On Fidelity, Or Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow

On Fidelity; or, will you still love me tomorrow...

by Jeremy Fernando with an afterword by James Batcho & a post-script translation by Daniel Chan

Layout and Cover Design by Yanyun Chen

This book was made possible by a collaboration between the Centre for Science & Innovation Studies at the University of California, Davis; Tembusu College at the National University of Singapore; the Centre for the Critical Study of Communication, Media, and Art at the National University of Singapore; the Centre for Modern Thought at the University of Aberdeen; and the European Graduate School.

For Caren Kaplan; with thanks and gratitude for your warmth, kindness, intelligence, and generosity. And — above all — for the gift of your friendship.

Contents

On fidelity; or, will you still love me tomorrow... by Jeremy Fernando

13

Afterword (or, Beyond Words) by James Batcho

41

Post-script: Une lettre sur les lettres ; or, the splat is the site of love par Jeremy Fernando

55

A letter on letters; or, the splat is the site of love by Daniel Chan & Jeremy Fernando

This talk was delivered on the 25th of February 2014, at the Centre for Science & Innovation Studies at the University of California, Davis. It was organised, and moderated, by Mario Biagioli, Director of the CSIS and Distinguished Professor of Law and Science and Technology Studies.

On fidelity; or, will you still love me tomorrow...

by Jeremy Fernando

I tell you yes. I begin us with a yes. Yes begins us. (Hélène Cixous)

16 And it is this “us” that is the site of thought. For, in order to

begin thinking, we have to open a relationality between our selves and something, or someone; between our selves and another. Thinking begins with a “yes.” But, in order for that relationality to be opened, one would first have to be open to that, to its, possibility. Thus, it is an openness that precedes thinking, even as much as one is thinking as one opens that relationality: it is — and we might never quite be able to say with any certainty what it is — both the condition and an approach to the possibility of thinking itself. And here, we have to attend to the fact that it is not one who “begins us with a yes” but an “I.” So, not only is it an active decision, it is one that is made by a singular person — and in that moment of deciding, the “I” cannot escape, retreat, hide behind, universality: there is no duty, imperative, framework, that makes that decision for the “I.” It is only such as I have chosen it to be so. “I” have called “us” to begin with that “yes.” In fact, the decision to begin must come before that “yes” — even as it can only come as the “yes” is uttered. Thus, opening oneself to a relationality with another resides in the “yes”; and “yes” is the very condition and juncture of relationality that we are speaking of. But, if opened by an “I”, then perhaps it is only that of Hélène Cixous. And by reading her “I,” do I then also make it mine, make her mine? Which opens the question of its legitimacy: for my reading of her “I” may never have had anything to do with her: the “I” might well only be voices in my head. Which might suggest that one has moved back into the realm of an imperative, a duty, a call: but, even if so, it is one where the one called, that thinks (s)he is called, can never

quite be certain from where this call is emanating, where it is coming from. So, perhaps the risk here is not just that by responding to a call one might make it one’s own, but that acknowledging the possibility that it might be a call already opens the possibility of “us”; an “us” that could only happen because of the intervention of the “I.” An answering that might have already happened the moment one says “yes” to the possibility of the call, to the possibility that it is a call. An openness, an opening, that resides in a “yes” even as yes, it, is only opened by an I. A “yes” that is preceded by a yesness of the yes; a yes-ness that can only be called into being by an I who cannot yet know of it. Or, perhaps even a “yes” that always carries with it a yes-ness that escapes the yes. For, even as a “yes” is opened, this is an affirmation that cannot be a complete affirmation: if that were so, this would be a “yes” that completely consumes the object that it is purporting to open a relationality with — at that point, the object or person that the “I” is in a relationality with is subsumed under the self; which would be the end of the possibility of that relationality. Perhaps here, it is the notion of possibility that we have to pay most attention to, keeping in mind that potentiality is not merely a phase preceding actuality. Which is not to say that nothing will happen; not only can we not quite be sure of that, if it were so, it would no longer be a potentiality. Nor it is — as Giorgio Agamben likes to say — a “potential-to-be and a potential-not-to-be.” For, if that were so, the “not-to-be” would lie beyond potentiality. Whilst there is something that quite possibly escapes potentiality, this is a beyond that is not outside the realm of potentiality, but within it. Thus, true potentiality is the potential-to-be and an impotentiality not-to-be, a potentiality that negates itself as a negation, but still shimmers there, as a possibility of a non-negation.1

17

18 In other words, even as there is a “yes,” in order for it to be

an opening to thinking, to thought, it has to always also carry the spectre of a no in it. And if thought is an openness to possibility — otherwise it would merely be a moment before action, be a precursor to doing — there has to be the potential for thought to not only amount to nothing, but also be non-thought itself. But this would not be a non-thought that is an antonym to thinking, a negation of thought, but a thinking that thinks itself as non-thinking, or a non-thinking that is already thinking; a no within a “yes”; a no that quite possibly carries echoes of yes-ness within it; the two perhaps remaining indistinguishable. A “yes” carrying echoes of a no. A “yes” that opens the possibility of a relationality, a possibility that is maintained as such only by the possibility of a no within, a no that perhaps cuts, but that never quite wounds. A cut that opens: keeping in mind Jean-Luc Nancy’s reminder that “it is space that is needed for touch to begin in the first place.”2 Perhaps then, a no that not only maintains the proper distance between the two saying “yes” — the two that attempt to open a relationality with each other — but more than that, a no that opens the possibility for “yes” to even “begin us.” *** A no that we find in the opening line of Hanif Kureishi’s novel Intimacy — “It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back”3 — a no uttered by the protagonist, Jay, to no one in particular, perhaps not even himself. For, one must try to remember that even as one encounters his thoughts at the beginning, that they touch one at the start,

Jay spends most of the novel doing absolutely nothing. And more than that, it is this no that opens his reflection, his recounting, of his relationship with his wife, Susan, and his two children; meditating upon them in a way that it seems that he has never before done. So, even as he is ostensibly enacting, or at least uttering, a cut, a break, from them, he is also already opening another — perhaps more intimate — relationship with them. And in this way, the time he remains with them — he does eventually leave — is “a time that pulses and moves within chronological time, that transforms chronological time from within.”4 Whilst it may seem strange to evoke Agamben’s meditation of messianic time here, one should not forget that the realm of memory, of remembering, is not just achronological, ahistorical, nor merely historical, chronological; it is a time that evokes what has already happened, and whilst doing so always also brings what is recalled back to one in the present. However, this particular parousia involves a second coming of an event that may or may not have happened. And here, one should never forget that one has no control over forgetting. And thus, not only is each memory potentially unreliable, one can never quite be sure if each act of memory, remembering, might always already have forgetting written into it. Where even if what one remembers is true, has a truth, aletheia, there might always be a certain forgetting, oblivion, lethe, inscribed in it.5 Here, one might even open the register that forgetting is the very condition of memory itself: for, if there were no forgetting, there would never be any need to remember. Thus, when one remembers, not only is one recalling a time that has past, one is also potentially calling forth a possibility that has not quite happened; a future-possibility; not from somewhere outside one’s own time, but from the time that remains within one’s own past, one’s own time. Which — reopening our registers to Agamben — “can only mean a

19

20 radical transformation of our experience of time,”6 or, if one prefers, times.

