(Constructs Series) Luce Irigaray, Mary Beth Mader-The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger-University of Texas Press (1999)

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2 469

TH THLONE ondoll



First published

1999

by

THE ATHLONE PRESS

1 Park Drive London NWIl

7SG

First published in France

1983

Editions de Minuit 1983

L oubli

e l air cbez Martin Heidegger

This

English translation

The

Athlone Press

1999

The

publishers wish to record their thanks to the French Ministry

of

Culture for a grant towards the cost of translation

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication

Data

catalogllc

record

Jar this

book

is availablc

Jrolll

the British Iibraty

ISBN 0 485 II491 7 HB

ISBN 0 485 12 I l9 0

P

All rights reserved. No

part

of

this publication may be reproduced stored

in a retrieval system or transmitted in any fonn 01 by any means electronic

mechanical photocopying

or

otherwise without prior permission in writing

from the publisher.

Printed and bound in the USA



Translator s Acknowledgments Vl

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

23

CHAPTER

THREE

47

CHAPTER

FOUR

63

CHAPTER FIVE 79

CHAPTER

SIX 95

CHAPTER

SEVEN

1 5

CHAPTER EIGHT

2

CHAPTER NINE 131

CHAPTER TEN 5

CHAPTER ELEVEN 6

CHAPTER TWELVE

7

~ o t s

8

Index 9



v Jknowledgments

I am very happy to

thank

Professor Robert Mugerauer and Ali

Hossaini for initiating and guiding this translation project

and

Professors

Robert

C. Solomon, Kelly Oliver, Dina Sherzer,

Kathleen Higgins, Louis Mackey, and Douglas Kellner for their

support

and encouragernent throughout. I thank editor

Jim

Burr for showing enough patience for a lifetime. lowe special

thanks to

Dean

Kent Buder

of

the University

of

Texas School

of Architecture

and

Michael Benedikt, director of the Center

for Arnerican Architecture

and

Design, for providing office

space and services,

s

well

s to

the Center s administrative as-

sistants, Suzanne Najarian

and

Jenny Stone. I am particularly

grateful

to

Luce Irigaray for her many helpful suggestions and

clarifications, which I have tried to incorporate into the final

version.

The

expert assistance of Lisa Walsh and readers for

the University ofTexas Press required a prodigious rneasure

of

energy and attention for which I am truly grateful. Christina

Hendricks, Pierre Larnarche, N odIe McAfee, Karen Mottola



Vllt I U E

]RIG R Y

and Shannon Winnubst deserve thanks for test-driving chapter

drafts along the way: C. Roger Mader Martine Marchand Mader

Madeleine Mader and Karen Counts Inade the work possible

in many ways whether they know

it

or

not. Finally hence first

of

all: my greatest thanks to the

constant

Carrie Laing Pickett.



TH FORG TTING



he

rose is without why));

it

flowers because it

flowers.

NGELUS SILESIUS



In

what

circle are

we

here,

and

truly with

no

way out? Is it the

cukuklcos aletbeie,

the without-withdrawal [lc sans-retraitJ) perfect

roundness, in its turn thought as

Lic Jtung)

as the clearing

of

the

opening? But

then

won t the task

of

thinking have

as

its title,

instead

of

eill

und Zeit)

Being and Time: licbtung

und

Anwescnheit

(Clearing and Presence)? But whence-and how-is there clear

ing

(gibt

s

die

lirhtung ?What

lT USt

we

hear in this

there

is

l t

givcs

(cs

gib0?The

task

of

thinking would then be the abandonment

of

the thinking in force

until

now so

as

to deterrnine the proper

matter

for thinking: I

That the there is

of

the clearing has never been questioned by

thought, although

it

would be the ultirnate condition

of

possi

bility for

thought,

that, frorn the beginning,

it

has been a

question

of

the necessity

of

the opening as the place

of

entry

into presence,

but that

nevertheless

the

opening remains

unthought-although it reigns within Being itself; in the state

of presence-such

would be the forgetting that sub-tends the



2 I U E

]RIGARAY

history of n1etaphysics, thus entailing the destiny of Being

as

being( s).

But in which pre-Socratic words can an evocation of the open

ing be sought? In Parmenides'

Poem.

Is it

not

already

too

late

to

reopen the seal of its lTlystery?

The

opening already being con

stituted in

that

text

as

perfect roundness or

as

groundless.

The

circle being already closed up: in each

point

beginning

and end

coincide, but at the cost of an abyss.

What abyss?

And

why valorize the heart that does not tremble

to so secure itself on the groundless? Why would unconcealrnent

frighten,

if not

because it unveils the chasm on which truth is

founded? Why

opt

for such a truth?-and for the tyranny it

rnay well

bring

in its wake as a result of its pact with fear?

In order

to

exarnine careflilly the fact that Hit is in this

bond

alone

that

any request for a possible allegiance

of

thinking

is

based, 3 perhaps one must remove from Heidegger that earth

on which he so loved to walk.

To

take away

from

him this

solid

ground, to

rid

hirn

of

the H llusion

of

a path that holds up

under his

step-even

if it goes nowhere-and to bring him

back not only to

thinking

but to the world of the pre-Socratics.

Metaphysics always supposes, in sorne manner, a solid crust

frorn which to raise a construction. Thus a physics that gives

privilege to, or at least that would have constituted, the solid

plane. Whether philosophers distance themselves frorn

it

or

whether they rnodify it, the ground is always there. s

long

as

Heidegger does

not

leave

the

Hearth, he does

not

leave meta

physics. The rnetaphysica1 is written neither

on/in

water,

nor

on/

n air, nor

on/in

fire. Its

ek sistance

is

founded on

the solid.

And

its abysses, whether frOlTI on high or on low, doubtless find

their explanation in the forgetting

of

those elements that do

not

have

that

sarne density.



THE FORGE T T ING

OF

AIR

Would

the

end of

the rnetaphysical be required by

their

reintervention in the physics

of

today? But would philosophical

rationality

not

notice things so patent? Would they remain

as

hidden

to it

as

the

forgetting

of

Being ?-a

name for

that

sarne refusal

to

notice?

For

the

sam.e

inability

to

translate fluid

realities

into

discursivity?Was Heidegger,

without

really saying

so, perhaps routing

thought

toward this question? Were it not

for his nearly exclusive love for the earth

..

His desire to abide

there always? Despite that strange attraction toward the clearing

of

the opening

..

The

clearing

of the

opening,

of

what can this

be?-one

could have asked hirn this. This

old

philosophical question seems

not to have been put to hiln. It was, doubtless, too innocent.

Too ignorant. Too sirnple. Too little complicit with the history

of

philosophy.

Too

sensible;'

or

too

Ilphysical ?

Not

to have

been forgotten.

Of

what

is

a being can be

posed

as

a question.

Of

what

[is] BeingS is not Ilposed.

It

is, always, pre-supposed. Fore

seeable, pre-established. At least since Parrnenides: to be and to

think being the Sarne. And the question: of what

is

thought

made, being left unthought.

Would

Being and thinking be rnade

of

the sarrle matter

O f

the same

element?-which

would explain their

mutual

attrac

tion? Their love unto inseparability, in any case when they give

themselves

to

each

other

w

ithout

withdrawing ?

Would the

Iithere is be the same for Being and for thinking? At least be

fore their decline

into

the specific aspects

of

their destinies:

being( s) and metaphysics.

There relnains the question: isn't thinking already a destiny

of

Being? Or the contrary?

Then

how does Parrnenides realize

their co-occurrence? What are the properties

of

this Ilis that



4

IueE ]RIGARAY

makes them meet in the Same? That circumscribes their region

as

being

(the)

sanie? Ground, unthought, of any H estiny to

corne?

HOf what [is] this is such that it brings about, prior to all

knowledge

and tnethods

for

knowing-identity, homoiosis;

adaequatio

t h e

co-existence, co-essence, and co-presence of

two? Before the possibility

of

their being posed

as

separate

Hthings. QLV\That [is] this iiis such that it has such a power to

found Being and presence, while disappearing in the very act

of

founding? Such that it

might

already be

Hused -and using?

without any birth being attributable to it. Such that

it

might

already have given rise to Being though there be no beginning

of Being.

Or

even: what consistency does the essence

of

Being

have?

Necessary for any being's and for any philosophy's advent in the

world, and

always

already

forgotten-impalpable,

imperceptible,

invisible, insensible,

unintelligible-in

its matter and act. HOf

what [is] this is such

that

it rernains invisible though it be the

fundamental condition of the visible, such

that

it be unable to

be posed though

it

be the condition for all posing, such

that

it

not be produced, yet be the condition for all production, such

that it have no origin but be the originary itself. Such that

it

merges two into one in the Same, though this operation cannot

be attributed to anything on the basis of technique.

Of

what [is] this

is?

Diaphanous, translucent, transparent.

Transcendent? Mediation, fluid mediurn, unhindered in relat

ing the whole to itself: and certain of its parts to each other,

according to their properties: real properties or ones decreed

true

:'

True? Within the sphere of Being.

Which

is to say within the

circle that

is characterized

as

the circle

of

thinking, relative to

that

barely thinkable thing

that

thinking

is.

Ruling to envelop,



THE

FORGETTING OF

AIR

to encircle, to close up, to de-fine

[de inir

J the unthinkable. To

designate

it as the unique

that

is beyond, or is this side of, all

the significations it gathers and binds together in its Whole,

this unthinkable that designates without ever being able to name

itself.

This

unthinkable that exceeds all declaration, all saying.

Or posing, phenomenon, or

fonn.While

remaining the condi

tion of possibility, the resource, the groundless ground.

Of what [is] this

is?

Of air.

The

meaning

of

this word?

In

the sphere already determined

by tpe forgetting of air, it will include: appearance, expression,

mime, to appear, to seem, to resemble And

even:

a piece of

music

written

for solo voice, accompanying lyrics; a tune.

Throughout the history of philosophy, these possible senses

of air have always been understood and have always been the

object

of

appraisals,

of

valuations,

of

the analysis

of

values

Their

relation to the truth and to Being has always been in

question.

They

are even, these senses

of

air, today the most ex

amined stakes, or therne, or motif in philosophy. Wouldn't ap

pearance, the appearing, the seeming, and the resernbling be that

toward which Being would today be destined?

This

new figure

of

the being would have its productions, its

producers and conSUlners in the visual arts, and, more subtly

close

to

Being, its musicians. But would one and all have for

gotten Being ? More precisely, they would think they could be

done with Being, while forgetting

of

what it is

No wonder philosophy dies-without air Did Being, at least,

keep some in reserve?

Hence: the clearing

of

the opening.

This

field, or open space,

where air would still give itself.

Which doesn't happen without risk. To recall that air

is

at

the groundless foundation of metaphysics amounts to ruining

metaphysics through and through. To conning it out of every-

5



6

Ivc

]RIGARAY

thing. To rendering ever fleeting and expandable, compressible

and elastic. . its properties. Nothing maintains itself in the sarne

way any longer in air. Free?

Free?This Being-air eet

etre-ai1J is

situated in a clearing. The

opening, the free,

is

still, within a circle.

Or

a near-circle: it is

open.

It

is

in the closure of the Parrnenidean circle that Heidegger

finds the evocation

of

this forgotten openness.

Which

would be

to say

that

his air has already lost its material qualities? That it

is already an ideal fluid? Not living. Finding again the

path

of

air, would Heidegger discover an unbreathable air?

Whence

the

peril? Except for thought?

But does

thought

need an other air than the living do?

More

ethereal?

If

so, how does the living thinker make do with these

two airs? Do they

rrlix

in him, or not? Is it

as

a living being that

he thinks? Or is

it not?

The task of thinking would then be the abandonment of

the thinking in force until now so as to deterrnine the proper

matter for thinking. Does thinking amount to dying? To caus

ing

to

die?

Through appropriation/

dis appropriation:

of

air?

Through

abusive use

of

this matter by some.

Through

a

mo

nopoly

on

what would be declared a respirable commodity [valeur

respirable}

through irmnobilization

of

the resources of air through

sublime atrrlOspheric transformation, through rarefaction

of

arnbiance: the most haughty quarreling with each other over

ever more ethereal spheres. Rarefaction and compression: the

volume

of

air

must

rernain controllable. Capitalization, thus

lack. Purification-thus?-lack

and

pollution. For ordinary

mortals, in any case.

The Inetaphysician would be a trafficker in airs.

Which

would

remain unthought, by him. Whence the danger that he would



THE FORGETTING

OF

AIR

always be threatened by Whence the forgetting

of

the origin

of

his power?

Once

he comes back, or is

brought

back, into an

open space a

clearing? he

cannot

know whether air suits hirn

or

not.

Whether

in breathing

as

a living being, he doesn t die

as

a thinker. Whether in breathing as a thinker, he doesn t die

as

a

living being.

The

unveiling

of

the fundamental operation

of

the

thinking

of

Being

is

a nearly unthinkable peril. Like death itselE

The

danger

is

not deadly, it

is

death.

Aletheia the

death that

thought is.

What death? That

is what

remains, and what must remain,

hidden: philosophy s fundarrlental method for causing death.

But isn t

it as

a

kind of

lack

of

air, in all its various forms, that

this method operates? In a manner subtle enough for

it

to keep

occurring

without

ever taking place openly, and lending

itself

to

possible judgrnent.

In

a

manner

ambiguous enough for it

no

longer to be known who gives or who takes air, provided we are

presently at a

point

in the history

of

philosophy when the issue

could be that easily decidable. What if he who gives you air

gives you air so rarefied, or cornpressed, or pure, or polluted,

or .. or .. that he, in effect, gives you death? If he takes your air

away

this at least reassures

y u

of

the fact

that

you

still breathe.

But, still, for the purposes

of

survival, country roads are rnore

salubrious than the atmosphere that surrounds philosophers and

through

which they roam. Providing a proof for this is

of

no

importance. That would already be

to

enter into their systern.

And to

risk frightening oneself for nothing: it s

not

out

of

the

question

that

they confuse country air with the abhorrence

of

vacuurn.

6

The vacuurn that they create

by

using up the air for

telling

without

ever telling

of

air itself: chasm at the origin

of

their thought s appropriation?



8

I U C E

]RIGARAY

Valorized in the final analysis as hollow: a possibility for gath

ering together?

When the world becomes too built

up

and

popu

lated, the mind

or

the soul

too

preoccupied or burdened

with

knowledge, the discourses far to·o congested, having recourse

to spaces that are still empty-not

planted

with

trees?-is

es

sentiaL But an emptiness that is nonetheless encircled: the clearing

i

he opening

from

which the whole emerges out

of

concealment

and into

which it enters in concealment.

Is

not

air the whole of our

habitation

as mortals? Is there a

dwelling more vast, more spacious, or even more generally peace

ful than

that of air? Can man live elsewhere

than

in air? Neither

in earth, nor in fire, nor

in

water is any

habitation

possible for

him.

No

other element can for hirn take the place of place. No

other

element carries

with

i t o r

lets

itself

be passed

through

by-light and shadow, voice or silence. No other element is to

this extent

opening itself--to one

who would

not

have forgot

ten its nature there

is

no need for it to

open or

re-open.

No

other

element

is as

light, as free, and

as much

in the

funda

mental mode of a perrnanent, available, there is.

No

other

element is in this way space

prior to alllocaliza

tion, and a

substratum both

immobile and mobile, permanent

and flowing, where multiple ternporal divisions remain forever

possible. Doubtless, no other element is as originarily constitu

tive

of

the whole

of

the world, without this generativity ever

coming to completion in a primordial tirne, in a singular pri

macy, in an autarchy, in an autonorny, in a unique

or

exclusive

property ..

But this element, irreducibly constitutive of the whole,

com

pels neither the faculty of

perception

nor that of knowledge to

recognize it. Always there, it allows

itself

to be forgotten.

Place of all and absence?

No

presence without air.





1

IueE ] R I G A R A Y

ology today impossible

for it?

Collaborating with

one

hand,

braking with the other. Cynical player in a capitalist epoch?

Arranging for its survival in all possible economic and political

regimes. The left and the right -having becon1e for it as little

distinct

from

each other

as

the difference between the sexes,

which they have always also signified. Everything able to

be

come everything and anything: one would need only argue on

the basis

of

one's fantasies, or irrlaginary identifications,

or

dreams,

or

..

Such

would

be the decadence

to

which an uncontrolled ex

ploitation of

air by language

and

by systems

of

representation

would have led: to such a surplus value, derived from a material

production supposedly fi ee

of

charge, that discourses would

today be without any possible credit. With the

philosopher

de

lighted

about

this?

The

faster it devalues,

the

faster

it

..

What?

No longer means anything? No longer has any relation to Be

ing?

Has

no more reserves of air?

No

longer has a livable future.

Or

a breathable one. Is

the

philosopher's future dwindling away

into a rnirage? Whence the anguish of the thinker?

And

whence the task he sets for himself: to deterrnine what

has been

lost to

the

proper

rnatter for thinking.

What

has been

forgotten in that perfect roundness where

to

be

and to

think

are the same.

Or even: how was air able to close up

into

a circle? What

psychical mediation was already

at

work with the Greeks,

bowing this fluid's freedom

to

a spherical form?

Hardening it

into a solid shell for the inhabitation-in the future-of mor

tals? Assuming an imnlediacy to the encounter with things, a

phenomenality to things apart frorrl any subjective workings,

while the irrlagination-transcendental at

that-was

already

fabricating its irreducible illusions: that because air

is

an im

perceptible,

non-apparent

thing,

and

so originary for percep-





2

L V E ]RIGARAY

within a

treatment

that can be termed idealist. This remains

unthought by materialists, at least by modern ones.)

Air would be the arch-mediation:

of

the logos

of

thinking, of

the world-whether physical or psychical. Air would be the sub

stance of the copula that would permit the gathering-together

and

the arrangement of the whole into the life

and

Being of

man, and permit his

habitation

in space s a mortal. But this

arche ness would never be able to be constituted

s

an origin

because of its rnediating qualities

and

because it is a

permanent

necessity for the immediate subsistence of man.

Which means that this matter escapes mastery and that the

debate between

man

and physis with respect to air, is the

one

that most

constantly threatens death: the one that is the most

originarily,

and

always imtnediately, present in his overcon1ing

of

the natural.

To

air he owes his life's beginning, his

birth

and

his death; on air, he nourishes himself; in air, he is housed; thanks

to air, he can move about, can exercise a faculty for action, can

manifest himself: can see and speak.

But this aerial

matter

remains unthought by the philosopher.

And, in this unthought, the force of rnother-nature prevails, at

least

until

the present day, over all

of

his powers.

The

priori

condition

of

all

of

his prioris?

But

is

air thinkable?

Through

what transformations must the

logos

pass in order to think this unthought?

Will

it survive this

operation? If the copula that ensures the

logos

s such

is

ques

tioned with

regard

to

its material properties,

what

will become

of

that truth

that

man has always believed he could grasp, even

in its concealment frorn imrnediate perception? Is a fluid

truth

thinkable? What becomes of the essential

truths

fashioned,

un

til the present day, by man? What becomes of this very man ?

And

is

it

not

today the task of thinking to question

itself

about

that reality that lives in it, and in which it lives s mortal? Wish-



THE FORGE T T ING

OF

IR

ing itself immortal.

There

remains air, fronl which

thought

draws

its subsistence.

Has

the

gesture

of

thought

always been

to

ward

off

and to

master death? Busying

itself

first with the gravest danger? Preoc-

cupying

itself

at first with

what is most

rare?

Unless thought is born of a superabundance, of an excess

that overflows man? A creator

of

rarity because he wishes to

constitute a world that would be

proper to

him? A world where

he ventures

to meet

nature in order

to bow

it

to

his own mea-

sure, and not

to

let it be. A world where he cares less

to

ensure

his subsistence, to find satisfaction

of

his basic needs,

to

arrange

a livable space,

than to

transform the whole into a universe of

his own.The relation

to plrysis

being deterrnined more by a proj ect

of appropriation

than

by a desire for life, or for survival.

Man

would intend to

rernake the world in his image,

as

much

as

if not rnore than,

to

inhabit it as a mortal.

The

future that he

would always have secretly

proposed

for

himself

would be to

become

or

to be

the

master

of the

universe, at the risk

of

thereby

losing his life.

To

become

as if

irnmortal, even

at the

price

of

dying

from

it here and now.

Whence the question: does the lo os assume a death sentence?7

Is this statement ambiguous or not? Is it man s dearest project to

die? In, frorn, by means of, for .. a mirage? Would his most radi-

cal intervention in nature be

to

transform it into a mirror for

hirnself?

Is

not

air

the

element

that

is

nlOst resistant

to

this operation?

How could air, the rnediation of all reflection, reflect itself?

Whence the forgetting of that which offers itself freely

in

abundance?This th r is where everything comes to pass and where

everything stirs nearly unhindered. Place

and

imperceptible mi-

lieu of all presence

and

of all relations. The unthought out of



L U E ]RIGARAY

which Being is born, in which it suspends itself; and

into

which

it declines? Harboring an aporia of the speaking of air. Because

man would have wanted to be ek-static to his surroundings, which

are those

of

a living

mortal

being,

to

be raised

upright

in separa

tion fl'orn his environment,

to

be erected in the misappreciation

of

that which permits, supports, accompanies, and rnanifests

..

his

upright

Being.

To

be silent about

that

infinite openness

that

is air, in order to affirm his essence as his own, although it

is

prior to any

ek-sistance

founded on an unthought exchange.

But the element of air does not manifest itself. Except in the

form

of

smoke? HIf all beings were to Inanifest themselves

as

smoke, noses would then be diagnostic experts:'8 A humorous

rendering of the fact that the power of knowing

is

detennined

by the

manner

of

the being's appearing?

Here

the closeness

of

Heraclitus and Parmenides can be heard clearly. This Fragment

/ being the Heraclitean version of HFragment 3 of Parrnenides'

Poem: the Same, in

truth, is

at once to think and to be.

Air does not show itself. As such, it escapes appearing as a)

being. t allows itself to be forgotten even by the perceptual

ability

of

the nose. Except in cases where hurnan activity has

fabricated the air to begin with.

Air remains the unthought resource of Being. Unthinkable?

By Heidegger? Even

though

the phenornenon of the cosmo

nauts has often

passed through his meditations

..

Most

certainly, in Heraclitus,

cosmos

already

no

longer means

the superabundance of a natural

phuein.

This sarne [ee

mime]

for

all time there already, always living, both reaching back in time

and being projected into the future as far as possible, this same

could designate the there

is

for all things and all beings,

that

air

is.

Air

that

no god and

no

man would have produced. But this

meaning would already be forgotten in the phenomenon, or the



THE FORGE T T ING

OF

AIR

phenornenality,

of

fire. Cosmos already represents the world

of

man: the power

to

light and use fire distinguishing

him

frorn

other

living beings.

That

there

is

no

fire

without

air,

that

the meeting

with

air

is

necessary for combustion,

that

something

of

a there is

of

plrys s ensures

the

posing

of man as

man,

without

any recogni

tion of this received provision-all this remains unthought

already in the order of

the

world found in Heraclitus and

Parmenides.

t

is

true that

air

is

not

produced

by

man and

that

it does

not appear as a wellspring

or

as a springing forth. Cosmos

should

already be

understood as

a gathering-together

and as

a

fll c-

tional ordering

of the

whole by

and

for

the

power

of

man. s-

mos and

logos being

of

the saIne.

That Cosmos also means iithat which is resplendent, the iiRa_

diant, Zeus, iithe light

of

heaven,

and those who

shine

at

the head

of

the State indicates that

OS1110S

is already

of the

reign

of

that which dominates from

on

high, which overhangs

from

its heaven, which issues cornmands

from

its elevation,

or

erection, as head, as chief: as capitaL 1

A third Ineaning, secretly linked to the

other

two, is: finery.

Produced by man, the fire that he pours out frorn his heights,

golden adornment. Finery, like gold, is not there merely

to

shine of itself: but to make he who wears it, on whorn it shines,

hirnself shine. II Such is n2ture, transforrned by man so he can

inhabit it as its rrlaster, its king, its God.

Frorn the beginning, air becornes the air

that man

gives

him

self in order

to

appear.

The

triple rneaning of cosmos

or of

fire

does not rnake any difference, fundarnentally,

to

what the sepa

ration

of

fire frorn the other elernents establishes as man's rule

over nature. Nature in its elerrlental multiplicity is already bowed

to the autarchy of a power:

plrysis

already opened up by

and

for

man

in accordance

with

his needs,

or

desires,

to

appear.

Plrysis)

5



16

I U E

]RIGARAY

letting-be corne, including its non-apparent letting-become, is not

encountered.

And

the privileged status

of

fire,

of

the shining,

of

the ap

pearing, finds itself unquestioned, while the clearing

of

Being

is

made out to be a there is prior to light

or

darkness, to sound

or silence. An evocation of the diaphanous properties of air?

Staying in the appearing, the thinker sees nothing there but

fire. Or,

even:

the emptied shell

of

the sphere

of

Being? Both

of

them

belonging to the same? The

mark on

nature

of

man's

desire.

Of

what [is] this shell? O f air. O f what could the envelope

of

the world be

if

not

of

vitrified air?

Which

is stated in

Empedocles' cosmology.

The first element to be separated y

batred

was

air, and

it

surrounded the world in a circle,

or

an egg.

The exterior circle of air solidified, or froze, and was transformed

into a crystalline vault

that

bounds the world. It

was

fire, in

virtue of its capacity to solidify, that condensed air and changed

it into ice.

Thus

was the world constituted as a whole closed in

upon

itself: the

most

fluid cosmic element serving

as

its solid crust.

How enclose air

if not

by using it itself

as

an envelope?

An

astounding

I2

procedure would always already have taken place

in order to prevent aporia including in the determination of place.

That which escapes being bounded becomes the very bound-

ary itself. And where Being still offers itself in the form of physi

cal, sensible

phenomena in

the Greek

world the

material

support of

the apeiron is constituted as a

peras.

Isn't this what is constantly being fabricated with the ges

ture that appropriates the world?

And

isn't this the reason that

this gesture always involves a groundless danger? The boundary

is

sometirnes revealed there as the boundary of thinking, though

it

sought to be the bounding of the world by thinking. Where



THE

FORGE T T ING

OF

AIR

unbounded

nature would still remain, would

man

discover only

his own

yet-unthought void? A vertigo proceeding from an at

tainment of

the borders

of that

place where

man

maintains

himself,

and

not

from

reaching the edges

of

some natural abyss?

And

this all the rnore so since the matter

that

ensures

the

properties

of

the world

is

already imaginary?

The

icy air

that

surrounds Empedocles world

is

a very subtle air: it

is of

ether.

The

mirror

that constitutes the world

of

man, by Ineans

of

its

envelopment, already being a projection

of

his desire?

If

he wants

to

appropriate the

mirror

for himself, he ends

up holding nothing

but the ungraspable installation

of

the

mirror.

Which with

this move,

is

undone. Or

is

thematically

redoubled.

Man

wanting

to

regain possession

of

himself

as

constituting and gathering together the whole, apprehends only

the nothing: a fabricated air-bubble, empty correlate

of

the

whole. Clearing

of

Being? Circle

of

the

logos?

Gestell

that

orga

nizes his perception, his reflection, and his proj ection into a

world. As a mortal?

Or as

wanting to be immortal? Which

means: to be nothing same?I3

Something of the

rnechanislTl

put into

place by

man to con

front

the danger

of

death in his meeting with nature remains

unthought.

This something could be described as his project

or as his projections, which are always already intervening in

what he says is. As his fabrication and his weaknesses always

already getting rnixed

up

in

that

which he designates

as the

letting-be

of

physis. The proposition at the origin

of

metaphys

ics:

to be to think the

same

already harboring, in a forgetting,

the difference in their provenance, production, upsurgence, and

apparition.

In the there is or it gives itself [ e

l

y a

ou l se

donne

ou

fa se

donne], which

of

the

two to

be

or to think-constitutes the

reserve that thus so freely gives

of

itself? Does it

amount

to the

7



8

IueE

JRIGARAY

sarne thing? Frorn what resource

do

these two draw their sameness

in order to thus develop

or

tell of thernselves?What

estell

of

Being

or

of

thinking

perm.its

the

use of resources?

And if the

two

of

them do

not

share

the

same provenance, have they dif

ferent estelle or not? In the meeting of

man

and nature,

is

man

taken into account by the two

of

thern?

Or:

do the installations

put

into

place by

nun

to

position

hilTIself

as

ITlan cloak the fact

that he nukes his own nature bloom only at the price of squar

ing up and masking nature? Man would

build

his world only

through

an

appropriation

of the natural world. A breaking-in, a

clearing of land,

and

a cultivation of this cleared

land

in

order

to take root in the natural world, to take fronl it the where

withal to ensure his subsistence, to draw frorn it the means to

feed his erecting. In order to open

up

a livable space there, to

arrange surroundings in which

to

dwell,

to

find a ground there

thanks to which the

apparition

of

phenomena

can ek-sist? But

doesn t this exploitation

of

nature by man run the risk

of

lead

ing to his own death?

Must

letting-be be understood as letting man s thinking

be

unfolded/

deployed, or

as

letting nature bloom? Can these two

advents occur in

the

same tirne?

Which

tirne?

Has

it already

taken place? Is

it

heralded

as

a possible taking-place? Doesn t

the

there is

of the tirne

of

Being defer their ITleeting

until death

and beyond?

Or even: isn t presence that estell

put

into place by man in

order to render certain rneetings with nature impossible?

estell

that

he ascribes

to

nature,

and

with

which he readies nature

to

the extent of reITlOving from it the becoming that

is

proper to

it. If to change, to deteriorate,

amounts

to absenting itself; then

the physical world is either radically absent for rnan or so trans

formed from old by the project

imposed

on it that it thereby

loses its properties. Which arnounts to the same thing with re

gard to the advent

of

a meeting between the two of them. The



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

face

projected

by Inan onto

plJ) sis

would already have eclipsed

the face of

the

taking-root, growth, efflorescence, and decay in

nature. A certain technique would always have so disguised l ~ y s s

that

man could

discover in it

but

a mirage

or

a danger

of

abyssal

decline. The vertigo of the unthought. And the unthinkability,

for hirn,

of

a

phueil

whose

danger-and

solutions to

that

dan

ger-he

would not

know.

