(constructs series) luce irigaray, mary beth mader-the forgetting of air in martin...
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~ n ~ ; \ ~ [ I ] r §
2 469
TH THLONE ondoll
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First published
1999
by
THE ATHLONE PRESS
1 Park Drive London NWIl
7SG
First published in France
1983
Editions de Minuit 1983
L oubli
e l air cbez Martin Heidegger
This
English translation
The
Athlone Press
1999
The
publishers wish to record their thanks to the French Ministry
of
Culture for a grant towards the cost of translation
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication
Data
catalogllc
record
Jar this
book
is availablc
Jrolll
the British Iibraty
ISBN 0 485 II491 7 HB
ISBN 0 485 12 I l9 0
P
All rights reserved. No
part
of
this publication may be reproduced stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any fonn 01 by any means electronic
mechanical photocopying
or
otherwise without prior permission in writing
from the publisher.
Printed and bound in the USA
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Translator s Acknowledgments Vl
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
23
CHAPTER
THREE
47
CHAPTER
FOUR
63
CHAPTER FIVE 79
CHAPTER
SIX 95
CHAPTER
SEVEN
1 5
CHAPTER EIGHT
2
CHAPTER NINE 131
CHAPTER TEN 5
CHAPTER ELEVEN 6
CHAPTER TWELVE
7
~ o t s
8
Index 9
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v Jknowledgments
I am very happy to
thank
Professor Robert Mugerauer and Ali
Hossaini for initiating and guiding this translation project
and
Professors
Robert
C. Solomon, Kelly Oliver, Dina Sherzer,
Kathleen Higgins, Louis Mackey, and Douglas Kellner for their
support
and encouragernent throughout. I thank editor
Jim
Burr for showing enough patience for a lifetime. lowe special
thanks to
Dean
Kent Buder
of
the University
of
Texas School
of Architecture
and
Michael Benedikt, director of the Center
for Arnerican Architecture
and
Design, for providing office
space and services,
s
well
s to
the Center s administrative as-
sistants, Suzanne Najarian
and
Jenny Stone. I am particularly
grateful
to
Luce Irigaray for her many helpful suggestions and
clarifications, which I have tried to incorporate into the final
version.
The
expert assistance of Lisa Walsh and readers for
the University ofTexas Press required a prodigious rneasure
of
energy and attention for which I am truly grateful. Christina
Hendricks, Pierre Larnarche, N odIe McAfee, Karen Mottola
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Vllt I U E
]RIG R Y
and Shannon Winnubst deserve thanks for test-driving chapter
drafts along the way: C. Roger Mader Martine Marchand Mader
Madeleine Mader and Karen Counts Inade the work possible
in many ways whether they know
it
or
not. Finally hence first
of
all: my greatest thanks to the
constant
Carrie Laing Pickett.
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TH FORG TTING
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he
rose is without why));
it
flowers because it
flowers.
NGELUS SILESIUS
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In
what
circle are
we
here,
and
truly with
no
way out? Is it the
cukuklcos aletbeie,
the without-withdrawal [lc sans-retraitJ) perfect
roundness, in its turn thought as
Lic Jtung)
as the clearing
of
the
opening? But
then
won t the task
of
thinking have
as
its title,
instead
of
eill
und Zeit)
Being and Time: licbtung
und
Anwescnheit
(Clearing and Presence)? But whence-and how-is there clear
ing
(gibt
s
die
lirhtung ?What
lT USt
we
hear in this
there
is
l t
givcs
(cs
gib0?The
task
of
thinking would then be the abandonment
of
the thinking in force
until
now so
as
to deterrnine the proper
matter
for thinking: I
That the there is
of
the clearing has never been questioned by
thought, although
it
would be the ultirnate condition
of
possi
bility for
thought,
that, frorn the beginning,
it
has been a
question
of
the necessity
of
the opening as the place
of
entry
into presence,
but that
nevertheless
the
opening remains
unthought-although it reigns within Being itself; in the state
of presence-such
would be the forgetting that sub-tends the
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2 I U E
]RIGARAY
history of n1etaphysics, thus entailing the destiny of Being
as
being( s).
But in which pre-Socratic words can an evocation of the open
ing be sought? In Parmenides'
Poem.
Is it
not
already
too
late
to
reopen the seal of its lTlystery?
The
opening already being con
stituted in
that
text
as
perfect roundness or
as
groundless.
The
circle being already closed up: in each
point
beginning
and end
coincide, but at the cost of an abyss.
What abyss?
And
why valorize the heart that does not tremble
to so secure itself on the groundless? Why would unconcealrnent
frighten,
if not
because it unveils the chasm on which truth is
founded? Why
opt
for such a truth?-and for the tyranny it
rnay well
bring
in its wake as a result of its pact with fear?
In order
to
exarnine careflilly the fact that Hit is in this
bond
alone
that
any request for a possible allegiance
of
thinking
is
based, 3 perhaps one must remove from Heidegger that earth
on which he so loved to walk.
To
take away
from
him this
solid
ground, to
rid
hirn
of
the H llusion
of
a path that holds up
under his
step-even
if it goes nowhere-and to bring him
back not only to
thinking
but to the world of the pre-Socratics.
Metaphysics always supposes, in sorne manner, a solid crust
frorn which to raise a construction. Thus a physics that gives
privilege to, or at least that would have constituted, the solid
plane. Whether philosophers distance themselves frorn
it
or
whether they rnodify it, the ground is always there. s
long
as
Heidegger does
not
leave
the
Hearth, he does
not
leave meta
physics. The rnetaphysica1 is written neither
on/in
water,
nor
on/
n air, nor
on/in
fire. Its
ek sistance
is
founded on
the solid.
And
its abysses, whether frOlTI on high or on low, doubtless find
their explanation in the forgetting
of
those elements that do
not
have
that
sarne density.
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THE FORGE T T ING
OF
AIR
Would
the
end of
the rnetaphysical be required by
their
reintervention in the physics
of
today? But would philosophical
rationality
not
notice things so patent? Would they remain
as
hidden
to it
as
the
forgetting
of
Being ?-a
name for
that
sarne refusal
to
notice?
For
the
sam.e
inability
to
translate fluid
realities
into
discursivity?Was Heidegger,
without
really saying
so, perhaps routing
thought
toward this question? Were it not
for his nearly exclusive love for the earth
..
His desire to abide
there always? Despite that strange attraction toward the clearing
of
the opening
..
The
clearing
of the
opening,
of
what can this
be?-one
could have asked hirn this. This
old
philosophical question seems
not to have been put to hiln. It was, doubtless, too innocent.
Too ignorant. Too sirnple. Too little complicit with the history
of
philosophy.
Too
sensible;'
or
too
Ilphysical ?
Not
to have
been forgotten.
Of
what
is
a being can be
posed
as
a question.
Of
what
[is] BeingS is not Ilposed.
It
is, always, pre-supposed. Fore
seeable, pre-established. At least since Parrnenides: to be and to
think being the Sarne. And the question: of what
is
thought
made, being left unthought.
Would
Being and thinking be rnade
of
the sarrle matter
O f
the same
element?-which
would explain their
mutual
attrac
tion? Their love unto inseparability, in any case when they give
themselves
to
each
other
w
ithout
withdrawing ?
Would the
Iithere is be the same for Being and for thinking? At least be
fore their decline
into
the specific aspects
of
their destinies:
being( s) and metaphysics.
There relnains the question: isn't thinking already a destiny
of
Being? Or the contrary?
Then
how does Parrnenides realize
their co-occurrence? What are the properties
of
this Ilis that
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4
IueE ]RIGARAY
makes them meet in the Same? That circumscribes their region
as
being
(the)
sanie? Ground, unthought, of any H estiny to
corne?
HOf what [is] this is such that it brings about, prior to all
knowledge
and tnethods
for
knowing-identity, homoiosis;
adaequatio
t h e
co-existence, co-essence, and co-presence of
two? Before the possibility
of
their being posed
as
separate
Hthings. QLV\That [is] this iiis such that it has such a power to
found Being and presence, while disappearing in the very act
of
founding? Such that it
might
already be
Hused -and using?
without any birth being attributable to it. Such that
it
might
already have given rise to Being though there be no beginning
of Being.
Or
even: what consistency does the essence
of
Being
have?
Necessary for any being's and for any philosophy's advent in the
world, and
always
already
forgotten-impalpable,
imperceptible,
invisible, insensible,
unintelligible-in
its matter and act. HOf
what [is] this is such
that
it rernains invisible though it be the
fundamental condition of the visible, such
that
it be unable to
be posed though
it
be the condition for all posing, such
that
it
not be produced, yet be the condition for all production, such
that it have no origin but be the originary itself. Such that
it
merges two into one in the Same, though this operation cannot
be attributed to anything on the basis of technique.
Of
what [is] this
is?
Diaphanous, translucent, transparent.
Transcendent? Mediation, fluid mediurn, unhindered in relat
ing the whole to itself: and certain of its parts to each other,
according to their properties: real properties or ones decreed
true
:'
True? Within the sphere of Being.
Which
is to say within the
circle that
is characterized
as
the circle
of
thinking, relative to
that
barely thinkable thing
that
thinking
is.
Ruling to envelop,
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THE
FORGETTING OF
AIR
to encircle, to close up, to de-fine
[de inir
J the unthinkable. To
designate
it as the unique
that
is beyond, or is this side of, all
the significations it gathers and binds together in its Whole,
this unthinkable that designates without ever being able to name
itself.
This
unthinkable that exceeds all declaration, all saying.
Or posing, phenomenon, or
fonn.While
remaining the condi
tion of possibility, the resource, the groundless ground.
Of what [is] this
is?
Of air.
The
meaning
of
this word?
In
the sphere already determined
by tpe forgetting of air, it will include: appearance, expression,
mime, to appear, to seem, to resemble And
even:
a piece of
music
written
for solo voice, accompanying lyrics; a tune.
Throughout the history of philosophy, these possible senses
of air have always been understood and have always been the
object
of
appraisals,
of
valuations,
of
the analysis
of
values
Their
relation to the truth and to Being has always been in
question.
They
are even, these senses
of
air, today the most ex
amined stakes, or therne, or motif in philosophy. Wouldn't ap
pearance, the appearing, the seeming, and the resernbling be that
toward which Being would today be destined?
This
new figure
of
the being would have its productions, its
producers and conSUlners in the visual arts, and, more subtly
close
to
Being, its musicians. But would one and all have for
gotten Being ? More precisely, they would think they could be
done with Being, while forgetting
of
what it is
No wonder philosophy dies-without air Did Being, at least,
keep some in reserve?
Hence: the clearing
of
the opening.
This
field, or open space,
where air would still give itself.
Which doesn't happen without risk. To recall that air
is
at
the groundless foundation of metaphysics amounts to ruining
metaphysics through and through. To conning it out of every-
5
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6
Ivc
]RIGARAY
thing. To rendering ever fleeting and expandable, compressible
and elastic. . its properties. Nothing maintains itself in the sarne
way any longer in air. Free?
Free?This Being-air eet
etre-ai1J is
situated in a clearing. The
opening, the free,
is
still, within a circle.
Or
a near-circle: it is
open.
It
is
in the closure of the Parrnenidean circle that Heidegger
finds the evocation
of
this forgotten openness.
Which
would be
to say
that
his air has already lost its material qualities? That it
is already an ideal fluid? Not living. Finding again the
path
of
air, would Heidegger discover an unbreathable air?
Whence
the
peril? Except for thought?
But does
thought
need an other air than the living do?
More
ethereal?
If
so, how does the living thinker make do with these
two airs? Do they
rrlix
in him, or not? Is it
as
a living being that
he thinks? Or is
it not?
The task of thinking would then be the abandonment of
the thinking in force until now so as to deterrnine the proper
matter for thinking. Does thinking amount to dying? To caus
ing
to
die?
Through appropriation/
dis appropriation:
of
air?
Through
abusive use
of
this matter by some.
Through
a
mo
nopoly
on
what would be declared a respirable commodity [valeur
respirable}
through irmnobilization
of
the resources of air through
sublime atrrlOspheric transformation, through rarefaction
of
arnbiance: the most haughty quarreling with each other over
ever more ethereal spheres. Rarefaction and compression: the
volume
of
air
must
rernain controllable. Capitalization, thus
lack. Purification-thus?-lack
and
pollution. For ordinary
mortals, in any case.
The Inetaphysician would be a trafficker in airs.
Which
would
remain unthought, by him. Whence the danger that he would
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THE FORGETTING
OF
AIR
always be threatened by Whence the forgetting
of
the origin
of
his power?
Once
he comes back, or is
brought
back, into an
open space a
clearing? he
cannot
know whether air suits hirn
or
not.
Whether
in breathing
as
a living being, he doesn t die
as
a thinker. Whether in breathing as a thinker, he doesn t die
as
a
living being.
The
unveiling
of
the fundamental operation
of
the
thinking
of
Being
is
a nearly unthinkable peril. Like death itselE
The
danger
is
not deadly, it
is
death.
Aletheia the
death that
thought is.
What death? That
is what
remains, and what must remain,
hidden: philosophy s fundarrlental method for causing death.
But isn t
it as
a
kind of
lack
of
air, in all its various forms, that
this method operates? In a manner subtle enough for
it
to keep
occurring
without
ever taking place openly, and lending
itself
to
possible judgrnent.
In
a
manner
ambiguous enough for it
no
longer to be known who gives or who takes air, provided we are
presently at a
point
in the history
of
philosophy when the issue
could be that easily decidable. What if he who gives you air
gives you air so rarefied, or cornpressed, or pure, or polluted,
or .. or .. that he, in effect, gives you death? If he takes your air
away
this at least reassures
y u
of
the fact
that
you
still breathe.
But, still, for the purposes
of
survival, country roads are rnore
salubrious than the atmosphere that surrounds philosophers and
through
which they roam. Providing a proof for this is
of
no
importance. That would already be
to
enter into their systern.
And to
risk frightening oneself for nothing: it s
not
out
of
the
question
that
they confuse country air with the abhorrence
of
vacuurn.
6
The vacuurn that they create
by
using up the air for
telling
without
ever telling
of
air itself: chasm at the origin
of
their thought s appropriation?
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8
I U C E
]RIGARAY
Valorized in the final analysis as hollow: a possibility for gath
ering together?
When the world becomes too built
up
and
popu
lated, the mind
or
the soul
too
preoccupied or burdened
with
knowledge, the discourses far to·o congested, having recourse
to spaces that are still empty-not
planted
with
trees?-is
es
sentiaL But an emptiness that is nonetheless encircled: the clearing
i
he opening
from
which the whole emerges out
of
concealment
and into
which it enters in concealment.
Is
not
air the whole of our
habitation
as mortals? Is there a
dwelling more vast, more spacious, or even more generally peace
ful than
that of air? Can man live elsewhere
than
in air? Neither
in earth, nor in fire, nor
in
water is any
habitation
possible for
him.
No
other element can for hirn take the place of place. No
other
element carries
with
i t o r
lets
itself
be passed
through
by-light and shadow, voice or silence. No other element is to
this extent
opening itself--to one
who would
not
have forgot
ten its nature there
is
no need for it to
open or
re-open.
No
other
element
is as
light, as free, and
as much
in the
funda
mental mode of a perrnanent, available, there is.
No
other
element is in this way space
prior to alllocaliza
tion, and a
substratum both
immobile and mobile, permanent
and flowing, where multiple ternporal divisions remain forever
possible. Doubtless, no other element is as originarily constitu
tive
of
the whole
of
the world, without this generativity ever
coming to completion in a primordial tirne, in a singular pri
macy, in an autarchy, in an autonorny, in a unique
or
exclusive
property ..
But this element, irreducibly constitutive of the whole,
com
pels neither the faculty of
perception
nor that of knowledge to
recognize it. Always there, it allows
itself
to be forgotten.
Place of all and absence?
No
presence without air.
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1
IueE ] R I G A R A Y
ology today impossible
for it?
Collaborating with
one
hand,
braking with the other. Cynical player in a capitalist epoch?
Arranging for its survival in all possible economic and political
regimes. The left and the right -having becon1e for it as little
distinct
from
each other
as
the difference between the sexes,
which they have always also signified. Everything able to
be
come everything and anything: one would need only argue on
the basis
of
one's fantasies, or irrlaginary identifications,
or
dreams,
or
..
Such
would
be the decadence
to
which an uncontrolled ex
ploitation of
air by language
and
by systems
of
representation
would have led: to such a surplus value, derived from a material
production supposedly fi ee
of
charge, that discourses would
today be without any possible credit. With the
philosopher
de
lighted
about
this?
The
faster it devalues,
the
faster
it
..
What?
No longer means anything? No longer has any relation to Be
ing?
Has
no more reserves of air?
No
longer has a livable future.
Or
a breathable one. Is
the
philosopher's future dwindling away
into a rnirage? Whence the anguish of the thinker?
And
whence the task he sets for himself: to deterrnine what
has been
lost to
the
proper
rnatter for thinking.
What
has been
forgotten in that perfect roundness where
to
be
and to
think
are the same.
Or even: how was air able to close up
into
a circle? What
psychical mediation was already
at
work with the Greeks,
bowing this fluid's freedom
to
a spherical form?
Hardening it
into a solid shell for the inhabitation-in the future-of mor
tals? Assuming an imnlediacy to the encounter with things, a
phenomenality to things apart frorrl any subjective workings,
while the irrlagination-transcendental at
that-was
already
fabricating its irreducible illusions: that because air
is
an im
perceptible,
non-apparent
thing,
and
so originary for percep-
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2
L V E ]RIGARAY
within a
treatment
that can be termed idealist. This remains
unthought by materialists, at least by modern ones.)
Air would be the arch-mediation:
of
the logos
of
thinking, of
the world-whether physical or psychical. Air would be the sub
stance of the copula that would permit the gathering-together
and
the arrangement of the whole into the life
and
Being of
man, and permit his
habitation
in space s a mortal. But this
arche ness would never be able to be constituted
s
an origin
because of its rnediating qualities
and
because it is a
permanent
necessity for the immediate subsistence of man.
Which means that this matter escapes mastery and that the
debate between
man
and physis with respect to air, is the
one
that most
constantly threatens death: the one that is the most
originarily,
and
always imtnediately, present in his overcon1ing
of
the natural.
To
air he owes his life's beginning, his
birth
and
his death; on air, he nourishes himself; in air, he is housed; thanks
to air, he can move about, can exercise a faculty for action, can
manifest himself: can see and speak.
But this aerial
matter
remains unthought by the philosopher.
And, in this unthought, the force of rnother-nature prevails, at
least
until
the present day, over all
of
his powers.
The
priori
condition
of
all
of
his prioris?
But
is
air thinkable?
Through
what transformations must the
logos
pass in order to think this unthought?
Will
it survive this
operation? If the copula that ensures the
logos
s such
is
ques
tioned with
regard
to
its material properties,
what
will become
of
that truth
that
man has always believed he could grasp, even
in its concealment frorn imrnediate perception? Is a fluid
truth
thinkable? What becomes of the essential
truths
fashioned,
un
til the present day, by man? What becomes of this very man ?
And
is
it
not
today the task of thinking to question
itself
about
that reality that lives in it, and in which it lives s mortal? Wish-
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THE FORGE T T ING
OF
IR
ing itself immortal.
There
remains air, fronl which
thought
draws
its subsistence.
Has
the
gesture
of
thought
always been
to
ward
off
and to
master death? Busying
itself
first with the gravest danger? Preoc-
cupying
itself
at first with
what is most
rare?
Unless thought is born of a superabundance, of an excess
that overflows man? A creator
of
rarity because he wishes to
constitute a world that would be
proper to
him? A world where
he ventures
to meet
nature in order
to bow
it
to
his own mea-
sure, and not
to
let it be. A world where he cares less
to
ensure
his subsistence, to find satisfaction
of
his basic needs,
to
arrange
a livable space,
than to
transform the whole into a universe of
his own.The relation
to plrysis
being deterrnined more by a proj ect
of appropriation
than
by a desire for life, or for survival.
Man
would intend to
rernake the world in his image,
as
much
as
if not rnore than,
to
inhabit it as a mortal.
The
future that he
would always have secretly
proposed
for
himself
would be to
become
or
to be
the
master
of the
universe, at the risk
of
thereby
losing his life.
To
become
as if
irnmortal, even
at the
price
of
dying
from
it here and now.
Whence the question: does the lo os assume a death sentence?7
Is this statement ambiguous or not? Is it man s dearest project to
die? In, frorn, by means of, for .. a mirage? Would his most radi-
cal intervention in nature be
to
transform it into a mirror for
hirnself?
Is
not
air
the
element
that
is
nlOst resistant
to
this operation?
How could air, the rnediation of all reflection, reflect itself?
Whence the forgetting of that which offers itself freely
in
abundance?This th r is where everything comes to pass and where
everything stirs nearly unhindered. Place
and
imperceptible mi-
lieu of all presence
and
of all relations. The unthought out of
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L U E ]RIGARAY
which Being is born, in which it suspends itself; and
into
which
it declines? Harboring an aporia of the speaking of air. Because
man would have wanted to be ek-static to his surroundings, which
are those
of
a living
mortal
being,
to
be raised
upright
in separa
tion fl'orn his environment,
to
be erected in the misappreciation
of
that which permits, supports, accompanies, and rnanifests
..
his
upright
Being.
To
be silent about
that
infinite openness
that
is air, in order to affirm his essence as his own, although it
is
prior to any
ek-sistance
founded on an unthought exchange.
But the element of air does not manifest itself. Except in the
form
of
smoke? HIf all beings were to Inanifest themselves
as
smoke, noses would then be diagnostic experts:'8 A humorous
rendering of the fact that the power of knowing
is
detennined
by the
manner
of
the being's appearing?
Here
the closeness
of
Heraclitus and Parmenides can be heard clearly. This Fragment
/ being the Heraclitean version of HFragment 3 of Parrnenides'
Poem: the Same, in
truth, is
at once to think and to be.
Air does not show itself. As such, it escapes appearing as a)
being. t allows itself to be forgotten even by the perceptual
ability
of
the nose. Except in cases where hurnan activity has
fabricated the air to begin with.
Air remains the unthought resource of Being. Unthinkable?
By Heidegger? Even
though
the phenornenon of the cosmo
nauts has often
passed through his meditations
..
Most
certainly, in Heraclitus,
cosmos
already
no
longer means
the superabundance of a natural
phuein.
This sarne [ee
mime]
for
all time there already, always living, both reaching back in time
and being projected into the future as far as possible, this same
could designate the there
is
for all things and all beings,
that
air
is.
Air
that
no god and
no
man would have produced. But this
meaning would already be forgotten in the phenomenon, or the
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THE FORGE T T ING
OF
AIR
phenornenality,
of
fire. Cosmos already represents the world
of
man: the power
to
light and use fire distinguishing
him
frorn
other
living beings.
That
there
is
no
fire
without
air,
that
the meeting
with
air
is
necessary for combustion,
that
something
of
a there is
of
plrys s ensures
the
posing
of man as
man,
without
any recogni
tion of this received provision-all this remains unthought
already in the order of
the
world found in Heraclitus and
Parmenides.
t
is
true that
air
is
not
produced
by
man and
that
it does
not appear as a wellspring
or
as a springing forth. Cosmos
should
already be
understood as
a gathering-together
and as
a
fll c-
tional ordering
of the
whole by
and
for
the
power
of
man. s-
mos and
logos being
of
the saIne.
That Cosmos also means iithat which is resplendent, the iiRa_
diant, Zeus, iithe light
of
heaven,
and those who
shine
at
the head
of
the State indicates that
OS1110S
is already
of the
reign
of
that which dominates from
on
high, which overhangs
from
its heaven, which issues cornmands
from
its elevation,
or
erection, as head, as chief: as capitaL 1
A third Ineaning, secretly linked to the
other
two, is: finery.
Produced by man, the fire that he pours out frorn his heights,
golden adornment. Finery, like gold, is not there merely
to
shine of itself: but to make he who wears it, on whorn it shines,
hirnself shine. II Such is n2ture, transforrned by man so he can
inhabit it as its rrlaster, its king, its God.
Frorn the beginning, air becornes the air
that man
gives
him
self in order
to
appear.
The
triple rneaning of cosmos
or of
fire
does not rnake any difference, fundarnentally,
to
what the sepa
ration
of
fire frorn the other elernents establishes as man's rule
over nature. Nature in its elerrlental multiplicity is already bowed
to the autarchy of a power:
plrysis
already opened up by
and
for
man
in accordance
with
his needs,
or
desires,
to
appear.
Plrysis)
5
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16
I U E
]RIGARAY
letting-be corne, including its non-apparent letting-become, is not
encountered.
And
the privileged status
of
fire,
of
the shining,
of
the ap
pearing, finds itself unquestioned, while the clearing
of
Being
is
made out to be a there is prior to light
or
darkness, to sound
or silence. An evocation of the diaphanous properties of air?
Staying in the appearing, the thinker sees nothing there but
fire. Or,
even:
the emptied shell
of
the sphere
of
Being? Both
of
them
belonging to the same? The
mark on
nature
of
man's
desire.
Of
what [is] this shell? O f air. O f what could the envelope
of
the world be
if
not
of
vitrified air?
Which
is stated in
Empedocles' cosmology.
The first element to be separated y
batred
was
air, and
it
surrounded the world in a circle,
or
an egg.
The exterior circle of air solidified, or froze, and was transformed
into a crystalline vault
that
bounds the world. It
was
fire, in
virtue of its capacity to solidify, that condensed air and changed
it into ice.
Thus
was the world constituted as a whole closed in
upon
itself: the
most
fluid cosmic element serving
as
its solid crust.
How enclose air
if not
by using it itself
as
an envelope?
An
astounding
I2
procedure would always already have taken place
in order to prevent aporia including in the determination of place.
That which escapes being bounded becomes the very bound-
ary itself. And where Being still offers itself in the form of physi
cal, sensible
phenomena in
the Greek
world the
material
support of
the apeiron is constituted as a
peras.
Isn't this what is constantly being fabricated with the ges
ture that appropriates the world?
And
isn't this the reason that
this gesture always involves a groundless danger? The boundary
is
sometirnes revealed there as the boundary of thinking, though
it
sought to be the bounding of the world by thinking. Where
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THE
FORGE T T ING
OF
AIR
unbounded
nature would still remain, would
man
discover only
his own
yet-unthought void? A vertigo proceeding from an at
tainment of
the borders
of that
place where
man
maintains
himself,
and
not
from
reaching the edges
of
some natural abyss?
And
this all the rnore so since the matter
that
ensures
the
properties
of
the world
is
already imaginary?
The
icy air
that
surrounds Empedocles world
is
a very subtle air: it
is of
ether.
The
mirror
that constitutes the world
of
man, by Ineans
of
its
envelopment, already being a projection
of
his desire?
If
he wants
to
appropriate the
mirror
for himself, he ends
up holding nothing
but the ungraspable installation
of
the
mirror.
Which with
this move,
is
undone. Or
is
thematically
redoubled.
Man
wanting
to
regain possession
of
himself
as
constituting and gathering together the whole, apprehends only
the nothing: a fabricated air-bubble, empty correlate
of
the
whole. Clearing
of
Being? Circle
of
the
logos?
Gestell
that
orga
nizes his perception, his reflection, and his proj ection into a
world. As a mortal?
Or as
wanting to be immortal? Which
means: to be nothing same?I3
Something of the
rnechanislTl
put into
place by
man to con
front
the danger
of
death in his meeting with nature remains
unthought.
This something could be described as his project
or as his projections, which are always already intervening in
what he says is. As his fabrication and his weaknesses always
already getting rnixed
up
in
that
which he designates
as the
letting-be
of
physis. The proposition at the origin
of
metaphys
ics:
to be to think the
same
already harboring, in a forgetting,
the difference in their provenance, production, upsurgence, and
apparition.
In the there is or it gives itself [ e
l
y a
ou l se
donne
ou
fa se
donne], which
of
the
two to
be
or to think-constitutes the
reserve that thus so freely gives
of
itself? Does it
amount
to the
7
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8
IueE
JRIGARAY
sarne thing? Frorn what resource
do
these two draw their sameness
in order to thus develop
or
tell of thernselves?What
estell
of
Being
or
of
thinking
perm.its
the
use of resources?
And if the
two
of
them do
not
share
the
same provenance, have they dif
ferent estelle or not? In the meeting of
man
and nature,
is
man
taken into account by the two
of
thern?
Or:
do the installations
put
into
place by
nun
to
position
hilTIself
as
ITlan cloak the fact
that he nukes his own nature bloom only at the price of squar
ing up and masking nature? Man would
build
his world only
through
an
appropriation
of the natural world. A breaking-in, a
clearing of land,
and
a cultivation of this cleared
land
in
order
to take root in the natural world, to take fronl it the where
withal to ensure his subsistence, to draw frorn it the means to
feed his erecting. In order to open
up
a livable space there, to
arrange surroundings in which
to
dwell,
to
find a ground there
thanks to which the
apparition
of
phenomena
can ek-sist? But
doesn t this exploitation
of
nature by man run the risk
of
lead
ing to his own death?
Must
letting-be be understood as letting man s thinking
be
unfolded/
deployed, or
as
letting nature bloom? Can these two
advents occur in
the
same tirne?
Which
tirne?
Has
it already
taken place? Is
it
heralded
as
a possible taking-place? Doesn t
the
there is
of the tirne
of
Being defer their ITleeting
until death
and beyond?
Or even: isn t presence that estell
put
into place by man in
order to render certain rneetings with nature impossible?
estell
that
he ascribes
to
nature,
and
with
which he readies nature
to
the extent of reITlOving from it the becoming that
is
proper to
it. If to change, to deteriorate,
amounts
to absenting itself; then
the physical world is either radically absent for rnan or so trans
formed from old by the project
imposed
on it that it thereby
loses its properties. Which arnounts to the same thing with re
gard to the advent
of
a meeting between the two of them. The
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
face
projected
by Inan onto
plJ) sis
would already have eclipsed
the face of
the
taking-root, growth, efflorescence, and decay in
nature. A certain technique would always have so disguised l ~ y s s
that
man could
discover in it
but
a mirage
or
a danger
of
abyssal
decline. The vertigo of the unthought. And the unthinkability,
for hirn,
of
a
phueil
whose
danger-and
solutions to
that
dan
ger-he
would not
know.
