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Edited, Tr anslated, and with an Introduction by Peggy Kamuf Stanford University Press Stanford California 2002 WITHOUT ALI BI Jacques Derrida "Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul" was originally published in French in 2000 under the title Etats dame de fa psychanalyseby Editions Galilee. © 2000 by Editions Galilee. Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2002 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America, on acid-free, archival-quality paper ISBN 0-8047-4410-6 (alk. paper) - ISBN 0-8047-44II-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) Original Printing 2002 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: II 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 Typeset by BookMatters in nll3 Adobe Garamond Acknowledgments Earlier versions of "History of the Lie" appeared in Graduate Fa culty Philosophy Jo urnal, New School fo r Social Research, vol. 19, 2-VOL 20, I, and Fu tures of Ja cques Derrida, ed. Richard Rand (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001). "Typewriter Ribbon" appeared initially in Ma terial Events: Pa ul de Ma n and the Afterlife of Theory, ed. Barbara Cohen et al. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), and appears here with the permission of the publisher. "Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul" is a translation of Etats d'ame de faps ychanalyse (Paris: Galilee, 2000). Vlt Contents Preface: Toward the Event Xl PEGGY KAMUF Provocation: Fo rewords xv JACQUES DERRIDA Introduction: Event of Resistance I PEGGY KAMUF I. History of the Lie: Prolegomena 28 2. Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2) 7I 3· "Le Parjure," Perhaps: Storytelling and Lying I61 4· The University Without Condition 202 5· Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul: The Impossible Beyond of a Sovereign Cruelty 238 No tes 281 Preface: Toward the Event PEGGY KAMUF The idea fo r this volume arose as I was working on the translation of"'Le Parjure,' Perhaps," which Jacques Derrida originally wrote fo r a collection of essays honoring his dear friend J. Hillis Miller. Having had the good fo rtune to translate numerous essays by Derrida fo r occasions of one kind or another in recent years, I was keenly aware of strong continuities among several of them. Indeed, many connections are so plainly in view that a reader certainly would not need, like a translator, to keep her at­ tention pressed close to the language of the essays in order to see the car­ ryover from one to the other. I therefore suggested to their author that fo ur of them be published together, even though the resulting collection would constitute a book in English translation fo r which there was no corresponding French original. Jacques Derrida immediately assented and proposed that a fifth, as yet un translated essay be included as well. This is the text of a keynote lecture that had just been delivered to the States General of Psychoanalysis, held at the Sorbonne in the summer of 2000 and translated here as "Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul." These five essays, then, were never intended to share space between the covers of a same book. Tr ue, many books get written that way, although usually not first of all in translation. It is also not unusual fo r such col­ lections to be made up of what are called occasional pieces, although a common practice in such circumstances is to erase as far as possible marks of the original occasion, the thought being that these limit or detract from the general import of what is being said. Such editing was simply out of the question here, fo r reasons closely bound up with Derrida's practice of thinking toward the event, by which I mean: letting thought unfold in re- xz XlI Preface sponse to occasions, invitations, demands, contexts, situations, but also, always, in or as friendship. It is this practice toward the event that is being remarked here each time, and each time differently. Four of the essays were written for initial presentation as lectures, and these were, of course, fo r specific occasions atspecific locations. "History of the Lie: Prolegomena" was initially delivered at the New School fo r Social Research, in a lecture series dedicated to the memory of Hannah Arendt's association with that institution. That year, the series was also dedicated to Reiner Schiirmann, the brilliant young German philosopher who, like Arendt, emigrated to the New School and, also like Arendt, was a strong reader of Heidegger. The lecture was given on this firstoccasion within a year after Reiner Schiirmann's death from AIDS in 1993 at age fifty-six. The occasion for "Typewriter Ribbon" was a conference held in 1998 at the Humanities Center of the University of California, Davis, organized by a host of friendsand colleagues (Hillis Miller, Thomas Cohen, Andrzej Warminski, Barbara Cohen, Georges Van Den Abbeele). The improbable title of this conference-which Derrida analyzes at some length and to comic effect-includes reference to Paul de Man's late work, collected posthumously (by Andrzej Warminski) under the title AestheticId eology. "The University Without Condition" was initially written in response to an invitation from the Presidential Lecture Series, hosted by President Gerhard Casper of Stanford University and organized by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht in 1999. Professor Gumbrecht having generously invited me, along with Samuel Weber, to attend this lecture, we heard Richard Rorty issue his warm and wry welcome to Derrida on this occasion, which was the first time the latter had spoken at this great university. There is no specificmark of this context in the lecture-although it was addressed di­ rectly in some prefatory remarks Derrida read out-but its outline ap­ pears, to me at least, never to be far in the background as I reread the essay now. Which is not to say that one had to be there. The argument of the essay is or ought to be clear as a bell fo r whoever continues to profess be­ lief in the teaching of the Humanities. "Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul" is not merely the sole essay of the fivethat bears mention of its date Guly 16, 2000); it is also a long, dramatized response to its context and occasion, about which, therefore, no more need be added here. As for "'Le Parjure,' Perhaps," the only essay destined originally fo r a publication and not for delivery at a Preface XU1 specific place and time, its context will have been, as already mentioned, a volume celebrating the work of Hillis Miller. It was written in the con­ text of this friendship, therefore, fo r the friend and the friend's work, but also fo r a work signed by another, the novel Ie Pa rjure (1964), by Henri Thomas. Because that work has not yet been translated into English, I can point to this part of the context only in French. The long passages Derrida cites from Thomas's text suffer no doubt from this lack of a full translation of the novel. Perhaps someday I'll finish the job, so fo r now I ask that it be seen as still work in progress, a draft. Friendship has been no less the context or accompaniment for this book. That is why I have tried to name so many friends in so few lines. Foremost there has been the friendship of Jacques Derrida, shown most recently by his ready assent to this project. Since 1974, when I had (I will never know how) the fo olhardy temerity to speak up in his seminar, Derrida has responded never less steadily with friendship. Werner Hamacher and Helen Tartar have given help and encouragement since the beginning, and have even made it possible fo r all of us to proceed quickly. Michael Naas showed exemplary friendship fo r the work in a reader's report that I was tempted to take over as introduction to this book, since it outlined so well what is perhaps the book's essential trait, common to all its chapters: the trait of sovereignty. If I ended up having to take my own responsibilities in an introduction, it was not without the wish to respond to all these exigent readers. l Provocation: Forewords JACQUES DERRIDA I Is it not a little as if, without obligating me but by inviting me, someone had one day defied me to do it? Provocation: would you dare, fo r this book, right here, right now, without alibi, a fo reword? A fo reword is not necessarily provoked or provocative, to be sure. But a provocation will always resemble a fo reword. Whatdo we call a provo­ cation? Before all other senses of the word,l a provocation proffers; it is the act of a speaking. A speech act, so to speak. Perhaps every speech act acts like a provocation. To provoke, is that not to cause (in French, causer means "to speak with the other," but also "to produce effects," "to give rise" to what takes place, to what is called, in a word, the event)? Is to pro­ voke not to let resonate a vocal appeal, a vocative, a "vocable," as we say in French, in other words, a word? Is it not to turn the initiative over to the word, which, like a fo reword and in a thousand ways, goes out ahead, to the .frontof the stage: to expose itself or to dare, to face up to, here and now, right away, without delay and without alibi? A provocation is always somewhat "vocal," as one might say in English, resolved to make itself heard, sonorous and noisy.

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