If

to be standing before, to be of the level of,

to

be up to

bearing

that

before which

one

is"

4

expresses the

comprehension

of Being,

then

these standards, this Gestell) are indeed inappro

priate when

it

cornes to air.

Never

able to be constituted into a

"before oneselC'

but

that in which and thanks

to

which all can

come to appear "before oneself." Prior to any clearing, air

is that

medium of which extension

is

built. The clearing of trees rnak

ing what

is

cut

out

of

it

appear

and

disappear for

the

upsurgence

of

other

beings.

But the clearing of Being is already no longer a clearing of

the forest. For if everything were to be represented there, air

would no longer be there. The meeting that can take place in

this clearing is always already an experience in a vacuum": 5 in a

space detenTlined

and

delimited by the forgetting,

the

privation,

of a nutter necessary for

the

existence of living beings.

In

a

milieu where things come together only after having been torn

from their natural site. In a hollow, a hole, an excavation, a loca

tion, and a place

that

are opened up by breaking into nature.

The question of

a

topology of

Being thus arnounts

to the

question of Being s a topo-Iogic. To what extent does Being

correspond

to

a deterrnination of localization that is already

constructed by destroying properties of natural "space"? Place

being only in virtue of its boundary: between a within and a

without, an exterior and an interior. An incorporation and a



2

IucE

] RI G A RA Y

projection?

Would

space corne

into

play only

y

way of this

border developed y man? Its volurnes, its openings, its possible

voids, would take place only in virtue of the edges set

y

him?

The

free

could

come

and

float

about

the borders

of

this work:

its

boundary

would still rernain.

Does this boundary bring Heidegger to a standstill in the

march of thought?

Should

the fluctuations, the oscillations, the

waverings, and the hesitations that occur repeatedly in Art and

Space I be

understood

as a withholding? Is the philosopher

changing position in that piece?

Or is

he making the things

rnove

about

before him, giving the illusion of a change in posi

tion, while he keeps the frarning of his

point

of view fixed?

Allowing

himself

any kinematics whatsoever, the projection

booth

remaining his protection.

But does the

philosopher

see the boundary?

If

he saw it,

wouldn't he lose his viewpoint in it Even if he feigns losing it,

does he really renounce it

When Heidegger questions the danger of a modern physlco

technological project for rnan's inhabitation of space, isn't this

questioning still

posed through

a Greek perspective? The open

ing

that

is

brought about

y

the

modern

prospecting

of

space

is

closed

up

again

y

a topo-Iogic

that

is still Aristotelian, and, to

some extent, pre-Socratic.

What is

to

be said of certain properties of air with regard

to the

envelope that defines place for Aristotle, Being

for

Parmenides, and the osmos for Heraclitus? Does air let itself

enclose in this rnanner

without

a technique

that

removes certain

of its qualities from it Does it encircle itself

y

itself? Which

of rnan's projects entails that it can present itself arranged in

such a

way

In a clearing, for exarnple.

Without air, is place livable for a rnortal? And

if the

pro-

tection of a limit-envelope is conceived in the abhorrence of



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

vacuum why does

it perpetuate itself

when

nature ought

to

be reassured by

the

discovery

of

the weight

of

air?

Or even: how

is

it that for Heidegger the vacuum/void

is

still there?

O f

what

is

it taking the place?

And

what

is

its

relation-an essential one?-to the totality

of

place?

To the

open

expanse. To vastness?

In order

to understand

something of this one method would

perhaps be to accompany three n1en making their way through

the countryside at dusk.

7

Far frorn their homes they converse

about their

perplexities their inquiries their astonishrnent

and

their wonder regarding their relation

to

the opening. Doubtless

nightfall plunges thern

into

meditation slowing the cadence

of

their steps.

They

rernain nonetheless each vested with a role:

scientist teacher scholar. Scarcely departing from their charac-

teristic ways

and

reserve. Just a

bit

of

exuberance so

as

to

elicit

more poetic assertions. Otherwise the sorts of secrets and en-

thusiasm that suit

the

child who

is

always in man.

No

risk then

of

being offended. Everything happens apparently in

and

for

the sake

of

the greatest tranquillity

of mind

for thern all.

2





Between

one and the

other between a male

one

and

a ferrlale

one there is at least at present

no

passage. Being would be a

waiting whose opening has closed itself up in a circle likewise

in oblivion so that the thinker can remain at rest there.

The

whole would represent the com_memoration

of

what has already

been awaited the watch that

permits

waiting still for what will

never come

to

pass.

The

open

expanse

and

all

that

takes place

within it would alTIOunt to the erecting of a bridge: a bridge

built in anticipation but also in oblivion of a passage toward.

The

bridge abides an unceasing conveying

but

at its

end

there

is

no

one.

With

its construction the

th r s of the

bridge

has carried away

that

other toward whorn it

sought

to be

the

passage.

What

is

left

ready to hand

is

the tool only the tooL

And

sorne already-fabricated things.

The

wholly

other the

fe

rnale wholly

other is no

longer there. Being has taken that

place. And

one

need only explicate

of

what Being

is

in order to

understand that the other cannot take place within i t unless

in presence. The other is nothing more

than

the assirnilation of



IucE

JRIGARAY

the mourning of the other, projected

into

the free:' Letting-be

thus alTIOunts

to

leaving the watch over serenity to the other,

in

the face

of

the absence

of

relations between one

and

the

other -

between a male

one

and

a female

one.

To

giving

up

the

task

of

toward, so

as to

return, endlessly,

to

constructing the bridge.

That nothing

comes

to

pass there would now be the work of

the other who opposes all attempts to pass with the resistance

of

a flawless serenity.

The

thinker always returns

to

his

starting

point to

set

off

again toward the

other or

the fernale

o n e -

who

is

no

more

than the comrnernoration of a waiting.

Without

end. The other or the fernale one has let herself be used as

a bridge-being at the end of which

is

nothing: this passage is

but

an eternal

return to the

sarne.

This

passage

from oneself to

oneself; frorn

oneself to

the

other

of

oneself; the same,

is

rnade across an expanse

that

seems

to transgress all boundaries: whether horizontal or vertical. This

could take place already without transcendence

and

in a vast

ness where the horizon is resolved

into

its beyond. Serenity pre

sumes that

nothing

remains: outside. The whole is convoked

there.

Or

is

reconvoked?

After

having been harvested in nature

and sheltered in a home where things last without spoiling.

Here the whole is

at

the same time culled

from

nature to be

collected in a single

and

definitive world of

appropriation-

dis appropriation: where the whole takes its place

and

is kept,

arranged

within

its dwelling. Nothing else can

happen

there

without

passing

through the

assirnilation

of

a mourning.

No

(female) living

thing

can reach it

without

first being inclined

before, collected, and sheltered in a place of noble com-

memoration.

Whether

male

or

female,

none

are given a sirnple

yes or no, and, in the suspense between these, each one

is

set

out

in its place. Yes for man must exempt frorn his

wait/

expecta

tions nothing of what

is

destined for him; no fo r no thing



THE FORGE T T ING

OF

AIR

can subsist,

or

even corne about unexpectedly, outside

of

this

space-tirne

that

is already detern1ined by

and

for the Being

of

man.

Is this

to

say already

determined

for death?

That

would be

saying

too

much.

The

narneless cannot be designated so. The

operation of constituting space-time

must

itself remain with

out

a nanle.

At

least, still in

the

present. Moreover,

it

would

not

be right to assert that this

operation

takes place solely

through

and

for

death

since

to

assert would already be

to

destroy this

very assertion).

It

takes place in,

and

thanks to,

the

suspense

between yes

and

no the to-come of a birth, the thereafter of

a death.

One must- in order

to

understand i t -return to

what

is

already, prior to the waiting. To that from which the waiting,

seemingly originary, proceeds. To that which it expects to re

peat, endlessly.

Or

even: from what,

of

what,

is

the waiting made?

To man, it proceeds from his ascendancy.

The

one who so

journs

at

the origin of his Being waits. The one who is en

trusted beforehand

to

that whence,

that

frorn which, that starting

from

which the essence of

thinking is constituted.

To that

anteriority

that

has so

outdistanced

the essence

of thinking

that

thinking cannot

reach it.

The

one

who waits awaits

the unthink

able

return of

a beginning.

O f

what

[is]

the

essence

of

thinking such

that

its beginning

should be in

this

manner

unthinkable?

Taking

place

in the

anteriority

of

every past, in

the to-come of

every future.

So

far

ahead

of

any nalnable time.

It

is

in

the

relation

to the

open

expanse

that

the

essence

of

thinking would

begin.

What? That s

scarcely thinkable For,

just

at the

place where

the open

expanse

is

the beginning

of

Being, this supply

of

essence

that

it provides is reversed in

the

fact that, without the Being of man, the

open

expanse is not.

The place

where-and

whence-man derives his origins, he



Lue ]RIGARAY

says, would not be,

without

the Being of man. The circle is

closed up.

"Plainly, if the Being of man is entrusted to the open ex

panse, this

is

because

it

belongs

-so

essentially

to

the

open

ex

panse that, without the Being

of ITlan

the open expanse would

not be able to unfold as it does:'2 The beginning of the Being

of

man

is thus quasi-instrurnentally necessary

to

the open ex

panse. Without it, the

open

expanse would not come

to

unfold.

This

is why the Being

of

man is appropriate to the open ex

panse: the open expanse needs it. Since the Being of

man is

the

open expanse needs i t he asserts, beyond the thinkable.

But how does the Being of

man

need the open expanse in

order to be?This question, which is in advance of the beginning

and even further in advance of serenity, is not asked. Pocket of

air

3

orof blood, or of life through which Being tacitly feeds?

Surely, Being also

must

assirnilate something in order

to

have

begun

to be?

This operation of assirnilation like any doing,

if

not any repetition? by and for the Being of man is forgotten.

It is left

to

the open expanse? Though after the Being of rnan

already is.

What

is

rnan, before the Being

of

man

already

is?

What

a

question .. It's too naive to be thinkable But isn't this comrnemo

rat ion a

rnore or less noble

one recalled

in the open expanse?

In

the reserve

of

air

that is

kept there?

In

the assimilation

that is

attributed to it? In the constituting of things? In the opposi-

tion?

..

In all the operations left, there, (Being) in suspense be

tween realization

and

conditions

of

possibility. Between

the

present participle and the infinitive.

Neither

a participation that

is simply present for

it

has already taken place, nor the immu-

tability of a completed constituting for

it

will still take place.

The reconstitution of the impossible definitive infinitive is re

peated indefinitely.

The

suspense between the definitive and the

infinitive indefinitive still permits something to be

made of



THE FORGE T T ING

OF

AIR

the relation between

death

and life: the already-finished and the

yet-to-be-defined.

Without

forgetting this turning: the already

brought-to-life, the yet-to-be-repeated, re-told, re-sheltered

un

der

protection

that

makes it last in sameness, in death.

In death? It s

not

that simple.

To

keep is also to keep

horn

destruction and, thus, from death. How

keep without

causing

death? Doubtless, this

is

the impossible operation

of

Being.

Unless Being were

of

air? Air which can itself be

kept

indefi

nitely definitive

if

it

is

sheltered in a dwelling.

t

is

then, techni

cally encircled, separated frorn itself

as

open expanse,

and

abstracted

horn

cornings-and-goings both within

it

and with

out. Thus, one cannot use it.

Should it

even be there. Deprived

of

a free assimilation

of

air,

the

thinker would have only ..

to die.

But he does

not

die.

At

least

not

exactly, at least

not

at once,

at least not altogether. And so he continues to assimilate and

reject: what is needed to live on.

He

does not recall this not

very noble?) resource for his Being. At least not in his thinking.

How does it

playa part

in the constitution and permanence

of

his

Being?-this

rerrlains unthinkable for him.

What

would

hap

pen

if

he lacked it?

That

question

..

He

is

necessary for it, thus,

it is. How long will that from which, that starting frorn which,

he draws

what

is needed for hirn

to

be, last?

That

question ..

The more he is the

more

it unfolds. But will there always be in

this unfolding what is needed to begin to be? Will he be able to

house and look after his Being there indefinitely? Doesn t he

thereby risk hollowing

out

this resource? Is it this

theret

that

he does not want to want, but that takes place? Is

it

this (there)

that is that ever more open opening, which he does not want

to be voracious, but

to

which he agrees

to open

himself,

as to

an assimilation?

O f

what?

In

what?

Do we

reach-

h r -

the forgotten relation to air? To which

air?

27



Lue

]RIGARAY

Haven't we- here-passed imperceptibly from one air to

another?

Fluid

rnatter, voice, appearance. The possibility to

breathe-live, the possibility to call-nalTIe, the possibility to ap

pear-enter

into

presence. Heidegger does

not

recall this passage.

He forgets the difference of air( s).

And in place of this forgetting? A certain void.

Shes

gives-first-air,

and does so irrecoverably, with the

exception of the unfolding, from and within her, of whoever

takes air frorn her. While this air

is -f i rs t -f luid

matter carried

by the blood she gives, it can also be understood as voice and

phenomenon. These issue from it and are the

possibility-ever

material-of

naming-denorninating, of appearing in presence.

She gives first. She gives the possibility of

that

beginning

from which the whole of rnan will be constituted. This gift is

received with no possibility of a return. He cannot pay her back

in kind. The numerous and varying and ceaseless times he will

make

return to her(e) will never take place in place

of

the first

gift. An unbreachable distance will remain between this here

from which he proceeds

and

his calls, his summons, his returns

to

That

first gift remains

without

response:'

This irrecoverable receipt takes place in a receptacle: in her,

but also in him.

These

two (here) cOmITlUnicate in one direction

only: she gives and he takes. At the beginning, there is

no

give

and-take, no there-and-back of the gift-except, on occasion,

with respect

to what isn't any good: he gives

or

returns what

is

not

assimilable.

This

distanceless rejection

of

the

110t-

t)here

threatens death:

him

or her. But,

most

generally: he takes.

This debt of life seems natural and like

it must

remain un

paid. Unpayable.

But what does this unpaid debt yield in him? A certain for

getting? A certain void? A certain confusion in the subsequent

call or sumrnons? Between the full and the empty? Does he si-



THE

FORGETTING

OF

AIR

multaneously bring about both a trenchant distinction between

these

two-that

in the beginning is

not -and

a confusion of

them? How not mistake theIn?

By

suspending

yes and

no?

To

take back?

No? To

return?

Yes

To return?

No? To

take

back? Yes

To return

so

as

to take back, to take back so as to return. Is it

still a

matter

of the same place? O f the same there? Or will

there now be a distance between there

and

there? Which dis

tance? Which

distance, there?

That

she

is

left there?

Or

there?

Where,

there?

(Do not think

I

am

amusing myself

with

wordplay. I haven t

come to that. I have not yet

found

the place from which I

could

begin

to

say anything whatsoever. Here

and

now. I am trying,

rather, to go back

through

all those places where I was exiled

enclosed so he

could constitute

his there.

To

read his text

to

try

to

take back fiorn

it what

he took fi om

me

irrecoverably.

To

re

open

everything he has

constructed

by taking me inside,

put

ting me outside, saying yes and no, saying neither yes nor no, by

leaving me suspended in waiting

and

oblivion, where I cannot

live, rnove, breathe. I

am

trying

to

re-discover the possibility of

a relation

to

air.

Don t

I need one, well before

starting to

speak?)

I

return

first, then, to

that

first receptacle.

The

one where he

took

rne irrecoverably.

Where

I

gave him

everything,

with

no

calculation possible,

with no

receipt,

with no

debt. With

the

exception

of

rny pleasure in giving-giving myself

without

rnea

sure? But isn t he

the one

who, frorn before the fact, thinks

that

I therewith find my full unfolding? Is he himself familiar

with

the gift that is outside

of

all economies, in order to rnake such

proclamations? Doesn t this sort of gift remain for hirn an un

thinkable beyond?

This place of

the

first gift du premier don

] o r

of the rom



Lue JRIGARAY

which

au

dontJ will

be closed up-folded up in an unthinkable

beginning

of

Being.

It is

unthinkable for its lack

of

any possible

economy, for the faulty fralning of its space-tilne, for its appre

hension

that

is

imperceptible by -all the senses: for its advent

prior to all saying. The Being of rnan will be constituted on the

basis of a forgetting: of the gift of this from which

of

which he is.

Beginning

with

the void,

on

which he constructs hirnself like a

bridge. All propositions, and, more generally, the

logos

work in

this way

But, to make this bridge, man needed

matter

and, for the

void to be, matter must first have occupied it.Would this vacuum,

of man and of man's, be the abhorrence of nature?

In

order to

create it, he needed her [nature]' When man hollows out the

first site, he uses the matter that was in place there to hollow

it

out

and to surmount it.

He

and

she-likewise

and differently

will be closed up-folded up around a certain void wrought from

what he takes from her irrecoverably.

Since he uses the first exchange between them to work out

their separation, how could he return (anything) there except in

the arbitrariness of a construction? He will be able to come

and

go indefinitely over the bridge,

with nothing

happening there

but what will lead to,

or

will lead back to, his own project.

Built

on

the void, the bridge

6

joined two banks that,

prior

to

its construction, were not: the bridge made two banks. And,

further: the bridge, a solidly established passageway, joins two

voids that, prior to its construction, were not: the bridge

made

the void.

How

not

suspend

that

toward which

it

goes,

that to

ward which it returns, in a serene awaiting?

In the) place of the first

receptacle-of

him, or of her in

the) place of their first meeting, there is, now, void. To pass

over it, frorn his side, in any case: a bridgeway. This bridge is for

re-turning: the first empty envelope, the envelope of the void,



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

into another one. This yields a double envelope or loop.

The

sign

of

infinity?

The

bridge

is at

the re-crossing-re-intersection

of these two envelopes. At this place, the inside passes into

the

outside, which comes back

to

the inside after havmg gone around.

There

is

no

longer any not-inside

or

not-outside here.

Here

the

whole

is:

taken

up

again in a flawless double encirclement. There

will be no breaching of this double boundary. Everything takes

place inside this double enclosure: one comes

and

goes here

frorn one side of the

bank

to the other, from one

bank

to

the

other

nearly imperceptibly,

and

without

noticing

that

one has

changed sides.

The

outside

of

being-there

and

the inside

of the

soul,

the

inside

of the

soul

and the

outside

of

being-there, indefinitely

pass one

into

the other: all that is needed is a bridge of language

to

cross. It is crossed both coming and gomg,

though

it goes all

the while in the sarne direction.

What

is

received fi'om the

world

and what

is given

to

i t o r

re-given-what is

given to it and

what is received

from

it,

now

pass insensibly frorn

one to the

other, one in the other, staying all the while within the sarne

project, the same course. A waymaking?

A

proposition

does

not

have two sides, one below

and one

above,

at

any rate not when it holds by itself. It

no

rnore adheres

to

a

substratum

that ensures its founding

than

it overflies

itself

to

estirnate the distance-frorn,

to

gain a perspective, a point of

view.

When

it is set forth, it holds by in,

and

for itself. From

where does it,

as

such, derive its matter? This remains

unthought.

For

were there not, this side

of

the first envelope, she

who

from the first supplied the nourishrrlent for

its

constitu

tion, organization,

and

interconnection, and,

beyond the

sec

ond envelope, she who supports its constitution-appearance

projection

with

an outside,

the proposition would

not

hold.

These two provisions of

matter

are forgotten.



IueE

]RIGARAY

Is this (there) the same forgetting

of

her? Repeated indefi

nitely. Is she forgotten, two times at least, and then forever?

Or

is

there a double forgetting? Are they [femaleJ a t least t w o -

indefinitely forgotten?

Or

further:

are all those [female] ones

present and to corrle caught in the forgetting of a single [fe

male] one-alone

and

unique-that (and

who) is

forever re

peated? Or are they two-always at least two to be forgotten?

In this case and the former one, what relations does he maintain

arnong

them and do

they rnaintain

alTIOng

themselves? Are they,

a plural

of

she,

lumped

together in the same bunch ?? Or are

there always at least two? How, then, can he pass from one

to

the other,

or

to others,

if

there are no means to pass by way of

the first one?

Does

he reduce them one to the other? How? Or:

does the female other always remain outside?

(Such questions

Enough

to drive you out

of

your heads ..

To smash your bridges:' But I'm trying to get out

of

your

envelopes, your propositions, your theres.

And

still... I haven't

begun

to

speak of relations between you, which, nevertheless,

cover over all the rest. Indefinitely encircling the relation

to

a

female them. Unless

I'm

speaking only

of

that?)

In

the

first rneeting, before his thought's beginning, she

gives-gives herself in the form of fluids. These fluids

pen

etrate into hirn, exceeding

all

boundaries: the envelope that serves

as

ambiance for him there, the envelope of his body-thing, the

envelope

of

his organs

and

mucous

rnembrane,

the

envelope

of

his cells. This way of entering

into

hirn goes beyond all possible

categorizations, intelligible

or

sensible, at least for

him at

present.

He

takes

her

into him, immediately, without even any percep

tion of the difference between perceiving and perceived. This

penetration

that constitutes him, at the beginning, takes place

in darkness.

This

gift without measure remains underrlOnstrated.



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

She does

not

offer herself

to

be seen where she gives herself, she

does not appear where she gives herself, does

not

even let her

self

be called

or

nalned in that place.

The

life she gives

is

already

prior

to

any possible

demonstra

tion. Without demonstration she gives

him

that estell that is

his living body. The mediation

of

this

gif t or of

this

from

which is fluid: the blood. There already is a bridge, a natural

one, between her-hirrl

and

him-her.

t

goes in one direction only,

except, on occasion,

with

respect

to

what isn't any good.

He

does

not

yet see:

not

the

world,

not

things,

not

her,

not

him.

This

takes place in the fonn of a proximity

without

dis

tance, of a

kind

of touch uninterrupted by any sides, even

though

he

is

naturally, within an envelope.

He

draws liquid through.

He

does not yet speak: he takes

without

asking, with

no

offer

frorn her in words

or

sentences.

He

draws liquid there without

seeing

or

identifying where, frorn whom,

or

how this there

is

taken.

He cannot

not take, on

pain

of not being. He is not yet free

to

either take

or

go away. To COITle and go, to leave

and return

whence he came, to withdraw

and

come take once again.

He

is

enclosed inside

her

so as

to

take. This whole is penneable, yet

sealed.

He

dwells in an envelope-surround

that

opens

to

let

him

through only once he can live without her.

This

horne is swollen

with water. He begins to be in and thanks

to

fluids.

Which will be forgotten

and

surpassed in

the

consistency

and

solidity

of

his

propositions and

arguments?

In

the coher

ence of his language? In the permanence of his Being and truth?

In that of things : past, present, and to come?

In

those fault

less envelopes where the inquiry bears above all upon history:

the envelopITlent he has made for himself and which he keeps

unrolling-rolling

up?

Where at

present, are the fluids? Those

that

have fed him,

those

that

have made him? And the passage between

them

and



4

I U C E IRIGARAY

him?

The

passage between

hilTI

and she who

constituted

him

with fluids?

Won't

this irrecoverable gift

and

this unpaid and

unpayable H ebt be repeated endlessly like some natural thing ?

N

attIral : in his language,

is

this

tb

say yet

unthought and

left

in oblivion?

How is

this oblivion recalled,

without

being thought,

in what he calls Being? In what he calls essence?

Where, thereafter, does the repetition of the first H neeting

with her take place?

Will

an

other

one be possible?

One ought perhaps to pause here at a certain portico that

detains Heidegger: the portico ofjorifeeling Something essential

happens

to us in

advance-in the form

of

a presentiment,

giving

itself

to our

attention

in this way so that we might pre

serve it there.

It

is

not

yet a rnatter of knowing, at this point,

but rather

of that

which covers over all

that

can be known, thereby

hiding it. The portico, which opens on the pre-understanding

and the placing under guard

of

all

that

is set-before, and on its

safekeeping in a

legeil that

ensures its assembly, this portico, which,

as

its presentiment, precedes

the

set-before, recalls the

opening

of the clearing of Being. And perhaps also the passage

from

one

loop to another?

Or

rather-earlier?-the passage from one

band

to

another:

the opening

prior

to the

leap

into

saying all?

Which

leap a voice still silent encourages, whispering

Hit

is;'

before this is so?

This

portico

would

be passed

through at

every step,

without

ever being passed through.

t

would always refer the next step to

the step before, the future

step

to the step past, suspending in

this corning-and-going that which sets itself

forth-does not

set

itself forth

in the present. It

would mark

the de-limiting open-·

ing

of

the entry

into

this there, into which he never truly enters:



THE FORGE T T ING OF AIR

he remains ever on the threshold before that which will be, or

has already been, set forth and

then

gathered, before him.

This

portico

would de-limit the passage between two places

even

if

the place set-before

is

apparently, the only one.

This

de

limitation would

open

indefinitely

on

a Ineeting that will never

take place: a Ineeting

that

will be recounted without taking place,

that

will take place only in the saying. Its advent is always forefelt,

pre-understood,

but

so

as to

be preserved and gathered to-

gether in the saying.

This

portico, where

and

through

which passes the leap

into

saying-all, would consist as Inuch in what has already been con

structed in the silent gift relation between her

and him as

in

what hastens its possible return in that which comes to pass. It

is

situated between these.

This

portico would re-present everything or rather (ear

lier?) would permit the re-presentation

of everything through

itself: the hamework

of

that from whi h she has him, and keeps

constituting

him as

a living being: opening

to and

through

this

solid

body

he now is the body which he received and still

receives horn

her, without dernonstration.This

portico

would

be the ilnage

of

the place

of

relation,

both

past and to come,

between her

and

him. The gift of her body in fluid

form

having becorne, in and through him,

that

which now stands sol

idly raised up erected.

With the assirnilation

of

her, thanks to which he

is

posi

t ioned upright an arch is opened

through

which he comes

and goes ceaselessly, suspended between remembering and await

ing.

He

awaits the

return of that

which he rernembers-does

not

remernber.

But how

is

she supposed to return when he has assimilated

her?

When he has assimilated her to hirnself? So what

is

he

waiting for?

To

assirnilate her again,

and

endlessly? Or

to

re-

5





THE

FORGE T T ING

OF

AIR

This «nothing is, or «everything

is,

has required-it is

t rue a leap beyond. Beyond what? Beyond what he has leapt

over and from. Perhaps already

pre-apprehending-there

is

doubtless no question

older-that,

were

there another language,

he might well find himself drawn into it and taken, assimilated,

appropriated-dis appropriated to be kept safe there in a lasting

truth), excluded-rejected, with no appeal

or

recall possible.

The

other language possibly being constructed (like his own lan

guage? as

long

as

there

is

no other he remains ever in a state

of

assirnilation

to

himself,

of

projection

of

himself)

on

the basis

of a gift

that

precedes all speech. A gift the other would

not

remember.

And

in which case he, then-he who would have

given this language the possibility of being-would henceforth

take place only in the non-places of an abyss.

For one who, despite having not been long in this non-place,

has been there «eternally, this absence

of

any site

is

not

appeal

ing, except as a sort of horror.

If

there

is

only one language,

this absence is, nonetheless, required there. Which remains

unthought

and unthinkable for him.

While he holds to, and keeps to, his own language as to that

which he holds-and to

that

which keeps hirn-most solid.

Solid enough for

him

now

to

allow himself to

put

this language

back into question. What is essential is that there be only one: a

single language, the one he has already appropriated, and that

he reappropriates for hirrlself endlessly.

Does this, then, amount to recalling

that

his living body left

the abyss by assirnilating-appropriating to itself a female

other

who gave herself

to

him, first, in silence, first, in a non-solid

form? It is the contrary, he will say: it is because his language

is

what it is

that

this could

not

have occurred otherwise. Given

such a non-argument,9 how can one make oneself understood

by him? He now occupies his language more than he does his

37



L U E ]RIGARAY

living body.

He

wants this language he

usesIO

to ensure him a

solid foundation. And

if

he

is

the one who lays this foundation,

there is no risk of losing

it too

suddenly. Which can always

occur

if

it proceeds frorn a female other:

should

she absent

herself: he

l

is plunged back into the abyss. It is not she, the

absent one, who first cries ou t i t is he. This cry is the call to

her, or the recall

of her before

he leaps into saying all. Well

before he names

her before

he SUlumons her

into

his speech,

where he can take her, keep her, draw from her, and propriate-

reappropriate her for himself ceaselessly he cries

out

for her

to

come corne

back to take, hide, and keep

him

in her, filling

him

up, the abyss. But he always assimilates her to himself

though

he cries out, she's the one who called. She comes because she

has always already called

him

to come to her. At least, this is

what he says in his language. Isn't this how he lays his abyssal

burdens down? Since she has called him, first, he now can be,

and with no destruction possible. She called me, first

as

always,

thus I can be and remain at rest: she misses me rnore than I rniss

her. She will still and always give me what I need

to

live.

His

way

of

making arbitrary predications

about

things does

not

mean

that

he has exhausted all

of

his syllogistic resources.

t even seerns that the more he falls or rises back into the sen-

sible, the rnore he puts into operation means for grasping things

solidly. And

things,12 still lacking language, let thernselves be

caught by these lueans.

They

will even go so far as to wait for

him

to leave

that

position from

which he claims to

say

truly,

what they are (which he has always done), so far, indeed, as to

wait for hirn to address thern. As if he could speak except to

speak his language still, thus not to speak to things:'

Rather,

it

would be up to them to begin to speak. Which

they will do: they will begin to speak, and even begin to speak

to

each other, through him. Which has taken place forever. They



T H E F O RG E T T IN G OF AIR

have always called narned said and presented each other through

him.

How could

it be otherwise?

Outside of

his language there is

nothing.

One single language-isn't this the rnost peremptory and

preemptive law there is? He does

not

want

to

know this.

