Given Time: I. Counterfeit MoneyIs giving possible? Is it possible to give without immediately entering into a circle of exchange that turns the gift into a debt to be returned? This question leads Jacques Derrida to make out an irresolvable paradox at what seems the most fundamental level of the gift's meaning: for the gift to be received as a gift, it must not appear as such, since its mere appearance as gift puts it in the cycle of repayment and debt. Derrida reads the relation of time to gift through a number of texts: Heidegger's Time and Being, Mauss's The Gift, as well as essays by Benveniste and Levi-Strauss that assume Mauss's legacy. It is, however, a short tale by Baudelaire, "Counterfeit Money," that guides Derrida's analyses throughout. At stake in his reading of the tale, to which the second half of this book is devoted, are the conditions of gift and forgiveness as essentially bound up with the movement of dissemination, a concept that Derrida has been working out for many years. For both readers of Baudelaire and students of literary theory, this work will prove indispensable. |
Contents
A Gift without Present | 34 |
Poetics of Tobacco | 71 |
Gift and Countergift Excuse and Forgiveness | 108 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
aleatory alms Aloysius Bertrand Anaximander annulled appears Aristotle Arsène Houssaye Baudelaire Baudelaire's beggar Benveniste calculation chance Charles Baudelaire circle condition confession counterfeit coin counterfeit money create an event debt desire discourse donation donne donner donor economy equivalence essay everything evil example exchange excusable eyes faut fiction fictive forgetting forgiveness gibt gift give given happens Heidegger impossible Indo-European languages Jacques Derrida language Lévi-Strauss literature logic looking for noon Madame de Maintenon madness Mauss meaning Melanesia metonymically moral narrative narrator nature Oeuvres complètes once oneself originary Ousia Paris Spleen Peggy Kamuf perhaps pleasure poor possible potlatch present problematic pure Purloined Letter question raison reason recall relation restitution Saint-Cyr scene secret semantic sense signifier simulacrum speak speculation story structure surplus-value symbolic taking sides thing tion tobacco trans translation true money truth word writing
References to this book
Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice Jutta Gisela Sperling No preview available - 2000 |