Moreover, we should recall Agamben’s lesson that “the messianic is not the end of time but the time of the end. What is messianic is not the end of time but the relation of every moment, every kairos, to the end of time, and to eternity.”7 Which suggests that — without even needing a divine notion of time here — it is a time which always already knows it own end, without actually knowing where the end is; a time which bears in mind a time when it is no longer time; a time which has non-time in time. Thus, time in relation with its other. And what else is relationality other than an attempt to be in relation with another;8 a call to another which never subsumes the other under the self. Or, to echo Alain Badiou’s conception, a “construction, a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of the One but from the perspective of Two.”9 And, as Badiou would call it, the moment of Love: keeping in mind that “love always starts with an encounter. And I would give this encounter the quasi-metaphysical status of an event, namely of something that doesn’t enter into the immediate order of things.”10 This is not a fusing of two into one — the romantic notion that continues to haunt, to tempt, attempts to think of love — a notion that not only — as in classic mythology — leads towards death, but more importantly, leads to the effacement of one by another, an effacement of relationality itself. Instead, this is love that “invents a new way of lasting in life … a new way of experiencing time.”11 Where the invention involves the transformation of the “absolute contingency of [an] encounter with someone I didn’t know [into something that] finally takes on the appearance of destiny.”12

In other words, love as the moment in which another time is written into one’s; the time of an other that transforms one’s time whilst always also remaining other, always also remaining a time that remains. A time with — a time in tune with another time yet also not of the same time — with time — contemporaneous. With and not-with at the same time. An impossible time. *** Here, perhaps it might be time to attempt to open the dossier of fidelity; and, in particular, attend to the question of the relationality between fidelity and its object, to the question of must there be an object to fidelity?. For, if one is faithful to something or someone, is one responding to the what, the characteristics of the thing, the person; or, the who, the person, thing, as such? Which is not to say that what and who are necessarily distinguishable, separable, to begin with. However, if we open the register that the who is always already beyond us — outside of knowability, even if only slightly — this suggests that it is the spectre, the potentially unknowable, that haunts all relationality. Thus, even if there is an object to one’s fidelity — without which one cannot even begin to speak of fidelity, speak of relationality — this might well be an objectless object or, at least, an object that remains veiled from one. And whenever we open the dossier of fidelity, the notion of love is, of course, quite possibly, never far behind. A notion that one often encounters through — a notion that might well come through, call to us through — the phrase I love

21

22 you. A phrase that Badiou reminds us “is usually thought to

be completely meaningless and banal [but, what it also says — and here I am, perhaps irresponsibly, disregarding one’s intentions, or even the subject who utters the sentence — is], I shall extract something else from what was mere chance. I’m going to extract something that will endure, something that will persist, a commitment, a fidelity.”13 When one says to another I love you, “you say that to someone living, standing there in front of you, but you are also addressing something that cannot be reduced to this simple material presence, something that is absolutely and simultaneously both beyond and within.”14 Or, perhaps even, something that is absolutely simultaneously beyond whilst — extracted — within. And even as one posits that one “extract[s] something that will endure,” the thing that lasts, that stays with the two, that might well be the sign of fidelity, is perhaps only to come, à venir. Thus, I love you, is an utterance of relation, of a relationality between an “I” and a “you”; a relationality — particularly if the other, both others, remain wholly other — in which the two in relation with each other remain unknown, where the other remains veiled. And, if love is the openness of one to another, it is a relationality where the “I” is altered, but perhaps in ways that one remains blind to. More than that, since the two — the “I” and the “you” — are, remain, unknown, the relationality itself — love itself — might well also remain hidden from one. Thus, I love you is an utterance of relationality that does nothing more, or less, than promises relationality between one and the other — an utterance in fidelity to the possibility of relationality. And here, as the dossier on promises is opened, one might also hear echoes of Werner Hamacher’s teaching that, “whenever there is a promise, something other than the promise and something other than language — or simply

another language — is also spoken. What is promised is 23 always something other than understanding, other than another understanding, and other than an alteration of understanding alone. Something unpromisable.”15 Something that is always already not of the promise; not in the sense of being excluded from promises, certainly not antonymous to promises, but something that escapes being promised even as it is part of the promise. For, in order to promise, there has to be something that is only to come, something not quite yet, something beyond; where the something that is promised cannot even have the status of a thing, or at least a known thing — thus, there can never be a referent to the promise. Which means that even as it is being promised — keeping in mind that promises can only take place as a relation, in relation to another — it is a relationality where the promisory utterance, statement — without which there cannot be any promise — is one that is without correspondence, is catachrestic. A statement, an utterance, that not only cannot be verified, but which might never be verifiable. And, which might well have occurred without one ever even knowing — a coming to be outside of, exterior to, what one knows, one thinks, one has uttered. Which means that it is not so much whether it is promised or not, but that the “unpromisable” cannot be promised because one can not know of it even when one has uttered it. Or, even: the “unpromisable” cannot be promised precisely because even when it is uttered, it is not, cannot be, is not quite yet, stated. Thus, “promising means nothing else — [other than] a promise of the mere possibility of making promises.”16 Which is not to say that the one that is promising is not responsible for the promise, for the utterance of the promise; for, one must never forget that even as it is perhaps always only in potentiality, it must also be uttered. A promise only exists — if it can be said to exist, to be; but at least it is always in becoming — in and through language.

24 Keeping in mind that often-times language says far more, or far less, something other, than what one is saying, writing. Or, to turn to Hamacher once again: “speaking a language means nothing else than speaking as one who does not yet have a language”17 — as one who is speaking as if one can speak a language — as one who is doing nothing other than promising to speak a language.

