Richard Burt
Read After Burning:
Delivering Derrida’s Post . . . to Be Published . . . Posthumously (with love, without such limits)[1]
But because me and myself, as you are no doubt aware, we are going to die, my relation –and yours too—to the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity. And it is hardly necessary to know that this text is undecipherable for it to remain, at once and for all, open, tendered and undecipherable. 137
The death that I am talking about is not that of tragedy nor that attributed to a subject. One would have to make a case for a subject and draw its consequences for that scene where we are occupied. But the procedure is not such that “I am mortal, therefore, etc. . . “. On the contrary, only when such a scene is possible can death and the posthumous de anticipated,. Thus, as far as tragedy and parody go, the same holds true for birth. 139
Relation between the postal and the posthumous
Call for a footnote that I will read presently. 313 Footnotes, 268; 270-72; 303; 313; 319-20; 324-26
Shortly before his death, Derrida told an interviewer,
I am among those few people who have constantly drawn attention to this: you must (and you must do it well) put philosophers’ biographies back in the picture, and the commitments, particularly political commitments, that they sign in their own names, whether in relation to Heidegger or equally to Hegel, Freud, Nietzsche, Sartre, or Blanchot, and so on.
“Controversy over the Possibility of a Science of Philosophy”
La Decision Philosophique No. 5, April 1988, pp. 62-76.
Translated by Robin Mackay ( Work in progress. 22 February 2005.
Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-philosophy
Francois Laruelle (Author), Rocco Gangle (Author) Continuum; 1 edition (March 3, 2011)
Nietzsche contre Heidegger de François Laruelle (1 janvier 1977)
Machines textuelles : Déconstruction et libido d'écriture (L'Ordre philosophique) de François Laruelle (1976)
Déclin de l'écriture de François Laruelle (8 janvier 1992)
Au-delà du principe de pouvoir de François Laruelle (1 septembre 1978)
The dead man, 319
I am saying 310,311, 318
Nietzsche 269
Auto-bio 336
Life death, 359
Vacation, 300
“most driven drive: 356
name omitted 362
I have cited elsewhere 263
I have often cited 264
Pot effect 394, 387
There is never repetition in itself. 353
“Let us translate.” 362
Will attempt elsewhere, 264
Transference, 339, 357
“Let us translate” 362
archive of its own demon, 353
Amortize, 347
Autotelos, 357
This is how I hear Freud resonate, at my own risk and peril, I translate now . . Here is the original text that I just translated, and that I translate in another way. If one has confidence in certain norms, one will doubtless find it more faithful. “ If so, it may be asked why I have embarked upon efforts such as this chapter, and why they are deleivered for publication. Well, I cannot deny that some of the analogies, corrections and connections which it contains seemed to me to deserve consideration. . . “ (60; mod.). My emphasis: mir der Beachtung wurdig erschienen sind. Period, the end. Thisis the final point, the last words of the chapter. 385
“just been said” 391
metaphoric transference, 384
morgagting of irresponsibility, 378
the devil comes back 379
“Not, however, without adding (anzuchkiessen) a few words of critical reflection” (59). Thus, he is going to add, to adjoin, almost as an accessory, several supplementary, subordinate reflections, a kind of annexation. Anschluss is an add piece, but also, again, a connecting train.” (378)
f we could say 395
Beyond a beyond whose line would have to divide, . . beyond the beyod of opposition, 408
I have often cited, 264
I will attempt elsewhere, 263
Diabolical 269
Vacation 300
Lide death 329
Translation 380
Post effect, 394, 387
Graphics 317 273,322, autobio 273, 336-37, 298, 305
Biopolitics, biologisim 363 But when the syngram has been published, he will no longer have anything to do with it, or with anyone—completely elsewhere-- the literary post will forward it by itself q.e.d. This has given me the wish, envie (that is indeed the word) to publish under my name things that are inconceivable, and above all unlivable, for me, thus abusing the “editorial” credit that I have been laboriously accumulating for years the to publish under my name things that are inconceivable with this sole aim in mind. 235; Freud’s Legacy, the title mentioned in envois, is the title of section 2, and the chapter opens with a comment about “The title of this chapter is a deliberately corrupt citation, which doubtless will have been recognized. The expression “Freud’s legacy [legs de Freud] is often encountered in the writings of Jacques Lacan and Wladimir Grandoo. Naturally I leave the reader as judge of what is going on in this corruption.