If
to be standing before, to be of the level of,
to
be up to
bearing
that
before which
one
is"
4
expresses the
comprehension
of Being,
then
these standards, this Gestell) are indeed inappro
priate when
it
cornes to air.
Never
able to be constituted into a
"before oneselC'
but
that in which and thanks
to
which all can
come to appear "before oneself." Prior to any clearing, air
is that
medium of which extension
is
built. The clearing of trees rnak
ing what
is
cut
out
of
it
appear
and
disappear for
the
upsurgence
of
other
beings.
But the clearing of Being is already no longer a clearing of
the forest. For if everything were to be represented there, air
would no longer be there. The meeting that can take place in
this clearing is always already an experience in a vacuum": 5 in a
space detenTlined
and
delimited by the forgetting,
the
privation,
of a nutter necessary for
the
existence of living beings.
In
a
milieu where things come together only after having been torn
from their natural site. In a hollow, a hole, an excavation, a loca
tion, and a place
that
are opened up by breaking into nature.
The question of
a
topology of
Being thus arnounts
to the
question of Being s a topo-Iogic. To what extent does Being
correspond
to
a deterrnination of localization that is already
constructed by destroying properties of natural "space"? Place
being only in virtue of its boundary: between a within and a
without, an exterior and an interior. An incorporation and a
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2
IucE
] RI G A RA Y
projection?
Would
space corne
into
play only
y
way of this
border developed y man? Its volurnes, its openings, its possible
voids, would take place only in virtue of the edges set
y
him?
The
free
could
come
and
float
about
the borders
of
this work:
its
boundary
would still rernain.
Does this boundary bring Heidegger to a standstill in the
march of thought?
Should
the fluctuations, the oscillations, the
waverings, and the hesitations that occur repeatedly in Art and
Space I be
understood
as a withholding? Is the philosopher
changing position in that piece?
Or is
he making the things
rnove
about
before him, giving the illusion of a change in posi
tion, while he keeps the frarning of his
point
of view fixed?
Allowing
himself
any kinematics whatsoever, the projection
booth
remaining his protection.
But does the
philosopher
see the boundary?
If
he saw it,
wouldn't he lose his viewpoint in it Even if he feigns losing it,
does he really renounce it
When Heidegger questions the danger of a modern physlco
technological project for rnan's inhabitation of space, isn't this
questioning still
posed through
a Greek perspective? The open
ing
that
is
brought about
y
the
modern
prospecting
of
space
is
closed
up
again
y
a topo-Iogic
that
is still Aristotelian, and, to
some extent, pre-Socratic.
What is
to
be said of certain properties of air with regard
to the
envelope that defines place for Aristotle, Being
for
Parmenides, and the osmos for Heraclitus? Does air let itself
enclose in this rnanner
without
a technique
that
removes certain
of its qualities from it Does it encircle itself
y
itself? Which
of rnan's projects entails that it can present itself arranged in
such a
way
In a clearing, for exarnple.
Without air, is place livable for a rnortal? And
if the
pro-
tection of a limit-envelope is conceived in the abhorrence of
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
vacuum why does
it perpetuate itself
when
nature ought
to
be reassured by
the
discovery
of
the weight
of
air?
Or even: how
is
it that for Heidegger the vacuum/void
is
still there?
O f
what
is
it taking the place?
And
what
is
its
relation-an essential one?-to the totality
of
place?
To the
open
expanse. To vastness?
In order
to understand
something of this one method would
perhaps be to accompany three n1en making their way through
the countryside at dusk.
7
Far frorn their homes they converse
about their
perplexities their inquiries their astonishrnent
and
their wonder regarding their relation
to
the opening. Doubtless
nightfall plunges thern
into
meditation slowing the cadence
of
their steps.
They
rernain nonetheless each vested with a role:
scientist teacher scholar. Scarcely departing from their charac-
teristic ways
and
reserve. Just a
bit
of
exuberance so
as
to
elicit
more poetic assertions. Otherwise the sorts of secrets and en-
thusiasm that suit
the
child who
is
always in man.
No
risk then
of
being offended. Everything happens apparently in
and
for
the sake
of
the greatest tranquillity
of mind
for thern all.
2
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Between
one and the
other between a male
one
and
a ferrlale
one there is at least at present
no
passage. Being would be a
waiting whose opening has closed itself up in a circle likewise
in oblivion so that the thinker can remain at rest there.
The
whole would represent the com_memoration
of
what has already
been awaited the watch that
permits
waiting still for what will
never come
to
pass.
The
open
expanse
and
all
that
takes place
within it would alTIOunt to the erecting of a bridge: a bridge
built in anticipation but also in oblivion of a passage toward.
The
bridge abides an unceasing conveying
but
at its
end
there
is
no
one.
With
its construction the
th r s of the
bridge
has carried away
that
other toward whorn it
sought
to be
the
passage.
What
is
left
ready to hand
is
the tool only the tooL
And
sorne already-fabricated things.
The
wholly
other the
fe
rnale wholly
other is no
longer there. Being has taken that
place. And
one
need only explicate
of
what Being
is
in order to
understand that the other cannot take place within i t unless
in presence. The other is nothing more
than
the assirnilation of
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IucE
JRIGARAY
the mourning of the other, projected
into
the free:' Letting-be
thus alTIOunts
to
leaving the watch over serenity to the other,
in
the face
of
the absence
of
relations between one
and
the
other -
between a male
one
and
a female
one.
To
giving
up
the
task
of
toward, so
as to
return, endlessly,
to
constructing the bridge.
That nothing
comes
to
pass there would now be the work of
the other who opposes all attempts to pass with the resistance
of
a flawless serenity.
The
thinker always returns
to
his
starting
point to
set
off
again toward the
other or
the fernale
o n e -
who
is
no
more
than the comrnernoration of a waiting.
Without
end. The other or the fernale one has let herself be used as
a bridge-being at the end of which
is
nothing: this passage is
but
an eternal
return to the
sarne.
This
passage
from oneself to
oneself; frorn
oneself to
the
other
of
oneself; the same,
is
rnade across an expanse
that
seems
to transgress all boundaries: whether horizontal or vertical. This
could take place already without transcendence
and
in a vast
ness where the horizon is resolved
into
its beyond. Serenity pre
sumes that
nothing
remains: outside. The whole is convoked
there.
Or
is
reconvoked?
After
having been harvested in nature
and sheltered in a home where things last without spoiling.
Here the whole is
at
the same time culled
from
nature to be
collected in a single
and
definitive world of
appropriation-
dis appropriation: where the whole takes its place
and
is kept,
arranged
within
its dwelling. Nothing else can
happen
there
without
passing
through the
assirnilation
of
a mourning.
No
(female) living
thing
can reach it
without
first being inclined
before, collected, and sheltered in a place of noble com-
memoration.
Whether
male
or
female,
none
are given a sirnple
yes or no, and, in the suspense between these, each one
is
set
out
in its place. Yes for man must exempt frorn his
wait/
expecta
tions nothing of what
is
destined for him; no fo r no thing
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THE FORGE T T ING
OF
AIR
can subsist,
or
even corne about unexpectedly, outside
of
this
space-tirne
that
is already detern1ined by
and
for the Being
of
man.
Is this
to
say already
determined
for death?
That
would be
saying
too
much.
The
narneless cannot be designated so. The
operation of constituting space-time
must
itself remain with
out
a nanle.
At
least, still in
the
present. Moreover,
it
would
not
be right to assert that this
operation
takes place solely
through
and
for
death
since
to
assert would already be
to
destroy this
very assertion).
It
takes place in,
and
thanks to,
the
suspense
between yes
and
no the to-come of a birth, the thereafter of
a death.
One must- in order
to
understand i t -return to
what
is
already, prior to the waiting. To that from which the waiting,
seemingly originary, proceeds. To that which it expects to re
peat, endlessly.
Or
even: from what,
of
what,
is
the waiting made?
To man, it proceeds from his ascendancy.
The
one who so
journs
at
the origin of his Being waits. The one who is en
trusted beforehand
to
that whence,
that
frorn which, that starting
from
which the essence of
thinking is constituted.
To that
anteriority
that
has so
outdistanced
the essence
of thinking
that
thinking cannot
reach it.
The
one
who waits awaits
the unthink
able
return of
a beginning.
O f
what
[is]
the
essence
of
thinking such
that
its beginning
should be in
this
manner
unthinkable?
Taking
place
in the
anteriority
of
every past, in
the to-come of
every future.
So
far
ahead
of
any nalnable time.
It
is
in
the
relation
to the
open
expanse
that
the
essence
of
thinking would
begin.
What? That s
scarcely thinkable For,
just
at the
place where
the open
expanse
is
the beginning
of
Being, this supply
of
essence
that
it provides is reversed in
the
fact that, without the Being of man, the
open
expanse is not.
The place
where-and
whence-man derives his origins, he
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Lue ]RIGARAY
says, would not be,
without
the Being of man. The circle is
closed up.
"Plainly, if the Being of man is entrusted to the open ex
panse, this
is
because
it
belongs
-so
essentially
to
the
open
ex
panse that, without the Being
of ITlan
the open expanse would
not be able to unfold as it does:'2 The beginning of the Being
of
man
is thus quasi-instrurnentally necessary
to
the open ex
panse. Without it, the
open
expanse would not come
to
unfold.
This
is why the Being
of
man is appropriate to the open ex
panse: the open expanse needs it. Since the Being of
man is
the
open expanse needs i t he asserts, beyond the thinkable.
But how does the Being of
man
need the open expanse in
order to be?This question, which is in advance of the beginning
and even further in advance of serenity, is not asked. Pocket of
air
3
orof blood, or of life through which Being tacitly feeds?
Surely, Being also
must
assirnilate something in order
to
have
begun
to be?
This operation of assirnilation like any doing,
if
not any repetition? by and for the Being of man is forgotten.
It is left
to
the open expanse? Though after the Being of rnan
already is.
What
is
rnan, before the Being
of
man
already
is?
What
a
question .. It's too naive to be thinkable But isn't this comrnemo
rat ion a
rnore or less noble
one recalled
in the open expanse?
In
the reserve
of
air
that is
kept there?
In
the assimilation
that is
attributed to it? In the constituting of things? In the opposi-
tion?
..
In all the operations left, there, (Being) in suspense be
tween realization
and
conditions
of
possibility. Between
the
present participle and the infinitive.
Neither
a participation that
is simply present for
it
has already taken place, nor the immu-
tability of a completed constituting for
it
will still take place.
The reconstitution of the impossible definitive infinitive is re
peated indefinitely.
The
suspense between the definitive and the
infinitive indefinitive still permits something to be
made of
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THE FORGE T T ING
OF
AIR
the relation between
death
and life: the already-finished and the
yet-to-be-defined.
Without
forgetting this turning: the already
brought-to-life, the yet-to-be-repeated, re-told, re-sheltered
un
der
protection
that
makes it last in sameness, in death.
In death? It s
not
that simple.
To
keep is also to keep
horn
destruction and, thus, from death. How
keep without
causing
death? Doubtless, this
is
the impossible operation
of
Being.
Unless Being were
of
air? Air which can itself be
kept
indefi
nitely definitive
if
it
is
sheltered in a dwelling.
t
is
then, techni
cally encircled, separated frorn itself
as
open expanse,
and
abstracted
horn
cornings-and-goings both within
it
and with
out. Thus, one cannot use it.
Should it
even be there. Deprived
of
a free assimilation
of
air,
the
thinker would have only ..
to die.
But he does
not
die.
At
least
not
exactly, at least
not
at once,
at least not altogether. And so he continues to assimilate and
reject: what is needed to live on.
He
does not recall this not
very noble?) resource for his Being. At least not in his thinking.
How does it
playa part
in the constitution and permanence
of
his
Being?-this
rerrlains unthinkable for him.
What
would
hap
pen
if
he lacked it?
That
question
..
He
is
necessary for it, thus,
it is. How long will that from which, that starting frorn which,
he draws
what
is needed for hirn
to
be, last?
That
question ..
The more he is the
more
it unfolds. But will there always be in
this unfolding what is needed to begin to be? Will he be able to
house and look after his Being there indefinitely? Doesn t he
thereby risk hollowing
out
this resource? Is it this
theret
that
he does not want to want, but that takes place? Is
it
this (there)
that is that ever more open opening, which he does not want
to be voracious, but
to
which he agrees
to open
himself,
as to
an assimilation?
O f
what?
In
what?
Do we
reach-
h r -
the forgotten relation to air? To which
air?
27
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Lue
]RIGARAY
Haven't we- here-passed imperceptibly from one air to
another?
Fluid
rnatter, voice, appearance. The possibility to
breathe-live, the possibility to call-nalTIe, the possibility to ap
pear-enter
into
presence. Heidegger does
not
recall this passage.
He forgets the difference of air( s).
And in place of this forgetting? A certain void.
Shes
gives-first-air,
and does so irrecoverably, with the
exception of the unfolding, from and within her, of whoever
takes air frorn her. While this air
is -f i rs t -f luid
matter carried
by the blood she gives, it can also be understood as voice and
phenomenon. These issue from it and are the
possibility-ever
material-of
naming-denorninating, of appearing in presence.
She gives first. She gives the possibility of
that
beginning
from which the whole of rnan will be constituted. This gift is
received with no possibility of a return. He cannot pay her back
in kind. The numerous and varying and ceaseless times he will
make
return to her(e) will never take place in place
of
the first
gift. An unbreachable distance will remain between this here
from which he proceeds
and
his calls, his summons, his returns
to
That
first gift remains
without
response:'
This irrecoverable receipt takes place in a receptacle: in her,
but also in him.
These
two (here) cOmITlUnicate in one direction
only: she gives and he takes. At the beginning, there is
no
give
and-take, no there-and-back of the gift-except, on occasion,
with respect
to what isn't any good: he gives
or
returns what
is
not
assimilable.
This
distanceless rejection
of
the
110t-
t)here
threatens death:
him
or her. But,
most
generally: he takes.
This debt of life seems natural and like
it must
remain un
paid. Unpayable.
But what does this unpaid debt yield in him? A certain for
getting? A certain void? A certain confusion in the subsequent
call or sumrnons? Between the full and the empty? Does he si-
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THE
FORGETTING
OF
AIR
multaneously bring about both a trenchant distinction between
these
two-that
in the beginning is
not -and
a confusion of
them? How not mistake theIn?
By
suspending
yes and
no?
To
take back?
No? To
return?
Yes
To return?
No? To
take
back? Yes
To return
so
as
to take back, to take back so as to return. Is it
still a
matter
of the same place? O f the same there? Or will
there now be a distance between there
and
there? Which dis
tance? Which
distance, there?
That
she
is
left there?
Or
there?
Where,
there?
(Do not think
I
am
amusing myself
with
wordplay. I haven t
come to that. I have not yet
found
the place from which I
could
begin
to
say anything whatsoever. Here
and
now. I am trying,
rather, to go back
through
all those places where I was exiled
enclosed so he
could constitute
his there.
To
read his text
to
try
to
take back fiorn
it what
he took fi om
me
irrecoverably.
To
re
open
everything he has
constructed
by taking me inside,
put
ting me outside, saying yes and no, saying neither yes nor no, by
leaving me suspended in waiting
and
oblivion, where I cannot
live, rnove, breathe. I
am
trying
to
re-discover the possibility of
a relation
to
air.
Don t
I need one, well before
starting to
speak?)
I
return
first, then, to
that
first receptacle.
The
one where he
took
rne irrecoverably.
Where
I
gave him
everything,
with
no
calculation possible,
with no
receipt,
with no
debt. With
the
exception
of
rny pleasure in giving-giving myself
without
rnea
sure? But isn t he
the one
who, frorn before the fact, thinks
that
I therewith find my full unfolding? Is he himself familiar
with
the gift that is outside
of
all economies, in order to rnake such
proclamations? Doesn t this sort of gift remain for hirn an un
thinkable beyond?
This place of
the
first gift du premier don
] o r
of the rom
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Lue JRIGARAY
which
au
dontJ will
be closed up-folded up in an unthinkable
beginning
of
Being.
It is
unthinkable for its lack
of
any possible
economy, for the faulty fralning of its space-tilne, for its appre
hension
that
is
imperceptible by -all the senses: for its advent
prior to all saying. The Being of rnan will be constituted on the
basis of a forgetting: of the gift of this from which
of
which he is.
Beginning
with
the void,
on
which he constructs hirnself like a
bridge. All propositions, and, more generally, the
logos
work in
this way
But, to make this bridge, man needed
matter
and, for the
void to be, matter must first have occupied it.Would this vacuum,
of man and of man's, be the abhorrence of nature?
In
order to
create it, he needed her [nature]' When man hollows out the
first site, he uses the matter that was in place there to hollow
it
out
and to surmount it.
He
and
she-likewise
and differently
will be closed up-folded up around a certain void wrought from
what he takes from her irrecoverably.
Since he uses the first exchange between them to work out
their separation, how could he return (anything) there except in
the arbitrariness of a construction? He will be able to come
and
go indefinitely over the bridge,
with nothing
happening there
but what will lead to,
or
will lead back to, his own project.
Built
on
the void, the bridge
6
joined two banks that,
prior
to
its construction, were not: the bridge made two banks. And,
further: the bridge, a solidly established passageway, joins two
voids that, prior to its construction, were not: the bridge
made
the void.
How
not
suspend
that
toward which
it
goes,
that to
ward which it returns, in a serene awaiting?
In the) place of the first
receptacle-of
him, or of her in
the) place of their first meeting, there is, now, void. To pass
over it, frorn his side, in any case: a bridgeway. This bridge is for
re-turning: the first empty envelope, the envelope of the void,
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
into another one. This yields a double envelope or loop.
The
sign
of
infinity?
The
bridge
is at
the re-crossing-re-intersection
of these two envelopes. At this place, the inside passes into
the
outside, which comes back
to
the inside after havmg gone around.
There
is
no
longer any not-inside
or
not-outside here.
Here
the
whole
is:
taken
up
again in a flawless double encirclement. There
will be no breaching of this double boundary. Everything takes
place inside this double enclosure: one comes
and
goes here
frorn one side of the
bank
to the other, from one
bank
to
the
other
nearly imperceptibly,
and
without
noticing
that
one has
changed sides.
The
outside
of
being-there
and
the inside
of the
soul,
the
inside
of the
soul
and the
outside
of
being-there, indefinitely
pass one
into
the other: all that is needed is a bridge of language
to
cross. It is crossed both coming and gomg,
though
it goes all
the while in the sarne direction.
What
is
received fi'om the
world
and what
is given
to
i t o r
re-given-what is
given to it and
what is received
from
it,
now
pass insensibly frorn
one to the
other, one in the other, staying all the while within the sarne
project, the same course. A waymaking?
A
proposition
does
not
have two sides, one below
and one
above,
at
any rate not when it holds by itself. It
no
rnore adheres
to
a
substratum
that ensures its founding
than
it overflies
itself
to
estirnate the distance-frorn,
to
gain a perspective, a point of
view.
When
it is set forth, it holds by in,
and
for itself. From
where does it,
as
such, derive its matter? This remains
unthought.
For
were there not, this side
of
the first envelope, she
who
from the first supplied the nourishrrlent for
its
constitu
tion, organization,
and
interconnection, and,
beyond the
sec
ond envelope, she who supports its constitution-appearance
projection
with
an outside,
the proposition would
not
hold.
These two provisions of
matter
are forgotten.
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IueE
]RIGARAY
Is this (there) the same forgetting
of
her? Repeated indefi
nitely. Is she forgotten, two times at least, and then forever?
Or
is
there a double forgetting? Are they [femaleJ a t least t w o -
indefinitely forgotten?
Or
further:
are all those [female] ones
present and to corrle caught in the forgetting of a single [fe
male] one-alone
and
unique-that (and
who) is
forever re
peated? Or are they two-always at least two to be forgotten?
In this case and the former one, what relations does he maintain
arnong
them and do
they rnaintain
alTIOng
themselves? Are they,
a plural
of
she,
lumped
together in the same bunch ?? Or are
there always at least two? How, then, can he pass from one
to
the other,
or
to others,
if
there are no means to pass by way of
the first one?
Does
he reduce them one to the other? How? Or:
does the female other always remain outside?
(Such questions
Enough
to drive you out
of
your heads ..
To smash your bridges:' But I'm trying to get out
of
your
envelopes, your propositions, your theres.
And
still... I haven't
begun
to
speak of relations between you, which, nevertheless,
cover over all the rest. Indefinitely encircling the relation
to
a
female them. Unless
I'm
speaking only
of
that?)
In
the
first rneeting, before his thought's beginning, she
gives-gives herself in the form of fluids. These fluids
pen
etrate into hirn, exceeding
all
boundaries: the envelope that serves
as
ambiance for him there, the envelope of his body-thing, the
envelope
of
his organs
and
mucous
rnembrane,
the
envelope
of
his cells. This way of entering
into
hirn goes beyond all possible
categorizations, intelligible
or
sensible, at least for
him at
present.
He
takes
her
into him, immediately, without even any percep
tion of the difference between perceiving and perceived. This
penetration
that constitutes him, at the beginning, takes place
in darkness.
This
gift without measure remains underrlOnstrated.
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
She does
not
offer herself
to
be seen where she gives herself, she
does not appear where she gives herself, does
not
even let her
self
be called
or
nalned in that place.
The
life she gives
is
already
prior
to
any possible
demonstra
tion. Without demonstration she gives
him
that estell that is
his living body. The mediation
of
this
gif t or of
this
from
which is fluid: the blood. There already is a bridge, a natural
one, between her-hirrl
and
him-her.
t
goes in one direction only,
except, on occasion,
with
respect
to
what isn't any good.
He
does
not
yet see:
not
the
world,
not
things,
not
her,
not
him.
This
takes place in the fonn of a proximity
without
dis
tance, of a
kind
of touch uninterrupted by any sides, even
though
he
is
naturally, within an envelope.
He
draws liquid through.
He
does not yet speak: he takes
without
asking, with
no
offer
frorn her in words
or
sentences.
He
draws liquid there without
seeing
or
identifying where, frorn whom,
or
how this there
is
taken.
He cannot
not take, on
pain
of not being. He is not yet free
to
either take
or
go away. To COITle and go, to leave
and return
whence he came, to withdraw
and
come take once again.
He
is
enclosed inside
her
so as
to
take. This whole is penneable, yet
sealed.
He
dwells in an envelope-surround
that
opens
to
let
him
through only once he can live without her.
This
horne is swollen
with water. He begins to be in and thanks
to
fluids.
Which will be forgotten
and
surpassed in
the
consistency
and
solidity
of
his
propositions and
arguments?
In
the coher
ence of his language? In the permanence of his Being and truth?
In that of things : past, present, and to come?
In
those fault
less envelopes where the inquiry bears above all upon history:
the envelopITlent he has made for himself and which he keeps
unrolling-rolling
up?
Where at
present, are the fluids? Those
that
have fed him,
those
that
have made him? And the passage between
them
and
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4
I U C E IRIGARAY
him?
The
passage between
hilTI
and she who
constituted
him
with fluids?
Won't
this irrecoverable gift
and
this unpaid and
unpayable H ebt be repeated endlessly like some natural thing ?
N
attIral : in his language,
is
this
tb
say yet
unthought and
left
in oblivion?
How is
this oblivion recalled,
without
being thought,
in what he calls Being? In what he calls essence?
Where, thereafter, does the repetition of the first H neeting
with her take place?
Will
an
other
one be possible?
One ought perhaps to pause here at a certain portico that
detains Heidegger: the portico ofjorifeeling Something essential
happens
to us in
advance-in the form
of
a presentiment,
giving
itself
to our
attention
in this way so that we might pre
serve it there.
It
is
not
yet a rnatter of knowing, at this point,
but rather
of that
which covers over all
that
can be known, thereby
hiding it. The portico, which opens on the pre-understanding
and the placing under guard
of
all
that
is set-before, and on its
safekeeping in a
legeil that
ensures its assembly, this portico, which,
as
its presentiment, precedes
the
set-before, recalls the
opening
of the clearing of Being. And perhaps also the passage
from
one
loop to another?
Or
rather-earlier?-the passage from one
band
to
another:
the opening
prior
to the
leap
into
saying all?
Which
leap a voice still silent encourages, whispering
Hit
is;'
before this is so?
This
portico
would
be passed
through at
every step,
without
ever being passed through.
t
would always refer the next step to
the step before, the future
step
to the step past, suspending in
this corning-and-going that which sets itself
forth-does not
set
itself forth
in the present. It
would mark
the de-limiting open-·
ing
of
the entry
into
this there, into which he never truly enters:
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THE FORGE T T ING OF AIR
he remains ever on the threshold before that which will be, or
has already been, set forth and
then
gathered, before him.
This
portico
would de-limit the passage between two places
even
if
the place set-before
is
apparently, the only one.
This
de
limitation would
open
indefinitely
on
a Ineeting that will never
take place: a Ineeting
that
will be recounted without taking place,
that
will take place only in the saying. Its advent is always forefelt,
pre-understood,
but
so
as to
be preserved and gathered to-
gether in the saying.
This
portico, where
and
through
which passes the leap
into
saying-all, would consist as Inuch in what has already been con
structed in the silent gift relation between her
and him as
in
what hastens its possible return in that which comes to pass. It
is
situated between these.
This
portico would re-present everything or rather (ear
lier?) would permit the re-presentation
of everything through
itself: the hamework
of
that from whi h she has him, and keeps
constituting
him as
a living being: opening
to and
through
this
solid
body
he now is the body which he received and still
receives horn
her, without dernonstration.This
portico
would
be the ilnage
of
the place
of
relation,
both
past and to come,
between her
and
him. The gift of her body in fluid
form
having becorne, in and through him,
that
which now stands sol
idly raised up erected.
With the assirnilation
of
her, thanks to which he
is
posi
t ioned upright an arch is opened
through
which he comes
and goes ceaselessly, suspended between remembering and await
ing.
He
awaits the
return of that
which he rernembers-does
not
remernber.
But how
is
she supposed to return when he has assimilated
her?
When he has assimilated her to hirnself? So what
is
he
waiting for?
To
assirnilate her again,
and
endlessly? Or
to
re-
5
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THE
FORGE T T ING
OF
AIR
This «nothing is, or «everything
is,
has required-it is
t rue a leap beyond. Beyond what? Beyond what he has leapt
over and from. Perhaps already
pre-apprehending-there
is
doubtless no question
older-that,
were
there another language,
he might well find himself drawn into it and taken, assimilated,
appropriated-dis appropriated to be kept safe there in a lasting
truth), excluded-rejected, with no appeal
or
recall possible.
The
other language possibly being constructed (like his own lan
guage? as
long
as
there
is
no other he remains ever in a state
of
assirnilation
to
himself,
of
projection
of
himself)
on
the basis
of a gift
that
precedes all speech. A gift the other would
not
remember.
And
in which case he, then-he who would have
given this language the possibility of being-would henceforth
take place only in the non-places of an abyss.
For one who, despite having not been long in this non-place,
has been there «eternally, this absence
of
any site
is
not
appeal
ing, except as a sort of horror.
If
there
is
only one language,
this absence is, nonetheless, required there. Which remains
unthought
and unthinkable for him.
While he holds to, and keeps to, his own language as to that
which he holds-and to
that
which keeps hirn-most solid.
Solid enough for
him
now
to
allow himself to
put
this language
back into question. What is essential is that there be only one: a
single language, the one he has already appropriated, and that
he reappropriates for hirrlself endlessly.
Does this, then, amount to recalling
that
his living body left
the abyss by assirnilating-appropriating to itself a female
other
who gave herself
to
him, first, in silence, first, in a non-solid
form? It is the contrary, he will say: it is because his language
is
what it is
that
this could
not
have occurred otherwise. Given
such a non-argument,9 how can one make oneself understood
by him? He now occupies his language more than he does his
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L U E ]RIGARAY
living body.
He
wants this language he
usesIO
to ensure him a
solid foundation. And
if
he
is
the one who lays this foundation,
there is no risk of losing
it too
suddenly. Which can always
occur
if
it proceeds frorn a female other:
should
she absent
herself: he
l
is plunged back into the abyss. It is not she, the
absent one, who first cries ou t i t is he. This cry is the call to
her, or the recall
of her before
he leaps into saying all. Well
before he names
her before
he SUlumons her
into
his speech,
where he can take her, keep her, draw from her, and propriate-
reappropriate her for himself ceaselessly he cries
out
for her
to
come corne
back to take, hide, and keep
him
in her, filling
him
up, the abyss. But he always assimilates her to himself
though
he cries out, she's the one who called. She comes because she
has always already called
him
to come to her. At least, this is
what he says in his language. Isn't this how he lays his abyssal
burdens down? Since she has called him, first, he now can be,
and with no destruction possible. She called me, first
as
always,
thus I can be and remain at rest: she misses me rnore than I rniss
her. She will still and always give me what I need
to
live.
His
way
of
making arbitrary predications
about
things does
not
mean
that
he has exhausted all
of
his syllogistic resources.
t even seerns that the more he falls or rises back into the sen-
sible, the rnore he puts into operation means for grasping things
solidly. And
things,12 still lacking language, let thernselves be
caught by these lueans.
They
will even go so far as to wait for
him
to leave
that
position from
which he claims to
say
truly,
what they are (which he has always done), so far, indeed, as to
wait for hirn to address thern. As if he could speak except to
speak his language still, thus not to speak to things:'
Rather,
it
would be up to them to begin to speak. Which
they will do: they will begin to speak, and even begin to speak
to
each other, through him. Which has taken place forever. They
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T H E F O RG E T T IN G OF AIR
have always called narned said and presented each other through
him.
How could
it be otherwise?
Outside of
his language there is
nothing.
