COUNTERPATH New Yo rk, behind the Public Library, memorial to Gertrude Stein, October 1998. "Everybody's Autobiography, yours which tellsyou so well that there is no thinking that one was never born until you hear accidentallythat ..." ("Circumfes­ sion"). (Jacques Derrida Archives) Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida, working session fo r Counter­ path at the Lutetia, Paris, 6 November 1998. (Eric Jacolliot) Eric Jacolliot acted as much more than a witness to, or cartographer of, the comings and goings that constitute this book. Solicitous host and vigilant advisor, present at every stage of its progress, he took an active part in the composition of the work, fo r which we thank him sincerely. J.D., C.M. Translator's acknowledgment: I sincerely thank Louis Stelling fo r his gen­ erous and assiduous assistance in the preparation of this translation. D.W. Cultural Memory In the Present Mieke Bat and Hent de Vries, Editors COUNTERPATH Traveling with Jacques Derrida Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida Translated by David Wills STANFO RD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFO RD, CAL IFO RNIA 2004 Stanford University Press Stanford, California This book has been published with the assistance of the Translator'sNote French Ministry of Culture-National Center for the Book. La Contre-allee by Catherine Malabou and Jacques Derrida, including L'Ecartement des voies: Derive, arrivee, catastrophe by Catherine Malabou, and Correspondance, lettres et cartes postales {extraits} by Jacques Derrida La © 1999, Quinzaine Litteraire-Louis Vuitton, Paris. Selection from "Letter to a Japanese Friend," in Derrida and Diffirance, translated by David Wood and Andrew Benjamin, edited by David Wood and Robert Bernasconi, Northwestern University Press. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. 1988. © English translation by the Board of Trustees of the © 2004 This book was published in French as La Contre-allee, in a series en­ Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. titled Voyager avec . [Traveling with ... ]. Previously published titles in­ Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper cluded Ernst Junger, Blaise Cendrars, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mario de Andrade, Natsume S6seki, and Vladimir Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mayakovski. Counterpath is my neologism fo r contre-allee, which refers to Malabou, Catherine. a sideroad, service or access road, or "alley" that runs alongside a main [Contre-allee. English] thoroughfare, such as one finds providing access to the buildings lining the Counterpath: traveling with Jacques Derrida Catherine Malabou and Jacques / boulevards of French cities. In this sense it is a tributary to the main road. Derrida ; translated by David Wills. However, as the word suggests, la contre-alleehere conveys also the sense of p. cm. - (Cultural memory in the present) going [aller] counter to that grain, main current, traffic, circulation, fare, Includes bibliographical references and index. way, or path. (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-8047-4040-2 D.W. (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 0-8°47-4°41-0 Derrida, Jacques. Derrida, Jacques-Travel. Philosophers­ 1. 2. 3. France-Biography. Critics-France-Biography. I. Derrida, Jacques. 4. II. Title. III. Series. B2430.D484M34513 2004 194-DC22 Original Printing 2004 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 13 12 II 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 Designed by Eleanor Mennick Typeset by Tim Roberts in Adobe Garamond and Optima " ... the margin within which, save certain (drifting) Contents (Random Order) pres), I shall remain ... " (it que/que derive ' -SPURS: NIETZSCHE S STYLES Note to the Reader XVlll I Preface Istanbul, IO May I997 3 PATHWAY I: REVE RSAL I. i. Tropics Chapter I: Foreword 39 Map 39 Itinerary 40 Cerisy-la-Salle, ISJuly I997 4I PATHWAY 2: TRAV ERSAL Chapter 2: Foreword 47 Map 47 Itinerary 48 Villefranche-sur-Mer, Meina (Lago Maggiore), 4 September I997 54 " " PATHWAY 3: VERSION ( NON-ARRIVAL ) Chapter 3: Foreword 59 Map 59 Itinerary 60 Chapter 4: From One Catastrophe to Another (Amazon-Paris) Reading "The Writing Lesson" 64 Contents (Random Order) Contents (Random Order) XU1 xu The "Innocence" of the Nambikwara 66 Unknown Antwerp n8 Epigenesis and Ethnocentrism 67 Amsterdam and the Floodgate of Its Tympan II8 The "Imitation of Writing" 69 Athens and Photography: A Mourned-for Survival II8 Reading "On the Line": There Is No Society "The New York Thread" II9 "Without Writing" 70 ''Am I in Jerusalem?" I20 Writing and Roadway 73 PATHWAY I: REVERSAL Chapter 5: Of Algeria 75 I. ii. "Envoyage" and "Setting Out" First Traverse 75 Chapter 9: Foreword Childhood and Fear 77 Map I25 Dissociation of Identity 78 Itinerary I26 Algerian without Arabic 79 The Sense of the "Withdrawal [Retrait] of Being" in Jewishness minus Jewishness 