It is

without

willing

or

will that he now

turns

toward

them:'

He

welcornes

theITl

insofar as they are destined for him.

For

his

part he relnains serene at rest: at the re-crossing-re-intersec

tion

of

these two

loops :

turned

more toward the second one.

He

is situated beneath a

portico and

atop a bridge:

that

have

passed

and re-pass one into the other indefinitely on the model

of a certain leap of the

look?-that

once took place but is

forgotten. A re-joining of the two bands that at present is for

gotten?

He

advances

rernaining

all

the

while.

He

stays

within

sam.eness which does not rule out a certain

sort

of movement.

Couldn't one

define his

operation of

assimilation in this

way?

For

which

operation

one rnust now

turn

toward the

open

expanse in its

mode

of

lying--before: the region.

13

It

is

not

without

a

kind

of

ITlagic

he said.

The

magic

of

this

region is thought

to

be the force specific

to

its own unfolding

and its capacity for op-position.

14

It gives-stretches itself out continuously and

without

end.

If

the

constitution

of the being of Being takes place in

assimila-

tion IS that of the

Being

of the

being takes place in

partiripation.

In

order for

participation

in

the

manner

of

a being

to

be

pos

sible what is

required-first- is

the constitution of a place

of

present non-assimilation: the region.

The open

expanse assimi

lates-first,

and only-the serenity

of

this suspension

of

as

sirnilation. n this

way

it can make persist that which it leads

into the expanse

of

repose: it consumes nothing. t gathers all

39





THE FORGE T T ING

OF

AIR

Free air would thus be the material substratum

of

the region,

and

the

medium through and

in which everything can appear.

Everything but free air itself?

Why

is

this air

that

is

free enclosed in a region? A vast re

gion, able ceaselessly

to

unfurl itself;

but

nonetheless at present

always bounded? Isn't excess that

which

the philosopher must

bring,

must

bring back, within measure?

What

will determine,

for him, the acceptable measure for air It is the measure of a

relation, subject

to

re-evaluation at each present mornent,

to

the

superfluity

of

absence

or

the superfluity

of

presence.

To

man, free air

is

first

of

all

the

advent

of

an absence

that is

too great: issuing

frOlTI that surrounding into

which he enters.

He

enters

into

the outside.

He

loses

that

living

body of

a

home

where he stayed before: there where she used

to

give herself to

him,

with no

difference yet between

his/her

outside

and his/

her inside, between her and him, feeding

him

from the inside,

without demonstration. Letting her strength pass into him while

he does

nothing with it

yet but become this

Gestell

a living body.

Leaving this horne, he comes

into

an outside

without bound

ary, with

no

sides

to

hold

him

in,

no

external-internal envelope

to

be everything for him,

no

milieu. Free, out in the free air,

he

is-first

of al l in

a state

of utrnost

thrownness. I7

And

this

outside enters hirn, limitlessly. Outside

having entered

into the

outside, he

is penetrated

to his

innermost

by this outside: a

horror, for him. That into which he enters and that which en

ters

him

are

the

same,

and

are present imperceptibly,

if

not as

excess.

The

other on the outside first presents itself as an abyss,

as an endless absence: passing fronl outside

to

inside, from in

side to outside.



L U E ]RIGARAY

O f what [is] this abyss? O f free air, which provokes cries of

distress.

FreedOlTI

provokes crying out, at first. There is just too

lTlUch absence there.

Is this cry also a first call? A

first call for air? At the begin

ning, he restores life

to

hirnself by lifting a cry for air,

for)

an

aspiration

of

air

[un cri d appel

dJajr .

HIn

its turn,

the

cry is essentially sOlTIething

other

than

the

simple fact of a noise being made. It

is

not necessarily a call, but

it may be one: the cry of distress. The call one sends out in fact

comes

from

that place yonder toward which it

is

directed. In the

call one sends out, there reigns an original impulse toward It is

for this reason alone that the call can desire; the simple cry is

lost and engulfed in itself. It can require neither pain nor joy to

allow

it to

abide.

The

call,

on

the contrary,

is

that

which arrives

yonder even

if

it is neither listened

to

nor heard. In the call

one sends out, there is the possibility of abiding. One

lTlUSt

indeed distinguish between noise, cry,

and

call. 18

The first call is an aspiration of air

[un appel

dJair ; it

is

indis

tinguishable

frolTl

a cry.

This

doesn't occur

to

hirn.

For

him,

there

is not

yet language

at

this

point-nor

unconcealment,

nor

entering into presence-at least not in the sense in which he

understands it: he does

not

yet see

or

speak,

and

hears only

sounds. Nonetheless, the conditions of possibility for what he

describes are given here: the entry

into

the outside (ness ) of ab

sence, and the aspiration-exhalation

of

air, in both of which he

will now dwell.

Air

remains-that which restores life,

but

it does so first in

the

form of an absence: there,

nothing is

lTlerely

that

which it is,

if it does not appear. This provenance

of

life, this mediation

and medium

of life, offers

itself

without appearing

as

these.

The first time, these are experienced

as

pain. Free air represents



THE FORGETTING OF AIR

the possibility for life, but it

is

also the sign of the loss of that

which-of she

who a t no

rernove, with

no

expectations, and

with

no

difficulty,

used to

provide everything.

In

air, life

is

in

the beginning,

the

boundless irnrnensity

of

a mourning.

In it

the whole

is

lost.

Air, this there, which gives itself boundlessly

and without

demonstration, ever unfurled-unfurling, and in which everything

will corne

to

presence

and into

relation, supplants, first, an ab

sence.

It

replaces

that

absence: that which has some properties

of

the absence takes its place

and

lets itself be forgotten

as

much

as

if not rnore thoroughly than, the absence does. Not

being perceived, air can serve as the base for mourning.

Air is first, the being

of

the open expanse whose measure

would be that of the yet-to-corne of

(the)

mourning: of she

who will never corne back.

In

expectation

and

oblivion, this

mourning

is

not

discernible

as

such, thanks

to

air, which

is

rnore

a sign

of

life

than of

mourning.

Or

it

is

a sign

of

one as rnuch

as

the other. So how does one

not

go wrong?

He

doesn't

think

about

this.

What will help hilTI at present

to

forget this

is

light. Oblivion

is

of

the sun:

made

upon

the basis

of

she who once was, in

the

night,

and

on the basis

of

air: on the basis

of

mourning.

The

sun

awakens one

to

oblivion.

t

sends one

into the

sleep

of

oblivion,

into the

drearn

of

a life

without

oblivion.

And where there now is sun, each thing COlTIeS about as

distinct, separated, in its place, in its presence,

and

in a relation

to the

others where proximity becornes juxtaposition.

Light

permits

approxirnation

of things

at a distance.

t permits

things to come to hirn, and to each other, in a (non-)distanc

ing

that is more or

less rernote.

The

sun, for its part, always keeps its distance; it does not

give itself ceaselessly; it cornes and goes, staying all the while

43



44

IveE JRIGARAY

the

same, always remaining right where it is

It

becomes, now,

the source.

That which gives itself always

and

everywhere,

without

mea

sure,

is

not thought of

as

a source. For there to be a source,

there

tnust

first be mourning. The source

is

that which hides a

lTlOurning: the absence

of

a beginning when the whole would

be, always

and

everywhere.

With

the source, rnan enters economy

and

the reserve supply. He begins to go back

and forth

between

absence

and

presence.

He

becOlnes entranced with the upsurgence

of presence in order

to shroud

absence. Or she who

is

absent?

The origin

is

the whole that issues frOln a source, replac

ing-and concealing the loss of-

-an

other (female) whole. This

dawning brings

about

an entry

into

oblivion

of that

which gave

itself

without

measure

and without

appearing, in the night.

19

This

sunrise marks the passage

to

an other appropriation. It

helps bring about the absence

of

she who has become man,

through

that assimilation

of her

to him that made him living.

This operation

never takes place in the light

of

day; it stays in

the shadows. By the tirne the sun clears the horizon, it has al

ways already taken place: she has always already becorne him,

without any demonstration.

The sun brings

about

this entrance into the oblivion of

mourning into the joy of mourning into the obsession of

mourning

which opens Western

thought.

Which opens Being.

This does not occur to him, even when he says

that

perhaps

the time has come

to mourn

and

make one's peace with its loss 20

If mourning consists in re-appropriating

absence-she

who

is

absent-for himself,

and

however he pleases, how

could

he

not

be serene?

How

could he give that up without loss? Being

cut frorn his natural

enrooted

state, man has made himself ec

static in a there from which he assimilates-reassimilates the whole,







Once he has passed from inside her to outside, his boundaries

will soon appear. e sets himself forth, and sets forth the whole,

by surrounding himself, by surrounding it, with borders. e

approaches both hirnself

and

everything by approximating

boundaries. Being near-to now arnounts to being set forth near

to; being within

to

being set forth within; having a rnediulTl

to

having things set

or

arranged about.

This

surrounding stretches

out gradually. In this world, things can be drawn near or put at

a distance: they always remain there.

Except in the case of assirnilation? For he keeps assimilating

in order to subsist and grow. Certain things still come into

him:

but

they disappear in a distanceless appropriation.

e

be

comes these things:' Except for what isn't any good, which he

gives back.

These things that he receives still irrecoverably and from the

other are, first of all, fluids: lTlilk





THE FORGETTING OF

AIR

Was

it

a call?

Or

was she answering the call?

Can

he still distin

guish between these two things once he assimilates her voice)?

Is she calling

him

so as

to

once again be assimilated

to

him ?

Is she calling so

as

to

lTIOUrn

and

make peace

with

her loss

of

h r s l f ~ in hirn? Has she no other past or to-corne than her

consumption disappearance appropriation in the being of the

Being

of

man? Remaining available, for her part, so that he can

begin

to be,

on

the basis

of the

assimilation

of her to

him?

From

his sleep-awakening, he wakes: she cried out. Called?

Sounds that he does

not

hear. An air still lacking lyrics/words.

Lacking language

[langue) And

that he does

not

hear, unless

as

a

call within this sleep he has entered. A call in the

form of

a cry?

It is she. She called in him.

Frorn her place of disappearance, she cried out: horror. She

returns crying out,

beyond

his language

[langue)

Beyond

the

point

where he

remembers does not

remember this: serenely

awaiting she who will

not

return. She cried out rending his

sleep with her absent presence. Like a dream that speaks, and

speaks with such closeness to reality

that

he wakes drowsy,

look-

ing for the one who called.

This is

the

terror

of

forgetting, this inside-outside cry

of

she

who

is

absent,

who cannot

disappear. She forever

COlTIeS and

recalls

from

her place of disappearance: she cries out at night.

She

is

so close

that the

cry is right here, either in

him or

be

tween the two

of

thern,

without

borders. Corning

from within

the borders. Frorrl

within what

he

leaps/skips

over,

and

forgets,

when he rrlourns

and

makes his peace

with

losing her?

That she

should

occupy the border, that what he believed

to

be solid

should

in this

manner

rnelt

away/be

founded,

and

that

a call issues

from

this abyss : this

is

horror.

49







L U E JRIGARAY

Unless this feature

of

being up-against

[ee

[ontre] proceeds

from

him? Isn t it with the right-against [Ie

tout

[Ol tre] that he

makes up for the loss

of

she who was lost in him?

That

he closes

back

up-contains

her disappearance?

That

he Inakes absence

the

condition

for entry

into

presence?

The right-against? The lack of any difference between love

and hatred in a

(non-

)distancing

that

always lTlaintains at a dis

tance.

When

he calls thern

to

come right-against him, isn t he

calling for them never

to

come back

within

him?

For

them never

to mix

with

hirn again? Except

during

the controlled portion of

tilne

that

a

consum.mation/ consumption

takes.

Which

rneans:

for an

entry into

the absence of presence?

There,

it

s night

still.

Where Being obtains-does

not

obtain.

But in day, this rising

sun

with which he ceaselessly tends his

forgetting, the whole stays over-and-against.

It

now counters.

From

the

region, things make a call

to

enter

into

presence,

to

receive a name. Is the countering aspect

of

the region and

of

the

opposition

of

things erased? forgotten? denied? in their call? He

says that they call in

order

that he give to them. Give them

what?

The

possibility

of

a serene mourning?

The right-against, in a mourning s

hatred

that

s

projected

left there, calls upon

him

to give it all back. t s he who calls for

dwelling in an endless repose.

Isn t this

how

he constitutes the space-time of entry

into

presence? First, an assimilation

of

her to

him-which

will re

main

within

the absence

of

presence. Returning to

her

what

isn t any good, but especially in the form of

the

immensity of

a

mourning

that

s

projected-left

to

her, and that

upholds the

basis for mourning her. She

s

always in excess of this

present

vastness;

from

this excess, he draws and assimilates wherewith

to still and always mourn and make peace

with

his loss. In this



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

space-time of mourning, hatred's

countering

and

opposition

are

forgotten-erased in the fact that she calls hirn so that he may

give-give back to her. Give-give back what? The whole. The

whole now arnounts

to

what?

To

death.

He

mourns

and

makes peace with his loss of

the

whole of

love only in an equally great relation to hatred: equally great

without destroying the whole, that is to say great enough for

the re-pose-laying out

of

the whole in its death.

The more life expands and tenders itself, placing the whole

into relation through interpenetration and

unbounded

exchange,

the more

death

rnust come to lneet it so as to put the whole

back in order, re-depositing each thing in its proper place,

in

the unalterable repose of its coming to presence.

What

is the magic

of

this region from which the essence of

thinking

proceeds?-everything

that belongs to it returns to its

place of rest.

5

For this, all

that

was needed was

that

the region

assimilate the serenity of the thinker. That it assirnilate his will

to non-willing to the point that all forms of will remain foreign

to it.

The open expanse remains indefinite availability, within which

all proper motion

6

has disappeared. It lends itself to all, to all

who want-do not want that it be there at their disposal, or that

it be there for them to dispose thernselves within it. Staying

outside 'or inside, outside

and

inside, in an openness where this

very distinction fades away: the opening

is

lost-forgotten in

the

unthinkable beginning of the essence

of

thinking.

At what point

did

he pass from the not yet to the always-

lre dy

of

Being? In stopping the assimilating movement of a

mouth ? A

rnouth

left there open, available, suspended in con-

5



54

I U E ]RIGARAY

sumption?

For

saying at least two

mouths

are required:

one

that takes-consulTles-assirnilates and one that gives-gives

back-

produces.

One

that closes

and

opens over the need to feed itself

and

one

that

remains

open

for the-pro-venance the

pro duction

of

speech. How in the present can the two be

put

in relation?

In the present?

Both

of thelTl at the sarne time? That

is impos-

sible. The present occupies this irnpossibility

and

its overcom

ing in ek-stasis.

In

the

present

the mouth

is kept

open and

in the dwelling of

this openness language

7

springs up springs back up.

Language has always already assimilated what is necessary

for it to happen [se pro duireJ8 in the present: there it gives itself

or gives itself back in the opening-as-fernale.

This

opening

says

nothing: she only lends

herself

to this upsurgence. Participating

in this production of language in an available openness. She

allows herself to be open in an expanse of ever greater vastness

where openness erases its own circumference its borders so that

the production

of

language might still and always take place.

This openness

that

is kept open ensures the passage between

two kinds

of

consumption.

Between two lives

and

two deaths.

Immediate consumption necessary for survival

that would

have

no

place being in presence; and the consurnption belonging

to

meditative thinking which having always already consumed what

is necessary finds its place in the ek-stasis of presence.

What does

the

thinker consurne

there?The

opening [{louvert]?

O f

what is

the

opening?

This

can

be

said in a variety of ways all the while relTlaining

a single way staying

within

the SalTle.

The opening

fouvert]

pro-ceeds frorn the absence

of

an irn

mediate

and

undifferentiated consurnption

from

the absence

of she who gave herself wholly for a distanceless assilTlilation:



THE FORGE T T ING OF AIR

fl.-om the present space-time of an infinite mourning. But the

opening pro-ceeds

as

well from that which is always-too-much

to consume in the present,

from

the ek-static suspension of

immediate assimilation in

pro-duction

and in what

pro-duction

gives-gives back.

In the

placing at a distance, the placing

under

protection,

1

that saves up excess, that assembles

and

re-g(u)ards

it in gathering meditation [le recueillelllent J leaving it at rest: for

an other consumption. For the consumption that belongs to

meditative

thinking

that feeds on conterrlplation.

On

its own

contemplation?

Between

these two mournings the

expanse

bearing the

thinker s

concerned

cornings-and-goings relnains open. Mouth

or

female loins, or

eye

or body, or matter

..

always available,

always open, left there, like that present absence that makes en

try into presence possible. Rendered ek-static in their openness

gaping solicitation

[lJinstance]J

I I

in the lasting suspension

of

all

consurnption/

consurrunation. Between assimilation and produc

tion, a mouth

must

remain ever open: an available outside

inside where everything

and nothing

comes about.

Which

leaves

at peace. And makes the whole dwell in an imperishable safe

keeping.

When he began to set

himself

up,

to

stand up, he dosed

himself off

to

being permeable

and porous

to

all things. He

holds

himself

within bounds. Now all that is left is a ringed,

encircled openness that is set-laid out before hirn, ready-to

hand. It takes

up

all the space: deposited, projected into

the

there.

Like a mouth? Or female loins? One or the other. One and

the other. The two

of

thern assimilated to each other?

Ringed

by lips. But by ever open lips.

Ever open, they are eclipsed by their openness. They are for

gotten in the opening.



LUCE JRIGARAY

Without lips, how is the passage

from

one side of the

open

ness to the other lTIarked? How can the entrance to the

opening

be passed back through

if

lips have vanished? Where is the prov

enance, without l ips-on this side

or

on the other?

How

can a

passage fi·0111 one mouth to the other, frorn here to there, take

place without losing one or the other, or both, in an assimila

tion by a kind of distance in which the difference between the

two is erased,

and

that once again amounts to sameness?

In the ek-stasis of

her

openness, she becomes, they all be

come, this sameness

from

which he proceeds

and to

which he

ceaselessly returns

to produce

hilTIself

The open expanse contains nothing, except

or

the openness

that opens and lets all things bloom within it

[elle)

The open

expanse

(GegneQ

is the expanse

that

prolongs,

and

that, gather

ing all things together, opens

itself

in such a way that the

open

ness is

contained

and retained within it, to let everything

bloom

in its own repose:

12

That which always so opens eludes any meeting. Being open,

its

manner of

approach

is to

withdraw

at

his approach. It does

not

stretch

out

like a perceptible horizon.

He

cannot touch

it,

not even with a look. When he turns toward it, he has already

entered into

it. He is already within

the

opening.

And things as objects are

lost

in

the open

expanse.

They no

more

stand

there to welcome hirn

than

does the

open

expanse:

they lie

and

rest upon and within the

open

expanse, in

the

re

turn to belonging to the abiding. Their only

fonn

of movernent

is blooming/unconcealrrlent

I3

within their repose.

Or

in his?

Nothing that takes place there can be presented

or

described.

It

can only be narned,

and

an attempt can be made

to

think it

through: outside all representation.



THE

F O RG E T T IN G OF AIR

Thus opens the way

to

the essence

of

thinking. Or at least

the wait for the essence

of thinking or

rather its awaiting.

The

essence of thinking can

no

more be met with

than

can

the

open

expanse

or

the

IIthings

that

rest within it.

To

wait for

the essence

of thinking is to

give

up

waiting for it

and to

be

released still

further into

the opening,

into

the expanse

of

the

faraway, near which remoteness waiting finds the abiding in which

it dwells. Waiting is in this way returned

to

its dwelling. The

opening

is

of no use

to

hirn, unless it is

to

advance the wait for

a

return to

his home:

to

corne

into

the nearness

of

the faraway.

Isn't

thinking

waiting to

return to that

which in the faraway

is imperceptibly near, so

as

to be able to dwell in

the

repose

of

a proximity at a distance?

To

dwell in one's own repose?

The

expanse

of

waiting that rnust be passed back

through

again

and

that

lies between she

who

once was

melded

inextrica-

bly with hiln, she who in his llliving body became him,

and

she

whorn he cornes upon again, close by

but

still

distant would it

be

from

this expanse that the essence

of thinking

proceeds?

O f what is this expanse made?

Who

bears the waiting?

Who

yields

to

openness, being ever available so that,

through

this

long way wended

within the

opening, she who

is

awaited Inight

gradually come about, like some very distant return,

to

which

he is forever drawing closer. While making, with each step, the

essence of his thinking?

As he goes along, he speaks

about

this endless waymaking,

about

this mysterious region,

with

other lTlen

14

Moving freely

about amid their

words,

pointing

IIthings

out to

each other

and

showing each

other

things;'

but

keeping these things within

57



I U E

JRIGARAY

the f1 111 reach of

what

may still be said

of

them. Giving each

other

the confidence,

amongst

themselves,

to

persevere within

the opening. Encouraging each other

along-amongst

them

selves-to

serenity. Isn't it arnongst themselves that they came

up with the name for it? That they follow its path? Together.

It

is true

that

if she has

no

language, each step

within her

risks the abyss. For them

to

be able

to

advance within the

open

ing

fouvert]

in complete serenity, the opening rnust at each

step

be named, while remaining nameless all along. Together they

seek names to give to it, conversing at night along country paths

far frorn their hornes.

They

grapple the question

from

afar.

On

what do they found thetTIselves in order to assess whether

the narnes they are giving are appropriate ones?

On

their arbi-

trary whim? On their recollection of a name

that

would simply

have escaped them? Or else:

do

they discover the namable, the

name, and the named in one (sarne) stroke? Would they then

be

producing

their very Being? Who could call

himself

author

of

it

n

the

region,

the

appellation

must

issue

from no

one.

It

alone answers for itself They have only to listen for the answer

appropriate(d) to the word spoken, and to repeat the answer

heard. And it rnatters little who first does the repeating, since

none

of them knows whence he gets

what

he is repeating.

Where did the answer corne from? Who spoke? She is

the

region

of

speech,

but

has no language. Who said that the

word

spoken was the

appropriate

d) one?

What

voice? Issuing

from

what night? Coming back

from

the outside-back

from

the

depths

of

what absence?-who is it

that

says yes to the names

that they give out? Against what obstacle does the natTIe re-

sound,

at

least once, before they repeat it, judging that it mea-

sures up to that obstacle?



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

Were the name appropriate

to

it, would the region perhaps

accept it, closing up,

and

enclosing the name, in her assimila

tion/likening?

Ever open,

what is

she waiting for? Keeping ev

erything,

gathering

everything

together,

letting

everything

settle-rely on her, yet assimilating nothing. Lending herself

to

everything and everyone, yet remaining still and always avail

able,

as if nothing

there were appropriate

to

her.

Wouldn t

she

be

a mirror, there, reflecting

and

preserving

the words spoken?

Could

this

be

arrlOng

other

things, her barely

thinkable

contribution

to entry into presence?

Didn t

they dream that she answered: yes? It was nighttime.

And

she

is

so mysterious that they expect everything

of

her.

Even that which they do not expect the

return

of that assimila

tion of

her to him

that

by day

is

forgotten.

The

question of

proper

names nevertheless confounds thern.

They

even go so far

as

to quarrel over the issue: one of their

thinkers love-spats .. No longer knowing who first

gave

the narne,

what was to be named, what

is

1urned in the use

of

the name.

No matter .. The

task now is

to

mind this narne that has so

befallen them.

The

narne came frorn waiting:

from the

waiting

of

openness.

Waiting is

the

relation

to the

open expanse.

There is no

other ..

On

the path, within her [elle] where the wait

is under way

she lets

the open

expanse reign alone.

What

are they waiting for?

To be maintained

in

their proper

Being by

that to

which

they bear a relation. Such would be for them, the true relation

to all things: a relation that keeps one safe from change. IS

59



6

I U E ]RIGARAY

One that obliterates the other s passage into them, through

appropriation.

What

is

the open

expanse such

that

she leaves

no

trace

of

herself at all

on

any who enter her? Such

that

she instead brings

that which penetrates

into her

back to its own Being? Could this

be the horizon,

though

veiling

itself as

such, of the advent of

the

return to

the proper? To the essence of the proper?

To

the

substance of the essence of the proper?

How

so?

This

derives frorn serenity. From which serenity?

The right relation

to

the

open

expanse must be serenity and,

since

the

relation

is

defined on the basis

of

what it

is

related to,

serenity must rest upon

her the open expanse and

have re

ceived from

her

the rnovernent

that

carries it toward her.

There

is

never any

return

but

a

return to

the

same.

They

are

therefore waiting

to

be

maintained

in their

proper

Being, for in

her

rests

the

serenity that draws

them to return to

thernselves.

Are they not, in a serene

and

confident manner,

turned to-

ward her? Toward she

to

whom they originally belonged? She by

whom

they were originally appropriated? She

who

opens, her

self;

to

let

them

enter

into

the

wait/

expectation for repose within

their

proper

Being?

The essence of

thinking

proceeds from. the fact that the open

expanse takes serenity

into herself

and assimilates it.

O f

what

is

serenity? O f waiting. O f relations where nothing but waiting

takes place any longer.

O f

the

relation

with

one

who gives-gives

back waiting as the space for the unfolding

of

what is essential.

O f

an endless waymaking

that

holds attractions-between safely

in suspension: leaving-sending back each one to his own Being.

Each one? Who

or

what grants serenity?

Who

or

what re

ceives it? Assimilates it?



T H E F O RG E T T IN G OF AIR

Isn't to assimilate serenity

or to

assimilate oneself

to

serenity

to assimilate death or to assimilate oneself to death? Which

death can be assimilated?

Must

she who

as

a living being

gave

herself for assitnilation

to

him

also in death assirnilate herself

to

him?

Does one ever assimilate death?

The

death of an other? Or

is

one only present for it? Receiving it. within oneself, letting

it settle on or within oneself, preserving it in a serene repose:

with it rernaining the sarrle throughout the full expanse

of

its

abiding.

16

To safeguard death in this

way

it

is

necessary

to

stay alive.

17

Would

the

open

expanse be

that

of

death maintained alive,

of

life preserved in death?

With

both suspending their days

of

reckoning?

With

the between-two

of

the no-longer

and

the

not-

yet,

and

the sustenance

of

the always-already and the never-yet,

unfolding their endless abiding: in the service

of

thinking?

Of

what can the being who bears such a duplicity

be? What

sort

of

Hrrlatter can abide in this manner without dissolving?

Without decornposing?

Without

deteriorating?

Maintaining

a

lasting subsistence,

and

inlperceptible in presence?

Air?

Which

air? Have

we

not

here imperceptibly passed

from

one air to the other? With both airs issuing from the same?

Is

it not

in dwelling within her, this rnatter, that p ysis finds

its

blooming unconcealment, that its

light

radiantly breaks

forth? In

being perrnanently open for the ek-stasis

of

being

there, doesn't she remain, still, a nourishing Hbody imnledi

ately

apprehended

as

undifferentiated: air?

Constituted

as

a

dwelling within which

man

wends his way

as

if within the safe

guard

of

his death. Advancing within an air that

is

appropri

ated in an indefinitely lasting manner.

An

air that maintains

distance, that always pushes back a step the

attempt

at a

con-

founding type

of

approach.

An

enveloping air that veils the

61



6

I U E JRIGARAY

whole in an ilnperceptible transparency

and

keeps everyone

and

everything in the distancing of an appropriation. Unmixed

un

divided air in which is marked and forgotten the passage to an

air

other

than that

air which breathed already brings

about

Being.

Nonetheless to breathe also means to be. This does

not

oc

cur to him. Is it because there

is

still

and

always too

ITlUch

air

that he has not yet reached the point of conserving it?

But what

is

forgotten

is always

recalled. Doesn t

the

unconceahnent-concealment

of

Being suggest the breathing of

air?

He

leaves this movement of a still-living

body

outside the

scope of his care

as

an event of little

importance

in light of his

preoccupation with

Being.

Air

that

is

already

subjected

to

thrownness-projection in a there: the environment of an invis

ible house that keeps him safe

as

a rnortaL

This superfluity of air this excess

of

air that

henceforth

allows

him to

have

concern

for his own death

is

still

given

given back thanks

to other

living beings and

is

sent--projected

back

onto

these beings like a sepulture in

aspects-in

a i r s -

that removes them frorn their becoming.



Within

this economy

of

the

copula,

both

of

them the

male one and the female one are deprived

of

their

return

to

themselves.

He can neither grow

nor

set himself

up

apart trom the wait

to return within her, to return

to

that beginning

prior

to the

beginning, when she gave herself entirely

to

hirn without dis-

tance

or

difference. Dwelling

in

a living house, a living

body

that

envelops, protects, and feeds hin1 that supplies his exis-

tence

without

reciprocity. A dwelling ever in darkness, where

this light alone shines: the heat and flame

of

life. Love's fire ?

A love, between her

and

him, that remains ever nocturnaL

When

he

turns

back toward her, he has made a source for

himself:

He

has appropriated,

and

attributed

to

himself,

the

source.

The

source always hides a rnourning,

and

hides the

need

for

ek sistance

relative

to

that beginning when the whole gives

itself always

and

everywhere,

and nothing is

withheld.



IueE J R I G A R A Y

Ek sistance? a mourning and

a triurnph?

The

triumph of a

Inourning?

He no

longer

turns

back toward

her

except from a point of

ek-stasis.

This

ek-stasis deprives-him

of

his relation

to

her: life

at the beginning.

This ek-stasis derives, first

of

all, frorn what

he has taken

from

her, fi'orn what he has appropriated begin

ning with her, too little and too much, and which he now re

turns to

her as

a triumphant gift.

He

triumphantly gives hirnself

back to

her

within him, to him within her. Thus: outside her.

For

where he ek-sists, she

is no

longer. Unless she

is

in his

rnemory and expectations.

Touched

by

her

in him, by hirn in

her: and not by her, over there, by she who exists outside him,

and whorn he does not affect. He

is

touched only by the expec

tation, the forgetting, and the

return

of she who will never corne

back.

He is touched

only by

memory and

expectation: he nei

ther

touches

her

nor

is touched

in an immediate fashion.

The ek-stasis of the present is this, their impossible meet-

ing.

