-­exculpation, and on the shameful pleasure that the body takes in it. Guilt is indelible; it relates to the body of the very writing of the avowal, to what is dedicated to avowing the fault in writing, and so contradicts and denies the avowal in the very heart of avowal. The second (minor and autobiographical) reason for my underlining the vocabulary and figure of the indelible in de Man’s text, is that the dedication that he inscribed for me — ­if I might be so bold as to quote it — ­in Allegories of Reading in November 1979, is this: “For Jacques, in indelible [ineffaçable] friendship, Paul,” and that dedication, written in ink, was followed, in pencil, by the words “letter following.” Letter following. When one knows, at least a little, what did follow, the posthumous sequel (de Man died four years later, in 1983) of a story whereby some thought they could reproach de Man for lying and for not avowing what he should have avowed concerning what he had, precisely, written one day, during the war, one is left with one’s reveries, set meandering, sent packing, walking, and analyzing, which is what we have in train, directly or not.59 In any case de Man knew — ­and 59. See Derrida, “Like the Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paul de Man’s War,” trans. Peggy Kamuf, in Memoires for Paul de Man, rev. ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 155–­2 63 [“Comme le bruit de la mer au fond d’un coquillage . . .

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that was the object of this text — ­that avowal, the act of avowing is in a certain way always culpable, both more and less, and more or less culpable than the fault that it avows avowing. In a word, avowal is never innocent. That is the machine. So, a word to conclude, as promised, around the expression “text-­machine.” De Man’s whole demonstration plays out around the concept of the machinal, of the writing-­or rather text-­machine (the work of writing-­machine), the concept of a textual machine that is at the same time produced by de Man — ­we’ll analyze it as such — ­and finds in Rousseau’s text (for example in the “Fourth Reverie” [p. 1034]) its vocabulary and figure (for example, Rousseau speaks there of a “mechanical effect [effet machinal],”60 but in his work there are also other examples of machines that are both prosthetic and mutilating, as we shall see). Of course, all that has to be put into a logical network with all of de Man’s work, with the style and axioms of what he calls, in this article and elsewhere, with much insistence, a “deconstruction,” and which regularly implies reference to a certain “machinality,” to a certain automaticity of the body [corps] and of the corpus-­automaton. De Man’s allusion, in this same essay, to Kleist’s marionettes (about which I also spoke several weeks ago), has to be put into relation with his other references to Kleist (for example in “Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant,” in Aesthetic Ideology [1996]).61 In “Excuses (Confessions),” (p. 351, English p. 294), one reads: By saying that the excuse is not only a fiction but also a machine one adds to the connotation of referential detachment, of gratuitous improvisation, that of the implacable repetition of a preordained pattern. Like Kleist’s marionettes, the machine is both “anti-­grav,” the anamorphosis of a form detached from meaning [a little like the anonymous and insignificant neutral there is that we spoke of to begin] and capable of taking on any structure whatever, yet entirely ruthless [cruelle, my emphasis (JD)] in its inability to modify its own structural design for nonstructural reasons. The machine is like [ressemble à, my emphasis (JD)] the grammar of the text . . . [etc.] (294/351)

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Why “is like” and why “cruel?” Why does he say “cruel”? Why would a machine be cruel? And a text-­machine? There you have one of the questions La guerre de Paul de Man,” in Mémoires — ­Pour Paul de Man (Paris: Galilée, 1988), 147–­232]. 60. Rousseau, Reveries, 36/1034. 61. Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, ed. Andrzej Warminski (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).

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that await us — ­still around “poor Marion’s” ribbon and the indelible guilt that de Man speaks of — ­once we come to ask ourselves about the relations among this “cruel” machine, what it is like, and what de Man names, at the end of the day, the “textual event.” As a last word for today, how can one think together the machine and the event, a machinal repetition and what occurs?

ninth session

March 11, 1998

(Rather long session: allow people to leave, if necessary, without disturbing . . .) We are once again going to set sail toward an improbable last word: language itself. What is coming to pass [Qu’est-­ce qui se passe]?1 But what, then, is coming to pass? To come to pass [se passer] is to come about [arriver], as one says, and they call that an event. What comes about when, asking for forgiveness or for excuse, excusing oneself or not, presenting oneself or presenting one’s excuses, one avows, declares, owns up (for it is not enough to avow in order to avow — ­that will be our whole problem, one can always say that one is avowing without avowing, one can even believe one is avowing while doing something else)?2 So, what is coming to pass? What event is one talking about when there is some declared avowing? As you can see, I am insisting on the event [événement], on what comes about, without really knowing what event means, in this case, nor where and when to look to find out. I am satisfied, and I suppose that we must be satisfied, to begin, to begin again, to say together, to agree to say together, in an ordinary, very ordinary language, that there is no forgiveness — ­if there is such a thing — ­nor is there excuse or perjury without something coming to pass, without something coming about, and especially without its 1. [Translator’s note:] The more usual translation of qu’est-­ce qui se passe, as of qu’est-­ ce qui arrive, would be “what is happening?” I use the somewhat archaic “come to pass” and “come about” in these opening paragraphs to render Derrida’s emphasis on “passing,” “arriving,” “coming,” and “the present” in relation to the “event” (derived from L. venire, “to come”). 2. [Translator’s note:] On Derrida’s somewhat selective use of the verb avouer (“admit to,” “own up to,” “confess”) and the corresponding noun aveu, see 130n36 above.

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having come about. Irreversibly. If I forgive or excuse and nothing happens — ­nothing comes about — ­to me or to the other, if something doesn’t come [arriver] to the one to whom it has to come, well, you will agree, there is neither forgiveness nor excuse. Nothing is done. (Let’s never forget, I’ll say it straightaway in parentheses so as not to forget it, as we stand on the threshold of rereading a certain story of stolen ribbon, that although Rousseau excused himself after owning up to it, or at the same time as he owned up to it — ­this question of the two times awaits us and we’ll come back to it in a moment — ­he did so neither in front of Marion nor in front of those in whose company he said that he lived through all that and committed the failing.) I used the words se passer, arriver, événement as fundamental words understood by all, but there is no certain or assured univocity and conceptual clarity in these words from ordinary language, words that are caught in a so-­called natural language. Don’t forget that all our questioning regarding pardon, perjury, and excuse would on no account be able to smooth over [ faire l’économie de] what is called ordinary language, not only natural language (with all its moments of idiomatic usage unable to be translated without some remainder, on which we have already insisted so much) but also, inside natural language (French, some decorum of French, English, German, Arabic, etc.), this or that usage from everyday life (“sorry [ pardon],” “excuse me,” “no harm done,” etc.); these are ordinary uses of natural language and neither natural language nor ordinary language can be formalized without some remainder when it comes to these speech acts that say forgiveness, excuse, promise (the sworn commitment of every promise with respect to which there can be perjuring: one lies only in natural language and in ordinary language, which is why I insist a great deal, as I did at the beginning last time, on the dramaturgy of the intonations, and all the scenes of everyday life in which those words take on meaning and become effective. We’ll come back to this enigmatic status of ordinary language a little later: does it or does it not have the last word? Does it not represent an irreducible, almost corporal or material resistance to every process of idealizing interiorization, to every spiritualizing economy?). In any case, no forgiveness or excuse without an event. That is part and parcel of the internal analysis of the concepts of forgiveness and excuse: the reference to an irreversible event, exterior and anterior to the potentially [éventuellement] discursive moment of avowal, forgiveness, or excuse. There is a first referential resistance (which could be said in a certain sense to be quasi-­material) in the event, its referential resistance to discursive reappropriation, to the verbal moment of forgiveness and excuse. But there is also a specific eventness [une événementialité propre], and of a performative

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type, in the moment of avowal and in the moment (which one could try to distinguish from it, although that wouldn’t be easy) of excuse and requested forgiveness. [3De Man, I’ll emphasize once and once only, speaks only of excuse in this context, and never or almost never of “forgiveness,” whether because he excludes the specific problem of forgiveness from his field of analysis (and first of all, because both Rousseau and Austin, who are the guiding references here, also speak overwhelmingly of excuse rather than of forgiveness), or because he himself considers, perhaps like Rousseau and Austin, that what one says about excuse is valid as well for forgiveness (something that remains to be seen). In fact, I would have two hypotheses in this regard. One is that de Man sees no essential difference between forgiveness and excuse (which can be posited, but at the same time leaves aside enormous stakes, since the problem of that distinction is not posed; the possibility of that distinction isn’t problematized). The other hypothesis, which would count for Austin as well as for de Man, is that what interests them here, as pragmatic or performative modality, is what occurs only on the side of the one who has committed the fault (never on the other side, the side of the victim); and, on the side of the one who has committed the fault, what they want to analyze is the act that consists in saying “I am sorry [ je m’excuse],” or “I apologize”4 (rather than “I request forgiveness,” and especially rather than “I forgive”). What interests both of them, as will be seen, is not the possibility, or not, of forgiving, or even of excusing, but what one does when one says, in the performative mode, “excuse me,” and more precisely “I excuse myself [ je m’excuse].” The rest (what interests us here concerning the possibility of forgiving, or not, etc.) is outside their field. So, in any case, de Man almost never speaks of forgiveness, if I am not mistaken, except in two passages. One concerns what is, he says, “easy to forgive” in that “the motivation for the theft becomes understandable.” (Read p. 340 M’, Eng. p. 284 M’.) The allegory of this metaphor, revealed in the “confession” of Rousseau’s desire for Marion, functions as an excuse if we are willing to take the desire 3. The bracket that opens here is not closed in the typescript. We close it below (see note 7). Large sections of what follows in this and the Tenth Session appear in “Typewriter Ribbon.” [Translator’s note:] In the remainder of this session, and in the Tenth Session, my translation is greatly indebted to that by Peggy Kamuf in “Typewriter Ribbon” (Without Alibi, 71–­160) [“Ruban de machine à écrire” (Papier Machine, 33–­147)], which I follow except for differences existing in the seminar version, and certain stylistic modifications that conform to choices made throughout this volume. 4. [Translator’s note:] Statement in English in typescript.

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at face value. If it is granted that Marion is desirable, or Rousseau ardent to such an extent, then the motivation for the theft becomes understandable and easy to forgive. He did it all out of love for her, and who would be a dour enough literalist to let a little property stand in the way of young love? (Allegories, 284/340)

The other occurrence of the word “forgiveness” is found in a passage that carries the only reference to Heidegger, whose definition of truth as revelation-­dissimulation remains determinant throughout this text by de Man (which inscribes its “deconstructive” gesture and its interpretation of “dissemination” — ­these two words, “deconstruction” and “dissemination” are present and very visible in this article — ­in a highly ambiguous double proximity: proximity to a certain Lacanianism, readable in what is said both about repression, and desire and language, and even in the recourse to truth according to Heidegger; and proximity, despite that Lacanianism, to a certain Deleuzianism from the period of Anti-­Oedipus, in what links desire to the machine, I would almost say to a desiring machine.5 How is one to disentangle all these threads (disseminal deconstruction, Lacanianism, Deleuzianism) in what is de Man’s original signature? That is what I would really like to be able to do, without being sure — ­far from it — ­of managing it.) Here is that passage (p. 342, Eng., p. 286): Promise is proleptic, but excuse is belated and always occurs after the crime; since the crime is exposure, the excuse consists in recapitulating the exposure in the guise of concealment. The excuse is a ruse which permits exposure in the name of hiding, not unlike Being, in the later Heidegger, reveals itself by hiding. Or, put differently, shame used as excuse permits repression to function as revelation, and thus to make pleasure and guilt interchangeable. Guilt is forgiven because it allows for the pleasure of revealing its repression. It follows that repression is in fact an excuse, one speech act among others. [Lacanian?]6 (286/342)

Unless I am wrong or have missed something, those are the only occurrences of the word “forgiveness” or the only borrowings from the lexicon of forgiveness, throughout what is a strong genealogy of excuse and forgiveness (here put in the same category) as economic ruse, as stratagem and cal­ culus, either conscious or unconscious, in view of the greatest pleasure in the 5. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-­Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983) [Anti-­Oedipe: Capitalisme et schizophrénie (Paris: Minuit, 1972)]. 6. During the session, Derrida adds: “This is the most Lacanian sentence, in its resonance at least, in its consonance. Repression is a speech act, repression is an excuse.”

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service of desire. We will come back later to the complicating of that desire, its writing machine and mutilating machine.]7 So, we were saying that there is also a specific eventness, and of a performative type, in the moment of avowal and in the moment (which one could try to distinguish from it, although that wouldn’t be easy) of excuse and requested forgiveness. And de Man is keen to clearly distinguish two structures and two moments at the beginning of his text; he distinguishes them with respect to referentiality, to the reference to an event, whether extraverbal or verbal. And since the distinction that is thereby proposed is alone capable of accounting, in de Man’s view, for the difference, the divergence, within the repetition, between two texts that, ten years apart, relate to the same event, the theft of the ribbon and the lie that followed it (namely the Confessions and the “Fourth Reverie”),8 as a preliminary step we’ll have to read and begin to understand this passage. (Read and comment on pp. 336–­38 E, Eng., pp. 280–­83 E.) The distinction between the confession stated in the mode of revealed truth and the confession stated in the mode of excuse is that the evidence for the former is referential (the ribbon), whereas the evidence for the latter can only be verbal. Rousseau can convey his “inner feeling” to us only if we take, as we say, his word for it, whereas the evidence for his theft is, at least in theory, literally available. Whether we believe him or not is not the point; it is the verbal or nonverbal nature of the evidence that makes the difference, not the sincerity of the speaker or the gullibility of the listener. The distinction is that the latter process necessarily includes a moment of understanding that cannot be equated with a perception, and that the logic that governs this moment is not the same as that which governs a referential verification. What Rousseau is saying then, when he insists on “sentiment intérieur,” is that confessional language can be considered under a double epistemological perspective: it functions as a verifiable referential cognition, but it also functions as a statement whose reliability cannot be verified by empirical means. The convergence of the two modes is not a priori given, and it is because of the possibility of a discrepancy between them that the possibility of excuse arises. The excuse articulates the discrepancy and, in so doing, it actually asserts it as fact (whereas it is only a suspicion). It believes, or pretends to believe, that the act of stealing the ribbon is both this act as a physical fact (he removed it from the place where it was and put it in his pocket, or wherever he kept it), as well as a certain “inner feeling’ ” that 7. We close here the bracket opened on 256. 8. Derrida again follows de Man in calling the “Fourth Promenade” the “Fourth Reverie.”

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was somehow (and this “how” remains open) connected with it. Moreover, it believes that the fact and the feeling are not the same. Thus to complicate a fact certainly is: to act. The difference between the verbal excuse and the referential crime is not a simple opposition between an action and a mere utterance about an action. To steal is to act and includes no necessary verbal elements. To confess is discursive, but the discourse is governed by a principle of referential verification that includes an extraverbal moment:9 even if we confess that we said something (as opposed to did), the verification of this verbal event, the decision about the truth or falsehood of its occurrence, is not verbal but factual, the knowledge that the utterance actually took place. No such possibility of verification exists for the excuse, which is verbal in its utterance, in its effect and in its authority: its purpose is not to state but to convince, itself an “inner” process to which only words can bear witness. As is well known at least since Austin, excuses are a complex instance of what he termed performative utterances, a variety of speech act. The interest of Rousseau’s text is that it explicitly functions performatively as well as cognitively, and thus gives indications about the structure of performative rhetoric; this is already established in this text when the confession fails to close off a discourse which feels compelled to modulate from the confessional into the apologetic mode. Neither does the performance of the excuse allow for a closing off of the apologetic text, despite Rousseau’s plea at the end of Book II: “This is what I had to say on this matter. May I be allowed never to mention it again” (1, p. 87).10 Yet, some ten years later, in the Fourth Reverie, he tells the entire story all over again, in the context of a meditation that has to do with the possible “excusability” of lies. Clearly, the apology has not succeeded in becalming his own guilt to the point where he would be allowed to forget it. It doesn’t matter much, for our purpose, whether the guilt truly relates to this particular act or if the act is merely made to substitute for another, worse crime or humiliation. It may stand for a whole series of crimes, a general mood of guilt, yet the repetition is significant by itself: whatever the content of the criminal act may have been, the excuse presented in the Confessions was unable to satisfy Rousseau as a judge of Jean-­Jacques. This failure was already partly inscribed within the excuse itself and it governs its further expansion and repetition. (280–­83/336–­38)

9. During the session, Derrida adds: “I confess that I stole, that means that there was a theft that was not itself verbal, I took the ribbon. But that distinction holds even when the fault is of a verbal nature. The referent can be verbal but the structure remains the same, that’s what de Man is going to say immediately after this.” 10. [Translator’s note:] For the Rousseau quote see Confessions, 73. Kelly has “May I be permitted never to speak of it again.”

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De Man thus proposes here a distinction that is at once subtle, necessary, and problematic. It seems fragile to me, in a process that is, all the same, of the order of the event [événementiel], doubly or triply so (I mean, first, of the order of the event by reference to an irreversible event that has already happened; second, of the order of the event as producing an event and an archiving, inscribing, recording of the event; and finally, third, of the order of the event in a mode that is each time performative in a way that we will have to clarify). The distinction proposed by de Man is both useful and problematic, for if it is indeed alleged that there is truth to be revealed, to be made known, thus a gesture of the theoretical type, a cognitive or, as de Man says, epistemological dimension in the confession, this latter is a confession or avowal only to the extent that on no account does it get reduced to that dimension or even analyzed into two dissociable elements (one de Man calls the cognitive, and the other: not only because making known does not reduce to knowing, but above all because making known a fault doesn’t reduce to making known just anything, but is already to accuse oneself and to become involved in a performative process of excuse or of forgiveness). A declaration that would bring forward some knowledge, a piece of information, a thing to be known would in no case be a confession, even if the thing to be known, even if the cognitive referent were defined as a fault (I can inform someone that I have killed or stolen or lied without that being in any way an avowal or a confession). For there to be a confessional declaration or an avowal it is necessary that I recognize, indissociably, in a mode of recognition that is not of the order of knowledge, that I am guilty, and that therefore, at least implicitly, I begin to accuse myself and so to excuse myself or offer excuses, or even ask for forgiveness. There is no doubt an irreducible instance of “truth” in that process, but this truth is precisely not a truth to be known or, as de Man so often says, to reveal. Rather, as Augustine says, it is a truth to be “done,”11 and that order of truth (to be totally rethought) is not of a cognitive order. It is not a revelation, or that revelation doesn’t consist only in lifting a veil to have it seen in a neutral and cognitive or theoretical manner. It is no doubt something similar that de Man also has in view when he writes the “as well as” that I quoted (“The interest of Rousseau’s text is that it explicitly functions performatively as well as cognitively, and thus gives indications about the structure of performative rhetoric; this is already established in this text when the confession fails to close off a 11. On truth to be “done” in Augustine (cf. Confessions II, 69: “whoever accomplishes truth comes to the light” [X.i, quoting John 3: 21]), see Derrida, “Circumfession” (Period 11), 56 [“Circonfession,” 42ff., 56ff.].

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discourse which feels compelled to modulate from the confessional into the apologetic mode” [Allegories, 282/337]). Yes, but I wonder whether (in truth, I think that) the confessional mode is already an apologetic mode: I believe that there are not here two dissociable modes and two different times, such that there might be “passing” from one to the other, nor even that what de Man calls “the interest of Rousseau’s text,” hence its originality, consists in having to “pass” from the confessional mode to the apologetic mode. Every confessional text is already apologetic, every avowal begins by offering excuses or by excusing itself. Having reached this point, perhaps it is better to leave this difficulty in place and move on. So let’s leave this difficulty in place, for it is going to haunt everything that we will say from here on. For what de Man calls “the distinction between the confession stated in the mode of revealed truth and the confession stated in the mode of excuse” (280/336) is going to organize, it seems to me, his whole demonstration, whereas I find that distinction impossible, in truth undecidable. And that undecidability would moreover be the whole interest, the obscurity, the nondecomposable specificity of what is called a confession, avowal, excuse, or forgiveness. But if one were to go still further in that direction — ­at which point, I think, we will leave behind the context and element of de Man’s interpretation — ­it would be because we are here touching on an originary synthesis and an equivocation (that of truth to be known, revealed, or stated, on the one hand, the truth that, according to de Man, would concern the order of the purely confessional, and, on the other, that of the pure performative of the excuse, which de Man nicknames “apologetic,” in short, two orders that are analogous to those of the constative and the performative), an equivocation, then, such that it is for this very equivocality, which invades language and action at their source, that we are always already in the process of excusing ourselves, in­deed requesting forgiveness, precisely in that equivocal and perjuring mode.12 What do I mean by that, for I indeed sense that it is not very clear? Well, following a path whose necessity neither Austin nor de Man failed to perceive, I mean that every constative is rooted in the presupposition of an at least implicit performative, and that every theoretical, cognitive utterance, 12. During the session, Derrida adds: “The equivocality [l’équivoque] is right there: at the same time as I tell the truth, I am guilty, I admit to a fault. And when I confess, I excuse myself. And one can’t tell the difference between them. And so, since there is equivocality, well, I implicitly ask you for forgiveness for being equivocal: what one does the whole time one speaks, what one should do explicitly, but that one does do implicitly.”

