Post #37 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

Baudelaire’s gift (170-172)
Derrida ends Given Time; signalling the unknowability of the secret of what either Baudelaire, the narrator, or the friend meant to say or do in Counterfeit Money. He does this through his repeated use of “perhaps,” as the condition under which the events occur. This is the secret that enters literature, constituted by the literary institution and revealed by that institution only to the extent it loses all interiority, all thickness, all depth. It is an unbreakable secret, it is not subjective, it is superficial, without substance.

“It is spread on the surface of the page, as obvious as a purloined letter, a post card, a bank note, a check, a “letter of credit” – or “a silver two-franc piece.” (170)

A further conclusion is reached, “there is no nature, only effects of nature.” The meaning of nature is referred back to it from a simulacrum that it is thought to cause, in this case literature. The narrator, as nature, represents a nature that does not so much give as lend, and lends more than it gives. It extends credit, this for that (tit for tat), as the narrator lends wings to his friend’s mind. Derrida expands on this lending of wings by asking us to recall the story of Icarus, as told in Baudelaire’s poem The Complaints of an Icarus. Asking if that story would be the “whole story, all of history? In any case…a certain history of philosophy.” There follows an account of the poem.

Icarus, “an” Icarus refers the poem’s subject to the author, to Baudelaire, a writer who “is not able to sign…unable even to give his name, to give himself a name, to give a name to his end.” (171) How therefore, asks Derrida, can he know how to give? As one who writes, he has no place of burial and therefore no proper name, he is depersonalised and thereby sinks into the abyss. The poet does not sign, he complains that he cannot even pity himself. A gift is not signed, it does not calculate even with a time that would do it justice, Baudelaire makes no concessions, his “modernity” marked by a “striking insolence,” extends no credit to the sublime. Which Derrida characterises as “speculation” and “counterfeit money” that one would like to substitute “for the hopeless, cruel, prostituting, killing of “love of beauty.”

Derrida concludes Given Time with a reading of The Complaints of an Icarus, as a downfall [chute], a story of the end, a falling off, “its absolute humility, and just the lowest possible:”

[…]
My consumed eyes see only
Souvenirs of the sun.
[…]
Beneath some unknowing eye of fire
I feel my wing breaking;

And burned by the love of beauty,
I will not have the sublime honor
Of giving my name to the abyss
That will serve as my tomb.

Derek Hampson

Previous Post: The Judgment of Nature

Post #36 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

Confessing an infinite debt (164-170)
Derrida now focuses on the narrator’s refusal to give forgiveness to his friend, for doing “evil out of stupidity,” asking what does the narrator mean by such words? (165) The friend is not condemned for having an evil intention, but for the “limits of his intelligence.” (166) Generally we do not condemn someone for such reasons. The limit of one’s intellect is considered to be innate, given by nature. The focus becomes the intention behind the friend’s actions – “lodged in stupidity.” (167) The question then becomes about stupidity, which Derrida surmises, in the eyes of the narrator, is the will of the rational animal (logon ekhon) that does not want to be able to use its reason. He has the reason, the capacity to act responsibly, but chooses not to be responsible for his irresponsibility. He does not understand the implications of his actions.

This understanding can appear as the beginning of remorse, which presupposes a link between awareness and confession. Derrida denies this, saying “confession does not consist essentially in making the other aware of something.” (168) One does not confess in order to inform. The consequence of this is that “the eidetic purity of confession stands out better when the other is already in a position to know what I confess.”

The friend did not do what he ought to have done in order to know that he was mean, to make it known, and to confess it to himself. Stupidity is not a natural state, but rather a relation to an intellectual power inscribed in us by nature, “a kind of universal good sense.” The friend fails to honour the contract that binds him to this gift of nature, by doing this he shows he is not worthy of this gift. He has therefore failed to acquit himself of his debt to nature, a natural debt.