Deprived

of his

return to himself

by returning

to

her: she,

at present, the absent one. He

is

rendered ek-static in absence.

Ek-stasis

is

the exit-entry out

of

her. But, at the saIne tirrle,

out

of

himself

Is this

how

his Being as sexuate is destined? Always throw

ing-projecting him there?

At

a distance? In distancing?

In what

is

destined for hirn this way he again confuses

her

with himself He assimilates the two theres: the there where he

is

thrown-projected outside himself:

and

the

there where she

exists outside him.

He

forgets

that

there are two different ek

stases in this there. That the there

of

his Being's destiny

is

not

the

there

of her

subsistence. He folds thern up

together in

sameness, in the eternal

return to

the same.

He

forgets the dif

ference between

theln within

Being.

Returning

to she whom he



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

has already assirnilated in a there where she is now an other.

Confusing her

with

this other, he begins anew

from

this point

to

assirnilate her once lTIOre

For

at

the point where he is thrown-projected out of hin1-

self; he will again recover hilTIself

He

will once

lTIOre

set

him-

self

this

project as

his very source.

He

will make

of

his ek-stasis

the way to return

to

hirnself the permanence of his Being. What

is nearest in what is farthest away

In

order

to

recover himself

and

to restore

himself to him-

self, ek-stasis

must

keep,

ek sistance must

be maintained,

and

ex

iting

himself must becOlTIe the

rneasure

of

his proper-proximal

being: "his house."

Which is impossible

without

her: that female

other

that sub-

sists outside.

His

ek-stasis rnust insist in her: she

who

remains

ever outside. It is necessary that she participate in this. "There,"

which/who

is

forgotten-erased in the "there," she

must con-

tinue

to

participate in his ek-stasis: always being available for

Being's

entry into

presence. Gaining even the heights

of the

heavens, bringing the relTIOVeS of ek-stasis close together there,

and

joining them

in

the

upsurgence

of

their lightening

or

unconcealment, Vithout stitch, selvedge, or thread, preserving

them, without the slightest discontinuity, in the perrnanence of

her night. Keeping thern in her repose, over which their enlight

enment gleams, but rernaining always at rest. Preserving

them

within

her

obscurity, transparent in the brilliance of their illu

minations,

though

staying forever in the dark.

Wondrous

home, all the

more

beautiful for remaining invis

ible to let their stars shine resplendent. Silent, irnperceptibly

present house of night, in which opens once again the serene

and confident

wait

for

that ek-stasis

into

which they are called:



66

I U E ] R I G A R A Y

in her repose, she will let be this one more star. Joining it to the

others already there, bringing them together

without

a trace of

their faraway upsurgence.

Taking

nothing,

keeping

the

whole settled-arranged

on

or

within her, lending

her

living

ody

as a gathering place for the

whole: she works only with proximity, unless she prefers to rest ..

While his own kind of rnotion

is

nearly the opposite

of

this:

waiting. Unless it be

another

kind of rest? The availability

of

a

still unconstrained energy, the serenity

of

Being-as-action that

does not know

itself

as such?

Doesn't that which thus maintains

itself

in a state of

distant

expectancy

suspend

the

rnotion

of attraction in rest ? Doesn't

it relate to the other in complete passivity?

Prior to this passivity,

or

in between

the

passivity that was

at

the beginning and its return in the wait, what

happened

that

might

have given rise

to

ek sistance?

To

ek-stasis?

What

change

occurred in the

nature

of the site that sheltered man? What

operation

took place between the Hhouse

of

a living body and

the house

of

Being in order for the dwelling

of

rnan, his home-

land,

to

now deterrnine his relations

to

the whole

and to him-

self, in the

form

of

an

approach

that

always maintains distance?

Perhaps this operation should be called the reduction to noth-

ingness. How ought it to be understood? Whence proceeds this

nothing that

unfolds its essence within Being itself?

This noth-

ing that tnakes Being more being than any being, this nothing

with which Being touches all beings, though in an impercep

tible

way

This

nothing that

has always already inserted-whis

pered all the Ilyes'S

and

no's;' even before what they

pertain to

has been set out.

This

nothing within Being: Hwhich grants

the

unscathed its gracefLll rise, and furor its impulse toward ruin. 2

This nothing, which

is

reduced to nothingness

as

the mere re

jection, refusal, or destruction rnanifesting

itself

among beings,



THE

FORGE T T ING OF AIR

but

which irnperceptibly abides in,

and

operates from, Being.

Concealing, resealing, within its ek-stasis, the ever possible to

come

of

a birth

or

death.

O f

love

or

of

hatred? Love

and

hatred left in suspension,

unaccomplished,

though

they are always

at

the same tilne des

tined within the openness of Being?

At the same

t ime-this

would mean that the graceful rise

is always also

an

impulse toward ruin.

That

one would never

corne

to

pass

without the

other.

And that

a certain dawning

sun, in

the

West,

would

already achieve, by the very fact

of

its

rising, a ftltious destruction.

And

not sirnply in virtue

of

its

future setting but

at the

same

time

At the sarne time. Being-he said-is the house of man.

To

be

and to

dwell amount

to

the same thing.

What

remains

unthought

is

that

dwelling

is

the fundamental

trait

of

man's condition.

3

It still remains unsaid,

hidden

in lan

guage, which, nevertheless, expresses it: in silence. This funda

mental character of man's relation to the spoken-man's dwelling

in language, in a language

as

the framing for a hOlTle

of and

for

man- is

forgotten in what is habitual.

This

forgetting can entail a

true

crisis in dwelling.

Can

entail,

for rnan, crisis itself? But man does not consider it

to

be such.

s

long as he does not think

through

homeless ness, he does not

recognize that what is of principal importance for

him

is

the

Being of dwelling. Nevertheless, abiding on earth as a mortal,

he always already dwells. This he forgets.

He

forgets the fralTling

of

this horne. He forgets

that

for

him

dwelling is the funda

mental trait of Being. How is he

to

be reminded of this

trait

that is erased in the habitual?

This trait

marks

out

a boundary.



8

I U C E ] R I G A R A Y

A

boundary

can be drawn

around

something:

it

encloses a

field or a vine for the purpose of cultivation, for exarnple. In

this sense,

to

build is simply

to

watch over the growth that, of

i t s l f ~ ripens its fruit. At this point, there isn't yet any fabrica

tion

on

the

part

of man, any works produced by him: with the

exception of this boundary, by rneans of which he will tend the

flourishing of nature's works.

And tend himself as one of these? Needing, first, an abode

that allows hirn

to

rernain in peace, kept frorn harm and threat,

his existence

husbanded and

spared. But requiring even rnore

that he be surrounded by protection that, frorn the start, leaves

him within his Being, that returns him to it and sets him at

peace therein: enclosed within what is akin

to

him. Free, there

fore.

Free, therefore? How could that which lends itself to sur

rounding sorneone or sornething in accordance with the Being

of

each one be free?

To

ensure this peaceful dwelling for an

other, hasn't i t o r

she-had to

appropriate itself;

or

herself;

to that other? Thus, to empropriate itself? To expatriate itself?

Yet the fundamental

trait

of dwelling

is

supposed

to

be this

sparing which would pervade dwelling

throughout its whole

range. Throughout its whole range, dwelling lTIUst be appropri

ated to man. Following this trait, rnan would be first of all a

dweller on earth: his first house would be granted hirn by earth,

and it

is

on

this basis

that

he would be able

to

build-rebuild a

dwelling of his own.

Dweller on earth, once he is situated-sets

himself

up ((on

the earth on her ),

5

rnan is already H

nder

the sky. Both of

these also mean Hremaining before the divinities and imply Hbe_



T H E

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

longing to the comrnunity

of

nien:' The four:

earth

and sky,

divinities

and

mortals,

fonn

a whole

on

the basis

of

an originary

oneness.

Why

four? Is

it

because, given the three-dimensional nature

of

this dwelling place, it

is

important

to

leave room for the

unexpected?

For

the ever possible

return of

the gods? Or is it,

on

the contrary, because the fourfold constitutes a more stable

dwelling?

Both

at the same

tiITle

Mortals

dwell

as

they await the divinities.

This

waiting pre

serves the pliancy

of

dwelling,

turning

the square

into

a circle

while keeping the envelope closed.

With

what

is

nearest being

left outside? With all

points

where proximity comes

about

re

maining forever tangents that meet but do not by intersection

h

l ih

penetrate t e proper ouse.

O f

what [is] this dwelling?

O f

what

is

this lisirnpleness

on

the basis

of

which these four

form-re-fonn

a whole?

What

power

gathers them together after having divided thern into four? Keep

ing them, in the present, within the inconspicuousness

of

an

everlasting

SaITleness?

Wouldn't this sirnpleness

that

keeps the secret

of

all penna

nence and magnitude be the capacity for death

as

death? That

which

is proper to

man? Which

is

projected

onto

the whole

that

is

thereby

transformed into

a dwelling

of

a world. A dwelling

in

the world outside

of

which world

is

nothing,

but

which

is

al

ready

kept

safe

frOITl and

in death, in virtue

of

its delineated

boundary.

Would dwelling-rnan s-be revealed, then, as the safekeep

ing

of

death? As enclosure by a

boundary

within which

death

is-is not

to be found?

The

dwelling that

is

the iworld

would

be the preservation

of

the being

of

the fourfold: which

is

main-







7

2

LU C E ] R I G A R A Y

The

reflection that each gives off and receives is the passage

by

way

of

a primary relation to death: in virtue of the individu

ation and specialness that death can still impart to each. Liber

ated by what

is

thrown back to

it

with this reflection each

is

given back over to what is most proper and can thus be bound

to the others in the Being of their Being: the simpleness

of

death.

This

expropriative appropriating transpropriation

expropriante]

of all things proper that are still individual is the mirror-play of

the fourfold without which the world is not.

This

cannot be

explained

as

it is without cause or foundation. The simpleness

of

the simplicity

of

the play

of

the world does not permit such

penetration by human understanding. It is. Posed positionless.

Staying up holding up in air?

The

Being

of

the fourfold

is

the play

of

the world: the two

do not let themselves be separated not

even

like an envelope

that would be added to boot to what it contains maintains

retains.

The

Being of the envelope is the mirror-play the round

dance of making each appear within the whole which gathers

together the world as

world. The encircling loop

of

the ring

that rolls up into itself and in which all are intertwined with

their Being: one Being nevertheless proper to each. This inter

twining renders thern flexible for and compliant to the mirror

play

brought back to what is most pliant in their Being.

The Being of the world the copula

of

the world is this

rnirror-play. In it each compliantly relies on each and leaves

behind its own pliancy in the encircling loop

of

the pliant.

The squaring of a circle: that would take place within the

transparency of each in each let-be within the whole. Ultimately

the mirror reflects nothing: the Being of Being. Empty so as to

reflect the whole back to that which binds it in Being: the re-·

duction to nothingness.



THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

Nevertheless,

the

play

of

mirrors gathers the whole to

gether within its encircling loop. Imposing itself, still

without

a

thinkable origin, it

is

the cincture/precinct: the world:' Cinc

ture/

precinct

of

lTlirrors/ ice that, in the end, reflects

nothing

back. Rejoining the no-longer to the not-yet in the constancy

of

a furling

that

brings each one back

to

the enigma

of

its

Being-that nothing whence it comes and to which it returns,

endlessly.

O f

what

is

this

nothing

such

that

it

is

perceived

not

as

a

territying abyss but

as

the round dance

of

the world ? What

bears it,

what

does

it

provide, such

that it

should be expected

recalled in this

way not

merely

as

the appeal

of

a void in which

all mernory would be engulfed, but

as

the

return of

what

is

most originary and what is most ultimate?

This

nothing?

Wouldn't it

be

found

in

open

air:

that

being

that

is

already there before birth, and still there after death,

rejoining the not-yet and the no-longer within a lasting expanse?

Within

which all come

to be and

gather in a single space,

sharing a

SalTleneSS that

does not

as

such appear, but that grants

the whole its permanence.

One

sameness, transparent, in which

each one can come

into

presence

and

receive-give

to

each

the

reflection

of

its Being.

Bound

by what bestows appearance

upon them, but to which they return-as to their own, most

simple, element-after having received and given off

that proper

reflection.

Air-still

silent space

of

speech.

Where

the voice

of

things

can be heard by he who

is born in the air that surrounds them.

Conveying the call

frolTl

the highest heaven, feeding, as well,

what the earth bears. Bringing into proxirnity the mountain top

and the country road, the hometown and today's horne, children's

games

and

a mother's gaze, the flight of birds and the work

of

73



7

UCE ]RIGARAY

the woodcutter, the din of machines or the breath of the gods.

But joining also, in a single harmony, the rotation of the sea-

sons: winter s stonn and harvest day, the quickening turbulence

of

spring

and

the quiet decline

of

autumn, the playful

temper

of

youth and the wisdom

of

age. Each taking place there, all

crossing paths and meeting each other there, passing from one

into the

other

within the expanse of a serene abiding. Within a

space and tirne in which everything comes into existence and

returns to death, leaving air still and already there, in a horizonless

vastness and a continuity where all can come to pass without

any given event stopping a

kind

of motion that, perpetually,

abides.

Air could be this nothing of Being: the Being of Being. It

could be this secret

that

Being keeps, could be

that

in which

earth and sky, mortals and divinities, belong together.

But he has forgotten this simple constituent of physis He no

longer hears it except through the voices of the logos the paths

he has already laid out within and on

physis

It is from the p a t h -

which would not be

had

he not opened i t that what has al-

ways already given

him

air now

cornes

back

to

hirn.

The

elementality of physis-air water, earth,

fire is

always already

reduced to nothingness in and by his own elernent: his language.

An ecstasis relative

to

his natural environment

that

keeps hilTI

exiled from his first horneland.

A horneland he so

often

recalls because he has

lost it?

Be-

cause he

and it

always remain

at

a distance from one

another

now?

At

a distant proxirnity?

Which

leaves him at peace,

but

with a kind of serenity that considers itself above suffering,

that

is

always marked by irony, by a

kind

of cheery melancholy.

A wisdorn divulged only in veiled expressions, already opening

onto eternity. A renunciation that leads to sameness: taking



T HE FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

nothing,

but

giving, rather, the inexhaustible energy

of

the simple.

O f

the nothing?

O f

death?

Within

which a native

land is

given

back to him.

It is

not for

nothing

that he makes the renunciation.

He

re

nounces so

as to

receive an inexhaustible energy.

Couldn t

this

energy, which is given-given back to and through

him

with no

taking on his part, proceed from the power of hatred?

The

ha

tred of nature? FrOlTI his rejection, his distancing, his desire to

want nature

elle]

no

rnore, his expectation

that

nature recall

him.

That

she rnight not have already totally succurnbed to his

hatred, that she rnight

not

yet be reduced to hatred,

that

she

might

not hate him: that she might nullify

the

power

of

hatred.

For

what would

become

of

his language were nature not,

and

not at his disposal? So, must nature be reduced to nothingness,

yet remain nevertheless,

if

only

as

an

open

space within which

to recall oneself? To enter into presence? To sojourn? To corne

together? Like a dwelling that,

with

its very ernptiness, is still

destined

to

welcorne. Were it even small, a little thing, its shel

tering space rnust always stay open.

For hatred

can be recalled

but not

rernernbered.

It

remains,

insists, consists: in oblivion. Void, spacing, gap, border,

bound-

ary, it orders representation, it shelters, frames,

and

aids it with-

out itself being expressed or presented in representation. The

dwelling of rnan is not built without hatred

of

nature; that is

why it

must

ensure the safekeeping of nature,

and of

man.

Empedocles told of the power

of

hatred.

He never recalls this, though he read

and

re-read it by way of

the works

of

Aristotle

and

H6lderlin,

on

which basis he under-

takes at nlore than

one

point to convey Ernpedocles thinking.

Fronl

where does this silence proceed

if

not

from

hatred,

7



IUCE JRIGARAY

whose destructive

power

he

relays

only in

relation

to

the

thrownness/

forsakenness

of

the poets?

To

this Greek

thinker at

the beginning of the Greek world

hatred

s equal in power to the four elements: air fire earth

water.

t s

equal still

to

love.

Equal

does

not

rnean: sarne.

Hatred

and

love order-disorder the relation to sameness within

the whole. Cultivating therein a perpetual and double rnotion.

Love draws things together into the mixture that brings about

birth:

physis Birth

cornes

from

the meeting and union of

the

things that are

death from

their separation by hatred and from

their return to their initial simplicity. Death itself s born

of

the

separation of fire

from

the other elements.

Each

thing has its proper physis; moreover each can be the

genesis

of

another

thing.

Mixture

s

not

the blurring

of

distinc

tions. At

the

place where others see Tatary the kingdom of

death the

ether

presses downward to earth

itself

and going all

the way to its center

binds

the outermost

points

to the core

uniting

earth

and sky. Penetrating

into

the heart of things love

joins

them

without con-fusing thern. Love can alter the forms

they take

and

can switch

their

places

without

for all

that

de

stroying their elemental Being.

Love reunites what

s

dissimilar: the dry loves and attracts

the wet. Hatred brings

about

the attraction

of

like to like: the

dry

returns

to the

dry. Love of

the other

and love of

self order

the world.

This

double attraction

s apparent

when the terms

are crossed with each other: the love of the other for those that

are the same and

of

the same for others.

The

whole

s

produced

by means of reciprocal proportions

and of

a blending that com-

prises alternating inversions without the whole being dissolved.

What gathers the whole together? The attraction

of

the ele

ments which

are maintained by the hot the soft

and

the

we t



T H E FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

for each other. They are always the same elements,

but

they pass

through

each

other

one by one, dominating in

turn

within the

mixture.

What

unites the whole?

The

power

of

hatred.

Hatred

di-

vides, separates, disperses, maintains and retains within the pu

rity

of

sameness,

and bounds

and delirnits the whole, like a

solid envelope.

The

envelope

of

the world proceeds from the

first element

that

was separated by hatred: air

that surrounded

the world in a circle and was transformed

into

ice

through

the

action

on it

of

fire. Air, condensed

and

congealed, in this

man

ner became the crystalline vault

of

the universe where man

is

born

into

the world.

Within the

order

of

hatred, man s first birthplace would be

where air

and

fire are

found

to

be unjoined from the first.

He

begins

to

breathe upon leaving the

warmth of

his first dwelling.

He

reaches air

as

if

attaining the forsakenness/ thrownness

of

an irreparable loss of love.

This

mourning

the measure

of

which he never takes and

which he does

not think

through, leaves

him

with the concern

to build a place,

and

places, over and over again. Shelters that

they fashion

around

a void, using earth, water, fire.

With

these houses, these works, isn t he reproducing some-

thing of

a useless separation?

An

irreparable

forsakenness/

thrownness

from

which he keeps

himself

safe

through the

economy

of

hatred?

This is

something he never expresses, never

thinks through. Unless he does so in treating the forsakenness/

thrownness

of the poets? Seeking a flash of illumination in the

works of those who still sight that distress that is the destiny of

all-earthly

exile.

The pain of

a separation at

birth that

would

maintain each one

in

his death. A life where love would never

again transgress the

boundary of the proper.







80 IueE ]RIGARAY

and furls its openness

within

a vastness

that

is

continuously

assimilating to the thinker s serenity.

Wait

and lasting openness

of

the absence within which and

from

which entry

into

presence---and the

entry into

presence

of all

things will

rise up.

Which

things are indefinitely near,

and

faraway.

And

are so in relation to each other,

as

welL

They

are things, and are things in relation to each other, only when

re-settled, in

good order, within

the open

expanse.

At

the re

move of a distance that, enveloping

them

in a sepulture of air,

allows theIn, now, to last

They last and

hold

together amongst themselves through a

translucent rnedium

that

rnakes thern

touch

only in appearance.

They

reach each

other

only by way of their capacity

to

appear

through. Their

manner

of meeting always takes the forrn of

superficial contact.

The

appearance lacks depth, unless

it

be

the

depth of

a mourning. And the more they near each other in

their presence, the

more

they distance themselves

within

the

confinement

of

their

airs.

Is this true? It s

hard to

say

This operation is

already of a

different

order

once I have

named it

in this manner.

It

is

less

lofty, less great,

and

can take place only in that place that is

infinitely

more

vast and that

cannot itself

be named. On

pain

of its essence being destroyed? But

then

what

about

any case of

naming? And,

further

still, what

about the

nameless?

Being

is

nothing

but

the

possibility

of

predication.

O f

the

dimension of predication.

If Being can make

itself into

a circle, it does so

within

the

suspension

of

predication. The subject-object axis has

not

yet

been put

forth

there. The horizon line

of

understanding has yet

to be drawn at

that

point. If its path already has been rnarked

out, it is in the form of the encirclement,

or

the rolling-up

into



THE

FORGETTING OF

AIR

a spiral, of a mystery: the mystery of the beginning of Being s

taking place.

Of

its springing forth from nothingness.

Whence does Being proceed?

And

whence proceeds its strange

power? How, and in what, can it unity?

What

is the secret of the

constitution of sameness? And

of

the permanence

of

its site?

Why does the line of the spoken word revolve around this crypt?

Returning to it and shutting it up with one and the sarne move?

What sort of forgetting of the other within ( it) makes the

un-

thinkability of sameness origin the exclusive place of thinking?

What fundamental assimilation ensures the unfolding of Being

as the region of sameness? And what kind of magic provides

for the participation of the whole in the subsistence of this

singular site?

Mustn t Being give back what it has taken frotn the other?

Having assimilated the other so as

to begin to be, and to unfold

on this basis the singular power of sameness, Being gives par-

ticipation back to the other.

Appropriation is founded in this double operation: an ss m -

lation

and a

participation These

do not take place on the same

slope of Being s constitution, but they are to be found, joined

together inseparably, under its dominion.

Man

and world are

reunited in the sorcery of this circle.

When

he does

not

remember himself and

is

unable to

think

that nature vanishing within hirn so

that

he might

be nour-

ished hirn first, he repays nature with this oblivion: it is only

through

him that

she is

Between the two of them, an operation of inversion and re-

payrnent is forgotten with the difference it neutralizes. A

pro-

jection has taken place, upheld by the power

of

love and hatred:

love of the same, which indefinitely seeks the dirnension for its

appropriated being,

and hatred, which divides, separates, and

marks out boundaries, differences.

81





THE

FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

ary are forgotten. She has passed into hirn: he has assim.ilated

her and reassin1ilates her ceaselessly,

without

at present positing

any difference between her

and

him, and

without

a trace

of

her

left: unless it's

that

he exists

Which

is something he forgets.

Thinking

is

not thought of

as a living being. Nevertheless, it is

one a t

first.

It

passes,

im

perceptibly, frorn one life to the other. And, since there is no

other,

it

passes from life to death: within the indifference

of

Being.

Being exists

on

the basis

of

indifference: this he has said.

Which does

not

rnean that

the

thinker can stay at rest there

once and for all,

with

no activity or motion.

In

order to main

tain this indifference within Being, he ceaselessly keeps assirni

lating the being to the being. But, in addition, so that this

operation

is

forgotten, he likewise keeps positing the being

as

being.

The

fact

that

the

proposition

does not convey

phuein

in its

fluid mediurn leaves a nlOde

of

subsistence beyond, and this

side of,

Being-in-the-world-a

nlOde

of

subsistence

that

is

un

thinkable within his categorial order.

There was

a

kind of

sub

sistence already,

prior to

the constitution

of

Being-in-the-world.

A

kind of

subsistence that is not divisible

into

a subject and

things separable from that subject, and separable from each other.

A kind

of

subsistence rnore originary

than

that

named

by

logos

noein and

soul:'The subsistence

of

a living

body that

draws its

life frorn fluid matter.

With

this assimilating relation to fluids,

which is necessary for his constitution

and

perdurance,

man

is

no longer in that world

of

existences that are contiguous at

best.

He

is in continuity. The

partes extra partes

functioning

of

Cartesian space, which for being-there still seems

to

rule the

world,

no

longer takes place here.

The

subject

and

things;' as

well as things

among

themselves, are

in

a relation

of

inter-



Lue

JRIGARAY

penetration: no longer one and another, a subject and a thing, a

thing and a thing, no longer near each other in the sense of

being in contact, or close to, or gathered together within

..

but

near each

other

in the

mode

of

a

kind

of

permeability

of

their envelopes which requires thinking out an other relation to

space-time. IIThings are

no

longer these particular things here,

in relation to a locatable and always unique section of space

tirne.

Their

mode of being

IIhere -if

the term still retains a

meaning in this

case-matches

the sort of space-time they share.

According to space-time as

it

is philosophically thinkable, they

are inseparable, though this is not to say that they are fused

into indistinction. Passage between them, but also, in a differ

ent way between them and the living subject, occurs through

immediate and instant penetration: without a bridge.

If interpenetration

is

a mode

of

being-there, then there

is

an

exchange

that

is prior to the bridge.

The

bridge undoes this

sharing, this relation of indivisible proximity: it distances rather

than brings near. It breaks, prevents, and prohibits the relation

between.

No

gap, breach, spacing, or distancing is possible between

the living organisrn

and

the

blood

that

has always already

nour

ished it, including with oxygen. Nor

is

there any more of a gap

between

it and

the ambient air it continuously breathes once

born.

Nor

between it and rnilk, water,

or

wine, when it drinks

these.

No

interval,

no

interstice, between it and that from which

it derives its most originary form of subsistence. Were there in

these circumstances any such distance, any void, the living or

ganisrn would die.

Being-there, being spatial, and being of a space-time rnade

by and for man, for any assimilation with an aim to the advent

of a kind of lasting growth,

to

establishing flawless construc

tions,

and

to the fabrication of IIthings that subsist ready-to-



T H E FORGE T T ING OF AIR

hand and in the service

of

his rnood (which

mood

is serene to

the extent that things stay within the possibility that belongs

to distance), is removed, ahead

of

time, from what is

most

origi

nal in the saying

s

such.

She who, far from corning in place of another-as linguists

would want all pronouns to do? and likewise

men

all women?

-comes

first, but

without

ever being able to be reached, at least

within this place

of

monstration. Falling short

of

the making

seen-or of

the

offering-to-sight-what-occurs-which

always

retreats,

or

effaces itself

to

make

room

for all phenornena, for

all names

and

their relations. She who does

not

appear but who,

remaining this invisible one,

with

no narne possible in the space

of

monstration, stays ever night and transparency from which

all phenornena spring forth

and

are revealed.

That

one, she there, would be for

phenomenology-which

sought

to

be the

contemplation

rerueillement]

of

what secretly

w s

already

l iving-a

forgotten reserve (store)

of

air. But be

cause she is not situated there, or not only there, this there will

never be anything but

another

image

of

her destiny: the destiny

of

a transparent fluid matter that supports the coming to pres

ence

of

the whole,

and

within which everything takes place.

With

the exception

of

her.

Moreover, even

if

she is recalled in the manifestation

and

naming

of

each

phenomenon

she still remains

without

a name:

beyond. Without an appeaL

How

is this possible?

The

back-and-forth

motion

within her,

between

her and

her, among them, constitutes a

kind of

base

without fissure or closure, where everything can take place with

out abyssal loss.

This modest

back-and-forth motion, which

takes place

prior

to all

phenomena

and all designation, would

be the groundless

ground of

the relation·-between. This state

of

touching herself within herself and

of

each [female] other touch-



86 I U E

]RIGARAY

ing each other

amongst

themselves, with

no

hindering borders,

would provide the groundless ground on the basis of which the

phenomenon

of

distance, indeed, the phenomenon in general,

becomes possible.

When

her role

as

this

condition

of

possibil

ity

is

forgotten, she,

or

she there,

is

encircled in a there that

always remains distanced in a beyond. In a [fernale ] beyond.

Even should

one

wish

to

bring

her

near, so

that the

now

unbreachable fault that keeps

her apart

could be recalled.

However, it is

not

clear

that

Ulan either could or would want

to attain

her

sort of proximity, one

without

boundaries and

without

assimilation of the

other to

the one, whether a ulale

or

fernale one. Even

if

this proximity does constitute the unthought

ground of his thinking. For

if

he gained it his

thinking

would

no

longer have the

right

to

be:

not

as

the sarne,

not

as

such,

not

even

as

being-there.

How

was the horizon and especially the

Region

formed then?

How

did things conie

to

this (there)?

To

what

sort

of

genesis

foreign to their own, have they been subjected to be arranged in

this fashion? According

to

what

arche

is

the whole now con

structed

of

entry into presence, and with no mernory of that

more archaic beginning that caused things to stir in accordance

with their nature ?

Teclme is now

the arche of the whole: the framing of the world

is teclme

and it forgets the origin that is nature.

Plrysis

is

always already subjected

to

technology

and

science:

that is to the technology and science

of

the logos.

In

these, some

thing of the Inanner in which physical beings grow

is

lost. Things,

cut from their

natural enrootedness, float about, wandering

the

propositional

landscape. The phuein

of

physical beings

is

forgot

ten in the physis of the logos. The physical

constitution of

beings



THE

FORGETTING OF AIR

is

forgotten in the rnetaphysics

of

Being. Nature is re-created by

the

logos. In

oblivion

of

the fact

that

what

is

done over in this

way keeps its physical qualities s well. O f the fact that

the

econorny

of

the physical being

is

always recalled in

everyone

of

man's fabrications. That the living body s

Gestell

always leaves

traces in these fabrications. Forgotten traces, they persist s the

unthought and

unthinkable aspects of

the

world

that man

has

fabricated for himself.

Isn't

to

resublnit

to

language in fact

to

resubmit oneself-'

and

to

resubmit

plrysis to

teclme?

Doesn t

Heidegger's lnove

amount to

making

plJ Jsis

out of

teclme

?To making

phueil

from

the

logos? In

a ceaseless inversion

of that

arcbe

where the whole

is lost

in the density of a still-virgin I corporeal site. Where the chance

for a rernainder still left

to

come is pre-apprehended, without

yet being able

to

be expressed.

With

this move, Heidegger indeed revisits the whole of rneta

physics, heading for that which, at the start, was

los t -and

kept-within

it. But he rernains within its architectonics:

the

logos.