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every truth to be revealed, etc., assumes a testimonial form, an “I myself think,” or “I myself say,” or “I myself believe,” “I myself have the inner feeling that,” etc., a relation to myself to which you will never have immediate access and for which you must believe me by taking my word for it (which means that I can always lie and bear false witness, even when I say to you “I am speaking to you, me, to you,” “I take you as my witness,” “I promise you,” or “I confess to you,” “I tell you the truth.” By reason of this general and radical form of testimoniality (such as we have elaborated on at length in recent years),13 whenever someone speaks, false witness is always possible, as is equivocating between two orders; such that in my address to another, I must always ask for faith or confidence, beg to be believed at my word, wherever equivocation is indelible and perjury always possible. That necessity (which is nothing other than the solitude, the singularity, the inaccessibility of “as for me,”14 the impossibility of having an originary and internal intuition of the proper experience of the other ego, of the alter ego) is necessarily felt on both sides of the address or the destination (on the side of the sender and of the addressee), as place of an always possible violence and abuse for which the apologetic confession — ­to use two notions of de Man’s that are here indissociable, always indissociable — ­is already at work. And not only in Rousseau (but that is also why Rousseau is so interesting, as exemplary, as one who endured in an exemplary manner this common necessity [ fatalité], a common fatality that is not only a misfortune, a trap, or a curse of the gods; for it is also the possibility, the only possibility of speaking to the other, of blessing, saying, or doing the truth, etc.). Since I can always lie, and since the other can always be the victim of that lie, since he or she never has the same access as I do to what I myself think or mean to say, I always begin, at least implicitly, by confessing a fault, or possible abuse or possible violence, and by requesting forgiveness when I address the other, and precisely in this equivocal mode, even if it is in order to say to him or her things that are as constative as, for example: “you know, it’s raining.” 13. See Derrida, unpublished seminar, “Le témoignage,” EHESS, 1992–­9 5; and Blanchot / Derrida, The Instant of My Death / Demeure [Demeure]. 14. During the session, Derrida adds: “described, for example, by Husserl. I will never have an intuition of the thing itself in person as for what happens inside another’s head, and vice versa. Well, that impossibility, of an intuitive or immediate access to the sphere of what Husserl calls Eigenheit, the ownness of the other, what is proper to the other, is something I will never have access to.” See Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (5, §44), trans. Dorion Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 92–­9 9 [Méditations cartésiennes et les Conférences de Paris, trans. Marc de Launay (Paris: PUF, 1994), 141–­47]; and Derrida, Voice and Phenomenon, 32–­34 [La Voix et le phénomène, 42–­43].

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That is why, when, later — ­we’ll come to that at a later stage, the final stage in de Man’s demonstration, when, beyond the first two surges of his reading, he comes to the final phase of his interpretation, which he adheres to most, concerning the discontinuity and the leap from the Confessions to the “Fourth Reverie,” when to that end he evokes a “twilight zone between knowing and not-­knowing” (Allegories, 286/342) — ­I feel so much in agreement with him that I don’t think that twilight comes to darken an initial clarity but only covers the passage from the Confessions to the Reveries, I feel that this twilight is consubstantial, from the origin, with confession in the moment or component that de Man would want to identify as purely cognitive, epistemological, or as a moment of revealed truth. We’ll come back to that, but when de Man writes this, in the paragraph that I am going to read, what he says seems to me valid in a much more general way, as if a priori, both for the Confessions and for the Reveries, which makes it difficult to maintain the claim of a change of regime between the two, at least in this respect. (Read and comment on D, p. 342, Eng., p. 286 D) But the text offers further possibilities. The analysis of shame as excuse makes evident the strong link between the performance of excuses and the act of understanding. It has led to the problematics of hiding and revealing, which are clearly problematics of cognition. Excuse occurs within an epistemological twilight zone between knowing and not-­knowing; this is also why it has to be centered on the crime of lying and why Rousseau can excuse himself for everything provided he can be excused for lying. When this turns out not to have been the case, when his claim to have lived for the sake of truth (vitam impendere vero) is being contested from the outside, the closure of excuse (“qu’il me soit permis de n’en reparler jamais”) becomes a delusion and the Fourth Reverie has to be written. (286/342)15

Let’s start out on another foot, before coming back to de Man. Before we were asking ourselves, and I quote: What is coming to pass [Qu’est-­ce qui se passe]? But what, then, is coming to pass? To come to pass [se passer] is to come about [arriver], as one says, and they call that an event. What comes about when, asking for forgiveness or for excuse, excusing oneself or not, presenting oneself or presenting one’s excuses, one avows, declares, owns up (for it is not enough to avow in order to avow — ­that will be our whole problem, one can always say that one is avowing without avowing, one can even believe one is avowing while doing something else)? 15. See Derrida’s previous discussion in the Eighth Session (249ff.).

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So, what is coming to pass? What event is one talking about when there is some declared avowing? As you can see, I am insisting on the event [événement], on what comes about, without really knowing what event means, in this case, nor where and when to look to find out. 341

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If nothing has come to pass indeed, if no misdeed has been done, if no wrong has irreversibly come about, there is nothing to forgive or excuse, no fault and no possible excuse. And if there is forgiveness or excuse, something has to effectively come to pass, come about to this one or that one, changing or affecting things, more precisely someone. Something has to have come to pass, and in the past. Irreversibly. It is therefore necessary that something has in some way been inscribed, memorized, retained, recorded, archived. That is still saying very few things,16 but let’s agree, it is an indispensable minimum, and about which I can at least hope that we concur (we are in synkhōrēsis, that word we already analyzed, a synkhōrēsis is, then, possible among us, and I leave this word synkhōrēsis or synkhōreme in Greek to keep it suspended among mutual agreement, consent, and forgiveness). If I insist on this value of event, of affecting by means of the event that affects and changes things, and especially on the past event as inscribed or archived, it is for at least three reasons. (1) On the one hand, and in the first place because this eventness is irreducible, of course. (2) But on the other hand, because the event in question, which must then be retained, inscribed, memorized, traced, archived, etc., can be the thing itself that one archives in that way, but it must also be the event that consists in archivation, in textualization, in writing that, while at the same time recording, produces a new event and affects the presumed primary event that it is supposed to retain, consign to writing [engrammer], inscribe, record, archive. There is the event that is archived, the archived event (and there is no archive without a body — ­I prefer to say “body” rather than “matter” for reasons that I’ll try to justify later) and there is the archiving event, the archivation, the archiving event that is not the same, structurally, as the archived event, even if, in certain circumstances, it is indistinguishable from it, or even contemporary with it. I one day spoke of archive fever [mal d’archive], that was my title, but a seminar on forgiveness is also a seminar on the archive of harm [archive du mal] — ­and moreover, in Archive

16. The typescript here has très peu de choses [“very few things”], instead of the usual très peu de chose [“very little”].

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Fever I never thought it was possible to separate the two, whence the title:17 archive “sickness” (as desire and passion for the archive) and the archive of harm, of a harm that pertains to some crime or past suffering, of course, but also to the terrible law of the archiving machine, which selects, filters, orders and forgets, suppresses, represses, destroys as much as it keeps. (3) The third reason, finally, the main reason for my insistence on the event recorded thus in an inscription, the event of the writing of the event, is the necessity of moving on, without any other form of transition, but precisely around the word and the concept of event, to de Man’s admirable reading of Rousseau. It is in truth a paradigmatic reading of a paradigmatic text, namely Rousseau’s avowal when he comes back, both to the theft of Marion’s ribbon, to the lie or perjury that followed, and, later, after the Confessions, to his very avowal. A double paradigm, paradigm upon paradigm, for if de Man’s reading is paradigmatic or exemplary by virtue of its inaugural character and as the first rigorous implementation [mise en oeuvre], concerning this famous passage, of certain theoretical reading protocols (in particular, but not only, of a theory of the performative whose complications we’ll analyze later, first in Austin, then in de Man), this paradigmatic reading itself declares that it bears on a “paradigmatic event” (these are de Man’s words) in the work of Rousseau. Concerning the Marion episode, de Man indeed writes: We are invited to believe that the episode was never revealed to anyone prior to the privileged reader of the Confessions [this privileged reader, this original receiver of the confession and of the scene of excuse would therefore be neither Marion nor any other living being, neither priest nor God, but an anonymous reader to come] “and . . . that the desire to free myself, so to speak, from this weight has greatly contributed to my resolve to write my confessions” (1, p. 86). When Rousseau returns to the Confessions in the later Fourth Reverie, he again singles out this same episode as paradigmatic event, the core of his autobiographical narrative. (Allegories, 278–­79/334)18

It is then, in the second paragraph of his introduction, that de Man uses the expression “textual event,” an expression that will reappear on the last page of the same essay. Here he continues: 17. See Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) [Mal d’archive: Une impression freudienne (Paris: Galilée, 1995). 18. [Translator’s note:] For the Rousseau quote see Confessions, 72/86. Kelly has “the desire to free myself from it in some measure has very much contributed to the resolution I have made to write my confessions.”

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The selection [of the theft of the ribbon and the lie that followed as paradigmatic episode] is, in itself, as arbitrary as it is suspicious, but it provides us with a textual event of undeniable exegetic interest: the juxtaposition of two confessional texts linked together by an explicit repetition, the confession, as it were, of a confession. (279/334, Derrida’s emphasis)

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That this selection is held by de Man to be “arbitrary” and “suspicious” is an hypothesis that must be taken seriously, even if one is not prepared to subscribe to it unreservedly. For it subtends in a definitive way de Man’s whole interpretation, notably his concepts of grammar and machine (at the end of the text, he will speak of the “gratuitous product of a textual grammar” (299/357), or again, still concerning this structure of machinic repetition, of “a system that is both entirely arbitrary and entirely repeatable, like a grammar” (300/358, Derrida’s emphasis)). The expression “textual event” that we have just encountered in the introduction is found again in conclusion, very close to the last word — ­not only of the chapter but of the book, since in de Man’s corpus this is the last chapter of the last book he published and reread during his lifetime. It both is and isn’t the same “textual event” that is in question at the beginning of the text. It the same because it is still a matter of what happens with this paradigmatic passage of the Confessions; but it is the same that is now analyzed, determined, interpreted, localized within a certain mechanism, namely — ­but we’ll come back to this later — ­an anacoluthon or a parabasis, a discontinuity or, to quote de Man at the end of his text, “a sudden revelation of the discontinuity between two rhetorical codes. This isolated textual event, as the reading of the Fourth Reverie shows, is disseminated throughout the entire text and the anacoluthon is extended over all the points of the figural line or allegory” (300/358). How is this “textual event” inscribed? What is the operation of its inscription, and notably the writing machine that both produces it and archives it? What is the body, or even the matter that confers on this inscription both a support and a resistance? And, above all, what essential relation does this textual event maintain with a scene of confession and excuse? Those are some of the questions that will have to guide us from here on. [19Since we are getting ready to speak of matter or more precisely of the body, I note in the first place, and as if within brackets, that de Man, very curiously, pays almost no attention — ­for reasons that he no doubt considers justified and that in my view are only partly so — ­either to the matter and body of the ribbon itself, or to the paragraph intervening between the 19. This bracket does not close in the typescript.

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account of the death of Mme de Vercellis following her breast cancer (her double expiry) and the beginning of the avowal of the fault for which Rousseau says he carries “unbearable remorse” (Confessions, 70/84), from which he will no more recover than he will ever console himself over it. I’ll begin with a remark about the paragraph neglected by de Man. This paragraph describes nothing less than a scene of inheritance, the inheritance left by Mme de Vercellis (Mme de Vercellis of whom de Man nevertheless says, as you recall, that there is no reason to “substitute” Marion for her [“nothing in the text,” he says, suggests such a “concatenation” (Allegories, 285n8/341n2)] and therefore even less so Mme de Warens, of whom de Man speaks not once in this context, and concerning whom I was recalling a week ago that Rousseau had met her for the first time the same year,20 a few months earlier, their meeting coinciding more or less with their common renunciation, their almost simultaneous conversion to Catholicism). That scene of inheritance seems to me significant, in this place, for countless reasons that I will not develop because they are too obvious, and they are, by essence or par excellence, as in every scene of inheritance, laws of substitution (and hence of responsibility, guilt, and forgiveness): substitution of persons and things, in the domains of the law governing persons and the law governing things. For one must not forget that the ribbon belongs more or less clearly to that scene and to the patrimony of things and values left as legacies. Even if it is a thing without value, as we shall see, an old and used thing, as Rousseau emphasizes, a worn-­out if not out-­of-­service thing, its exchange value is caught up in the logic of substitution constituted by the inheritance. And we will once again have to reckon with more than one substitution: those de Man speaks of and those of which he doesn’t speak. So that this may look more concrete to you, I’ll read some lines. They are basically the lines in which de Man seems not to be interested: (Read p. 84, from “She had bequeathed” to “already old.”) She had bequeathed one year’s wages to her underservants; but not being set down in the estate as part of her house I had nothing. Nevertheless the Comte de la Roque had thirty livres given to me and left me the new suit I had on, and of which M. Lorenzy wished to deprive me. He even promised to seek to place me and permitted me to come to see him. I went there two or three times without being able to speak to him. I was easy to rebuff, I no longer went back. It will soon be seen that I was wrong. Why have I not finished everything I had to say about my stay at Mme de Vercellis’s! But, although my apparent situation remained the same, I 20. On these details see Derrida’s discussion in the Seventh Session (209–14).

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did not leave her house as I had entered it. I carried away from it the long remembrances of crime and the unbearable weight of remorse with which my conscience is still burdened after forty years, and the bitter feeling of which, far from growing weaker, becomes inflamed as I grow older. Who would believe that the fault of a child could have such cruel consequences? My heart does not know how to console itself over these more than probable consequences. I have perhaps caused a lovable, decent, estimable girl, who was surely worth much more than I was, to die in disgrace and misery. It is very difficult for the dissolution of a household not to involve a little confusion in the house, and for many things not to be mislaid. Nevertheless, such was the faithfulness of the domestic servants, and the vigilance of M. and Mme Lorenzy, that nothing was found missing in the inventory. Only Mlle Pontal lost a little pink and silver colored ribbon that was already old. (Confessions, 70/84)21

These two little words, “already old,” are also omitted by de Man, I don’t know why, in his quotation of this phrase, which he therefore extracts from its context and without having cited the preceding paragraph, which I would call testamentary. No doubt the inventory in the course of which the disappearance of the ribbon was noted is not the moment of the inheritance itself, but it is something like its inseparable continuation; and Mlle Pontal, who “lost” the “little ribbon,” had received 600 pounds in inheritance, twenty times more than all the servants who had each received, in addition, individual legacies. Rousseau, for his part, inherited nothing as you just heard him complain, and you notice his grievance over it. These scenes of inheritance and inventory, which de Man does not evoke, are not the scenes that Rousseau describes before recounting the death of Mme de Vercellis, in a passage where it is already a question of legacies: the entourage of Mme de Vercellis, already thinking about the legacy, had done everything to get Rousseau out of the way and “keep [him] away from her eyes” (Confessions, 69/83), as he puts it. No doubt it is to this paragraph preceding the account that de Man refers to in the note that had surprised me somewhat (“The embarrassing story of Rousseau’s rejection by Mme de Vercellis, who is dying of a cancer of the breast, immediately precedes the story of Marion, but nothing in the text suggests a concatenation that would allow one to substitute Marion for Mme de Vercellis in a scene of rejection” [Allegories, 285n8/341n2]). It is this substitution that de Man does not believe should be credited, because his whole text will conversely put to work in a deci21. In the typescript Derrida writes “Portal” for “Pontal,” then corrects by hand most occurrences of the name.

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sive fashion a logic of substitution: further on he will he talk at length of a substitution between Rousseau and Marion, and even of “two levels of substitution (or displacement) taking place: the ribbon substituting for a desire which is itself a desire for substitution” (pp. 339–­40) (284/339–­40). Summing up the facts, he indeed writes: “The episode itself is one in a series of stories of petty larceny, but with an added twist. While employed as a servant in an aristocratic Turin household, Rousseau has stolen a ‘pink and silver colored ribbon’ ” (1, p. 84)”22 (279/334). Why does he cut up the sentence, mutilating it or dismembering it in this way, and in such an apparently arbitrary fashion, cutting out two of its own little words before the period (“already old”)? I have no answer to this question. If I use the words “mutilation” or “dismemberment,” or even “arbitrary cut” to qualify the operation by which a sentence has two of its little words cut out of it in this way, and has its organic syntax interrupted, it is both because that is indeed the way it is, no doubt, first of all, and the phenomenon is as strange as it is remarkable (it is indeed an apparently arbitrary amputation and dissociation),23 but also because, as we’ll see, de Man’s general interpretation of the “textual event” in question will put to work, in a determinant fashion, these motifs (“mutilation” and “dismemberment”), and, what’s more, the operation of a machinery. However, anticipating something from a little further along, among the significations that will later structure the de Manian concept of materiality or material inscription (the words “matter” and “materialism” are not yet uttered in “Excuses (Confessions),” although a certain place seems here to be readied for the welcome de Man will extend to them in later publications), one finds once again, besides the significations of mute literality and body, those of discontinuity, caesura, division, mutilation, and dismemberment or, as de Man often says here, dissemination. Whether one is talking about the body in general, the body proper, or also, as in the example of Kleist’s Marionettentheater read by de Man, of the linguistic body of phrases and words in syllables and letters (for example, from Fall as “case” or “fall” to Falle as “trap”),24 these figures of dismemberment, fragmentation, mutilation, and “material disarticulation”25 play an essential role in a certain 22. The quote from Rousseau is in fact from Book II (70/84). 23. On arbitrariness and gratuitousness, see Allegories, 299/357. 24. See de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, 89, and “Aesthetic Formalization: Kleist’s ‘Uber das Marionettentheater,’ ” in The Rhetoric of Romanticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 263–­9 0. 25. De Man, “Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant,” in Aesthetic Ideology, 89.

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insistent “materialist” signature in de Man’s last texts. How does the concept of matter, or rather of “materialism” that will be associated with it in later texts (“Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant” and “Kant’s Materialism,” in Aesthetic Ideology, Minnesota, 1996), get elaborated? That is a question we can also keep in view in this interpretation of Rousseau. We are also keeping in view, in order to have it intersect with this logic of textual event as material inscription, a certain concept of history, of the historicity of history, a concept that, when it comes to this structure of the text, will no longer be governed by the schema of progression or regression, therefore by a schema of teleological process, but rather by that of the event, or occurrence. And that value of event, of occurrence, links historicity not to time, as is usually thought, nor to the temporal process, but, according to de Man, to power, to the language of power and to language as power. Whence the profound necessity of taking into account the performativity of language, which precisely defines the power of language and power as language, and the excess of the language of power or of the power of language over constative or cognitive language. I’ll very quickly quote a passage from the article “Kant and Schiller” (a lecture delivered at Cornell the very year de Man died, in 1983, and collected in Aesthetic Ideology on the basis of notes, here on p. 133). De Man has just spoken of a history to be thought of as event and not as process, progress, or regress. He then adds: There is history from the moment that words such as “power” and “battle” and so on emerge on the scene. At that moment things happen, there is occurrence, there is event. History is therefore not a temporal notion, it has nothing to do with temporality [de Man’s style! radicalizing provocation] but it is the emergence of a language of power out of a language of cognition.26

De Man distinguishes this eventness from a dialectical process or from any continuum accessible to a process of knowledge, such as the Hegelian dialectic. He also specifies that the performative (a language of power beyond the language of knowledge) is not the negation of the tropological but remains separated from the tropological by a discontinuity that tolerates no mediation and no temporal schema. It remains that the performative, however foreign and excessive it be with regard to the cognitive, can always be reinscribed, “recuperated” (that is de Man’s word) in a cognitive 26. De Man, “Kant and Schiller,” in Aesthetic Ideology, 133. During the session, Derrida translates the passage directly into French on the basis of a photocopy of the page of Aesthetic Ideology inserted into the typescript [cf. Papier Machine, 91].