The next paragraph:
This chapter was originally published in the number of Etudes freudiennes devoted to Nicholas Abraham. I had then prefaced it with this note: 292
This is what has encouraged me to publish this fragment here. Those who wish to delimit its import can consider it a reading of the second chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. 292
The last sentence of the note is “Other fragments of the same seminar will appear soon in book form.” 293
Any morgue Any morte Morgue-aging derrida. Amortization? Hemmorgueing
In the last couple paragraphs in the Paralysis subchapter, Derrida translates the last part of Freud’s chapter in two ways and then proceeds to wonder why the seventh chapter was added. Why does he choose to translate Freud’s text two different ways for the reader? He barely goes into much of this last paragraph by Freud after he translates it before saying, “Period, the end.” Why does he not go into more depth regarding the last words of Freud and his decision to translate the text twice?
Why does Derrida “no longer wish to translate” the final paragraph in the chapter Seven: Postscript?
Will a letter necessarilyL have been sent, even if it never arrives. Is the send-off alsoa edparture, a letting go, a leav taking fo the letter? IS there always a sender even there no return to sender is ever guarnteed? . Not have bEen a book. Not arrived same as not pubished? Fn unpublished. What is relation between Ffreud's unmarked postscript and jds titled postscript.
I am purposely all the movements in the trans- under the word transference, whether in question is translation toward theoretical or descriptive language, transposition from one science to another, metaphoric transposition within language. The word transference reminds one of the unity of the metaphoric network, which is precisely metaphor and transference (ÜbertragungUebertragung), a network of correspondences, connections, switch points, traffic and a semantic postal, railway sorting without which no transferential destination would be possible, in the strictly technical sense that Freud’s psychoanalysis has sought to assign this word(See the end of Chapter Three). . . . . 383
Thus some delayed prefaces illustrate a variety we call the posthumous preface—posthumous to its publication, needless to say: for the paratext as for the text itself, this is the standard meaning of that adjective, short of a resort to séances. But in contrast to the text, a preface—if it is allographic – may be a posthumous production . . .
Genette, Paratexts, 175
These are the last words of the chapter. . . This is the final point, the last words of the chapter. 385[2] The last page, that is, the last paragraph—one could just as well say paraph in its place—begins with the project ofa newengagement, another iniative. . . 406The last words of the chaper coould have been the last words of the book, They indeed seem like it. This is the last paragraph , and also the last page. Even though this last scene of the last act seems to mean nothing . . . something will still be heard in it.” 407
The seventh, tyhten. The last, by far the shortest. It resembles another postscript, another codicil, the postscript or codicil to the entire book this time. Everything seems finished when it begins.
This is the end: an appendix that is as reduced as possible, free, detachable too, a play appendix. This supplelement of a postscript is all the more more detahcable in in htat it seems to add nothing, in its content, to the total corpus. One more fort : da for nothing, ia repeitive, redundant review in the shape of a comet’s tail. 388
Nietzsche’s “’Will’ (last testament] to Power?”