Seeking

the

cause

of the

loss in the forgetting

of

this archi

tectonics,

though it

is

the

architectonics

itself that

accounts

for

the loss.

Though the

loss

and

its oblivion

proceed from

an

arrhiteclme: from the

meta-physical

logos.

It is thus that

Heidegger's hostility to,

or

suspicion of; sci

ence and technology can be understood. The

arrhiteclme

rnust

remain the site of flmdarnental ontology's expression of the

whole. The Being of rnan can dwell, be preserved, and becolTle

rnanifest only within a single language, even it: within this

II

uniqueness, it can be expressed in various ways.

Don t today's sciences and technologies claim

to

affirm-to

reveal-that the Being of rnan is but a part of the being? That



LU E ]RIGARAY

the being, physical beings, exceed the Being of man and elude

his language? That, for man, the being has thus become an inde

cipherable mystery?

Which it has always been. This

m

even be found in the Greeks:

in those that Heidegger forgets, or in what he forgets to hear in

their works. Which they themselves forget to restate, even if they

do say it at least once: that physis has a proper arche a proper

space-titne of unfolding,

and

that to submit

it

[elle to tnan s

architechne

his language, atnounts to bowing its destiny to an in

appropriate form

of

unfolding, to suspending this destiny within

a factitious blossotning,

and

to leaving plrysis out, a remainder

stilL A resource that resists technocratic power and

that

can only

unfold according

to

its

proper

motion.

When

man returns

to

draw on it, he exhausts

it

as factitiously as he makes

it

blossom

artificially.

He

cuts

off

both

himself

and it

from its reserve store,

tearing it away from the motion of unfolding

that

follows its

arche.

Its arche: a second time. To begin

to hear/understand,

it al

ways takes him

at

least two times, but to

him

this second time

means the possibility

of

a

return to

the satne.

So, now: its arche. One other than this second one that is at

tributed to physis so that he can begin to think it through. An

other

one, at which he cannot be thought, since this arche is not

in language. Which will be interpreted as: it is not. Thus closing

up

the circle of oblivion. Until the next time. And

without

end,

perhaps. For, to continue to be, it is necessary to persist in for

getting, endlessly.

Heidegger s question would amount to this: How can that

which ensures the

foundation

and conditions

of

possibility

of

a

space of

de-monstration-the

copula-be tnade

to

enter

that

space while ceaselessly evading it? This question relies upon the





Lue ]RIGARAY

universe? What will man pursue in this ek-stasis? \Vhat

part

of

the lost relation to himself and to Hthings will he keep there?

Do this loss and preservation have any other possible to come

than an ek-static one? -

Is the copula necessarily destined to take the forrn

of

an ek

stasis?

Which

ek-stasis?Which instance of the copula does this

ek-stasis keep in reserve? What

part

of the unfOlding of the

being, of the relation between beings, has he always reserved for

hirnself within Being, and within the forgetting of Being?

Or, further: why

is

the copula suspended in an essence

that

radiates its effects only in the fotrn

of

keeping the proper safe?

Why

is

it

rnaintained in this way by being withheld? And for

such a long time? A

met bole

with such a long carry .. A stirring

that

spans the history of the West

without

having already come

to

term.

Opening

up,

on

occasion,

but

always forgetting

that

which in this unconcealrnent is still held back. That which is

kept safe in this production of Being.

In

the historicality

of

Being.

And since Being is within the technocratic

po

with regard

to

its sexual destiny

as

well, the question

could

be rendered

as:

does ek-stasis proceed from erection or frorn ejaculation? Is

it

as destined for erection that rnan is in being-there, in a nearing

that always rnaintains distance in the relation to him and to the

whole, or is

it

rather as destined for ernitting-producing his seed

outside hirnself

that

he is thrown-projected there? Both of these?

How are they linked?

By

the suspense between thern? Would

being-there take place be

held

back between the two?

So the

erection would surge up with the entry into presence, and would

produce the being

that is

present, rernaining all the while also

within the shelter of its reserve and of its own occultation. With

being-there bringing both erection and ejaculation back to the

present, within sarneness, thanks to its dwelling within the lan-







THE FORGETTING

OF

AIR

rates, that prevents conjoining. Except for the conjoining, al

ready, in death's safekeeping. Being: copula already in and for

death.

This

sense

of

the

copula-that

which stays suspended in

between-is a pro-duction of man's and of man. It is the his

torical

3

production of man as rnan: what Heidegger calls the

historical destiny of Being.

He

makes every being participate in this production-by as

similation to him and by assisting his entry into presence

imposing the sense

of

his ek-stasis

on

each.

He

bows the whole

to his sexed destiny, including in its relation to death. He takes

up the whole within his death. He envelops the whole in his

project, thereby depriving it of its proper motion.

Language

[ a langue]

becornes

that

which

gives that

which is

given, though no object

of

giving

is

constituted.

It

is

at present,

the place where there is giving, from which th r

is if a]

that

which gives.

The dative structure becornes transitive at this point: lacking

protagonists, the gift gives itself With no distinction yet be

tween subject and predicate except for the actualizing of a present

that at the same tirne

is

withheld. Giving

i t s l f ~

the gift abides.

The

verb does

not

exhaust the subject, the present does

not

exhaust the past: it actualizes while maintaining the reserve

(store). Giving-.itself-while abiding, staying the

sarne-oblit

erates the passage frorn the one who

gives

to the one who re

ceives, the exhaustion of the (fernale) one when the other is

formed therefrom. Obliterates the debt

that

could follow frorn

this.

The

war

that

could follow. The death that could follow?

The gift gives itself Doesn't this

reduced-and

therefore,

spent/given back, perrnanent, reproducible-dative structure

represent the circle of Being? Doesn't it express this:

that

Being

93



94

IueE

JRIGARAY

is

the re-turn

of

she who will never corne back in a superabun

dance of uncountable space and tilTle

as

well

as

the re-turn to

her? Spelling

itself

out in the entry

into

presence

without

ever

bringing about there that reserve store on the basis

of

which all

production takes place. She who gives herself, flrst, becOlne that

which gives itself, becolTle this there on the basis of which there

lS

glVll1g.

The

gift gives

itself-the

infinity of a sensible

lrypokeimenol1J

without boundary or

distinctive trait, with no

ii proper

being,

no singular body, no physical

physis

A passage that abolishes the

break between the physical

and

the rnetaphysical by

constitut

ing a iground, earth, and mother other than she or they-still

physical

and

alive-who can assimilate: eat, drink, dwell, call,

narne, and,

thus-perhaps?-make

vanish. The gift gives

itself

without

breaking

into

the reserve store,

if

she who will never

come back has become, at present, a sensible transcendental al

ways already

and

neverrnore there.

Does

the

re-turn

of

and to plrysis

as the dwelling place of

Being

arnount to

a sealing up within oblivion

or

not? A sealing

up

of

she who flrst gives herself?

The

there

is

of

the gift now has

its place

within

language. But when language holds,4 as the shel

ter of

Being,

something

of the taking-place of the gift

of the

being

is

already swallowed up. n a

consumption,

an assirnila

tion, an appropriation. A gift of a physical, sensible

ing-

fluid, non-apparent, imperceptible .. HProper for constituting

the transcendental.

This passage frorn

one to the

other,

from

a female

one to

a lTlale one, can only be forgotten. Without forgetting, Being

would not be. t

is

forgetting, repeated again

and

again, and

kept up, that brings about passage to this new ground.

And

if it

be too closely approached, it fades away for it

is

not. Except as

an effect of forgetting.



It

is

with

respect

to the

original privilege

granted

to

time

that

the question

of

the foundation should be posed to Heidegger

this he has said. Isn't tirne already an

incorporation of

space

whose tissue, thus appropriated, will constitute subjectivity?

Won t he turn this in space where man originally comes

about, and does so even prior

to

any subjectivity,

into

an lIin

time where spatiality

itself

will

then

appear? Taking place

in

side a double inversion, where rnan stays s

if

within a shelter-

ing

horizon

that extends

beyond

hiln.

The spatial rnatter of the world is thus already given

to man

when he constitutes subjectivity

and

temporality frOIn it, but it

is given in such a rnanner

that

he

cannot-as finite-master

its

expanse.

It is by

rrleans

of the

system

of

relations

that he

establishes

by organizing the

parts of

space into a single totality

that man

obtains hirrlself s

n

interiority:' This interiority would be

built

of the

infinity

of

spatial

matter to the

extent,

and

only to





THE

FORGE T T ING

OF AIR

tion

of their movements. That s danger.

The

rerrledy? It remains

to

be found.

Forgotten at

least twice, she remains

the nocturnal

ground

and lethal slumber on which bases he erects himself; remains a

transparency irrlperceptible in the entry into presence.

For

man s

part, it is

necessary that certain

priori

conditions

of

space

and

time be safeguarded.

That the

cutting-up

of

space

and

its

reconstruction

s

one

be ensured

s

the possibility for

an

ontological foundation.

In

order

to

establish this ground;

man

takes

from

his first

dwelling his mode

of

inhabiting space s the place

of

an ever

infinite unfolding.

Her relation

to

herself,

to

the universe, and

to

the other does

not

will

the

finite.

But

in

order

to

shelter the

foundation

of

the

thinking of

this finite Being that

is

man, she who bears this

foundation is exiled from

her

dwelling that is infinitely space.

She

must

emerge from it s a being that presents

and

shows

itself, s an object offering itself

to

maris intuition.

The

erection

s

a

sort of

anaisthesis A

trait that

passes

from

a

body that is matter-potency

to

the

act,

from the

flesh

to the

fonn, from

the sensible to

the

intelligible?

In the

West, hasn t

this erection been

entrusted in

a privileged way

to the

look?

Again and again, the erection crosses-though without reach

ing the ground of the groundless-that soil man has given him

self in virtue of having a relation

to

essence, that soil necessary

for his Being-man.

So s not

to

lose itself in this traversal, in its act

of

breach

ing, the erection anchors itself in language. It makes use of this

insensate body, that takes the place for it

of

a guideline, in

order

97





THE FORGE T T ING OF

AIR

For

SOlTIe the trait still penneates the body. For others, it no

longer operates anywhere but in the domain of the look, where

matter-flesh

is

indefinitely resolved into spectacle.

Granting

privileged

rank

to

vision,

man

has already

aCCOlTI-

plished an exit beyond the borders of the body. The subject is

already ecstatic

to the

place that gives rise

to

hirn. He already

lives outside himself: beyond the

body

that gives him sight.

Brought back

into

itself, this outside has becorne form, a

quasi-finn

shell

that

acts

as

a screen for

what

can be received

frorn the

other

outside. Being seized

up

in a receptacle-con

tainer, a fabrication by/of the subject, the

other

is mastered

in

this custody

without disturbing-from

within

or without

the

to-and-fro

motion

of

the subject within

or

beyond

itself

Man

would receive frorn the maternal phuein the abandon

ment

that

orients

him

toward

constituting

his foundation.

In

place

of

that which

would

have

abandoned

him, toward which

he repeats this move of abandonrnent, the matrix of every act,

man gives

himself

nothingness. The tie that bound hirn, as en

gendered,

to

this rnaternal her

[ elle

maternelle] breaks. Being can

exist as one, can close

itself

up in a circle.

Between emergence

from

and

in a

body

of

flesh

and

the cre

ation

of

Being, nothingness

now

intervenes. Being takes place

in a void of flesh. FrOlTI where does this void proceed? Frorn

the reduction of the blood s

productions

and properties

to

nothingness.

Man provides a foundation for himself on the basis of re

ducing to nothingness that from which the foundation proceeds.

NalTIeS

are

born

in the reduction

to

nothingness that consti

tutes the foundation. Between this reduction

to

nothingness and

the transcendental horizon out of the line of a ground that

rests on

the

abyss of nothing words are born. Like offshoots of

99





THE

F O R G E T T I N G

OF AIR

reaching this boundary. Dead always already

and

nevermore,

from forgetting his own birth. Lost in the entirety that

sup

ports his existence, s if in a refuge

of

ice where

no

definitive

event takes place.

An

anticipatory global

understanding-like

an early

repaYlnent-that

steals each one ft'orn its destiny,

pro

ducing each in an ecstasis that is out of reach of r e a l i z a t i o r ~

of the present. Unveiling-veiling that in which and for which

he exists with a power-to-be that is always in the process of

becoming.

Isn't

it

necessary that belonging

to Da-seil1

stay

hidden

so

that

the

entirety can be constituted, and be constituted s

transcendent?

If Da-seil1 s

project of constituting

the

world reveals its se

cret, doesn't the totality come

undone

like a new dream

from

beyond? Like the appropriation-dis appropriation

of

man, and

of

the world, in an ek-stasis where man's power to be covers

the

entirety of beings in a casing

of

imrrlObility frorn which he will

draw again what he needs to ensure his becoming

s

an

immor

tal? Would the world amount to the erection

of

a transparent

but icy grave of all beings and their relations?

To

a vitrification

in which

man

safe-guards

himself

from all deterioration?

Which means that he perceives the whole from a perspective

that

immobilizes the being's activity of becoming-alive.

With

the denial of the spatial dimension of the

point

of

view frorn

which he envisions the world-and every thing-signifYing only

a forgotten suspension

of

an older type

of

motion.

The

confinement

to

which rnan subjects the world and

him

self

ends in this cry: Only a god can save us now:'3 Is this an

echo of the God is dead that w s issued not long before this,

an echo coming back

from the

depths of the foundation of

Greek thinking like a call for the re-opening of the circle

in

which this thinking was enclosed?

101



1 2

L U E ]RIGARAY

At

the

dawn of Greek culture, the path to differentiation

is

through

affirmation of the body. Greek man apprehends hirn

self

as separated from infinite nature by his corporeal being.

Dexterity and athletic valor are essential qualities

of

the

Homeric

hero. Strength and ability in combat are the m.eans by which he

learns

to

apprehend himself. The singularity that, frorn the start,

seems to be the condition for the Hesperian makes hilTI forget

how this individuation was won. At present, he is shut up inside

hilTIself to the degree that attaining anything from outside

himself is a difficult task. Nostalgia for a

return

to the One

Whole-such

is his desire for reversal. Yet

man

cannot by hirn

self undertake reversal to birth and this

is

forbidden the man

of

knowledge without

the

guarantee of a

foundation

inside of

which he takes place.

Whence

the oblivion of the being s beginning?

And what conclusion should be drawn about the

nothing

that inhabits Being from. the fact that the thinker, whose care it

is

to

recollect the initial loss in our history, perpetuates the

unthought

in

lTIan S

relation to his body?4

Mans power comes from the transformation of space into

time: Da-sein cannot realize its Being without an anticipatory

essence that gives it power-to-be. Da-sein possesses the onto

logical structure of projection. It anticipates.

If

physis inasrnuch

as

it gives rise

to

growth,

is

turned toward

the future in a quasi-rnaterna1 way and

prior

to

all naming, then

man lTIUSt project hirnself toward the future so

as

to

not

regress

in the direction of that which gave him life. The generative

wornan, for her part does

not

carve out a horizon by turning to

what

is

before her, she gives herself forth and lTle1ds with what

is given frOlTI her. With this ternpora1 indifferentiation of her

self and the other, which she sub-tends and accornpanies, she



THE

F O R G E T T I N G

OF AIR

provides rnaterial for

the

ek-stasis

of

time.

Though

not therein

herself existing

s

a subject.

Nor will there be reciprocity with or in Da sein for if

it

opens

space

if

it

spatializes

the

matter

for its place

is

given

to

it by

and

with the other the still available

phueil1)

the hyle

that man

would always have to open expose

and

unveil

to

make possible

any manifestation or tneeting. The irruption which man brings

about in cultivating the totality

of

beings helps the being to

become itself; but this

itse t

which it owes

to

the work

of

man

radically divides it and divides

it from

man by an

ecstasis

they are now

situated

outside

of

their original site.

This decline of mitsein is the correlative of the

constitution

of

Da sein

s

separate(d).

Does

the fact

that

Da seill is

essentially

anticipatory empropriate it

to

mit sein? Its proper power-to-be

and the project of becoming it that determines Da-sein) pre

vents

Da sein

frotn receiving itself at each moment from the

other.

Within

the

horizon of Da-sein)

the copula

s

reversion

and

reinscription

of

one in

the other indefinitely-and

while pre

serving the specificity of each-is irnpossible. Da sein draws its

project

from

what

would

be its source

but

for this to be so it

univocally appropriates the other.

To

have an intuition of the

other

that is

not

to

be

projective

one rnust be capable of an infinite intuition-whether this is

understood

s

that

of

a

god

or

divine principle

that

attends

the

birth

of

the

other without

bowing it

to

its desires

or s the

intuition of

a subject who at each time present remains incom

plete and

open

to a becoming

of

the other-and

of

itself in

relation

to

all

others-that is neither

rnerely passive

nor

merely

active.

3



IueE ]RIGARAY

For lack

of

such a turn toward the other, does

not

hatred

become the

apeiron

the dimension

of

the infinite? Pressing ever

outward, it knows no bounds t passes from one to the other

without

stopping. Since love s gathering together does

not

have

the same cohesive force s hatred s disintegrating power, hatred

bursts the bounds of the realm of staying and dwelling together.

Horneless, it

is

condetuned

to wandering,

and

to an endless

course

of

destruction.









w

iue JRIGARAY

from which everything can issue. Ever being born: the living

female one.

And still so little apparent in her unceasing becoming that

those who are distinct will make

her

the mediation for any

con-

stituting of worlds. Thus indefinitely at a remove within their

boundaries

and

re-united in her,

though

not approaching

that

which is most near. Always held back in the distancing of con

founding immediacy.

Which

they approach only as something shut-away and

difficult

to

win,

3

and

nevertheless alien

to

a

ground

on

which

to found his

proper

dwelling. Close by she slips away from any

who corne

to

meet her, in her very manner of nearing. She

touches him, awakens him

to

the air of his birthplace, though

the secret of this allotment cannot be appropriated. But it can

not any rnore

than

this be

kept

in reserve. Here, everywhere, the

orrmipresent

one cannot

be grasped.

Nor

though, does she flee.

She irnperceptibly embraces the whole. Evocations of her live

in

the

familiar quality of every appearance,

the

intimate

tone

of

every voice, the kindly character of every fragrance, the strange

simplicity of air, the kinship of every face. In the quality

of

every land, every cherished being, every thing, that is

the

qual

ity of

being not-yet-folded-up in its proper destiny.

This impregnation of all by all never achieves suitability or

adaptation. t [ lleJ is,

or

is reborn, only in the openness

of

each one

to

that which is everywhere already there, falling short

of any monstration.

So

intimate a mystery that this there can

never be set out, be viewed, without

already being closed up.

Tendered everywhere, ornnipresent, this there resists those who

wish to grasp it

as

if it were a thing. And it

cannot

be

known

ahead of tirne,

not

even by the poets. t takes place only in

becoming. Any announcement

or commemoration

eclipses it

in

a wrap/warp of absence.









IIZ

L U E

]RIGARAY

Language le langageJ the most perilous of all possessions,

created the gods,

but it

cannot destroy them and make

them

disappear in order

to

return

to

her, the eternally living,

to

the

lover?

and

the rnother,

and

to

attest

to

having inherited what

it

is to having learned from her what she has that is most di

vine-the love that safeguards the universe.

s

Removed from love of her through ek-stasis in language, the

poet is laid

open

to wandering

and

distress. Being torn from her

light ernbrace carries him ever further still into a solitary exile

where an essential proximity with the

god

presses near.

But first it is necessary

to

leave.

For the remoteness of a

point ever farther

away

into which what

is

preapprehended upon

its approach recedes indefinitely. Yonder, perhaps, the distanc

ing will end. But this yonder also must be left.

The

need

to

depart

anew for the rnost remote

of

remote beginnings.

The sea is crossed

as

well, for this reason, for a return in

which things that are the same will have switched signs. Where

everything will be differently perceived. That which was

most

familiar having become that which in approach is the most

remote.

For the sea gives and takes memory: it sends one ever deeper

into the rnemory of oblivion. Crossing the opening takes

him

to

a foreign shore, awakens

him to

the foreigner s thinking,

but

retains and transfigures what is foreign so that the appropria

tion

of the proper can be realized.

Turned

toward the other, the

seafarer would always be brought back to the same as soon as he

arrives at the other s banks. Brought back

to

the

H ground

of

Being.

To come alongside a foreign shore would mark the decision

found in the turning: the decision to return to the same.

The

other-earth-would be grasped in its foreign aspect only

to

be exposed clearly upon return to the homeland, so that the





LueE ]RIGARAY

an itnperceptible embrace.

t

opens

with

a distancing that per

mits the

other to

appear

and to

be looked at

to

be clearly ex

posed

in its alterity. And thus to be appropriated by eliminating

its strange charm at the

ground

of

Being.

But this repatriation

of

the other to the world and language

of the same still does not attain to the original nature

rref re

originel

of a faithful thinking. Such thinking is elucidated only

at first in this repatriation. The seafarers the lovers do

not

loose themselves frorn

the

circle

that

binds

them to

the

foreign:

their

horizon is still the rnutual belonging of the one

to

the

other. Perpetually traveling between

the

two they can

with

this

plying sound

the

depth

of

a ground/bottom But this ground

does

not

rernain itnmutable: it does

not

found in the mode

of

an origin. t changes

and is

capable of

not

lasting of taking

place only as a passageway.

t

does

not

lead to the source of

the

one.

The

seafarers the lovers have their being in going from one

to the other. Their place is still between-the-two.

The

poet

puts in so as to keep the opening open. Leaving the

sea he casts anchor in the land

of

his birth. He returns there to

chronicle the days of love.

He

keeps the opening open by show

ing it. Constituting it as remaining open. He does not designate

the

content

of

that

which retnains he consecrates the soil for it:

the founding

of

the house where the gods will come to lodge.

He lives in the between -the-two.

Firmly

establishing himself

there he remains faithful to

the

faraway that nears

with the

com -

ing

of

the holy.

The gods arrive when the poet leaves his lips open for their

speech to-come. It

is

entrusted to

him

as his calling to watch

over this prirnordial openness

that

the holy opens and covers

over

with

its said. Poem

prior

to all saying that bids

men

and

gods to the festivities.



T HE F O R G E T T I N G

OF AIR

In these festivities, the celestial fire is

brought

back to the

native land, the divinities

COlne to

pass arnong rnortals.

Their

meeting, in this dial, takes place only in the stability

of

a singu

lar, lasting foundation.

Once that

plying voyage

is

brought

back

on

course

to

the origin,

and

the sea

to

its source, the winds

to

a

single direction. All movement now proceeding fi om the

most

high.

The

between-the-two bemg kept

open

for passage

to

this

elevation.

On earth and

yet beyond it, the

poet

shows the sky and

thus

makes the earth appear within its poetic ether. That irreal that

gathers earth together on the basis of the unity of its Being.

Transparent veil or rneITlbrane that covers earth over and screens

it as the place of origin. As the ground of birth for the mind,

as

well.

But

at

present

earth is

closed. Shrinking and hiding

behind

what she brings to light. Refusing the grasp of one who turns

toward her

as

toward his own horne. Letting hinl sink into search

ing ever more vain, letting him consume his strength in the de

sire

to

be, irnmediately, that which by right

is

his alone. Except

when love

of

his homeland leads him

to

put himself to the test

of

a privation

of

home.

To

leaving for a foreign land.

To

the

attraction

to

a land other than his native land.

Exiled, away from his home, he

is

always seeking the same

(land),10 in a mediate

and hidden way

Accepting oblivion with

an eye to his future conquest.

Abroad, though,

brought

low by the celestial fire. Still being

consurned.

Until

the

fire teaches

him that it must

be

brought

back

to

the hOITleland.

The poet begins by transpropriating

into

his native tongue

the foreignness of the foreigner. The otherness

of

the other?

He thus keeps open, by showing it, the gap between them. But

he leaves expression

of

the contents

of

this remaining-open

to

II5



n6 IucE ]RIGARAY

the gods and to men. The celestial fire which passes through

him and thus is given to tTlortals will permit them to discover

its truth

The

poet

is illurnined by the flash

of

divine light.

His

look

remains open on that which does not disclose

itself

to him. The

flash of divine

light

opens

the opening

of

the

look. But he no

longer catches sight

of

that which can appear in this look. The

sight

of

familiar things things which showed themselves to him

is

masked by

the

brilliance of the god

and

by the nostalgia for

the origin in which

men

cover them.

The flesh sources indefinitely never moving away from the

setting that gives rise to it. The flesh opens petal after petal in

an efflorescence

that

does not COtTle about for the look with

out for all that avoiding the look. These blooms are not seen.

Unless by an

other

sort

of

look? A

look

that

allows

itself

to

be

touched

by the

birth of

forms

that

are not exposed in

the

bright

light

of day? Yet nonetheless are there. Invisible sub

strate for the constitution of the visible. These gifts give them-

selves in the direction of an outside that does

not

cross the

threshold of appearance. They suffuse the look without being

noticed by sight. Irrigation by a sense-intuition that flows back

and forth

from the

flesh to

the

look frorn the look to

the

flesh

with neither

the

ek-stasis that attends a

contemplation

that has

been resolved nor a confinement in lack of light. Irradiances

that imperceptibly illuminate.

The look which is thus a look in and through the flesh does

not

retTlOVe itself frorn the flesh in the distance of a

point of

view. The

flesh

is not

stared

at

as flesh whose properties the

look

would

have to

uncover or

unveiL Being of flesh

the

look covers the flesh back over in

that

flesh

that

it is which it

received frorn the flesh.

And

which it holds in

common with





II8 Lue

]RIGARAY

only in

the

oneness

of

a natal landscape or

of

an

appropriated

soil.

There

each

thing

is

already

one and

yet many in its super

abundance. Near, near itself; and taking place

with

no begin

ning or end. In an abiding that

is

yet uncountable.

The

openness

of

a time before history.

Where

everything happens but one

tilne,

though

in an

unfolding that

knows no final tenn. This

initial time

is

never repeated but lasts forever. A

mornent

this

side of,

or

beyond,

the

finite

and

the infinite, anterior

to

every

measure, subsisting as the to-come of their

past or

future.

Cradle of the event. Celebration of morning. Betrothal

that

is

prior

to or follows love, when the

look

looks at that which

it

regards: once again for the first time, without the distance of an

always-already

or

a not-yet in which the ek sistance of a

point

of

view takes place.

The departure, the tearing-away of the one

from the

whole

does not yet exist, and the call for its return to the proxirnity of

the center/medium is not necessary.

Here

is expressed that which

is

so close that words

them

selves blind. The holy hides in this so-close. But the day that

divides makes it dwell in invisibility.

This unknown familiar something that starts, stirs, promotes,

that lends its irnpulsive motion to the showing of the (female)

said, would be the bloom of

that

morning with which alone

the

possible exchange of day and night opens. The most matinal

and the arch-ancient?I2

How, why in the name

of

what reason that cannot be expli

cated, are these two reduced or

brought

down to the same? What

naming, what names, furl

them

back into sarneness? And isn t

the design

13

that frees up the unfolding of speech made neces-



THE

FORGETTING OF AIR

sary by the fact that the most matinal

is

constituted

as

the arch

ancient in which all points of all the spaces of time s play would

originate?

The

springhead from which history s various upsurges and

epochal abidances would arise. A springhead that, though it sus

tains these epochs with a propriating [d une propriation] that has

always remained secret, itself would never have appeared within

history.

And

would always have remained the mystery behind

history s unfoldings.

Though

nevertheless, at every

moment

bringing speech back to itself, bearing it unto speech as speech,

on the basis of that which

is

unspoken and unsaid of/in it.

Advancing within itself; speech would always have spoken

solely with itself alone. However, in order for speech to turn

round indefinitely within itself in this

way

something ever

unpresentable, indernonstrable, and unpronounceable has resisted

its welcome within man s saying. Drawing man along a path

that

leads ever farther into the depths, and binding with this attrac

tion all

of

his words and monsters. A sornething to which man

listened, to which he perhaps tried to match himself, but which

remained indefinitely mute.

Because he had never let her speak? Because, receivmg what

is

of her, this gift, he had blindly appropriated it for himself with

out

reciprocation?

That man is heading for decline, heading for the dissolution

of what until the present day held him

together-this

he has

said. At least through the work

of

the poet Trakl.

14

That

dusk

should be the possibility of a new dawn, and this November the

hope for a new spring, whose to-come issues frorn the look lost

in the night-this he has said. And, further, that the destiny of

this other rising is entrusted to the

strange/

foreign-a rising

where everything will be differently gathered, sheltered, and pre-





If to

e

and to think the

same

doesn't this mean that what

is under-

stood to be referred to by Being and by logos is not the same

thing ?

That

Being is not yet said in the logos? A reserve of si

lence circurnscribed by

and

in the order of language.

The

possi

bility for the articulation of language,

and

for all that it offers up,

and offers back up, in presence. Wouldn't this

clearing that

would

define

man s

man, and the properties of which would be: free

dom, vastness, gathering meditation, lightness, radiance con-

sist, or in-sist, in the impossibility, for man, of expressing in speech

that which is most fundamental to his needs or desires?

Mutistic

about

what is essential,

and

desiring to rernain so. Shut on the

subject

of

the

Gestell

for all

exchanges ranging

from the

most

useful instance of consumption to the most sublime contempla

t ion and

keeping this

Gestell

sealed within his world.

Ever irifans when it comes

to

expression of its most elementary

metabolisrn and of

its rnost transcendental transmutations, lan

guage would be situated on a line between earth

and

sky/heaven.

That

which

is

most past and that

which

is

most

future joining



122 IucE ]RIGARAY

upon a wordless pedestal-base, a bridge overhanging

the

unfor

mulated. To breathe,

to

vocalize,

to say-these

never enter into

presence,

nor

are they repeated in language. No

more

than

is the

project

that

anirnates language.

The

possibility passability for

all

that

language gathers, these remain ilTlpossib1e/ilTlpassab1e

in it. Unthinkable.