Within the structure of Counterfeit Money the narrator takes the place of nature, through which we witness “something that resembles the birth of literature.” The “I” of the narrator in supplanting Baudelaire as the true signatory of the story leads to the “naturalization” of literature, it leads to an interpretation of literature as nature.

Baudelaire in creating the narrative of Counterfeit Money, puts on stage a narrator who is both like nature and is judgmental, exhibiting the “fiction of a naturalization of literature,” inscribing naturalization “in an institution called literature.” In the process inviting us to “suspend…the old opposition between nature and institution.” (170)

Derek Hampson

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

Post #34 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

The enigma of the text (152-156)
Whether or not the friend gave the beggar a counterfeit coin is the interest, the enigma of Baudelaire’s Counterfeit Money, and as such is indecipherable and resistant to interpretation. This is the secret of the text, a secret which is “unbreakable.” There is no chance of ever knowing if a counterfeit coin was given – there is therefore no sense in wondering what actually happened, whether on the part of the friend or the narrator. As fictional characters they have no “consistency, no depth beyond their literary phenomenon.” The inviolability of the secret they both carry depends on this “essential superficiality of their phenomenality.” They are “two-to-speak” [this form of words makes them a single entity] holding the possibility of non-truth “in which every truth is held or is made.” This also says the “(non-) truth of literature,” which ensures the possibility of literature.

Derrida then compares literature to money, which as long as one can reckon with its phenomenality [its appearance as money], as long as one can count with and on cash money to produce effects (alms, purchase, speculation), as long as money passes for (real) money, it is not different from the money that, perhaps, it counterfeits. There is no way of detecting the difference, between the real and the counterfeit, as long as it is framed by its conventions or institutions. Beyond this frame other possibilities, other contexts of truth and reality are opened up.

This would confirm that everything was being played out for the narrator – the friend would not have done any of this if it had not been for his friend the narrator. Everything happens to the narrator, everything is dedicated to him:

• The time of the story is given to the narrator
• The narrator recounts a story whose meaning is dedicated to him

This situation leads to a murder, the narrative gives and kills time. The relationship between the friends is that of a merciless war – in which each acknowledges that the other is right, exchanging the phrase “you are right.” Derrida calls this exchange a “specular reversal” (155), which he writes as “you are right”/”you are right.” They tell each other that they are right to tell each other they are right, which Derrida says could mean three things:

1. We are right, which confirms that we have reason, we belong to the species of the rational animal (logon ekhon)
2. We know how to count, we are men of knowledge and calculation and also good narrators.
3. Our calculation has prevailed, we have controlled by reasoning with the other.

Yet their being subject to reason, in giving each other reason, leads them to the breaking of the contract [of friendship?] between them. In giving reason to each other they have given nothing. The gift does not obey the principle of reason, it is without foundation, Derrida claims that the gift is a “stranger” to morality and to law.

If you give because you must give, then you no longer give. (156)

The gift and the event share the same conditions; “being outside-the-law, unforeseeability, “surprise,” the absence of anticipation or horizon, the excess in regard to all reason.” Leading Derrida to conclude that “nothing ever happens by reason.”

Derek Hampson

Post #33 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

The relationship between the narrator and the friend is uncertain, questionable, did the friend truly give counterfeit money or did he lie to his friend in a false confession? As Derrida says we will never know the answer to this question, which says something about the place of belief in writing, which frames Baudelaire’s writing. Derrida describes this frame as a four-sided border, a “dislocated frame of a triptych,” (150) which excludes a fourth term.