The X about which one does not know what it is before banded, precisely, and represented by representatives. 393
The drive of the drive, the lsoen, the de-marche
You Aren’t Here (Any morte )
What we do we do with Derrida now that he is dead? Does Derrda’s change the way we read him? That may seem like a naïve question, given Derrida’s work on autobiography and “autobiographics” in The Post Card and elsewhere as well as his work on hauntology, life and death, and so on? Yet Derrida wrote essays and books on the occasion of the death of friends many times and revisted their works as in Resistance to Pyschoanalysis, Work of Mourning, Memoires of Paul De Man, among others. Derrida himself asks “What is the other—what are others—going to make of me when I am departed, deceased, passed away, gone, absolutely without defense, disarmed, in their hands, i.e., as they say, so to speak, dead?”[3] The biological death and publication? Will have said or not have said. Wake up recall or recoil? Biological death and posthumous publication as well as postal reeading. Here is what I am going to do by way of a tenative answer. I am going to engage to The Post Card and ask what it means to read Derrida after hisbiological death, his death in the brute facticity of that event, its history, as an infinite gloss but not an infinite conversation, with respeect to The Post Card and. I will consider a number of challenges to reading The Post . . . after Derrida’s death, challenges I will route first through Derrida’s reading of what Lacan said to Derrida and what Derrida said about Lacan after Lacan’s death in “For the Love of Lacan,” and that I will then route through Derrida’s posthumously published TheBeast and the Sovereign 2 in which Derrida talks about posthumous publication . and asks “What is the other—what are others—going to make of me when I am departed, deceased, passed away, gone, absolutely without defense, disarmed, in their hands, i.e., as they say, so to speak, dead?”[4] These challenges may be posted and enumerated as follows in an anticipatory manner, given that what I say now follows from readings of texts to which we have not yet attended:
- What is the difference between footnotes about work “to be published” and work that is posthumously published? Is there a difference? Does it matter that Derrida returns to Le facteur de la verite after Lacan is dead ? Does it alter the archive? Can the archive include letters never sent? Is there always a send off? Even if the rearrival is never gauanteed. Is sending guaranttaneed? Does it have any bearing on the scene of writing and autbiiographics or auto-bio-thanato-hertoro-graphy in “To Speculate on Freud?” Derrida often did not follow bibliographical norms when citing his works or works by other writers. In “To Speculate—On ‘Freud’,” Derrida “Leaving” and “departing, or “de-parting, rather than division, a wake up recalling of the “party” in “departi . . . ng.” “to appear” as in a prediction of a ghost, an appriation, as in the apparition du livre. Top of 293, the last sentence of the long quotation of a preface that is a note:“Other fragments of the same seminar will appear soon in book form.” 293 Note 6. Donner—le temps (To Give—time, in preparation, to appear later. Other essays (to appear) analyze this figure under the heading of “double chiasmatic invagination of the borders.” 391 8. An allusion, in the seminar Life death, to other seminars organized, or three years running, under the title of La Chose (The Thing) (Heidegger / Ponge, Heidegger / Blanchot, Heidegger / Freud), at Yale and in Paris. Perhaps they will give rise to other publications later. 401. Footnote 10, p. 403”10. The problematic of the “Il y a” (Es gibt, There is) was engaged in another seminar (Donner—le temps), fragments of which are to be published. Before my death I would give orders. If you aren’t there, my body is to be pulled out of the lake and burned, my ashes are to be sent to you, the urn well protected (“fragile”) but not registered, in order to tempt fate. This would be an envoi of / from me un envoi de moi which no longer would come from me (or an envoi come from me, who would have ordered it, but no longer an envoi of/ from me, as you like). And then you would enjoy mixing my ashes with what you eat (morning coffee, brioche, tea at 5 o’clock, etc.) After a certain dose, you would start to go numb, to fall in love with yourself. I would watch you slowly advance toward death . . . . 196. Also the problem of the name, of the proper name, but also naming the problem Freud says and his writing does, the “overlap”? that cannot be named? Spectrality as well of the orgnaic and inorganic—even writing can haunt. ND lalso the relation between the transference, the hedding for al the other trans words, and leaving words in other lanaguages behind, not translating them, or using the German word after it has been trnslated. Bass not trnslated in French words in “Envoovis.” So this a kind of unsettled debt? Is it a work of morning passed on to the reader, a resistnace to a transfernce,a posting of the transference or a tranaseference of fhte postal effect? See AppendiX question of annexation in the posst Card, the Anschluss (also in restitutions. Transference can fail; but what about trnanslation; why is metaphor—also translation suordinate ot he unity , hteetowrof thetransferece?
4. Seven: Postscript
INSOLVENCY—POST EFFECT
Letter never sent. The archival effect in The Post Card mentioned once. “will become archival” 342
- Cite my New Formations essay.v
Taking into account the death, in the ordinary sense of the word as the opposite of life, of the person of whom the living speak while at the same time taking into account the way that any such saying is neither dead nor alive, andall the while taking into account that this distinction is fair from rigorous given that one cannot always tell when the dead are dead, even when, or especially when, a death certificate has been issued by the proper medical and legal authorities.[5]
- Taking into account that we are not talking about the speech of the dead (or of the living, for that matter, of speech as living presence) but their saying, their having a say in what is still being said, of the justice of what is being said about them dead in their absence, however complicated the meaning of the word “absence” may be. “No[WW1] dead person has ever said their last word,” Helene Cixous writes. Ia that damnation, never to stop talking? Or is it the possibility of justice, or a plea? Or as Maurice Blanchot, writes in "The Last Word," , "The strange nature of posthumous publications is to be inexhaustible." [6]Maurice Blanchot, writes in "The Last Word," , "The strange nature of posthumous publications is to be inexhaustible." [7] A gift or a curse that publication is infinite? The frequent retentions references to his audience, to his giving a lecture, the mementos of a performative rhetoric that records its occasion and date, the recourse to the verb “to say” rather than “to write.”.
