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9 The Passion of Literature Genet in Laguna, Gide in Algiers
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9 The Passion of Literature Genet in Laguna, Gide in Algiers Derrida thus ends ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ with a reference to the ‘‘dispersion of ashes’’ and to ‘‘death given.’’ He concludes with what sounds like a testimony or a testament or, better, a signature that would come to punctuate, endorse, or sign a text that is now complete. As noted earlier, in the very first appearance of any part of ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ in any language, namely, in the fifteen sections first published in English translation under the title ‘‘and pomegranates,’’ this was indeed the final line—a signature event to sign and punctuate the ‘‘Post-scriptum’’ and the essay as a whole. But something must have happened in the end, or at the end; with time and space available, a supplement seemed called for, the supplement, once again, of memory, of a dedication, and the paying of another kind of debt. And so after the final line, after the essay properly speaking, Derrida adds one final paragraph (n Ⳮ 1), unnumbered this time, in parentheses , and—as if we were returning to the opening sections—in italics: (This, perhaps, is what I would have liked to say of a certain Mount Moriah—while going to Capri, last year, close by the Vesuvius of Gradiva . Today I remember what I had just finished reading in Genet at Chatila, of which so many of the premises deserve to be remembered here, in so many languages, the actors and the victims, and the eves and the consequence, all the landscapes and all the specters: ‘‘One of the questions I will not avoid is that of religion.’’ Laguna, 26 April 1995.) 243 Derrida speaks here, notice, not of what he said, or even of what he wanted to say but did not, but of what, ‘‘perhaps,’’ he ‘‘would have liked to say’’ of a certain Mount Moriah, the place of Abraham or Ibrahim’s near-sacrifice of Isaac or Ishmael, a name, Moriah, that means ‘‘ordained by YHWH.’’1 Derrida is here recalling from Laguna Beach in California, not far from the University of California at Irvine, where he was teaching at the time, what he would have perhaps liked to say of Moriah when he went, some fourteen months earlier, to Capri, not far from the Vesuvius of Gradiva. Writing from Laguna, not far from LA, in a post-scriptum to his ‘‘Post-scriptum’’ to ‘‘Faith and Knowledge,’’ Derrida brings Laguna Beach into proximity with not only Capri but Mount Moriah, not far, some would say, from Jerusalem. Capri, Vesuvius, and Moriah: places of memory, sacrifice, and death. Voir Capri et mourir, as one says in French: ‘‘You have to see Capri before you die’’; ‘‘Once you’ve seen Capri, you can die.’’ For Derrida, however, there could be no such acceptance of death after a trip to Capri or anywhere else.2 So long as there is more time or more space available, another response is always called for, another trace and another name—up until the end. Hence Derrida goes on after this reference to Capri to recall yet another place and yet another proper name, another text that brings the two together, Genet at Chatila, a text, says Derrida, ‘‘of which so many of the premises deserve to be remembered here, in so many languages, the actors and the victims, and the eves and the consequence , all the landscapes and all the specters.’’ This is, as far as I can tell, the only reference in ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ to Jean Genet, certainly the only reference to Genet at Chatila, which, says Derrida, he ‘‘today’’ remembers having ‘‘just finished reading,’’ that is, it seems, just finished reading in or before Capri. The temporality of this sentence is vertiginous, at the very least doubled, duplicitous: there in Laguna Beach, at the moment of signing and sending off the essay ‘‘Faith and Knowledge,’’ Derrida recalls what he had just read in Capri, or at some point just before, a line from Genet at Chatila that would not be included in any obvious or explicit way in ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’ but that would, at the moment of signing, find a place on its border—a line, moreover, that would be about nothing other than inclusion and exclusion, confrontation and avoidance: ‘‘One of the questions I will not avoid is that of religion.’’ If ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’—the title ‘‘Faith and Knowledge’’— gestures in the direction of the eponymous essay of Hegel, is...