Speaking in fidelity to the possibility of speaking a language — perhaps, especially when one is attempting to speak of fidelity, in fidelity, to another. Perhaps especially when one is uttering I love you. Which opens the possibility that not only does the “I” never quite know what (s)he, one, it, is uttering — that one is uttering in blind faith to the possibility of love, in the hope of a fidelity to come —but that at the point of love, the “I” and the “you” might well be in a relationality that brings with it the possibility of a non-relationality. A relationality that puts the two in a relation with each other, whilst at the same time maintains a distance within that relationality. A relationality that knows not what it is, even as it enters that relationality. A relationality where the one — the “I” — that enters into that relationality knows not what it does; where one jumps, where I jump, in blindly, even foolishly. ***

The fool, the clown, the picaro — for, whenever one hears of 25 love, especially a love that is intensely devout in spite of all circumstances, situations, particularities, it is not too difficult to hear the voice of Don Quixote, calling out, declaring his service, dedicating his life even, to Lady Dulcinea, or more aptly, his Lady Dulcinea. In his own words: “... her name is Dulcinea, her country El Toboso, a village of La Mancha, her rank must be at least that of a princess, since she is my queen and mistress, for in her are realised all the impossible and chimerical attributes of beauty that poets assign to ladies; for her hair is gold; her forehead Elysian fields; her eyebrows rainbows; her eyes suns; her cheeks roses; her lips coral; her teeth pearls; her neck alabaster; her bosom marble; her hands ivory; her fairness snow; and those parts that modesty has concealed from human sight are such, I think and trust, that discretion can praise them, but make no comparison.” Despite the fact that — or, to be fair once again, according to Sancho Panza — “… I can tell you that she can pitch the iron bar as well as the strongest lad in the whole village. God save us! She’s a lusty lass, tall and straight, with hair on her chest, who can pull the chestnuts out of the fire for any knight errant now or to come who has her for his lady.”19 But, it would be too easy to say that infatuation has pulled the wool over the Don’s eyes, and that he cannot see her for who and what she really is: that, in spite of everyone — even his trusty squire — pointing out that Dulcinea is really Aldonzo Lorenzo, the Knight of the Rueful Figure sees her as the fairest lady in the world. Moreover, this would be consistent with his version of the world — attacking windmills as giants, challenging other non-existent knights, declaring himself a knight whilst forgetting that he is Alonso Quixana. For, one should not forget that his madness — the catalyst, as it were, of his transfiguration from Quixana to a knight — comes from, through, too many books on chivalry, from too much reading. In this sense, one can open the dossier of Avital

26 Ronell’s wonderful reading of Madame Bovary — where

she teases out the possibility that Emma’s addictions to pharmaceuticals and reading are not necessarily completely distinguishable20 — and attend to the register that it is not so much that Quixana is seeing things that are not there, in a flight of fancy as it were, but that he is seeing new possibilities in what is in front of him, in reality itself. This distinction between fancy and possibilities — or between fancy and imagination as Wallace Stevens would put it — is in one’s relationship to reality itself. Fancy, as Stevens posits in The Necessary Angel is an attempt to break, separate, from reality; imagination is an attempt to be in the world, but not in a way that is bound by convention, repetition, habits, mores, culture even.21 In other words, imagination is a throwing of oneself into the world; where one’s habitus is not merely habit, merely habitual, but an attempt to respond to the world in such a way that there is a momentary cut — not from the world, but in the world itself. Thus, imagination is a manner of opening oneself to the possibility of a relationality: one that is not quite there yet, where the relation itself has not yet formed, but where one acts as if it has already done so. Which might be why — to everyone else — the one who imagines might seem to be mad, to be out of her or his mind, to be quite literally seeing things. Or, more aptly, seeing things that no one else can see — not because they are not there, not because they are not looking hard enough, but perhaps because they are not looking blindly. For, if knowledge, if knowing, is based on correspondence, it is always also in the realm of memory — what is known is also what one recalls, calls back to oneself. Thus, it is a relationality between one, a subject, and the object one remembers. However, since forgetting happens to one — one can neither control when it strikes us, nor what one forgets — this suggests that there is no necessary object to forgetting; or, at least, no object that can be known to the one who

forgets. Hence, one might never be able to detect if one has 27 forgotten, even retrospectively. And more than that, since forgetting can come and go as it pleases, since it is beyond the possibility of knowing, it remains a name referring to nothing except the fact that it is a name; a catachrestic metaphor that moves in and out independently of one’s cognition. Thus, there is no reason to believe that each act of memory might not have forgetting inscribed in it. Which opens the possibility that this moment of madness, this moment of seeing what no one else sees, is also a glimpse into forgetting. Not that one can articulate it — for, the moment it is uttered, one is back into an attempted correspondence, into memory. But, at the same time, one almost always articulates it — if only to express the fact that one does not, cannot, know what one has forgotten — through the enigmatic utterance, the utterance of an enigma, I forgot. An utterance of a memory — since it can be, and is, uttered — but a memory that is not shared by anyone else, not even one self, one’s self. And what one’s utterance, this utterance, makes all too clear is that it is often quite impossible to distinguish with any certainty between fancy and imagination: for, if one cannot know if one’s recollection has any correspondence with the world, with what has happened, one cannot know if it has anything to do with reality or not. Thus, at that moment of seeing, of bringing back before oneself, one is always seeing blindly; in the precise sense of there being an inherent blindness in one’s sight. Not just because one might have missed something, or that one might have seen something that others cannot; not just because one can never be sure if what one is seeing is actually there, that there is an unknowability in all referentiality; but that one must make a leap of faith that one is actually seeing, that one can even see, that there is a possibility of knowing, that one can even know.

28 And perhaps imagination, seeing what is not seen by others, is an acknowledgment — a foregrounding even — that even as one is seeing, one is always already seeing blindly. Where blindness is both the limit, and the necessary condition, of seeing itself. Which might be why he is the Rueful Knight: for, what he is sorrowful about is the fact that not only can no one else see the Lady Dulcinea that is in Aldonzo Lorenzo, but that even as he can name her as the fairest of ladies, her beauty is “impossible and chimerical”, a beauty that is only that which “poets assign to ladies” — a beauty that is such perhaps only because he has named her as “my queen and mistress.” Or, even: that her beauty is “impossible” as it is only in his naming her as “queen and mistress”; and that it will — Dulcinea will — always remains “chimerical”, even to him. Which brings us back to the beginning, and to the question of the relationality between love and the who and the what — the question of, do we love someone for who they are, or what they are. And the possibility that, even as they remain potentially inseparable, one perhaps catches a glimpse of the who in these moments of foolishness, in these moments when everyone else calls one a fool, mad. Not that one might even necessarily be able to know what this glimpse is, but only that one names it so; in the very moment that one names the other as the loved one — in the moment of uttering I love you. Thus, not so much why do fools fall in love, but that one has to be a fool to fall in love. Where the risk is precisely that of falling itself. Not just when love fails, but perhaps even more so when there is a momentary opening of the possibility of the Two. Where,