Language does

not express the essential. t unfolds

as off

shoots, in excess

of

that which founds

man as

rnan. What

is

said, exchanged, presented, or represented would never be any

thing

but

superfluous, relative

to

the conditions indispensable

for existence. Never would

man

speak

out

of necessity. Unless

it were in a very ancient past. Forgotten. The path to which past

would be lost. And would open on abysses. The chasIn of man s

origin as useless? Anirnal that produces gratuitousness between

earth

and

sky/heaven. Preoccupied with death and

not

with

life. Uprooted

from

his birth frorn his growth, into a world of

projections, a world of drealns.

Being would narne the nothing in rnan, and the nothing that

is of his making. It would name his desire for reducing to noth

ingness, which desire is more insistently at the heart of his truth

than is his concern to live. Always already torn from his soil,

always already in mourning. Foreign to that which is most fa

miliar. Out

of

his element

with

respect to what is nearest to

him. Having enveloped hirnself

and

the whole in a useless cas

ing, from fearful anticipation of death?

Death

that, always irn

mediately there, nevertheless would be that which saves? Saves

frorn forgetting the peril of living. Frorn the lethargic sleep

in

which rnen slurnber frorn birth. Corning together in

and

through

language.

But for what reason, and in what way does this lTleeting take

place? In

order to come

to

one another in the suspension

of




OF AIR

what is rnost necessary?

To

rnaintain an order

that

silences the

fundamental needs

and

desires, even if it

is

built on the basis of

these? Having

as

a group found conlmon measure

and

shared

belonging by

determining that

such necessities are incidentaL

Initial inversion

that

is translated into the silence of language.

Nucleus left unarticulated, surrounded by a tautological circle

that

protects it

frOITl

fissure:

to be to

think the

same

Otherwise,

the whole explodes.

The order

breaks up.

To

split Being

and

thinking brings

about

the

end of

the world.

But haven t they forever been conjoined artificially? Being re

maining the unthinkable.

The

complementary residue

of the

logos?

The accomplice indispensable to its functioning. The

copula s untouchable entity, appropriated by man? Retracted

into

him in present anticipation of rneeting with the wholly ot r -

with death?

Copula

sealed in silence

and

non-appearance, at the

depths of language. Keeping language from coming undone

through

and

through, should

to

be and to think differ, should

this secret instrument

of

the symbolic order be revealed

as

a

technologically fabricated entity, and one

that

does not

stand

up to

questioning.

Which

would

point to

the need for forget

ting it.

Should

Being divide in two, what happens to presence? If

this obscure key that opens man s world is broken into at least

two parts, what then beocomes of man s time,

of

rnan in his

space-time?

Should

the

mystery

of

the

syrnbolic be revealed as

the symbol of a rnystery: the mystery

of

a pact, always already

sealed, between two

that

are different,

and

whose articulation/

linkage never appears, is never said,

is not spoken what

hap-

pens to language? That language presupposes

that

two can be

OITlethe same,

the

very same, in the forgetting

that

characterizes

12

3













THE F O R G E T T I N G

OF AIR

cries of distress be needed to create a little more spacing within

language? Where silence would be heard less

and

less.

Unless a move

to

the

we is

made? We who? Always at least

two, whose

estell

would re-articulate Being in an

other

way

Never closed

up

in a circle. Never folded up, or furled up, in a

site. Never here, or elsewhere. Ceaselessly in the course of con-

stituting itself.

Would this still be a matter of Being, then? What a question

There

is always already Being that is produced by two. The Be

ing

of

man, for exarnple.

Why is

this not conveyed inCto lan

guage?Why

does each [male] one appropriate the copula for

himself? Because the copula

produced him as

one? Granted,

but

it did so

out

of two. Which he does not say One always issues

from two that are irreducibly different.

Will

it

be objected that this question arises only among those

who are uninitiated to Being? It is

true

that if things take to

speaking, that's

the end

of

the

world. Due in particular

to the

discovery of truths so elementary that these risk engulfing

the

whole in an immemorial fiction.

12

9







Lue

]RIGARAY

Something would have

to

be loosed in language itself in order

to

allow the appearance of that which prevents language from

letting loose in new utterances. To let arise the yet unspoken.

The

yet

to

be unveiled.

In

reserve .

Which

requires the rethink

ing of

certain boundaries, certain traits/strokes that

mark

out

the horizon of saying, and of its tautological circle.

Being

as

sign,

as

symbol, and

as

copula

that

tends

to

equate,

must

be questioned.

Toward what indissoluble assemblage does this Being point

if

it

is

not

the sign

of

signs, the intangible keystone

of

all ap

pearance and disappearance, the eternal guarantee for all entry

into presence? Sign that shows nothing

but

the requirernent of

monstration for entering the circle of joint belonging

to

the

same language, nothing but the requirement of harmony in a

conversation-always already closed-among human broth

ers in agreement

upon

the subjects

of

saying

and

silence.

United

in a single site whose surrounding does not appear

to

them.

A long history .. That tirelessly retraces the design for mark

ing

out

its furrows. The breaking-in to physis and its covering

up. The deadly landclearing and

the cultivation-as

well as the

culture-that forgets it.

The

wounding cut opened for the re

gathering recueillement] of the seed.

But in

what or in whom is

the

opening? And was it

not

al

ready, before the breaking-in? Why this appropriating repeti

tion? Under whose

protection

is the opening? And for what

destiny is it kept?

What

count, and tale, or gest( ure ) is expressed

at the beginning?

In

what language, reserved for initiates? That

excludes those-or those female

ones-who

have

no

part in

certain rites.

Boys to the right, girls to the left (Parmenides). Between

them, the break between two universes that no longer speak to

one another.

The

ones to the others.

The

ones, creators of worlds,



T H E F O R G E T T I N G OF

AIR

constructors of ternples, builders

of

houses; the others, protec

tresses of a phuein

that

pours itself

out

prior to all cultivation/

culture.

On

one side, rupture, the establishrnent

and

assessrnent

of

levels;

on

the other, continuity, the safekeeping

of

the ex

panse, and of

tirne, that

is

cosmic or naturaL

A phuein already spoken of:

and

never spoken of. Already caught

in man's projects,

and

never expressed in its primal springing

forth. Always already profaned, yet nonetheless ever in the course

of gestation. With the consecration of the left side dwelling

still in silence. Or belonging to an other sort

of

speech than the

one that has already taken place.

Indefinitely

uttered

gest( ure ) of giving birth.The mute dem-

onstration of a kind of

producing

that is always taken from its

purveyoress. Without which nothing

could

be designated as

something produced. Lowly

birthing

of speech that is engen

dered

from

what already exists,

out

of what

is

unspoken.

In

what speech says,

and

what

it

refers/sends back

to

the unsaid.

The totality of speaking would then have as its surety the set

of

grooves

that man

has laid out so

that

his rays

of

light rnay

appear there.

The

unfolding

of

saying finds its fit in a field

furrowed by breaking

and

entering. A book engraved in a nature

that is mute in the re-collection [recueille ent] it offers up to

the

tilling and fecundity of sowing, of growth. A nature yet-unspo

ken and beyond preservation as this earth,

or

this clearing, that

it is The peace of its serenity, its spatiality that is open and

receptive

to

light

and

voice,

the

tonal vibration it

bears all

these rernain

unthought.

A saying that is

not

nothing. A saying of Being? But one that

is

reduced to nothingness so as to be appropriated by man.

With

its secret accompanying and abidance erased, it resembles a

medium

that conveys

in

silence and in the danger

of

appearing,

like the threat

of

a horrifYing void. A saying

that

is

forbidden

33



IucE ]RIGARAY

unless it is repeated by man. Unless the monstration cornes frorn

him. Unless the phenornena

of

nature

are

produced-reproduced

in his language, in accordance with what appears or doesn t ap

pear to hilll.

In

accordance with. what hides, or with what he

hides, in a unique appropriating. Within a horizon and for in

tentions that do

not

signal him. That

are

for hilll already signs.

Not

beyond.

And that which he lets show itsel£ without his yet being able

to designate it, is

always

already caught in the erection

of

his

world.

The

rest inspires in him only terror. Including that which

surrounds hirIl and accepts his listening without his knowing or

recognizing this. Including that

on

which basis he perceives

through listening, and which he cannot itself perceive. Unheard.

A surrounding that redoubles the circle

of

his dwelling. Envel

oping him, sheltering hirn, but in an unattainable manner.

This place unbuilt by rnan, and frorn which he receives him

self- -rernains beyond preservation. Even going to the depths

of

what

he says

of

what is said with his saying, man does

not

rejoin what gives itself this way in silence. Would the source, or

the resource,

of

saying keep its distance, set apart from man s

speaking? Would a bridge be lacking,

here?

A bridge that is yet

to be built?

Does the river of

silence take place in the difference between

what is already said and its re-saying by man? A river henceforth

produced by hinI? Flowing within his world? The unity

of

which

world comes about through uniting the river s banks? In this

way rnan makes silence itself enter his saying. Forgetting the

other that dwells outside his land. A strange silence-always

already,

not

yet, and never acclirnatized. Silently binding-rebind

ing the whole together.

As

long as this silence does not reveal itself to be other.

The

end

of

the world. A call for an unhappened joining

of

differ-







THE FORGETTING OF

AIR

each instant. Always covered over by a soiL Caught in the fOld

of a false bottom

of

a double ground,

that

holds in oblivion

the reduction

of

a primitive fertility

to

nothingness. Culture/

cultivation preceding all

cultures/

cultivations

and

that, secretly,

gives rise

to

nmnerous implantations. Revelation preceding all

revelations

and

that, mysteriously, is

not

said in language. Whereas

ie' shows

itself

in one simple nudity and gives rise to the visible,

which is produced

or

reproduced

on

the basis

of

it. Cloaking it

in layers

of

airs that in1mobilize the freedom

of

its growth.

Imposing on

it dirnensions

or

directions

that

envelop it in shel-

ters

but

artificially carve

up

its primal gushings and entwinements.

n language r a langue]

nothing

is given but what language

gives back. Moreover,

if

language seeks

to

be unique,

it

imposes

itself

as

the closure of a revelation.

t

does not let all that shows

itself come

into

presence. Language-hideaway for Being. Neu

tralizing all

that would

not proceed from its enrooting or frarne-

work.

FrOlTl

its propriation.

Everything being set out

as

a unity fit together in multiple

rnodes

of

showing. But

that

which gathers does not say

i

its

gathering. Neither does it recognize, or even know, fi'om and of

what sort of availability it receives itself in order

to

gather itself

together in this way

into

a world

or

a sojourn.

t

says,

or

says again, only what already is in its language.

Thus not everything-not

what is in excess

of

its everything.

Only

its own language, its own speech, its own saying, its

own

whole.

The

rest remains silent.

And even that which this excess gives is caught in webs

that

only render it neutralized by what it passes

through

in order

to

give itself

to

the

present.

There

is, it gives, Being-the effect

of

the appropriation

dis

appropriation

of

the one

who gives

the

place

of

Being.

The

sojourn

of

mortals

in

their

Being

is

tantamount to

their

37



Lue JRIGARAY

capacity to be those who speak, and in this way appropriate

themselves.

But

one

who does

not

speak

as

a place only in accordance

with the law

or

the statute

granted

it. A decree bestows on it

that

which

is

Clproper

to

it,

as

the sole place that devolves

to

it,

and suits it, within the assernbly of the whole. On the subject

of this allotment, the voice of such a one has

not

been heard.

What

is listened to is only what

was

already shown

or

pro-

nounced by those who speak, and who seek

to

encounter the

resounding gathering [recueillement of the said.

In this manner, they rnatch this whole

that

they are, corre

sponding

to

thernselves in all their modes

of

showing.

Making

ring out in words that which frOlTI everywhere devolves

to

them.

Contra-dieting, counter-saying all.

And

nothing. This contra

diction being but the spoken resonance of the horizon of their

sOJourn.

Alone in his site. Even if a man should seem to clear a way

there, he is only going back toward the

proper/essence

of his

Being.

He

opens nothing that is

not

already open. He obeys

what has already been said, frorn which he receives hirnselE

Contra-dieting amounts

to

tracing the pathclearing right back

toward the source, taking it word by word. Letting-be all that

already is. A journey through webs of relations that at times are

obscured,

but

that become clear in this very waymaking. Each

word thing rediscovered in its sculpted stature within some

cleared wood.

Hailing the word thing Ioosed in this way in speech, man

then binds it

up

again in an appropriating manner.

Nothing there but a forest

that

already is surveyed

and

as

sessed, where a walker will recognize/reconnoiter the terrain.

Nothing but

a world already built, which the

inhabitant

discov-



T H E F O R G E T T I N G

OF AIR

ers as his own.

And

reappropriates for himself, by letting it be.

Mourning the loss of a singular property that would not belong

to

the Being rnan.

Nothing,

then,

but

a language

that

is

already there, in which

speech makes its way freely.

Not

beyond a non-apparent but

imperious layout.

Land

from which one does not come out.

The

borders never re-open. That which is

found

on the outside

senseless

utterance-has

no place being.

Double

rnourning, ceaselessly repeated.

The proper

remains

generic. No rnorta1 possesses it in a mode

that

is particular. It

lets be that which for rnorta1s has forever taken place. It hails

that which

is,

and

does not retain it. It stays within,

and

holds

itself within, that which is. The

proper

knows

nothing of

what

is beyond its sole site. The stranger

to

this land does not exist.

Being implies the renunciation

of

what Being-as Being

takes the place of: and does so in the forrn of mourning. Renun

ciation of the wholly other, for example. Being-built in

the

obstruction and harboring of

the

meeting between one

and the

other. Clearing for going to encounter the said of speech

within

language.

Man

making his way toward

the

depths, the ground,

of

the enveloping rnatrix

of

his being. Responding to it, match

ing it, in a play

of

resonances. Resonances

that

are always al

ready harrnonized? Endless rehearsal

of

a score written by a

rnusician that is absent in the present. The air

to

be executed by

time's performers would last forever. In lyrics. In ringing words.

Where

is the

body

of

the

one

who speaks

or

who

is

spoken,

here?

How is

it

ill

given in this there is or this

it

gives ?4 Or:

how is she given? Or: how are these two given together? What

sacrifice of body or flesh is offered to she-of-ever, a sacrifice

that

survives in his historical monurnents of words

or

of sculpted

things, his braided bonds, his lasting interlacings, his paths, his

layouts, his horizons, his land?

What

has she taken into

herself



14

0

IucE JRIGARAY

that she gives back

as

neutral

flux-there is

it gives?The

grant

ing

of

an inassimilable present? A present in/of what?

What does language say

of

he who speaks? And

of

she

who

does not speak?5

O f their l l i n ~ e

or non-alliance in words or

in silence. Nothing much. Nothing special. That they belong

to

each

other within the

solitude

of

a solitary m.onologue.

That

they are neither separated, nor isolated, nor without relations.

Linked in language

as

in a

con1n1ll11ity

where they must take a

place. A comrnunity that they can only repeat. Only reproduce.

Otherwise, they are incapable

of

speaking. Engaged in a place

frOlTI which they cannot get out. Thunderstruck in the unfold

ing of speech as they are in their sojourn as mortals.

A destiny

on

which no point

of

view

would

be possible.

Only an obedient waymaking within she who gives the sole

site. All-powerful one who does not let herself be captured in a

staternent-she

gathers thern all together in

her horizon.

En

veloping all beings in an opening cloudbreak that spares their

appeanng.

Earth-n10ther of language, re-fashioned by

man out of that

female other fronl which he proceeds and

that

he remembers

only through

the attraction of

clearing away that which pre

vents hirn frorn seeing.

That which

cannot

be seen. Mother with

whom

he will never

be reunited.

Separated

from her by

the

framework

of

a saying

where she is buried in the oblivion of an imn1emorial silence.

Matrix of words/lyrics

that

forever distances hirn fi oul she who

brought

the day

to

light, ulatrix in which she no longer knows

or recognizes herself: where she has disappeared into a

protec

tive surrounding where brothers reply to each

other

in

one

saUle tone. With no

contradiction

con1ing

from

a

felTIale other

whose voice

would

be different.

Opening

holes in

the

wall with




OF AIR

the sound of melodies that would call out for yet unheard

reverberations.

he Sayinl says

he?The

saying by

and

for him. Not her, she

who dwells in the inappropriation of a silence. Invisible base for

all

reproduction

of the visible. Which she

upholds

with an open

yet

blind

eye

She sets one

to

seeing, she gives seeing, she permits seeing,

like the look that encloses the landscape and issues no edict on

the truth. She leaves the freedon1 of the world

to

those who

decree

it and

preserves the project

of

mortals in an inconspicu-

ous crystal.

At least for a

long

time such was her contribution to the fu-

ture this availability that she offered

up

for man s calculations.

However, when natural language the tnaternal

saying finds

itself bowed to the technical irnperatives of the information sci-

ences, perhaps

that

which

it

has always been might appear at

last:

mans

formalization

of

a

primary

nature

from

which he

pro-

ceeds

and that

he wishes

to

rnaster.

The doubling

of

an

operation

would always be required in

order for its stake

or

its

truth to

be unveiled. In order

to

reveal

that

which its enframing left in slumber. But this greater danger,

coming frorn technology,

would end

in salvation only if tech-

nology

manifested its unavailability. Compelling the

look to

re-

enter its

orbit and to

see

that

which it

had

never

perceived the

blindness

that

lies

at

the

heart of

sameness.

An

unveiling

of

the

fundarnenta1 project that rnakes hirn see every being

from

his

sole and exclusive point of view.

Technology, by rnaking the boundary

of

mans perceptual field



I U E

]RIGARAY

appear, would perhaps bring the danger to a close. Through the

arrival or the return-beyond

essence-of

a god or a divinity

that until that point has been expropriated fronl his destiny.

Nature that

is

excluded fron1 history, never said,

that

at last

would take its turn at speaking?

Would

this still be a case of appropriating in language? Or

rather, of listening, beyond an interval of in-finite difference

and deferral un i111il1£ d1ferendJ

to that

which would not neces

sarily speak within the same horizon? Does this dialogue

prom

ise

to

be a possible one? Or n1ust speech always rernain a

monologue in one single voice? Will the call that crosses

the

boundary

of this solitary place never be heard? It

is

true that, by

himself: man is unable to transgress the boundaries of his site.

But cannot some

other

voice reach the heart of this enclosure?

Drawing

him

into

listening

to

what would be said in a different

landscape.

Is the dOlTlination of language s rule unshakable? Allowing

merely the addition of stylistic devices, of rhetorical flourishes,

of still unsung rnelodies, of lyrics or words yet

to

ring out,

within an empire of unchanging delineation. Will

man

speak to

hilTlself: still and always, through a mediunl that

is

determined

by hirn, through an

other

defined in him, through a god or

divinity created or interpreted by hin1?

To

open

up

and build a place for oneself within an over

abundant nature so as

to

re-implant there a language whose webs

blind and hold captive with their bonds, isn t this still and al

ways to

reproduce the sarne old story:

that

of a lack of liberty

in relation

to

the other?

Thus

of a lack of exchanges

and

rela

tions with her. Unending dodge, the danger of which threatens

ever rnore,

without

a glirnpse

of

salvation.

Unless a god, perhaps? Should return frorn beyond this




OF AIR

circle, announcing or bearing a metamorphosis

of

speech, at

tainable neither

through

the use

of

force nor, even, through man's

imagination. A

god

who changes the relation to speech at

the

very

heart

of

its unfolding,

with

that

move

of

appropriation

and propriation

that

ordains all modes of relation there. A god

who bears the rose

to

where the spider

and

its web were

to

be

found? Substituting for the weaving

of

threads

that

are not with

out meaning the sight of the flower's opening without a why ??

A sort

of

speech

that

would be

without

a why;'

that would

flower because

it

flowers,

that

would have

not

a care for itself,

that

would not desire

to

be

seen-wouldn t

this be the sort of

speech

that is

awaited? A speech

of

exchange

without

reason.

Speech

as

the offering for the possibility

of

exchange. Speech

that

no

longer ensures the consistency

of

things,

or of

words,

nor

their upright

conduct

in a permanent

posture-their

per

fect

stability?-or

the

bonds

established in accordance with this

project,

but

speech

that

leaves these to their flowering.

Speech that is never uttered, except at certain

points

prior to

thinking?

And that

the

philosopher

cites-recites only with mod

esty

and

with arguments asserted solely on the basis

of

absolute

authority.

Contradicting

himself: such spoken words would

not

work

without

an extrerne precision

and

depth of thinking.

Would

their site be insituable?

Opened

without

a foundation.

Thus,

without

an enclosure?

With not

even a care for itself.

A speaking for all

growth

and flowering

that

is still in si

lence. The supply appropriated for the unfolding of saying?

Making

of

its whole

self

an offering,

the

rose would have

no

iiwhy

other

than

to

flower.

It

would offer itself

to

sight with

out foreseeing or overseeing its irnpact.With

no

furtive, self

interested glances at what it presents or represents. Paying no

attention to

the world

that

surrounds it.

Which rnen

could not

do,

and

still remain within their Be

ing?

Their

destiny requiring

that

they ceaselessly observe

that

43



144

L U E

]RIGARAY

which fonTis, informs, and surrounds them. That they cease

lessly be in search of reasons, including on the subject of the

rose and its secret As for the rose, it would have no need for

this. Since its need

is

to

flower. -

And its very flowering requires

no

design [trace ouvrantJ a

simple spontaneous blooming/

un

concealment. Visible

with the

unclosing

of the

rose s gathering [S il recl eil]J an exposition

with

no prelitninary objective

or

lens.

With

no a priori frame that

would produce this flowering

as

such.

With no

project

that

might

will

it so.

How does

man

designate this strange relation

to uncon

ceahnent/blooming? How does he speak of this kind of growth

that does not take place in ek-stasis of its world?

How

does he

appropriate it for

himself

in saying?

Doesn t he over and over again re-cloak this groundless ground

for the dwelling of Being in reason with its various destinies?

Lethargic distancing

of

that most intimate plJUein Ever

remote

frotn the land

of

his conception,

birth,

childhood, body, and

f lesh-a silence abides about the unconcealment/concealment

of these. Ever in want of relations.

Homesick

for his native

land. A mourning at the heart

of

the unfolding

of

a history

story

that in word is uniforrn? Whose deed would never be with

out

a why -would never be an offering without reason, with

no appropriating to justifY it. Nor would it be without an at

traction

that already is subjected to a teleology.

An offer of exchange that never

is

said in language.

And

that

appears there

as

nothing, void,

as

a danger where the secret of

the relation to

the tnost

intimate

is

situated-retained. Language

that refuses to speak about what is essential in and to its

own

essence. And that keeps this captive, sealed

up

again, and buried

beneath all unfolding speech, all resounding words. Laying down,

in place

of

this unsayable something, a principle that at base is



THE FORGETTING

OF AIR

equally mysterious. Its Ineaning being

that

it may be set out

and

laid down as the stable

foundation

for a world. As the su

preme director of

the

ordering of the principal

or deri-

vative lTlOtivations that by right would enter

that

world. As the

unconditioned

master

of

adm.issible propositions,

of

permit-

ted

perspectives.

Operations that

are

unknown

to

the rose?

Which

flowers

in

earth

that

is foreign

to

such a tradition, left out of the rnono-

logue

that

this latter maintains with itself: Speaking with

itself

With not a care for the flower. Except, on occasion, for the

purpose of demonstration?

But a wall separates the rose from the question

that

is ad

dressed

to

it at

that

point. A questioning

that

runs against a

chain

of

mountains and returns

to

the questioner in a lone echo.

The

stopping

point

of

thinking, thinking s finishing stitch.

The rose is there, though, static before one s eyes. Too close

for what is

most

singular

about

it to be perceived. The rose rnay

be seen,

of

course, like some evident

thing that

is so f ~ l r n i l i r

and

certain that it seems not

to

be

worth

looking at for any

strangeness it

might

have. Nor for the flame that it bears to

thinking? A

contemplation

that

illurninates,

that

touches

the

senses with its still radiance but does

not

tell

of itself

To

tell

of

the rose, wouldn t speech forever have

to appropri-

ate the rose anew for

itself

by proceeding toward an origin

the

rose does

not

have? Seeking, in the rose, a false depth: the rea

son for its Being. Relinquishing na ive admiration to discover

the cause

of

the

flower in thinking.

Into

which

the

flower can

not be transposed? The metaphorical rose no longer blooms-

fixed in an ideal figure. A figure possible only thanks to immediate

sensible perception,

something ITlan

ends up forgetting.

Doesn t Being find its

foundation

in a yet-unspoken sensible

imlnediacy? In a silence

about what

secretly nourishes thinking?

145



LU E ]RIGARAY

The unsaid or the unsayab1e in man s relation to a nature that

escapes his logos A nature that gives itself in that unnan1ed place

where the contributions of the o ~ g n s of

all his senses are col

lected. Receipt that he re-projects

as

a world and its things.

Thus re-creating the whole,

and

making of each thing all

of

them and

of all things each of then1, without the secret of this

productive activity ever appearing to him.

But doesn t he always seek reasons on

the

side of what he

gives, and not on the side of what he has already received when

he gives back? This receipt being inappropriab1e? The heart of

the difference and deferral [difJerendJ that is buried in the depths

of language [ia langue] And that cannot be unveiled without

danger. The abyss of what is yet-nameless for rnan and the abyss

of

a female other that is without language the relation to this

other

remains an abyssal one.

The re-covering of irrunediate sensible perception in Being

thus harbors two others that are ceremonially yoked without

connection: what is yet unspoken, in the case of rnan,

and

what

is

without

speech, in the case of the other. But the deciphering,

the release, of this seal

of

Being

cannot

take place in a language

whose fundarnenta11TIove

is

propriation.What

is

too

near would

slip its seizure. A distance, there, would be

of

unbreachab1e

measure something infinitely small whose cipher would re

rnain in obscurity. Sornething

that

suffuses the eye

and

the hear

ing and all senses, like an air

that

is neither seen nor heard

but

nevertheless

is

there.

Fluid medium

that accompanies every per

ception

and

bestows its

tone

upon

it. Like a silent

incarnation

everywhere at work. A perilous incarnation, when

it is intended

to be

appropriated

in a single sort

of

saying.

Since he is of flesh, which can only be received from

the

other, what becOlT es

of

hirn if flesh

is

not given back to the

other?

What

difference,

one

that admittedly

is

not easily deter

mined one

that

is

infinitely

small is

abolished in this rnove?




OF AIR

With the resource for an infinitely great unfolding heading

to

ward ruin. For lack of a boundary, for want of a future,

through

the destruction of reserves. Through the reduction

of

the

other

to

nothingness. She

is

still

and

always assirnilated and

not

known

or recognized in her irreducible difference. A network of at

tracting charges alone would bring her near, would rnove her

away

according

to

past, present,

and

projected needs. A

pro

duction of forces that are already taken from the f lesh-of

the

other. And

that

become entangled in blinding webs.

Must

man

finally discover

himself

to be carnal in order for

him to see what he appropriates from the other?

For

this unveil

ing

to

take place, isn t it necessary that he give up his language

[langue]

What

gain does this renunciation prornise hiln?

The

need to ensure his salvation? Isn t

it

already

too

late for this

sort

of

thinking? Doesn t the interplay

of

forces

that

he set off pre

vail today over any possible meditation? Over any return

to

start

ing out for a new future? In this technical world he has fabricated,

this world that resernbles an organisrn that now has escaped

him, does

man

still have

(the)

tirne

to

study his destiny?

From

being a creator, has he

not

becorne a machine in the service

of

his creation?

An

effect of that archi-techne that

is

his language.

An

effect of his solitary rnonologue with his plrysis his polis his

things, his brothers. Brothers that are all speaking the same (way),

without

knowing of what this sarneness is. Dwelling, stirring,

even being stirred within a sarneness that they neither know

nor

recognize. Registering only what they have always already granted

each

other

in the way of a perceptible answer. Themselves, thus,

and nothing

else.

But this sarneness has not yet thought

through

what consti

tutes it. Which elernent is it, for instance, that establishes the

kinship between light

and

eye? Where, in man, does the rnight

of

his

God

reside?

What

bond

do

these two beings maintain?

47













THE FORGETTING OF

AIR

inside-outside of the other. He creates things,

immanent and

transcendent, matter and form.

Things

whose approximation is

remote, for in theIn

past

forces are evoked,

and

future forces

invoked,

that

resist any present co-belonging.

They

remain at

rest,

but recall, or call for, movements. Immobile, their forms

conU11emorate the mobility deployed. To l t them be then, means

to leave

to

them the forces that they contain or retain.

To

will to impose one s mark, one s world, one s Being,

dis appropriates. This creating carries off, in or with itself, S lne-

thing of the proper and at the same time covers over what will

no longer give itself as (prime?) matter

to

be consumed, used,

given form, produced. A twofold loss,

of

oneself

and of

the

other, in oneself

and

in the other.

There

is neither the

one nor the other. But, rather, co pro-

duction,

of

a world or of things, in a dwelling place

that

ob-

structs access

to

one same space-time. One

and

the other, the

One

and

the others, separated in

ek-sistallcc.

Cut from

their

rootedness, they meet up in an encounter of signs

that

remem

ber or

await,

but sojourn at

an unreachable rernove: the im

memorable oblivion

of

their

joint

belonging

to

the

production

of

the presentness

of

presence. A joint belonging

that

is never

said, never repeated-represented

in language, never articulated

between thetn at the sarne tin1e.

Always at the wrong time, out of synch, syncopated.

When

man

makes the

thing

his own, he has already torn it fi om its

soil, giving back

to

it

as

a

ground or

a

surrounding

what

he

already has received trom it. Countering, in or upon the thing,

the origin of the Gestell that is his living body. Settling his

debt

by enveloping it in, or hollowing it out of, airs? Using his knowl

edge

and know how

in this. Deploying

or pouring out

his en

ergy here, but thereby immobilizing the thing in a

surrounding

of

death.