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system.27 This discontinuity, this event as discontinuity, is very important for us if only because it will allow us to go beyond excuse and come closer to the event of forgiveness, which always supposes irreversible interruption, revolutionary caesura, or even the end of history, at least of history as teleological process. That said, one may note with similar interest that, in the same text (“Kant and Schiller”), de Man constructs his concept of event, of history as eventness rather than as temporal process, on the basis of two determinations that are equally important for us: that of irreversibility (forgiveness and excuse suppose precisely that what has happened is irreversible) and that of inscription or material trace. (Quote, translate, and comment on “Kant and Schiller,” p. 132 M.)

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When I speak of irreversibility, and insist on irreversibility, this is because in all those texts and those juxtapositions of texts, we have been aware of something which one could call a progression — ­though it shouldn’t be — ­a movement, from cognition, from acts of knowledge, from states of cognition, to something which is no longer a cognition but which is to some extent an occurrence, which has the materiality of something that actually happens, that actually occurs. And there, the thought of material occurrence, something that occurs materially, that leaves a trace on the world, that does something to the world as such — ­that notion of occurrence is not opposed in any sense to the notion of writing. But it is opposed to some extent to the notion of cognition. I’m reminded of a quotation in Hölderlin — ­if you don’t quote Pascal you can always quote Hölderlin, that’s about equally useful — ­which says: “Lang ist die Zeit, es ereignet sich aber das Wahre.” Long is time, but — ­not truth, not Wahrheit, but das Wahre, that which is true, will occur, will take place, will eventually take place, will eventually occur. And the characteristic of truth is the fact that it occurs, not the truth, but that which is true. The occurrence is true because it occurs; by the fact that it occurs it has truth, truth value, it is true.28

It remains — ­I’m coming back to it — ­that I don’t know why de Man forgot, omitted, or effaced those two words (“already old”) that qualify also a certain materiality of the enigmatic thing called ribbon? Was it to save space, as one sometimes does by not citing a text or context in toto, omitting passages that are less pertinent for the demonstration under way? Perhaps, but it is difficult to justify for two little words (“already old”) that come 27. Aesthetic Ideology, 133. 28. Aesthetic Ideology, 132. During the session, Derrida translates the passage directly into French on the basis of a photocopy of the page of Aesthetic Ideology inserted into the typescript.

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just after the words quoted and before the final period (I’ll repeat it, with emphasis: “Only Mlle Pontal lost a little pink and silver colored ribbon that was already old” [Confessions, 70/84, Derrida’s emphasis]). I also emphasize Rousseau’s word regarding this ribbon: she “lost” it. On the preceding page, the same Rousseau said of Mme de Vercellis: “Finally we lost her. I saw her expire” (69/83, Derrida’s emphasis). Would there be a relation of substitution between these two losses signified by the same verb in the same tense, the preterit, which says — ­but what does it thereby say and mean? — ­nous la perdîmes, elle perdit? I wouldn’t swear to such a relation of substitution, but let’s leave it at that. If one excludes a concern for economy and the possibly inconsequential abbreviation of two little words, can one speak of a pure and simple omission by mechanical distraction? Supposing that such a thing exists, one can comprehend even less that it fell to these two words on the basis of which de Man — ­instead of letting them drop — ­could have drawn an argument or even have reinforced his own argument. For in order to lend coherence to his hypothesis of substitution (between Rousseau and Marion, the desire of Rousseau and Marion, desire and the desire of substitution), the ribbon had itself to be a simple exchange value without use value. Moreover, if theft is a sin, one only ever steals exchange values, not use values. If I really steal in order to eat, my theft is not really a crime, a wrong for wrong’s sake. In order to speak of a misdeed, the profit must not be derived from the usefulness of the fault, the crime, the theft, or the lie, but from a certain uselessness. One has to have loved the fault for itself, for the shame that it procures, and that therefore supposes some “out-­of-­use” quality in the immediate or apparent object of the fault. Augustine and Rousseau understood that very well when they both emphasized having stolen something for which they had neither need and nor use. And for that matter, a little further on (whence my surprise), de Man indeed alludes to the fact that the ribbon must be out of use, “devoid,” as he puts it, “of meaning and function,” in order to play the role it plays. In this first stage of his analysis, at the level he himself calls “elementary,” when he is describing one of the ways the text functions (among others, which he will next exhibit), de Man specifies forcefully that the desire for gift and possession, the movement of representation, exchange, and substitution of the ribbon supposes that the latter not be, I will say, a “use value” but an exchange value, or even, I’ll again say (but this is not de Man’s term), already a fetish, an exchange value whose body is fetishizable; one never steals the thing itself, which moreover never presents itself. Let us read: (Read and comment on pp. 339–­40, Eng. p. 283 M.)

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It is easy enough to describe how “shame” functions in a context that seems to offer a convincing answer to the question: what is shame or, rather, what is one ashamed of? Since the entire scene stands under the aegis of theft, it has to do with possession, and desire must therefore be understood as functioning, at least at times, as a desire to possess, in all the connotations of the term. Once it is removed from its legitimate owner, the ribbon, being in itself devoid of meaning and function, can circulate symbolically as a pure signifier and become the articulating hinge in a chain of exchanges and possessions. As the ribbon changes hands it traces a circuit leading to the exposure of a hidden, censored desire. Rousseau identifies the desire as his desire for Marion: “it was my intention to give her the ribbon” (1, p. 86), i.e., to “possess” her. At this point in the reading suggested by Rousseau, the proper meaning of the trope is clear enough: the ribbon “stands for” Rousseau’s desire for Marion or, what amounts to the same thing, for Marion herself. (Allegories, 283/339–­40)29

In renaming the ribbon here, the word ruban (the word’s origin is far from certain, but it probably ties — ­with this figure of a thin band of silk, thread or wool, worn on the head, in the hair, or as a collar around the neck for example — ­it is a word, then, that probably ties together the motifs of ring [ringhbad, it seems in Middle Dutch], so ring, circular, annular link, or even wedding band, and band, namely link once again, as bind or Bund, the ribbon in itself thus being doubly ribboned, knotted, hardbound or hardbinding [bandé or bandant], as I might say, a ribbon perhaps being therefore the double bind en soie),30 in re-­naming Marion’s ribbon, then, I associate almost inadvertently — ­whereas I wasn’t expecting it — ­but no doubt not fortuitously, Marion’s ribbon with the typewriter ribbon. De Man, who has little interest in the matter of the ribbon, as we have just seen, is not at all interested in the signifier or the word “ribbon.” For — ­we are going to come to this — ­this eighteenth-­century ribbon, the ribbon that Mlle Pontal 29. [Translator’s note:] For the Rousseau quote, see Confessions, 72/86. Kelly has “my intention was to give it to her.” 30. [Translator’s note:] The verb bander means “to bind” in the sense of “to bandage,” but also “to get/have an erection”; that wordplay is extensively exploited in Clang, where my co-­translator and I have recourse to the portmanteau “hardbind” (see Derrida, Clang, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and David Wills [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020]). “Double bind en soie” means “silken double bind,” but is a homophone for “double bind in itself [en soi]” (cf. Derrida, “Un ver à soi,” translated as “A Silkworm of One’s Own,” trans. Geoffrey Bennington, in Hélène Cixous and Derrida, Veils [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001], 17–­108. “Double bind” is in English in Derrida’s typescript.

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“lost” after we “lost” Mme. de Vercellis, was also, once lost and stolen, a formidable writing machine, a ribbon of ink along which, but also on whose phantasmatic body, so much will have been printed and through which so much ink will have been made to flow. And when one makes ink flow, figuratively or not, one can also have it figured that one has flow or lets flow everything that flows and pervades a fabric. This ribbon of poor Marion’s (and that Mlle Pontal, who lost it, won’t have worn up to the end), will have supplied tissue and ink and surface of an immense calligraphy. (31I would have been tempted, but I won’t have time, to have the figural ink of this ribbon of ink pass through a text by Austin that I treated elsewhere, precisely in Limited Inc (and it is also a text on excuse and responsibility, an analysis that is moreover complementary to “A Plea for Excuses”).32 This text of Austin’s analyzes there the possibilities of a wrong that is done intentionally or unintentionally, deliberately or by accident, by inadvertence (which one can always claim in order to excuse oneself ), etc. It is entitled “Three Ways of Spilling Ink,” a title that he takes from his first example: a child spills ink and the schoolmaster asks him “Did you do that intentionally?” or “Did you do that deliberately?” or “Did you do that on purpose (purposely)?” (in Philosophical Papers, p. 274).33 This ribbon will have been more or less than a subject, a support rather, both a subjectile on which and the part of a machine thanks to which one will never have done with inscribing: discourse upon discourse, exegesis upon exegesis, beginning with those of Rousseau. And the ribbon has become, in the universal doxa, by substitution, the ribbon of “poor Marion” whose property it never was (imagine what she might have thought if someone had told her what was going to happen to her ghost, that is to say, to her name and in her name over centuries, thanks to Rousseau or by “the fault of Rousseau,” on the basis of the act of which she was one day merely the poor, innocent victim, perhaps as virginal as Mary: she will have been fertilized with ink through the ribbon of a terrible and tireless writing machine that is now relayed, in this floating sea of characters, by the apparently liquid element of computer screens). (Explain the intrinsic 31. This parenthesis does not close in the typescript. 32. See Derrida, Limited Inc, ed. Gerald Graff (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 109n3 [Limited Inc, trans. Elisabeth Weber (Paris: Galilée, 1990), 90–­91n1. 33. J. L. Austin, “Three Ways of Spilling Ink,” in James Opie Urmson and Geoffrey James Warnock, ed., Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 274 [“Trois manières de répandre de l’encre,” in Écrits philosophiques, trans. Lou Aubert and Anne-­Lise Hacker (Paris: Seuil, 1994), 231].

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reasons for insisting on the typewriter ribbon. Not free association. Everything here works through the written avowal without a living addressee and inside Rousseau’s writing, between the Confessions and the Reveries.) This ribbon of poor Marion’s as tireless writing machine gave rise — ­which is why I began by the event, by the event that is archivable as much as it is archiving — ­to what de Man twice calls, at the beginning and the end of his text, a “textual event” (Allegories, 279/334, 300/358): the second time in order to recognize there, as you heard, a dissemination of the textual event as anacoluthon; the first time to recall that this event already has the structure of a repetitive substitution, a repetition of confession within confession. Among all the signal merits of de Man’s reading, there is first of all this reckoning with the works of Austin (I say purposely, vaguely, the “works” of Austin because one of the interests in these works is to have not only resisted, but marked the line of resistance to philosophy as formalizing theorization, absolute and closed, freed of its adherence to ordinary language and to so-­called natural languages). There is also — ­another merit in de Man — ­an implementation and original complication of Austin’s concepts. We’ll see what that consists of. De Man, as you’ve heard, cites (“Performative Utterances” and “A Plea for Excuses” from Philosophical Papers) at the precise moment he writes: “As is well known at least since Austin, excuses are a complex instance of what he termed performative utterances, a variety of speech acts” (Allegories, 281–­82/337); and to illustrate the complexity of this “complex example” he immediately adds: “The interest of Rousseau’s text is that it explicitly functions performatively and thus gives indications about the structure of performative rhetoric” (282/337). As for the opposition, which you have just heard mentioned, between “performative” and “cognitive,” that was evoked starting from the first lines of the chapter, at which point de Man declared that if “the relationship between cognition and performance is relatively easy to grasp in the case of a temporal speech act such as a promise — ­which, in Rousseau’s work, is the model for the Social Contract — ­it is more complex in the confessional mode of his autobiographies” (278/333). In other words, the model of the promise, of the performative of the promise, is simpler than that of confession or excuse, notably with regard to this cognition/performance distinction. As in the preceding chapter, de Man had treated the promise on the basis of the Social Contract, and he thus goes from the Social Contract to the Confessions and to the Reveries, from the simplest to the most complex (where, precisely, the complexity can no longer be undone, nor the distinction operate — ­I’m the one speaking there, for de Man wants to maintain this distinction even when it seems to him

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difficult to do so). I invite you all the same to reread at least the preceding five chapters on Rousseau, and in particular the chapter immediately preceding this one, on the Social Contract and the promise, since he also puts to work already this problematic of speech acts. You’ll find there many things that anticipate, or are premises of, the one we are reading now on “Excuses (Confessions).” Especially the following: (1) a concept and an operation of “deconstruction” that consist in “reveal[ing] the existence of hidden articulations and fragmentations within assumedly monadic totalities” (p. 301) (249/301), within a binary system or in “a binary metaphorical system” (p. 311) (258/311); (2) a determinant system of “machine,” that is to say of text whose grammaticality is a logical code or a machine, which signifies, de Man specifies, that, no text being conceivable without grammar and no grammar (hence no machine) conceivable without the “suspension of referential meaning,” well then: Just as no law can ever be written unless one suspends any consideration of applicability to a particular entity including, of course, oneself, grammatical logic can function only if its referential consequences are disregarded. On the other hand, no law is a law unless it also applies to particular individuals. It cannot be left hanging in the air, in the abstraction of its generality. (p. 322) (269/322)34 357

(3) On the basis of contradiction or this incompatibility (the law is both the suspension of the application or of every referential consequence, the law supposes on the contrary applicability as verification) de Man comes to interpret in a very striking manner, and, so to speak, striking for us here in view of the trajectory that it perhaps allows to be brought about, from the Social Contract (read by de Man from the point of view of the promise) to the Confessions or the Rêveries (read from the point of view of the excuse). It means that, as you are going to see, one can overcome this contradiction or this incompatibility only by an act of deceit; and this deception is a theft, a theft in language, the theft of a word, of the meaning of a word in a text; this theft is not the appropriation of just any word at all, it is the theft of the subject, more precisely of the word chacun [“each one”] inasmuch as it says at once the “I,” the singularity and generality of every “I” (nothing is more 34. During the session, Derrida adds: “Whence the contradiction: grammatical logic can function only if one leaves aside the referent, as it were, but conversely a law isn’t a law if it cannot be applied. That appears contradictory. By reaffirming it, de Man knows and says as much.”

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irreducibly singular than “I,” and nothing is more universal, anonymous, and substitutable). As the deception and theft by which the word chacun is appropriated (to appropriate the term each, those are Rousseau’s words, as you will hear; deceit and theft are de Man’s translations, at once brutal and faithful: when one appropriates, one always steals, and when one steals, one deceives, one lies, especially when one denies it), as this deceit and this theft, then, are constitutive of justice (which is both without reference and applicable, with and without reference), well, de Man comes to proffer the formula that I risked in another context, without reference to de Man, rather, in an interpretation of Levinas, to the logic of the third party and of perjury, namely that all “justice is unjust” and begins in perjury (in Adieu).35 Here is what de Man writes: (Read and comment on pp. 322–­23 J, Eng., pp. 268–­6 9.) On the other hand, no law is a law unless it also applies to particular individuals. It cannot be left hanging in the air, in the abstraction of its generality. Only by thus referring it back to particular praxis can the justice of the law be tested, exactly as the justesse of any statement can only be tested by referential verifiability, or by deviation from this verification. For how is justice to be determined if not by particular reference? “Why is the general will always right, and why do all citizens constantly desire the well-­being of each, if it were not for the fact that no one exists who does not secretly appropriate the term each and think of himself when he votes for all [il n’y a personne qui ne s’approprie en secret ce mot chacun et qui ne songe à lui-­même en votant pour tous]? Which proves that the equality of right and the notion of justice that follows from it derive from the preference that each man gives to himself, and therefore from the nature of man” (3, p. 306). There can be no text without grammar: the logic of grammar generates texts only in the absence of referential meaning, but every text generates a referent that subverts the grammatical principle to which it owed its constitution. What remains hidden in the everyday use of language, the fundamental incompatibility between grammar and meaning, becomes explicit when the linguistic structures are stated, as is the case here, in political terms. The preceding passage makes clear that the incompatibility between the elaboration of the law and its application (or justice) can only be bridged by an act of deceit. “S’approprier en secret ce mot chacun” is to steal from the text the very meaning to which, according to this text, we are not entitled, the particular I which destroys its generality; hence the deceitful, covert gesture “en secret,” in the foolish hope that the theft will go unnoticed. Justice is 35. See Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas: “Another Job, unless this is the other of Job, asks what he has to do with justice, with just and unjust justice” (30 [Adieu, 62]).

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unjust; no wonder that the language of justice is also the language of guilt and that, as we know from the Confessions, we never lie as much as when we want to do full justice to ourselves, especially in self-­accusation. The divergence between grammar and referential meaning is what we call the figural dimension of language. (Allegories, 269–­70/322–­23)36 359

(To be developed: the substitution of the “I” for the “I” is also the root of perjury: I (the I) can always, by addressing myself/itself to (a [you]), each one to each one, substitute the other same “I” for this “I” here, and change the destination, change the address in secret at the last moment. Since every “I” is an “I” (the same and wholly other, every other is wholly other as the same, since every other (one) is every (bit) other [tout autre est tout autre]), (the) “I” can betray, without anything appearing so, by substituting the address of one for the address of the other, up to the last moment — ­in ecstasy or in death.) Before coming back to de Man’s text, and inviting you to reread Austin, notably How to Do Things with Words, and, in Philosophical Papers, “Performative Utterances” and “A Plea for Excuses,” I would like to draw your attention to several strategic, and, in my view, important gestures that de Man does not note and that I pick up on because they intersect with the paths we are following in an interesting, and in any case amusing way. First of all, just for a laugh, this strange association which means that the second example of “performative utterances” that Austin gives in the text with that title is “I apologize [ Je m’excuse],” and precisely when you step on someone’s foot (the example that came to my mind, in a way that seemed just as random, without my recalling that it was also an example of Austin’s). Now, what is the sequence where this example comes up? Is it symptomatic (a question one must always ask when Englishmen seem to exercise their wit by choosing at random arbitrary, insignificant, joking, or trivial examples)? Don’t forget that the text had begun in a funny way, as always with Austin, when, in what is precisely a decisive and performative manner, he baptizes “performative” what will be defined as performative (why this word? Beyond all sorts of theoretical or semantic justifications, the terminological choice of an expression reserved for a regulated usage, 36. The Rousseau quote is from Social Contract, Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero, Political Fragments, and Geneva Manuscript, trans. Judith R. Bush, Roger D. Masters, and Christopher Kelly, in Collected Writings, vol. 4 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994), 149 [Du contrat social ou Essai sur la forme de la République (Première version), in Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, eds., Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1964), 306].

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this choice includes a performative dimension:37 “I decide to propose that utterances of this type be called performatives,” “I so decide” — ­and it worked, more or less well, as will be seen — ­for the rigorous definition of the performative is infinitely problematic, but the word is now indelible). So Austin begins his text as follows:

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You are more than entitled not to know what the word “performative” means. It is a new word and an ugly word, and perhaps it does not mean anything very much. But at any rate there is one thing in its favour, it is not a profound word. I remember once when I had been talking on this subject that somebody afterwards said: “You know, I haven’t the least idea what he means, unless it could be that he simply means what he says.” Well, that is what I should like to mean.38

(My experience with the “ugly” and “new” words “deconstruction” and “differance” at Oxford: whenever I have misadventures at Oxford, where Austin taught, or at Cambridge, I always think of him.)39 So, coming back to it, the second major example of “performative utterance” will be “I apologize” when I step on someone’s foot. But that example comes immediately after the example of “I do [oui]” at the moment of marriage, “I do” marking clearly that I do what I say and I say what I do. What does Austin say and do in these two examples? He has just said that with certain utterances, one says that the person does something, they are in the process of doing, rather than saying or being in the process of saying something; and he proposes a series of four examples: “Suppose for example, that in the course of a marriage ceremony I say, as people will, ‘I do’ (sc. take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife). Or again [this “Or again” is sublime] suppose that I tread on your toe and say ‘I apologize.’ Or again . . .”40 This sequence by additive contiguity, without transition (“Or again”) from marriage to excuse when I tread on another’s toes irresistibly makes me think of an 37. During the session, Derrida adds: “One could give, among other examples, Heidegger’s Dasein.” 38. Austin, “Performative Utterances,” in Philosophical Papers, 233. 39. Derrida is alluding to his lecture “La différance” (given for the first time at the Société française de philosophie on January 27, 1968, and again at Oxford in February 1968). See Derrida, “Différance,” trans. Alan Bass, in Margins of Philosophy, 1–­27 [Marges de la philosophie, 1–­2 9]. See also Derrida, The Post Card, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 14–­15 [La carte postale: de Socrates à Freud et au-­ delà (Paris: Aubier-­Flammarion, 1980), 19]. [Translator’s note:] Derrida’s reference to Cambridge is to the controversy over his being awarded an honorary doctorate in 1992. 40. Austin, “Performative Utterances,” 235.