in that moment, there is a coming together — even as both 29 remain wholly other from each other. And here, one should never forget the risks involved in any potential communion: for, as Georges Bataille teaches us: “communication cannot proceed from one full and intact individual to another. It requires individuals whose separate existence in themselves is risked, placed at the limit of death and nothingness; the moral summit is the moment of risk taking, it is a being suspended in the beyond of oneself, at the limit of nothingness ...”22 Perhaps then, the risk is precisely that the two can no longer quite remain wholly other, cannot remain whole; that what is opened, ruptured even, is quite possibly the self. That at that point, he really is no longer Alonso Quixana but is Don Quixote. As to, why do they fall in love?, if the question is one that is calling for a reasonable response, a response of reason, perhaps the only possible reply is another question: so, why do birds sing so gay? Which is perhaps a way of saying: I don’t know. *** Which is why I love you is never two-way. For, just because it is an utterance that opens to the possibility of a relationality does not mean that it is reciprocal. And, even if reciprocated, it is a reciprocity that is another I love you; possibly through an I love you too — another one-way; and, perhaps more importantly, another utterance that might not know, might not ever know, the reason for its utterance; a response that is an utterance which, an utterance as an

30 attempted response that, might always already lie outside

reason; a response that is made in the same blindness — whatever that might even begin to mean — as the one it is perhaps attempting to respond to. An utterance that might have naught to do with the other. But, as Roland Barthes never lets us forget: “proffering cannot be double (doubled): only the single flash will do, in which two forces join (separate, divided, they would not exceed some ordinary agreement). For the single flash achieves this unheard-of thing: the abolition of responsibility. Exchange, gift, and theft (the only known forms of economy) each in its way implies heterogeneous objects and a dislocated time: my desire against something else — and this always requires the time for drawing up the agreement. Simultaneous proffering establishes a movement whose model is socially unknown, unthinkable: neither exchange, nor gift, nor theft, our proffering, welling up in crossed fires, designates an expenditure which relapses nowhere and whose very community abolishes any thought of reservation: we enter each by means of the other into absolute materialism.”24 And not just materialism in the sense of conditions, contexts, particularities, situations; but also, and perhaps more importantly, in the unknowability of the object, and the unknowability that the other, both others, plunge themselves into as they, we, become objects. Which is why “I hallucinate what is empirically impossible: that our two profferings be made at the same time.”25 But, perhaps possible if one considers the possibility that love is the opening of the time of the two, of two in their own time. A dream perhaps, a hallucination even. After all, it would not quite be a dream if it were already possible. However, in order to dream of something, to imagine it, it would also have to be within one’s realm of possibility — at the very

least, one would have to be able to conceive of it. Perhaps then, the dream of simultaneity is an impossible possibility: possible only if we take seriously the impossibility of the simultaneous. Perhaps then, only in a time which “cannot designate a chronological period or duration but, instead, must represent nothing less than a qualitative change in how time is experienced.”26 Which suggests that it is not time itself that is altered — how could that even be — but one’s relationship to it. Thus, a relationality that might never be able to be felt by anyone but oneself; or even, it might well be a relationality to oneself that is at stake here. After all, one should recall again that this is a time that Giorgio Agamben calls, the “time of the messiah,”27 messianic time. One that is “not the end of time, but the time of the end” — where “to experience the ‘time of the end’, can only mean a radical transformation of our experience of time.”28 Keeping in mind that this is a “time that pulses and moves within chronological time, that transforms chronological time from within.”29 Not that the chronology is altered, but rather, the manner in which one experiences it: for, what is radically transformed, is changed at the root, is oneself. And here, one should not, even as one tends to, forget that the “I” is always already plural; even grammatically. (S)he loves — I love. Perhaps always already an indication, a reminder, of its own otherness—perhaps even to itself. Thus, it is a situation where one is both in time, and in another time, at the same time: where one is contemporary. Perhaps then, keeping in mind that I love you is an attempt to open a relationality, it is an opening, an utterance, that “distends time, an already that is also a not yet, a delay that does not put off until later but is, instead, a disconnection within the present moment that allows us to grasp time.”30 For, without this momentary delay, this disconnection, there

31

32 would not be the gap, the space-between, for the other I love

you, for the response from another, to be an actual response. It is a relationality, an opening to the event, to the possibility of the Two, only in the moment when the I love you doesn’t merely assume an automatic affirmation, isn’t seeking a banal reaction — where it opens itself to the possibility of a rejection, even a non-response — but at the same time remains open to a possible response that is to come. And, in fact, is uttered as if the response is to come — never expectantly, but always already in hope. Perhaps only awaiting ... Bearing in mind that waiting has no object. For, the moment one knows what, or whom, one is waiting for, waiting has already ended: one is already in expectancy; where arrival is the mere actualisation, where waiting is only part of a phase. Moreover, if one already knows the object that, whom, one is waiting for, (s)he, it, is always already there, just not yet materialised — and one is in chronological time. But, at the same time, if one has absolutely no idea of what, or whom, one is waiting for, there is no relationality; there is no waiting as well. Thus, the only way in which one can be waiting — without it being merely functional, simply utilitarian — is to have a name to the waiting; where one is waiting for a name, without necessarily knowing whom or what this name corresponds to, with. In this way, it is a relationality to something, but a something that remains in possibility. Godot, for instance. Where there is a distance, a gap between, that opens the possibility that the name that one is awaiting is not just about to come, but also perhaps always already there; an “already and a not yet.” But, not in the same form as when one knows the object: for, that is when the idea is already

there, and the material object is not yet. This, instead, is a 33 radical transformation of one’s experience of waiting: where both the eidos and the physis are both simulateneously potentially there, and not yet there. Where, all one can say is that, I wait.31 Allowing all echoes of Roland Barthes’ beautiful question — “Am I in love?” — to resound here, alongside his enigmatic response: “— Yes, since I’m waiting.”32 And where else is waiting but in the dash, “—”: between the mark of the question, and the response. And he continues: “the lover’s identity is precisely: I am the one that waits.” Which opens for us, leaves us with, the question of the “I”, and the identity of this “I”: for, since the I cannot quite know whom, or what, (s)he might be awaiting, and since love is the openness to the possibility of another, since love is of the possibility of the Two, all the I can know is that it is “the one that waits.” For nothing other that the possibility of the Two, nothing other than what one has named love. Whether another responds, whether another comes, whether the other that comes is I itself is not known; and perhaps can never be known, even if, even after, there is a response. For, the I love you that one hears might always only be voices in one’s head. Which might be why one can say — at least in the English language — that I am a faithful person,33 that I am a person of faith. For, faith always already brings with it a notion of doubt — without which, it is a matter of knowledge, of knowing. In order for there to be faith, one has to also acknowledge that one believes in spite of the fact that it might be untrue or, at least that, the object of one’s faith might remain veiled from one. Thus, it is a relationality between one, the I — for, to have faith, one must say that one is the one who has, that it is I who have, who professes, faith — and an object that is already and also not yet here. For, to know