One single language-isn't this the rnost peremptory and
preemptive law there is? He does
not
want
to
know this.
It is
without
willing
or
will that he now
turns
toward
them:'
He
welcornes
theITl
insofar as they are destined for him.
For
his
part he relnains serene at rest: at the re-crossing-re-intersec
tion
of
these two
loops :
turned
more toward the second one.
He
is situated beneath a
portico and
atop a bridge:
that
have
passed
and re-pass one into the other indefinitely on the model
of a certain leap of the
look?-that
once took place but is
forgotten. A re-joining of the two bands that at present is for
gotten?
He
advances
rernaining
all
the
while.
He
stays
within
sam.eness which does not rule out a certain
sort
of movement.
Couldn't one
define his
operation of
assimilation in this
way?
For
which
operation
one rnust now
turn
toward the
open
expanse in its
mode
of
lying--before: the region.
13
It
is
not
without
a
kind
of
ITlagic
he said.
The
magic
of
this
region is thought
to
be the force specific
to
its own unfolding
and its capacity for op-position.
14
It gives-stretches itself out continuously and
without
end.
If
the
constitution
of the being of Being takes place in
assimila-
tion IS that of the
Being
of the
being takes place in
partiripation.
In
order for
participation
in
the
manner
of
a being
to
be
pos
sible what is
required-first- is
the constitution of a place
of
present non-assimilation: the region.
The open
expanse assimi
lates-first,
and only-the serenity
of
this suspension
of
as
sirnilation. n this
way
it can make persist that which it leads
into the expanse
of
repose: it consumes nothing. t gathers all
39
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THE FORGE T T ING
OF
AIR
Free air would thus be the material substratum
of
the region,
and
the
medium through and
in which everything can appear.
Everything but free air itself?
Why
is
this air
that
is
free enclosed in a region? A vast re
gion, able ceaselessly
to
unfurl itself;
but
nonetheless at present
always bounded? Isn't excess that
which
the philosopher must
bring,
must
bring back, within measure?
What
will determine,
for him, the acceptable measure for air It is the measure of a
relation, subject
to
re-evaluation at each present mornent,
to
the
superfluity
of
absence
or
the superfluity
of
presence.
To
man, free air
is
first
of
all
the
advent
of
an absence
that is
too great: issuing
frOlTI that surrounding into
which he enters.
He
enters
into
the outside.
He
loses
that
living
body of
a
home
where he stayed before: there where she used
to
give herself to
him,
with no
difference yet between
his/her
outside
and his/
her inside, between her and him, feeding
him
from the inside,
without demonstration. Letting her strength pass into him while
he does
nothing with it
yet but become this
Gestell
a living body.
Leaving this horne, he comes
into
an outside
without bound
ary, with
no
sides
to
hold
him
in,
no
external-internal envelope
to
be everything for him,
no
milieu. Free, out in the free air,
he
is-first
of al l in
a state
of utrnost
thrownness. I7
And
this
outside enters hirn, limitlessly. Outside
having entered
into the
outside, he
is penetrated
to his
innermost
by this outside: a
horror, for him. That into which he enters and that which en
ters
him
are
the
same,
and
are present imperceptibly,
if
not as
excess.
The
other on the outside first presents itself as an abyss,
as an endless absence: passing fronl outside
to
inside, from in
side to outside.
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L U E ]RIGARAY
O f what [is] this abyss? O f free air, which provokes cries of
distress.
FreedOlTI
provokes crying out, at first. There is just too
lTlUch absence there.
Is this cry also a first call? A
first call for air? At the begin
ning, he restores life
to
hirnself by lifting a cry for air,
for)
an
aspiration
of
air
[un cri d appel
dJajr .
HIn
its turn,
the
cry is essentially sOlTIething
other
than
the
simple fact of a noise being made. It
is
not necessarily a call, but
it may be one: the cry of distress. The call one sends out in fact
comes
from
that place yonder toward which it
is
directed. In the
call one sends out, there reigns an original impulse toward It is
for this reason alone that the call can desire; the simple cry is
lost and engulfed in itself. It can require neither pain nor joy to
allow
it to
abide.
The
call,
on
the contrary,
is
that
which arrives
yonder even
if
it is neither listened
to
nor heard. In the call
one sends out, there is the possibility of abiding. One
lTlUSt
indeed distinguish between noise, cry,
and
call. 18
The first call is an aspiration of air
[un appel
dJair ; it
is
indis
tinguishable
frolTl
a cry.
This
doesn't occur
to
hirn.
For
him,
there
is not
yet language
at
this
point-nor
unconcealment,
nor
entering into presence-at least not in the sense in which he
understands it: he does
not
yet see
or
speak,
and
hears only
sounds. Nonetheless, the conditions of possibility for what he
describes are given here: the entry
into
the outside (ness ) of ab
sence, and the aspiration-exhalation
of
air, in both of which he
will now dwell.
Air
remains-that which restores life,
but
it does so first in
the
form of an absence: there,
nothing is
lTlerely
that
which it is,
if it does not appear. This provenance
of
life, this mediation
and medium
of life, offers
itself
without appearing
as
these.
The first time, these are experienced
as
pain. Free air represents
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THE FORGETTING OF AIR
the possibility for life, but it
is
also the sign of the loss of that
which-of she
who a t no
rernove, with
no
expectations, and
with
no
difficulty,
used to
provide everything.
In
air, life
is
in
the beginning,
the
boundless irnrnensity
of
a mourning.
In it
the whole
is
lost.
Air, this there, which gives itself boundlessly
and without
demonstration, ever unfurled-unfurling, and in which everything
will corne
to
presence
and into
relation, supplants, first, an ab
sence.
It
replaces
that
absence: that which has some properties
of
the absence takes its place
and
lets itself be forgotten
as
much
as
if not rnore thoroughly than, the absence does. Not
being perceived, air can serve as the base for mourning.
Air is first, the being
of
the open expanse whose measure
would be that of the yet-to-corne of
(the)
mourning: of she
who will never corne back.
In
expectation
and
oblivion, this
mourning
is
not
discernible
as
such, thanks
to
air, which
is
rnore
a sign
of
life
than of
mourning.
Or
it
is
a sign
of
one as rnuch
as
the other. So how does one
not
go wrong?
He
doesn't
think
about
this.
What will help hilTI at present
to
forget this
is
light. Oblivion
is
of
the sun:
made
upon
the basis
of
she who once was, in
the
night,
and
on the basis
of
air: on the basis
of
mourning.
The
sun
awakens one
to
oblivion.
t
sends one
into the
sleep
of
oblivion,
into the
drearn
of
a life
without
oblivion.
And where there now is sun, each thing COlTIeS about as
distinct, separated, in its place, in its presence,
and
in a relation
to the
others where proximity becornes juxtaposition.
Light
permits
approxirnation
of things
at a distance.
t permits
things to come to hirn, and to each other, in a (non-)distanc
ing
that is more or
less rernote.
The
sun, for its part, always keeps its distance; it does not
give itself ceaselessly; it cornes and goes, staying all the while
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44
IveE JRIGARAY
the
same, always remaining right where it is
It
becomes, now,
the source.
That which gives itself always
and
everywhere,
without
mea
sure,
is
not thought of
as
a source. For there to be a source,
there
tnust
first be mourning. The source
is
that which hides a
lTlOurning: the absence
of
a beginning when the whole would
be, always
and
everywhere.
With
the source, rnan enters economy
and
the reserve supply. He begins to go back
and forth
between
absence
and
presence.
He
becOlnes entranced with the upsurgence
of presence in order
to shroud
absence. Or she who
is
absent?
The origin
is
the whole that issues frOln a source, replac
ing-and concealing the loss of-
-an
other (female) whole. This
dawning brings
about
an entry
into
oblivion
of that
which gave
itself
without
measure
and without
appearing, in the night.
19
This
sunrise marks the passage
to
an other appropriation. It
helps bring about the absence
of
she who has become man,
through
that assimilation
of her
to him that made him living.
This operation
never takes place in the light
of
day; it stays in
the shadows. By the tirne the sun clears the horizon, it has al
ways already taken place: she has always already becorne him,
without any demonstration.
The sun brings
about
this entrance into the oblivion of
mourning into the joy of mourning into the obsession of
mourning
which opens Western
thought.
Which opens Being.
This does not occur to him, even when he says
that
perhaps
the time has come
to mourn
and
make one's peace with its loss 20
If mourning consists in re-appropriating
absence-she
who
is
absent-for himself,
and
however he pleases, how
could
he
not
be serene?
How
could he give that up without loss? Being
cut frorn his natural
enrooted
state, man has made himself ec
static in a there from which he assimilates-reassimilates the whole,
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Once he has passed from inside her to outside, his boundaries
will soon appear. e sets himself forth, and sets forth the whole,
by surrounding himself, by surrounding it, with borders. e
approaches both hirnself
and
everything by approximating
boundaries. Being near-to now arnounts to being set forth near
to; being within
to
being set forth within; having a rnediulTl
to
having things set
or
arranged about.
This
surrounding stretches
out gradually. In this world, things can be drawn near or put at
a distance: they always remain there.
Except in the case of assirnilation? For he keeps assimilating
in order to subsist and grow. Certain things still come into
him:
but
they disappear in a distanceless appropriation.
e
be
comes these things:' Except for what isn't any good, which he
gives back.
These things that he receives still irrecoverably and from the
other are, first of all, fluids: lTlilk
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THE FORGETTING OF
AIR
Was
it
a call?
Or
was she answering the call?
Can
he still distin
guish between these two things once he assimilates her voice)?
Is she calling
him
so as
to
once again be assimilated
to
him ?
Is she calling so
as
to
lTIOUrn
and
make peace
with
her loss
of
h r s l f ~ in hirn? Has she no other past or to-corne than her
consumption disappearance appropriation in the being of the
Being
of
man? Remaining available, for her part, so that he can
begin
to be,
on
the basis
of the
assimilation
of her to
him?
From
his sleep-awakening, he wakes: she cried out. Called?
Sounds that he does
not
hear. An air still lacking lyrics/words.
Lacking language
[langue) And
that he does
not
hear, unless
as
a
call within this sleep he has entered. A call in the
form of
a cry?
It is she. She called in him.
Frorn her place of disappearance, she cried out: horror. She
returns crying out,
beyond
his language
[langue)
Beyond
the
point
where he
remembers does not
remember this: serenely
awaiting she who will
not
return. She cried out rending his
sleep with her absent presence. Like a dream that speaks, and
speaks with such closeness to reality
that
he wakes drowsy,
look-
ing for the one who called.
This is
the
terror
of
forgetting, this inside-outside cry
of
she
who
is
absent,
who cannot
disappear. She forever
COlTIeS and
recalls
from
her place of disappearance: she cries out at night.
She
is
so close
that the
cry is right here, either in
him or
be
tween the two
of
thern,
without
borders. Corning
from within
the borders. Frorrl
within what
he
leaps/skips
over,
and
forgets,
when he rrlourns
and
makes his peace
with
losing her?
That she
should
occupy the border, that what he believed
to
be solid
should
in this
manner
rnelt
away/be
founded,
and
that
a call issues
from
this abyss : this
is
horror.
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L U E JRIGARAY
Unless this feature
of
being up-against
[ee
[ontre] proceeds
from
him? Isn t it with the right-against [Ie
tout
[Ol tre] that he
makes up for the loss
of
she who was lost in him?
That
he closes
back
up-contains
her disappearance?
That
he Inakes absence
the
condition
for entry
into
presence?
The right-against? The lack of any difference between love
and hatred in a
(non-
)distancing
that
always lTlaintains at a dis
tance.
When
he calls thern
to
come right-against him, isn t he
calling for them never
to
come back
within
him?
For
them never
to mix
with
hirn again? Except
during
the controlled portion of
tilne
that
a
consum.mation/ consumption
takes.
Which
rneans:
for an
entry into
the absence of presence?
There,
it
s night
still.
Where Being obtains-does
not
obtain.
But in day, this rising
sun
with which he ceaselessly tends his
forgetting, the whole stays over-and-against.
It
now counters.
From
the
region, things make a call
to
enter
into
presence,
to
receive a name. Is the countering aspect
of
the region and
of
the
opposition
of
things erased? forgotten? denied? in their call? He
says that they call in
order
that he give to them. Give them
what?
The
possibility
of
a serene mourning?
The right-against, in a mourning s
hatred
that
s
projected
left there, calls upon
him
to give it all back. t s he who calls for
dwelling in an endless repose.
Isn t this
how
he constitutes the space-time of entry
into
presence? First, an assimilation
of
her to
him-which
will re
main
within
the absence
of
presence. Returning to
her
what
isn t any good, but especially in the form of
the
immensity of
a
mourning
that
s
projected-left
to
her, and that
upholds the
basis for mourning her. She
s
always in excess of this
present
vastness;
from
this excess, he draws and assimilates wherewith
to still and always mourn and make peace
with
his loss. In this
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
space-time of mourning, hatred's
countering
and
opposition
are
forgotten-erased in the fact that she calls hirn so that he may
give-give back to her. Give-give back what? The whole. The
whole now arnounts
to
what?
To
death.
He
mourns
and
makes peace with his loss of
the
whole of
love only in an equally great relation to hatred: equally great
without destroying the whole, that is to say great enough for
the re-pose-laying out
of
the whole in its death.
The more life expands and tenders itself, placing the whole
into relation through interpenetration and
unbounded
exchange,
the more
death
rnust come to lneet it so as to put the whole
back in order, re-depositing each thing in its proper place,
in
the unalterable repose of its coming to presence.
What
is the magic
of
this region from which the essence of
thinking
proceeds?-everything
that belongs to it returns to its
place of rest.
5
For this, all
that
was needed was
that
the region
assimilate the serenity of the thinker. That it assirnilate his will
to non-willing to the point that all forms of will remain foreign
to it.
The open expanse remains indefinite availability, within which
all proper motion
6
has disappeared. It lends itself to all, to all
who want-do not want that it be there at their disposal, or that
it be there for them to dispose thernselves within it. Staying
outside 'or inside, outside
and
inside, in an openness where this
very distinction fades away: the opening
is
lost-forgotten in
the
unthinkable beginning of the essence
of
thinking.
At what point
did
he pass from the not yet to the always-
lre dy
of
Being? In stopping the assimilating movement of a
mouth ? A
rnouth
left there open, available, suspended in con-
5
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54
I U E ]RIGARAY
sumption?
For
saying at least two
mouths
are required:
one
that takes-consulTles-assirnilates and one that gives-gives
back-
produces.
One
that closes
and
opens over the need to feed itself
and
one
that
remains
open
for the-pro-venance the
pro duction
of
speech. How in the present can the two be
put
in relation?
In the present?
Both
of thelTl at the sarne time? That
is impos-
sible. The present occupies this irnpossibility
and
its overcom
ing in ek-stasis.
In
the
present
the mouth
is kept
open and
in the dwelling of
this openness language
7
springs up springs back up.
Language has always already assimilated what is necessary
for it to happen [se pro duireJ8 in the present: there it gives itself
or gives itself back in the opening-as-fernale.
This
opening
says
nothing: she only lends
herself
to this upsurgence. Participating
in this production of language in an available openness. She
allows herself to be open in an expanse of ever greater vastness
where openness erases its own circumference its borders so that
the production
of
language might still and always take place.
This openness
that
is kept open ensures the passage between
two kinds
of
consumption.
Between two lives
and
two deaths.
Immediate consumption necessary for survival
that would
have
no
place being in presence; and the consurnption belonging
to
meditative thinking which having always already consumed what
is necessary finds its place in the ek-stasis of presence.
What does
the
thinker consurne
there?The
opening [{louvert]?
O f
what is
the
opening?
This
can
be
said in a variety of ways all the while relTlaining
a single way staying
within
the SalTle.
The opening
fouvert]
pro-ceeds frorn the absence
of
an irn
mediate
and
undifferentiated consurnption
from
the absence
of she who gave herself wholly for a distanceless assilTlilation:
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THE FORGE T T ING OF AIR
fl.-om the present space-time of an infinite mourning. But the
opening pro-ceeds
as
well from that which is always-too-much
to consume in the present,
from
the ek-static suspension of
immediate assimilation in
pro-duction
and in what
pro-duction
gives-gives back.
In the
placing at a distance, the placing
under
protection,
1
that saves up excess, that assembles
and
re-g(u)ards
it in gathering meditation [le recueillelllent J leaving it at rest: for
an other consumption. For the consumption that belongs to
meditative
thinking
that feeds on conterrlplation.
On
its own
contemplation?
Between
these two mournings the
expanse
bearing the
thinker s
concerned
cornings-and-goings relnains open. Mouth
or
female loins, or
eye
or body, or matter
..
always available,
always open, left there, like that present absence that makes en
try into presence possible. Rendered ek-static in their openness
gaping solicitation
[lJinstance]J
I I
in the lasting suspension
of
all
consurnption/
consurrunation. Between assimilation and produc
tion, a mouth
must
remain ever open: an available outside
inside where everything
and nothing
comes about.
Which
leaves
at peace. And makes the whole dwell in an imperishable safe
keeping.
When he began to set
himself
up,
to
stand up, he dosed
himself off
to
being permeable
and porous
to
all things. He
holds
himself
within bounds. Now all that is left is a ringed,
encircled openness that is set-laid out before hirn, ready-to
hand. It takes
up
all the space: deposited, projected into
the
there.
Like a mouth? Or female loins? One or the other. One and
the other. The two
of
thern assimilated to each other?
Ringed
by lips. But by ever open lips.
Ever open, they are eclipsed by their openness. They are for
gotten in the opening.
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LUCE JRIGARAY
Without lips, how is the passage
from
one side of the
open
ness to the other lTIarked? How can the entrance to the
opening
be passed back through
if
lips have vanished? Where is the prov
enance, without l ips-on this side
or
on the other?
How
can a
passage fi·0111 one mouth to the other, frorn here to there, take
place without losing one or the other, or both, in an assimila
tion by a kind of distance in which the difference between the
two is erased,
and
that once again amounts to sameness?
In the ek-stasis of
her
openness, she becomes, they all be
come, this sameness
from
which he proceeds
and to
which he
ceaselessly returns
to produce
hilTIself
The open expanse contains nothing, except
or
the openness
that opens and lets all things bloom within it
[elle)
The open
expanse
(GegneQ
is the expanse
that
prolongs,
and
that, gather
ing all things together, opens
itself
in such a way that the
open
ness is
contained
and retained within it, to let everything
bloom
in its own repose:
12
That which always so opens eludes any meeting. Being open,
its
manner of
approach
is to
withdraw
at
his approach. It does
not
stretch
out
like a perceptible horizon.
He
cannot touch
it,
not even with a look. When he turns toward it, he has already
entered into
it. He is already within
the
opening.
And things as objects are
lost
in
the open
expanse.
They no
more
stand
there to welcome hirn
than
does the
open
expanse:
they lie
and
rest upon and within the
open
expanse, in
the
re
turn to belonging to the abiding. Their only
fonn
of movernent
is blooming/unconcealrrlent
I3
within their repose.
Or
in his?
Nothing that takes place there can be presented
or
described.
It
can only be narned,
and
an attempt can be made
to
think it
through: outside all representation.
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THE
F O RG E T T IN G OF AIR
Thus opens the way
to
the essence
of
thinking. Or at least
the wait for the essence
of thinking or
rather its awaiting.
The
essence of thinking can
no
more be met with
than
can
the
open
expanse
or
the
IIthings
that
rest within it.
To
wait for
the essence
of thinking is to
give
up
waiting for it
and to
be
released still
further into
the opening,
into
the expanse
of
the
faraway, near which remoteness waiting finds the abiding in which
it dwells. Waiting is in this way returned
to
its dwelling. The
opening
is
of no use
to
hirn, unless it is
to
advance the wait for
a
return to
his home:
to
corne
into
the nearness
of
the faraway.
Isn't
thinking
waiting to
return to that
which in the faraway
is imperceptibly near, so
as
to be able to dwell in
the
repose
of
a proximity at a distance?
To
dwell in one's own repose?
The
expanse
of
waiting that rnust be passed back
through
again
and
that
lies between she
who
once was
melded
inextrica-
bly with hiln, she who in his llliving body became him,
and
she
whorn he cornes upon again, close by
but
still
distant would it
be
from
this expanse that the essence
of thinking
proceeds?
O f what is this expanse made?
Who
bears the waiting?
Who
yields
to
openness, being ever available so that,
through
this
long way wended
within the
opening, she who
is
awaited Inight
gradually come about, like some very distant return,
to
which
he is forever drawing closer. While making, with each step, the
essence of his thinking?
As he goes along, he speaks
about
this endless waymaking,
about
this mysterious region,
with
other lTlen
14
Moving freely
about amid their
words,
pointing
IIthings
out to
each other
and
showing each
other
things;'
but
keeping these things within
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I U E
JRIGARAY
the f1 111 reach of
what
may still be said
of
them. Giving each
other
the confidence,
amongst
themselves,
to
persevere within
the opening. Encouraging each other
along-amongst
them
selves-to
serenity. Isn't it arnongst themselves that they came
up with the name for it? That they follow its path? Together.
It
is true
that
if she has
no
language, each step
within her
risks the abyss. For them
to
be able
to
advance within the
open
ing
fouvert]
in complete serenity, the opening rnust at each
step
be named, while remaining nameless all along. Together they
seek names to give to it, conversing at night along country paths
far frorn their hornes.
They
grapple the question
from
afar.
On
what do they found thetTIselves in order to assess whether
the narnes they are giving are appropriate ones?
On
their arbi-
trary whim? On their recollection of a name
that
would simply
have escaped them? Or else:
do
they discover the namable, the
name, and the named in one (sarne) stroke? Would they then
be
producing
their very Being? Who could call
himself
author
of
it
n
the
region,
the
appellation
must
issue
from no
one.
It
alone answers for itself They have only to listen for the answer
appropriate(d) to the word spoken, and to repeat the answer
heard. And it rnatters little who first does the repeating, since
none
of them knows whence he gets
what
he is repeating.
Where did the answer corne from? Who spoke? She is
the
region
of
speech,
but
has no language. Who said that the
word
spoken was the
appropriate
d) one?
What
voice? Issuing
from
what night? Coming back
from
the outside-back
from
the
depths
of
what absence?-who is it
that
says yes to the names
that they give out? Against what obstacle does the natTIe re-
sound,
at
least once, before they repeat it, judging that it mea-
sures up to that obstacle?
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
Were the name appropriate
to
it, would the region perhaps
accept it, closing up,
and
enclosing the name, in her assimila
tion/likening?
Ever open,
what is
she waiting for? Keeping ev
erything,
gathering
everything
together,
letting
everything
settle-rely on her, yet assimilating nothing. Lending herself
to
everything and everyone, yet remaining still and always avail
able,
as if nothing
there were appropriate
to
her.
Wouldn t
she
be
a mirror, there, reflecting
and
preserving
the words spoken?
Could
this
be
arrlOng
other
things, her barely
thinkable
contribution
to entry into presence?
Didn t
they dream that she answered: yes? It was nighttime.
And
she
is
so mysterious that they expect everything
of
her.
Even that which they do not expect the
return
of that assimila
tion of
her to him
that
by day
is
forgotten.
The
question of
proper
names nevertheless confounds thern.
They
even go so far
as
to quarrel over the issue: one of their
thinkers love-spats .. No longer knowing who first
gave
the narne,
what was to be named, what
is
1urned in the use
of
the name.
No matter .. The
task now is
to
mind this narne that has so
befallen them.
The
narne came frorn waiting:
from the
waiting
of
openness.
Waiting is
the
relation
to the
open expanse.
There is no
other ..
On
the path, within her [elle] where the wait
is under way
she lets
the open
expanse reign alone.
What
are they waiting for?
To be maintained
in
their proper
Being by
that to
which
they bear a relation. Such would be for them, the true relation
to all things: a relation that keeps one safe from change. IS
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6
I U E ]RIGARAY
One that obliterates the other s passage into them, through
appropriation.
What
is
the open
expanse such
that
she leaves
no
trace
of
herself at all
on
any who enter her? Such
that
she instead brings
that which penetrates
into her
back to its own Being? Could this
be the horizon,
though
veiling
itself as
such, of the advent of
the
return to
the proper? To the essence of the proper?
To
the
substance of the essence of the proper?
How
so?
This
derives frorn serenity. From which serenity?
The right relation
to
the
open
expanse must be serenity and,
since
the
relation
is
defined on the basis
of
what it
is
related to,
serenity must rest upon
her the open expanse and
have re
ceived from
her
the rnovernent
that
carries it toward her.
There
is
never any
return
but
a
return to
the
same.
They
are
therefore waiting
to
be
maintained
in their
proper
Being, for in
her
rests
the
serenity that draws
them to return to
thernselves.
Are they not, in a serene
and
confident manner,
turned to-
ward her? Toward she
to
whom they originally belonged? She by
whom
they were originally appropriated? She
who
opens, her
self;
to
let
them
enter
into
the
wait/
expectation for repose within
their
proper
Being?
The essence of
thinking
proceeds from. the fact that the open
expanse takes serenity
into herself
and assimilates it.
O f
what
is
serenity? O f waiting. O f relations where nothing but waiting
takes place any longer.
O f
the
relation
with
one
who gives-gives
back waiting as the space for the unfolding
of
what is essential.
O f
an endless waymaking
that
holds attractions-between safely
in suspension: leaving-sending back each one to his own Being.
Each one? Who
or
what grants serenity?
Who
or
what re
ceives it? Assimilates it?
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T H E F O RG E T T IN G OF AIR
Isn't to assimilate serenity
or to
assimilate oneself
to
serenity
to assimilate death or to assimilate oneself to death? Which
death can be assimilated?
Must
she who
as
a living being
gave
herself for assitnilation
to
him
also in death assirnilate herself
to
him?
Does one ever assimilate death?
The
death of an other? Or
is
one only present for it? Receiving it. within oneself, letting
it settle on or within oneself, preserving it in a serene repose:
with it rernaining the sarrle throughout the full expanse
of
its
abiding.
16
To safeguard death in this
way
it
is
necessary
to
stay alive.
17
Would
the
open
expanse be
that
of
death maintained alive,
of
life preserved in death?
With
both suspending their days
of
reckoning?
With
the between-two
of
the no-longer
and
the
not-
yet,
and
the sustenance
of
the always-already and the never-yet,
unfolding their endless abiding: in the service
of
thinking?
Of
what can the being who bears such a duplicity
be? What
sort
of
Hrrlatter can abide in this manner without dissolving?
Without decornposing?
Without
deteriorating?
Maintaining
a
lasting subsistence,
and
inlperceptible in presence?
Air?
Which
air? Have
we
not
here imperceptibly passed
from
one air to the other? With both airs issuing from the same?
Is
it not
in dwelling within her, this rnatter, that p ysis finds
its
blooming unconcealment, that its
light
radiantly breaks
forth? In
being perrnanently open for the ek-stasis
of
being
there, doesn't she remain, still, a nourishing Hbody imnledi
ately
apprehended
as
undifferentiated: air?
Constituted
as
a
dwelling within which
man
wends his way
as
if within the safe
guard
of
his death. Advancing within an air that
is
appropri
ated in an indefinitely lasting manner.
An
air that maintains
distance, that always pushes back a step the
attempt
at a
con-
founding type
of
approach.
An
enveloping air that veils the
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6
I U E JRIGARAY
whole in an ilnperceptible transparency
and
keeps everyone
and
everything in the distancing of an appropriation. Unmixed
un
divided air in which is marked and forgotten the passage to an
air
other
than that
air which breathed already brings
about
Being.
Nonetheless to breathe also means to be. This does
not
oc
cur to him. Is it because there
is
still
and
always too
ITlUch
air
that he has not yet reached the point of conserving it?
But what
is
forgotten
is always
recalled. Doesn t
the
unconceahnent-concealment
of
Being suggest the breathing of
air?
He
leaves this movement of a still-living
body
outside the
scope of his care
as
an event of little
importance
in light of his
preoccupation with
Being.
Air
that
is
already
subjected
to
thrownness-projection in a there: the environment of an invis
ible house that keeps him safe
as
a rnortaL
This superfluity of air this excess
of
air that
henceforth
allows
him to
have
concern
for his own death
is
still
given
given back thanks
to other
living beings and
is
sent--projected
back
onto
these beings like a sepulture in
aspects-in
a i r s -
that removes them frorn their becoming.
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Within
this economy
of
the
copula,
both
of
them the
male one and the female one are deprived
of
their
return
to
themselves.
He can neither grow
nor
set himself
up
apart trom the wait
to return within her, to return
to
that beginning
prior
to the
beginning, when she gave herself entirely
to
hirn without dis-
tance
or
difference. Dwelling
in
a living house, a living
body
that
envelops, protects, and feeds hin1 that supplies his exis-
tence
without
reciprocity. A dwelling ever in darkness, where
this light alone shines: the heat and flame
of
life. Love's fire ?
A love, between her
and
him, that remains ever nocturnaL
When
he
turns
back toward her, he has made a source for
himself:
He
has appropriated,
and
attributed
to
himself,
the
source.
The
source always hides a rnourning,
and
hides the
need
for
ek sistance
relative
to
that beginning when the whole gives
itself always
and
everywhere,
and nothing is
withheld.
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IueE J R I G A R A Y
Ek sistance? a mourning and
a triurnph?
The
triumph of a
Inourning?
He no
longer
turns
back toward
her
except from a point of
ek-stasis.
This
ek-stasis deprives-him
of
his relation
to
her: life
at the beginning.
This ek-stasis derives, first
of
all, frorn what
he has taken
from
her, fi'orn what he has appropriated begin
ning with her, too little and too much, and which he now re
turns to
her as
a triumphant gift.
He
triumphantly gives hirnself
back to
her
within him, to him within her. Thus: outside her.
For
where he ek-sists, she
is no
longer. Unless she
is
in his
rnemory and expectations.
Touched
by
her
in him, by hirn in
her: and not by her, over there, by she who exists outside him,
and whorn he does not affect. He
is
touched only by the expec
tation, the forgetting, and the
return
of she who will never corne
back.