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Algerian Jewish rite, an ordinary and more or less superstitious custom: the betrothed couple are advised, at the moment when their marriage is consecrated in the synagogue, without delay to place a foot on the other’s foot so as to guarantee for oneself power in the conjugal life that follows. One has then to hurry and take the other by surprise: to create the event. The first one to put their foot on the other’s will have the upper hand throughout their life. The stuff of dreams [ce qui fait rêver]: it’s as if, right after the “I do” of the wedding ceremony, one had to excuse oneself or ask forgiveness of the other for this first coup d’état, for the power blow [coup de force],41 for the authority that is thus violently appropriated or usurped. “Yes, I take you to be my husband (or wife), oh, excuse me, sorry,” followed or not by “it’s nothing,” “no harm done.” In any case, whatever the response to a marriage proposal be, it would be necessary to excuse oneself or request forgiveness. “Marry me, I want to marry you.” Response: “Yes, I beg your pardon” or “No, I beg your pardon.” In both cases, there is fault and thus forgiveness to be requested — ­and it is always as if one were treading on the other’s toes. Finally, and this will be my last word today, two last remarks on Austin’s article that de Man references without noting those two little things. “A Plea for Excuses” (1956–­57) begins with excuses, just as we began this seminar on pardon with a pardon. As if that performative couldn’t be integrated into the field of knowledge that would treat of it. And in this case, without saying “I apologize,” Austin implicitly excuses himself for not being able to deal with the subject he announced: “The subject of this paper, Excuses, is one not to be treated, but only to be introduced, within such limits.”42 That said, he wonders what the subject of his “paper” is. And he specifies that although he uses the word “Excuses” in the title, there is no need to be rigid about this noun, or the associated verb. For a time he used the word “extenuation,” but now considers that the word “excuse” is the most central and most comprehensive one in this field, although he also includes others, just as important, like “plea” (excuse, claim, argument for the defense that pleads — ­“to make a plea for mercy”), “defense,” “justification.” But Austin 41. [Translator’s note:] Coup is a literal or figurative “blow,” and un coup de pied is “a kick.” 42. J. L. Austin, “A Plea for Excuses,” in Philosophical Papers, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 175 [Écrits philosophiques, 136]. Further references will appear in parentheses in text. During the session, Derrida translates the quote then adds: “so he begins by excusing himself for not dealing with the precise subject.” See Derrida, “As If It Were Possible, ‘Within Such Limits,’ ” trans. Rachel Bowlby in Bowlby, ed., Paper Machine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 73–­9 9 [Papier Machine, 283–­319].

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doesn’t speak of forgiveness and of “asking for forgiveness,” no doubt for the reasons I spoke of at the beginning. With what is called a “plea,” “plea for excuses,” it is always a case of making an argument to excuse oneself by justifying oneself in the face of an accusation, the accusation of having done something “bad, wrong, inept, unwelcome . . . untoward” (176/137). So here is “the Last Word” (183/145) as it appears with capitals, the Last Word in this text that also speaks of the machine and of a “complicated internal machinery” (179/141).43 Austin explains why excuse is an “admirable topic” (183/145), namely, that one can treat of it by appealing solely to ordinary language, and speak, in relation to it, of all sorts of banal things that do not have the dignity of grand philosophical themes (like clumsiness, absence of mind, inconsiderateness and even spontaneity) without appealing to Plato, Aristotle, or Kant. One may discuss “deliberation without for once remembering Aristotle or self-­control without Plato.” It is enough to pay attention to ordinary language. Notwithstanding a certain more or less feigned naïveté, which consists in thinking that it is sufficient to address ordinary language in order to dispense with remembering Plato, Aristotle, or Kant (as if they, for their part, abandoned the milieu of ordinary language), it is interesting to see Austin here recall — ­an Austin who was anything but naive — ­that these questions of the performative (and within them those of excuse) could have no other field of experience than that of traces and inscriptions (I prefer using those terms rather than “language” so as not to exclude either nonverbal language or nonhuman and so-­called animal life) the events of which are constituted by nonformalizable displacements of bodies, events that, taking certain philosophical precautions, one could call both “textual” and “material.” Simply put, once one turns deliberately toward this instance — ­which Austin here calls “ordinary language” (182/145),44 and which I would be tempted to extend to every trace — ­the difficulties are only just beginning. Among all those difficulties, Austin selects two, concerning which, he says, “the study of excuses may help to encourage us” (183/145). One concerns the objection or classic obstacle of “Loose (or Divergent or Alternative) Usage” (183/145). Not everybody uses ordinary language in the same way, or in a strict or rigorous way (it must be recognized that the difficulty is substantial, and in Austin’s way of sublating it [dont Austin 43. Here, and in most of the shorter quotations that follow, Derrida quotes Austin in English, then adds his own translation. 44. [Translator’s note:] Words in English in typescript.

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la relève] as a “snag” [183/145], a slight obstacle, a hitch [ gêne], an inconvenience; certain nationalists — ­I am not among them — ­would be tempted to see a typically English euphemism employed by Oxford tutors discussing these questions with their students over a cup of tea). The other snag is “the crux of the Last Word,” the cross of the Last Word: “Do we all say the same, and only the same, things in the same situations? Don’t usages differ? And, Why should what we all ordinarily say be the only or the best or final way of putting it? Why should it even be true?” (183/145) (Translate and comment, especially on “the best or final way.” “Crux” is going to become “bogey” [184/147, 186/149], scarecrow, devil.) The development, and so the response that follows, which I’ll let you read (pp. 183–­86) [if I have time, I’ll read one of those pages (p. 185)], is undertaken in two parts, with two conclusions. On the one hand, if ordinary language is not the last word, it is the first word (which, as I see it, merely reconstitutes, at least in the form of a witticism, a certain disavowed foundationalism or transcendentalism). The page that begins by re-­posing the question of the last word, the “crux of the Last Word” (“Then, for the Last Word” [capitals]) (185/147) ends like this: “Certainly, then, ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word” (185/148). Following “word,” Austin adds a very droll footnote, finely tuned and very typical: “And forget, for once and for a while, that other curious question ‘Is it true?’ May we?” (185n2/ 148n6) (Comment on each word, in particular “for once and for a while” and “may we?”) On the other hand, on the following page (p. 186), having shown how fertile the field of excuse is for difficult cases for debate — ­and for law and psychology — ­Austin concludes: “We have, then, ample material for practice in learning to handle the bogey [scarecrow, demon, bête noire] of the Last Word [capitals], however it should be handled” (186/148–­49). (If time, read pp. 185–­86) Then, for the Last Word. Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better than the metaphysics of the Stone Age, namely, as was said, the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men. But then, that acumen has been concentrated primarily upon the practical business of life. If a distinction works well for practical purposes in ordinary life (no mean feat, for even ordinary life is full of hard cases), then there is sure to be something in it, it will not mark nothing: yet this is likely enough to be not the best

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way of arranging things if our interests are more extensive or intellectual than the ordinary. And again, that experience has been derived only from the sources available to ordinary men throughout most of civilised history: it has not been fed from the resources of the microscope and its successors. And it must be added too, that superstition and error and fantasy of all kinds do become incorporated in ordinary language and even sometimes stand up to the survival test (only, when they do, why should we not detect it?). Certainly, then, ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word. (185–­86/149–­50)

tenth session

March 25, 1998

(Read text on “ribbon” during the Revolution)1 “A man orders the former princess to bend her knee, to beg forgiveness of the nation. . . . Two executioners seized her by the hands, stretching them out sideways, ready to dislocate them, in order to make her kneel. Then she felt redoubled blows of the saber.” . . . The king and queen are called to greet this face that, according to a persistent and revelatory legend, a barber had “washed, curled and rouged” on the way. The courtesan’s final toilette returns many times in the September stories, an anecdote completely fab1. Before beginning the session, Derrida adds this introduction: “By way of a transition and to recall what we were saying about Marion’s ribbon, I noted that few people, and de Man in particular, were interested in its sensible materiality, its color, etc., de Man insisting on the fact that it was a free signifier and forgetting to mark how it was “already old.” In that context, and for other reasons also, I recommend to you the book by Antoine de Baecque — ­who is also director of the Cahiers du cinéma — ­Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths under the French Revolution, a book about death and corpses under the Reign of Terror, and you’ll there come across this, among other things, in the chapter dedicated to the Princesse de Lamballe — ­you know who that is and her relations with Marie ­Antoinette — ­at the moment when she is put to death, how she is going to be guillotined, how she was taken to be the queen’s slave, a sex slave in particular. You know everything that was said about those sexual relations. See Antoine de Baecque, La gloire et l’effroi. Sept morts sous la Terreur (Paris: Éditions Grasset, 1997), 77–­106. De Baecque’s French sources are as follows: Anonymous, La Juste Vengeance du peuple. Détail exact. La tête de la ci-­devant princesse de Lamballe promenée et son corps traîné par les rues, no publication details; Nicolas Edme Rétif de la Bretonne, “XIe nuit,” in Vingt nuits à Paris (Paris: n.p., 1794); Adolphe de Lescure, La Princesse de Lamballe. Marie-­ Thérèse-­Louise de Savoie-­Carignan. Sa Vie, sa mort (1749–­1792) (Paris: Hachette Livre–­ BnF, 2012); Anonymous, Fureurs utérines de Marie-­Antoinette, femme de Louis XVI, no publication details; Charles-­Joseph Mayer, Vie de Marie-­Antoinette d’Autriche, reine de France, femme de Louis XVI, roi des Français, no publication details; Les Bordels de Lesbos ou le Génie de Sapho (St. Petersburg: n.p., 1790).

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ricated by three self-­proclaimed witnesses — ­Blanzy, Rétif de la Bretonne, and a historian who has remained anonymous. The first asserts that the daughter of a wig maker in the Rue des Ballets had the head carried to her father’s shop so that “it could be curled, made up with vermilion, a tricolor ribbon placed in her hair,” a head that the people “want to be beautiful for her friend, who cries behind the somber walls of the Temple, to contemplate.” . . . My legs weakened. I fainted. When I came to myself, I saw the bleeding head. I was told that they had had it washed at a wig maker’s, curled, made up, put on the end of a lance to present it to the Temple. . . . Little by little, the descriptions become more precise, bolder, explicitly designating this antimasculine sexual plot. “The court was not slow in joining the fashion / Each woman was at once tribade and trollop / They no longer made children, that seemed too easy / The prick was replaced by a lascivious finger,” writes the author of the Fureurs utérines de Marie-­ Antoinette [Uterine furies of Marie Antoinette], to which the author of the Vie de Marie-­Antoinette d’Autriche [Life of Marie Antoinette of Austria] responds, describing a pleasure party between the queen and her favorite: “The Princess Lamballe, with her right hand, burrowed into the bush of Venus, which was often moistened with a sweet serous fluid. Her left hand adroitly and rhythmically slapped one of the royal buttocks. She draws from her pockets a kind of dildo, which she applies to that part which gives our pleasures. A large ribbon was attached to it; it passed with grace over the contour of her breasts. Madame Tourzel made a distinct rosette in the small of her back. The bright crimson of this ribbon contrasted wonderfully with the whiteness of her skin.” The queen, in the lewd imagination of these pamphlets, exhausts men without loving them, and her only true passion is “lesbian vice”: “If one day men abandoned us,” she confides to Lamballe in Les Bordels de Lesbos ou le Génie de Sapho [The Brothels of Lesbos; or, The Genius of Sappho], “we would not have to complain since we know how to replace them.”2

As if . . .3 Not it was as if, but I was as if. How can one say “I was as if . . . ?” For example: “I was as if I had committed an act of incest” (Rousseau, Confessions, 165/197). As if . . . Not it was as if, but I was as if. “I” happens,

2. Antoine de Baecque, Glory and Terror: Seven Deaths Under the French Revolution, trans. Charlotte Mandel (London: Routledge, 2001), 78–­79/100, 82–­83/104–­5. 3. In the typescript these words follow immediately after the mention “(Read text on ‘ribbon’ during the Revolution”). What follows is repeated, with some modifications, in “Typewriter Ribbon” (Without Alibi, 128–­6 0) [Papier Machine, 105–­47].

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as the other used to say,4 where there it was, there where the neutral, impersonal “it,” the “ce,” the “ça,” ought to have been; or to have remained what it will have been. This is a sentence — ­“I was as if I had committed an act of incest” — ­that I quoted long ago, more than thirty years ago. I inscribed it as epigraph to the whole second part of Of Grammatology devoted to Rousseau.5 Signed Rousseau, then, it comes from the Confessions, Book V, p. 197. Rousseau writes it in a passage that I invite you to reread for yourselves and by yourselves, in memory of what we have said up to this point about the scene of excuse and forgiveness between stepfather and son and between mother and son, notably in a famous play — ­and by Freud himself, to give depth to the Oedipal thing — ­namely, Hamlet. In Book V of the Confessions, around that famous and scabrous sexual initiation by Mamma, you might see, among other things, around “I was as if I had committed an act of incest,” that the same paragraph begins: “Dreaded rather than being looked forward to, the day came at last. I have promised everything and I did not lie.” Further on, in the same paragraph: “No, I tasted pleasure. I do not know what invincible sadness poisoned its charm. I was as if I had committed an act of incest” (165/197). Following which, at the end of the paragraph, he notes that Mamma knew no remorse. I’ll quote: “Since she was hardly sensual and had not at all sought sensual pleasure, she did not have its delights, and never had remorse about it” (165/197). She didn’t come, so no harm done, no remorse for her. Not only did she know no remorse, but she had, like God, the virtue of mercy [miséricorde], forgiving without even thinking that there was some merit in forgiving. For, concerning Mamma, then, who had no remorse for this quasi-­incest, Rousseau undertakes to justify her in every regard, to excuse her down to her very existence with all the eloquence he is known for, given that you know and Rousseau knew even 4. Allusion to Freud’s famous aphorism (“Wo Es war, soll Ich werden [where id was, there ego shall be]”) at the conclusion of Lecture 31 of the New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-­Analysis (Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 22, ed. and trans. James Strachey [London: Hogarth Press, 1964], 79; Gesammelte Werke, vol. 15 [London: Imago Publishing, 1991], 86). Lacan translates the sentence as “Là où était ça, le je doit être.” See Jacques Lacan, “La chose freudienne ou Sens du retour à Freud en psychanalyse,” Écrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 426 [“The Freudian Thing, or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis,” Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink in collaboration with Héloise Fink and Russell Grigg (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2002), 347)]. 5. Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 95 [De la grammatologie (Paris: Minuit, 1967), 143].

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better than us how many lovers the woman he calls Mamma had had; yet he writes, as if speaking of himself: “I repeat it: all her faults came to her from her errors, never from her passions. She was wellborn, her heart was pure . . .” (165/197) etc., etc. You can read, further along, on p. 199, it’s still as if he were speaking of himself: “She abhorred duplicity, lying; she was just, equitable, humane, disinterested, faithful to her word, to her friends, to her duties that she recognized as such, incapable of vengeance and of hatred, and it did not even occur to her that there could be the slightest merit in pardoning” (167/199). So she forgave graciously, without effort, without forcing herself. She was mercy and forgiveness itself. Next sentence, however: “In sum, to return to what was least excusable in her, although she did not esteem her favors for what they were worth, she never made a low transaction of them; she lavished them but she did not sell them; even though she was ceaselessly reduced to expedients in order to live, I dare say that if Socrates could esteem Aspasia, he would have respected Mme de Warens” (167/199). So she forgave infinitely, like God, and she may be excused for her faults, which is what Rousseau sets about doing. You’ll read all that, beginning, earlier, with the occurrences of the word “forgive,” “first enjoyment [ jouissance],” that of this quasi-­incest, and this oath: “I can swear that never did I love her more tenderly than when I desired to possess her so little” (164/196). So there you have an epigraph, in memory of an epigraph, more than thirty years old. So then — ­and here now is another epigraph, here and now, that reaches back not thirty years or two centuries ago but to this week. You no doubt shared my disturbing amazement if you discovered, as I did, reading the news, that they have just brought to light, exhumed and decoded, in Picardy, this week, a prodigious archive.6 In rich layers of fauna and flora (sometimes unable to be identified) were found, protected in amber, some animal or other, some insect or other for example (that’s not something new), but the intact corpse of this or that insect surprised by death, in an instant, by a geological or geothermal catastrophe, at the moment when it was sucking the blood of another insect, some fifty-­four million years before humans appeared on earth. Once upon a time, an insect died, its corpse is still visible and intact, the corpse of someone who died, was surprised by 6. See Hervé Morin, “Des insectes prisonniers de l’ambre depuis plus de 100 millions d’années,” Le Monde, March 18, 1998: https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article /1999/09/30/des-­i nsectes-­p risonniers-­d e-­l -­a mbre-­d epuis-­p lus-­d e-­1 00-­m illions-­d -­annees_3570060_1819218.html.

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death in the instant when it was sucking the blood of another! But it would suffice that it be but two hours before the appearance of anyone at all, of any living being or other, of anyone who would be capable of referring to this archive as such, that is, to the archive of a singular event at which this indeterminate living being will not have been, itself, present, yesterday, an hour ago — ­or fifty-­four million years before the appearance of humans on earth. It is one thing to know things, stones or other similar things, that can be dated to this time when nothing human or even living signaled its presence on earth; it is another thing to relate to, to refer to a singular event, to what took place one time, one time only, in a nonrepeatable instant, like this animal surprised by catastrophe at the moment, at some stigmatic instant, the unique stigmē in which it was in the process of taking its pleasure sucking the blood of another animal, just as it could have taken it in some other way for that matter. There is also a report of two gnats, immobilized in the same honey-­colored amber, in the process of making love: fifty-­four million years before humans appeared on earth, a jouissance took place whose archive we preserve. We have there, set down, recorded in a support, protected by the body of an amber coffin, the trace, which is itself corporeal, of an event that took place one time only and that, as semelfactive event, is not reducible to the permanence of elements from the same epoch that have also endured through time all the way down to us, for example amber in general. There are many things on earth that have been there since fifty-­four million years prior to humans, things that we can identify or analyze, but rarely in the form of the archive of a singular event and, what is more, of an event that happened to some living being, affecting a kind of living that is organized, already endowed with a kind of memory, with project, need, desire, pleasure, jouissance, and capacity to retain traces. I don’t know why I am telling you this. Perhaps because this discovery is itself an event, an event on the subject of another event that is thus archived, or because what we are in the process of questioning is also the relation between, on the one hand, impassive but fragile matter, the material depository, the support, the subjectile, the document, and, on the other, singularity, semelfactivity, the “one time only” of the event thus recorded, confided in this way — ­without any guarantee other than the aleatory — ­incalculably, to some matter, here amber. And then, perhaps one begins to think — ­to know, and to know how to think, to know how to think knowledge — ­only by taking the measure of this scale: for example, fifty-­four million years before humans appeared on earth. Or yesterday, when I wasn’t there, when an “I” and above all an “I” saying “I, a man” was not there — ­or when I will no longer be there.