34 that I am a faithful person, one would both have to already

be faithful to, and yet also has to wait until the end, until the end of the relationality, to know if one has been faithful. Hence, I am a faithful person is, and can always only be, a profession, a promise, where one acts as if one is faithful. And in acting as if, one lives as a faithful person; one has a radical transformation and is always already — even as one is not yet — faithful; faithful even as one can never be faithful enough. Which is also why I am a faithful person is, must be, an utterance. For, it is not, and can never be, at the level of fact: it is only so as it is said to be. Not even a performative statement — even as it might affect another, might sometimes be perlocutionary — but one which refers to nothing except its own utterance, does nothing except call itself — one’s own faithfulness — into being. And more than that, it is an utterance that waits — that awaits the possibility of its own being, or even becoming. An utterance that is faithful to the possibility of its own fidelity. An utterance that remains faithful to itself. One made in fidelity to nothing but the possibility of fidelity. An utterance — returning once again to the beginning, to where we began, to the voice that continues to resound with us — that attempts to attend to the echoes of Hélène Cixous that whisper:

I love you: I work at understanding you to the point of not understanding you, and there, standing in a wind, I don’t understand you. Not understanding in a way of holding myself in front and of letting come. Transverbal, transintellectual relationship, this loving the other in submission to the mystery. (It’s accepting, not knowing, forefeeling, feeling with the heart.) I’m speaking in favour of non-recognition, not of mistaken cognition. I’m speaking of closeness, without any familiarity.34

36

Notes: This particular notion of, relationality with, potentiality was opened to me in a conversation with Werner Hamacher. 1

The need for space in relation to touch was explored by Nancy — particularly in relation to love, relationality, closeness, and the possibility of rupturing, wounding, ripping when space is effaced — during his seminar, entitled Art, Community, & Freedom, at the European Graduate School in June 2006. 2

3

1999: 3.

Hanif Kureishi. Intimacy. London: Faber & Faber,

Giorgio Agamben. The Church and the Kingdom. translated by Leland de la Durantaye. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2012: 12. 4

Lethe being one of the five river of Hades (whose water when drunk caused forgetfulness); from the Greek lethe, literally “forgetfulness, oblivion,” which is related to lethargos “forgetful,” lathre “secretly, by stealth,” lathrios “stealthy,” lanthanein “to be hidden.” Also related to the Latin latere “to be hidden.” 5

Aletheia: “truth, truthfulness,” which comes from alethes “true,” literally “not concealing”; from a- “not”+ lethe “forgetfulness, oblivion.” Which opens the register that it is not so much that forgetting is the negation of memory, but the very opposite: memory, and thus, knowledge, perhaps truth even, lies in not-forgetting.

6

Giorgio Agamben. The Church and the Kingdom: 9.

7

Ibid: 8.

And when one opens the dossier of attempts, of attempting, it also brings with it echoes of a tempting, temptations. Keeping in mind that to attempt first requires trying out (temptare), finding out: a sentiment that is not too difficult to hear in the primordial question in the garden, the question posed to the woman, the question of “did God really say you were not to eat from any of the tress in the garden?” (Genesis 3:1) 8

Alain Badiou with Nicholas Truong. In Praise of Love. translated by Peter Bush. London: Serpent’s Tail, 2012: 29. 9

10

Ibid: 28.

11

Ibid: 33.

12

Ibid: 43.

13

Ibid: 44.

14

Ibid: 85.

Werner Hamacher. Premises: Essays in Philosophy & Literature from Kant to Celan. translated by Peter Fenves. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999: 142. 15

16

Ibid: 133.

17

Ibid: 133.

37

38

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote. translated by Walter Starkie. New York: Signet Classic, 2001: Volume 1, Chapter XIII, 134. 18

19

Ibid: Volume 1, Chapter XXV, 247.

Avital Ronell. Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. 20

Wallace Stevens. ‘The Nobel Rider & the Sound of Words’ in The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality & the Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1965: 3-36. 21

Georges Bataille. On Nietzsche. translated by Bruce Boon. London: continuum, 2004: 19 22

Why do fools fall in love? Why do birds sing so gay? And lovers await the break of day Why do they fall in love? (Frankie Lymon & Morris Levy: Why do fools fall in love, 1956) 23

Roland Barthes. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. translated by Richard Howard. London: Vintage, 2002: 150151. 24

25

Ibid: 150.

26

Giorgio Agamben. The Church and the Kingdom: 4-5.

27

Ibid: 4.

28

Ibid: 9.

29

Ibid: 12.

30

Ibid: 26.

This is, perhaps, Samuel Beckett’s lesson in Waiting for Godot: Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for nothing other than a name. For, even as they know that Godot exists — after all, at the end of each day, a little boy comes to tell them that Mr Godot will not be able to make it that day, but that he will the next — they do not know exactly whom he is. Thus, even if he had arrived — without a referentiality to the name — they would not know if he were Godot or not. Which means that all Vladimir and Estragon can do is: either leave or wait. They would either cut all ties with the name, or continue waiting for Godot; where Godot is nothing but the name for waiting itself. 31

32

Roland Barthes. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments: 39.