He is touched
only by
memory and
expectation: he nei
ther
touches
her
nor
is touched
in an immediate fashion.
The ek-stasis of the present is this, their impossible meet-
ing.
Deprived
of his
return to himself
by returning
to
her: she,
at present, the absent one. He
is
rendered ek-static in absence.
Ek-stasis
is
the exit-entry out
of
her. But, at the saIne tirrle,
out
of
himself
Is this
how
his Being as sexuate is destined? Always throw
ing-projecting him there?
At
a distance? In distancing?
In what
is
destined for hirn this way he again confuses
her
with himself He assimilates the two theres: the there where he
is
thrown-projected outside himself:
and
the
there where she
exists outside him.
He
forgets
that
there are two different ek
stases in this there. That the there
of
his Being's destiny
is
not
the
there
of her
subsistence. He folds thern up
together in
sameness, in the eternal
return to
the same.
He
forgets the dif
ference between
theln within
Being.
Returning
to she whom he
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
has already assirnilated in a there where she is now an other.
Confusing her
with
this other, he begins anew
from
this point
to
assirnilate her once lTIOre
For
at
the point where he is thrown-projected out of hin1-
self; he will again recover hilTIself
He
will once
lTIOre
set
him-
self
this
project as
his very source.
He
will make
of
his ek-stasis
the way to return
to
hirnself the permanence of his Being. What
is nearest in what is farthest away
In
order
to
recover himself
and
to restore
himself to him-
self, ek-stasis
must
keep,
ek sistance must
be maintained,
and
ex
iting
himself must becOlTIe the
rneasure
of
his proper-proximal
being: "his house."
Which is impossible
without
her: that female
other
that sub-
sists outside.
His
ek-stasis rnust insist in her: she
who
remains
ever outside. It is necessary that she participate in this. "There,"
which/who
is
forgotten-erased in the "there," she
must con-
tinue
to
participate in his ek-stasis: always being available for
Being's
entry into
presence. Gaining even the heights
of the
heavens, bringing the relTIOVeS of ek-stasis close together there,
and
joining them
in
the
upsurgence
of
their lightening
or
unconcealment, Vithout stitch, selvedge, or thread, preserving
them, without the slightest discontinuity, in the perrnanence of
her night. Keeping thern in her repose, over which their enlight
enment gleams, but rernaining always at rest. Preserving
them
within
her
obscurity, transparent in the brilliance of their illu
minations,
though
staying forever in the dark.
Wondrous
home, all the
more
beautiful for remaining invis
ible to let their stars shine resplendent. Silent, irnperceptibly
present house of night, in which opens once again the serene
and confident
wait
for
that ek-stasis
into
which they are called:
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66
I U E ] R I G A R A Y
in her repose, she will let be this one more star. Joining it to the
others already there, bringing them together
without
a trace of
their faraway upsurgence.
Taking
nothing,
keeping
the
whole settled-arranged
on
or
within her, lending
her
living
ody
as a gathering place for the
whole: she works only with proximity, unless she prefers to rest ..
While his own kind of rnotion
is
nearly the opposite
of
this:
waiting. Unless it be
another
kind of rest? The availability
of
a
still unconstrained energy, the serenity
of
Being-as-action that
does not know
itself
as such?
Doesn't that which thus maintains
itself
in a state of
distant
expectancy
suspend
the
rnotion
of attraction in rest ? Doesn't
it relate to the other in complete passivity?
Prior to this passivity,
or
in between
the
passivity that was
at
the beginning and its return in the wait, what
happened
that
might
have given rise
to
ek sistance?
To
ek-stasis?
What
change
occurred in the
nature
of the site that sheltered man? What
operation
took place between the Hhouse
of
a living body and
the house
of
Being in order for the dwelling
of
rnan, his home-
land,
to
now deterrnine his relations
to
the whole
and to him-
self, in the
form
of
an
approach
that
always maintains distance?
Perhaps this operation should be called the reduction to noth-
ingness. How ought it to be understood? Whence proceeds this
nothing that
unfolds its essence within Being itself?
This noth-
ing that tnakes Being more being than any being, this nothing
with which Being touches all beings, though in an impercep
tible
way
This
nothing that
has always already inserted-whis
pered all the Ilyes'S
and
no's;' even before what they
pertain to
has been set out.
This
nothing within Being: Hwhich grants
the
unscathed its gracefLll rise, and furor its impulse toward ruin. 2
This nothing, which
is
reduced to nothingness
as
the mere re
jection, refusal, or destruction rnanifesting
itself
among beings,
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF AIR
but
which irnperceptibly abides in,
and
operates from, Being.
Concealing, resealing, within its ek-stasis, the ever possible to
come
of
a birth
or
death.
O f
love
or
of
hatred? Love
and
hatred left in suspension,
unaccomplished,
though
they are always
at
the same tilne des
tined within the openness of Being?
At the same
t ime-this
would mean that the graceful rise
is always also
an
impulse toward ruin.
That
one would never
corne
to
pass
without the
other.
And that
a certain dawning
sun, in
the
West,
would
already achieve, by the very fact
of
its
rising, a ftltious destruction.
And
not sirnply in virtue
of
its
future setting but
at the
same
time
At the sarne time. Being-he said-is the house of man.
To
be
and to
dwell amount
to
the same thing.
What
remains
unthought
is
that
dwelling
is
the fundamental
trait
of
man's condition.
3
It still remains unsaid,
hidden
in lan
guage, which, nevertheless, expresses it: in silence. This funda
mental character of man's relation to the spoken-man's dwelling
in language, in a language
as
the framing for a hOlTle
of and
for
man- is
forgotten in what is habitual.
This
forgetting can entail a
true
crisis in dwelling.
Can
entail,
for rnan, crisis itself? But man does not consider it
to
be such.
s
long as he does not think
through
homeless ness, he does not
recognize that what is of principal importance for
him
is
the
Being of dwelling. Nevertheless, abiding on earth as a mortal,
he always already dwells. This he forgets.
He
forgets the fralTling
of
this horne. He forgets
that
for
him
dwelling is the funda
mental trait of Being. How is he
to
be reminded of this
trait
that is erased in the habitual?
This trait
marks
out
a boundary.
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8
I U C E ] R I G A R A Y
A
boundary
can be drawn
around
something:
it
encloses a
field or a vine for the purpose of cultivation, for exarnple. In
this sense,
to
build is simply
to
watch over the growth that, of
i t s l f ~ ripens its fruit. At this point, there isn't yet any fabrica
tion
on
the
part
of man, any works produced by him: with the
exception of this boundary, by rneans of which he will tend the
flourishing of nature's works.
And tend himself as one of these? Needing, first, an abode
that allows hirn
to
rernain in peace, kept frorn harm and threat,
his existence
husbanded and
spared. But requiring even rnore
that he be surrounded by protection that, frorn the start, leaves
him within his Being, that returns him to it and sets him at
peace therein: enclosed within what is akin
to
him. Free, there
fore.
Free, therefore? How could that which lends itself to sur
rounding sorneone or sornething in accordance with the Being
of
each one be free?
To
ensure this peaceful dwelling for an
other, hasn't i t o r
she-had to
appropriate itself;
or
herself;
to that other? Thus, to empropriate itself? To expatriate itself?
Yet the fundamental
trait
of dwelling
is
supposed
to
be this
sparing which would pervade dwelling
throughout its whole
range. Throughout its whole range, dwelling lTIUst be appropri
ated to man. Following this trait, rnan would be first of all a
dweller on earth: his first house would be granted hirn by earth,
and it
is
on
this basis
that
he would be able
to
build-rebuild a
dwelling of his own.
Dweller on earth, once he is situated-sets
himself
up ((on
the earth on her ),
5
rnan is already H
nder
the sky. Both of
these also mean Hremaining before the divinities and imply Hbe_
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T H E
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
longing to the comrnunity
of
nien:' The four:
earth
and sky,
divinities
and
mortals,
fonn
a whole
on
the basis
of
an originary
oneness.
Why
four? Is
it
because, given the three-dimensional nature
of
this dwelling place, it
is
important
to
leave room for the
unexpected?
For
the ever possible
return of
the gods? Or is it,
on
the contrary, because the fourfold constitutes a more stable
dwelling?
Both
at the same
tiITle
Mortals
dwell
as
they await the divinities.
This
waiting pre
serves the pliancy
of
dwelling,
turning
the square
into
a circle
while keeping the envelope closed.
With
what
is
nearest being
left outside? With all
points
where proximity comes
about
re
maining forever tangents that meet but do not by intersection
h
l ih
penetrate t e proper ouse.
O f
what [is] this dwelling?
O f
what
is
this lisirnpleness
on
the basis
of
which these four
form-re-fonn
a whole?
What
power
gathers them together after having divided thern into four? Keep
ing them, in the present, within the inconspicuousness
of
an
everlasting
SaITleness?
Wouldn't this sirnpleness
that
keeps the secret
of
all penna
nence and magnitude be the capacity for death
as
death? That
which
is proper to
man? Which
is
projected
onto
the whole
that
is
thereby
transformed into
a dwelling
of
a world. A dwelling
in
the world outside
of
which world
is
nothing,
but
which
is
al
ready
kept
safe
frOITl and
in death, in virtue
of
its delineated
boundary.
Would dwelling-rnan s-be revealed, then, as the safekeep
ing
of
death? As enclosure by a
boundary
within which
death
is-is not
to be found?
The
dwelling that
is
the iworld
would
be the preservation
of
the being
of
the fourfold: which
is
main-
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7
2
LU C E ] R I G A R A Y
The
reflection that each gives off and receives is the passage
by
way
of
a primary relation to death: in virtue of the individu
ation and specialness that death can still impart to each. Liber
ated by what
is
thrown back to
it
with this reflection each
is
given back over to what is most proper and can thus be bound
to the others in the Being of their Being: the simpleness
of
death.
This
expropriative appropriating transpropriation
expropriante]
of all things proper that are still individual is the mirror-play of
the fourfold without which the world is not.
This
cannot be
explained
as
it is without cause or foundation. The simpleness
of
the simplicity
of
the play
of
the world does not permit such
penetration by human understanding. It is. Posed positionless.
Staying up holding up in air?
The
Being
of
the fourfold
is
the play
of
the world: the two
do not let themselves be separated not
even
like an envelope
that would be added to boot to what it contains maintains
retains.
The
Being of the envelope is the mirror-play the round
dance of making each appear within the whole which gathers
together the world as
world. The encircling loop
of
the ring
that rolls up into itself and in which all are intertwined with
their Being: one Being nevertheless proper to each. This inter
twining renders thern flexible for and compliant to the mirror
play
brought back to what is most pliant in their Being.
The Being of the world the copula
of
the world is this
rnirror-play. In it each compliantly relies on each and leaves
behind its own pliancy in the encircling loop
of
the pliant.
The squaring of a circle: that would take place within the
transparency of each in each let-be within the whole. Ultimately
the mirror reflects nothing: the Being of Being. Empty so as to
reflect the whole back to that which binds it in Being: the re-·
duction to nothingness.
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
Nevertheless,
the
play
of
mirrors gathers the whole to
gether within its encircling loop. Imposing itself, still
without
a
thinkable origin, it
is
the cincture/precinct: the world:' Cinc
ture/
precinct
of
lTlirrors/ ice that, in the end, reflects
nothing
back. Rejoining the no-longer to the not-yet in the constancy
of
a furling
that
brings each one back
to
the enigma
of
its
Being-that nothing whence it comes and to which it returns,
endlessly.
O f
what
is
this
nothing
such
that
it
is
perceived
not
as
a
territying abyss but
as
the round dance
of
the world ? What
bears it,
what
does
it
provide, such
that it
should be expected
recalled in this
way not
merely
as
the appeal
of
a void in which
all mernory would be engulfed, but
as
the
return of
what
is
most originary and what is most ultimate?
This
nothing?
Wouldn't it
be
found
in
open
air:
that
being
that
is
already there before birth, and still there after death,
rejoining the not-yet and the no-longer within a lasting expanse?
Within
which all come
to be and
gather in a single space,
sharing a
SalTleneSS that
does not
as
such appear, but that grants
the whole its permanence.
One
sameness, transparent, in which
each one can come
into
presence
and
receive-give
to
each
the
reflection
of
its Being.
Bound
by what bestows appearance
upon them, but to which they return-as to their own, most
simple, element-after having received and given off
that proper
reflection.
Air-still
silent space
of
speech.
Where
the voice
of
things
can be heard by he who
is born in the air that surrounds them.
Conveying the call
frolTl
the highest heaven, feeding, as well,
what the earth bears. Bringing into proxirnity the mountain top
and the country road, the hometown and today's horne, children's
games
and
a mother's gaze, the flight of birds and the work
of
73
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7
UCE ]RIGARAY
the woodcutter, the din of machines or the breath of the gods.
But joining also, in a single harmony, the rotation of the sea-
sons: winter s stonn and harvest day, the quickening turbulence
of
spring
and
the quiet decline
of
autumn, the playful
temper
of
youth and the wisdom
of
age. Each taking place there, all
crossing paths and meeting each other there, passing from one
into the
other
within the expanse of a serene abiding. Within a
space and tirne in which everything comes into existence and
returns to death, leaving air still and already there, in a horizonless
vastness and a continuity where all can come to pass without
any given event stopping a
kind
of motion that, perpetually,
abides.
Air could be this nothing of Being: the Being of Being. It
could be this secret
that
Being keeps, could be
that
in which
earth and sky, mortals and divinities, belong together.
But he has forgotten this simple constituent of physis He no
longer hears it except through the voices of the logos the paths
he has already laid out within and on
physis
It is from the p a t h -
which would not be
had
he not opened i t that what has al-
ways already given
him
air now
cornes
back
to
hirn.
The
elementality of physis-air water, earth,
fire is
always already
reduced to nothingness in and by his own elernent: his language.
An ecstasis relative
to
his natural environment
that
keeps hilTI
exiled from his first horneland.
A horneland he so
often
recalls because he has
lost it?
Be-
cause he
and it
always remain
at
a distance from one
another
now?
At
a distant proxirnity?
Which
leaves him at peace,
but
with a kind of serenity that considers itself above suffering,
that
is
always marked by irony, by a
kind
of cheery melancholy.
A wisdorn divulged only in veiled expressions, already opening
onto eternity. A renunciation that leads to sameness: taking
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T HE FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
nothing,
but
giving, rather, the inexhaustible energy
of
the simple.
O f
the nothing?
O f
death?
Within
which a native
land is
given
back to him.
It is
not for
nothing
that he makes the renunciation.
He
re
nounces so
as to
receive an inexhaustible energy.
Couldn t
this
energy, which is given-given back to and through
him
with no
taking on his part, proceed from the power of hatred?
The
ha
tred of nature? FrOlTI his rejection, his distancing, his desire to
want nature
elle]
no
rnore, his expectation
that
nature recall
him.
That
she rnight not have already totally succurnbed to his
hatred, that she rnight
not
yet be reduced to hatred,
that
she
might
not hate him: that she might nullify
the
power
of
hatred.
For
what would
become
of
his language were nature not,
and
not at his disposal? So, must nature be reduced to nothingness,
yet remain nevertheless,
if
only
as
an
open
space within which
to recall oneself? To enter into presence? To sojourn? To corne
together? Like a dwelling that,
with
its very ernptiness, is still
destined
to
welcorne. Were it even small, a little thing, its shel
tering space rnust always stay open.
For hatred
can be recalled
but not
rernernbered.
It
remains,
insists, consists: in oblivion. Void, spacing, gap, border,
bound-
ary, it orders representation, it shelters, frames,
and
aids it with-
out itself being expressed or presented in representation. The
dwelling of rnan is not built without hatred
of
nature; that is
why it
must
ensure the safekeeping of nature,
and of
man.
Empedocles told of the power
of
hatred.
He never recalls this, though he read
and
re-read it by way of
the works
of
Aristotle
and
H6lderlin,
on
which basis he under-
takes at nlore than
one
point to convey Ernpedocles thinking.
Fronl
where does this silence proceed
if
not
from
hatred,
7
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IUCE JRIGARAY
whose destructive
power
he
relays
only in
relation
to
the
thrownness/
forsakenness
of
the poets?
To
this Greek
thinker at
the beginning of the Greek world
hatred
s equal in power to the four elements: air fire earth
water.
t s
equal still
to
love.
Equal
does
not
rnean: sarne.
Hatred
and
love order-disorder the relation to sameness within
the whole. Cultivating therein a perpetual and double rnotion.
Love draws things together into the mixture that brings about
birth:
physis Birth
cornes
from
the meeting and union of
the
things that are
death from
their separation by hatred and from
their return to their initial simplicity. Death itself s born
of
the
separation of fire
from
the other elements.
Each
thing has its proper physis; moreover each can be the
genesis
of
another
thing.
Mixture
s
not
the blurring
of
distinc
tions. At
the
place where others see Tatary the kingdom of
death the
ether
presses downward to earth
itself
and going all
the way to its center
binds
the outermost
points
to the core
uniting
earth
and sky. Penetrating
into
the heart of things love
joins
them
without con-fusing thern. Love can alter the forms
they take
and
can switch
their
places
without
for all
that
de
stroying their elemental Being.
Love reunites what
s
dissimilar: the dry loves and attracts
the wet. Hatred brings
about
the attraction
of
like to like: the
dry
returns
to the
dry. Love of
the other
and love of
self order
the world.
This
double attraction
s apparent
when the terms
are crossed with each other: the love of the other for those that
are the same and
of
the same for others.
The
whole
s
produced
by means of reciprocal proportions
and of
a blending that com-
prises alternating inversions without the whole being dissolved.
What gathers the whole together? The attraction
of
the ele
ments which
are maintained by the hot the soft
and
the
we t
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T H E FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
for each other. They are always the same elements,
but
they pass
through
each
other
one by one, dominating in
turn
within the
mixture.
What
unites the whole?
The
power
of
hatred.
Hatred
di-
vides, separates, disperses, maintains and retains within the pu
rity
of
sameness,
and bounds
and delirnits the whole, like a
solid envelope.
The
envelope
of
the world proceeds from the
first element
that
was separated by hatred: air
that surrounded
the world in a circle and was transformed
into
ice
through
the
action
on it
of
fire. Air, condensed
and
congealed, in this
man
ner became the crystalline vault
of
the universe where man
is
born
into
the world.
Within the
order
of
hatred, man s first birthplace would be
where air
and
fire are
found
to
be unjoined from the first.
He
begins
to
breathe upon leaving the
warmth of
his first dwelling.
He
reaches air
as
if
attaining the forsakenness/ thrownness
of
an irreparable loss of love.
This
mourning
the measure
of
which he never takes and
which he does
not think
through, leaves
him
with the concern
to build a place,
and
places, over and over again. Shelters that
they fashion
around
a void, using earth, water, fire.
With
these houses, these works, isn t he reproducing some-
thing of
a useless separation?
An
irreparable
forsakenness/
thrownness
from
which he keeps
himself
safe
through the
economy
of
hatred?
This is
something he never expresses, never
thinks through. Unless he does so in treating the forsakenness/
thrownness
of the poets? Seeking a flash of illumination in the
works of those who still sight that distress that is the destiny of
all-earthly
exile.
The pain of
a separation at
birth that
would
maintain each one
in
his death. A life where love would never
again transgress the
boundary of the proper.
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80 IueE ]RIGARAY
and furls its openness
within
a vastness
that
is
continuously
assimilating to the thinker s serenity.
Wait
and lasting openness
of
the absence within which and
from
which entry
into
presence---and the
entry into
presence
of all
things will
rise up.
Which
things are indefinitely near,
and
faraway.
And
are so in relation to each other,
as
welL
They
are things, and are things in relation to each other, only when
re-settled, in
good order, within
the open
expanse.
At
the re
move of a distance that, enveloping
them
in a sepulture of air,
allows theIn, now, to last
They last and
hold
together amongst themselves through a
translucent rnedium
that
rnakes thern
touch
only in appearance.
They
reach each
other
only by way of their capacity
to
appear
through. Their
manner
of meeting always takes the forrn of
superficial contact.
The
appearance lacks depth, unless
it
be
the
depth of
a mourning. And the more they near each other in
their presence, the
more
they distance themselves
within
the
confinement
of
their
airs.
Is this true? It s
hard to
say
This operation is
already of a
different
order
once I have
named it
in this manner.
It
is
less
lofty, less great,
and
can take place only in that place that is
infinitely
more
vast and that
cannot itself
be named. On
pain
of its essence being destroyed? But
then
what
about
any case of
naming? And,
further
still, what
about the
nameless?
Being
is
nothing
but
the
possibility
of
predication.
O f
the
dimension of predication.
If Being can make
itself into
a circle, it does so
within
the
suspension
of
predication. The subject-object axis has
not
yet
been put
forth
there. The horizon line
of
understanding has yet
to be drawn at
that
point. If its path already has been rnarked
out, it is in the form of the encirclement,
or
the rolling-up
into
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THE
FORGETTING OF
AIR
a spiral, of a mystery: the mystery of the beginning of Being s
taking place.
Of
its springing forth from nothingness.
Whence does Being proceed?
And
whence proceeds its strange
power? How, and in what, can it unity?
What
is the secret of the
constitution of sameness? And
of
the permanence
of
its site?
Why does the line of the spoken word revolve around this crypt?
Returning to it and shutting it up with one and the sarne move?
What sort of forgetting of the other within ( it) makes the
un-
thinkability of sameness origin the exclusive place of thinking?
What fundamental assimilation ensures the unfolding of Being
as the region of sameness? And what kind of magic provides
for the participation of the whole in the subsistence of this
singular site?
Mustn t Being give back what it has taken frotn the other?
Having assimilated the other so as
to begin to be, and to unfold
on this basis the singular power of sameness, Being gives par-
ticipation back to the other.
Appropriation is founded in this double operation: an ss m -
lation
and a
participation These
do not take place on the same
slope of Being s constitution, but they are to be found, joined
together inseparably, under its dominion.
Man
and world are
reunited in the sorcery of this circle.
When
he does
not
remember himself and
is
unable to
think
that nature vanishing within hirn so
that
he might
be nour-
ished hirn first, he repays nature with this oblivion: it is only
through
him that
she is
Between the two of them, an operation of inversion and re-
payrnent is forgotten with the difference it neutralizes. A
pro-
jection has taken place, upheld by the power
of
love and hatred:
love of the same, which indefinitely seeks the dirnension for its
appropriated being,
and hatred, which divides, separates, and
marks out boundaries, differences.
81
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THE
FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
ary are forgotten. She has passed into hirn: he has assim.ilated
her and reassin1ilates her ceaselessly,
without
at present positing
any difference between her
and
him, and
without
a trace
of
her
left: unless it's
that
he exists
Which
is something he forgets.
Thinking
is
not thought of
as a living being. Nevertheless, it is
one a t
first.
It
passes,
im
perceptibly, frorn one life to the other. And, since there is no
other,
it
passes from life to death: within the indifference
of
Being.
Being exists
on
the basis
of
indifference: this he has said.
Which does
not
rnean that
the
thinker can stay at rest there
once and for all,
with
no activity or motion.
In
order to main
tain this indifference within Being, he ceaselessly keeps assirni
lating the being to the being. But, in addition, so that this
operation
is
forgotten, he likewise keeps positing the being
as
being.
The
fact
that
the
proposition
does not convey
phuein
in its
fluid mediurn leaves a nlOde
of
subsistence beyond, and this
side of,
Being-in-the-world-a
nlOde
of
subsistence
that
is
un
thinkable within his categorial order.
There was
a
kind of
sub
sistence already,
prior to
the constitution
of
Being-in-the-world.
A
kind of
subsistence that is not divisible
into
a subject and
things separable from that subject, and separable from each other.
A kind
of
subsistence rnore originary
than
that
named
by
logos
noein and
soul:'The subsistence
of
a living
body that
draws its
life frorn fluid matter.
With
this assimilating relation to fluids,
which is necessary for his constitution
and
perdurance,
man
is
no longer in that world
of
existences that are contiguous at
best.
He
is in continuity. The
partes extra partes
functioning
of
Cartesian space, which for being-there still seems
to
rule the
world,
no
longer takes place here.
The
subject
and
things;' as
well as things
among
themselves, are
in
a relation
of
inter-
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Lue
JRIGARAY
penetration: no longer one and another, a subject and a thing, a
thing and a thing, no longer near each other in the sense of
being in contact, or close to, or gathered together within
..
but
near each
other
in the
mode
of
a
kind
of
permeability
of
their envelopes which requires thinking out an other relation to
space-time. IIThings are
no
longer these particular things here,
in relation to a locatable and always unique section of space
tirne.
Their
mode of being
IIhere -if
the term still retains a
meaning in this
case-matches
the sort of space-time they share.
According to space-time as
it
is philosophically thinkable, they
are inseparable, though this is not to say that they are fused
into indistinction. Passage between them, but also, in a differ
ent way between them and the living subject, occurs through
immediate and instant penetration: without a bridge.
If interpenetration
is
a mode
of
being-there, then there
is
an
exchange
that
is prior to the bridge.
The
bridge undoes this
sharing, this relation of indivisible proximity: it distances rather
than brings near. It breaks, prevents, and prohibits the relation
between.
No
gap, breach, spacing, or distancing is possible between
the living organisrn
and
the
blood
that
has always already
nour
ished it, including with oxygen. Nor
is
there any more of a gap
between
it and
the ambient air it continuously breathes once
born.
Nor
between it and rnilk, water,
or
wine, when it drinks
these.
No
interval,
no
interstice, between it and that from which
it derives its most originary form of subsistence. Were there in
these circumstances any such distance, any void, the living or
ganisrn would die.
Being-there, being spatial, and being of a space-time rnade
by and for man, for any assimilation with an aim to the advent
of a kind of lasting growth,
to
establishing flawless construc
tions,
and
to the fabrication of IIthings that subsist ready-to-
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T H E FORGE T T ING OF AIR
hand and in the service
of
his rnood (which
mood
is serene to
the extent that things stay within the possibility that belongs
to distance), is removed, ahead
of
time, from what is
most
origi
nal in the saying
s
such.
She who, far from corning in place of another-as linguists
would want all pronouns to do? and likewise
men
all women?
-comes
first, but
without
ever being able to be reached, at least
within this place
of
monstration. Falling short
of
the making
seen-or of
the
offering-to-sight-what-occurs-which
always
retreats,
or
effaces itself
to
make
room
for all phenornena, for
all names
and
their relations. She who does
not
appear but who,
remaining this invisible one,
with
no narne possible in the space
of
monstration, stays ever night and transparency from which
all phenornena spring forth
and
are revealed.
That
one, she there, would be for
phenomenology-which
sought
to
be the
contemplation
rerueillement]
of
what secretly
w s
already
l iving-a
forgotten reserve (store)
of
air. But be
cause she is not situated there, or not only there, this there will
never be anything but
another
image
of
her destiny: the destiny
of
a transparent fluid matter that supports the coming to pres
ence
of
the whole,
and
within which everything takes place.
With
the exception
of
her.
Moreover, even
if
she is recalled in the manifestation
and
naming
of
each
phenomenon
she still remains
without
a name:
beyond. Without an appeaL
How
is this possible?
The
back-and-forth
motion
within her,
between
her and
her, among them, constitutes a
kind of
base
without fissure or closure, where everything can take place with
out abyssal loss.
This modest
back-and-forth motion, which
takes place
prior
to all
phenomena
and all designation, would
be the groundless
ground of
the relation·-between. This state
of
touching herself within herself and
of
each [female] other touch-
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86 I U E
]RIGARAY
ing each other
amongst
themselves, with
no
hindering borders,
would provide the groundless ground on the basis of which the
phenomenon
of
distance, indeed, the phenomenon in general,
becomes possible.
When
her role
as
this
condition
of
possibil
ity
is
forgotten, she,
or
she there,
is
encircled in a there that
always remains distanced in a beyond. In a [fernale ] beyond.
Even should
one
wish
to
bring
her
near, so
that the
now
unbreachable fault that keeps
her apart
could be recalled.
However, it is
not
clear
that
Ulan either could or would want
to attain
her
sort of proximity, one
without
boundaries and
without
assimilation of the
other to
the one, whether a ulale
or
fernale one. Even
if
this proximity does constitute the unthought
ground of his thinking. For
if
he gained it his
thinking
would
no
longer have the
right
to
be:
not
as
the sarne,
not
as
such,
not
even
as
being-there.
How
was the horizon and especially the
Region
formed then?
How
did things conie
to
this (there)?
To
what
sort
of
genesis
foreign to their own, have they been subjected to be arranged in
this fashion? According
to
what
arche
is
the whole now con
structed
of
entry into presence, and with no mernory of that
more archaic beginning that caused things to stir in accordance
with their nature ?
Teclme is now
the arche of the whole: the framing of the world
is teclme
and it forgets the origin that is nature.
Plrysis
is
always already subjected
to
technology
and
science:
that is to the technology and science
of
the logos.
In
these, some
thing of the Inanner in which physical beings grow
is
lost. Things,
cut from their
natural enrootedness, float about, wandering
the
propositional
landscape. The phuein
of
physical beings
is
forgot
ten in the physis of the logos. The physical
constitution of
beings
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THE
FORGETTING OF AIR
is
forgotten in the rnetaphysics
of
Being. Nature is re-created by
the
logos. In
oblivion
of
the fact
that
what
is
done over in this
way keeps its physical qualities s well. O f the fact that
the
econorny
of
the physical being
is
always recalled in
everyone
of
man's fabrications. That the living body s
Gestell
always leaves
traces in these fabrications. Forgotten traces, they persist s the
unthought and
unthinkable aspects of
the
world
that man
has
fabricated for himself.
Isn't
to
resublnit
to
language in fact
to
resubmit oneself-'
and
to
resubmit
plrysis to
teclme?
Doesn t
Heidegger's lnove
amount to
making
plJ Jsis
out of
teclme
?To making
phueil
from
the
logos? In
a ceaseless inversion
of that
arcbe
where the whole
is lost
in the density of a still-virgin I corporeal site. Where the chance
for a rernainder still left
to
come is pre-apprehended, without
yet being able
to
be expressed.
