The king takes all my time; I give the rest to Saint-Cyr, to whom I would like to give all. Madame de Maintenon
1. She gives the rest which is nothing since the king takes it all from her.
2. "I would like to give all" indicates her infinite sigh of unsatisfied desire. Her desire would be there where she would like to give what she cannot give, the all, that rest of the rest of which she cannot make a present. Desire and the desire to give would be the same thing.
3. Derrida refers to a certain circle whose figure precipitates both time and the gift toward the possibility of their impossibility . The law of economy is a circle implying the idea of exchange, of return. But if there is gift, the given of the gift must not come back to the giving. In the sense , the gift might be impossible. Not impossible but the impossible.
4. Time is also considered as a circle . Wherever there is time, wherever time as circle , the gift is impossible. A gift could be possible only at the instant an effraction in the circle will have taken place. This instant of effractiion must no longer be part of time. In this sense one would never have the time of a gift.
5. If we are going to speak of it, we will have to name something. However, unless the gift were the impossible but not unnameable or unthinkable a dimension opens up where there is a gift.
6. Conditions of possibility of the gift designate simultaneously the conditions of the impossibility of the gift. In the logic of debit, the circulation of a good is not only that of the things but even of the values or the symbol and the intention to give , whether they are conscious or unconscious. Thus, in order to be a gift, it is necessary that donor and the donee do not recognize the gift as gift. If it present it self , it no longer presents it self.
7. Forgetting does not work as well in making a gift possible. Because for there to be forgetting in this sense, there must be gift. The gift would also be the condition of forgetting.
8. Forgetting and gift would be each in the condition of the other. Heidegger names forgetting as the condition of Being and of the truth of Being. The forgetting is another name of Being.
9. As the condition for a gift to be given, the forgetting must be radical not only on the part of the donee but on the part of the donor. There where there is subject and object , the gift would be excluded. A subject will never give an object to another subject.
10. The truth of the gift suffices to annul the gift. The structure of this impossible gift is also that of Being and of time.
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