This particular phrase was brought to my attention by Christian Baier, during a conversation with Dustin Hellberg and myself in Phuket, January 2014. 33

Hélène Cixous. ‘What is it o’clock? or The Door (we never enter)’, translated by Catherine A.F. MacGillivray in Stigmata. New York: Routledge, 2005: 106. 34

39

Afterword (or, Beyond Words)

by James Batcho

42 When sound came to the silent medium of film in the early

20th Century, a collision — both sensorial and ideological — ensued. Film was the capturing of light. But what this really meant was that light was a means of rendering shadows, the stuff that defined objects. What was it that sound was meant to capture? And in so doing, what did one wish to render? Recordists, the practitioners of sound, argued that their work should offer an audience the sonic experience of place, a world of sound in its ‘true’ being. The studios, desiring legibility and predictability, favored techniques of isolating voices in order to reproduce spoken words. This latter approach, known as the intelligibility model, prevailed. It endured through an ongoing relationship — one could call it a co-dependence — between the film industry on the one hand and Bell Labs and RCA on the other to make intelligible renderings possible. Not only is this why we hear films as we do, it is the reason why microphones are instruments of authority and why telephones capture words more than voices. In intelligibility’s victory, the former model of sonic experience was left behind and forgotten. It was known as the fidelity model.1 As such, film, a recorder of narrative, produces a sonic object of speaking over presence. Film is a document of intelligibility riding a medium of visual experience. Why begin an afterword for Jeremy Fernando, who explores the depths of literary acts, with a footnote to technological history? It is because if you listen closely to his words, you will find that Jeremy hears things. This does not make him mad, but like the madman, he is open to hearing not only what is there, but what is not yet and may never be. It is a theme that he traces in all of his work, albeit never explicitly. In every encounter, his subject is subject to questioning, and his object can never be objectified; there is no beginning and no end in any meeting, rather a continual crossfade of ongoing possibilities — as it is with sound, as it is with hearing. He listens within hearing for the fidelity of moments.

At the same time, what he does is he writes and he reads; 43 in such acts, he engages in the intelligible. I will leave it to others (Jeremy himself in his own way) to write what writing may be, but it seems that in one sense it is this ongoing endeavor to play with the in-betweens of intelligibility and fidelity, their meeting points and divergences. Pragmatic creatures that we are, one can usually identify the intelligible in a reading, for that is one’s ground in the act of reading. The fidelic is something we may not notice. Here is where the writer casts spells in suggestions, relations, insinuations and flirtations, all in an effort to conjure some possible manifestation of the poetic out from the otherwise quotidian, instrumental structures of language. To hear fidelity in words, one must read with fidelity, to offer a gesture of faith in the act of reading, to choose to be open without the a priori of expectation — as Jeremy might say, to read with no object. This is the distinction within the encounter. Intelligibility is an “intelligibility of ” (of the words, of the dialogue, of the other), whereas fidelity is a “fidelity to” (to a possibility, to a promise, to another). So in our world of fragments, pieces, objects, we might on the one hand ask what it is that we are acquiring and assembling, what we are making of all this intelligibility. But perhaps that is a matter for another day, and is instead a means toward approaching this distinction, toward the possibilities ignored when intelligibility stands alone. In my reading of Jeremy, which is of course only mine, fidelity is an expression that cannot be known; it lies as much outside the words — in writing, the speaking — as within them. It is an ongoing expression wherein we must accept the uncertainties that come with any particular instance of being expressed. Fidelity resides beyond any possibility of acquisition; it is devoid of any hint of utility. It lives only in how we regard the relation, in what we bring in an act of engagement, a knowing that one will never know. This is what resonates for me in the question that Jeremy Fernando

44 asks: Is an act of fidelity to a whom or a what? In asking the

question, he leaves open a space in order to fall into the relation itself. If intelligibility is the promise in words, can we say that fidelity is the promise in the encounter, that which is rendered not by any one but in the relation as such, which lives through the experience of now and hopefully maintains itself in the evolving memory of us? If we stop to think more about the word, in its most colloquial of meanings, we find a presence within the event that includes also its eventuality, its remembrance. This is what I mean by a “rendering.”2 To have fidelity is an attempt to be true to its origination, in order that we may be faithful to it in memory. The call, as Jeremy suggests, is also the recall. Fidelity then is everything that we have brought to this moment, and what resonates into the recurring now of remembrance. It feeds back on itself with each expression of recall — a fidelity to fidelity in acts of nurturing. Of course, this is the hope, for we cannot know with any certainty what is being rendered, nor what resonates from it. In the gesture, the speaker exhibits a desire for purity within the promise. We want this singular act of faith, of fidelity, to be heard as purity. In my words, which I can only produce intelligibly, I want to be received in a manner that transcends its construction in language, something that embodies my very being, and thus delivers an open invitation to my soul. Then there is the response to the call, that gesture which constitutes the call. Here we have openness itself; the call as a willingness to call forth all the unintelligible uncertainties of reception. Fidelity is thereby extended into what is heard in the listening, a desire answered, a desire to experience what is pure in the impossibility of purity. What we too often fail to acknowledge in any relation is that in this opening of our self to the other’s speaking, we are not merely hearing words; we are hearing the resonance of the encounter itself.

Jeremy explores this openness, not only here but in Writing 45 Death, in which he considers the act of listening that has no objective, the act that refuses to consume, subsume, the other.3 Let us therefore explore this notion, the question of what it is we hear in the listening, what we hear in the reading, and what we hear in the hearing as such. Admittedly, this is my particular rendering — one possible expansion of Jeremy’s intent regarding the notion. What follows is a resounding in me, from his words that I have read. In this sense of an after words, therefore, what I wish is to play with the word, in words. We can proceed with some key questions: Are such resonances, the distal and proximal subharmonics of experience, always feeding back to the fundamental notes expressed as language, in language that is us? Or is there something in the promise of fidelity that lies beyond words, a beyond that lives both within and without? Such an exploration is an impossible task, being as we are, in words. And yet … *** Love comes not through the eyes but through the ear. Vision is the sense modality of attraction, of capturing. It is our means of discerning prior to engaging, of finding the beautiful. As Plato has offered repeatedly, though all the senses are illusionary, light at least points toward the possibility of knowing. Hearing draws its illusions from a deeper place; it does not define the shadows but lives within them, in darkness. Therefore, in having fidelity in hearing, we give our faith to the hidden within the illusion. And this is where a gap arises in the promise of fidelity. The ear never takes but rather receives. It is that mode of access that neither seeks the object of fidelity nor speaks its promises,

46 but can only receive the promise. Love comes not in a look,

not in a beholding, but through a whisper — a hearing of that particular sound of the other who promises. Eyes closed, in the dark of night: this is when we often hear the promise, initially or in affirmation. Such an event, to which we hope to bring purity, is in fact encased in the impossibility of verification. Hearing is most potent and most terrifying when it is truly blind, when the light is nowhere to be found. It is in these moments that we trust it. We must. We either pull our psyche back against the safest corner, arms huddled around knees in the need to hold onto some thing, waiting for the light to reveal the knowable again; or we trust what is given through the ear and stumble forth, awkwardly, blindly toward the promise — not only the words, what has been codified in “I love you,” but as an engagement with the event of sounding. The who of the what. The voice who says in words what is more than the words said. Of course we know, always: this blind advance does not save us from the unknowability of the utterance. In darkness, where sound lies, the promise is perhaps safer for the speaker in that darkness, and more fragile for the hearer. Darkness is a blanket that hides the said, providing safety to the speaker. But in the event it also enshrouds any possibility of safety in the hearing. The voice brings no evidence, no illusion of the knowing, the comfort, that seeing gives us. If the who is veiled from us, as Jeremy suggests, it is partly due to the resonances within the encounter itself, the vibrations between I and the other, that constitutes the veil. In the flat light of day, the eyes verify. Even as it is its own interpretation, the meeting of the eyes signs the contract of verification. In the unseen we are adrift, left to navigate, starless, the shifting currents of audibility, the promise not only in the words but in the act of saying, in sound itself. In an extended now the act stands alone, momentarily suspended and trembling, waiting to be integrated, accepted.