With
this move, Heidegger indeed revisits the whole of rneta
physics, heading for that which, at the start, was
los t -and
kept-within
it. But he rernains within its architectonics:
the
logos.
Seeking
the
cause
of the
loss in the forgetting
of
this archi
tectonics,
though it
is
the
architectonics
itself that
accounts
for
the loss.
Though the
loss
and
its oblivion
proceed from
an
arrhiteclme: from the
meta-physical
logos.
It is thus that
Heidegger's hostility to,
or
suspicion of; sci
ence and technology can be understood. The
arrhiteclme
rnust
remain the site of flmdarnental ontology's expression of the
whole. The Being of rnan can dwell, be preserved, and becolTle
rnanifest only within a single language, even it: within this
II
uniqueness, it can be expressed in various ways.
Don t today's sciences and technologies claim
to
affirm-to
reveal-that the Being of rnan is but a part of the being? That
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LU E ]RIGARAY
the being, physical beings, exceed the Being of man and elude
his language? That, for man, the being has thus become an inde
cipherable mystery?
Which it has always been. This
m
even be found in the Greeks:
in those that Heidegger forgets, or in what he forgets to hear in
their works. Which they themselves forget to restate, even if they
do say it at least once: that physis has a proper arche a proper
space-titne of unfolding,
and
that to submit
it
[elle to tnan s
architechne
his language, atnounts to bowing its destiny to an in
appropriate form
of
unfolding, to suspending this destiny within
a factitious blossotning,
and
to leaving plrysis out, a remainder
stilL A resource that resists technocratic power and
that
can only
unfold according
to
its
proper
motion.
When
man returns
to
draw on it, he exhausts
it
as factitiously as he makes
it
blossom
artificially.
He
cuts
off
both
himself
and it
from its reserve store,
tearing it away from the motion of unfolding
that
follows its
arche.
Its arche: a second time. To begin
to hear/understand,
it al
ways takes him
at
least two times, but to
him
this second time
means the possibility
of
a
return to
the satne.
So, now: its arche. One other than this second one that is at
tributed to physis so that he can begin to think it through. An
other
one, at which he cannot be thought, since this arche is not
in language. Which will be interpreted as: it is not. Thus closing
up
the circle of oblivion. Until the next time. And
without
end,
perhaps. For, to continue to be, it is necessary to persist in for
getting, endlessly.
Heidegger s question would amount to this: How can that
which ensures the
foundation
and conditions
of
possibility
of
a
space of
de-monstration-the
copula-be tnade
to
enter
that
space while ceaselessly evading it? This question relies upon the
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Lue ]RIGARAY
universe? What will man pursue in this ek-stasis? \Vhat
part
of
the lost relation to himself and to Hthings will he keep there?
Do this loss and preservation have any other possible to come
than an ek-static one? -
Is the copula necessarily destined to take the forrn
of
an ek
stasis?
Which
ek-stasis?Which instance of the copula does this
ek-stasis keep in reserve? What
part
of the unfOlding of the
being, of the relation between beings, has he always reserved for
hirnself within Being, and within the forgetting of Being?
Or, further: why
is
the copula suspended in an essence
that
radiates its effects only in the fotrn
of
keeping the proper safe?
Why
is
it
rnaintained in this way by being withheld? And for
such a long time? A
met bole
with such a long carry .. A stirring
that
spans the history of the West
without
having already come
to
term.
Opening
up,
on
occasion,
but
always forgetting
that
which in this unconcealrnent is still held back. That which is
kept safe in this production of Being.
In
the historicality
of
Being.
And since Being is within the technocratic
po
with regard
to
its sexual destiny
as
well, the question
could
be rendered
as:
does ek-stasis proceed from erection or frorn ejaculation? Is
it
as destined for erection that rnan is in being-there, in a nearing
that always rnaintains distance in the relation to him and to the
whole, or is
it
rather as destined for ernitting-producing his seed
outside hirnself
that
he is thrown-projected there? Both of these?
How are they linked?
By
the suspense between thern? Would
being-there take place be
held
back between the two?
So the
erection would surge up with the entry into presence, and would
produce the being
that is
present, rernaining all the while also
within the shelter of its reserve and of its own occultation. With
being-there bringing both erection and ejaculation back to the
present, within sarneness, thanks to its dwelling within the lan-
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THE FORGETTING
OF
AIR
rates, that prevents conjoining. Except for the conjoining, al
ready, in death's safekeeping. Being: copula already in and for
death.
This
sense
of
the
copula-that
which stays suspended in
between-is a pro-duction of man's and of man. It is the his
torical
3
production of man as rnan: what Heidegger calls the
historical destiny of Being.
He
makes every being participate in this production-by as
similation to him and by assisting his entry into presence
imposing the sense
of
his ek-stasis
on
each.
He
bows the whole
to his sexed destiny, including in its relation to death. He takes
up the whole within his death. He envelops the whole in his
project, thereby depriving it of its proper motion.
Language
[ a langue]
becornes
that
which
gives that
which is
given, though no object
of
giving
is
constituted.
It
is
at present,
the place where there is giving, from which th r
is if a]
that
which gives.
The dative structure becornes transitive at this point: lacking
protagonists, the gift gives itself With no distinction yet be
tween subject and predicate except for the actualizing of a present
that at the same tirne
is
withheld. Giving
i t s l f ~
the gift abides.
The
verb does
not
exhaust the subject, the present does
not
exhaust the past: it actualizes while maintaining the reserve
(store). Giving-.itself-while abiding, staying the
sarne-oblit
erates the passage frorn the one who
gives
to the one who re
ceives, the exhaustion of the (fernale) one when the other is
formed therefrom. Obliterates the debt
that
could follow frorn
this.
The
war
that
could follow. The death that could follow?
The gift gives itself Doesn't this
reduced-and
therefore,
spent/given back, perrnanent, reproducible-dative structure
represent the circle of Being? Doesn't it express this:
that
Being
93
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94
IueE
JRIGARAY
is
the re-turn
of
she who will never corne back in a superabun
dance of uncountable space and tilTle
as
well
as
the re-turn to
her? Spelling
itself
out in the entry
into
presence
without
ever
bringing about there that reserve store on the basis
of
which all
production takes place. She who gives herself, flrst, becOlne that
which gives itself, becolTle this there on the basis of which there
lS
glVll1g.
The
gift gives
itself-the
infinity of a sensible
lrypokeimenol1J
without boundary or
distinctive trait, with no
ii proper
being,
no singular body, no physical
physis
A passage that abolishes the
break between the physical
and
the rnetaphysical by
constitut
ing a iground, earth, and mother other than she or they-still
physical
and
alive-who can assimilate: eat, drink, dwell, call,
narne, and,
thus-perhaps?-make
vanish. The gift gives
itself
without
breaking
into
the reserve store,
if
she who will never
come back has become, at present, a sensible transcendental al
ways already
and
neverrnore there.
Does
the
re-turn
of
and to plrysis
as the dwelling place of
Being
arnount to
a sealing up within oblivion
or
not? A sealing
up
of
she who flrst gives herself?
The
there
is
of
the gift now has
its place
within
language. But when language holds,4 as the shel
ter of
Being,
something
of the taking-place of the gift
of the
being
is
already swallowed up. n a
consumption,
an assirnila
tion, an appropriation. A gift of a physical, sensible
ing-
fluid, non-apparent, imperceptible .. HProper for constituting
the transcendental.
This passage frorn
one to the
other,
from
a female
one to
a lTlale one, can only be forgotten. Without forgetting, Being
would not be. t
is
forgetting, repeated again
and
again, and
kept up, that brings about passage to this new ground.
And
if it
be too closely approached, it fades away for it
is
not. Except as
an effect of forgetting.
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It
is
with
respect
to the
original privilege
granted
to
time
that
the question
of
the foundation should be posed to Heidegger
this he has said. Isn't tirne already an
incorporation of
space
whose tissue, thus appropriated, will constitute subjectivity?
Won t he turn this in space where man originally comes
about, and does so even prior
to
any subjectivity,
into
an lIin
time where spatiality
itself
will
then
appear? Taking place
in
side a double inversion, where rnan stays s
if
within a shelter-
ing
horizon
that extends
beyond
hiln.
The spatial rnatter of the world is thus already given
to man
when he constitutes subjectivity
and
temporality frOIn it, but it
is given in such a rnanner
that
he
cannot-as finite-master
its
expanse.
It is by
rrleans
of the
system
of
relations
that he
establishes
by organizing the
parts of
space into a single totality
that man
obtains hirrlself s
n
interiority:' This interiority would be
built
of the
infinity
of
spatial
matter to the
extent,
and
only to
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THE
FORGE T T ING
OF AIR
tion
of their movements. That s danger.
The
rerrledy? It remains
to
be found.
Forgotten at
least twice, she remains
the nocturnal
ground
and lethal slumber on which bases he erects himself; remains a
transparency irrlperceptible in the entry into presence.
For
man s
part, it is
necessary that certain
priori
conditions
of
space
and
time be safeguarded.
That the
cutting-up
of
space
and
its
reconstruction
s
one
be ensured
s
the possibility for
an
ontological foundation.
In
order
to
establish this ground;
man
takes
from
his first
dwelling his mode
of
inhabiting space s the place
of
an ever
infinite unfolding.
Her relation
to
herself,
to
the universe, and
to
the other does
not
will
the
finite.
But
in
order
to
shelter the
foundation
of
the
thinking of
this finite Being that
is
man, she who bears this
foundation is exiled from
her
dwelling that is infinitely space.
She
must
emerge from it s a being that presents
and
shows
itself, s an object offering itself
to
maris intuition.
The
erection
s
a
sort of
anaisthesis A
trait that
passes
from
a
body that is matter-potency
to
the
act,
from the
flesh
to the
fonn, from
the sensible to
the
intelligible?
In the
West, hasn t
this erection been
entrusted in
a privileged way
to the
look?
Again and again, the erection crosses-though without reach
ing the ground of the groundless-that soil man has given him
self in virtue of having a relation
to
essence, that soil necessary
for his Being-man.
So s not
to
lose itself in this traversal, in its act
of
breach
ing, the erection anchors itself in language. It makes use of this
insensate body, that takes the place for it
of
a guideline, in
order
97
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THE FORGE T T ING OF
AIR
For
SOlTIe the trait still penneates the body. For others, it no
longer operates anywhere but in the domain of the look, where
matter-flesh
is
indefinitely resolved into spectacle.
Granting
privileged
rank
to
vision,
man
has already
aCCOlTI-
plished an exit beyond the borders of the body. The subject is
already ecstatic
to the
place that gives rise
to
hirn. He already
lives outside himself: beyond the
body
that gives him sight.
Brought back
into
itself, this outside has becorne form, a
quasi-finn
shell
that
acts
as
a screen for
what
can be received
frorn the
other
outside. Being seized
up
in a receptacle-con
tainer, a fabrication by/of the subject, the
other
is mastered
in
this custody
without disturbing-from
within
or without
the
to-and-fro
motion
of
the subject within
or
beyond
itself
Man
would receive frorn the maternal phuein the abandon
ment
that
orients
him
toward
constituting
his foundation.
In
place
of
that which
would
have
abandoned
him, toward which
he repeats this move of abandonrnent, the matrix of every act,
man gives
himself
nothingness. The tie that bound hirn, as en
gendered,
to
this rnaternal her
[ elle
maternelle] breaks. Being can
exist as one, can close
itself
up in a circle.
Between emergence
from
and
in a
body
of
flesh
and
the cre
ation
of
Being, nothingness
now
intervenes. Being takes place
in a void of flesh. FrOlTI where does this void proceed? Frorn
the reduction of the blood s
productions
and properties
to
nothingness.
Man provides a foundation for himself on the basis of re
ducing to nothingness that from which the foundation proceeds.
NalTIeS
are
born
in the reduction
to
nothingness that consti
tutes the foundation. Between this reduction
to
nothingness and
the transcendental horizon out of the line of a ground that
rests on
the
abyss of nothing words are born. Like offshoots of
99
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THE
F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
reaching this boundary. Dead always already
and
nevermore,
from forgetting his own birth. Lost in the entirety that
sup
ports his existence, s if in a refuge
of
ice where
no
definitive
event takes place.
An
anticipatory global
understanding-like
an early
repaYlnent-that
steals each one ft'orn its destiny,
pro
ducing each in an ecstasis that is out of reach of r e a l i z a t i o r ~
of the present. Unveiling-veiling that in which and for which
he exists with a power-to-be that is always in the process of
becoming.
Isn't
it
necessary that belonging
to Da-seil1
stay
hidden
so
that
the
entirety can be constituted, and be constituted s
transcendent?
If Da-seil1 s
project of constituting
the
world reveals its se
cret, doesn't the totality come
undone
like a new dream
from
beyond? Like the appropriation-dis appropriation
of
man, and
of
the world, in an ek-stasis where man's power to be covers
the
entirety of beings in a casing
of
imrrlObility frorn which he will
draw again what he needs to ensure his becoming
s
an
immor
tal? Would the world amount to the erection
of
a transparent
but icy grave of all beings and their relations?
To
a vitrification
in which
man
safe-guards
himself
from all deterioration?
Which means that he perceives the whole from a perspective
that
immobilizes the being's activity of becoming-alive.
With
the denial of the spatial dimension of the
point
of
view frorn
which he envisions the world-and every thing-signifYing only
a forgotten suspension
of
an older type
of
motion.
The
confinement
to
which rnan subjects the world and
him
self
ends in this cry: Only a god can save us now:'3 Is this an
echo of the God is dead that w s issued not long before this,
an echo coming back
from the
depths of the foundation of
Greek thinking like a call for the re-opening of the circle
in
which this thinking was enclosed?
101
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1 2
L U E ]RIGARAY
At
the
dawn of Greek culture, the path to differentiation
is
through
affirmation of the body. Greek man apprehends hirn
self
as separated from infinite nature by his corporeal being.
Dexterity and athletic valor are essential qualities
of
the
Homeric
hero. Strength and ability in combat are the m.eans by which he
learns
to
apprehend himself. The singularity that, frorn the start,
seems to be the condition for the Hesperian makes hilTI forget
how this individuation was won. At present, he is shut up inside
hilTIself to the degree that attaining anything from outside
himself is a difficult task. Nostalgia for a
return
to the One
Whole-such
is his desire for reversal. Yet
man
cannot by hirn
self undertake reversal to birth and this
is
forbidden the man
of
knowledge without
the
guarantee of a
foundation
inside of
which he takes place.
Whence
the oblivion of the being s beginning?
And what conclusion should be drawn about the
nothing
that inhabits Being from. the fact that the thinker, whose care it
is
to
recollect the initial loss in our history, perpetuates the
unthought
in
lTIan S
relation to his body?4
Mans power comes from the transformation of space into
time: Da-sein cannot realize its Being without an anticipatory
essence that gives it power-to-be. Da-sein possesses the onto
logical structure of projection. It anticipates.
If
physis inasrnuch
as
it gives rise
to
growth,
is
turned toward
the future in a quasi-rnaterna1 way and
prior
to
all naming, then
man lTIUSt project hirnself toward the future so
as
to
not
regress
in the direction of that which gave him life. The generative
wornan, for her part does
not
carve out a horizon by turning to
what
is
before her, she gives herself forth and lTle1ds with what
is given frOlTI her. With this ternpora1 indifferentiation of her
self and the other, which she sub-tends and accornpanies, she
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THE
F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
provides rnaterial for
the
ek-stasis
of
time.
Though
not therein
herself existing
s
a subject.
Nor will there be reciprocity with or in Da sein for if
it
opens
space
if
it
spatializes
the
matter
for its place
is
given
to
it by
and
with the other the still available
phueil1)
the hyle
that man
would always have to open expose
and
unveil
to
make possible
any manifestation or tneeting. The irruption which man brings
about in cultivating the totality
of
beings helps the being to
become itself; but this
itse t
which it owes
to
the work
of
man
radically divides it and divides
it from
man by an
ecstasis
they are now
situated
outside
of
their original site.
This decline of mitsein is the correlative of the
constitution
of
Da sein
s
separate(d).
Does
the fact
that
Da seill is
essentially
anticipatory empropriate it
to
mit sein? Its proper power-to-be
and the project of becoming it that determines Da-sein) pre
vents
Da sein
frotn receiving itself at each moment from the
other.
Within
the
horizon of Da-sein)
the copula
s
reversion
and
reinscription
of
one in
the other indefinitely-and
while pre
serving the specificity of each-is irnpossible. Da sein draws its
project
from
what
would
be its source
but
for this to be so it
univocally appropriates the other.
To
have an intuition of the
other
that is
not
to
be
projective
one rnust be capable of an infinite intuition-whether this is
understood
s
that
of
a
god
or
divine principle
that
attends
the
birth
of
the
other without
bowing it
to
its desires
or s the
intuition of
a subject who at each time present remains incom
plete and
open
to a becoming
of
the other-and
of
itself in
relation
to
all
others-that is neither
rnerely passive
nor
merely
active.
3
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IueE ]RIGARAY
For lack
of
such a turn toward the other, does
not
hatred
become the
apeiron
the dimension
of
the infinite? Pressing ever
outward, it knows no bounds t passes from one to the other
without
stopping. Since love s gathering together does
not
have
the same cohesive force s hatred s disintegrating power, hatred
bursts the bounds of the realm of staying and dwelling together.
Horneless, it
is
condetuned
to wandering,
and
to an endless
course
of
destruction.
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w
iue JRIGARAY
from which everything can issue. Ever being born: the living
female one.
And still so little apparent in her unceasing becoming that
those who are distinct will make
her
the mediation for any
con-
stituting of worlds. Thus indefinitely at a remove within their
boundaries
and
re-united in her,
though
not approaching
that
which is most near. Always held back in the distancing of con
founding immediacy.
Which
they approach only as something shut-away and
difficult
to
win,
3
and
nevertheless alien
to
a
ground
on
which
to found his
proper
dwelling. Close by she slips away from any
who corne
to
meet her, in her very manner of nearing. She
touches him, awakens him
to
the air of his birthplace, though
the secret of this allotment cannot be appropriated. But it can
not any rnore
than
this be
kept
in reserve. Here, everywhere, the
orrmipresent
one cannot
be grasped.
Nor
though, does she flee.
She irnperceptibly embraces the whole. Evocations of her live
in
the
familiar quality of every appearance,
the
intimate
tone
of
every voice, the kindly character of every fragrance, the strange
simplicity of air, the kinship of every face. In the quality
of
every land, every cherished being, every thing, that is
the
qual
ity of
being not-yet-folded-up in its proper destiny.
This impregnation of all by all never achieves suitability or
adaptation. t [ lleJ is,
or
is reborn, only in the openness
of
each one
to
that which is everywhere already there, falling short
of any monstration.
So
intimate a mystery that this there can
never be set out, be viewed, without
already being closed up.
Tendered everywhere, ornnipresent, this there resists those who
wish to grasp it
as
if it were a thing. And it
cannot
be
known
ahead of tirne,
not
even by the poets. t takes place only in
becoming. Any announcement
or commemoration
eclipses it
in
a wrap/warp of absence.
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IIZ
L U E
]RIGARAY
Language le langageJ the most perilous of all possessions,
created the gods,
but it
cannot destroy them and make
them
disappear in order
to
return
to
her, the eternally living,
to
the
lover?
and
the rnother,
and
to
attest
to
having inherited what
it
is to having learned from her what she has that is most di
vine-the love that safeguards the universe.
s
Removed from love of her through ek-stasis in language, the
poet is laid
open
to wandering
and
distress. Being torn from her
light ernbrace carries him ever further still into a solitary exile
where an essential proximity with the
god
presses near.
But first it is necessary
to
leave.
For the remoteness of a
point ever farther
away
into which what
is
preapprehended upon
its approach recedes indefinitely. Yonder, perhaps, the distanc
ing will end. But this yonder also must be left.
The
need
to
depart
anew for the rnost remote
of
remote beginnings.
The sea is crossed
as
well, for this reason, for a return in
which things that are the same will have switched signs. Where
everything will be differently perceived. That which was
most
familiar having become that which in approach is the most
remote.
For the sea gives and takes memory: it sends one ever deeper
into the rnemory of oblivion. Crossing the opening takes
him
to
a foreign shore, awakens
him to
the foreigner s thinking,
but
retains and transfigures what is foreign so that the appropria
tion
of the proper can be realized.
Turned
toward the other, the
seafarer would always be brought back to the same as soon as he
arrives at the other s banks. Brought back
to
the
H ground
of
Being.
To come alongside a foreign shore would mark the decision
found in the turning: the decision to return to the same.
The
other-earth-would be grasped in its foreign aspect only
to
be exposed clearly upon return to the homeland, so that the
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LueE ]RIGARAY
an itnperceptible embrace.
t
opens
with
a distancing that per
mits the
other to
appear
and to
be looked at
to
be clearly ex
posed
in its alterity. And thus to be appropriated by eliminating
its strange charm at the
ground
of
Being.
But this repatriation
of
the other to the world and language
of the same still does not attain to the original nature
rref re
originel
of a faithful thinking. Such thinking is elucidated only
at first in this repatriation. The seafarers the lovers do
not
loose themselves frorn
the
circle
that
binds
them to
the
foreign:
their
horizon is still the rnutual belonging of the one
to
the
other. Perpetually traveling between
the
two they can
with
this
plying sound
the
depth
of
a ground/bottom But this ground
does
not
rernain itnmutable: it does
not
found in the mode
of
an origin. t changes
and is
capable of
not
lasting of taking
place only as a passageway.
t
does
not
lead to the source of
the
one.
The
seafarers the lovers have their being in going from one
to the other. Their place is still between-the-two.
The
poet
puts in so as to keep the opening open. Leaving the
sea he casts anchor in the land
of
his birth. He returns there to
chronicle the days of love.
He
keeps the opening open by show
ing it. Constituting it as remaining open. He does not designate
the
content
of
that
which retnains he consecrates the soil for it:
the founding
of
the house where the gods will come to lodge.
He lives in the between -the-two.
Firmly
establishing himself
there he remains faithful to
the
faraway that nears
with the
com -
ing
of
the holy.
The gods arrive when the poet leaves his lips open for their
speech to-come. It
is
entrusted to
him
as his calling to watch
over this prirnordial openness
that
the holy opens and covers
over
with
its said. Poem
prior
to all saying that bids
men
and
gods to the festivities.
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T HE F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
In these festivities, the celestial fire is
brought
back to the
native land, the divinities
COlne to
pass arnong rnortals.
Their
meeting, in this dial, takes place only in the stability
of
a singu
lar, lasting foundation.
Once that
plying voyage
is
brought
back
on
course
to
the origin,
and
the sea
to
its source, the winds
to
a
single direction. All movement now proceeding fi om the
most
high.
The
between-the-two bemg kept
open
for passage
to
this
elevation.
On earth and
yet beyond it, the
poet
shows the sky and
thus
makes the earth appear within its poetic ether. That irreal that
gathers earth together on the basis of the unity of its Being.
Transparent veil or rneITlbrane that covers earth over and screens
it as the place of origin. As the ground of birth for the mind,
as
well.
But
at
present
earth is
closed. Shrinking and hiding
behind
what she brings to light. Refusing the grasp of one who turns
toward her
as
toward his own horne. Letting hinl sink into search
ing ever more vain, letting him consume his strength in the de
sire
to
be, irnmediately, that which by right
is
his alone. Except
when love
of
his homeland leads him
to
put himself to the test
of
a privation
of
home.
To
leaving for a foreign land.
To
the
attraction
to
a land other than his native land.
Exiled, away from his home, he
is
always seeking the same
(land),10 in a mediate
and hidden way
Accepting oblivion with
an eye to his future conquest.
Abroad, though,
brought
low by the celestial fire. Still being
consurned.
Until
the
fire teaches
him that it must
be
brought
back
to
the hOITleland.
The poet begins by transpropriating
into
his native tongue
the foreignness of the foreigner. The otherness
of
the other?
He thus keeps open, by showing it, the gap between them. But
he leaves expression
of
the contents
of
this remaining-open
to
II5
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n6 IucE ]RIGARAY
the gods and to men. The celestial fire which passes through
him and thus is given to tTlortals will permit them to discover
its truth
The
poet
is illurnined by the flash
of
divine light.
His
look
remains open on that which does not disclose
itself
to him. The
flash of divine
light
opens
the opening
of
the
look. But he no
longer catches sight
of
that which can appear in this look. The
sight
of
familiar things things which showed themselves to him
is
masked by
the
brilliance of the god
and
by the nostalgia for
the origin in which
men
cover them.
The flesh sources indefinitely never moving away from the
setting that gives rise to it. The flesh opens petal after petal in
an efflorescence
that
does not COtTle about for the look with
out for all that avoiding the look. These blooms are not seen.
Unless by an
other
sort
of
look? A
look
that
allows
itself
to
be
touched
by the
birth of
forms
that
are not exposed in
the
bright
light
of day? Yet nonetheless are there. Invisible sub
strate for the constitution of the visible. These gifts give them-
selves in the direction of an outside that does
not
cross the
threshold of appearance. They suffuse the look without being
noticed by sight. Irrigation by a sense-intuition that flows back
and forth
from the
flesh to
the
look frorn the look to
the
flesh
with neither
the
ek-stasis that attends a
contemplation
that has
been resolved nor a confinement in lack of light. Irradiances
that imperceptibly illuminate.
The look which is thus a look in and through the flesh does
not
retTlOVe itself frorn the flesh in the distance of a
point of
view. The
flesh
is not
stared
at
as flesh whose properties the
look
would
have to
uncover or
unveiL Being of flesh
the
look covers the flesh back over in
that
flesh
that
it is which it
received frorn the flesh.
And
which it holds in
common with
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II8 Lue
]RIGARAY
only in
the
oneness
of
a natal landscape or
of
an
appropriated
soil.
There
each
thing
is
already
one and
yet many in its super
abundance. Near, near itself; and taking place
with
no begin
ning or end. In an abiding that
is
yet uncountable.
The
openness
of
a time before history.
Where
everything happens but one
tilne,
though
in an
unfolding that
knows no final tenn. This
initial time
is
never repeated but lasts forever. A
mornent
this
side of,
or
beyond,
the
finite
and
the infinite, anterior
to
every
measure, subsisting as the to-come of their
past or
future.
Cradle of the event. Celebration of morning. Betrothal
that
is
prior
to or follows love, when the
look
looks at that which
it
regards: once again for the first time, without the distance of an
always-already
or
a not-yet in which the ek sistance of a
point
of
view takes place.
The departure, the tearing-away of the one
from the
whole
does not yet exist, and the call for its return to the proxirnity of
the center/medium is not necessary.
Here
is expressed that which
is
so close that words
them
selves blind. The holy hides in this so-close. But the day that
divides makes it dwell in invisibility.
This unknown familiar something that starts, stirs, promotes,
that lends its irnpulsive motion to the showing of the (female)
said, would be the bloom of
that
morning with which alone
the
possible exchange of day and night opens. The most matinal
and the arch-ancient?I2
How, why in the name
of
what reason that cannot be expli
cated, are these two reduced or
brought
down to the same? What
naming, what names, furl
them
back into sarneness? And isn t
the design
13
that frees up the unfolding of speech made neces-
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THE
FORGETTING OF AIR
sary by the fact that the most matinal
is
constituted
as
the arch
ancient in which all points of all the spaces of time s play would
originate?
The
springhead from which history s various upsurges and
epochal abidances would arise. A springhead that, though it sus
tains these epochs with a propriating [d une propriation] that has
always remained secret, itself would never have appeared within
history.
And
would always have remained the mystery behind
history s unfoldings.
Though
nevertheless, at every
moment
bringing speech back to itself, bearing it unto speech as speech,
on the basis of that which
is
unspoken and unsaid of/in it.
Advancing within itself; speech would always have spoken
solely with itself alone. However, in order for speech to turn
round indefinitely within itself in this
way
something ever
unpresentable, indernonstrable, and unpronounceable has resisted
its welcome within man s saying. Drawing man along a path
that
leads ever farther into the depths, and binding with this attrac
tion all
of
his words and monsters. A sornething to which man
listened, to which he perhaps tried to match himself, but which
remained indefinitely mute.
Because he had never let her speak? Because, receivmg what
is
of her, this gift, he had blindly appropriated it for himself with
out
reciprocation?
That man is heading for decline, heading for the dissolution
of what until the present day held him
together-this
he has
said. At least through the work
of
the poet Trakl.
14
That
dusk
should be the possibility of a new dawn, and this November the
hope for a new spring, whose to-come issues frorn the look lost
in the night-this he has said. And, further, that the destiny of
this other rising is entrusted to the
strange/
foreign-a rising
where everything will be differently gathered, sheltered, and pre-
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If to
e
and to think the
same
doesn't this mean that what
is under-
stood to be referred to by Being and by logos is not the same
thing ?
That
Being is not yet said in the logos? A reserve of si
lence circurnscribed by
and
in the order of language.
The
possi
bility for the articulation of language,
and
for all that it offers up,
and offers back up, in presence. Wouldn't this
clearing that
would
define
man s
man, and the properties of which would be: free
dom, vastness, gathering meditation, lightness, radiance con-
sist, or in-sist, in the impossibility, for man, of expressing in speech
that which is most fundamental to his needs or desires?
Mutistic
about
what is essential,
and
desiring to rernain so. Shut on the
subject
of
the
Gestell
for all
exchanges ranging
from the
most
useful instance of consumption to the most sublime contempla
t ion and
keeping this
Gestell
sealed within his world.
Ever irifans when it comes
to
expression of its most elementary
metabolisrn and of
its rnost transcendental transmutations, lan
guage would be situated on a line between earth
and
sky/heaven.
That
which
is
most past and that
which
is
most
future joining
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122 IucE ]RIGARAY
upon a wordless pedestal-base, a bridge overhanging
the
unfor
mulated. To breathe,
to
vocalize,
to say-these
never enter into
presence,
nor
are they repeated in language. No
more
than
is the
project
that
anirnates language.
