In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

73 notes 1 The phrase nous nous devons à la mort comes from the first person plural form of the reflexive verb se devoir à. Collins Robert Dictionary gives as its only example of this reflexive form: une mère se doit à sa famille, “a mother has to or must devote herself to her family.” Hence nous nous devons à la mort would mean “we must devote ourselves to death” or, as we have translated it throughout, “we owe ourselves to death.” But following Derrida’s suggestion in Right of Inspection that the phrase elles se regardent be heard as either a reflexive relation, “they look at themselves,” or a reciprocal one, “they look at one another,” nous nous devons à la mort might also be read as expressing a reciprocal relation: “we owe each other or we owe one another to death (or up until death).” While we have translated this phrase as a reflexive throughout, the reader may want to experiment with this other possibility, especially in Still XVII.—Trans. 2 In addition to the meaning it carries in English, the French word cliché can mean either a photographic negative or plate or else, more generally and more colloquially,aphotograph.Derridagivesthetitlecliché—whichwehave translatedas“still”—toeachofthetwentysectionsofhiscommentary.—Trans. 3 What a word is right. Though the adverb incessamment typically means in modern French not “incessantly” but “what is about to happen, what is on the verge of happening, what could happen at any moment,” it is occasionally used in French letters to mean “without interruption or pause,” that is, “continually or incessantly.” In what follows Derrida seems to be trading on both senses of the term.—Trans. 4 Crito 43c–44b; trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). Translation slightly modified. 5 Ibid., 59d-e. 6 Phaedo 61a-b; trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). 7 SigmundFreud,“ADisturbanceofMemoryontheAcropolis,”inTheStandard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. under the editorshipofJamesStrachey ,incollaborationwithAnnaFreud(London:TheHogarthPressandtheInstituteofPsycho -analysis,1964),22:239–48;thephrase non arrivé can be found on p. 246. 8 The French text reads here en grec—“in Greek”—since, as we learn from Still XVII, Derrida was anticipating the Modern Greek translation of this work.—Trans. ...

Share