Thanks Alan, I like the poetry that this is. It works as language across a network of ether, ghost calling ghost. A disembodied myth of disembodied discourse. In real life/space/time I doubt the event would have been as poetic. In real life/space/time I would have rather asked Bakhtin an embodied utterance. We would have tasted the banality of the moment like the fallen angel Peter Falk burning his freshly incarnate tongue on the material semiotically known as coffee, now affectively known as "ah! this!" in Wenders "Wings of Desire."
Loving Hand Turns Burning Sand to Water, Curt >"I want to ask Jacques Derrida a question." > > >I want to ask Jacques Derrida a question. > >It is question about death, not in particular his death. > >But a question concerned with the aporia of death, not necessarily his >own. > >Such a question, which would have been possible several years ago, is no >longer possible. > >We are thrown back on the words of Jacques Derrida. > >We are immured there. > >It would have been simple: Jacques, here is what I want to know. > >Do you have a minute of your time. > >The body of Jacques Derrida still exists. > >His body, phoric, carries the aporia. > >The aporia is not his own, nor can he speak and return an unraveling. > >Today, words are never set in stone, and questions go unanswered. > >Today, questions disappear, and their occasion disappears. > >The occasion of a question: a gap, as in a detective story. > >As if the question were sutured by an answered, when in fact it is sutured >by any reply at all. > >An answer responds to a question; a reply responds to the occasion of a >question. > >I remember Jacques Derrida, and would have tapped him on the shoulder, >saying, excuse me, but ... > >There is an image I have of this tapping: the softness of his jacket, the >slight giving away of the flesh beneath, and he turns towards me. > >When I move my hands, everything is empty. > >Jacques Derrida is a remnant of matter. > >... "If death" ... "names the very irreplaceability of absolute >singularity (no one can die in my place or in the place of the other), >then all the _examples_ in the world can precisely illustrate this >singularity. Everyone's death, the death of all those who can say 'my >death,' is irreplaceable." ... (Derrida, Aporias) > >When I move my hands: when my hands are moved for me, are only moved for >me: mise en scene, a scenario or occurrence, chora. > >I do not collapse time, Jacques, in order to speak to you: I speak to >you. > >I do not collapse space, in order to speak: I touch you lightly on your >shoulder, I wait until you turn around, your glance moves in my direction, >momentarily you are caught up in my gaze, you hesitate whether or not to >return your own, your reply to my question, you return such, as if such is >returned, an exchange of gifts or misrecognition. > >Of the good, there is the edge of a knife, and the fall which surrounds >it; of the spoken, there is a comprehension, empathetic alignment, then >nothing. > >Of the spoken, the knife edge separates the question I give to Jacques as >a gift, an awakening, and the reply which shatters after a particular >time, calculable, unattainable. > >Of the question: all questions are a permanence: It is impossible to >answer a question. > >Jacques turns; I look at his shoes. Thinking of Van Gogh, of Heidegger, >of Jacques Derrida, I take several photographs. They are remnants, indices >with lost referents; they are abject. I am silent; I say nothing to him, >to Van Gogh, to Heidegger. Repeatedly I raise the camera; eye-level, I aim >downward, towards an incalculable earth. The images, lost, are digital; >they never were. Between one pixel and another, a hole, precisely the >width of death. > >_______________________________________________ >NetBehaviour mailing list >[email protected] >http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