The
possibility passability for
all
that
language gathers, these remain ilTlpossib1e/ilTlpassab1e
in it. Unthinkable.
Language does
not express the essential. t unfolds
as off
shoots, in excess
of
that which founds
man as
rnan. What
is
said, exchanged, presented, or represented would never be any
thing
but
superfluous, relative
to
the conditions indispensable
for existence. Never would
man
speak
out
of necessity. Unless
it were in a very ancient past. Forgotten. The path to which past
would be lost. And would open on abysses. The chasIn of man s
origin as useless? Anirnal that produces gratuitousness between
earth
and
sky/heaven. Preoccupied with death and
not
with
life. Uprooted
from
his birth frorn his growth, into a world of
projections, a world of drealns.
Being would narne the nothing in rnan, and the nothing that
is of his making. It would name his desire for reducing to noth
ingness, which desire is more insistently at the heart of his truth
than is his concern to live. Always already torn from his soil,
always already in mourning. Foreign to that which is most fa
miliar. Out
of
his element
with
respect to what is nearest to
him. Having enveloped hirnself
and
the whole in a useless cas
ing, from fearful anticipation of death?
Death
that, always irn
mediately there, nevertheless would be that which saves? Saves
frorn forgetting the peril of living. Frorn the lethargic sleep
in
which rnen slurnber frorn birth. Corning together in
and
through
language.
But for what reason, and in what way does this lTleeting take
place? In
order to come
to
one another in the suspension
of
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T HE F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
what is rnost necessary?
To
rnaintain an order
that
silences the
fundamental needs
and
desires, even if it
is
built on the basis of
these? Having
as
a group found conlmon measure
and
shared
belonging by
determining that
such necessities are incidentaL
Initial inversion
that
is translated into the silence of language.
Nucleus left unarticulated, surrounded by a tautological circle
that
protects it
frOITl
fissure:
to be to
think the
same
Otherwise,
the whole explodes.
The order
breaks up.
To
split Being
and
thinking brings
about
the
end of
the world.
But haven t they forever been conjoined artificially? Being re
maining the unthinkable.
The
complementary residue
of the
logos?
The accomplice indispensable to its functioning. The
copula s untouchable entity, appropriated by man? Retracted
into
him in present anticipation of rneeting with the wholly ot r -
with death?
Copula
sealed in silence
and
non-appearance, at the
depths of language. Keeping language from coming undone
through
and
through, should
to
be and to think differ, should
this secret instrument
of
the symbolic order be revealed
as
a
technologically fabricated entity, and one
that
does not
stand
up to
questioning.
Which
would
point to
the need for forget
ting it.
Should
Being divide in two, what happens to presence? If
this obscure key that opens man s world is broken into at least
two parts, what then beocomes of man s time,
of
rnan in his
space-time?
Should
the
mystery
of
the
syrnbolic be revealed as
the symbol of a rnystery: the mystery
of
a pact, always already
sealed, between two
that
are different,
and
whose articulation/
linkage never appears, is never said,
is not spoken what
hap-
pens to language? That language presupposes
that
two can be
OITlethe same,
the
very same, in the forgetting
that
characterizes
12
3
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THE F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
cries of distress be needed to create a little more spacing within
language? Where silence would be heard less
and
less.
Unless a move
to
the
we is
made? We who? Always at least
two, whose
estell
would re-articulate Being in an
other
way
Never closed
up
in a circle. Never folded up, or furled up, in a
site. Never here, or elsewhere. Ceaselessly in the course of con-
stituting itself.
Would this still be a matter of Being, then? What a question
There
is always already Being that is produced by two. The Be
ing
of
man, for exarnple.
Why is
this not conveyed inCto lan
guage?Why
does each [male] one appropriate the copula for
himself? Because the copula
produced him as
one? Granted,
but
it did so
out
of two. Which he does not say One always issues
from two that are irreducibly different.
Will
it
be objected that this question arises only among those
who are uninitiated to Being? It is
true
that if things take to
speaking, that's
the end
of
the
world. Due in particular
to the
discovery of truths so elementary that these risk engulfing
the
whole in an immemorial fiction.
12
9
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Lue
]RIGARAY
Something would have
to
be loosed in language itself in order
to
allow the appearance of that which prevents language from
letting loose in new utterances. To let arise the yet unspoken.
The
yet
to
be unveiled.
In
reserve .
Which
requires the rethink
ing of
certain boundaries, certain traits/strokes that
mark
out
the horizon of saying, and of its tautological circle.
Being
as
sign,
as
symbol, and
as
copula
that
tends
to
equate,
must
be questioned.
Toward what indissoluble assemblage does this Being point
if
it
is
not
the sign
of
signs, the intangible keystone
of
all ap
pearance and disappearance, the eternal guarantee for all entry
into presence? Sign that shows nothing
but
the requirernent of
monstration for entering the circle of joint belonging
to
the
same language, nothing but the requirement of harmony in a
conversation-always already closed-among human broth
ers in agreement
upon
the subjects
of
saying
and
silence.
United
in a single site whose surrounding does not appear
to
them.
A long history .. That tirelessly retraces the design for mark
ing
out
its furrows. The breaking-in to physis and its covering
up. The deadly landclearing and
the cultivation-as
well as the
culture-that forgets it.
The
wounding cut opened for the re
gathering recueillement] of the seed.
But in
what or in whom is
the
opening? And was it
not
al
ready, before the breaking-in? Why this appropriating repeti
tion? Under whose
protection
is the opening? And for what
destiny is it kept?
What
count, and tale, or gest( ure ) is expressed
at the beginning?
In
what language, reserved for initiates? That
excludes those-or those female
ones-who
have
no
part in
certain rites.
Boys to the right, girls to the left (Parmenides). Between
them, the break between two universes that no longer speak to
one another.
The
ones to the others.
The
ones, creators of worlds,
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T H E F O R G E T T I N G OF
AIR
constructors of ternples, builders
of
houses; the others, protec
tresses of a phuein
that
pours itself
out
prior to all cultivation/
culture.
On
one side, rupture, the establishrnent
and
assessrnent
of
levels;
on
the other, continuity, the safekeeping
of
the ex
panse, and of
tirne, that
is
cosmic or naturaL
A phuein already spoken of:
and
never spoken of. Already caught
in man's projects,
and
never expressed in its primal springing
forth. Always already profaned, yet nonetheless ever in the course
of gestation. With the consecration of the left side dwelling
still in silence. Or belonging to an other sort
of
speech than the
one that has already taken place.
Indefinitely
uttered
gest( ure ) of giving birth.The mute dem-
onstration of a kind of
producing
that is always taken from its
purveyoress. Without which nothing
could
be designated as
something produced. Lowly
birthing
of speech that is engen
dered
from
what already exists,
out
of what
is
unspoken.
In
what speech says,
and
what
it
refers/sends back
to
the unsaid.
The totality of speaking would then have as its surety the set
of
grooves
that man
has laid out so
that
his rays
of
light rnay
appear there.
The
unfolding
of
saying finds its fit in a field
furrowed by breaking
and
entering. A book engraved in a nature
that is mute in the re-collection [recueille ent] it offers up to
the
tilling and fecundity of sowing, of growth. A nature yet-unspo
ken and beyond preservation as this earth,
or
this clearing, that
it is The peace of its serenity, its spatiality that is open and
receptive
to
light
and
voice,
the
tonal vibration it
bears all
these rernain
unthought.
A saying that is
not
nothing. A saying of Being? But one that
is
reduced to nothingness so as to be appropriated by man.
With
its secret accompanying and abidance erased, it resembles a
medium
that conveys
in
silence and in the danger
of
appearing,
like the threat
of
a horrifYing void. A saying
that
is
forbidden
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IucE ]RIGARAY
unless it is repeated by man. Unless the monstration cornes frorn
him. Unless the phenornena
of
nature
are
produced-reproduced
in his language, in accordance with what appears or doesn t ap
pear to hilll.
In
accordance with. what hides, or with what he
hides, in a unique appropriating. Within a horizon and for in
tentions that do
not
signal him. That
are
for hilll already signs.
Not
beyond.
And that which he lets show itsel£ without his yet being able
to designate it, is
always
already caught in the erection
of
his
world.
The
rest inspires in him only terror. Including that which
surrounds hirIl and accepts his listening without his knowing or
recognizing this. Including that
on
which basis he perceives
through listening, and which he cannot itself perceive. Unheard.
A surrounding that redoubles the circle
of
his dwelling. Envel
oping him, sheltering hirn, but in an unattainable manner.
This place unbuilt by rnan, and frorn which he receives him
self- -rernains beyond preservation. Even going to the depths
of
what
he says
of
what is said with his saying, man does
not
rejoin what gives itself this way in silence. Would the source, or
the resource,
of
saying keep its distance, set apart from man s
speaking? Would a bridge be lacking,
here?
A bridge that is yet
to be built?
Does the river of
silence take place in the difference between
what is already said and its re-saying by man? A river henceforth
produced by hinI? Flowing within his world? The unity
of
which
world comes about through uniting the river s banks? In this
way rnan makes silence itself enter his saying. Forgetting the
other that dwells outside his land. A strange silence-always
already,
not
yet, and never acclirnatized. Silently binding-rebind
ing the whole together.
As
long as this silence does not reveal itself to be other.
The
end
of
the world. A call for an unhappened joining
of
differ-
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THE FORGETTING OF
AIR
each instant. Always covered over by a soiL Caught in the fOld
of a false bottom
of
a double ground,
that
holds in oblivion
the reduction
of
a primitive fertility
to
nothingness. Culture/
cultivation preceding all
cultures/
cultivations
and
that, secretly,
gives rise
to
nmnerous implantations. Revelation preceding all
revelations
and
that, mysteriously, is
not
said in language. Whereas
ie' shows
itself
in one simple nudity and gives rise to the visible,
which is produced
or
reproduced
on
the basis
of
it. Cloaking it
in layers
of
airs that in1mobilize the freedom
of
its growth.
Imposing on
it dirnensions
or
directions
that
envelop it in shel-
ters
but
artificially carve
up
its primal gushings and entwinements.
n language r a langue]
nothing
is given but what language
gives back. Moreover,
if
language seeks
to
be unique,
it
imposes
itself
as
the closure of a revelation.
t
does not let all that shows
itself come
into
presence. Language-hideaway for Being. Neu
tralizing all
that would
not proceed from its enrooting or frarne-
work.
FrOlTl
its propriation.
Everything being set out
as
a unity fit together in multiple
rnodes
of
showing. But
that
which gathers does not say
i
its
gathering. Neither does it recognize, or even know, fi'om and of
what sort of availability it receives itself in order
to
gather itself
together in this way
into
a world
or
a sojourn.
t
says,
or
says again, only what already is in its language.
Thus not everything-not
what is in excess
of
its everything.
Only
its own language, its own speech, its own saying, its
own
whole.
The
rest remains silent.
And even that which this excess gives is caught in webs
that
only render it neutralized by what it passes
through
in order
to
give itself
to
the
present.
There
is, it gives, Being-the effect
of
the appropriation
dis
appropriation
of
the one
who gives
the
place
of
Being.
The
sojourn
of
mortals
in
their
Being
is
tantamount to
their
37
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Lue JRIGARAY
capacity to be those who speak, and in this way appropriate
themselves.
But
one
who does
not
speak
as
a place only in accordance
with the law
or
the statute
granted
it. A decree bestows on it
that
which
is
Clproper
to
it,
as
the sole place that devolves
to
it,
and suits it, within the assernbly of the whole. On the subject
of this allotment, the voice of such a one has
not
been heard.
What
is listened to is only what
was
already shown
or
pro-
nounced by those who speak, and who seek
to
encounter the
resounding gathering [recueillement of the said.
In this manner, they rnatch this whole
that
they are, corre
sponding
to
thernselves in all their modes
of
showing.
Making
ring out in words that which frOlTI everywhere devolves
to
them.
Contra-dieting, counter-saying all.
And
nothing. This contra
diction being but the spoken resonance of the horizon of their
sOJourn.
Alone in his site. Even if a man should seem to clear a way
there, he is only going back toward the
proper/essence
of his
Being.
He
opens nothing that is
not
already open. He obeys
what has already been said, frorn which he receives hirnselE
Contra-dieting amounts
to
tracing the pathclearing right back
toward the source, taking it word by word. Letting-be all that
already is. A journey through webs of relations that at times are
obscured,
but
that become clear in this very waymaking. Each
word thing rediscovered in its sculpted stature within some
cleared wood.
Hailing the word thing Ioosed in this way in speech, man
then binds it
up
again in an appropriating manner.
Nothing there but a forest
that
already is surveyed
and
as
sessed, where a walker will recognize/reconnoiter the terrain.
Nothing but
a world already built, which the
inhabitant
discov-
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T H E F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
ers as his own.
And
reappropriates for himself, by letting it be.
Mourning the loss of a singular property that would not belong
to
the Being rnan.
Nothing,
then,
but
a language
that
is
already there, in which
speech makes its way freely.
Not
beyond a non-apparent but
imperious layout.
Land
from which one does not come out.
The
borders never re-open. That which is
found
on the outside
senseless
utterance-has
no place being.
Double
rnourning, ceaselessly repeated.
The proper
remains
generic. No rnorta1 possesses it in a mode
that
is particular. It
lets be that which for rnorta1s has forever taken place. It hails
that which
is,
and
does not retain it. It stays within,
and
holds
itself within, that which is. The
proper
knows
nothing of
what
is beyond its sole site. The stranger
to
this land does not exist.
Being implies the renunciation
of
what Being-as Being
takes the place of: and does so in the forrn of mourning. Renun
ciation of the wholly other, for example. Being-built in
the
obstruction and harboring of
the
meeting between one
and the
other. Clearing for going to encounter the said of speech
within
language.
Man
making his way toward
the
depths, the ground,
of
the enveloping rnatrix
of
his being. Responding to it, match
ing it, in a play
of
resonances. Resonances
that
are always al
ready harrnonized? Endless rehearsal
of
a score written by a
rnusician that is absent in the present. The air
to
be executed by
time's performers would last forever. In lyrics. In ringing words.
Where
is the
body
of
the
one
who speaks
or
who
is
spoken,
here?
How is
it
ill
given in this there is or this
it
gives ?4 Or:
how is she given? Or: how are these two given together? What
sacrifice of body or flesh is offered to she-of-ever, a sacrifice
that
survives in his historical monurnents of words
or
of sculpted
things, his braided bonds, his lasting interlacings, his paths, his
layouts, his horizons, his land?
What
has she taken into
herself
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14
0
IucE JRIGARAY
that she gives back
as
neutral
flux-there is
it gives?The
grant
ing
of
an inassimilable present? A present in/of what?
What does language say
of
he who speaks? And
of
she
who
does not speak?5
O f their l l i n ~ e
or non-alliance in words or
in silence. Nothing much. Nothing special. That they belong
to
each
other within the
solitude
of
a solitary m.onologue.
That
they are neither separated, nor isolated, nor without relations.
Linked in language
as
in a
con1n1ll11ity
where they must take a
place. A comrnunity that they can only repeat. Only reproduce.
Otherwise, they are incapable
of
speaking. Engaged in a place
frOlTI which they cannot get out. Thunderstruck in the unfold
ing of speech as they are in their sojourn as mortals.
A destiny
on
which no point
of
view
would
be possible.
Only an obedient waymaking within she who gives the sole
site. All-powerful one who does not let herself be captured in a
staternent-she
gathers thern all together in
her horizon.
En
veloping all beings in an opening cloudbreak that spares their
appeanng.
Earth-n10ther of language, re-fashioned by
man out of that
female other fronl which he proceeds and
that
he remembers
only through
the attraction of
clearing away that which pre
vents hirn frorn seeing.
That which
cannot
be seen. Mother with
whom
he will never
be reunited.
Separated
from her by
the
framework
of
a saying
where she is buried in the oblivion of an imn1emorial silence.
Matrix of words/lyrics
that
forever distances hirn fi oul she who
brought
the day
to
light, ulatrix in which she no longer knows
or recognizes herself: where she has disappeared into a
protec
tive surrounding where brothers reply to each
other
in
one
saUle tone. With no
contradiction
con1ing
from
a
felTIale other
whose voice
would
be different.
Opening
holes in
the
wall with
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THE F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
the sound of melodies that would call out for yet unheard
reverberations.
he Sayinl says
he?The
saying by
and
for him. Not her, she
who dwells in the inappropriation of a silence. Invisible base for
all
reproduction
of the visible. Which she
upholds
with an open
yet
blind
eye
She sets one
to
seeing, she gives seeing, she permits seeing,
like the look that encloses the landscape and issues no edict on
the truth. She leaves the freedon1 of the world
to
those who
decree
it and
preserves the project
of
mortals in an inconspicu-
ous crystal.
At least for a
long
time such was her contribution to the fu-
ture this availability that she offered
up
for man s calculations.
However, when natural language the tnaternal
saying finds
itself bowed to the technical irnperatives of the information sci-
ences, perhaps
that
which
it
has always been might appear at
last:
mans
formalization
of
a
primary
nature
from
which he
pro-
ceeds
and that
he wishes
to
rnaster.
The doubling
of
an
operation
would always be required in
order for its stake
or
its
truth to
be unveiled. In order
to
reveal
that
which its enframing left in slumber. But this greater danger,
coming frorn technology,
would end
in salvation only if tech-
nology
manifested its unavailability. Compelling the
look to
re-
enter its
orbit and to
see
that
which it
had
never
perceived the
blindness
that
lies
at
the
heart of
sameness.
An
unveiling
of
the
fundarnenta1 project that rnakes hirn see every being
from
his
sole and exclusive point of view.
Technology, by rnaking the boundary
of
mans perceptual field
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I U E
]RIGARAY
appear, would perhaps bring the danger to a close. Through the
arrival or the return-beyond
essence-of
a god or a divinity
that until that point has been expropriated fronl his destiny.
Nature that
is
excluded fron1 history, never said,
that
at last
would take its turn at speaking?
Would
this still be a case of appropriating in language? Or
rather, of listening, beyond an interval of in-finite difference
and deferral un i111il1£ d1ferendJ
to that
which would not neces
sarily speak within the same horizon? Does this dialogue
prom
ise
to
be a possible one? Or n1ust speech always rernain a
monologue in one single voice? Will the call that crosses
the
boundary
of this solitary place never be heard? It
is
true that, by
himself: man is unable to transgress the boundaries of his site.
But cannot some
other
voice reach the heart of this enclosure?
Drawing
him
into
listening
to
what would be said in a different
landscape.
Is the dOlTlination of language s rule unshakable? Allowing
merely the addition of stylistic devices, of rhetorical flourishes,
of still unsung rnelodies, of lyrics or words yet
to
ring out,
within an empire of unchanging delineation. Will
man
speak to
hilTlself: still and always, through a mediunl that
is
determined
by hirn, through an
other
defined in him, through a god or
divinity created or interpreted by hin1?
To
open
up
and build a place for oneself within an over
abundant nature so as
to
re-implant there a language whose webs
blind and hold captive with their bonds, isn t this still and al
ways to
reproduce the sarne old story:
that
of a lack of liberty
in relation
to
the other?
Thus
of a lack of exchanges
and
rela
tions with her. Unending dodge, the danger of which threatens
ever rnore,
without
a glirnpse
of
salvation.
Unless a god, perhaps? Should return frorn beyond this
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THE F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
circle, announcing or bearing a metamorphosis
of
speech, at
tainable neither
through
the use
of
force nor, even, through man's
imagination. A
god
who changes the relation to speech at
the
very
heart
of
its unfolding,
with
that
move
of
appropriation
and propriation
that
ordains all modes of relation there. A god
who bears the rose
to
where the spider
and
its web were
to
be
found? Substituting for the weaving
of
threads
that
are not with
out meaning the sight of the flower's opening without a why ??
A sort
of
speech
that
would be
without
a why;'
that would
flower because
it
flowers,
that
would have
not
a care for itself,
that
would not desire
to
be
seen-wouldn t
this be the sort of
speech
that is
awaited? A speech
of
exchange
without
reason.
Speech
as
the offering for the possibility
of
exchange. Speech
that
no
longer ensures the consistency
of
things,
or of
words,
nor
their upright
conduct
in a permanent
posture-their
per
fect
stability?-or
the
bonds
established in accordance with this
project,
but
speech
that
leaves these to their flowering.
Speech that is never uttered, except at certain
points
prior to
thinking?
And that
the
philosopher
cites-recites only with mod
esty
and
with arguments asserted solely on the basis
of
absolute
authority.
Contradicting
himself: such spoken words would
not
work
without
an extrerne precision
and
depth of thinking.
Would
their site be insituable?
Opened
without
a foundation.
Thus,
without
an enclosure?
With not
even a care for itself.
A speaking for all
growth
and flowering
that
is still in si
lence. The supply appropriated for the unfolding of saying?
Making
of
its whole
self
an offering,
the
rose would have
no
iiwhy
other
than
to
flower.
It
would offer itself
to
sight with
out foreseeing or overseeing its irnpact.With
no
furtive, self
interested glances at what it presents or represents. Paying no
attention to
the world
that
surrounds it.
Which rnen
could not
do,
and
still remain within their Be
ing?
Their
destiny requiring
that
they ceaselessly observe
that
43
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144
L U E
]RIGARAY
which fonTis, informs, and surrounds them. That they cease
lessly be in search of reasons, including on the subject of the
rose and its secret As for the rose, it would have no need for
this. Since its need
is
to
flower. -
And its very flowering requires
no
design [trace ouvrantJ a
simple spontaneous blooming/
un
concealment. Visible
with the
unclosing
of the
rose s gathering [S il recl eil]J an exposition
with
no prelitninary objective
or
lens.
With
no a priori frame that
would produce this flowering
as
such.
With no
project
that
might
will
it so.
How does
man
designate this strange relation
to uncon
ceahnent/blooming? How does he speak of this kind of growth
that does not take place in ek-stasis of its world?
How
does he
appropriate it for
himself
in saying?
Doesn t he over and over again re-cloak this groundless ground
for the dwelling of Being in reason with its various destinies?
Lethargic distancing
of
that most intimate plJUein Ever
remote
frotn the land
of
his conception,
birth,
childhood, body, and
f lesh-a silence abides about the unconcealment/concealment
of these. Ever in want of relations.
Homesick
for his native
land. A mourning at the heart
of
the unfolding
of
a history
story
that in word is uniforrn? Whose deed would never be with
out
a why -would never be an offering without reason, with
no appropriating to justifY it. Nor would it be without an at
traction
that already is subjected to a teleology.
An offer of exchange that never
is
said in language.
And
that
appears there
as
nothing, void,
as
a danger where the secret of
the relation to
the tnost
intimate
is
situated-retained. Language
that refuses to speak about what is essential in and to its
own
essence. And that keeps this captive, sealed
up
again, and buried
beneath all unfolding speech, all resounding words. Laying down,
in place
of
this unsayable something, a principle that at base is
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THE FORGETTING
OF AIR
equally mysterious. Its Ineaning being
that
it may be set out
and
laid down as the stable
foundation
for a world. As the su
preme director of
the
ordering of the principal
or deri-
vative lTlOtivations that by right would enter
that
world. As the
unconditioned
master
of
adm.issible propositions,
of
permit-
ted
perspectives.
Operations that
are
unknown
to
the rose?
Which
flowers
in
earth
that
is foreign
to
such a tradition, left out of the rnono-
logue
that
this latter maintains with itself: Speaking with
itself
With not a care for the flower. Except, on occasion, for the
purpose of demonstration?
But a wall separates the rose from the question
that
is ad
dressed
to
it at
that
point. A questioning
that
runs against a
chain
of
mountains and returns
to
the questioner in a lone echo.
The
stopping
point
of
thinking, thinking s finishing stitch.
The rose is there, though, static before one s eyes. Too close
for what is
most
singular
about
it to be perceived. The rose rnay
be seen,
of
course, like some evident
thing that
is so f ~ l r n i l i r
and
certain that it seems not
to
be
worth
looking at for any
strangeness it
might
have. Nor for the flame that it bears to
thinking? A
contemplation
that
illurninates,
that
touches
the
senses with its still radiance but does
not
tell
of itself
To
tell
of
the rose, wouldn t speech forever have
to appropri-
ate the rose anew for
itself
by proceeding toward an origin
the
rose does
not
have? Seeking, in the rose, a false depth: the rea
son for its Being. Relinquishing na ive admiration to discover
the cause
of
the
flower in thinking.
Into
which
the
flower can
not be transposed? The metaphorical rose no longer blooms-
fixed in an ideal figure. A figure possible only thanks to immediate
sensible perception,
something ITlan
ends up forgetting.
Doesn t Being find its
foundation
in a yet-unspoken sensible
imlnediacy? In a silence
about what
secretly nourishes thinking?
145
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LU E ]RIGARAY
The unsaid or the unsayab1e in man s relation to a nature that
escapes his logos A nature that gives itself in that unnan1ed place
where the contributions of the o ~ g n s of
all his senses are col
lected. Receipt that he re-projects
as
a world and its things.
Thus re-creating the whole,
and
making of each thing all
of
them and
of all things each of then1, without the secret of this
productive activity ever appearing to him.
But doesn t he always seek reasons on
the
side of what he
gives, and not on the side of what he has already received when
he gives back? This receipt being inappropriab1e? The heart of
the difference and deferral [difJerendJ that is buried in the depths
of language [ia langue] And that cannot be unveiled without
danger. The abyss of what is yet-nameless for rnan and the abyss
of
a female other that is without language the relation to this
other
remains an abyssal one.
The re-covering of irrunediate sensible perception in Being
thus harbors two others that are ceremonially yoked without
connection: what is yet unspoken, in the case of rnan,
and
what
is
without
speech, in the case of the other. But the deciphering,
the release, of this seal
of
Being
cannot
take place in a language
whose fundarnenta11TIove
is
propriation.What
is
too
near would
slip its seizure. A distance, there, would be
of
unbreachab1e
measure something infinitely small whose cipher would re
rnain in obscurity. Sornething
that
suffuses the eye
and
the hear
ing and all senses, like an air
that
is neither seen nor heard
but
nevertheless
is
there.
Fluid medium
that accompanies every per
ception
and
bestows its
tone
upon
it. Like a silent
incarnation
everywhere at work. A perilous incarnation, when
it is intended
to be
appropriated
in a single sort
of
saying.
Since he is of flesh, which can only be received from
the
other, what becOlT es
of
hirn if flesh
is
not given back to the
other?
What
difference,
one
that admittedly
is
not easily deter
mined one
that
is
infinitely
small is
abolished in this rnove?
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T HE F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
With the resource for an infinitely great unfolding heading
to
ward ruin. For lack of a boundary, for want of a future,
through
the destruction of reserves. Through the reduction
of
the
other
to
nothingness. She
is
still
and
always assirnilated and
not
known
or recognized in her irreducible difference. A network of at
tracting charges alone would bring her near, would rnove her
away
according
to
past, present,
and
projected needs. A
pro
duction of forces that are already taken from the f lesh-of
the
other. And
that
become entangled in blinding webs.
Must
man
finally discover
himself
to be carnal in order for
him to see what he appropriates from the other?
For
this unveil
ing
to
take place, isn t it necessary that he give up his language
[langue]
What
gain does this renunciation prornise hiln?
The
need to ensure his salvation? Isn t
it
already
too
late for this
sort
of
thinking? Doesn t the interplay
of
forces
that
he set off pre
vail today over any possible meditation? Over any return
to
start
ing out for a new future? In this technical world he has fabricated,
this world that resernbles an organisrn that now has escaped
him, does
man
still have
(the)
tirne
to
study his destiny?
From
being a creator, has he
not
becorne a machine in the service
of
his creation?
An
effect of that archi-techne that
is
his language.
An
effect of his solitary rnonologue with his plrysis his polis his
things, his brothers. Brothers that are all speaking the same (way),
without
knowing of what this sarneness is. Dwelling, stirring,
even being stirred within a sarneness that they neither know
nor
recognize. Registering only what they have always already granted
each
other
in the way of a perceptible answer. Themselves, thus,
and nothing
else.
But this sarneness has not yet thought
through
what consti
tutes it. Which elernent is it, for instance, that establishes the
kinship between light
and
eye? Where, in man, does the rnight
of
his
God
reside?
What
bond
do
these two beings maintain?
47
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THE FORGETTING OF
AIR
inside-outside of the other. He creates things,
immanent and
transcendent, matter and form.
Things
whose approximation is
remote, for in theIn
past
forces are evoked,
and
future forces
invoked,
that
resist any present co-belonging.
They
remain at
rest,
but recall, or call for, movements. Immobile, their forms
conU11emorate the mobility deployed. To l t them be then, means
to leave
to
them the forces that they contain or retain.
To
will to impose one s mark, one s world, one s Being,
dis appropriates. This creating carries off, in or with itself, S lne-
thing of the proper and at the same time covers over what will
no longer give itself as (prime?) matter
to
be consumed, used,
given form, produced. A twofold loss,
of
oneself
and of
the
other, in oneself
and
in the other.
There
is neither the
one nor the other. But, rather, co pro-
duction,
of
a world or of things, in a dwelling place
that
ob-
structs access
to
one same space-time. One
and
the other, the
One
and
the others, separated in
ek-sistallcc.
Cut from
their
rootedness, they meet up in an encounter of signs
that
remem
ber or
await,
but sojourn at
an unreachable rernove: the im
memorable oblivion
of
their
joint
belonging
to
the
production
of
the presentness
of
presence. A joint belonging
that
is never
said, never repeated-represented
in language, never articulated
between thetn at the sarne tin1e.
Always at the wrong time, out of synch, syncopated.
When
man
makes the
thing
his own, he has already torn it fi om its
soil, giving back
to
it
as
a
ground or
a
surrounding
what
he
already has received trom it. Countering, in or upon the thing,
the origin of the Gestell that is his living body. Settling his
debt
by enveloping it in, or hollowing it out of, airs? Using his knowl
edge
and know how
in this. Deploying
or pouring out
his en
ergy here, but thereby immobilizing the thing in a
surrounding
of
death.