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On this scale, what becomes of our interest for archives that are as human, recent, micrological, but just as fragile as confessions or reveries, as cases of “sorry” or requested forgiveness in a history of literature that, even on the very small scale of human history, is barely newborn come down in the last shower, being only a few centuries young or old, namely, a few fractions of a second in the history of life, the earth, and the rest? Reread now the two beginnings of the Confessions (we’ll come back to the duplicity of these two beginnings soon, that of the first word and the before-­ the-­first word). Well, these two beginnings both begin by saying that what is beginning there begins for the first and last time in the history of humanity. No true archive of man in his truth before the Confessions. Unique event, without precedent and without sequel, event that is its own archivation: “Here is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly according to nature and in all its truth, that exists and that will probably ever exist” (3/3). That is found in the preamble, which has a strange status that I will talk about in a moment. On the following page of text, with the opening of Book I and therefore with what one may call the first word of the Confessions, Rousseau repeats more or less the same thing: “I am forming an undertaking which has no precedent, and the execution of which will have no imitator whatsoever. I wish to show my fellows a man in all the truth of nature; and this man will be myself ” (5/5). As if, after fifty-­four million years, one were witnessing in nature, and according to nature, the first painting or archive of man worthy of that name and in all his truth: the birth if not of man, at least of the exhibition of the natural truth of man. I was saying just now that I didn’t know why I was telling you these stories of archives: archives of a vampire insect, and archives as Confessions. But yes, I think I remember now, even though it was first of all unconscious and came back to me only after the fact. It is because I will shortly talk to you about erasure and mutilation of texts, about falsification of the letter, about prosthesis, etc. Now — ­and here you’ll have to believe me because I am telling you the truth, as always — ­when I quoted Rousseau, in Of Grammatology in 1967, and wrote, as epigraph for the whole section, almost the whole book, that I devoted to Rousseau, “I was as if I had committed an act of incest,”7 well, the first proofs of the book came back to me with a typographical error that I was tempted not to correct. The printer in fact 7. Derrida’s typescript has “I was as if I had committed incest [ J’étais comme si j’avais commis l’inceste]” rather than Rousseau’s J’étais comme si j’avais commis un inceste. [Translator’s note:] Here and below, Rousseau’s French spelling in this sentence has been modernized.

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had written: “I was as if I had committed an act of insect.” Perhaps the typo was meant to protect from incest, but to protect whom or what? A perfect anagram (inceste/insecte) that, in order to respect the grammatical machine, I had to resolve to rectify and to normalize, in order to come back from insect to incest, retracing the whole path, the fifty-­four million years that lead from the blood-­sucking insect to the first man of the Confessions, an Oedipal man as first man (Hegel) or as last man (Nietzsche),8 Oedipus dictating there the first, here the last word of man. End of the second epigraph. We are seeking in this way to advance in the research undertaken from the beginning of the seminar concerning what, in pardon, excuse, or perjury, comes to pass, is done, happens, comes about and, so, what, as event, requires in a certain way not only an operation, an act, a performance, a praxis, but a work [oeuvre], that is to say, both the result and the trace left by a supposed operation, a work that survives its supposed operation and operator, and which, by surviving, being destined to that sur-­vival, to that excess over present life, implies from the outset the structure of that sur-­vival, that is, what cuts the work from the operation, this cut assuring it a sort of independence or archival autonomy that is quasi-­machine-­like [quasi-­machinale] (I don’t say “machinal” but “quasi-­machinal”), assuring it a power of repetition, repeatability, iterability, serial and prosthetic substitution of self for self. The cut I speak of is less brought about by the machine (although the machine can in fact cut and repeat the cut in turn) than it is the condition of production of a machine. The machine is as much cut as cutting with regard to the living present of life or of the living body; it is an effect of cutting as much as a cause of cutting. And that is one of the difficulties in handling this concept of machine, which always, by definition, structurally resembles a causa sui. In any case, leaving that difficulty as is, I recall that what keeps us moving, in this seminar, is the hypothesis that forgiveness and excuse are pos­ sible, are called upon to go into effect, only where a work, where this relative, quasi-­machine-­like survival of the work or of the archive as work, takes

8. See Friedrich Nietzsche, “Fragment 19 [131],” in Unpublished Writings from the Period of Unfashionable Observations, trans. Richard T. Gray (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 43 [Das Philosophenbuch: Theoretische Studien / Le livre du philosophe. Études théoriques (Paris: Aubier-­Flammarion, 1969), 98–­101]; and Derrida’s discussion in Life Death, trans. Pascale-­Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 52–­55 [La vie la mort (Paris: Seuil, 2012), 79–­8 9].

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place, institutes and constitutes an event, and as it were takes on board forgiveness or excuse. When I say that the work institutes and constitutes an event, I am merely registering in a confused way some very obscure or ambiguous thing. A work is an event, there is no work without a singular event, without textual event, if one can agree to enlarge this notion beyond its verbal or discursive limits. But is the work the trace of an event, the name of the trace of the event that will have instituted it as work? Or is it the institution of this very event? I would be tempted to respond, and not only in order to cloud the issue: both at the same time. And every surviving work retains the trace of this ambiguity; it keeps the memory of the present that instituted it but, in this present, there was already, if not the project, at least the essential possibility of this cut — ­of this cut with a view to leaving a trace, of this cut whose intention is survival, or even of this cut that assures survival itself even if there is no intention to survive. This cut (both a wounding and an opening, the chance of breathing), was as it were already there at work; it structured the originary living present of that institution, as if the machine, the quasi-­machine were already operating, even before being produced in the world — ­if I can put it that way — ­in the vivid experience of the living present. That is already a terrifying aporia (but why terrifying and for whom? This question shouldn’t let go of us; I’ll come back to it very soon). It is a terrifying aporia, I was saying, because this necessity or fatality automatically engenders a situation in which forgiveness and excuse (I am keeping the two words together for the moment, I’ll explain that very shortly) are both automatic (they cannot not take place, independently as it were of the presumed living “subjects” that they are supposed to involve), and therefore null and void, because they are in contradiction with what we, as inheritors of these values, either Abrahamic or not, think about forgiveness and excuse; because automatic and mechanical cases of forgiveness or excuse cannot have the value of forgiveness and excuse. Or, if you prefer, one of the formidable effects of this machine-­like automaticity would be to reduce every scene of forgiveness not only to a process of excuse but to the automatic and null efficacy of an a priori “I apologize,” I exculpate myself and justify myself before or after the fact, with an a posteriori that is a priori programmed [d’un a posteriori a priori programmé], and in which, moreover, the “I” itself would be the “I” of anyone at all, according to the law of “deceit” or “theft” that we have talked about, usurpation of the singular I by the universal I, ineluctable substitution and subterfuge that make all

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“justice” “unjust.” A case of forgiveness or excuse that is mechanical, machinic, automatic is destroyed without delay, and loses its sense, or even its memory, still more radically than the recorded tapes of Mission Impossible9 that catch fire and self-­destruct automatically, canceling themselves as archive after being heard a single time. Why did I say that this self-­destructive, automatic neutralization, which both produces and is produced by the scene of forgiveness or the apologetic scene, is terrifying, or that its effects are fearsome? I could have used different words, more or less grave. In any case, it would be a matter of naming an affect, and a negative affect, the affect of a threat, but the affect of a threat at the heart of the promise. Yes, at the heart of promise, because what threatens is also what makes possible expectation or promise (for example, of forgiveness or an excuse that I could not even desire, expect, or anticipate without that cut, that survival, that beyond-­the-­living-­present). In the very place where automaticity is effective and exculpates “me” a priori, it threatens me, therefore. In the very place where it reassures me, I can feel it as a threat. Why? Because it cuts me off from my own initiative, from my own origin or originary life, so from the present of my life, but also from the authenticity of forgiveness and of excuse, from their very meaning, and finally from the eventness — ­of both the fault and its avowal, or of forgiveness or excuse. As a result, and by reason of this quasi-­automaticity or quasi-­machinality of the sur-­viving work, one has the impression that one is no more dealing with anything other than quasi-­events, quasi-­faults, quasi-­excuses, or quasi-­forgiveness. And before any other possible suffering or any other possible passion, there is the wound, at once infinite and unfelt, anesthetized, of this neutralization by the “as if ” (with which I began today), by the “as if ” of this quasi-­, by the limitless risk of becoming simulacrum or becoming virtuality without consistency — ­of everything. Is it necessary and is it possible to give an account of this wound, of this trauma, that is to say of the desire, of the living movement, of the proper body, etc., given that the desire in question is not only injured or threatened with injury by the machine, but produced by the very possibility of the machine, of machinic expropriation? Giving an account becomes impossible in that its

9. American television series created in 1966 by Bruce Geller, with a significant following until 1973, giving rise to a film by Brian de Palma in 1996. Each episode began in the same way: secret agents received their instructions by means of a tape recording that immediately destroyed itself, allowing the mission to be disavowed by the authorities who ordered it in the case of failure.

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condition of possibility is its condition of impossibility. (Develop in view of the virtual, and the virtualizing machine.)10 One of our many and immense difficulties, then, would be to reconcile, on the one hand, a thinking of the event (real, undeniable, inscribed, singular, of an always essentially traumatic type, even when it is a happy event: an event is always traumatic inasmuch as its singularity interrupts an order and, like every decision worthy of the name, rends the normal fabric of temporality or history), to reconcile, then, on the one hand, a thinking of the event that I proposed to remove — ­despite the apparent paradox — ­from an ontology or metaphysics of presence (so, to think an event that is undeniable but without pure presence), and, on the other hand, a certain concept of machinality (implying at least the following predicates: a certain materiality, which is not necessarily bodiliness [corporéité]; technicity; programming; repetition or iterability; cutting off or independence from any living subject, whether psychological, sociological, transcendental, or even human, etc.). How to think together, in two words, the event and the machine, the event with the machine, this event with this machine? Here I am simply repeating, as if machinically, the question that I asked three weeks ago at the end of the session before last: “As a last word for today, how can one think together the machine and the event, a machinal repetition and what occurs?”11 It is within the perspective of that repetitive series of questions that, you remember, we began to read de Man, more precisely what de Man wrote one day, what he inscribed one day, apparently concerning an “excuse me” of Rousseau’s — ­which was perhaps only an “excuse me” of de Man’s, just as we read an “excuse me” of Austin’s at the moment he was getting ready to talk about the excuse in general and excused himself for not doing so, apparently contenting himself with excusing himself. I purposely say an “excuse me” of Rousseau’s because I would like to show how de Man aims — ­rather than at excuse or forgiveness in general, or even in the end at some generality in general — ­at this “excuse me,” of this Rousseau, even though, with the example or the index of this “excuse me,” he is appealing to what he himself says — ­we’ll come to this — ­he “call[s] 10. During the session, Derrida adds: “A formula I have often used and that would need to be developed, or meditated on here, by reelaborating the thinking of the possible. That is basically the basis [c’est au fond ce qui est au fond] of all these seminars, isn’t it? How to think the impossible possible otherwise within our tradition? And how to think the virtual differently from how it has been thought in the tradition. The virtualizing machine. We are concerned here with virtualizing machines. 11. See 253 above.

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text” (“What we call text,” [Allegories, 270/323] he will have written, a phrase that is followed by a definition of the text in general that places the word “definition” in quotation marks). Not that there is no general thematics or problematics in play in this text, these very rich texts; there is, and much of it, but at the point of the reference, what is at stake, in my opinion, is the singularity of a certain “excuse me” by Rousseau that is moreover double, according to the at once ordinary and rather ambiguous French grammar of that verb (s’excuser), which appears at least twice in Rousseau, in strategic places, in the same paragraph of the Confessions concerning the theft of the ribbon. The two occurrences are the object of de Man’s very active attention and interpretation. Before recalling them, I emphasize once again that s’excuser — ­and this is one of the reasons its usage is sometimes deemed improper in French culture — ­can mean either to “offer apologies,” or to exculpate oneself in advance, to wash one’s hands of the avowed fault, and which, in truth, since it was not a fault, didn’t even have to be avowed, still less excused or forgiven, all of this thereby becoming, as event itself, simulacrum or pretense, fiction or scene of quasi-­excuse. And that is obviously the machinality of this s’excuser, which will draw in like a magnet the whole field of de Man’s analysis. Here are those two occurrences (you remember that they fall within the space of three sentences, in the same paragraph that concludes Book II of the Confessions and the episode of the ribbon). You will straightway note that — ­in a manner somewhat analogous to Austin’s both naive and perverse scene in “A Plea for Excuses,” where he seems to excuse himself in advance for not being able to deal with the declared subject, namely the “excuse” — ­Rousseau begins, in a passage that does not appear to interest de Man, by excusing himself for having not even succeeded in excusing himself, in whitewashing his own crime. As if, at bottom, one had always to excuse oneself for failing to excuse oneself. But once one excuses oneself for that, for failing, one may judge oneself, as one says in French, to be fully excused [tout excusé] in advance, or forever convicted [condamné], irremediably, irreparably. And it’s the madness of that machine that will interest us. (A) First occurrence of the s’excuser, then: Rousseau writes this in the final § of Book II: I have proceeded straight to the point in the confession I just made, and it will surely not be found that I have palliated the foulness of my heinous crime [so, I surely haven’t convinced you, which is my fault, that my fault was non-­existent or minor. I have failed, and I’m at fault, but — ­for there is

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a “but” and it’s this “but” that will interest us — ­but, Rousseau will immediately go on to explain to us, I think I have to explain to you, in justifying myself, why I thought I had to, that is to say excuse myself, excuse myself for excusing myself for excusing myself ]. But I would not fulfill the goal of this book if I did not expose my internal inclinations at the same time, and if I feared to excuse myself in what agrees with the truth. (Confessions, 72/86)12

This is a sentence that De Man quotes in the original French and in translation, but by indulging therefore in a very surprising operation, which is precisely pointed out by his French translator, and for which I can find neither the justification nor the necessity. He adds a word to the text in brackets, an expletive ne. An expletive ne, as you know, is a pleonastic ne, which one may inscribe or not in a sentence. For example — ­and this example, which is given in all the dictionaries, is all the more interesting in that it uses a verb found in Rousseau’s sentence, changed or augmented by de Man with a useless, utilized expletive prosthesis — ­I may say il craint que je sois trop jeune [he is afraid that I am too young] or, equally correct and with the same meaning, il craint que je ne sois trop jeune. Those two sentences are exactly equivalent in French. Now, what does de Man do here, curiously? Where Rousseau writes: Mais je ne remplirois pas le but de ce livre si je n’exposois en même tems mes dispositions intérieures, et que je craignisse de m’excuser en ce qui est conforme à la vérité ” (which is perfectly clear for a French ear and means “if I feared to excuse myself,” etc.), de Man adds a ne in brackets in his quotation of the French — ­which is nothing serious and may always be done, pleonastically, without changing the meaning, all the more so because the brackets sign and signal clearly de Man’s intervention. But what he also does, and this troubles me and seems to me more serious, to the extent that it risks inducing or translating a misinterpretation in the mind of readers or in de Man’s own mind, is that he then translates, so to speak, this expletive ne into English without brackets, into a “not” that is no longer at all expletive. That gives (p. 280 in the English, 335 in French): “But I would not fulfill the purpose of this book if I did not reveal my inner sentiments as well, and if I did not fear” [here, de Man neither underlines nor brackets the second “not” that he adds even before quoting the French in parentheses, admitting only to the fact of having himself italicized excuser in French 12. Quoted in De Man, Allegories, 280/335. De Man’s French translator, Thomas Tresize, points to de Man’s addition of the expletive ne before craignisse. During the session, Derrida repeats the correct sentence from Rousseau several times and writes it on the blackboard.

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and “excuse” in English] to excuse myself by means of what conforms to the truth” (280/335). I do not know how to interpret this confusion, which risks making the text say exactly the opposite of what its grammar, its grammatical machine says, namely that Rousseau does not fear, and does not want to fear, does not want to have to fear excusing himself. He would not fulfill the aim of his book if he did not reveal his inner feelings and if he feared excusing himself with what conforms to the truth. So the correct translation would be the exact opposite of that proposed by de Man: “But I would not fulfill the purpose of this book if I did not reveal my inner sentiments as well, and if I did fear [or “if I feared” and not as de Man says, “if I did not fear”] to excuse myself by means of what conforms to the truth.” Naturally, de Man might claim — ­and this is perhaps what he has in mind when he then comments at length on this motive of fear — ­that Rousseau says “he does not fear” or “he doesn’t have to fear” because in truth he does fear, and all of this is disavowal by means of an expletive ruse. Let’s leave that, but since it has been, and will often be, a question of what happens [arrive] to texts, injuring them, mutilating them, adding prostheses to them (de Man himself speaks of “prosthesis,” p. 353 [296/353]), I point out this little thing, just as I pointed out last time de Man’s omission of the two little words déjà vieux in relation to the ribbon. As if, to take up again the example from the dictionary that I quoted just now, de Man feared lest the ribbon were not (or were) already old, or that he feared on the contrary lest it were or were not “too young.” Some preliminary remarks on this first occurrence of “excusing myself.” On the one hand, the imperative to which Rousseau here seems to submit everything in order to justify the gesture that consists in excusing himself, in not fearing to excuse himself, even if he does not succeed in doing so in a convincing way, is, more than truth itself, more than truth in itself, his commitment before the truth, more precisely his sworn commitment to write this book in this or that manner, to sign it in conformity to a promise, not to betray through perjury the promise made at the beginning of the Confessions, in any case at the beginning of Book I of the Confessions, which is not — ­I’ll come to this straightaway — ­the absolute beginning of the work. (13I’ll recall only a few lines and refer you to read this whole first page of Book I, a page that is at once canonical and extraordinary, whose first version was much longer, but it is an immense little page that would call for several seminars devoted to it alone, as well as to the reactions that it has 13. This parenthesis does not close in the typescript.

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incited (cf. notes to the Pléiade edition)14 and where the scene of the oath not to betray, of the performative commitment not to perjure or abjure seems to me more important than the theoretical or constative dimension of a truth to be revealed or known. I emphasize this point in order to mark once again that the criterion by which de Man distinguishes confession from excuse, as well as an epistemic moment from an apologetic moment, seems to me problematic; in any case, the moment said to be epistemic, that of knowledge, truth, or revelation, already depends, from the first line of the book, on a performative promise: the promise to tell the truth, including the truth of the faults and indignities that will be in question immediately thereafter, the indignities of someone who declares, “If I am worth no more at least I am different,” and adds that he does not know “whether nature has done well or ill in breaking the mold in which it cast me” (5/5), that is, whether it has left his example without possible imitation or reproduction. He does not know, but as for the reader, he or she will judge: 1. I am forming an undertaking which has no precedent, and the execution of which will have no imitator whatsoever. I wish to show my fellows a man in all the truth of nature; and this man will be myself. 2. Myself alone. . . . 3. Let the trumpet of the last judgment sound when it will; I shall come with this book in my hands to present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I shall say loudly, “Behold what I have done, what I have thought, what I have been. . . .” (5/5)

This commitment in the future, toward the future, this promise, sworn oath (at the risk of perjury and so promising never to commit perjury), is made in an exemplary way; it wants to be, he declares itself to be at once singular, unique, and exemplary (in a manner analogous to what Augustine did with a more explicitly Christian gesture; and Rousseau also addresses God, he invokes God, like Augustine he addresses him with the familiar tu, and he addresses his fellows only through God as intermediary, only as brothers, which is to say, sons of God: the scene remains fundamentally Christian). This commitment to the future, I was saying, this promise, this sworn oath (at the risk of perjury and so promising never to commit perjury), is made in an exemplary way, that is to say, for myself alone (moi seul, and Rousseau insists both on his solitude and on his isolation, forever, without example, without precedent and without sequel, without imitator): at the 14. See Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959), 1231n2.

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same time for myself alone, therefore, and also for all others yet to come, for, as “without example,” it aims, as always, to be exemplary and therefore repeatable; for Rousseau will not be long in calling others, in a defiant tone and a call to imitation, to compassion, to community, to sharing what cannot be shared, as if he were calling on them not only to judge whether nature did well in breaking the mold in which it cast him, but also to see to it that this mold be not forever broken; and this appeal to others and to the future belongs to the same time, to the same moment as “myself alone,” “the only portrait . . . that exists and that will probably ever exist” (3, Derrida’s emphasis) (this “probably” says everything that is aleatory, nonprobable, improbable space or time, so space or time delivered over to uncertainty or to the wager, the virtual or incalculable space or time of the absolute perhaps in which the contradiction between the without-­example and the exemplary will be able to insinuate itself, slip in, and survive, not surmounting itself but surviving and enduring as such, without solution but without immediately disappearing):15 Eternal Being, assemble around me the countless host of my fellows: Let them listen to my confessions, let them shudder at my unworthiness, let them blush at my woes. [So everyone should be ashamed and confess with him, for him, provided that he is read and understood]. Let each of them in his turn uncover his heart at the foot of Thy throne with the same sincerity [what counts, then, is not the objective truth, referred to the outside, but veracity referred within, to an interior disposition, to the adequation between what I say and what I think, even if what I think is false]; and then let a single one say to Thee, if he dares: “I was better than that man” [a frequent formulation in Rousseau; see the Pléiade edition note on this].16 (5/5)

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Since I am quoting this opening as performative act of sworn oath, as pledge, promise not to commit perjury rather than as experience of a cognitive or epistemic type, I’ll take advantage of it (because later this will be of great importance for what I would like to say) to recall that this opening is only a quasi-­opening in the final version of the work. It is preceded by another short page, shorter and without title, something like a foreword that, in and of itself, would also call for an infinite analysis, but about which I’ll have to be content to note one or two things. What is this before-­the-­first word of the Confessions doing, being found only in what is known as the Geneva manuscript, in different handwriting from that of the Confessions 15. We close here the parenthesis opened six lines above. 16. See Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, 1232–­33n6.