- Taking into account that the lack of rigor in any distinction between what the living and what the dead say nevertheless retaining that distinction to ask questions such as How do the dead say? How do they keep on saying? What kind of say in what is being said do the dead have? And if the living say, in print, from a place that is neither life nor death, how does what the living say differ from what the dead say? Did the dead or do the living ever say anything?
- Asking why the tense of saying something about the dead--future anterior, future anterior in the conditional, past perfect--so crucial to Derrida[WW2]?
- Asking why the question of what the dead say, the personal, dare as I say it, the personal question of Derrida saying or not saying that he and Lacan loved each other very much, become very quickly subsumed by Derrida under the more general problem of the archive and hence its radical destruction?
- Asking how these questions become a question of the protection of the dead, of the proper name and the title of a saying (as said in print), and a question of their effacement and erasure.
- Asking how the question of reading the published and yet to be published or will have been published by the dead becomes a question of the paratext, the name and the title being what was for Gérard Genettethe most fundamental of paratexts,[8] and a question the managing of the paratext and text to archive both references the name and title and what has already read or said and hence does not have to be repeated. Is the relation of the text and paratext, the postscript, the description of Freud’s last chapter as a postscript, a matter not only of losen, or solving, a word linked up to the drive of the drive, the binding and the stricture or lacing, but of the lassen, the Nachlass at the end, the left, abandoned, deserted, deprivation of the reader in face of is it exhaustion or just a change of mind—how to read “I no longer wish to translate? [Cite Derrida on annexation to Speculate on Freud. Relation between footnotes, which JD reads carefully in To Speculate, and text, a relation of losen, of structure of lacing, or of lassen, “to leave”. Also Erlaubnis, to takea leave of oabsence, or Urlaub, to leave on vacation—the references to holiday and vacation. Cite Freud on hiday.
- Asking why questions of the dead saying, the archive, the proper name, paratexts, and so on, become for Derrida in a return to The Post Card in “For the Love of Lacan,” a quasi-methodological question of deconstruction and psychoanalysis, of psychoanalysis being philosophical?
- Is there a posthumous principle or posthumous structure that differs from the postal principle or postal structure? Or would any notion of the posthumous be subsumed by the posterous and the postal?
All of these questions turn on the assumptions that there is such a thing as reading and that we know what reading is. A reading may be bad, it may be strong, it may be a misreading, it may be a reading that resists reading, it may be a reading that didn’t bother to read and hence an irresponsible reading, but a reading is still irreducibly a reading. Similarly, there is reading and rereading, reading that may take years, that may be infinite. Derrida turns this assumption on its head, I shall maintain, in “Love Lacan” by introducing a single letter, the letter “X,” to stand for a proper name. Derrida’s “last point” (69) in “Love Lacan” is that the “question of knowing whether or not there is some psychoanalysis—X-ian, his, yours, mine that the degree—that can hold up or that is coming, this incalcaluable, unimaginable, unaccountable, unattribuable question is displaced to the degree that the analytic siutation, and thus the analytic institution, is deconstructed, as if by itself, without deconstruction or deconstructive project” (69). Ordinarily, one would not read the the letter “X” in the sentence above. One one would simply pass over it as a variable for which any proper name could be substituted and move on. Simiarly, names, titles, and other titles ordinarily don’t get read beause they an iconic rather than indexical value. In the glosses to follow, however, I will be doing something out of the ordinary, something that is quite secondary to what usually gets talked about in academic discourse, even in discourse about deconstruciton. Among many textual, paratextual, bibliographical, and typographical features, including typos, in Derrida’s texts in and around The Post Card, I will take the letter in the “word” “X-ian” (and Derrida’s use of the phrase “X without X”) to be the something like a crux.