53
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I54
LueE
JRIGARAY
Undying rnemory, which the thing silently figures. And even
if he acts
upon
or in it, the thing, this doesn t mean that he
speaks
to
it any the more. As for the
lyle
3
all rnan finds are
points
to
be
criticized/
re-stated. -He does
not
tell
of
lyle
in its
initial appearing. He repeats and rehearses his project in or upon
it.
And
he comes upon it only
as
already produced by himsel£
He
gathers it up, gathers
himself
in Ineditation within it, with
out
ever welcoming
it
in its initial upsurgence, in its first birth.
When he and
it
are situated there, they already are no longer
together.
And
neither lyle
nor
man
is fi ee
any longer with regard
to
their openness
to
each other.
In
the there is neither one shows or
lavishes itself: the effect of an overflow or shortage in their meet
ing, in which meeting each spares itself within the other in an
econorny that
is
based
on
the cache or the reserve store, and
that
vanishes
(them into)
their difference.
here
i s a gift of language in which the gap, indeed the abyss,
of
an irreducibility is
obliterated-the
persistence of the other
in presence. Talking
to
itself, language forgets the fundamental
concern of its aim:
how-and
in what, for what- to join with
the other that springs up, is situated, and dwells before one.
What
freedorn opens up, or
is
rejected, in the space of this
meeting?
How
has man been able
to
miss the
point
that for
him
there was no task rnore essential than to shed light on this ques
tion? What are the stakes of such a forgetting?
Hasn t
his project been to construct a world for
himself in
and through language,
without
care for the apportionment of
this place? Isn t what matters to
him
that his language give
him
place?
That it
prepare a
home
for him? Tool for exchange that
is
rnade of sorne
neutral/neuter
transcendence whence the inhab
itable would be received? Place of places, refuge out of which
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T H E F O R G E T T I N G OF AIR
any interspace for tneeting would
open up
again, language would
contain-retain, in itself, the possibility for the exchange with the
other,
though
in the nlOde
of
the serenity
of
a free clearing,
of an open reserve. One that still
s
not shared? The safeguard
ing of the conversation with the other would have its
monu
ments: a vacant interspace, a
short-cut of
a bridge.
Here
the
emptiness and fullness
of
a rnovement -of going-toward would
be com_memorated
with a silent distance. Everything would be
assembled there
and no one
there would speak
to
anyone else.
O f what
and
in
what
are these historic monuments
con
structed? What rnaterials were used and went into their devel
opment?
There s air, light, earth, water, and energy used.
To
clear
land
or to
erect.
There
s
what
s
given in nature
and
there are
moves
of
appropriation.The received offering,
and
what
s
made
from it. Living birth growth, and efflorescence, and the
medi
tative gathering
of
these, their ordering in accordance with
the
world
of
man.
There s language, like a rnodel, or like the
esten
for the
project
of
the whole's belonging
to
him.
Instrument that
ap
propriates through the folding up of the whole within man.
Following his specifications. Not
therefore, a
tool
for exchange.
Language never gives back
what
it takes. Unless language is
opened
back up at great depth? Unless everything
that
language
(re )says, veiled in
death
already,
s
gone back through? Unless a
path
s retraced all
the
way
to
the
heart
of
this
empty
clearing
where that which language has never
known
how
to
say s con1-
memorated? Freely. Without a care. Without prevision or provi
sions.With no distress, or bustling
about
in anticipation of
what rnight prove
to
be lacking.
With no
technique for gaining
the submission
of
what prornises
to
be a danger
or
a
boon.
55
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T HE F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
whorn he turns away
as
from the origin of his peril, constitut-
ing her in and of an imrnernorable oblivion. Should he move
back toward her, he would find nothing but an act
of
breaking
in
and
of
invisible covering-over in a temple
that
doubles
her
so
as
to consecrate her disappearance. Unless he renounces his Being,
his world, his
ek sistal1ce.
Being a
dream
of autonon1Y, self-begetting, and auto-
production that
is
called
truth. Truth
that
is
not
to
be unveiled.
Looked
at
too
closely, it disappears.
That man should
have
built
frorn it a world does
not
mean
that
this world
is
true. It signifies
the imposing
of
a power the power to separate,
to
cut up, to
divide Along with its corresponding powerlessness:
to
reunite.
Separating presupposes the
constitution
of an envelope
as
such. But the envelope has an inside
as
well
as
an outside. And
doesn t what the envelope protects exclude the possibility that
the envelope
protect
itself?
Is this likewise the case for the Being of man, of the world,
and
of
the opening,
of
the clearing? Never does
that
which
protects take
itself into
its
own
care.
An
overflow
is
always for
gotten
in the abiding nature
of
preserving in sarneness. Whence
the unfolding
of
a destiny.
One
that
is
always
under
threat
of
being forsaken. And one whose erection
is
so fragile
that
its
safeguarding requires a matrical encirclement.
In
each epoch,
the beginning
lTIUst
be
rebound reknotted to
the
end
so that
this there holds. What
is
forgotten
or
rernains in slurnber always
threatens to re-emerge.
To
re-open the horizon,
to
shake the
ground,
to
fill
the
air,
to
unhinge
thought.
Being this
folding
over
of
the base hides
nothing but
the need for a doubleness
that
is
essential for the whole
to
dare
to
enter into presence.
Secret guarantee for an identicalness that would resist deterio
ration/alteration. That lasts,
proper to
itself only.
But
nothing
remains the sarne, not even in death. A drearn
of
157
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160 I V E ]RIGARAY
no initiative possible still.
Not knowmg
where
to
re-discover
himself in silence so as to start over to speak about what has
never been said: himself.
Always said never said. Ever ·unfolded
and
never
thought
through
with
respect
to the
source of speech.
Why
speak? For whom?
To
whom? Between his world-his
beings both given and
fabricated-and
his vanished silent god
or gods what is n an? Neither the fanner nor the latter? Doesn t
this still
amount
to
not
thinking himself through? To not think
ing
through
any
of
these?
How
are they articulated in him? How are they exchanged?
What
bridge is there between them? How do creature and
creator share language? And
if
they are but one what about
the other entities built
on
the saIne model? Is there any pas
sage between these entities? Was it not the destiny of language
to make thein meet up with each other? How is it possible
that man should have advanced so little in the course of this
waYlnaking?
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Is Being
not
the
unappeared-non-apparent estell of
air?
That
clearing where
man
lives the
estell of
air out
of
which he cuts
his milieu builds his
home-and
where he takes place.
With
which
and
in which he abides in constant exchange. Exchanges
that
range from the most useftll to the
most
useless.
From what
his survival rnost requires
to
what
meets his
most
refined fancy.
From the most elementary of breathing
to
his
most
sublime
tneditations. Binding together all of the senses: frOln animal
olfaction
to
philosophical scenting-n1odes of perception that
are often covered over by the hegemony of the
look
and
of
hearing
instruments of
theory tools
of
reason. But it is still an
itnperceptible fluid
within
which all beings all things
and
any
other
COlne alongside one another. t is
that
thanks
to
which
they appear enter
into
presence
and
can be
put
at a
distance
moved farther away
or brought
closer by Really
or
virtually:
the
density of air is no barrier to approximation.
This
density hides
nothing. Nothing is hidden in
it
but air. Nothing cache of air.
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I6
IUCE
]RIGARAY
Air-caches-nothing. A reduction
to
nothingness without
destruction,
at
least without any apparent destruction. A reduc
tion
to
nothingness
that is
necessary for the very appearance of
any being, which being would
not
take place
without
the air
that it hides with its entry into presence. Thus occupying, and
without a care, a space that is already preoccupied by the condi
tions for its upsurgence.
Free-in
air. Air that it causes to dis
appear by appearing. For nothing other than it can rnanifest
itself
[se produire]
where it is situated. Two things cannot take
place in the saIne place,
cannot
dwell openly in the sarne air,
cannot at the same tirne invest the same instance of appearing.
And what becomes of air when the being appears within it
t
is
reduced to nothingness.
And
what becomes of the plurality
of
these instances
of
reduction
to
nothingness in the domain
of the appearing? They are forgotten
and
recalled in the rnulti
plicity of the gift of presence, upon a ground of a
there is
of
the)
nothing that
makes possible this multiplicity.
And what if the tbere is insists based on its
not
being nothing?
Nothing-not being. What rernains? This negative inscription
of the appearing whence Being proceeds? This possibility for
every being to enter
into
presence-Being. Rerrlernbrance and
oblivion of what provides place, of what gives rise to. This noth
ing-rnernorable that rnan appropriates for himself in being-there.
This space free of presence where the world of man is estab
lished as if it had been built up from nothing.
And this nothing? The rnost elementary condition of his ex
istence,
or
of his
existancc
He forgets it.
And
isn t the erasure of
this primary and ever-irnrnediate necessity blindly constituted
as essence? Being s perdurance in oblivion? The persistence of
the forgetting of Being?
Let
us recall
that
he appeals
to
the
tautology as an evocation of Being within saying.) Which for··
getting, repeated indefinitely, installs rnan in one same air. Pro-
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166
I U E
JRIGARAY
It is of the essence of veiling to conceal itself and thus
to
founder in oblivion.
The
foundation that
rnan provides himself entails the veil
ing
of
the nothingness
on
·which it rests.
The
veiling
of
the
reduction
to
nothing of that whence, matter-flesh, he proceeds.
The veiling of making that whence he traces his birth mto the
groundless.
This veiling conceals itself: The veil the operation of con
cealrnent. The veil-lTIan s non-attestation that Being amounts
to
Being
s
nothing.
The
non-resulTlption
of
the Being
of
the
nothing within the Being of man. The negation-denial of the
passage by way
of
being nothing. For nothing other than
to
be
through the strangeness of the jump beyond what gives
him
life. Through ecstasis that is always already beyond the place
that gives rise to him, the place that gives him place. And with
no
possibility for participating in generation in accordance
with
this place. Always already separate in relation
to
nature that
brings hirn into the world, in relation
to
the maternal whence
he is born.
When
he nears it, his approach will only take place
within the distance of a mere nothing of Being. O f an ilTlpos
sibility of Being.
Man s truth
will be created
s
the unfolding
of
a base be
tween the absence of a possible foundation in his relation
to
that
whence he springs
forth
and the emergence
of
predication:
the world beginning over again. The formation of a surround-
ing where he can exist by reproducing hirnself s rnan.
Discourse the
means by which
man
hilTIself reproduces
himself starting frorn the lTlystery of his begetting, about which
he can say nothing. Saying nothing, thinking nothing, being
nothing, these subtend the making
of
that ground-bridge on
which man is situated and where he exists s an essence.
It is
not light
that
creates the clearing,
but
light comes about
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168 I U C E
JRIGARAY
location for entry into presence--stays the same. If a given be
ing has sprung forth into a given circumscription of air, there it
reulains forever. Indeed, the surroundings
of
these advents are
sedimented within Being. And, yes, they are disposed within
the
continuity
of
a memory.
Doesn t their ecstasis in a there where everything can corne
back, come to pass,
and
be anticipated mean that the rnultiplic
ity of instances of taking-place exceeds the capacity for remem
bering, though this condition doesn t rule
out
tearing beings
frorn their setting so
as
to
gather
them
in thinking,
on
a
ground
of
sarneness? The insensibility of dwelling within man.
O f what [is] this place where all would be preserved without
alteration/deterioration? O f what
is
the psychic guarantor
of
air made?-this remains
unthought.
And it is taken as what
destiny, cast down as it
is
at the groundless ground of Being? By
a will
to
appropriate
that
removes things
from
their living sub
strate so
as
to bring thern to ek sistancc in the world
of
man?
But can air be appropriated? Endlessly? Is there death, other
wise?
Can
the singularly omnipresent be apprehended by a liv
ing being that is particular, or does
it
infinitely overflow such a
being?
Wouldn t
it be due to this lack
of
the power to appropri
ate
the
whole that this being gives hilTlself
the
sky? A
to-come
that is
always partly attained, that
is
never
on
the scale of a
project whose ground slips away already beyond and still in
exhaustible.
And unreflective: everything comes to pass
within it
but it
remains, like a groundless, bottomless there is
The
condition for
the gif t -an ever sparing one o f beings and
of
beings
as
a
whole.
But it is forgotten that inasrnuch as it is
of
air the sky still
belongs or co-belongs to the earth. That the sky consists nei
ther
in nor
of
nothing
and
insists neither in nor
of nothing
with
the
exception
of
a
reduction of
its nutritive eleulent to
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THE FORGETTING OF
AIR
nothingness re creates or projects it like a chasm, whether frOlll
on high or on low, that threatens the very heart of presence.
The
gesture marks
and
re-rnarks the entry
into
presence;
it
appropriates and gives at the sarne tim.e. Mere presentation
representation, which forgets the gesture and
that
in which the
gesture takes place, creates illlnmtability in an empty f ree?-
spatial ecstasis that belongs
to
a time with no
memory
of the
place in which it is rooted.
The
gesture re-imposes directions
and
dirnensions
on
space,
turning
out of its course the teleology
of
time: past, present,
ftlture.
It
unfolds again the in-stance that is sub-jacent
to
ecstasis.
It confounds the erection of the transcendental. It makes tur-
bulent what
should
reillain unm.oved in
and
for the
connnemo-
ration
of
Being.
It
neutralizes the
neuter/neutral
character
of
a
th r
is
on which basis everything would be given-given back.
Intact. Disfiguring the order
of
language.
So,
to
transcend indicates a direction:
fi om
... to.
An
advance
or
an ascension, depending on the sort
of
plane
that
is tra
versed.
When
the transcendental exists
as
such, it suspends in
imillutability the movernents that have
constituted
it.
It
forgets
the mobility, the motivity, and the still-sensible experience that
have given rise to it. It is the result of various paralyses. Inert
sky of thought.
An
inversion of high and low in which thought
dissolves, so
as to
regulate frorn this void all movernents in space.
But,
of
course, when
man
comes
into the
world he
is
already
entering a pre-established system
of
relations between beings.
This past, which for hilll never will be present, is granted
him as
the
ground
upon which basis he exists. Lacking all possible ex
perience of its constitution, doesn t he receive
it as
the estab
lished
sky/heaven
for any and all vision?
Unless he deciphers its inscriptions in
the
matter and
the
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17
IucE ]RIGARAY
bodily matter-in which he is situated. Unless he examines what
this representative vault has already taken from
and
given
to
the
earth? Unless he questions his historic basis as a bridge between
earth
and
sky/heaven?
If abyss there is then what step/advance is tnissing? Of
what [is] this sky/heaven
on earth
that
is the
world
of
man? If
it is a question
of
going beyond, is the only spatial direction
possible perhaps not that
of
leaving behind but that
of
keeping
below? The
advance/step
is
not
necessarily a
horizontal
one.
Otherwise, frorn where
would
ecstasis proceed?
But, frOln the look of it, one
or
more steps/advances are
lacking. Man leaps, and forgets the bridge to be built between
these banks: earth
and
sky/heaven.
He
wants to understand
the
entirety with
no
care for how? of what? in what? to construct
the elevation of a point of view that overflies without forget-
ting, with
no
care for how? of what? in what? to build an eleva-
tion
that is
raised in remetnbering itself: Isn't the emphasis on
projective anticipation a consequence
of
the obliteration
of
the
spatial dirnension that leads to ecstasis?The world
of
man would
hold
up in air
with
no care for
the foundation of
this construc-
tion. A peak, whether from on high or on low,
from
which the
entirety
would
unveil
itself
to hinl. But
of
what, in what,
and
how does the architecture of this
depth-its
Gestell hold?
What
is
the nature of its power?
How
does this there becorne?
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One who ventures ventures life itself:
Surpassing life barely, by
a breath: the one that, if preserved, saves through song. Prophet
of
the pure forces that call for
and
refuse shelter. Doesn t all
that
already exists paralyze the breath? Dwelling ilTIperceptibly
in air. Holding air back from being freely dispensed. Imrnobi-
lizing within countless webs
that
which would still wish
to
cross
through this preoccupied atrnosphere.
nd one who does
not
venture into the abyss can only re-
count and
retrace paths that are already cleared
and
that obliter-
ate the trace of the fugitive gods. Alone, ever alone, the poet
runs the risk of rnoving out beyond the world
and
from there
of
inverting the
open
until
the ground
of
the groundless
is
reached. Saying yes to
that
which calls him beyond the horizon.
He
has left
at
best a breath, in this abandonment. First and final
energy that is forgotten so
long
s it is not lacking. Present
everywhere, though invisible, bestowing life upon everything and
everyone, on
pain of
death.
Adventure seized
at
each rnornent by the poet,
that
seeker
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LUCE ]RIGARAY
after still-holy ether.
Which
today is so covered over
or
buried
that
he can
trust
in
no
heaven,
no
earth. No mouth speaks his
pathway.
In no
direction can he find a sign. No place is habit
able for him, he who has
e e ~
invited to re-open a site for
festivity. He thus must leave the world, remaining all the while
mortal.
And
must start for some
distant
unheralded shore. For
some uncertain life. A blossoming for which the soil fails to
corne. Tearing himself fi-om his native earth to strike
root
in an
earth still virgin. Thus unknown. Unforeseeable. Free, for the
venture.
Loosing
himself
even from that captivating magic
that makes
men kindred. Exiling himself from any willing suited to an
existing comrnunity. Descending into history's netherworld
to
search for traces of life.
For
seeds still held captive by a subsoil
to be
opened
back up. To be liberated. To be let out in the air
of
the future
of what
has not yet appeared. Bringing into
pl
ay
3
the
peril
of
a new blooming/unconcealment,
stripped
of
protec
tion. Unshielded. Beyond home.
Without
a veil/sail? Proceed
ing ahead in the danger without his confidence having already
been granted a response.
Neither
betrothal
nor
abandonrnent,
here. t is still
too
early for such alternations. Everything stays
iin the) balance in relation to the final evaluation. Advancing
without care for any dirnension
or
direction
that
is already there.
Only the draw of a risky sort of growth sets
off
movement.
Secure-without
doubt.
Only
one
who already knows the right direction, who has
good
sense, doubts.
He
for
whom
the ways have already been
traced
out is
on occasion, unstable. But he who opens a way
following his own gravity, even before any center is determined,
does not hesitate. And he withdraws
further
still
from
inscrip
tion
within any cOlnpass. Pulling
himself
together away from
allinediurns/centers so
as
to once again venture that unfore
seeable day
of
paying-up in a garne with his historical
partner
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THE
F O R G E T T I N G
OF AIR
in play. The match is never won. It does not wish
to
be subjected
to
an
end
in which one player
or
the
other
would abolish the
intermediary place for their mutual perception
}
The
scourge-
the
balance s beam of
their
relation in difference.
An
equilibrium. that is still and always in balance between the
ground
that ventures and what is ventured
as
a whole. Between
what gives
itself
over
to
a new blossoming and the whole of
what is already established. Between what
is
projected into
the
insituable
and
what already belongs
to
the world. Between
one
who dwells already
and
one who leaves behind
home
and all
forms of properties to enter into a boundless open.
An
access to
Ineetings without barriers, when the rnore venturesome ones
approach one another and
leave again, holding
nothing
back.
Acquitting themselves of the in-finite
without
dissolving
into
nothingness.
Uncornmon
destiny.
Not the drean1 of a boundlessness that is attained by turning
lilnits in upon themselves.
That
still rnakes calculations
with
an
objective. A
departure that
runs counter
to
nothing, unless
it
be
to the perception counter
to
which nothing stands opposed. That
does
not
force any enclosure
but
obeys
the
gravity
of
pure forces
calling out
to
a whole with
no
possible end. Air indefinitely free
of
obstacles. That lacks even
the
obstacle
of
a horizon.
An
imlnensity discovered in the first rnornents
of love When
the
other
still escapes representation? There
and not
there.
Un-
mediated
perception
within an
open
that
does
not
block
off
any
consciousness. Native bonds, foreign
to
all reflection. Being to-
gether
prior
to any face-to-face meeting
that
inaugurates a prac
tice
of
evaluation. Obscure draw where they belong
to
each
other
within a
rnediurn/
center
that
absorbs
them
this side
of
all rela
tion. Resting in a
depth that
bears thern. Diffusing into
one
another
in this
medimn/
center
that
they become.
In
the relin-
173
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174
IueE IRIGARAY
quishtTIent
of
a kind
of
calculation that contents itself with a
rnore
or
less veiled confrontation. Separation
and apportioning
of earth sky and space where
that
which hears and obeys only
the
pure
attraction
no
longer
-takes place. Acceptance
of
a
breadth
of
an offing that
is
unmasterable
of
a tTIultiplicity
irreducible to the one.
Neither
geometry
nor
accounts here.
That
which opens stops in no
direction/sense.
No beacon in
this absolute venture.
From
this venture the very content of desire escapes. Un
foreseeable incapable
of
being asserted carried out.
Abstracted
frOlTI
domination-whether in oneself or in the other. From
every preliminary condition
that
commands production.
With
the exception of the draw of
tTIoving
ahead toward the uncorn
mono Call to enter a willing that wills nothing and gives up all
resistance. Response without any knowledge
or
intention
that
owes obedience
to
anything whatsoever.
Only the
force
that is not to be refused
that
gives itself unconditionally. That
lets itself be raw material. Still in innocence
of
appropriate
techniques.
This force [ lle] lives
itself
out profuses itself
with
no safe
guard. Prior to that allotment
into
subject and object those
effects
of the
lTleanS useful to lTlan s imperialist willing.
Estab
lishlTlent
of
a market where nothing
is
delivered without being
introduced into a systern of exchange that dirns
or
effaces tan
gible reality in a speculative spiritualness. With no one rneeting
up with anyone else or apprehending things without going by
way
of the
tribunal
of
a generalized calculation whose rule is
all the
lTlOre
peremptory at
points
when nUlTIbers do
not
ap
pear. When it comes to love
then
..
Without shelter and obstructed when he gives hirnself over
to the values assessrnents that organize the world through and
through. Already yesterday. Love that has become mere mate
rial subjected to the objective
of production
whether produc-
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THE FORGETTING OF AIR
tion of
a limited
or
an
unconditional
sort. With
man
losing
within it that
dim
desire
that
makes him nian. Becoming swal
lowed
up
in an infinite difference between the draw
that
deeply
animates
him
and
willing hilTlself in self-assertion.
Between these two, there is no transition: the abyss of a re
duction
to
nothingness that nothing saves. That opens onto
nothing. Memorial
to
rnan s parting. Frorn everythmg-against
everything. The constituting of an enclosure within which he
shuts himself
away
impervious to perception
that
is innocent
of
calculation.
Functionary of
technology, henceforth in exile
from
that
which moves him at his innermost.
Shut up
within
the
unconditional
character
of
a
purposeful
self-assertion. O f a
willing willing itself? Alone, there are sorne who would venture
themselves beyond this confinement. Willing more? Or, rather,
being willing to will no more.
Renouncing
their own interests,
giving
up
acquiring a
more
for themselves.
And not
boasting
of any feats. These daring ones
do not
appear so at the
point
when they advance
within
danger. What they venture
is
fleeting
and
imperceptible-barely a breath.
Are they in this rnanner in search
of
additional protection?
No. That would
still be
to
cut oneself off from the
open.
They
breathe
without
care. Secure, because they are relieved of the
distress of their security. Unenveloped by anything built ac
cording to their self-willing. Resting only on the attraction they
perceive, which moves thern outside all borders. Consenting to
proceed there where they feel themselves carried-all the way
to
the source frorn which they receive thelTIselves. Unreservedly
accomplishing the entire scope of the draw
and
unfurling
it
once again in the fullness of a gift.
On this trip there
and
back, no dwelling would have been
fashioned, no shelter set up. This willingness and what it gives
back take place without any additional production for those
who venture themselves in this
way.
They
do
not
find thern-
175
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I U E JRIGARAY
selves back within some enclosure guaranteeing danger. Set apart.
Willing madly, they receive themselves, and
give thernselves back,
within the open.
Admittance to this odd adventure occurs through renounc-
ing all paths that already have been proposed. All
that
presented
itself as a possible future must be forsaken,
ITlUSt
be inverted,
like a
bounded
horizon: nnperceptibly protective veil of oppo-
siteness. Before leaving, all ends must at least be subnlitted to a
retroversion. Every objective
must
be thwarted.
It
is
blindly, with
no project, that those who dare all advance. Released
from
the
spell
of
the fear
of
being
without
shelter. Holding
nothing
back,
giving themselves up to the measureless open. Medium/center
for blooming within which those free of all fear would be em-
braced. Delivering
up
all their facets with no evasion, melding
their forces into each other, and acting upon one
another
within
the wholeness of a perception that at the center of its pure
gravity is not
to
be refused. Saying yes unreservedly to
the
entirety of all
that
cornes to pass.
To death, as the other side of life? Yes And to the other as
other? Yes?
Or is
it
still a matter
of
dwelling within the circle of
the
proper?
While
accepting the reverse side, of course. Making a
positive
of
a negative, no
doubt.
But always by means
of
the
sarne move.
Expanding
the sphere
of
its application. Making
what describes its horizon which from this point
is
turned
into
the
widest one enter
into
it. Imperceptible pellicle whose
outside continuously is brought back to its inside. Unveiling-
reveiling the confinement within a site. The parting reversed
into a willingness with regard to the whole. Allowing hiITlself to
be moved by all
that
touches. With
no
refusal,
no
recession.
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T HE FORGETTING OF
AIR
Protected
bv the venture itself. Insensibly invisiblv, sheltered
,
within his Being? At the heart of himself?
Not
yet open
to
the
other, except
to
the other of the same?
A stranger to that existence beyond number which is
born
for he who gives hirnself over: who receives himself from,
and
lavishes himself upon the other, beyond himself. Attaining to
an endless space and time. Dimensions
that
exceed the sidereal,
and
the imaginary of every consciousness
s
well. With the ob
jective
and
the subjective losing their boundaries. With each
one
and
all things resting one in the other, pouring themselves
out one
into
the
other without
bounds. A recalling of a state so
long
past that
few can manage
to
do it. Crossing back over the
borders of their own lives. Flowing back
to
this side, venturing
their breath.
Entrusting
to
the
other
the very
r yt m
of
their
breathing. Welcoming the loss
of
the measure
of
their breath
ing so
s to
discover for it a new range. Expiring in the
other
so
s to thence be reborn rnore inspired. Putting language, the pre
cinct of Being, into danger so that it might regain its voice. Its
song. Leaving the temple
that is
already sanctified in order
to
rediscover
the
traces
of
the festive
bond
with
the wholly other.
Having speech no longer-daring the saying itself. Not calcu
lating, hence
not
unstilled. A stranger to exchanges
and
busi
ness.
Out of
the nurket. Trembling over the arrival of what
is
heralded.
Over that
other breath which is born to them after
every resounding already known has shattered itself. Beyond all
that
has been attained already. A
sounding
unheard-of
by those
who
look
on, who do not venture into the in-finite sojourn
of
invisibility. Where the only guide is to call out to the other.
Whose breath
subtly suffuses the air, like a vibration sensed
by those distraught with love.
They
go forth, vigilant, boldly
progressing
down paths
where others see
but
darkness and
77
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I U E ]RIGARAY
netherworld. They go onward and, now and then, a song rises
to
their lips.
From
their mouth are breathed sounds that mean
to
say nothing that are just the i Jspiration that will strike the
other with feelings and thoughts overspilling these sounds. A
versicle, for the rnost part inaudible,
to that
which they forefeel
in the wind.
So proceed, one
to
another, those who renounce their self
willing. Invoking thernselves behind every saying already artiCll
lated, every word already uttered, all words already exchanged,
all rhythms already hamrnered out. They are drawn into the
mystery of a word
that
seeks its incarnation. Trusting exorbi
tantly in that which makes
up
the
body
and flesh of all diction:
air, breath, song. Receiving and giving themselves in that which
s
still senseless.
In
order
to
be reborn
of
it, one
through
an
other, invested with a saying that s of forgotten inspiration.
That s buried beneath every logic. In excess of every existing
language. Suspension of every signification, that unveils signi
fication's fundamental middlernan's fraud,s and ventures itself
this side
of it.
Prior to
the
point
when the parting
s to
have
taken place,
and
to
assessments
of
greater
or
lesser value.
Within
this opacity, this night of the world, they discover
the
trace of
the fugitive gods, even though they have given up ensuring their
salvation. Fulguration comes to them from their willingness
that
nothing should ensure their safety.
Not
even that historical pre
cinct of man's--Being. Nor that guarantor of the sense
or
non-
sense
of
the
whole God?
These prophets sense that if the divine can still come to us it
s
in the abandonrnent of all calculation that
it
may come. The
abandonment of all language and lTleaning that are already pro-
duced. In the venture. Only the venture,
and
none know where
it leads.
None
know what future it heralds.
O f
what
past
it s
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THE FORGETTING OF AIR
the secret comn1emoratlon. No project here. Merely this re-
fusal
to
refuse
oneself
to
what
is
perceived.
Whatever
distress
or
destitution might corne of it.
These
precursors have
no future they
arrive
out of
it.
In
them
the future
is
present already. But who hears it? Their song
insensibly waters the world. O f today of tomorrow of yester-
day. The need for a destiny that never can be heard clearly that
never appears in broad daylight. At the risk
that
it already be
misshapen.
But the
breath of one
who in singing rningles his inspiration
with
the divine
breath
rernains out
of
reach. Insituable. Face-
less.
Whoever
senses it starts
under
way Obeys the draw.
Runs
counter
to
nothing only
to
what exceeds all
that
is
179
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CHAPTER I
1.
La fin de la philo sophie et la tache de la pensee, in Questiolls
V
(Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 139 [This passage
is
translated from the
French. For the English translation from the German, see
Martin
Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking, in
Basic illritings)
trans. David Farrell Krell
(New
York: HarperCollins
Publishers,
1993)' 449.