53



I54

LueE

JRIGARAY

Undying rnemory, which the thing silently figures. And even

if he acts

upon

or in it, the thing, this doesn t mean that he

speaks

to

it any the more. As for the

lyle

3

all rnan finds are

points

to

be

criticized/

re-stated. -He does

not

tell

of

lyle

in its

initial appearing. He repeats and rehearses his project in or upon

it.

And

he comes upon it only

as

already produced by himsel£

He

gathers it up, gathers

himself

in Ineditation within it, with

out

ever welcoming

it

in its initial upsurgence, in its first birth.

When he and

it

are situated there, they already are no longer

together.

And

neither lyle

nor

man

is fi ee

any longer with regard

to

their openness

to

each other.

In

the there is neither one shows or

lavishes itself: the effect of an overflow or shortage in their meet

ing, in which meeting each spares itself within the other in an

econorny that

is

based

on

the cache or the reserve store, and

that

vanishes

(them into)

their difference.

here

i s a gift of language in which the gap, indeed the abyss,

of

an irreducibility is

obliterated-the

persistence of the other

in presence. Talking

to

itself, language forgets the fundamental

concern of its aim:

how-and

in what, for what- to join with

the other that springs up, is situated, and dwells before one.

What

freedorn opens up, or

is

rejected, in the space of this

meeting?

How

has man been able

to

miss the

point

that for

him

there was no task rnore essential than to shed light on this ques

tion? What are the stakes of such a forgetting?

Hasn t

his project been to construct a world for

himself in

and through language,

without

care for the apportionment of

this place? Isn t what matters to

him

that his language give

him

place?

That it

prepare a

home

for him? Tool for exchange that

is

rnade of sorne

neutral/neuter

transcendence whence the inhab

itable would be received? Place of places, refuge out of which



T H E F O R G E T T I N G OF AIR

any interspace for tneeting would

open up

again, language would

contain-retain, in itself, the possibility for the exchange with the

other,

though

in the nlOde

of

the serenity

of

a free clearing,

of an open reserve. One that still

s

not shared? The safeguard

ing of the conversation with the other would have its

monu

ments: a vacant interspace, a

short-cut of

a bridge.

Here

the

emptiness and fullness

of

a rnovement -of going-toward would

be com_memorated

with a silent distance. Everything would be

assembled there

and no one

there would speak

to

anyone else.

O f what

and

in

what

are these historic monuments

con

structed? What rnaterials were used and went into their devel

opment?

There s air, light, earth, water, and energy used.

To

clear

land

or to

erect.

There

s

what

s

given in nature

and

there are

moves

of

appropriation.The received offering,

and

what

s

made

from it. Living birth growth, and efflorescence, and the

medi

tative gathering

of

these, their ordering in accordance with

the

world

of

man.

There s language, like a rnodel, or like the

esten

for the

project

of

the whole's belonging

to

him.

Instrument that

ap

propriates through the folding up of the whole within man.

Following his specifications. Not

therefore, a

tool

for exchange.

Language never gives back

what

it takes. Unless language is

opened

back up at great depth? Unless everything

that

language

(re )says, veiled in

death

already,

s

gone back through? Unless a

path

s retraced all

the

way

to

the

heart

of

this

empty

clearing

where that which language has never

known

how

to

say s con1-

memorated? Freely. Without a care. Without prevision or provi

sions.With no distress, or bustling

about

in anticipation of

what rnight prove

to

be lacking.

With no

technique for gaining

the submission

of

what prornises

to

be a danger

or

a

boon.

55






OF AIR

whorn he turns away

as

from the origin of his peril, constitut-

ing her in and of an imrnernorable oblivion. Should he move

back toward her, he would find nothing but an act

of

breaking

in

and

of

invisible covering-over in a temple

that

doubles

her

so

as

to consecrate her disappearance. Unless he renounces his Being,

his world, his

ek sistal1ce.

Being a

dream

of autonon1Y, self-begetting, and auto-

production that

is

called

truth. Truth

that

is

not

to

be unveiled.

Looked

at

too

closely, it disappears.

That man should

have

built

frorn it a world does

not

mean

that

this world

is

true. It signifies

the imposing

of

a power the power to separate,

to

cut up, to

divide Along with its corresponding powerlessness:

to

reunite.

Separating presupposes the

constitution

of an envelope

as

such. But the envelope has an inside

as

well

as

an outside. And

doesn t what the envelope protects exclude the possibility that

the envelope

protect

itself?

Is this likewise the case for the Being of man, of the world,

and

of

the opening,

of

the clearing? Never does

that

which

protects take

itself into

its

own

care.

An

overflow

is

always for

gotten

in the abiding nature

of

preserving in sarneness. Whence

the unfolding

of

a destiny.

One

that

is

always

under

threat

of

being forsaken. And one whose erection

is

so fragile

that

its

safeguarding requires a matrical encirclement.

In

each epoch,

the beginning

lTIUst

be

rebound reknotted to

the

end

so that

this there holds. What

is

forgotten

or

rernains in slurnber always

threatens to re-emerge.

To

re-open the horizon,

to

shake the

ground,

to

fill

the

air,

to

unhinge

thought.

Being this

folding

over

of

the base hides

nothing but

the need for a doubleness

that

is

essential for the whole

to

dare

to

enter into presence.

Secret guarantee for an identicalness that would resist deterio

ration/alteration. That lasts,

proper to

itself only.

But

nothing

remains the sarne, not even in death. A drearn

of

157







160 I V E ]RIGARAY

no initiative possible still.

Not knowmg

where

to

re-discover

himself in silence so as to start over to speak about what has

never been said: himself.

Always said never said. Ever ·unfolded

and

never

thought

through

with

respect

to the

source of speech.

Why

speak? For whom?

To

whom? Between his world-his

beings both given and

fabricated-and

his vanished silent god

or gods what is n an? Neither the fanner nor the latter? Doesn t

this still

amount

to

not

thinking himself through? To not think

ing

through

any

of

these?

How

are they articulated in him? How are they exchanged?

What

bridge is there between them? How do creature and

creator share language? And

if

they are but one what about

the other entities built

on

the saIne model? Is there any pas

sage between these entities? Was it not the destiny of language

to make thein meet up with each other? How is it possible

that man should have advanced so little in the course of this

waYlnaking?



Is Being

not

the

unappeared-non-apparent estell of

air?

That

clearing where

man

lives the

estell of

air out

of

which he cuts

his milieu builds his

home-and

where he takes place.

With

which

and

in which he abides in constant exchange. Exchanges

that

range from the most useftll to the

most

useless.

From what

his survival rnost requires

to

what

meets his

most

refined fancy.

From the most elementary of breathing

to

his

most

sublime

tneditations. Binding together all of the senses: frOln animal

olfaction

to

philosophical scenting-n1odes of perception that

are often covered over by the hegemony of the

look

and

of

hearing

instruments of

theory tools

of

reason. But it is still an

itnperceptible fluid

within

which all beings all things

and

any

other

COlne alongside one another. t is

that

thanks

to

which

they appear enter

into

presence

and

can be

put

at a

distance

moved farther away

or brought

closer by Really

or

virtually:

the

density of air is no barrier to approximation.

This

density hides

nothing. Nothing is hidden in

it

but air. Nothing cache of air.



I6

IUCE

]RIGARAY

Air-caches-nothing. A reduction

to

nothingness without

destruction,

at

least without any apparent destruction. A reduc

tion

to

nothingness

that is

necessary for the very appearance of

any being, which being would

not

take place

without

the air

that it hides with its entry into presence. Thus occupying, and

without a care, a space that is already preoccupied by the condi

tions for its upsurgence.

Free-in

air. Air that it causes to dis

appear by appearing. For nothing other than it can rnanifest

itself

[se produire]

where it is situated. Two things cannot take

place in the saIne place,

cannot

dwell openly in the sarne air,

cannot at the same tirne invest the same instance of appearing.

And what becomes of air when the being appears within it

t

is

reduced to nothingness.

And

what becomes of the plurality

of

these instances

of

reduction

to

nothingness in the domain

of the appearing? They are forgotten

and

recalled in the rnulti

plicity of the gift of presence, upon a ground of a

there is

of

the)

nothing that

makes possible this multiplicity.

And what if the tbere is insists based on its

not

being nothing?

Nothing-not being. What rernains? This negative inscription

of the appearing whence Being proceeds? This possibility for

every being to enter

into

presence-Being. Rerrlernbrance and

oblivion of what provides place, of what gives rise to. This noth

ing-rnernorable that rnan appropriates for himself in being-there.

This space free of presence where the world of man is estab

lished as if it had been built up from nothing.

And this nothing? The rnost elementary condition of his ex

istence,

or

of his

existancc

He forgets it.

And

isn t the erasure of

this primary and ever-irnrnediate necessity blindly constituted

as essence? Being s perdurance in oblivion? The persistence of

the forgetting of Being?

Let

us recall

that

he appeals

to

the

tautology as an evocation of Being within saying.) Which for··

getting, repeated indefinitely, installs rnan in one same air. Pro-









166

I U E

JRIGARAY

It is of the essence of veiling to conceal itself and thus

to

founder in oblivion.

The

foundation that

rnan provides himself entails the veil

ing

of

the nothingness

on

·which it rests.

The

veiling

of

the

reduction

to

nothing of that whence, matter-flesh, he proceeds.

The veiling of making that whence he traces his birth mto the

groundless.

This veiling conceals itself: The veil the operation of con

cealrnent. The veil-lTIan s non-attestation that Being amounts

to

Being

s

nothing.

The

non-resulTlption

of

the Being

of

the

nothing within the Being of man. The negation-denial of the

passage by way

of

being nothing. For nothing other than

to

be

through the strangeness of the jump beyond what gives

him

life. Through ecstasis that is always already beyond the place

that gives rise to him, the place that gives him place. And with

no

possibility for participating in generation in accordance

with

this place. Always already separate in relation

to

nature that

brings hirn into the world, in relation

to

the maternal whence

he is born.

When

he nears it, his approach will only take place

within the distance of a mere nothing of Being. O f an ilTlpos

sibility of Being.

Man s truth

will be created

s

the unfolding

of

a base be

tween the absence of a possible foundation in his relation

to

that

whence he springs

forth

and the emergence

of

predication:

the world beginning over again. The formation of a surround-

ing where he can exist by reproducing hirnself s rnan.

Discourse the

means by which

man

hilTIself reproduces

himself starting frorn the lTlystery of his begetting, about which

he can say nothing. Saying nothing, thinking nothing, being

nothing, these subtend the making

of

that ground-bridge on

which man is situated and where he exists s an essence.

It is

not light

that

creates the clearing,

but

light comes about





168 I U C E

JRIGARAY

location for entry into presence--stays the same. If a given be

ing has sprung forth into a given circumscription of air, there it

reulains forever. Indeed, the surroundings

of

these advents are

sedimented within Being. And, yes, they are disposed within

the

continuity

of

a memory.

Doesn t their ecstasis in a there where everything can corne

back, come to pass,

and

be anticipated mean that the rnultiplic

ity of instances of taking-place exceeds the capacity for remem

bering, though this condition doesn t rule

out

tearing beings

frorn their setting so

as

to

gather

them

in thinking,

on

a

ground

of

sarneness? The insensibility of dwelling within man.

O f what [is] this place where all would be preserved without

alteration/deterioration? O f what

is

the psychic guarantor

of

air made?-this remains

unthought.

And it is taken as what

destiny, cast down as it

is

at the groundless ground of Being? By

a will

to

appropriate

that

removes things

from

their living sub

strate so

as

to bring thern to ek sistancc in the world

of

man?

But can air be appropriated? Endlessly? Is there death, other

wise?

Can

the singularly omnipresent be apprehended by a liv

ing being that is particular, or does

it

infinitely overflow such a

being?

Wouldn t

it be due to this lack

of

the power to appropri

ate

the

whole that this being gives hilTlself

the

sky? A

to-come

that is

always partly attained, that

is

never

on

the scale of a

project whose ground slips away already beyond and still in

exhaustible.

And unreflective: everything comes to pass

within it

but it

remains, like a groundless, bottomless there is

The

condition for

the gif t -an ever sparing one o f beings and

of

beings

as

a

whole.

But it is forgotten that inasrnuch as it is

of

air the sky still

belongs or co-belongs to the earth. That the sky consists nei

ther

in nor

of

nothing

and

insists neither in nor

of nothing

with

the

exception

of

a

reduction of

its nutritive eleulent to



THE FORGETTING OF

AIR

nothingness re creates or projects it like a chasm, whether frOlll

on high or on low, that threatens the very heart of presence.

The

gesture marks

and

re-rnarks the entry

into

presence;

it

appropriates and gives at the sarne tim.e. Mere presentation

representation, which forgets the gesture and

that

in which the

gesture takes place, creates illlnmtability in an empty f ree?-

spatial ecstasis that belongs

to

a time with no

memory

of the

place in which it is rooted.

The

gesture re-imposes directions

and

dirnensions

on

space,

turning

out of its course the teleology

of

time: past, present,

ftlture.

It

unfolds again the in-stance that is sub-jacent

to

ecstasis.

It confounds the erection of the transcendental. It makes tur-

bulent what

should

reillain unm.oved in

and

for the

connnemo-

ration

of

Being.

It

neutralizes the

neuter/neutral

character

of

a

th r

is

on which basis everything would be given-given back.

Intact. Disfiguring the order

of

language.

So,

to

transcend indicates a direction:

fi om

... to.

An

advance

or

an ascension, depending on the sort

of

plane

that

is tra

versed.

When

the transcendental exists

as

such, it suspends in

imillutability the movernents that have

constituted

it.

It

forgets

the mobility, the motivity, and the still-sensible experience that

have given rise to it. It is the result of various paralyses. Inert

sky of thought.

An

inversion of high and low in which thought

dissolves, so

as to

regulate frorn this void all movernents in space.

But,

of

course, when

man

comes

into the

world he

is

already

entering a pre-established system

of

relations between beings.

This past, which for hilll never will be present, is granted

him as

the

ground

upon which basis he exists. Lacking all possible ex

perience of its constitution, doesn t he receive

it as

the estab

lished

sky/heaven

for any and all vision?

Unless he deciphers its inscriptions in

the

matter and

the



17

IucE ]RIGARAY

bodily matter-in which he is situated. Unless he examines what

this representative vault has already taken from

and

given

to

the

earth? Unless he questions his historic basis as a bridge between

earth

and

sky/heaven?

If abyss there is then what step/advance is tnissing? Of

what [is] this sky/heaven

on earth

that

is the

world

of

man? If

it is a question

of

going beyond, is the only spatial direction

possible perhaps not that

of

leaving behind but that

of

keeping

below? The

advance/step

is

not

necessarily a

horizontal

one.

Otherwise, frorn where

would

ecstasis proceed?

But, frOln the look of it, one

or

more steps/advances are

lacking. Man leaps, and forgets the bridge to be built between

these banks: earth

and

sky/heaven.

He

wants to understand

the

entirety with

no

care for how? of what? in what? to construct

the elevation of a point of view that overflies without forget-

ting, with

no

care for how? of what? in what? to build an eleva-

tion

that is

raised in remetnbering itself: Isn't the emphasis on

projective anticipation a consequence

of

the obliteration

of

the

spatial dirnension that leads to ecstasis?The world

of

man would

hold

up in air

with

no care for

the foundation of

this construc-

tion. A peak, whether from on high or on low,

from

which the

entirety

would

unveil

itself

to hinl. But

of

what, in what,

and

how does the architecture of this

depth-its

Gestell hold?

What

is

the nature of its power?

How

does this there becorne?



One who ventures ventures life itself:

Surpassing life barely, by

a breath: the one that, if preserved, saves through song. Prophet

of

the pure forces that call for

and

refuse shelter. Doesn t all

that

already exists paralyze the breath? Dwelling ilTIperceptibly

in air. Holding air back from being freely dispensed. Imrnobi-

lizing within countless webs

that

which would still wish

to

cross

through this preoccupied atrnosphere.

nd one who does

not

venture into the abyss can only re-

count and

retrace paths that are already cleared

and

that obliter-

ate the trace of the fugitive gods. Alone, ever alone, the poet

runs the risk of rnoving out beyond the world

and

from there

of

inverting the

open

until

the ground

of

the groundless

is

reached. Saying yes to

that

which calls him beyond the horizon.

He

has left

at

best a breath, in this abandonment. First and final

energy that is forgotten so

long

s it is not lacking. Present

everywhere, though invisible, bestowing life upon everything and

everyone, on

pain of

death.

Adventure seized

at

each rnornent by the poet,

that

seeker



LUCE ]RIGARAY

after still-holy ether.

Which

today is so covered over

or

buried

that

he can

trust

in

no

heaven,

no

earth. No mouth speaks his

pathway.

In no

direction can he find a sign. No place is habit

able for him, he who has

e e ~

invited to re-open a site for

festivity. He thus must leave the world, remaining all the while

mortal.

And

must start for some

distant

unheralded shore. For

some uncertain life. A blossoming for which the soil fails to

corne. Tearing himself fi-om his native earth to strike

root

in an

earth still virgin. Thus unknown. Unforeseeable. Free, for the

venture.

Loosing

himself

even from that captivating magic

that makes

men kindred. Exiling himself from any willing suited to an

existing comrnunity. Descending into history's netherworld

to

search for traces of life.

For

seeds still held captive by a subsoil

to be

opened

back up. To be liberated. To be let out in the air

of

the future

of what

has not yet appeared. Bringing into

pl

ay

3

the

peril

of

a new blooming/unconcealment,

stripped

of

protec

tion. Unshielded. Beyond home.

Without

a veil/sail? Proceed

ing ahead in the danger without his confidence having already

been granted a response.

Neither

betrothal

nor

abandonrnent,

here. t is still

too

early for such alternations. Everything stays

iin the) balance in relation to the final evaluation. Advancing

without care for any dirnension

or

direction

that

is already there.

Only the draw of a risky sort of growth sets

off

movement.

Secure-without

doubt.

Only

one

who already knows the right direction, who has

good

sense, doubts.

He

for

whom

the ways have already been

traced

out is

on occasion, unstable. But he who opens a way

following his own gravity, even before any center is determined,

does not hesitate. And he withdraws

further

still

from

inscrip

tion

within any cOlnpass. Pulling

himself

together away from

allinediurns/centers so

as

to once again venture that unfore

seeable day

of

paying-up in a garne with his historical

partner



THE

F O R G E T T I N G

OF AIR

in play. The match is never won. It does not wish

to

be subjected

to

an

end

in which one player

or

the

other

would abolish the

intermediary place for their mutual perception

}

The

scourge-

the

balance s beam of

their

relation in difference.

An

equilibrium. that is still and always in balance between the

ground

that ventures and what is ventured

as

a whole. Between

what gives

itself

over

to

a new blossoming and the whole of

what is already established. Between what

is

projected into

the

insituable

and

what already belongs

to

the world. Between

one

who dwells already

and

one who leaves behind

home

and all

forms of properties to enter into a boundless open.

An

access to

Ineetings without barriers, when the rnore venturesome ones

approach one another and

leave again, holding

nothing

back.

Acquitting themselves of the in-finite

without

dissolving

into

nothingness.

Uncornmon

destiny.

Not the drean1 of a boundlessness that is attained by turning

lilnits in upon themselves.

That

still rnakes calculations

with

an

objective. A

departure that

runs counter

to

nothing, unless

it

be

to the perception counter

to

which nothing stands opposed. That

does

not

force any enclosure

but

obeys

the

gravity

of

pure forces

calling out

to

a whole with

no

possible end. Air indefinitely free

of

obstacles. That lacks even

the

obstacle

of

a horizon.

An

imlnensity discovered in the first rnornents

of love When

the

other

still escapes representation? There

and not

there.

Un-

mediated

perception

within an

open

that

does

not

block

off

any

consciousness. Native bonds, foreign

to

all reflection. Being to-

gether

prior

to any face-to-face meeting

that

inaugurates a prac

tice

of

evaluation. Obscure draw where they belong

to

each

other

within a

rnediurn/

center

that

absorbs

them

this side

of

all rela

tion. Resting in a

depth that

bears thern. Diffusing into

one

another

in this

medimn/

center

that

they become.

In

the relin-

173



174

IueE IRIGARAY

quishtTIent

of

a kind

of

calculation that contents itself with a

rnore

or

less veiled confrontation. Separation

and apportioning

of earth sky and space where

that

which hears and obeys only

the

pure

attraction

no

longer

-takes place. Acceptance

of

a

breadth

of

an offing that

is

unmasterable

of

a tTIultiplicity

irreducible to the one.

Neither

geometry

nor

accounts here.

That

which opens stops in no

direction/sense.

No beacon in

this absolute venture.

From

this venture the very content of desire escapes. Un

foreseeable incapable

of

being asserted carried out.

Abstracted

frOlTI

domination-whether in oneself or in the other. From

every preliminary condition

that

commands production.

With

the exception of the draw of

tTIoving

ahead toward the uncorn

mono Call to enter a willing that wills nothing and gives up all

resistance. Response without any knowledge

or

intention

that

owes obedience

to

anything whatsoever.

Only the

force

that is not to be refused

that

gives itself unconditionally. That

lets itself be raw material. Still in innocence

of

appropriate

techniques.

This force [ lle] lives

itself

out profuses itself

with

no safe

guard. Prior to that allotment

into

subject and object those

effects

of the

lTleanS useful to lTlan s imperialist willing.

Estab

lishlTlent

of

a market where nothing

is

delivered without being

introduced into a systern of exchange that dirns

or

effaces tan

gible reality in a speculative spiritualness. With no one rneeting

up with anyone else or apprehending things without going by

way

of the

tribunal

of

a generalized calculation whose rule is

all the

lTlOre

peremptory at

points

when nUlTIbers do

not

ap

pear. When it comes to love

then

..

Without shelter and obstructed when he gives hirnself over

to the values assessrnents that organize the world through and

through. Already yesterday. Love that has become mere mate

rial subjected to the objective

of production

whether produc-




tion of

a limited

or

an

unconditional

sort. With

man

losing

within it that

dim

desire

that

makes him nian. Becoming swal

lowed

up

in an infinite difference between the draw

that

deeply

animates

him

and

willing hilTlself in self-assertion.

Between these two, there is no transition: the abyss of a re

duction

to

nothingness that nothing saves. That opens onto

nothing. Memorial

to

rnan s parting. Frorn everythmg-against

everything. The constituting of an enclosure within which he

shuts himself

away

impervious to perception

that

is innocent

of

calculation.

Functionary of

technology, henceforth in exile

from

that

which moves him at his innermost.

Shut up

within

the

unconditional

character

of

a

purposeful

self-assertion. O f a

willing willing itself? Alone, there are sorne who would venture

themselves beyond this confinement. Willing more? Or, rather,

being willing to will no more.

Renouncing

their own interests,

giving

up

acquiring a

more

for themselves.

And not

boasting

of any feats. These daring ones

do not

appear so at the

point

when they advance

within

danger. What they venture

is

fleeting

and

imperceptible-barely a breath.

Are they in this rnanner in search

of

additional protection?

No. That would

still be

to

cut oneself off from the

open.

They

breathe

without

care. Secure, because they are relieved of the

distress of their security. Unenveloped by anything built ac

cording to their self-willing. Resting only on the attraction they

perceive, which moves thern outside all borders. Consenting to

proceed there where they feel themselves carried-all the way

to

the source frorn which they receive thelTIselves. Unreservedly

accomplishing the entire scope of the draw

and

unfurling

it

once again in the fullness of a gift.

On this trip there

and

back, no dwelling would have been

fashioned, no shelter set up. This willingness and what it gives

back take place without any additional production for those

who venture themselves in this

way.

They

do

not

find thern-

175



I U E JRIGARAY

selves back within some enclosure guaranteeing danger. Set apart.

Willing madly, they receive themselves, and

give thernselves back,

within the open.

Admittance to this odd adventure occurs through renounc-

ing all paths that already have been proposed. All

that

presented

itself as a possible future must be forsaken,

ITlUSt

be inverted,

like a

bounded

horizon: nnperceptibly protective veil of oppo-

siteness. Before leaving, all ends must at least be subnlitted to a

retroversion. Every objective

must

be thwarted.

It

is

blindly, with

no project, that those who dare all advance. Released

from

the

spell

of

the fear

of

being

without

shelter. Holding

nothing

back,

giving themselves up to the measureless open. Medium/center

for blooming within which those free of all fear would be em-

braced. Delivering

up

all their facets with no evasion, melding

their forces into each other, and acting upon one

another

within

the wholeness of a perception that at the center of its pure

gravity is not

to

be refused. Saying yes unreservedly to

the

entirety of all

that

cornes to pass.

To death, as the other side of life? Yes And to the other as

other? Yes?

Or is

it

still a matter

of

dwelling within the circle of

the

proper?

While

accepting the reverse side, of course. Making a

positive

of

a negative, no

doubt.

But always by means

of

the

sarne move.

Expanding

the sphere

of

its application. Making

what describes its horizon which from this point

is

turned

into

the

widest one enter

into

it. Imperceptible pellicle whose

outside continuously is brought back to its inside. Unveiling-

reveiling the confinement within a site. The parting reversed

into a willingness with regard to the whole. Allowing hiITlself to

be moved by all

that

touches. With

no

refusal,

no

recession.



T HE FORGETTING OF

AIR

Protected

bv the venture itself. Insensibly invisiblv, sheltered

,

within his Being? At the heart of himself?

Not

yet open

to

the

other, except

to

the other of the same?

A stranger to that existence beyond number which is

born

for he who gives hirnself over: who receives himself from,

and

lavishes himself upon the other, beyond himself. Attaining to

an endless space and time. Dimensions

that

exceed the sidereal,

and

the imaginary of every consciousness

s

well. With the ob

jective

and

the subjective losing their boundaries. With each

one

and

all things resting one in the other, pouring themselves

out one

into

the

other without

bounds. A recalling of a state so

long

past that

few can manage

to

do it. Crossing back over the

borders of their own lives. Flowing back

to

this side, venturing

their breath.

Entrusting

to

the

other

the very

r yt m

of

their

breathing. Welcoming the loss

of

the measure

of

their breath

ing so

s to

discover for it a new range. Expiring in the

other

so

s to thence be reborn rnore inspired. Putting language, the pre

cinct of Being, into danger so that it might regain its voice. Its

song. Leaving the temple

that is

already sanctified in order

to

rediscover

the

traces

of

the festive

bond

with

the wholly other.

Having speech no longer-daring the saying itself. Not calcu

lating, hence

not

unstilled. A stranger to exchanges

and

busi

ness.

Out of

the nurket. Trembling over the arrival of what

is

heralded.

Over that

other breath which is born to them after

every resounding already known has shattered itself. Beyond all

that

has been attained already. A

sounding

unheard-of

by those

who

look

on, who do not venture into the in-finite sojourn

of

invisibility. Where the only guide is to call out to the other.

Whose breath

subtly suffuses the air, like a vibration sensed

by those distraught with love.

They

go forth, vigilant, boldly

progressing

down paths

where others see

but

darkness and

77



I U E ]RIGARAY

netherworld. They go onward and, now and then, a song rises

to

their lips.

From

their mouth are breathed sounds that mean

to

say nothing that are just the i Jspiration that will strike the

other with feelings and thoughts overspilling these sounds. A

versicle, for the rnost part inaudible,

to that

which they forefeel

in the wind.

So proceed, one

to

another, those who renounce their self

willing. Invoking thernselves behind every saying already artiCll

lated, every word already uttered, all words already exchanged,

all rhythms already hamrnered out. They are drawn into the

mystery of a word

that

seeks its incarnation. Trusting exorbi

tantly in that which makes

up

the

body

and flesh of all diction:

air, breath, song. Receiving and giving themselves in that which

s

still senseless.

In

order

to

be reborn

of

it, one

through

an

other, invested with a saying that s of forgotten inspiration.

That s buried beneath every logic. In excess of every existing

language. Suspension of every signification, that unveils signi

fication's fundamental middlernan's fraud,s and ventures itself

this side

of it.

Prior to

the

point

when the parting

s to

have

taken place,

and

to

assessments

of

greater

or

lesser value.

Within

this opacity, this night of the world, they discover

the

trace of

the fugitive gods, even though they have given up ensuring their

salvation. Fulguration comes to them from their willingness

that

nothing should ensure their safety.

Not

even that historical pre

cinct of man's--Being. Nor that guarantor of the sense

or

non-

sense

of

the

whole God?

These prophets sense that if the divine can still come to us it

s

in the abandonrnent of all calculation that

it

may come. The

abandonment of all language and lTleaning that are already pro-

duced. In the venture. Only the venture,

and

none know where

it leads.

None

know what future it heralds.

O f

what

past

it s




the secret comn1emoratlon. No project here. Merely this re-

fusal

to

refuse

oneself

to

what

is

perceived.

Whatever

distress

or

destitution might corne of it.

These

precursors have

no future they

arrive

out of

it.

In

them

the future

is

present already. But who hears it? Their song

insensibly waters the world. O f today of tomorrow of yester-

day. The need for a destiny that never can be heard clearly that

never appears in broad daylight. At the risk

that

it already be

misshapen.

But the

breath of one

who in singing rningles his inspiration

with

the divine

breath

rernains out

of

reach. Insituable. Face-

less.

Whoever

senses it starts

under

way Obeys the draw.

Runs

counter

to

nothing only

to

what exceeds all

that

is

179





CHAPTER I

1.

La fin de la philo sophie et la tache de la pensee, in Questiolls

V

(Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 139 [This passage

is

translated from the

French. For the English translation from the German, see

Martin

Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking, in

Basic illritings)

trans. David Farrell Krell

(New

York: HarperCollins

Publishers,

1993)' 449.

A divergence to be noted: in the Krell version,

the English

is

well-rounded unconcealment where the correlative

French

is Ie sans-retrait) rondntr paifaite

(the without-withdrawal, perfect

roundness). Note also

that

there is/it gives translates Heidegger's es

gibt) rendered variously in French

as

i y a i donne) or fa donne. In these

phrases,

l

is

an impersonal pronoun that (allegedly) functions

as

a

purely grammatical subject. In the expression es gibt) es is a personal

pronoun, neuter except when used demonstratively, that here likewise

is used

as

a subject

of

an impersonal verb I1mls.]

