Post #35 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

Taking time (157-163)
Derrida continues his analysis of Counterfeit Money, pointing out that the narrator, at first, tries to make excusable what his friend has just confessed to him, i.e. that he gave the beggar a counterfeit coin. This search for excuse occurs in the mind of the narrator, in a reverie which is broken by the friend speaking, which leads to the narrator’s judgment of his friend; “I will never forgive him.”

Because of lack of time Derrida then proposes to explore just three motifs from within the narrator’s reverie on the possibilities of excusing the endless unforeseen possibilities opened up by his friend’s actions:
1. Excuse
The desire to “create an event” overrides the “criminal enjoyment” that the friend might take in his false gift.
2. Limit and limitless
The gift of counterfeit money appears to make the impossibility of the gift possible. The effects of counterfeit money, wealth – prison, are incalculable, as must the gift be in order to be a gift; “one can give only in the measure of the incalculable.” The incalculable, in terms of money, is also the infinite, the limitless possibilities that monetary speculation promises. Here Derrida uses Aristotle’s concepts of chremastics and economy to explore the good limit of economy and the bad infinite of monetary exchange. Economy, the law of the household (oikos), circulates within its boundary, yet requires the khrema (of chremastics) for anything to occur such as an event. The gift must go against nature’s generosity, “one may give with generosity but not out of generosity.” (162) The narrator’s speculative reverie produces the interest of Counterfeit Money as a phantasm, the illusion that limitless speculation gives.
3. What is seen breaks the contract of friendship
In his desire to excuse his friend the narrator credits him with a variety of motives that might lead him to give a false gift. Derrida characterises this effort of the narrator towards the friend as contractual. The narrator advances credit to the friend drawn on a “reserve fund” of friendship, which the narrator then sees he does not deserve. Derrida asks what proves to the narrator that the friend does not deserve forgiveness. His answer, the narrator sees the friend’s true aim in his eyes, which shine with “unquestionable candor.” (163) The place of the narrator is the place of credulity and the place from which moral judgment is proffered, in a judgment without appeal.

Derek Hampson