8I Heidegger I28 French without Citizenship 83 Cutting a Path I29 "My Mother To ngue," for Others 86 Derrida's Envoyage IjI (No) More than One Shore 89 The Other Side of the Mediterranean 89 Chapter 10: "We Can't Bypass Freiburg" 134 The Other Shore of Judaism 90 Chapter II: The Kh ora-Nuclear Catastrophe Neither . .. Nor 9I Khora "in Which Country?" I43 Chapter 6: The Time of the Wo rld: Peril and Promise 93 Turin-Pisa, 25 November I997 I45 "The World Is Going Badly" 93 The Hypothesis of a "Remainderless Destruction The Dominant Discourse 94 of the Archive" I48 The Plagues of the Earth 98 The Future of Tr uth I50 The New International 98 Chapter 12: The Postal Principle Villanova, 26 September I997 95 "In the Beginning Was the Post" I52 New York, 2 October I997 IOI Epochs of the Postal I56 Chapter 7: The Greek Delay 103 Chapter 13: Italy and the Countertime of Love 160 Chapter 8: Cities 109 Chapter 14: In the Field 162 The City of Asylum I09 "There Is No Outside to the Te xt" I62 Strasbourg, "This Generous Border City" II2 "Wherever We Are" I63 Paris as Capital II2 The Porousness of Borders I64 Prague, DelRe-constructed City II2 Shibboleth I66 Los Angeles and the "Post-Political Age" II4 Collapse of the Edges and Accosting the Other I67 Geneva and the Becoming-Postal of the Museum II6 The Unpresentable Approach I67 Bordeaux and the Becoming-Museum of the Postal II7 The Step Not [pas] I68 Contents (Random Order) Contents (Random Order) xv XIV Spur 169 The Place of Language 216 Surround 170 Metatelerhetoric 217 Margin 170 Chapter 20: Deconstruction Is America? 219 Chapter 15: The Prague Mfa ir East and We st: Biographical Reference Points 220 More than One Deconstruction 222 Chapter 16: Correspondences The Deconstruction Jetty and Its Resistance to Theory 224 Te legram I76 Deconstruction is/in America: The Time of Mourning 226 Stamp I76 Postcard 178 Chapter 21: Saint Monica 230 Telephone 180 Chapter 22: The Other Heading 234 Fax 182 The Absolute Arrivant and the Messianic 234 Telepathy 183 "Something Unique Is Afoot in Europe" 236 Cracow, Katowice, \.Vtzrsaw,9-14 December 1997 237 Chapter IT "The Oxford Scene" The Event That Reverses 184 The Ethics of Responsibility 239 Accident-Apocalypse 185 Chapter 23: Japan 241 Seen fr om the Back: "Reversibility Goes Mad" 188 Insularity and Imminence 241 Destinerrance 192 Future-Architecture 242 Voyage and Paralysis 195 Tokyo Basements 243 The Denouement 198 To a Japanese Friend 245 London-Brighton, 29 November-1 December 1997 199 Chapter 24: Island, Promised Land, Desert 249 200 Chapter 18: The Last Voyage Aporia 249 The Cape 200 "There Where Every Other Is Every (Bit) Other" 251 The Ve rdict 202 Rational Faith 252 The Accident 204 Island 252 "You'll End Up in Imminence" 205 Always More than One Source 253 Chapter 19: The "Metaphoric Catastrophe" (Heliopolis) 206 Promised Land and Desert 254 Porto, 4-5 December 1997 209 The Undeniable Possibility 257 The Odyssey of Metaphor 210 "Come" Does Not Derive from Coming 258 The Transport Company 210 Athens, 18-21 December 1997 259 The "Continuist Presupposition" 212 Chapter 25: Portrait of the Traveler as Hedgehog 261 Usure 212 The Poematic Catastrophe 261 Metaphor and Heliotrope 213 Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramallah, IIJanuary 1998 263 "We Are Not in Metaphor Like a Pilot in His Ship" 215 The Unconscious of the Retreat 266 "What Is 'Inside' and What Is 'Outside'?" 215 Fribourg, 26 January 1998 267 XVI Contents (Random Order) �� Tunis, I9-22 February I998 267 Accident without Sacrifice 270 Baltimore Uohns Hopkins), 3I March I998 274 Laguna Beach, 8 May I998 276 Conclusion: A Trio of Ways [A trois voies] 280 Appendices THE PARTING OF WAYS Stops 289 Works Cited 295 Drift, Arrival, Catastrophe Index of Place Names 30I Contents (Logical Order) 304 Presentation and Choice of Texts TextCredits 307 by Catherine Malabou Notes 309 Note to the Reader The chapters comprising Catherine Malabou's essay, The Pa rt�'ng of U7tzys: Drift, Arrival, Catastrophe, have been randomly arranged. TheIr nu­ merical sequence (I to 25) does not therefore respect their logical order. �s explained at the end of the Preface, this is designed to ena�le sever�l �If­ fe rent reading trajectories. The reader who wishes to establIsh the ongmal order of the text, that is, to explore successively Pathways I, 2, and 3, should begin with chapter I and proceed as directed by the numbers given Arriving and deriving [deriver] have separated. Catastrophe is the in brackets at the end of each chapter, fo llowing this sequence: I, 4, 17, 16, name fo r the parting [ecart] that henceforth keeps each out of range of the 19, 9, 10, 12, 25, 14, 2, 5, 13, 7, 15, 20, 21, 18, 23, 8, 3, 6, II, 22, 24. A logical other. "Henceforth" means since Derrida has passed by since he has situ­ . table of contents, reproduced as an appendix to this volume, wIll serve as a ated the very possibility of the voyage within that space or parting.