The narrative is framed in such a way that we, the readers, are like the narrator, in debt to the friend. But we are also his creditor, we extend the credit of belief to him that he gave the counterfeit coin as he said. There is no way we can intervene in the scene in order to ascertain the truth or otherwise of the narrator’s claim. The dual, dialogic nature of the friend’s “stroll tete-a-tete” excludes the reader’s access to the secret, as it excludes the author himself. (150-152)

Derek Hampson

Post #32 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

The interaction between the two friends in Counterfeit Money is fraught with accusation, which leads to the friend justifying his action of seeming over-generosity by saying he had given a counterfeit coin. Derrida speculates on why the friend says this. He may be asking to get himself excused for his prodigality and for dominance of the narrator through his larger donation. His confession may signal a naively triumphal and boastful account of his speculative abilities. Yet these hypotheses do not exclude each other, they bear the appearance of counterfeit money, as such the false-donor the narrator is free of the violence of the gift, breaking the cycle of exchange implicit in the gift. (149-150)

Derek Hampson

Post #31 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

In the story of Counterfeit Money the friend is judged by the narrator, but both are indicted by the appearance and look of the beggar to acquit themselves by sacrificing, i.e. to make a destructive gift to appease the gods, the poor. They both must give, but one gives more than the other and in this giving what they give must show itself. This is not for the poor man or for the law but for the other, the partner, the friend. This is because as friends they are not only indebted with regard to the poor man but also to each other. (145)

The comparison of their offerings is central to the story, the other elements, the poor man, the law seem as part of the conditions needed for their exchange to take place, which is constituted as a bidding war, a potlatch. What is given in this potlatch is one friend’s advantage over the other due to the surprising generosity of the donation. The narrator at first takes pleasure in his friend’s generosity, he treats himself to pleasure.

The narrator equates pleasure with surprise, the sudden coming of the new, which cannot be anticipated or repeated, it is an event. Pleasure is being surprised and more intensely causing a surprise in the other. The cause of pleasure in the other is surprise, the passion of wonder – the origin of philosophy. But the greatest pleasure is to be the cause of the cause of the surprise, by giving what gives me pleasure to the other – for example tobacco.

Derek Hampson

Post #30 of the Art as Gift project’s reading of Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

The demand of the beggar is the demand of the gods (137-142)

“Generosity is an obligation because Nemesis avenges the poor and the gods for the superabundance of happiness and wealth of certain people.” (Mauss, 18)

The beggar signifies the absolute demand of the other, which is the unquenchable thirst for the gift, for alms. The giving of alms to the beggar is within a sacrificial structure. Sacrifice is different to a pure gift – it is giving is in the form of destruction, hoping for a benefit. Mauss calls the sacrifice “the present made to the gods.” Alms are a calculated sacrifice.

The poor, marginal people excluded from the process and circulation of wealth, come to represent the gods or the dead. The look of the beggar or of the poor is one of incrimination, accusation, a demand from the other. You must pay, i.e. give to stop the spirit from coming back to haunt you. The giving of alms is in order to “get in good graces and make peace with it.”

The persecution of the beggar
Counterfeit Money is marked by misfortune from the moment of the first encounter. The condition of the poor man is on account of misfortune, he is destitute, speechless. The absolute demand of the other that the beggar gives, is communicated through his eyes. His look accuses and frightens the two friends, who are persecuted by the law, by justice, in the face of which they are in turn destitute. The poor man has nothing to give, he can only demand restitution in the disquieting mute eloquence of his look, which communicates humility and reproach. Baudelaire likens this look of the beggar to that of a beaten dog. Elsewhere he invokes the image of the dog and the poor to define his “urban muse,” “his poet’s inspiration as painter of modern capital and of the modern capital.” (143) Saying the poet shares the same fate of exclusion as the dog and the poor.

The trial of Counterfeit Money
The demand of the poor man embodies the figure of the law. The two friends are indebted and guilty as soon as the beggar silently looks at them. “They are on trial, they appear before the donee’s court as before the law.” (144) They treat with gratitude whoever accepts their payment in order to acquit themselves of their debt.

The story is a trial, a process [procession, walk]. The two friends walk for the length of the story, which also contains the time of a judicial procedure: incrimination [the meeting with the beggar], law [the giving of the gift] judgment [“I will never forgive him”]. In meeting the beggar they are before the law.

Derek Hampson