Uncategorized – Derek Hampson

Why Counterfeit Money is a Story of Tobacco

Reading Given Time, Post #22

A risky promenade (GT, 114-115)
Derrida characterises his approach to Counterfeit Money, and his numerous digressions leading up to the final chapter, as a “risky promenade,” one which reflects the journey of the two friends in Baudelaire’s story.(114)

He then seeks to justify his reading of Counterfeit Money as a story of tobacco, citing Baudelaire’s repeated references to tobacco in Counterfeit Money and elsewhere. But his main justification is internal to the story, central to which is the agonistic relationship between the narrator and his friend, described by Derrida as both an alliance and a duel. This is expressed in the double annulment of the gift and of forgiveness, the gift “that seems to give nothing” and a forgiveness that is withheld. Tobacco is there from the beginning, “before the first act, before speech, there is, there was, there will have been tobacco.” Tobacco is “the point of departure,” “the first partition or sharing,” from which everything that follows comes out of. It is the origin that is departed from and left behind in the distance. as the tobacco shop is left behind by the two friends, expressed at the opening of the story: “As we were leaving the tobacconist’s…” (115)

Derek Hampson

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Art as Gift

Art as Gift was an Art and Theory Reading Group project that ran from January to May 2017, the aim of which was to examine the idea that we experience works of art in terms of presence – as something given, i.e. as gifts. Two principle theorisations of the gift informed discussions:

1. The gift as part of a process of exchange, as set out by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss in: The Gift (1950).
2. The impossibility of the gift, as set out by Jacques Derrida in his book: Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money (1991).

Project Organisation
Derrida’s text was the main focus of the group’s discussions, meetings were organised around discussing each of the four chapters of “Given Time” in turn. To support these I wrote a series of detailed blogposts on each chapter. The project culminated in a public presentation, informed by the thinking developed within the group.

Timetable
Reading Group 1 – January 26
Introductory presentation by Derek Hampson, then discussion
Text: ‘The Time of the King’ in Given Time (1).

Reading Group 2 – February 23
This meeting will focus on reading and discussing chapter 2 of Given Time: The Madness of Economic Reason: A Gift without Present (34-70). Suggested themes for discussion will be posted on this website.

Reading Group 3 – March 30
This meeting will focus on reading and discussing chapter 3 of Given Time: “Counterfeit Money’ 1: Poetics of Tobacco” (71-107). Suggested themes for discussion will be posted on this website.

Reading Group 4 – April 27
Final meeting, dedicated to reading chapter 4 of Given Time: “Counterfeit Money” II:Gift and Countergift, Excuse and Forgiveness (108-172). Suggested themes for discussion will be posted on this website.

Art as Gift Symposium – May 13
11:00am at the Lace Market Gallery, Stoney Street, Nottingham. The artist and critic Peter Suchin (Art Monthly) will address the question: “What is Given in Marcel Duchamp’s Given?”

Click on image below to download “Given Time” as a pdf

Art as Gift Overview

Starting 26th January 2017, the Art & Theory Reading Group met once a month for four months, at Wollaton Street Studios, to discuss Jacques Derrida’s Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money, examining the implications for artistic practice of its ostensible theme of the gift.

Given Time is structured around Derrida’s deconstructivist analysis of the anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s 1925 essay The Gift, a study of gift-giving rituals in tribal societies, and Charles Baudelaire’s short story Counterfeit Money (1869).

In advance of each meeting I wrote a commentary on one of the book’s four chapters, in the form of a series of blog posts. The project culminated in a symposium, in which the artist and critic Peter Suchin (Art Monthly) discussed the question “What is Given in Marcel Duchamp’s Given?”

Derek Hampson
(Convenor, Art & Theory Reading Group)

Read my introduction to Jacques Derrida’s Given Time

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