What we hear in such a vibration is the possibility of fidelity 47 — the answer of the call that constitutes our faith in the act of hearing, an embrace that mollifies the unspoken stammering of being. Here it becomes clear that fidelity is a matter of trust as much as it is an offering. We must also, however, recognize the power in the unseen, a primal narrowing of possibility into singular events, signs that have no structure. We hear the other not only in voice, but in the body that shares my world, our world that may not yet be ours if there is waiting. In the time before the promise we have no offerings explicit in revelation. Instead, we live within the deeper shadows, the nonverbal aspects of the call — the body calling out to the other. In such encounters there is always the question of whether such a call is being sent or whether I am simply receiving a phantom: a notion, a possibility in the sound, or rather, in my hearing. The particular shuffling of her socks moving upon this wooden floor (particular, like the voice, hers and hers only — are they coming closer?); her busy in the next room, creating sounds that call — a sound that calls — back to some activity that attracts me; the clearing of her throat (is she about to speak?). These are all acts of fidelity in this other sense of the word: fidelity in sound alone that produces indices toward the possibility of the expression to come in words — the promise offered, heard, in fidelity, to fidelity. *** For Henri Bergson, hearing is a means toward solving an old Cartesian problem: how do I know I am not dreaming?4 Hearing straddles the borderspace between worlds, wherein the shouting of a crowd in the dream becomes a barking dog in that of the awakening. That between, the gap, is the

48 moment when we are offered the opportunity to know. For

Bergson, the dream world is just as valid as the waking world; we simply move from one to the other. It is a world primarily of colors, shapes and objects. The sound is something else, a “buzzing, tinkling, whistling — which we hardly feel while awake, but clearly distinguish in sleep.”5 That is why the shift from the dream toward wakefulness,6 the gap itself, is our means of knowledge; it announces our coming forth to what we may then, after the fact, regard as intelligible. But in the meantime, hovering sonically within the borderspace, we might have something like a fidelity to the moment, a moment of transcendence. Consider that sleep itself is a cut, an acknowledgement of the need to shut down intelligibility. Every fall into sleep is a death of the self, a severing of what we regard as consciousness, yet one in which I am conscious of the faith I have in my eventual rebirth come morning. To enter into sleep we must first make the easy decision — to close our eyes to the images of the waking world. But in order to fall, we must next do what is far more difficult: We must allow ourselves to turn off our language, to cease the internal listening that is thought itself. Only then can we open ourselves to the other world of possible vision and hearing. This then opens the question: can I recall the memory of a hearing — as Jeremy might say, bring a hearing back to myself? Or is it doomed to be forgotten entirely, lost in the ephemeral kairos of now? When we remember, bringing with it what we have forgotten, we tend to recall in brief and often disjointed silent films. It seems also that to recall a particular sound we must conjure its image, even in its vagueness. If I recall the voice of another, I visualize her face and with the image the sound of the voice comes. In the recollection of dreams, this does not happen. We can draw forth images, but we struggle to recall the sounds.7 This is perhaps most profound in dreams of falling in love, which are powerful experiences that resonate long into the return to wakefulness.

What is interesting here is that the person does not require a 49 previous rendering in the waking world for the dream to take hold. And yet, she has a specificity to her in her appearance, and more than that, a singularity in her being. I can not only see her in the memory, but feel the intimate knowing of her beyond vision. In each instance of a dream of this type, there is always a moment in which this someone will say something to me that is so deeply felt that time elongates into suspension. There is something in this gesture, this moment, that is akin to the wish fulfillment of a promise to fidelity in the waking world. So much of the intensity, the future recall of the dream, is in that act of speaking that I am attending to. But I cannot recall the voice itself, the particular sonic qualities that belong to her. What she said meant everything, but I remember neither the words nor the sound, only her face and the fidelity her act of speaking brings. The words defy any attempt at recollection. Perhaps this is because the dream world does not welcome langue; therefore the utterance, delivered in fidelity, is incapable of accompanying the listener back to the intelligible world. Where does this leave the unseen heard in wakefulness — the voice in my ear that night, all the broken signifiers that carried me along, this never quite knowing? As in the dream, we are seeking origins. Here, once again, fidelity has kinship with hearing, sharing the desire to reach back along chains of association, traces. The fidelity to would seem to have its end in the other. What we find instead is not an end but a beginning — one that draws back into the depths of histories, hers and mine, that are shared but unknowable. The source, the other who speaks, is synecdochic in the act of revealing, drawing us back to nothing other than the unfathomable navel. And yet we believe because we cannot do otherwise. This is the “unknowability in all referentiality” that Jeremy writes of that brings the leap of faith. In the listening, I render my own promise to be faithful to this promise as I have heard

50 it. Perhaps then fidelity is a sphere that encases both you

and me. As with words, it resonates what is both within and without, yet it is only revealed to us from the inside. This sphere is semipermeable, vulnerable to the elements and to all our future utterances and actions, within and beyond us, that are yet to come. The great fear in fidelity is that through the changes, I (we) will forget, and that in turn, I (we) will be forgotten entirely. Worse still, we fear that we will not recognize that it has already happened. We hope always that our fidelity to the moment will be what provides the precision, a clarity in the rendering, which signs the bond to memory. But such writing produces no document other than fidelity itself. In asking therefore what is remembered, perhaps it is neither what is intelligible in words nor fidelic in experience, and instead lies safe within the knowing that it occurred — faith in the now that was more so than the what that can only leave us guessing. Anne Dufourmantelle’s musings about the sexual encounter rings just as true for promises such as these: “Our desire to merge, to become one, to forget everything with the other finds its ideal in this experience of the kairos. It is the desire for one’s very self to dissolve into something else that would be the world itself, its whiteness, a blind space in which you or I have disappeared from the scene together.”8 *** And yet ... This reaching out as kairos, the moment, is never attainable as any manifestation of knowing. This is why we render in forms — in art, in writing. So here I am, caught up in the act of writing, perhaps now even in the act of being read. As Jeremy has written, and is always saying in writing,

much of the why and the what in these acts is tied to this 51 forgetting. Here is my act, my attempt to be faithful to Jeremy Fernando, in words, to the person and his words. As he has said elsewhere, we write so that we do not forget; we write so that we can forget. This response that we all do — the act of reading — is the gesture that promises without a word, in fidelity, and carries the impossibility of ever knowing: I will remember you.