2 See Heidegger, The End of Philosophy and the Task

of

Think-

ing, in

Basic

Wt itings) 444, for his discussion

of

Parmenides' Fragment

I, 28f£, on which the author comments here. Trans.

3 See Heidegger, The

End of

Philosophy and the Task

ofThink-

ing, in

Basic

Writings) 445:

The

possible claim to a binding character

or commitment of thinking is grounded in this bond. Trans.







NOTES TO PAGES

38-51

ro. Gette langue

qu'i tfellt

can also

n1.ean

'this tongue he holds:

as

in the

expression 'to hold one's tongue: Ti-alls.

II.

It

creates a play

on

words here; it can refer to the foundation:'

to

the male subject,

or

to

the

author

being

put

into question.

Ti"alls.

12.

The

noun

les

chases (things) is pronominalized with eUes the femi

nine third person plural pronoun. Iimls.

13. La

contde (the region) translates die Gegend; one of its cognates,

gegen,

is translated

as

contre

and

'counter: 'against: C01lt1'e is also a

form

of

the

verb 'to counter:

La

contde is a feminine noun pronominalized as elle.

Ii·alls.

1 See

Discourse

11 Thinking,

65;

Pour servir de commentaire

aSirenlti,

in Questiolls

III 192.

TrailS.

IS. Assimilation is the French translation of

der

Tle1;gegnis rendered

as

'the

regioning' in Discourse

on Thinking.

Trans.

16.

See

Discourse on

Thinking,

66;

Pour servir de commentaire a

Sidniti,

in Questions

III 193.

Ii'alls.

17. The

French translation

of

Heidegger's term Gewoifcllhcit

(thrownness)

is direliction,

which also means 'forsakenness:

Trans.

18. Martin Heidegger,

What

Is

Called

Thinking? trans. Fred D. Wieck and

J

Glenn Gray

(New

York: Harper Row,

1968), 124; Qu'appelle-t-oll

penscr?

trans. Aloys Becker and Gerard Granel (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1973)' 230. [The

quoted

passage is translated

from the French.

Trans.

]

19. An ambiguity in the French creates a secondary sense: that which

gave

itself without measure

and without

appearing is

the

night:' Trans.

20.

Cf.

Martin

Heidegger,

The

Anaximander Fragment, in

Early

Greek

Thinking,

trans. David Farrell Krell and Frank A. Capuzzi (New

York: Harper & Row, 1975), 18-19; La parole d'Anaximandre, in

Chemins

qui

I f menent

nulle part, trans. Wolfgang Brokmeier, ed. r a n ~ o i s

Fedier (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 267.

CHAPTER 3

1.

Rendre,

here

'to

give back: can also mean

'to

vomit:

It"am.

2 Ellc: here a reference to the woman-mother. Ij'am.

3

The

French words for 'morning'

and 'mourning'

are

not

homopho

nous. Ij'aII S.

4. COlltre can mean 'counter: 'against: 'opposed to: Le

tout

cOl1tre can

mean not only 'the right-up-against: but 'the very-close-by'

as

well

as

'the whole counters: Ii"alls.



NOTES TO PAGES 53-61

5

See Discollrse

011

Thillkillg, 65; POUl' senir de comnlentaire Shillili,

in Qllestiolls III, 191. Trails,

6.

Proper motion

is an astronomical

term

meaning the

motion of

a star by which it changes place. relative

to other

stars near it,

or

the

actual change in place

of

a star. relative

to

its former place. Ti'alls.

7. La lallgue means both 'language' and 'tongue:

TiwIs.

8.

The

Heideggerian term to produce

is

rendered in French as

pro-

rluire

to

emphasize the sense of 'bringing forth' (Latin: pro-,

'forward' rlllcerc, 'to lead'). Hence, in addition to an everyday sense of

se prorluire

as 'to

occur, to happen,' the pronomial construction se pro

rlllire) when read as reflexive, carries the meaning

'to

bring itself

forth:

'to

manifest itself;

'to

make appear: 'to make come to light: TrailS,

9. L)ollvert is the French equivalent of Heidegger's the opening.

Here the author has given it a feminine ending: ['oltverte.

Thus,

in this

context, it can imply both 'mouth'

and 'woman-mother'

as well

as

al

lude to two different

sorts

of mouths.

TrailS.

ro. La

lIlise

CIl garrle can also mean 'the action of alerting, of warning:

TrailS,

I I

Illstance is also the French rendering

of

Heidegger's Illstiillrligkcit, the

standard English translation of which

is

'in-dwelling: See Discou ISC 011

Thillkillg, 81ff. (However, in L'origine de l'oeuvre d'art

[ The

Origin

of

the

Work of

Art, in Basic

H'ritillgs)

139-212], i/lStallcc translates

Daste/Jell

or'

standing there:) Ii alls.

12. Conversation

on

a

Country

Path, in Discourse 011 Thinkillg) 66;

Pour servir de commentaire aSethlite) in

Questiolls

III) 19+

[The

pas

sage is translated from the French. Also, many expressions in the fol

lowing three sections are drawn from Discourse

011

Th ill killg,

67-68;

Questiolls

III)

194-196.

Iiwls,]

13 L)iclosioll translates Heidegger's die Ullverl)orgellhcit

(unconcealment)

and deelosion translates rlie

VerborgCllheit

(conceahnent). In everyday usage,

though, ielosioll means

'blooming'

and rleclosion n1.eans

'unblooming: T1wIS,

1+ Many expressions in the rest

of

the chapter can be found in

Dis-

course

011 Thinking) 70-75; Questiolls

III,

199-206. Tiwls.

15 Here

the author plays

on

the word

alteratiol/

(alter, 'other') to imply

a relation that keeps one hom

becoming

other, from losing one's prop

erness or ownness. TrailS.

16

La

rluric is the French rendering

of

Heidegger's rlas vVahrcll (the

abiding).

TrailS.

17. Alive is marked feminine here: vival/te,

TrailS,

5



186

NOTES

TO PAGES

6 4 8 9

CHAPTER

1. Hots d)elle

(outside

herself;

out of

and

bars de lll

(outside him-

self,

out

of him) also rnean 'beside herself' and 'beside himself; that

is

'in a state of great excitement, agitatio_n, exaltation: Ii ans,

2. See Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, in Basic Writings,

261:

To healing Being first grants ascent into grace; to raging its com

pulsion to malignancy.

Trails.

3. See Martin Heidegger, Building, Dwelling,

Thinking,

in

Basic

Writings) 350. This and the next seven sections draw heavily on this es

say. Trails.

4.

Le tmit here means 'character' or 'feature: But it is also

the

stan

dard French translation of Heidegger's

del

Riss) 'the stroke' or 'rending

stroke: as well

as

'crack: 'fissure,' 'outline,' 'tracing: ' rift:

The

French

word also has many nontechnical senses, including line, mark, linea

ment, arrow, bolt, dash, gulp, burst, touch, deed, and act, among oth

ers. Trans,

5.

La terre

(earth) is a noun marked feminine;

Ie

ciel (sky) is a noun

marked masculine. Trans.

6.

Martin

Heidegger,

The

Thing,

in

Poehy)

Language)

Thought)

179;

La chose, in Essais et COlifCfetlceS

213.

[Translation adapted. Much in

this and following sections is drawn

hom

this essay. Iralls.]

CHAPTER

5

1. In French, subject

is

marked nusculine and copula is

marked

feminine. According

to

French grammatical rules, then, the same or

e

11leme must

be masculine, because masculine nouns always

trump

feminine ones. In the opening line of this paragraph, however,

the

au

thor writes the same -qualifying both subject and

copula -as

la

mellU

using the feminine definite article and thus breaking, and

breaking with,

that

rule and

the

sort of sameness it entails.

If

the sub

ject

(m)

and the copula Cf are the same, what

is

to prevent them from

being referred to

with

a noun marked feminine? Trans.

2.

The

standard English translation

of

if

y

a

which

is

the French

rendering

of

Heidegger's

es gibt)

is 'there is: However,

if y

a has an exis

tential sense without using the French verb equivalent of 'to be'; it in

stead uses the French equivalent of the verb 'to have: Since 'is'

is

a

form

of

the copula in English, to translate

if y

a

as

'there is' in

the

context

of

this discussion

of

the copula would risk obscuring points

of

the passage, namely, the copula's inability

to

form predications



NOTES TO PAGES 93-108

about itself and the replacement of the copula and its silence about

itself with the noncopulative locution

il y

a,

For this reason, i

y

a is

left: untranslated here. Ti-allS,

3

'Historical'

is

the standard English rendering

of

Heidegger's

geschichtlich and the French historial. Heidegger distinguishes this term

from historisch, rendered as 'historiographic' and historique, It-ailS,

4. Qualld

la langue se

tifllt can also mean 'when the tongue is held:

'when language is held: and even 'when language holds

itself

It-ailS,

CHAPTER 6

1.

Retouche

means

both

'the action

of

retouching (a painting,

photo

graph, text), and 'alteration

(of

an article

of

clothing):

It-ailS,

2

Realisatioll also carries the commercial sense of 'liquidation: T1-a/ls.

3 This is a reference to a remark made by Heidegger

in

his final in-

terview. See Nur noch ein

Gott

kann uns retten, Del Spiegel, May

31,

1976. For English translations, see Only a God Can Save Us: Del

Spiegel s Interview with Martin Heidegger, trans. Maria P Alter and

John

D.

Caputo, in

Philosophy

Today

20

(Winter

1976):

267-284;

Martin

Heidegger alld Natiollal Socialism: Questions and

Allswers,

ed.

Gunther Neske

and Emil Kettering, trans. Lisa Harries. (New York: Paragon House,

1990 ;

Heidegger: The Mall and the Thillke1;

ed.

T Sheehan, trans. William

Richardson (Chicago: Precedent, 1981).

TrailS.

4. Ct:

Martin

Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar 1966/67

trans. Charles H. Seibert (University: University of Alabama Press,

1979).

CHAPTER 7

1. Martin Heidegger, Comme au jour de fhe:' in Approche

de

HoUerlill, trans. M. Deguy and

F

Fedier (Paris: Gallimard, 1962),

81-82. [This essay is the French translation of Heidegger's Holderlins

Hy1ll11e VV/e wfiln am Feiertage

,

. . (Halle, 1941), reprinted

in

Erliiu-

tentllgfll

zu

Holderlins

Dic};tung (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951) and

Gesamtausgabe) vol. 4 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981). To date, there

is

no published English translation of it.

The

quoted passage has been

translated and adapted from the French. Trans.]

2.

The French noun

la mtit

(night) is marked feminine; the noun

e

jour

(

day) is marked masculine. TrailS.

3 Drawn fi'om Die Wanderung, The Voyage, in Holderlin,

Sdmtliche liVerke, ed.

Norbert

von Hellingrath and Friedrich Seebass



188

NOTES

TO

PAGES 109-131

(Berlin: Propyben-Verlag. 1914),4:170, quoted in 1Vlartin Heidegger,

Remembrance of the Poet, in Existence alld Being, trans. Douglas

Scott

(London: Vision Press, 1956), Approche

de Ho1derlill,

16

4.

From Remembrance

of

the

Poet, translated,

quoted, and com

mented upon in Existence and Beillg, 259,

265;

Retour, in Approche

de Holderlill,

13 18.

5 Remembrance of the Poet, 256; ApprodJi de

Hdldcrlill,

II.

6. Remernbrance of the Poet, 266; Approche de Hdlderlill,

19

7.

Al/lallte is the word al/lallt (lover) given a feminine ending.

Unlike

'lover,'

al/lallt

can reter

only to

a lover

who

is male.

TrailS.

8.

Holderlin,

Sdl/ltlir/Jc

Hlcrke,

translated.

quoted,

and

com-

mented upon in

Holderlin

and the

Essence of Poetry, in

Existl l1ce

alld

Beillg) 296; Approche de H6lderfill,

45.

9. Some following sections draw on the essay Souvenir;' in

Approche

de H6fderlin, 99-194; this

is

the

French

translation of

Heidegger's

Andenken, in ErldutenflzgCll i t Hdlderlills Dichtlllzg 1936-44)) 2nd ed.

(Frankfurt:

Klostermann,

1951). To date, there is no

published

English

translation of

the

essay.

TrailS.

ro.

The

ambiguity of fa

lllenle here also implies the

same

(earth)

and the

same (mother).

Timls.

I I Le

regard (the look)

is marked

masculine and la chair (the flesh) is

marked

feminine.

They

are

thus pronominalized

as if and clle respec

tively. In

the

French

gender

system,

the third person 'personal' pro

nouns can refer to either animates or inanimates.

In

this section,

the

author plays on

this

feature

of

the language to suggest an interplay

between he ll)

and she

elle).

Trans.

12. See

Martin Heidegger, The Way to

Language,

in

011 the

vVay to

Lallguage, trans. Peter D.

Hertz (New

York: Harper

and

Row, 1971), 127;

Le chemin vers la parole,

in

AchelllillClllCilt vcrs la parolc) trans. Jean

Beaufi-et,

Wolfgang

Brokmeier,

and

Fran<;:ois

Fedier

(Paris:

Gallimard,

1976),245. Ii alls.

13 Le tracC-ouvrt1l1t is the French rendering of

del

Alifriss (design). Ij allS,

14.

C f Martin Heidegger, Language in the Poem, in

Oil

the vVa to

Lallguage) 159-198; La parole dans l'element

du

poeme, in AdJellline11lent

vcrs

la parole,

39-83.

CHAPTER

9

1. Cf

Martin

Heidegger, The Way to Language, in Oil

the

vVay to









forgetting, 94;

and logos 121; and

representation,

100;

and

sameness,

163;

and

the

nothing 122,

166;

and

thinking,

3; as

being( s), 2;

as

dwelling, 92;

as

house

of

rnan, 67;

as

sexuate, 64;

as

sign,

IF;

begin

ning of,

30; Being and Tillle I;

care

of, 89; circle of, 93, 99;

constitu

tion

of,

81;

forgetting

5,

90,

162;

foundation

145; historical

destiny of,

93;

house o t ~ 66, 91; in

difference of,

83;

-in-the-wodd

83;

language and,

15

6

; -man, 97;

of

Being,

71,

72, 74;

of

man,

25,

26, 30,

87, 157, 165;

of

the clearing,

157; of

the opening,

157; of

the

world, 72,

157; operation

of; 27;

precinct of,

177; produced

by two,

129; question of, 19, 82; the being

of, 39; the metaphysics of; 87;

to

pology

of,

19

beings, 2, 3; gift of; 168; living, 19,

35;

system

of

relations between,

16

9

being-there,

31 61, 83,

84, 86, 90,

no, 162,

164,

183n4; interpenetra

tion

as

a

mode

of, 84

birth

4,

25, IIO, 133; and

separation,

77;

ground

of;

II5;

reversal to, 102

blood, 28, 33, 84, 9

6

, 99

body,

61, 82, 139; affirmation of

the,

102;

living, 41,

57,

63, 66;

man s, 102;

of

the world, 89

border, 47, 51

boundary, 47, 67, 68;

and

air,

16;

and death, 71;

and

place, 20;

double, 31; false, 89; of thinking,

16; without 41

breathing,

7, 62,

107,

122, 161, 163,

17

1

, 177-

1

79

bridge,

23,

24, 3

0

33, 39,

134,

170;

-being, 24;

prior

to

the, 84

call,

38,

4

2

,

174

care, I09-1Il

change,

18, 59

IN EX

circle, 1,4,23,105, I I I

II 151; and

- Being, 80,

81;

closure of,

2, 6, 10,

26; enveloping,

159; of

air, 16,77:

of

his dwelling,

134; of

oblivion,

88; of the logos 17; of the proper,

176; Parmenidean, 6; re-opening

of, 101; squaring of a, 72;

tauto

logicaL 123, 126, IF 159; turning

square into, 69

clearing, 1,7, 20,

133, 1 9, 155, 156,

166;

encircled, 151; of air,

9; of

Being,

17; of land,

18;

of the opening, 3

5,

8;

of trees,

19;

properties of; 121

cOlTunemoration, 23, 24, 26, 45

concealment, 8

consumption: two kinds

o t ~

54

copula,

88, 124;

air

as

substance of,

12; and

death, 93;

and

ek-stasis, 90;

and

subject, 82;

as

axis, 125;

economy of,

63; of

the world, 72

cosmos,

14, 15

crY,4

2

cultivation, 68,

13

2

,

137

danger,

6, 7, 175;

groundless,

16

Da-sein

183n4;

and

projection, 102;

and

spatializing,

103; project

of,

101, 103;

transparency of,

100

day,

106, 107,

II7

death,

12,

25, 27,

53, 176;

and

assimi

lation,

61;

and

eternity, roo;

and

love,

71;

and

production 93; and

thought

7,

13

debt:

and there is 93; of

life, 28; set-

tling, 153

de-monstration: space of; 88

design, the, II8,

136,

144, 188m3

destiny: sexual, 90, 91

difference,

134;

and

Being, 82; an in-



I N D E X

finite,

I7S;

infinitdy small. 46; ir

reducible,

124

dimension: denial

of

spatial, 101

discourse: man as

producer

of, 98

distance, 28, 29,

117;

and proximity,

57; infinitdy small, 146

149;

phe

nomenon

of, 86

divine, the, 178

divinities, 68, 69, lIS

dwelling, 18 120; air

as

8

61;

and

sparing, 68; as fundaniental trait,

67; crisis in, 67; first, 77. 97; in

darkness,

of

Being, 44;

of

man, 66, 69, 1)4,

164; techno

cratically, Is8

earth, 2 3

8

74, 94, II2, lIS I4S

IS5

156;

dweller on,

68; -mother,

140;

native,

172

ecstases: temporal. 167

ecstasis, 168-170

ejaculation:

and

ek-stasis, 90

ck-sistance,

2 14 63-66, 89, III, II8,

IS3

157

16

3

168 182n4

ek-stasis, 54 64; in-between,

106

dement,

8 13; nutritive,

168

dementary, the,

IS6

dernents, 2;

and

Empedocles, 76

Empedocles, 152;

and

Heidegger,

7S; cosmology

of, 16 76; world of,

17

emptiness,

8;

creating,

164

enfi:aming,

141

envdope,

16

20,

30 32;

double, 31

environment: natural, 74

epoke.

technocratic, 90

erection: and ek-stasis, 90; and lan-

guage, 97; as allaisthesis 9

exile, II2

existallce IS6 162 163

expanse,

183n2

expectation, 45

f brication, 68. 87

fire, 8 IS 74, II5, 152

156;

in

Empedocles ' cosmology, 16; love's,

63

flesh, 97.

146; and

Being, 99;

and

the look. II6; bonds of, 98; void

o f ~

99

flowering) 143 144

fluid, 10 II;

dement,

16; ideal, 6;

imperceptible, 161

fluids,

II

32

3,47

forefeeling:

portico o f ~

)4,

178

forgetting,

7;

a difference, 17 28;

and Being. 94, 128

164;

and lan

guage, I23; and metaphysics, I 87;

and recalling,

62;

and

sensible

perception,

145; and

space, 96;

and the essence of man,

164;

and

the proposition, 82; and the

thing,

127.

I28; change. 163;

double, 97; memory of,

164;

of

air,

1 ,

19 27, 74,

16

4; of Being,

3

5 162; of her, 32 64, 128; place

for,

128;

the Being of,

164;

the

other, 81 I34

IS4;

the

terror

of,

49; passage, 94; persisting in, 88.

ee also oblivion

foundation, 38

88. 98; constitution

of man's, 99; ontological, 97;

question

of the, 95

fourfold, the, 69;

mirror-play

of, 72

future: livable, 10

13

gathering,

15

109

137;

the

rose's, 144

generation, 166

genesis, 86

Cestell 17 121 183n9; and air,

19;

body

as

33 87; of air, 161; of Be

ing, 18; of existence

or existallce

16

3

gesture, the,

169

gift, 28, 32

136;

and oblivion, 94;



first, 28, 29; gives itself,

93,

94:

of

beings,

168; of her

body, 35; outside

of

all economies, 29;

triumphant

64

giving:

and

language,

93

god, 101,

III

14

2

,

143

God 101,

178

God, 147,

15

6

gods, II4

Greek: culture,

102;

man,

102;

per

spective, 20; thinking, 101

Greeks,

10,

88

ground 4, II4; constituting a, 94;

groundless,

5,

3

6

,

85,

86, 96, 168;

nocturnal, 97; of Being, II2, II4;

of

the groundless, 97;

unthought

86

habitation, 8

hatred,

16, 53; and

love, 67, 76;

and

the infinite, 104; economy of; 77;

of nature, 75; power of; 75

Heidegger,

Martin 2,

3

6, 14,

20,

21,

28, 40;

and

the Greeks, 88; and his

torical destiny

of

Being,

93;

suspi

cion of science, 87

Heraclitus, 14, 152;

and

osmos) 2

hero:

Homeric

102

Hesperian, the:

condition

for,

102

history, II9;

and

nature, 142

Holderlin

Friedrich, 188nn8,9

holy, the,

105, 114

home,

65, II5, 161

homeland, 74, II5

horizon, 86

house, 66, 69, 124; his, 65; invisible,

62;

living,

63

lrylc 103, 154, 189n3

i a

89,

186r12. Sec

also there

is

indifferentiation: temporal,

102

individuation,

102

in-stance,

169

instrumentality, 98

interiority, 95

interpenetration, 84

intra-touching, 96

J N E X

-intuition: finite, 96; infinite,

103;

Ulan's, 97

is, 3-5

language,

54, 155; and

Being, 79, 121,

137,

15

6

,

177;

and

dwelling, 67;

and

life, 159;

and

nature,

1 1; and

neces

sity,

122;

and

place,

154;

and

speech,

132;

and

the Being of man, 87;

and

the gods,

III 112; and truth 91;

an

other, 37;

as

arc/;itcclme) 88,

91, 125,

147; as dwelling, 92; as his element,

74; bridge of; 3

1

; coherence of; 33,

94; destiny of;

160;

essence of;

91;

exploitation of air

by,

10; house of;

92; natural,

141;

only one, 36,

37, 39,

51;

silence of;

123;

the rule of; 142

leap, 34, 39; beyond, 37;

of

thought

14

8

149

legcill)

34,

3

6

lirhtHl1g)

lite, 27, 33,43, 53, 17

1

, 17

6

; exchange

159

lips:

and

openness, 55,

56

logos 15, 30, 146;

and

air, II;

and

Being,

121; and

death,

13; and

naming, II;

and

voice, 48; power of; 9; the

meta-physical, 87; the

plrysis of

the,

86

look, the,

39,

97, 99, 188ml;

and the

flesh, II6;

and the

other, II3

love, II2,

173, 174;

and

hatred, 7

6

, 104;

of

self; 76;

of

the other, 76, 82;

of

the same, 82, 11

lover, II2,

II3,

188n7

magic: captivating,

172

man:

and

plrysis

II-13;

and

whole,

17;





organism: living,

84

ongln,44

other, 24,

11 ,

14

2

, 173; elimination

of

the,

82;

female,

2, 37,

3

8

, 140;

language

and

the,

154;

mastery

99;

of

the same, 177; on the out

side, 48; otherness of the, II5; re

duction

to nothingness of the,

9

8

,

147;

wholly,

23,

139

oxygen, 84

Pannenides.

2,

3

14,

132;

and

Being,

20

participation, 39;

and

Being, 81

passage,

33, 34,

84,

160

passivity, 66

penetration.

32

pems, 16

phenomenology,

85,

II3

phenom.enon: in general, 86

philosopher, the,

TO,

143

philosophers, 2, 7

philosophy, 4,

15

2

,

159;

business of,

15

8

;

death

of, 5; history of, 5, 7

pholle) 8

phueill,

14,

19, 83,

133; of

physical be

ings, 86; the maternal, 99

physics,

2,

3; techno-physics, 9

p l ~ v s i s 13, 15, 19,

45,

94;

and

technol

ogy, 86;

and

unconcealment,

61;

arche of, 88;

deployment

of:

9;

elementality of; 74; Greek,

II;

proper, 76

place, 8,

13,

20,

25; and

boundary,

19; building, 142;

delimitation

of;

151;

of

Being,

137

poet,

9,

II2, II5,

171;

and the

open-

mg, II4

poets:

and

thrownness, 7

6

, 77

portico,

34, 35, 39

predicate, 82, 93

predication,

166;

and

Being, 80, 92

J N E X

presence, 4;

and

a being,

91; and

absence, 8, 48;

and

Being,

123; and

the copula,

124;

ek-stasis of; 54;

entry

into,

I,

48,

50, 135,

167-169;

sign of, 48; superfluity of,

41;

the

philosophy 40; the presentness

of, 40, 153

pre-Socratics,

40

production,

4,

174

pro-duction, 54, 91,

I85n8;

and

the

copula,

93

project,

17,

30;

Da-scill s,

T03;

funda-

mental,

141;

sexual,

91

projection, 17, 20, 81

proof, 7

proper, the,

139,

149,

17

6

proposition, 31

82

propositions: consistency

33

propriation, III,

137,

14

6

, 149

proximity, 66, 70, II2; distant, 74

indivisible, 84;

without

bound

aries,

86;

without

distance,

33

question: Heidegger s, 88

rarefaction, 6, 7

rebirth,

110

receptacle, 28; first, 29,

30

reClleillcl1lent, 55, 85, 133, 13

6

,

13

8

,

15

1

;

circle of, 79

reflection:

and

air,

13; and

the four

fold, 70, 72

regimes: political, TO

region, the,

39,

184m3;

countering

aspect of; 52;

formation

of; 86;

magic of:

53; of

speech,

40

relations,

32;

the system of, 95, 96

remembering, 35, 49, 75;

and

being

there,

164;

the forgetting, 163

repatriation, II4

repetition:

and

Being,

TOO; appro

priating,

132



INDEX

re-presentation. 35

In;

and Being.

roo

reserve. the,

17.

93 136; of air, 26 85

reserves:

of

air, 9

retroversion,

176

return. 63 64, 109 IIO

I I ;

to the

san1e, II2

right-against, the, 52

rose, 143 14

8

; metaphorical, 145

roundness: perfect,

I.

ro, 151

same, the,

3

4,

14.

82;

and

nothing,

17;

eternal return to, 24; not, 126;

to be

and

to think, 17 12I

12

3 159

sameness,

45

159;

and equality, 7

6

;

and language, 147; constitution

of,

147;

everlasting, 69; ground of,

113

168; whole of,

126

saying, the. 35 141 177 I89n6; and

nature, 133; Inan's, II9; m.aternal.

141

science: and the logos, 86; informa

tion, 141;

of

today, 87

scientists, 9

sea, II2

seafarer, I I

3

serenity, 24, 26;

and

the

open

ex-

panse, 60; of the thinker, 53

sexes: difference between,

ro

she, 28,

85

I05 128 141 I83n5; there,

85

86, I07; who remains ever out

side, 65

simplicity: of the four, 70

sky,

lIS

168-17°;

under

the,

68

sleep,49

source, 44; and mourning,

63

space,

8

169; and boundary,

19

20;

an in-finite,

151;

priori conditions

of, 97; as gift, 96; Cartesian,

83;

endless, 177; infinite totality of;

96;

inhabitation

of, 20; livable,

13

18;

mode

of

inhabiting, 97;

un-

countable, 94

natural,

19

spaces: empty, 8

space-time, 25

123;

a

made

by and

for man, 84;

and

care,

III;

and

loss,

91;

as it is philosophically think

able, 84; of history, 136; of entry

into presence, 52 15 r of the

present, 51;

of

things, 84

spatiality,

95

126 170; air as 167;

intemporal, 167; of air, 167

speech, II9.

133

143;

and

air,

73;

power of, 159; the way to, 131; un

folding of, II8

structure: dative, 93; transitive, 93

subject: and predicate, 82

93;

and

representation, 148;

and

things,

83 84; as ecstatic, 99; identity of

the, 98; instrumentality of the, 98;

living, the, man's origin

as

98

subjectivity, 95

subject-object: axis of; 80

subsistence, 13; man's, 12 18; of a liv-

ing body,

83

sun, 43 51 52

16

7; dawning, 67

teclJlle

86, 87

technology, 9;

and

danger, 141-142;

and physis 86; functionary of,

175;

of today, 87; this language as 91

temporality,

95

167; and technique,

IOO

temporalization: unresolved, 167

there, 27,

2,

64,

10

7

16

3

170 I83n4;

ecstasis in a

168;

his, 29, 40

there, 50 65

there is I 3 8

12

5 137 139

153

169

I8mI, I86n2; air as,

13 14;

and

lan

guage, 93

154; and

nothing, 162;

and

reserve,

17;

bottomless, 168;

of

plrysis

IS;

of

the bridge, 23

things,

38

86,

127; and

instrumental-



ity

98;

and

the

open

expanse, 80;

encounter

with,

10

things:'

4,19.20,33.38,4°,51,127,

152; and

relations,

83

84;

fc1brica-

tion

of, 84 .

thinking, 79;

as

a living being,

83;

circle of; 4; essence of, 25 53;

faithful,

II),

II4; task of,

I, 12

158

thought,

96; Western, 44

thrownness, 41 77, 184m7; air

subjected to.

62

time: a namable,

25;

and

foundation,

95;

and

place,

164; and

remember

ing,

163; and

subjectivity, 95;

priori conditions

of, 97;

as

an

in

JN EX

product

of,

128 129;

that

are dif

ferent,

125;

theres, 64

unconcealment, 2

42,

56 1851113;

a

new, 172; relation to, 144

unthinkable, 5

12

3

unthought,

12 13 19

vacuum, 30 I82nn6,I5; abhorrence

of, 7 20;

and

clearing, 19; and

place,

21

veiling,

166

venture, the; 171-172,

177 178

vISion, 99

voice, 28, 48

Documents

(Constructs Series) Luce Irigaray, Mary Beth Mader-The Forgetting of Air in Martin Heidegger-University of Texas Press (1999)