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(“larger” and “loose[r]”17 say the Pléiade editors in a note that I invite you to read since it concerns the material body of the archive or textual events that count for us here)? This before-­the-­first word announces, locates, or anticipates the first words of the Confessions, to be sure (one reads there, in fact, from the very first words: “Here is the only portrait of a man, painted exactly according to nature and in all its truth, that exists and that will probably ever exist” [3/3]). But that little sentence, which is almost the same, which has the same sense as the first § of Book I, on the next page, lo and behold is here followed by something else entirely, namely, an entreaty, to whoever might be in a position to do so, not to destroy this document, this archive, this subjectile, the support of this confession — ­literally “this notebook.” This time, then, we have something that precedes and conditions the confession itself, and even the in principle infinite oath that itself assures the performative condition of the truth. What precedes and conditions the performative condition of the Confessions is another performative oath or rather another performative appeal that entreats [conjurer] the others to take an oath, but this time regarding a body, a “notebook,” this “notebook,” this body in a single authentic copy [exemplaire], a copy capable of being reproduced, but above all reducible to a single original and authentic copy, without other example or copy, this body of paper, a destructible, erasable, vulnerable paper body, one exposed to accident, mutilation, falsification, or vengeance. Rousseau is going to entreat (conjurer is his word, for as I was saying just now, it is still an appeal, another performative, another recourse to swearing on oath, in the name of “my misfortunes,” “by my misfortunes,” Rousseau says, but also “in the name of the whole human species”), he is going to entreat men unknown to him, men of the present and of the future, not to annihilate his work. This “notebook,” which he confides to future generations, is at once “unique” and, in that it is an original archive, it is the “only accurate monument” (Confessions, 3/3, Derrida’s emphasis). This document, this notebook is a “monument” (to warn and recall in the form of a thing exposed in the world, a thing that is at the same time natural and artifactual, stone or other substance). I’ll read here what comes just after the first sentence, which is almost equivalent to the first § of the Confessions: Whoever you may be whom my destiny or my trust has made the arbiter of the fate of this notebook [I underline: this notebook here, deictic that won’t function unless the notebook in question hasn’t been destroyed,18 17. Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, 1230n1. 18. During the session, Derrida adds: “Because if one destroys the notebook, one destroys the deixis. He says ‘safeguard this notebook,’ but of course you will be able to

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already destroyed], I entreat you by my misfortunes, by your innermost emotions [entrailles] [there would have to be an analysis of this series of things in the name of which he swears and guarantees this act of swearing [ jurer] and entreating [conjurer]: he adjures, he swears by calling upon others to swear with him, he entreats them19 — ­but we don’t have time], and in the name of the whole human species [there, the guarantor in whose name Rousseau swears, entreats, adjures, appeals not to abjure, is almost [quasiment] infinite: following “my misfortunes” and “your entrails” it is the whole of the “human species,” past, present, and to come] not to destroy a unique and useful work which can serve as the first piece of comparison for the study of men, a study which certainly has not yet begun [so, although unique and concerning myself alone it is exemplary for the study of humans in general, a study to come of which this document will be the instituting arch-­archive, like the first man captured in absolute amber], and not to take away from the honor of my memory the only accurate monument [I underline “only” because if this monumental document is exposed, it is because it is single and irreplaceable] to my character that has not been disfigured by my enemies. (3/3)

It must be remarked here, before continuing this quotation, that this page was published only in 1850, but based on a copy of the so-­called Moultou manuscript transcribed by Du Peyrou in 1780. It belongs without a doubt, in its inspiration, to so many other analogous and well-­known things Rousseau wrote after Emile, when he began to fear that Emile had fallen into the hands of the Jesuits who would have sought to mutilate it; and what is hastily termed his persecution complex was fixated, as you know and as many texts attest, on the fate of the manuscripts or original copies, the fate of the authentic arch-­archive as it were (Rousseau, Judge of Jean-­Jacques: Dialogues, 1772, “Histoire du précédent écrit,” 1776 [concerning this I refer you to the remarkable chapters that Peggy Kamuf devotes to Rousseau, to this Rousseau, in her book Signatures (Galilée, 1991)]).20

hear the order to safeguard this notebook only if you safeguard it! If you destroy it there will no longer be any deixis. What is the archive of a deixis?” 19. During the session, Derrida adds: “He entreats them in the name of ‘my misfortunes,’ and that is what will guarantee the oath, or else in the name of your entrailles, which is to say your heart, yes? — ­we have commented on the words entrailles, miséricorde, the whole semantics of the heart and the entrails.” See 138–40 above. 20. See Peggy Kamuf, Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988 [Signatures ou L’institution de l’auteur, trans. Claudette Sartiliot (Paris: Galilée, 1991)].

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The end of this page, of this adjuration, like the “sooner or later” that we have already analyzed, like the trading on the future that he sets up, also makes explicit reference to the time when none of those who is called upon to swear, adjure, entreat in this way will still be alive: “Finally, even if you yourself might be one of these implacable enemies, cease to be so towards my ashes, and do not sustain your cruel injustice up to the time when neither you nor I will be alive any longer” (Confessions, 3/3). The logic of the argument that follows consists in calling on those others to save this notebook, to commit not to destroy it, not only for the future, but so that they may render to themselves, in the present, at least current testimony to their goodness and their generosity, more precisely testimony to having known not to take revenge — ­so, to have known how to substitute a movement of understanding, compassion, reconciliation, justice, or even forgiveness for a logic of retaliation and vengeance. Although everything is still to be decided for the future, in the future, when neither you nor I will still be there, starting from today you can draw benefit, realize a profit, a gain in the present from the current anticipation of this future perfect; namely, to be able, starting now, to look yourself in the eye, love and honor yourself, from this moment on, for what you will have done tomorrow for the future. That is the present chance offered to you starting today, if you read me and understand me, if you watch over this manuscript, this “notebook”: to be able to honor yourself, love yourself, render to yourself testimony to your having been good “at least once.” This chance that is offered is also a wager, a logic and economy of the wager: by wagering on the future, for the future of this notebook, you will win every throw, since you draw an immediate benefit, that of bearing witness in your own eyes to your goodness, that of thereby having a good image of yourself immediately, without waiting, and of enjoying it no matter what happens in the future. (Logic and economy whose import could not be exaggerated for all our calculations and our whole relation to time, to the future and to survival, to the work [l’oeuvre] and to the work of time. [Develop?])21 Rousseau throws this out to them: here, at least once, is the chance I offer you and entreat you to seize on; for once you won’t have been guilty, you will be able to forgive yourselves, or better, at least for once you won’t even have had to ask for forgiveness virtually, or forgive yourselves for doing wrong, for having been — ­these are Rousseau’s words — ­“harmful and vindictive.” I’ll emphasize, then, the 21. During the session, Derrida adds: “That is to say the immediate profit that one can obtain from calculating on the future. It’s a pure phantasm, naturally, but it’s the wager that engages this phantasm or a phantasm that engages the wager.”

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temporal modes and “at least once” in this ending of the before-­the-­first word: “. . . up to the time when neither you nor I will be alive any longer; so that at least once you might nobly bear witness to yourself of having been generous and good when you could have been harmful and vindictive: If indeed evil intended for a man who [that’s me] has never done . . . any, can bear the name of vengeance” (3/3). [Comment.]22 I note in passing (but I could have devoted an abyssal or endless development to this strange phenomenon of archivation) that the document of this before-­the-­first word, this little page, that belongs then to the so-­called Geneva manuscript, has undergone an archival treatment that merits our attention. On the one hand, it is found on a sheet that was “cut” (that’s the word23 used by the Pléiade editors of the Confessions: “the sheet has been imperfectly cut about halfway up” they say);24 on the other hand, right on the same sheet, one can see “traces” (once again, this is25 the editors’ word) of a dozen additional lines that have been erased, but that remain as traces of the erasure, and so remain, but as illegible traces (“The page must have had another dozen lines whose traces can be seen, but the sheet has been imperfectly cut about halfway up”). Which indeed confirms the vulnerability, the erasability of the document, of an archive as precarious as it is artificial, and precisely in the very place where the signatory puts on guard, appeals, entreats, warns against the risk of whatever might come along, as he says, “to destroy [this] work” (Confessions, 3/3).26 Even if it is he who erased these twelve additional lines and cut the sheet, that demonstrates a priori that he was right to be concerned: the archival document is vulnerable, transformable, alterable, even destructible or falsifiable. Its integrity and authenticity are, in its very body, in its proper and unique body, threatened in advance. Imagine now, following those twists and turns, those after-­the-­fact events, those recompositions, this little document introducing itself as the “only ac22. During the session, Derrida comments: “He’s rubbing it in there, isn’t he: ‘you will be able to forgive yourselves for not having taken revenge and moreover you don’t have to take revenge for anything since I didn’t deserve it. . . . In the end, if you were thinking you could take revenge at least you will be able — ­by not doing so, by declining to — ­to have a good image of yourselves, at all times.” 23. The typescript has “these are the words.” 24. Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1, 1230n1. 25. The typescript has “these are.” 26. During the session, Derrida adds: “It’s because he knows that the work is falsifiable, that it can be cut, that it can be erased, that it can be entirely destroyed, that it can be recomposed, etc. One doesn’t know whether a computer diskette would have worsened or resolved the problem.”

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curate monument,” which might not have been there, here it is now at the head of the Confessions, before the exordium and the self-­presentation in the form of the exemplary promise addressed both to you, “Eternal Being,” and to all of you, “the host of my fellows.” “I entreat you . . . not to destroy” this “notebook” is not only a before-­the-­first word; it is a performative eve of the first performative, an arch-­performative before the performative, the performative that concerns the support and archive of the performative of the confession. And it therefore concerns the very body of the event, the archival auto-­deictic body that will have to record all the textual events engendered as and by the Confessions; the Reveries; Rousseau, Judge of Jean-­ Jacques, and other writings in the same vein. The arch-­performative, and so the arch-­event of this sequence adjures one to save the body of the inscriptions, a “notebook” without which the revelation of the truth itself, however unconditional, truthful, sincere it be in its promised manifestation, would have no chance of coming about and would be in its turn compromised. Perhaps we have here, I am content to note in passing (but this would deserve long and careful analyses), a historical difference between the two Confessions that were those of Augustine and Rousseau, whatever Christian filiation they share, no doubt, but each in its own way. Why is it so difficult to imagine this archival protocol at the beginning of Augustine’s Confessions? That is a question that would mobilize, and require that we articulate between them, many problematics of different styles. (B)27 Perhaps you remember that we were in the process of re-­citing the two occurrences of Rousseau’s s’excuser in the same final § of Book II of the Confessions. The second occurrence of “I excused myself” follows several lines after the first. Having said: I have proceeded straight to the point in the confession I just made, and it will surely not be found that I have palliated the foulness of my heinous crime. But I would not fulfill the goal of this book if I did not expose my internal inclinations at the same time, and if I feared to excuse myself in what agrees with the truth. (72/86, Derrida’s emphasis)

He continues: Never has wickedness been farther from me than in that cruel moment, and when I accused that unfortunate girl, it is bizarre but true that my friendship for her was the cause. She was present to my thought, I excused myself on the first object that offered itself. I accused her of having done

27. Derrida’s typescript has “A”; cf. 294 above.

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what I wanted to do and of having given me the ribbon because my intention was to give it to her. (72/86, Derrida’s emphasis)

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Despite the proximity in the text, and the semantic or grammatical analogy, this second occurrence of s’excuser refers to a totally different object or a totally different time from the first occurrence (“if I feared to excuse myself”). The first occurrence is second in time, since it is a matter of excusing oneself by writing the Confessions. The second occurrence refers to an earlier time: what Rousseau did, that day, by accusing Marion. In other words, Rousseau does not want to fear to excuse himself in the Confessions by recounting how and why he already excused himself, so many years earlier, at the moment of the theft of the ribbon. Without forcing things too much, one could perhaps say that the first s’excuser (the first event in the order of the text of the Confessions, within the time or sequence of the Confessions) is a first “excusing oneself ” on the subject of the second “excusing oneself,” even though this second “excusing oneself” was first in reality [dans le réel], as we say; it was an earlier event in time. Rousseau first of all excused himself by means of the first object that offered itself, and he must now, and in the future, without fear, excuse himself on the subject of that past excuse. He won’t have to fear excusing himself on the subject of a fault that consisted in excusing himself by lying. And for that matter he has just recognized that he risks being less convincing with excuse no. 2 than with excuse no. 1. (Comment?)28 Having arrived at this point in my recap, and in the time left to me, I would like to submit to you a few hypotheses, that is to say, two or three interpretations whose performative temerity or imprudence I take responsibility for. Although de Man does not treat of this couple of excuses, this excuse on the subject of an excuse, in the way that I, for my part, am in the process of doing here, I will take the risk of asserting — ­attempting thereafter to demonstrate it (which I am not sure of completely succeeding in doing today) — ­that his whole interpretation stands between these two times, which are also two events and two regimes of “excusing oneself.” Moreover, he says at a given moment, having just begun the second phase of his reading, which interests him most:

28. During the session, Derrida adds: “In excuse no. 1, he convinced because he was believed. He says ‘that worked.’ And it worked so well that he has been feeling guilty all his life and, on the contrary, in excuse no. 2 in the Confessions, he has just said ‘that didn’t convince you,’ ‘in the end it didn’t work very well.’ ”

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We have, of course, omitted from the reading the other sentence in which the verb “excuser” is explicitly being used, again in a somewhat unusual construction; the oddity of “que je craignisse de m’excuser” is repeated in the even more unusual locution: “Je m’excusai sur le premier objet qui s’offrit” (“I excused myself upon the first thing that offered itself” (1, p. 86) as one would say “je me vengeai” or “je m’acharnai sur le premier objet qui s’offrit.” (De Man, Allegories, 288/344)29

(Read what follows, pp. 344–­45, Eng., p. 288 O.) The sentence is inserted, it is true, within a context that may seem to confirm the coherence of the causal chain: “. . . it is bizarre but it is true that my friendship for her was the cause of my accusation. She was present to my mind, I excused myself on the first thing that offered itself. I accused her of having done what I wanted to do and of having given me the ribbon because it was my intention to give it to her . . .” (1, p. 86). Because Rousseau desires Marion, she haunts his mind and her name is pronounced almost unconsciously, as if it were a slip, a segment of the discourse of the other. But the use of a vocabulary of contingency (“le premier objet qui s’offrit”) within an argument of causality is arresting and disruptive. (288/345, Derrida’s emphasis)30

This disarticulatable articulation of allusions to contingency, to the “almost unconsciously,” not only to the discourse of the other, but to the “segment of the discourse of the other,” to the discourse of the other as fragmented discourse, therefore mutilated, half-­erased, redistributed, deconstructed, and disseminated as if by a machine, the disarticulated articulation of allusions in this passage is relayed, in the whole text, by a very large number of occurrences of analogous motifs: the machine, the arbitrary, mutilation, prosthesis, etc. I do not find Rousseau’s constructions as “strange” as de Man twice says they are (reread) (I have explained why on the subject of the expletive misguidedly added by de Man in French and transmuted in advance into a pure and simple negation in English. As for sur le premier objet qui s’offrit, the sense is very clear in French (“by reaching for the first pretext at hand”), even if de Man is right to say that this may in fact make one think of je me vengeai or je m’acharnai sur le premier objet — ­yes, or similarly, I would say, 29. [Translator’s note:] These two common expressions, which use the same construction as je m’excusai sur, mean “I took my revenge on,” “I took it out on the first thing that presented itself.” The Rousseau quote is from Confessions, 72/86: Kelly has “I excused myself on the first object that offered itself.” 30. [Translator’s note:] Rousseau quote from Confessions, 72/86.

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one might think of “I rushed after the first object that offered itself,” “I threw myself at the first object that offered itself ”). I would have liked to reread with you, step by step, the whole of de Man’s text, at each of its stages, but we don’t have time, and you can do it without me, whether or not you follow the directions that I have proposed over these last three sessions. I will have to be content, in order to conclude provisionally, I was saying, with several hypotheses or interpretations. The first is that everything that de Man analyzes concerning Rousseau’s text, as concerning “the first object that offered itself,” is, as many of his formulations clearly say, involved in taking Rousseau’s text (on s’excuser, from the Confessions to the Reveries) as an exemplary text, that is to say both singular and capable — ­according to the very machine that is described here — ­of being valid for every text, as de Man was saying in the preceding chapter on the Social Contract, for what “we call text,” a performative formulation that is assumed as such, and I want to reread it. “We call text” comes, I remind you, just after this passage, which we have already read, where it is a question of “theft,” of stealing “from the text the very meaning to which, according to this text, we are not entitled.”31 (Reread and comment on pp. 323–­2 4, Eng. pp. 269–­70) (I, 2): We call text [in italics, then] any entity that can be considered from such a double perspective: as a generative, open-­ended, non-­referential grammatical system and as a figural system closed off by a transcendental signification that subverts the grammatical code to which the text owes its existence. The “definition” [in quotes, then] of the text also states the impossibility of its existence and prefigures the allegorical narratives of this impossibility. The preceding passage makes clear that the incompatibility between the elaboration of the law and its application (or justice) can only be bridged by an act of deceit. “S’approprier en secret ce mot chacun” is to steal from the text the very meaning to which, according to this text, we are not entitled, the particular I which destroys its generality; hence the deceitful, covert gesture “en secret,” in the foolish hope that the theft will go unnoticed. Justice is unjust. . . . The divergence between grammar and referential meaning is what we call the figural dimension of language. (269–­70/323–­2 4)

I commented on and interpreted these words “We call text” (“text” in italics) and these quotation marks around “definition” in Mémoires — ­Pour

31. During the session, Derrida adds: “Which means that the significance of the theft, the usurpation, is already located in the text on the Social Contract before returning in the text on the ribbon.”

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Paul de Man, around p. 138.32 If that holds, if what is said here of what we “call” text (“definition” in quotation marks) holds for every text, exemplarily and metonymically (I say “metonymically,” in any case not metaphorically, for de Man is explaining here the displacement of metaphor, including the metaphor of the text, especially of the text as body, among other things — ­I’ll come to that straightaway), then it holds for de Man’s text, which includes itself, by itself, in what he “calls” and “defines” thus. In other words, and I don’t think de Man would have rejected this consequence, de Man’s text can and must also be read as a politico-­autobiographical, performative, machinal text, both confessional and apologetic, with all the traits that he himself, in an exemplary way, trains on this object that offers itself and that is named for example Rousseau (even if there were, for de Man as for Rousseau, other objects on other stages, one will wonder why Rousseau consented to, and reinforced such a privilege for, the story of the ribbon in the genesis of the Confessions, and why de Man pursues, or even persecutes, him, hounds him, and why in this trace). One could take many examples that would show without the least doubt that Rousseau’s text, however singular it be, serves here as exemplary index. Exemplary index of what? Of the text in general, or more rigorously (and this makes a difference that counts here) of — ­quoting — ­“what we call text,” as de Man says playing with the italics and with the “definition” in quotation marks that he gives by putting the word “definition” in quotation marks, literal artifices that mark at the same time: (1) that de Man assumes the performative and decisional character of the responsibility he takes in this appellation and this “definition”; (2) that one must be attentive to every detail of the letter, the literality of the letter defining here the place of what de Man will call materiality. The literality of the letter situates in fact that materiality not so much because it would be a physical or sensible (aesthetic) substance, or even matter, but because it is the place of prosaic resistance (cf. “Phenomenality and Materiality in Kant” in Aesthetic Ideology, where de Man concludes with the words “prosaic materiality of the letter”)33 to any organic and aesthetic totalization, to any organic form. The materiality in question — ­and one must gauge the importance of this irony or paradox — ­is not a thing, it is not something sensible or intelligible; it is not even the matter of a body; as it isn’t some thing, as it is nothing but it works [cela oeuvre], this nothing therefore operates, it 32. Derrida’s typescript has Mémoires sur Paul de Man rather than Mémoires — ­Pour Paul de Man. See Memoires for Paul de Man, 143ff. [Mémoires, 138ff.]. 33. De Man, Aesthetic Ideology, 90.

