The Animal That Therefore I Am

Chapter 1: The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)

1 The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow) In the beginning, I would like to entrust myself to words that, were it possible, would be naked. Naked in the first place—but this is in order to announce already that I plan to speak endlessly of nudity and of the nude in philosophy. Starting from Genesis. I would like to choose words that are, to begin with, naked, quite simply, words from the heart. And to utter these words without repeating myself, without beginning again what I have already said here, more than once. It is said that one must avoid repeating oneself, in order not to give the appearance of training [dressage], already, of a habit or a convention that would in the long term program the very act of thanking. Some of you, and the thought of it moves me to tears, were already here in 1980, or again in 1992, at the time of the previous two conferences . Some even, among my dearest and most faithful friends (Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Marie-Louise Mallet) had already inspired, conceived of, and brought to fruition those two occasions, with the smiling genius that Marie-Louise radiates once again. Jean-Luc Nancy promised us he would be here again. Along with Philippe he opened the 1980 conference . I think of him constantly and he must know that his friends and admirers send him their very best wishes from here.1 To those I have just named I owe so much that the language of gratitude is insufficient. What I owe them remains infinite and indelible. 1 Without forgetting that, I wish, if you’ll forgive me, to go back in time, back to an earlier moment still, to a time before that time. And to speak starting from that point in time, so long ago, as one says,2 a time that for me becomes fabulous or mythical. Some of you here, Maurice de Gandillac, first of all, whom I wish to greet and thank in pride of place, know that about forty years ago, in 1959, our wonderful hosts here at Cerisy were already offering me their hospitality—and it was the moment of my very first lecture, in fact, the first time I spoke in public. If I were already to give in to what others might call the instinct of the autobiographical animal, I might recall that in 1959, as today, the theme was, in short, Genesis. The title of the conference was ‘‘Structure and Genesis,’’ and it was my first ten-day Cerisy event. Following that I have greatly enjoyed returning for ‘‘Nietzsche’’ in 1972, ‘‘Ponge’’ in 1974, ‘‘Lyotard’’ in 1982. I don’t think I have to say any more about that for you to be able, not so much to measure, for it is immeasurable, but rather to sense the immensity of my gratitude. Everything I shall venture to say today will therefore be, once more, in order to express my thanks, in order to say ‘‘thanks to this place, to those who welcome us here and to you.’’ I experience my returns to Cerisy as a wonderful and intense story that has parsed almost the whole of my adult life, everything I have tried to think about it out loud. If ever the animal that I am were one day to take it upon itself to write an autobiography (whether intellectual or emotional), it would have to name Cerisy again and again, more than once and in more than one way—in the renown of the proper name and of metonymy. As for these ten days, the third in something like a series, they seemed to me unimaginable, even excluded in advance. Last time, in 1992, when Didier Cahen alluded to the possibility in the attic on the last evening, asking me what the theme of a third conference would be, I still remember dismissing such a hypothesis: ‘‘This guy is crazy,’’ I exclaimed. He wasn’t so crazy, but the whole idea remains, like everything that happens, and such is the condition for something to be able to happen, impossible to anticipate. It is only after the event, reading the titles of these three meetings (Les fins de l’homme [The Ends of Man], Le passage des frontières [The Crossing of Borders], L’animal autobiographique [The Autobiographical Animal]) with a feeling of uncanniness, that I perceived a sort of prescriptive arrangement, a preestablished if not harmonious order...