A divergence to be noted: in the Krell version,
the English
is
well-rounded unconcealment where the correlative
French
is Ie sans-retrait) rondntr paifaite
(the without-withdrawal, perfect
roundness). Note also
that
there is/it gives translates Heidegger's es
gibt) rendered variously in French
as
i y a i donne) or fa donne. In these
phrases,
l
is
an impersonal pronoun that (allegedly) functions
as
a
purely grammatical subject. In the expression es gibt) es is a personal
pronoun, neuter except when used demonstratively, that here likewise
is used
as
a subject
of
an impersonal verb I1mls.]
2 See Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and the Task
of
Think-
ing, in
Basic
Wt itings) 444, for his discussion
of
Parmenides' Fragment
I, 28f£, on which the author comments here. Trans.
3 See Heidegger, The
End of
Philosophy and the Task
ofThink-
ing, in
Basic
Writings) 445:
The
possible claim to a binding character
or commitment of thinking is grounded in this bond. Trans.
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NOTES TO PAGES
38-51
ro. Gette langue
qu'i tfellt
can also
n1.ean
'this tongue he holds:
as
in the
expression 'to hold one's tongue: Ti-alls.
II.
It
creates a play
on
words here; it can refer to the foundation:'
to
the male subject,
or
to
the
author
being
put
into question.
Ti"alls.
12.
The
noun
les
chases (things) is pronominalized with eUes the femi
nine third person plural pronoun. Iimls.
13. La
contde (the region) translates die Gegend; one of its cognates,
gegen,
is translated
as
contre
and
'counter: 'against: C01lt1'e is also a
form
of
the
verb 'to counter:
La
contde is a feminine noun pronominalized as elle.
Ii·alls.
1 See
Discourse
11 Thinking,
65;
Pour servir de commentaire
aSirenlti,
in Questiolls
III 192.
TrailS.
IS. Assimilation is the French translation of
der
Tle1;gegnis rendered
as
'the
regioning' in Discourse
on Thinking.
Trans.
16.
See
Discourse on
Thinking,
66;
Pour servir de commentaire a
Sidniti,
in Questions
III 193.
Ii'alls.
17. The
French translation
of
Heidegger's term Gewoifcllhcit
(thrownness)
is direliction,
which also means 'forsakenness:
Trans.
18. Martin Heidegger,
What
Is
Called
Thinking? trans. Fred D. Wieck and
J
Glenn Gray
(New
York: Harper Row,
1968), 124; Qu'appelle-t-oll
penscr?
trans. Aloys Becker and Gerard Granel (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1973)' 230. [The
quoted
passage is translated
from the French.
Trans.
]
19. An ambiguity in the French creates a secondary sense: that which
gave
itself without measure
and without
appearing is
the
night:' Trans.
20.
Cf.
Martin
Heidegger,
The
Anaximander Fragment, in
Early
Greek
Thinking,
trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New
York: Harper & Row, 1975), 18-19; La parole d'Anaximandre, in
Chemins
qui
I f menent
nulle part, trans. Wolfgang Brokmeier, ed. r a n ~ o i s
Fedier (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 267.
CHAPTER 3
1.
Rendre,
here
'to
give back: can also mean
'to
vomit:
It"am.
2 Ellc: here a reference to the woman-mother. Ij'am.
3
The
French words for 'morning'
and 'mourning'
are
not
homopho
nous. Ij'aII S.
4. COlltre can mean 'counter: 'against: 'opposed to: Le
tout
cOl1tre can
mean not only 'the right-up-against: but 'the very-close-by'
as
well
as
'the whole counters: Ii"alls.
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NOTES TO PAGES 53-61
5
See Discollrse
011
Thillkillg, 65; POUl' senir de comnlentaire Shillili,
in Qllestiolls III, 191. Trails,
6.
Proper motion
is an astronomical
term
meaning the
motion of
a star by which it changes place. relative
to other
stars near it,
or
the
actual change in place
of
a star. relative
to
its former place. Ti'alls.
7. La lallgue means both 'language' and 'tongue:
TiwIs.
8.
The
Heideggerian term to produce
is
rendered in French as
pro-
rluire
to
emphasize the sense of 'bringing forth' (Latin: pro-,
'forward' rlllcerc, 'to lead'). Hence, in addition to an everyday sense of
se prorluire
as 'to
occur, to happen,' the pronomial construction se pro
rlllire) when read as reflexive, carries the meaning
'to
bring itself
forth:
'to
manifest itself;
'to
make appear: 'to make come to light: TrailS,
9. L)ollvert is the French equivalent of Heidegger's the opening.
Here the author has given it a feminine ending: ['oltverte.
Thus,
in this
context, it can imply both 'mouth'
and 'woman-mother'
as well
as
al
lude to two different
sorts
of mouths.
TrailS.
ro. La
lIlise
CIl garrle can also mean 'the action of alerting, of warning:
TrailS,
I I
Illstance is also the French rendering
of
Heidegger's Illstiillrligkcit, the
standard English translation of which
is
'in-dwelling: See Discou ISC 011
Thillkillg, 81ff. (However, in L'origine de l'oeuvre d'art
[ The
Origin
of
the
Work of
Art, in Basic
H'ritillgs)
139-212], i/lStallcc translates
Daste/Jell
or'
standing there:) Ii alls.
12. Conversation
on
a
Country
Path, in Discourse 011 Thinkillg) 66;
Pour servir de commentaire aSethlite) in
Questiolls
III) 19+
[The
pas
sage is translated from the French. Also, many expressions in the fol
lowing three sections are drawn from Discourse
011
Th ill killg,
67-68;
Questiolls
III)
194-196.
Iiwls,]
13 L)iclosioll translates Heidegger's die Ullverl)orgellhcit
(unconcealment)
and deelosion translates rlie
VerborgCllheit
(conceahnent). In everyday usage,
though, ielosioll means
'blooming'
and rleclosion n1.eans
'unblooming: T1wIS,
1+ Many expressions in the rest
of
the chapter can be found in
Dis-
course
011 Thinking) 70-75; Questiolls
III,
199-206. Tiwls.
15 Here
the author plays
on
the word
alteratiol/
(alter, 'other') to imply
a relation that keeps one hom
becoming
other, from losing one's prop
erness or ownness. TrailS.
16
La
rluric is the French rendering
of
Heidegger's rlas vVahrcll (the
abiding).
TrailS.
17. Alive is marked feminine here: vival/te,
TrailS,
5
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186
NOTES
TO PAGES
6 4 8 9
CHAPTER
1. Hots d)elle
(outside
herself;
out of
and
bars de lll
(outside him-
self,
out
of him) also rnean 'beside herself' and 'beside himself; that
is
'in a state of great excitement, agitatio_n, exaltation: Ii ans,
2. See Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, in Basic Writings,
261:
To healing Being first grants ascent into grace; to raging its com
pulsion to malignancy.
Trails.
3. See Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling,
Thinking,
in
Basic
Writings) 350. This and the next seven sections draw heavily on this es
say. Trails.
4.
Le tmit here means 'character' or 'feature: But it is also
the
stan
dard French translation of Heidegger's
del
Riss) 'the stroke' or 'rending
stroke: as well
as
'crack: 'fissure,' 'outline,' 'tracing: ' rift:
The
French
word also has many nontechnical senses, including line, mark, linea
ment, arrow, bolt, dash, gulp, burst, touch, deed, and act, among oth
ers. Trans,
5.
La terre
(earth) is a noun marked feminine;
Ie
ciel (sky) is a noun
marked masculine. Trans.
6.
Martin
Heidegger,
The
Thing,
in
Poehy)
Language)
Thought)
179;
La chose, in Essais et COlifCfetlceS
213.
[Translation adapted. Much in
this and following sections is drawn
hom
this essay. Iralls.]
CHAPTER
5
1. In French, subject
is
marked nusculine and copula is
marked
feminine. According
to
French grammatical rules, then, the same or
e
11leme must
be masculine, because masculine nouns always
trump
feminine ones. In the opening line of this paragraph, however,
the
au
thor writes the same -qualifying both subject and
copula -as
la
mellU
using the feminine definite article and thus breaking, and
breaking with,
that
rule and
the
sort of sameness it entails.
If
the sub
ject
(m)
and the copula Cf are the same, what
is
to prevent them from
being referred to
with
a noun marked feminine? Trans.
2.
The
standard English translation
of
if
y
a
which
is
the French
rendering
of
Heidegger's
es gibt)
is 'there is: However,
if y
a has an exis
tential sense without using the French verb equivalent of 'to be'; it in
stead uses the French equivalent of the verb 'to have: Since 'is'
is
a
form
of
the copula in English, to translate
if y
a
as
'there is' in
the
context
of
this discussion
of
the copula would risk obscuring points
of
the passage, namely, the copula's inability
to
form predications
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NOTES TO PAGES 93-108
about itself and the replacement of the copula and its silence about
itself with the noncopulative locution
il y
a,
For this reason, i
y
a is
left: untranslated here. Ti-allS,
3
'Historical'
is
the standard English rendering
of
Heidegger's
geschichtlich and the French historial. Heidegger distinguishes this term
from historisch, rendered as 'historiographic' and historique, It-ailS,
4. Qualld
la langue se
tifllt can also mean 'when the tongue is held:
'when language is held: and even 'when language holds
itself
It-ailS,
CHAPTER 6
1.
Retouche
means
both
'the action
of
retouching (a painting,
photo
graph, text), and 'alteration
(of
an article
of
clothing):
It-ailS,
2
Realisatioll also carries the commercial sense of 'liquidation: T1-a/ls.
3 This is a reference to a remark made by Heidegger
in
his final in-
terview. See Nur noch ein
Gott
kann uns retten, Del Spiegel, May
31,
1976. For English translations, see Only a God Can Save Us: Del
Spiegel s Interview with Martin Heidegger, trans. Maria P Alter and
John
D.
Caputo, in
Philosophy
Today
20
(Winter
1976):
267-284;
Martin
Heidegger alld Natiollal Socialism: Questions and
Allswers,
ed.
Gunther Neske
and Emil Kettering, trans. Lisa Harries. (New York: Paragon House,
1990 ;
Heidegger: The Mall and the Thillke1;
ed.
T Sheehan, trans. William
Richardson (Chicago: Precedent, 1981).
TrailS.
4. Ct:
Martin
Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar 1966/67
trans. Charles H. Seibert (University: University of Alabama Press,
1979).
CHAPTER 7
1. Martin Heidegger, Comme au jour de fhe:' in Approche
de
HoUerlill, trans. M. Deguy and
F
Fedier (Paris: Gallimard, 1962),
81-82. [This essay is the French translation of Heidegger's Holderlins
Hy1ll11e VV/e wfiln am Feiertage
,
. . (Halle, 1941), reprinted
in
Erliiu-
tentllgfll
zu
Holderlins
Dic};tung (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951) and
Gesamtausgabe) vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981). To date, there
is
no published English translation of it.
The
quoted passage has been
translated and adapted from the French. Trans.]
2.
The French noun
la mtit
(night) is marked feminine; the noun
e
jour
(
day) is marked masculine. TrailS.
3 Drawn fi'om Die Wanderung, The Voyage, in Holderlin,
Sdmtliche liVerke, ed.
Norbert
von Hellingrath and Friedrich Seebass
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188
NOTES
TO
PAGES 109-131
(Berlin: Propyben-Verlag. 1914),4:170, quoted in 1Vlartin Heidegger,
Remembrance of the Poet, in Existence alld Being, trans. Douglas
Scott
(London: Vision Press, 1956), Approche
de Ho1derlill,
16
4.
From Remembrance
of
the
Poet, translated,
quoted, and com
mented upon in Existence and Beillg, 259,
265;
Retour, in Approche
de Holderlill,
13 18.
5 Remembrance of the Poet, 256; ApprodJi de
Hdldcrlill,
II.
6. Remernbrance of the Poet, 266; Approche de Hdlderlill,
19
7.
Al/lallte is the word al/lallt (lover) given a feminine ending.
Unlike
'lover,'
al/lallt
can reter
only to
a lover
who
is male.
TrailS.
8.
Holderlin,
Sdl/ltlir/Jc
Hlcrke,
translated.
quoted,
and
com-
mented upon in
Holderlin
and the
Essence of Poetry, in
Existl l1ce
alld
Beillg) 296; Approche de H6lderfill,
45.
9. Some following sections draw on the essay Souvenir;' in
Approche
de H6fderlin, 99-194; this
is
the
French
translation of
Heidegger's
Andenken, in ErldutenflzgCll i t Hdlderlills Dichtlllzg 1936-44)) 2nd ed.
(Frankfurt:
Klostermann,
1951). To date, there is no
published
English
translation of
the
essay.
TrailS.
ro.
The
ambiguity of fa
lllenle here also implies the
same
(earth)
and the
same (mother).
Timls.
I I Le
regard (the look)
is marked
masculine and la chair (the flesh) is
marked
feminine.
They
are
thus pronominalized
as if and clle respec
tively. In
the
French
gender
system,
the third person 'personal' pro
nouns can refer to either animates or inanimates.
In
this section,
the
author plays on
this
feature
of
the language to suggest an interplay
between he ll)
and she
elle).
Trans.
12. See
Martin Heidegger, The Way to
Language,
in
011 the
vVay to
Lallguage, trans. Peter D.
Hertz (New
York: Harper
and
Row, 1971), 127;
Le chemin vers la parole,
in
AchelllillClllCilt vcrs la parolc) trans. Jean
Beaufi-et,
Wolfgang
Brokmeier,
and
Fran<;:ois
Fedier
(Paris:
Gallimard,
1976),245. Ii alls.
13 Le tracC-ouvrt1l1t is the French rendering of
del
Alifriss (design). Ij allS,
14.
C f Martin Heidegger, Language in the Poem, in
Oil
the vVa to
Lallguage) 159-198; La parole dans l'element
du
poeme, in AdJellline11lent
vcrs
la parole,
39-83.
CHAPTER
9
1. Cf
Martin
Heidegger, The Way to Language, in Oil
the
vVay to
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forgetting, 94;
and logos 121; and
representation,
100;
and
sameness,
163;
and
the
nothing 122,
166;
and
thinking,
3; as
being( s), 2;
as
dwelling, 92;
as
house
of
rnan, 67;
as
sexuate, 64;
as
sign,
IF;
begin
ning of,
30; Being and Tillle I;
care
of, 89; circle of, 93, 99;
constitu
tion
of,
81;
forgetting
5,
90,
162;
foundation
145; historical
destiny of,
93;
house o t ~ 66, 91; in
difference of,
83;
-in-the-wodd
83;
language and,
15
6
; -man, 97;
of
Being,
71,
72, 74;
of
man,
25,
26, 30,
87, 157, 165;
of
the clearing,
157; of
the opening,
157; of
the
world, 72,
157; operation
of; 27;
precinct of,
177; produced
by two,
129; question of, 19, 82; the being
of, 39; the metaphysics of; 87;
to
pology
of,
19
beings, 2, 3; gift of; 168; living, 19,
35;
system
of
relations between,
16
9
being-there,
31 61, 83,
84, 86, 90,
no, 162,
164,
183n4; interpenetra
tion
as
a
mode
of, 84
birth
4,
25, IIO, 133; and
separation,
77;
ground
of;
II5;
reversal to, 102
blood, 28, 33, 84, 9
6
, 99
body,
61, 82, 139; affirmation of
the,
102;
living, 41,
57,
63, 66;
man s, 102;
of
the world, 89
border, 47, 51
boundary, 47, 67, 68;
and
air,
16;
and death, 71;
and
place, 20;
double, 31; false, 89; of thinking,
16; without 41
breathing,
7, 62,
107,
122, 161, 163,
17
1
, 177-
1
79
bridge,
23,
24, 3
0
33, 39,
134,
170;
-being, 24;
prior
to
the, 84
call,
38,
4
2
,
174
care, I09-1Il
change,
18, 59
IN EX
circle, 1,4,23,105, I I I
II 151; and
- Being, 80,
81;
closure of,
2, 6, 10,
26; enveloping,
159; of
air, 16,77:
of
his dwelling,
134; of
oblivion,
88; of the logos 17; of the proper,
176; Parmenidean, 6; re-opening
of, 101; squaring of a, 72;
tauto
logicaL 123, 126, IF 159; turning
square into, 69
clearing, 1,7, 20,
133, 1 9, 155, 156,
166;
encircled, 151; of air,
9; of
Being,
17; of land,
18;
of the opening, 3
5,
8;
of trees,
19;
properties of; 121
cOlTunemoration, 23, 24, 26, 45
concealment, 8
consumption: two kinds
o t ~
54
copula,
88, 124;
air
as
substance of,
12; and
death, 93;
and
ek-stasis, 90;
and
subject, 82;
as
axis, 125;
economy of,
63; of
the world, 72
cosmos,
14, 15
crY,4
2
cultivation, 68,
13
2
,
137
danger,
6, 7, 175;
groundless,
16
Da-sein
183n4;
and
projection, 102;
and
spatializing,
103; project
of,
101, 103;
transparency of,
100
day,
106, 107,
II7
death,
12,
25, 27,
53, 176;
and
assimi
lation,
61;
and
eternity, roo;
and
love,
71;
and
production 93; and
thought
7,
13
debt:
and there is 93; of
life, 28; set-
tling, 153
de-monstration: space of; 88
design, the, II8,
136,
144, 188m3
destiny: sexual, 90, 91
difference,
134;
and
Being, 82; an in-
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I N D E X
finite,
I7S;
infinitdy small. 46; ir
reducible,
124
dimension: denial
of
spatial, 101
discourse: man as
producer
of, 98
distance, 28, 29,
117;
and proximity,
57; infinitdy small, 146
149;
phe
nomenon
of, 86
divine, the, 178
divinities, 68, 69, lIS
dwelling, 18 120; air
as
8
61;
and
sparing, 68; as fundaniental trait,
67; crisis in, 67; first, 77. 97; in
darkness,
of
Being, 44;
of
man, 66, 69, 1)4,
164; techno
cratically, Is8
earth, 2 3
8
74, 94, II2, lIS I4S
IS5
156;
dweller on,
68; -mother,
140;
native,
172
ecstases: temporal. 167
ecstasis, 168-170
ejaculation:
and
ek-stasis, 90
ck-sistance,
2 14 63-66, 89, III, II8,
IS3
157
16
3
168 182n4
ek-stasis, 54 64; in-between,
106
dement,
8 13; nutritive,
168
dementary, the,
IS6
dernents, 2;
and
Empedocles, 76
Empedocles, 152;
and
Heidegger,
7S; cosmology
of, 16 76; world of,
17
emptiness,
8;
creating,
164
enfi:aming,
141
envdope,
16
20,
30 32;
double, 31
environment: natural, 74
epoke.
technocratic, 90
erection: and ek-stasis, 90; and lan-
guage, 97; as allaisthesis 9
exile, II2
existallce IS6 162 163
expanse,
183n2
expectation, 45
f brication, 68. 87
fire, 8 IS 74, II5, 152
156;
in
Empedocles ' cosmology, 16; love's,
63
flesh, 97.
146; and
Being, 99;
and
the look. II6; bonds of, 98; void
o f ~
99
flowering) 143 144
fluid, 10 II;
dement,
16; ideal, 6;
imperceptible, 161
fluids,
II
32
3,47
forefeeling:
portico o f ~
)4,
178
forgetting,
7;
a difference, 17 28;
and Being. 94, 128
164;
and lan
guage, I23; and metaphysics, I 87;
and recalling,
62;
and
sensible
perception,
145; and
space, 96;
and the essence of man,
164;
and
the proposition, 82; and the
thing,
127.
I28; change. 163;
double, 97; memory of,
164;
of
air,
1 ,
19 27, 74,
16
4; of Being,
3
5 162; of her, 32 64, 128; place
for,
128;
the Being of,
164;
the
other, 81 I34
IS4;
the
terror
of,
49; passage, 94; persisting in, 88.
ee also oblivion
foundation, 38
88. 98; constitution
of man's, 99; ontological, 97;
question
of the, 95
fourfold, the, 69;
mirror-play
of, 72
future: livable, 10
13
gathering,
15
109
137;
the
rose's, 144
generation, 166
genesis, 86
Cestell 17 121 183n9; and air,
19;
body
as
33 87; of air, 161; of Be
ing, 18; of existence
or existallce
16
3
gesture, the,
169
gift, 28, 32
136;
and oblivion, 94;
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first, 28, 29; gives itself,
93,
94:
of
beings,
168; of her
body, 35; outside
of
all economies, 29;
triumphant
64
giving:
and
language,
93
god, 101,
III
14
2
,
143
God 101,
178
God, 147,
15
6
gods, II4
Greek: culture,
102;
man,
102;
per
spective, 20; thinking, 101
Greeks,
10,
88
ground 4, II4; constituting a, 94;
groundless,
5,
3
6
,
85,
86, 96, 168;
nocturnal, 97; of Being, II2, II4;
of
the groundless, 97;
unthought
86
habitation, 8
hatred,
16, 53; and
love, 67, 76;
and
the infinite, 104; economy of; 77;
of nature, 75; power of; 75
Heidegger,
Martin 2,
3
6, 14,
20,
21,
28, 40;
and
the Greeks, 88; and his
torical destiny
of
Being,
93;
suspi
cion of science, 87
Heraclitus, 14, 152;
and
osmos) 2
hero:
Homeric
102
Hesperian, the:
condition
for,
102
history, II9;
and
nature, 142
Holderlin
Friedrich, 188nn8,9
holy, the,
105, 114
home,
65, II5, 161
homeland, 74, II5
horizon, 86
house, 66, 69, 124; his, 65; invisible,
62;
living,
63
lrylc 103, 154, 189n3
i a
89,
186r12. Sec
also there
is
indifferentiation: temporal,
102
individuation,
102
in-stance,
169
instrumentality, 98
interiority, 95
interpenetration, 84
intra-touching, 96
J N E X
-intuition: finite, 96; infinite,
103;
Ulan's, 97
is, 3-5
language,
54, 155; and
Being, 79, 121,
137,
15
6
,
177;
and
dwelling, 67;
and
life, 159;
and
nature,
1 1; and
neces
sity,
122;
and
place,
154;
and
speech,
132;
and
the Being of man, 87;
and
the gods,
III 112; and truth 91;
an
other, 37;
as
arc/;itcclme) 88,
91, 125,
147; as dwelling, 92; as his element,
74; bridge of; 3
1
; coherence of; 33,
94; destiny of;
160;
essence of;
91;
exploitation of air
by,
10; house of;
92; natural,
141;
only one, 36,
37, 39,
51;
silence of;
123;
the rule of; 142
leap, 34, 39; beyond, 37;
of
thought
14
8
149
legcill)
34,
3
6
lirhtHl1g)
lite, 27, 33,43, 53, 17
1
, 17
6
; exchange
159
lips:
and
openness, 55,
56
logos 15, 30, 146;
and
air, II;
and
Being,
121; and
death,
13; and
naming, II;
and
voice, 48; power of; 9; the
meta-physical, 87; the
plrysis of
the,
86
look, the,
39,
97, 99, 188ml;
and the
flesh, II6;
and the
other, II3
love, II2,
173, 174;
and
hatred, 7
6
, 104;
of
self; 76;
of
the other, 76, 82;
of
the same, 82, 11
lover, II2,
II3,
188n7
magic: captivating,
172
man:
and
plrysis
II-13;
and
whole,
17;
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organism: living,
84
ongln,44
other, 24,
11 ,
14
2
, 173; elimination
of
the,
82;
female,
2, 37,
3
8
, 140;
language
and
the,
154;
mastery
99;
of
the same, 177; on the out
side, 48; otherness of the, II5; re
duction
to nothingness of the,
9
8
,
147;
wholly,
23,
139
oxygen, 84
Pannenides.
2,
3
14,
132;
and
Being,
20
participation, 39;
and
Being, 81
passage,
33, 34,
84,
160
passivity, 66
penetration.
32
pems, 16
phenomenology,
85,
II3
phenom.enon: in general, 86
philosopher, the,
TO,
143
philosophers, 2, 7
philosophy, 4,
15
2
,
159;
business of,
15
8
;
death
of, 5; history of, 5, 7
pholle) 8
phueill,
14,
19, 83,
133; of
physical be
ings, 86; the maternal, 99
physics,
2,
3; techno-physics, 9
p l ~ v s i s 13, 15, 19,
45,
94;
and
technol
ogy, 86;
and
unconcealment,
61;
arche of, 88;
deployment
of:
9;
elementality of; 74; Greek,
II;
proper, 76
place, 8,
13,
20,
25; and
boundary,
19; building, 142;
delimitation
of;
151;
of
Being,
137
poet,
9,
II2, II5,
171;
and the
open-
mg, II4
poets:
and
thrownness, 7
6
, 77
portico,
34, 35, 39
predicate, 82, 93
predication,
166;
and
Being, 80, 92
J N E X
presence, 4;
and
a being,
91; and
absence, 8, 48;
and
Being,
123; and
the copula,
124;
ek-stasis of; 54;
entry
into,
I,
48,
50, 135,
167-169;
sign of, 48; superfluity of,
41;
the
philosophy 40; the presentness
of, 40, 153
pre-Socratics,
40
production,
4,
174
pro-duction, 54, 91,
I85n8;
and
the
copula,
93
project,
17,
30;
Da-scill s,
T03;
funda-
mental,
141;
sexual,
91
projection, 17, 20, 81
proof, 7
proper, the,
139,
149,
17
6
proposition, 31
82
propositions: consistency
33
propriation, III,
137,
14
6
, 149
proximity, 66, 70, II2; distant, 74
indivisible, 84;
without
bound
aries,
86;
without
distance,
33
question: Heidegger s, 88
rarefaction, 6, 7
rebirth,
110
receptacle, 28; first, 29,
30
reClleillcl1lent, 55, 85, 133, 13
6
,
13
8
,
15
1
;
circle of, 79
reflection:
and
air,
13; and
the four
fold, 70, 72
regimes: political, TO
region, the,
39,
184m3;
countering
aspect of; 52;
formation
of; 86;
magic of:
53; of
speech,
40
relations,
32;
the system of, 95, 96
remembering, 35, 49, 75;
and
being
there,
164;
the forgetting, 163
repatriation, II4
repetition:
and
Being,
TOO; appro
priating,
132
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INDEX
re-presentation. 35
In;
and Being.
roo
reserve. the,
17.
93 136; of air, 26 85
reserves:
of
air, 9
retroversion,
176
return. 63 64, 109 IIO
I I ;
to the
san1e, II2
right-against, the, 52
rose, 143 14
8
; metaphorical, 145
roundness: perfect,
I.
ro, 151
same, the,
3
4,
14.
82;
and
nothing,
17;
eternal return to, 24; not, 126;
to be
and
to think, 17 12I
12
3 159
sameness,
45
159;
and equality, 7
6
;
and language, 147; constitution
of,
147;
everlasting, 69; ground of,
113
168; whole of,
126
saying, the. 35 141 177 I89n6; and
nature, 133; Inan's, II9; m.aternal.
141
science: and the logos, 86; informa
tion, 141;
of
today, 87
scientists, 9
sea, II2
seafarer, I I
3
serenity, 24, 26;
and
the
open
ex-
panse, 60; of the thinker, 53
sexes: difference between,
ro
she, 28,
85
I05 128 141 I83n5; there,
85
86, I07; who remains ever out
side, 65
simplicity: of the four, 70
sky,
lIS
168-17°;
under
the,
68
sleep,49
source, 44; and mourning,
63
space,
8
169; and boundary,
19
20;
an in-finite,
151;
priori conditions
of, 97; as gift, 96; Cartesian,
83;
endless, 177; infinite totality of;
96;
inhabitation
of, 20; livable,
13
18;
mode
of
inhabiting, 97;
un-
countable, 94
natural,
19
spaces: empty, 8
space-time, 25
123;
a
made
by and
for man, 84;
and
care,
III;
and
loss,
91;
as it is philosophically think
able, 84; of history, 136; of entry
into presence, 52 15 r of the
present, 51;
of
things, 84
spatiality,
95
126 170; air as 167;
intemporal, 167; of air, 167
speech, II9.
133
143;
and
air,
73;
power of, 159; the way to, 131; un
folding of, II8
structure: dative, 93; transitive, 93
subject: and predicate, 82
93;
and
representation, 148;
and
things,
83 84; as ecstatic, 99; identity of
the, 98; instrumentality of the, 98;
living, the, man's origin
as
98
subjectivity, 95
subject-object: axis of; 80
subsistence, 13; man's, 12 18; of a liv-
ing body,
83
sun, 43 51 52
16
7; dawning, 67
teclJlle
86, 87
technology, 9;
and
danger, 141-142;
and physis 86; functionary of,
175;
of today, 87; this language as 91
temporality,
95
167; and technique,
IOO
temporalization: unresolved, 167
there, 27,
2,
64,
10
7
16
3
170 I83n4;
ecstasis in a
168;
his, 29, 40
there, 50 65
there is I 3 8
12
5 137 139
153
169
I8mI, I86n2; air as,
13 14;
and
lan
guage, 93
154; and
nothing, 162;
and
reserve,
17;
bottomless, 168;
of
plrysis
IS;
of
the bridge, 23
things,
38
86,
127; and
instrumental-
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ity
98;
and
the
open
expanse, 80;
encounter
with,
10
things:'
4,19.20,33.38,4°,51,127,
152; and
relations,
83
84;
fc1brica-
tion
of, 84 .
thinking, 79;
as
a living being,
83;
circle of; 4; essence of, 25 53;
faithful,
II),
II4; task of,
I, 12
158
thought,
96; Western, 44
thrownness, 41 77, 184m7; air
subjected to.
62
time: a namable,
25;
and
foundation,
95;
and
place,
164; and
remember
ing,
163; and
subjectivity, 95;
priori conditions
of, 97;
as
an
in
JN EX
product
of,
128 129;
that
are dif
ferent,
125;
theres, 64
unconcealment, 2
42,
56 1851113;
a
new, 172; relation to, 144
unthinkable, 5
12
3
unthought,
12 13 19
vacuum, 30 I82nn6,I5; abhorrence
of, 7 20;
and
clearing, 19; and
place,
21
veiling,
166
venture, the; 171-172,
177 178
vISion, 99
voice, 28, 48