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forces, as a force of resistance, as much against fine form as against matter as substantial and organic totality. That is one of the reasons why de Man never, it seems to me, says “matter” but “materiality.” And by assuming the risk of this formula, although de Man does not do so himself, I would say that it is a materiality without matter, which moreover allies itself very well with a formality without form (in the sense of beautiful synthetic and totalizing form) and without formalism. In his thinking of materiality, it seems to me, de Man is no more materialist than he is formalist. To be sure, he happens to use these two words to accentuate and accompany a Kantian movement, an original reading of Kant (at the end of “Kant’s Materialism,” he speaks of an “absolute, radical formalism”) and he adds, taking all possible precautions regarding this performative of nomination and appellation, he writes: “To parody Kant’s stylistic procedure of dictionary definition: the radical formalism that animates aesthetic judgment in the dynamics of the sublime is what is called materialism.”34 (Comment on “what is called” and the materialist interpretation of the “sublime,” etc.)35 But he doesn’t himself assume, it seems to me, a philosophical or metaphysical position that one might complacently call materialism. And this force of resistance without material substance derives from the dissociative, dismembering, fracturing, disarticulating, and even disseminal power that de Man attributes to the letter.36 To a letter whose dissociative and inorganic, disorganizing, disarticu34. De Man, Aesthetic Ideology, 128. In “Typewriter Ribbon,” Derrida italicizes “what is called” (cf. Without Alibi, 151). 35. During the session, Derrida adds, “ ‘materialist’ in quotes, the chapter on the sublime in Kant.” 36. In the typescript Derrida adds the note “Quote here Aesthetic Ideology, pp. 88–­ 89 M.” During the session, he adds: “For example, in Aesthetic Ideology he writes this, I won’t translate, everyone understands English here: ‘We must, in short, consider our limbs, hands, toes, breasts, or what Montaigne so cheerfully referred to as “Monsieur ma partie,” in themselves, severed from the organic unity of the body, the way the poets look at the oceans severed from their geographical place on earth. We must, in other words, disarticulate, mutilate the body in a way that is much closer to Kleist than to Winckelmann.’ A little further on it is a question of ‘the material disarticulation not only of nature but of the body,’ or again, ‘To the dismemberment of the body corresponds a dismemberment of language, as meaning-­producing tropes are replaced by the fragmentation of sentences and propositions into discrete words, or the fragmentation of words into syllables or finally letters. In Kleist’s text, one would isolate the dissemina­ tion of the word Fall,’ etc., etc. I already spoke of that last time, it’s not worth my insisting.” See de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, 88, 89. See 269–70 above. [Translator’s note:] In the event, Derrida quotes the first passage in English, with his own glosses, and the second passage in his translation.

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lating force affects not only nature but the body proper — ­as organic and organized totality. From that point of view, even though the word “matter” is not pronounced, or even yet the word “materiality,” concerning which I just said that it designates a materiality without matter or material substance, this thinking of the materiality of the letter already silently marks the chapter of Allegories of Reading that we are in the process of reading and that — ­I’ll come back to this in a moment — ­attributes a determinant role to dismemberment, mutilation, disfigurations, etc., as well as to the contingency of literal signifiers. The textual event is inseparable from this formal materiality of the letter. I indeed say formal materiality or literality because what one might call in quotation marks or italics “materialism” — ­it would be better to say the renown [renommée], the renomination of materiality by de Man — ­requires an extreme and radical reckoning with formality. You heard it at the end of the text on “Kant’s Materialism.” Now, valid for everything that de Man calls text, this becomes just as pertinent for his text itself, this text of his, which then becomes a case of what he is talking about and does not itself fail to present itself thus, more or less ironically. I’ll give just one example, and I choose it because it says something about the values of machine, mechanicity, and formality toward which I will then turn, having left to germinate [en plant], that is to say, as a construction site endlessly open, the project not only of showing the politico-­performative autobiographicity of this text of de Man’s, but also of reapplying to it in a quasi-­machine-­like way everything that he himself writes on one of the first objects that offered itself, namely this text or these texts of Rousseau — ­and of some others. For if the confession of the Confessions — ­even if one distinguishes it, as a moment of truth, from the apologetic gesture of the Reveries — ­cannot be a text of pure knowledge, it includes an irresistible performativity. The latter precedes, overflows, and so exceeds its structure of knowledge; well then, similarly, the performativity of de Man’s does not — ­no more than does any other text — ­constitute it as an operation of pure knowledge. Here then is the exemplary passage, I mean exemplary in itself, but also because, concerning Rousseau’s text, its object is clearly the text and language in general, in its law, a law that is itself without individual reference (remember what we were saying about that in relation to political law and its grammar — ­a notion of grammar that has to be understood in de Man on the basis of his reference to the trivium and quadrivium [cf. Warminski, to be developed],37 but also as machine of the letter): 37. Cf. Andrzej Warminski, “Introduction: Allegories of Reference,” in de Man, Aesthetic Ideology, 1–­33. During the session, Derrida adds: “You’ll find, in Warminski’s

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The machine is like [I would be tempted to insist heavily, perhaps beyond what de Man would himself have wanted, on this word “like,” which marks an analogy, the “like” of a resemblance or “as if,” rather than “as”] the grammar of the text when it is isolated from its rhetoric, the merely formal element without which no text can be generated. (Allegories, 294/351, Derrida’s emphasis) 399

De Man doesn’t say that the machine is a grammar of the text or that the grammar of the text is a machine, but that one is like the other inasmuch as the grammar of the text is isolated from its rhetoric (whether that be performative rhetoric or cognitive rhetoric, the rhetoric of tropes, two rhetorics that de Man distinguishes as such, p. 357 [300/357]). The machine is thought on the basis of grammar and vice versa. Isolated from its rhetoric, as suspension of reference, grammar is purely formal. This is valid in general: no text can be produced without this formal, grammatical, or machinal element. No text and no language, for De Man immediately adds, speaking of language after speaking of text, and here that amounts to the same thing: There can be no use of language which is not, within a certain perspective, thus radically formal, i.e. mechanical, no matter how deeply this aspect may be concealed by aesthetic, formalistic delusions. The machine not only generates, but also suppresses, and not always in an innocent or balanced way. (294/351)

We see here, in this simple passage already (but dare I say already without teleological illusion?), the insistence on the formal, on formality, in truth on grammatical or machinal formality, in opposition to aesthetic, but also formalist illusions in the philosophy of art or the theory of literature. That is a gesture and a strategy that de Man deploys in a systematic way in Aesthetic Ideology. My only ambition, to conclude today, would be, on the basis of this text from Allegories of Reading, to sketch out as it were a deduction, in the quasi-­ philosophical sense, of the concept of materiality (without matter) that is not present here in that name, but all of whose traits I believe can be recognized, a concept that will occupy in that name a properly thematic place in the texts gathered under the title Aesthetic Ideology.

‘Introduction’ to this book, what needs to be said about this notion of the trivium and quadrivium in de Man. The word ‘grammar’ . . . well, according to Warminski, this text would be ruled by a reference to the trivium and to the quadrivium. If that interests you, I’ll let you go and take a look.”

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De Man’s concept of materiality is not a philosophical concept, the metaphysical concept of matter; it is, it seems to me, an artifactual figure that I will not dissociate from the performative signature I spoke of a moment ago. It is a sort of invention by de Man, one could say, almost a fiction produced in the movement of a strategy that is both theoretical and autobiographical and that calls for lengthy analyses. To say it is a fiction (in de Man’s sense) does not mean that it is without theoretical value or philosophical effect, or that it is totally arbitrary, but that the choice of the word “materiality” to designate “that” is in part arbitrary, in part necessary with regard to an entire historical field (the history of philosophy and, for example, of the diverse possibilities of philosophies of matter, the history of literary theory, political history, etc.), the field within which de Man calculates his strategy and places his bets. In order to attempt this deduction on the basis of this text, I will take into account (much too quickly) the different predicates (so many predicaments, de Man might say — ­he liked that word a lot), the different predicating traits that inseparably and irreducibly constitute this concept of materiality. Without having yet been named, this concept of materiality plays a decisive role (I repeat: this concept of materiality and not of matter; but I don’t say that in a facile way, and I leave intact the problem of the choice of this essentializing word “materiality,” inasmuch as it should exclude, in its interpretation, any semantic implication of matter, of substratum or instance called “matter,” and all reference to some content named matter, as a result running the risk of signifying only “matter effect” without matter). This concept of materiality determines the concept of textual event that, I remind you, is named as such at least twice, twice associated with what de Man, for his part, calls in his own way, but literally, and often in this text, “deconstruction” and “dissemination.” I will propose several points of view, several sectioned motifs that are ultimately indissociable within what is at bottom one and the same perspective, one and the same performative strategy. (1) First of all, the inscription of the textual event — ­and this will later be one of the traits of the materiality of matter — ­is a machinal deconstruction of the body proper. Matter is not body, at least not the body proper as organic totality. This machinal deconstruction is also a deconstruction of metaphor, of the totalizing metaphorical model, through a dissociative metonymic structure (a gesture that, I suggested two weeks ago, has some affinity with a certain Lacanianism allied with a certain Deleuzianism).38 The preceding essay, on the Social Contract (“Promises”), called for, and I 38. See 257–58 above.

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quote, “the deconstruction of the metaphorical model” in a context where “the attribute of naturalness shifts from the metaphorical totality to the metonymic aggregate” (p. 312) (Allegories, 259/312). This movement continues, is developed, becomes more precise in the essay on the Confessions. In the context of an analysis of the “Fourth Promenade” that I can’t reconstitute here (p. 354), de Man writes for example: But precisely because, in all these instances, the metaphor for the text is still the metaphor of text as body (from which a more or less vital part, including the head, is being severed), the threat [I underline this word] remains sheltered behind its metaphoricity. . . . Only when Rousseau no longer confronts Tasso’s or Montesquieu’s but his own text, the Confessions, does the metaphor of text as body make way for the more directly threatening alternative of the text as machine.” (297/354, Derrida’s emphasis)

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(39I underline “threatening” once again: from the preceding text to this one, one passes not only from promise to excuse, as two performatives, but also from promise to threat (fear in the face of a cruel menace), a threat about which I have tried to show elsewhere that,40 far from being irreducibly opposed to the promise as common sense and the theoreticians of speech acts would have it (a promise can in fact seem able to promise only good, one doesn’t promise something threatening),41 well, the threat, the threatening possibility is, as I see it, qua possibility, a possibility that is constitutive of every promise (that’s another story, cf. “Advances”). On the following page (p. 355), de Man raises the stakes by adding to the same threatening machination of the body proper and of its metaphor, the “loss of the illusion of meaning.” (Read p. 355 M, Eng., p. 298: from “but in what way” to “illusion of meaning.”) But in what way are these narratives threatening? As instances of Rousseau’s generosity they are, as we already pointed out, more inept than convincing. They seem to exist primarily for the sake of the mutilations they describe. 39. This parenthesis does not close in the typescript. 40. During the session, Derrida adds: “In a preface to a book by Margel, called “Advances.” See Derrida, Advances, trans. Philippe Lynes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). [Translator’s note:] Derrida’s preface and Margel’s text are published as separate volumes in English: cf. “Avances,” in Serge Margel, Le Tombeau du dieu artisan (Paris: Minuit, 1995); Margel, The Tomb of the Artisan God: On Plato’s Timaeus, trans. Philippe Lynes (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019). 41. During the session, Derrida adds: “Speech act theorists say: ‘one doesn’t ever promise something bad, one doesn’t promise to kill you, I threaten to kill you,’ you see, everything that one promises is good, that’s simple common sense.”

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But these actual, bodily mutilations seem, in their turn, to be there more for the sake of allowing the evocation of the machine that causes them than for their own shock value; Rousseau lingers complacently over the description of the machine that seduces him into dangerously close contact: “I looked at the metal rolls, my eyes were attracted by their polish. I was tempted to touch them with my fingers and I moved them with pleasure over the polished surface of the cylinder . . .” (1. p. 1036). In the general economy of the Rêverie, the machine displaces all other significations and becomes the raison d’être of the text. Its power of suggestion reaches far beyond its illustrative purpose, especially if one bears in mind the previous characterization of unmotivated fictional language as “machinal.” The underlying structural patterns of addition and suppression as well as the figural system of the text all converge towards it. Barely concealed by its peripheral function, the text here stages the textual machine of its own constitution and performance, its own textual allegory. The threatening element in these incidents then becomes more apparent. The text as body, with all its implications of substitutive tropes ultimately always retraceable to metaphor, is displaced by the text as machine and, in the process, it suffers the loss of the illusion of meaning. (298/355)42

This loss of the illusion of meaning is also sometimes, as passage from metaphor to metonymy, and as fiction, the loss of the illusion of reference: “In fiction thus conceived the ‘necessary link’ of the metaphor has been metonym­ ized beyond the point of catachresis, and the fiction becomes the disruption of the narrative’s referential illusion” (p. 348, Eng. p. 292.). (2) The concept and word “machine” (seemingly singled out in Rousseau’s text [quoted p. 350]): “It is certain that neither my judgment, nor my will dictated my reply, but that it was the automatic result [l’effet machinal] of my embarrassment”),43 they are found again, re-­elaborated, and redistributed everywhere (Kleist, Pascal), and already in the Social Contract [quoted p. 325] when Rousseau speaks of what there is “in the mechanism of the State” [dans les ressorts de l’Etat], namely an “equivalent of friction in machines”;44 this word-­concept “machine” is thus inseparable from motifs of

42. Derrida’s emphasis on “threatening”; Rousseau quote from Reveries, 38/1036. 43. Allegories, 294/350, Derrida’s emphasis; Rousseau quote from Reveries, 36/1034. [Translator’s note:] Butterworth et al. have “Thus it is certain that neither my judgment nor my will dictated my reply, but that it was the mechanical effect of my embarrassment.” 44. Quoted in Allegories, 272/325; cf. Rousseau, Collected Writings, vol. 4, 88 [Oeuvres complètes, vol. 3, 297].

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the suspension of reference, of repetition, of the threat of mutilation, etc., and from interpretation and de Man’s practice of deconstruction-­dissemination. (3) This deconstruction is the very process of de-­metaphorization, and also, by the same token, of machinal dis-­figuration. I have given many examples of that already; here is another that follows the passage that I have just read, but which will allow us to identify and deduce a third motif of this concept of materiality, namely a mechanical, machinal independence with regard to every subject, every subject of desire and every unconscious, so, de Man no doubt thinks, every psychology and every psychoanalysis as such (to be discussed: where then to situate the affect of desire and especially that of threat and of cruelty? Nondesire in desire,45 desubjectivation in and as the subject?). I am going to quote what follows in the same passage that makes all of that clear, but where once again threat comes into view, threatening it: 404

The deconstruction of the figural dimension is a process that takes place independently of any desire; as such it is not unconscious but mechanical, systematic in its performance but arbitrary [I emphasize that for a reason that I’ll emphasize in a moment] in its principle, like a grammar [“like” once more, “like a grammar” whose status can be as difficult to fix as Lacan’s “like a language”: “The unconscious is structured like a language”46 — ­as difficult and no doubt very close, even in implicitly protesting against psychology or against psychoanalysis as psychology, be it that of desire]. This threatens [my emphasis] the autobiographical subject not as the loss of something that once was present and that it once possessed, but as a radical estrangement between the meaning and the performance of any text” [my emphasis: comment, p. 355, Eng. p. 298].47

I’ll reread it: The deconstruction of the figural dimension is a process that takes place independently of any desire; as such it is not unconscious but mechanical, systematic in its performance but arbitrary [I emphasize that for a reason that I’ll emphasize in a moment] in its principle, like a grammar.

It is on the basis of this deconstruction independent of all desire that de Man goes beyond his first attempts at interpretation of the purloined ribbon 45. During the session, Derrida adds: “unless nondesire be implied in desire, that is my hypothesis.” 46. Jacques Lacan, “La science et la vérité” in Écrits, 868; “Science and Truth,” Écrits, 737. 47. Allegories, 298/355–­56. During the session, Derrida simply says: “I am giving you the page numbers, because I don’t have time to comment on this at any length.”

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(re­mem­ber: the logic of Rousseau’s desire for Marion, substitution between Rousseau and Marion, a ribbon that, as “pure signifier,” “devoid of meaning and function . . . circulate[s] symbolically” (283/339), “substituting for a desire which is itself a desire for substitution,” the two desires being both “governed by the same desire for specular symmetry” (284/340), etc.).48 It is because this logic of desire seems to him, if not without pertinence, at least unable to account for the textual event, that de Man wants to go further, and says, on two occasions, two pages apart: “This is not the only way, however, in which the text functions” (p. 340) (284/340) or “But the text offers further possibilities” (p. 342) (286/342). And it is then that he goes from the Confessions to the Reveries (from the excuse for what happened to the excuse for writing and for the pleasure taken in writing what happened, and for recounting the event, etc.). (4) Beyond this logic and this necessity of desire, materiality implies the effect of what is arbitrary. If we had time, we would have followed, throughout the text, the systematic recourse to this machinic value of the arbitrary (relayed by a series of equivalents, including notably the gratuitous, the contingent, the random), whether one is talking about “the gratuitous product of a textual grammar or a radical fiction” (p. 357) (299/357), the “random denunciation of Marion” (p. 356) (298/356), the “absolute randomness of language” (p. 356) (299/356), the “arbitrary power play of the signifier” (p. 353) (296/353), the “gratuitous improvisation, that of the implacable repetition of a preordained pattern. Like Kleist’s marionettes . . .” (p. 351) (294/351), the “anarchic fact of proximity” between the ribbon and Marion (p. 349) (293/349), the “excuse of randomness . . . in the Confessions” (p. 347) (291/347), the “total arbitrariness” of “the sound ‘Marion’ ” (p. 345) (289/345), the “vocabulary of contingency (‘le premier objet qui s’offrit’)” (p. 345) (288/345), etc. Although de Man does not say so, not in this way, I would for my part underline the fact that this insistence on the arbitrary, the random, the contingent, the unforeseeable is required each time that one wishes to think the event. An event that would not occur within the category of unforeseeable contingency, and that would be held necessary and thus programmed, foreseeable, etc., would that be an event? (No need to insist on that obvious line of thinking.) But above all, if it must be understood that de Man associates this feeling of arbitrariness with the experience of suffering in dismemberment, decapitation, or castration (the abundance of which he follows in Rousseau in this context; I refer you to many many examples that 48. See 268ff. above.

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I don’t have the time to come back to), what conclusions are to be drawn from that? There is the conclusion that de Man himself draws, namely that this suffering is in fact what happens and is lived, but “from the point of view of the subject” (“This more than warrants the anxiety with which Rousseau acknowledges the lethal quality of writing. Writing always includes the moment of dispossession in favor of the arbitrary power play of the signifier and from the point of view of the subject, this can only be experienced as a dismemberment, a beheading, or a castration.”) (p. 353) (296/353). And clearly de Man wishes to describe what it is in deconstruction-­ dissemination (which, remember, “is disseminated” as “textual event” and as anacoluthon “throughout the entire text” [300/357]) that operates independently of and beyond desire, “independently of any desire” (298/355).49 And for him the materiality of this event as textual event is what makes itself independent of any subject and any desire. That logic has something irrefutable about it. If, on the one hand, the event supposes surprise, contingency, or the arbitrary, as I was emphasizing a moment ago, it also supposes, on the other hand, this exteriority, or this irreducibility to desire. I will therefore say — ­and this will be the other consequence that I draw here without being able to develop it, and no doubt beyond what de Man himself says or would say about it — ­that as a result, because of this unforeseeability as exteriority that is irreducible to the subject of experience, an event, every event is traumatic. And trauma, understood in this sense, is what renders precarious the distinction between the point of view of the subject and what is produced independently of desire.50 An event is traumatic or it does not happen; it is traumatic, it is so for desire, even when desire does not desire what comes about.51 49. See 314–15 above. 50. During the session, Derrida adds: “In other words, what must be thought is what, in desire, is not desire or would be suspension of desire. In other words — ­and that’s where the dialogue with Lacan on one side and perhaps Deleuze on the other, remains to be pursued — ­desire is perhaps not reducible to the concept of desire that de Man applies here.” 51. Derrida adds to his typescript a handwritten sentence at the end of the paragraph: “What, in desire, resists desire and constitutes it on the basis of that resistance.” In the computer file of the seminar given at EHESS in 1997–­9 8, he also adds a sentence that does not appear in the typescript (for a seminar given at New York University in 2001): “What, in desire, constitutes it and insists on it while resisting it: from outside, irreducibly, as nondesire.” During the session, he adds: “It is necessary that desire not

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That is no doubt the stage upon which the questions of the unpardonable, of the inexcusable — ­and of perjury — ­arise. There, pardon me for having spoken too long. I’ll cut things off here, arbitrarily.52

desire what happens for the event to be an event, in a certain way, and that it therefore be produced independently of desire. De Man is right! He is right, but how can he be right, how can one agree that he is right and take into account that there is, all the same, desire, suffering, affect, mutilation, cruelty, menace, etc? So, we must take into account here what, in desire, resists desire, with that notion of resistance that is perhaps at the heart of this thinking of materiality, and constitutes desire on the basis of that resistance.” 52. In the computer file of the seminar given at EHESS in 1997–­9 8, the session in­ cludes a fragment on inscription and erasure in Paul de Man. That corresponds to two pages on the text-­machine found in the Eighth Session (see 250–51 above, from the quotation “Excuses generate the very guilt” to “in the very heart of avowal”).

a p p e n d i x , t e n t h s e s s i o n —­ restricted session

June 3, 1998

410

. . . and1 we are interested in everything going on in the world in relation to forgiveness, you must have noticed that this week —­ ­one example among others —­ ­Germany, the German state, officially asked forgiveness of . . .2 I don’t know of whom, but the victims of Guernica, for having bombed Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, under the conditions that you know of, that is to say, without any military objective. Nazi Germany, coming to the aid of Franco, bombarded this small city Guernica, under the atrocious conditions that you know about, without any military objective, and so massacred, as we say, innocent women and children. Well, here we are, in 1998, with the Federal Republic of Germany asking for forgiveness from the victims of Guernica. That’s very good, but it places us once more in front of the line defining what forgiveness requested by a state might something that was never seen in centuries past —­ ­ for mean today —­ ­ wrongs committed not only by previous generations but by a previous regime of the same country, a same nation, without their being involved in an official war with a part of the population of another country engaged in a civil war, etc., so, you see. I don’t know what that might mean, what the word “forgiveness” requested . Who? Moreover, who can respond? Who can respond to such a request, to such a request for forgiveness, 1. The restricted seminar session of June 3, 1998, began with a preamble of about ten minutes during which Derrida commented on recent news. On April 24, 1998, the German Parliament asked for forgiveness for the bombing, by the German Air Force, of the Spanish Basque city of Guernica, sixty-­one years earlier, on April 26, 1937. We are here transcribing that preamble because it marks a transition toward the question of the “scene” of political forgiveness that will concern Derrida throughout the second year of the “Perjury and Pardon” seminar. The beginning of the recording is missing. 2. [Translator’s note:] This and subsequent ellipses in typescript.

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and at the same time what are the motivations, the effects of such an event, which relates to a “who” today, and a “who,” the examples and occurrences of which are increasing considerably. We have picked up on a large number of them since the beginning of this seminar, since the beginning of the year, and it is continuing at a gallop. For human beings of a certain generation Guernica doesn’t mean a great deal. I am sure that if one were to ask people in the street, Europeans —­ ­I of course don’t speak of non-­Europeans —­ ­ Europeans of average culture and who are not of my age, for example: “What is Guernica? Where was it? What was it about?” I suppose that in the best hypothesis, most often, it is Picasso who would be the memory of that thing, that it is the work by Picasso entitled Guernica that, better than any other today, bears the memory of that outrageous matter.3 Outrageous among other reasons because I wonder why Guernica —­ ­an immense disaster among so many others —­ ­has remained part of a certain memory rather than so many other older, more contemporary or more recent things. In any case, the work by Picasso is at bottom the most steadfast, persevering, resistant witness of that thing. And in an analysis of what might be signified by the forgiveness requested by Germans of today, in the figure of their state —­ ­these are not Germans, individuals who are descendants of those who piloted the planes, etc., who are asking for forgiveness, it is the president of the German Federal Republic, it isn’t even the chancellor, I think, it’s the president of the German Federal Republic who is made spokesperson for this request for forgiveness,4 isn’t it —­ ­so, if one analyzes this event, this nonevent event , one would have to take into account, among other things, Picasso’s work called Guernica. There will be this scene of forgiveness requested that remains there like a nonresponse, the sign of possible nonresponse to this request for forgiveness. Who

3. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas, 349.3 cm × 776.6 cm. Commissioned by the Spanish Republican government for display in its pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exposition, the painting was held for forty years by the Museum of Modern Art in New York before being returned to Madrid, according to Picasso’s wishes, in 1981, following the death of Franco. Since 1992 it has been housed in the Reina-­Sofia Museum in Madrid. 4. See “Guernica: excuses allemandes,” Libération, April 25, 1998, 8, http://www.liber ation.fr/planete/1998/04/25/guernica-­excuses-­allemandes_233992. [Translator’s note:] In English, see “Germany Admits Guilt over Guernica,” New York Times, April 28, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/28/world/germany-­admits-­guilt-­over-­guernica .html.

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is going to grant it? Who is going to forgive or not? Who can receive this request for forgiveness? Well, the absence of a possible response before this attempt that is both in vain and a little . . . both decent and derisory —­ ­decent because it’s decent that today they asked for forgiveness, now, you know that, and it’s good, it means that they wouldn’t want it to ever happen again, that they commit to not letting it happen ever again, from that point of view, it’s very positive, but it’s not forgiveness is it —­ ­well, with respect to the eternal nonresponse to this eternally vain attempt to assume a responsibility that is unassumable by any living being today, Picasso’s work is, in its very silence, because Picasso is dead and the work is silent, Picasso’s work perhaps remains, like this or that poem —­ ­and there are poems about Guernica —­ ­the witness (at once imperturbable, implacable, and —­ ­how to put it —­ ­merciless) of what happened on that day, that night, in Guernica. It is enough to look at, it’s not about painting, by looking at Picasso’s painting one can take the measure of what such a request for forgiveness can signify or in its very insignificance. In any case, as this kind of phenomenon that is multiplying on the surface of the earth —­ ­because there are not only the cases of forgiveness requested on the European stage for what happened under Nazism, there is also apartheid in South Africa, but there is also Japan and its neighbors, etc., etc. —­ ­so there is globalization, as it is called, a globalization of this scene of forgiveness requested in vain that both inscribes in worldwide history the heritage of this idea of forgiveness whose origin we are hunting down here —­ ­and all of a sudden it’s the whole of humanity, it took some doing, that is beginning to tremble in order to inherit forgiveness, to inherit this thing called pardon —­ ­and, at the same time, naturally, in this desperate effort to inherit this unavoidable thing (we are trying to show here that one can’t forgive, are we not), on the surface of the whole earth the experience of forgiveness is becoming a more serious and more impressive experience than ever. I think that phenomena such as those, I point this out —­ ­in a certain way forgiveness brings with it many things, many many things, in particular, to name just this one, what politics, what the political can mean —­ ­since the novelty, the mutation is that forgiveness becomes a political thing, which it has never been, that is to say an affair of state, apparently, a phenomenon, no? These are states or representatives of states, chiefs of state, as such —­ ­that is to say representatives of the political in its excellence, par excellence, before being the state —­ ­who are involved in scenes of forgiveness and so in both this planetarization and this destruction at the same time of the meaning, this highlighting of the vanity of this thing, the abuse, because it is strictly speaking an abuse of the word

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“forgiveness.” What asks for forgiveness, the machine of state that asks for forgiveness is both something extremely decent that must be respected as such, but at the same time it is a scandalously frivolous abuse. For this president of the German Republic to ask forgiveness of the victims of Guernica represents both a gravity and an inconsequentiality that are both completely striking.5 That’s what is happening, and perhaps one of the reasons, among others, in the end one of the big reasons why I think that our thinking through forgiveness today has a sort of urgency, the fact of whether there is something to be thought, that’s what it is. What is happening with the political, what is happening with globalization [ globalisation]? Because globalization [mondialisation] is not only that of the market, as is often said, it isn’t only all the phenomena of globalization that can be registered everywhere by using and abusing this word; “globalization” is also this: all of a sudden, there is a general public show [comparution] of planetary human conscience in the face of wrongdoing —­ ­when the president of the Federal Republic of Germany asks forgiveness of Guernica, of course, he doesn’t do so in private, he does so before the world, he calls as witness humanity as a whole, that’s what is meant by a state gesture, a state forgiveness —­ ­so globalization is also that. There is henceforth —­ ­and this is the reason we began, at the beginning of the seminar, by reflecting on what is called a crime against humanity, which, as we were discussing just now, is the exemplary example of the thing, right? —­ ­there is henceforth a political culpability for crimes against political humanity that are owned up to as such, on the surface of the earth and before humanity as a whole, in its institution at a planetary level. And I think that with that we have something new. Unless I am mistaken there was no example before what is going on right now, within a sequence of events that, roughly speaking, goes back to the worldwide period after the Second World War [l’après-­Seconde-­Guerre mondiale], that is to say, the definition of crime against humanity, that juridico-­political sequence, before that sequence whose blooming we are seeing today, because it didn’t just require the Nuremberg Tribunal to define the crime against humanity in order for these scenes of forgiveness to be public, but fifty years later that is beginning to increase considerably, well, to my knowledge, there is no example of that before the Second World War, and so the worldwide period after the Second World War. So, the question of forgiveness

5. Derrida is referring to President Roman Herzog (1934–­2 017), president of the German Federal Republic from 1994 to 1999.

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and of its ancient heritage, let’s call it Judeo-­Christian, as one used to say “Judeo-­Christian-­Islamic,” is today reaching a limit, a shift, a completely singular site of movement [lieu de passage]. There.

What that signifies, those scenes of forgiveness, are not simply ceremonies that are as it were quasi-­confessional, it’s that the recognition of genocide as such, like, I suppose, forgiveness asked of Guernica, implicates the state not only as an accused before a global tribunal, it commits the state to reparations, that is to say, that the recognition of genocide by international institutions is a concrete and material commitment. For example, Germany has committed to a process of reparations on behalf of Jews, to Israel, they have marked their guilt in thousands of ways, by sending money to Israel since the end of the World War. As for the meaning of genocide in Rwanda, where there have been so many stories trying to determine whether what took place in Rwanda constitutes genocide or not, it isn’t just an abstract conceptual question or rather a mea culpa on the part of the French or others, or the people of Rwanda themselves, it was because if what happened in Rwanda was recognized as genocide, then at that point the international community, through the intermediaries of its governmental or nongovernmental institutions, had to take charge of reinstalling the whole Rwandan hospital, education system, etc., implying huge investments. And I suppose that with Guernica, there was something like that behind it also, that in fact commits —­ ­it’s not just a scene, a simulacrum or symbolic scene —­ ­it commits, it should in fact commit the international community to an enterprise of reparation. And concerning the Armenian genocide, over which many of you have been mobilized for a long time, before France recognizes it . . . that’s been going on for a long time, I’ve signed I don’t know how many things on that subject in France. Alas, France is not alone, it hasn’t in any case been recognized universally, but on the day when it is officially recognized by an institution such as the United Nations, at that point it will mean that the Turkish will be obliged not just to recognize but to pay reparations, and there is so much to do, the effects of that genocide, of that violence, are so serious, so continuous, so —­ ­how should we say —­ ­expanding, that the debt mounts. As in the case of Guernica, the debt is infinite. And who is going to pay the reparations? Even if the German state were to pay money, etc., as they have paid Israel, if the German state paid an indemnity —­ ­it is a question of “indemnification” in all the senses of the term —­ ­if the German state sought to indemnify for the war crime of Guernica, it would be an abyss [sans fond], and then it wouldn’t indemnify anything at all, the Span­

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ish state since Franco, etc., etc. Whence both the profundity and vanity of all these stories. And the word “forgiveness,” what matters here among other things is that the word pardon, loaded as it is with all sorts of theologemes, should come as it were to name these modern scenes, of a modernity that is without precedent, that the word pardon should come there.6

6. The session continued with the presentation by Safaa Fathy (see Editorial Note, xixn16 above).

index of proper names

This index of proper names covers only those names appearing in Derrida’s seminar and in further comments he makes during the seminar; it does not include those found in front matter or in notes by editors or the translator. Abimelech, 113 Abraham, 86–­93, 95–­9 6, 101, 104, 112–­ 15, 120, 161–­62, 195–­9 7 Achilles, 220–­21 Adam, 102 Adonai, 106 Alcibiades, 181 Anna, 138 Antonio, 48–­54, 61, 63 Anytus, 227 Arachne, 183 Arendt, Hannah, 8, 15, 17, 50, 74, 80, 82–­83 Aristotle, 81, 173, 281 Aron, Raymond, 39 Aspasia, 287 Aubriot, Danièle, 45–­46, 182–­85, 187 Augustine, Saint, 101, 116–­18, 120, 126, 132–­42, 144, 147, 154, 158, 182, 189, 191, 198–­2 06, 208, 213–­16, 227, 260, 272, 297, 303 Austin, John Langshaw, 256, 259, 261, 264, 274–­75, 278–­82, 285, 293–­9 4 Baecque, Antoine de, 284–­85 Bassanio, 54

Bastide, François-­Régis, 27 Baudelaire, Charles, 118–­2 0, 126–­31, 134–­36, 151–­53, 161 Beer-­Sheba, 113 Benjamin, Walter, 151–­52 Benveniste, Émile, 74 Blanchot, Maurice, 231–­34, 237–­40, 242 Blanzy, 285 Bloy, Léon, 152–­54, 161 Bonnefoy, Yves, 121 Bourdaloue, Louis, 186 Brisson, Luc, 188, 190–­91 Buber, Martin, 5 Bush, George W., Jr., 150, 161, 193–­9 4 Caesar, Julius, 140 Cain, 121 Celan, Paul, 22–­25, 27, 38, 100, 118, 136 Céline, Louis-­Ferdinand, 151 Chirac, Jacques, 16 Chopin, Frédéric, 28 Chouraqui, André, 92, 108–­10, 112–­14, 215, 219 Christ, Jesus, 22, 49, 61, 119, 138–­39, 209, 219, 220, 237

326 ‡ in de x of prope r na m e s

Debussy, Claude, 28 De Gaulle, Charles, 159 Deleuze, Gilles, 257, 311, 316 De Man, Paul, 159, 175, 208–­10, 230, 248–­53, 256–­63, 265–­78, 280, 284, 293–­9 7, 304–­17 Derrida, Jacques, 151–­53, 252 Descartes, René, 28 De Silentio, Johannes, 92 Diogenes, Laertius, 226

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 4, 11, 17, 28, 30, 33–­34, 36, 60, 137, 158, 241–­42, 270, 290 Heidegger, Hermann, 25 Heidegger, Martin, 22–­25, 28, 33–­34, 62, 128, 132, 134, 161, 233, 238, 249, 257, 279 Hermocrates, 191 Herodotus, 184 Hippias, 220–­2 2, 224–­2 6 Hitler, Adolf, 9, 34, 179 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 271 Homer, 140 Hugo, François-­Victor, 48, 52, 58, 65 Husserl, Edmund, 128, 262 Hyppolite, Jean, 59

Eleos, 140 Éluard, Paul, 9 Eudicus, 225 Euripides, 183–­84

Isaac, 86–­92, 95–­9 6, 104, 112–­14, 120, 162, 195–­9 6 Is’hac. See Isaac Ishmael, 89

Fauré, Gabriel, 28 Fineman, Joel, 47 Franco, Francisco, 318, 323 Frank, Anne, 26 Freud, Sigmund, 50, 286

Jacob, 90 Jankélévitch, Vladimir, 7, 9–­15, 20–­2 2, 26–­34, 38, 44, 72, 74, 80–­83, 120, 134, 157, 169–­70, 173, 175–­77, 181–­82, 227, 240–­42, 244–­47 Jaspers, Karl, 28 Jean-­Jacques. See Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques Jesus. See Christ, Jesus Job, 93 John, Saint, 207 John Paul II, Pope, 49

Cicero, 140, 147, 170 Claudius, 121–­23 Clinton, Bill, 5, 7 Constantius, Constantin, 92 Critias, 187, 191, 218 Croiset, Maurice, 220

Gautier, Théophile, 119 Gide, André, 122 Gouhier, Alain, 13 Gregory, Saint, 203 Grosjean, Jean, 219 Guitton, Jean, 153 Hagar, 89 Hamburger, Michael, 24 Hamlet, 96, 120–­2 6, 135–­36, 206, 223 Hashimoto, Ryutaro, 8 Havel, Vaclav, 8

Kafka, Franz, 92, 96–­100, 104, 118, 120, 126, 131, 136 Kamuf, Peggy, 300 Kant, Immanuel, 18–­19, 33, 52, 82, 118, 132, 136, 161, 180, 193–­9 4, 223, 242, 252, 270–­71, 281, 307–­9 Kantorowicz, Ernst, 61

in de x of prope r na m e s ‡ 327 Kierkegaard, Søren, 136 Kleist, Heinrich von, 252, 269, 308, 313, 315 Lacan, Jacques, 257, 311, 314, 316 Laertes, 123–­2 6, 223 Lamballe, Princesse de, 284–­85 Lanzmann, Claude, 178–­8 0 Le Sueur, Jean, 203 Léturmy, Michel, 219 Levinas, Emmanuel, 5, 17, 33–­34, 42, 107, 158, 233–­38, 277 Lorenzy, Madame, 268 Lorenzy, Monsieur, 267 Luke, Saint, 137–­39, 219 Mamma. See Warens, Madame de Margel, Serge, 312 Marie Antoinette, 284–­85 Marion, 200–­1, 206, 209–­11, 213–­14, 247–­48, 253, 255–­57, 265, 267–­6 9, 272–­75, 284, 304–­5, 315 Marin, Louis, 61 Marsyas, 183 Mary, Virgin, 274 Massignon, Louis, 237 Matthew, Saint, 22, 137–­39 Meletus, 227 Menuhin, Yehudi, 28 Minder, Robert, 22 Monica, Saint, 120 Montaigne, Michel de, 308 Montesquieu, Baron de (Charles Louis de Secondat), 312 Moses, 139 Nancy, Jean-­Luc, 6 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 28, 33, 131–­33 208, 237–­38, 290 Niobe, 183 Noah, 102, 106, 108–­12

Oedipus, 183 Ophelia, 126 Pan, 217 Papon, Maurice, 154–­57, 161 Pascal, Blaise, 57, 61, 210, 271, 313 Paul, Saint, 58, 81–­82, 139, 214–­17, 246 Peter, Saint, 119 Peyrou, Pierre Alexandre du, 300 Picasso, Pablo, 319–­2 0 Pichois, Claude, 152 Plato, 173, 188–­8 9, 199, 219, 245, 281 Ponge, Francis, 40 Pontal, Mademoiselle, 268, 272–­74 Portia, 46, 48–­55, 57–­63 Poseidon, 188 Proust, Marcel, 118, 136 Raveling, Wiard, 27–­2 9 Regine, 88, 92, 96 Rétif de la Bretonne (Nicolas Edme), 285 Rivaud, Albert, 190 Romilly, Jacqueline de, 182 Roque, Comte de la, 267 Rousseau, Isaac, 201 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 116, 120, 128, 137, 147, 158–­59, 175, 182, 199–­214, 217–­18, 220, 227, 229–­30, 245, 247–­ 52, 255–­63, 265–­78, 285–­87, 289, 293–­307, 311–­16 Rubenstein, Arthur, 28 Samuel, 138 Sappho, 285 Sarah, 86, 92, 97 Sartre, Jean-­Paul, 28 Schiller, Friedrich von, 270–­71 Schubert, Franz, 28 Schumann, Robert, 28 Shakespeare, William, 45–­63, 120–­2 6

328 ‡ in de x of prope r na m e s Shylock, 46–­54, 57–­58, 61, 72 Silesius, Angelus, 56 Sitruk, Joseph, 148–­49, 154–­55, 161 Socrates, 191–­92, 209, 218–­27, 230, 287 Tasso, 312 Theodosius, 101 Timaeus, 189–­91 Tourzel, Madame, 285 Tutu, Desmond, 176

Ulysses, 220–­21 Venus, 285 Vercellis, Madame de, 201, 208–­14, 229, 240, 267–­68, 272, 274 Warens, Madame de, 120, 209, 211–­14, 267, 286–­87 Warminski, Andrzej, 309–­10 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 308 Zeus, 188–­8 9