52

Notes: The fidelity/intelligibility (also known as phonographic/telephonic) divide in audible representation has been perhaps best examined historically by James Lastra in Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. 1

This use of “rendering” is something of a play on Michel Chion’s use in Audio-vision and elsewhere. Whereas he uses the word as an encoding of notions of realism over truth in film, I am using it in two somewhat related ways: first, as any making of something (a promise, a work of literature, etc.) as drawn from experience; second, as a relation of self to memory. Experience is “written” to memory in a rendering, and that which is rendered is what we draw from in yet another act of rendering that is the recall. In this way, we can also say that reading is as much a rendering as writing. 2

Michel Chion. Audio-vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Jeremy Fernando. Writing Death. with an introduction by Avital Ronell. The Hague: Uitgeverij, 2011. 3

Henri Bergson. ‘Dreams’ in Mind-Energy. translated by Carr, H. Wildon. New York: Henry Holt Company, 1920: 104-133. (Reprinted in 1975 by Greenwood Press). 4

5

Ibid: 108.

The noun “dream” has no syntactic opposite that does not privilege the status of consciousness. I therefore have appended “to wake” into “wakefulness.” 6

Bergson would seem to be in agreement on this point 53 with Roland Barthes after him, that in the recall of dreams, the visual takes precedence over the audible. See Barthes. ‘Listening’ in The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. translated by Richard Howard. Oakland: University of California Press, 1991. 7

Anne Dufourmantelle. Blind Date: Sex and Philosophy. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007. 8

Post-script

Une lettre sur les lettres ; or, the splat is the site of love …

par Jeremy Fernando

A letter on letters; or, the splat is the site of love …

by Daniel Chan with Jeremy Fernando

M erci pour les pensées, les commentaires : je suis très

reconnaissant pour votre présence, pour le don de votre réflexion. Peut-être, c’est tout ce que je peux dire. Et peutêtre seulement dans une langue qui n’est pas la mienne. Quoiqu’aucune langue ne nous appartient vraiment.

T hank you for the thoughts, the comments: I am very

grateful for your presence, for the gift of your thinking. Perhaps, that is all I can say. And perhaps only in a language that is not mine. Although no language really belongs to us.

Peut-être comme l’amour.

Perhaps like love.

Une relationnalité qui appartient à tous, à laquelle tous appartiennent, mais qui n’appartient à personne en même temps.

A relationality which belongs to all, to which all belong, but which belongs to no one at the same time.

Qui pourrait être la raison pour laquelle il est difficile, pour laquelle je trouve qu’il est difficile, voire impossible, de parler de l’amour.

Which could be the reason why it is difficult, why I find it difficult, in fact impossible, to speak of love.

C ela aurait été facile, ou au moins je pensais que ça le

serait — après tout, je n’ai jamais eu de mal à répondre, à donner une réponse, à des questions — mais, ça ne l’est sûrement pas. Peut-être, ça a toujours été un de mes rêves: d’être capable d’écrire dans une langue qui n’est pas la mienne. Quoique la langue ne pourrait jamais vraiment nous appartenir.

I t should have been easy, or at least I thought it would

be so — after all, I never had difficulty answering, giving an answer to, questions — but, it certainly is not. Perhaps, it has always been one of my dreams: to be able to write in a language that is not mine. Not that language could ever belong to us.

Comme les rêves.

Like dreams.

Rêves. La langue. Le langage des rêves. Heureusement, je parle dans mes rêves — peut-être, je ne parle que dans les rêves. Ou, il se peut que je rêve de parler, que parler — ma parole — n’est qu’un rêve.

Dreams. Language. The language of dreams. Fortunately, I speak in my dreams — perhaps, I speak only in dreams. Or, it could be that I dream of speaking, that speaking — my speech — is only a dream.

La chose à propos des rêves c’est qu’ils ont leur propre temps. Un temps qui pourrait même rester le secret à quelqu’un ; un secret qui reste peut-être même le secret à lui-même. On pourrait même dire : un secret connu seulement du temps ; que seul le temps sait.

The thing about dreams is that they have their own time. A time that could remain secret to one; a secret that perhaps remains even secret to itself. One could even say: a secret known only to time; that only time knows.

Même s’il peut changer constamment.

Even as it may be ever changing.

Non pas que je sois sûr de ce qui pourrait arriver même si j’attends, après l’attente, après mon attente — si même quelque chose arrivera.

Not that I am sure of what might happen even if I wait, after waiting, after my wait — if even anything will happen.

Peut-être alors, seulement un rêve qui rêve qu’il est un rêve. Ou, l’un qui est silencieux sur le fait d’être un rêve. Peut-être alors, un rêve silencieux. Mais, ce n’est pas parce que c’est silencieux, qu’il y a du silence, que cela signifie qu’il ne dit rien.

Perhaps then, only a dream that dreams it is a dream. Or, one that is silent about being a dream. Perhaps then, a silent dream. But, just because it is silent, there is silence, does not mean it does not say anything.

Peut-être alors, une parole silencieuse. Je suis absolument sûr que c’est possible ; je pense. Ou, du moins je l’aurais dit. Peut-être, seulement dans un rêve.

Perhaps then, a silent speech. I am absolutely sure that it is possible; I think. Or, at least I would say so. Perhaps, only in a dream.

P eut-être alors, une réponse, n’importe quelle réponse, est comme un rêve.

P erhaps then, a response, any response, is like a dream.

Oui, cher Mario : nous sommes, on est, en effet une confluence des histoires. Cependant, je refuse — peut-être naïvement — de renoncer à la possibilité d’un sujet, aussi instable que celui-ci puisse être ; car, le site du je est aussi le site de la possibilité de la réponse, de répondre à un autre, de la responsabilité elle-même.

Qui ne veut pas dire que l’on peut être assez responsable; ou, que l’on peut même répondre à un autre. Même si l’on peut rêver de le faire. Car, on ne doit jamais oublier qu’on écrit sur ce qui est cher à soi-même. Ainsi, une réponse n’est jamais seulement une réponse à quelqu’un ; une réponse pourrait même ne pas savoir ce à quoi il répond, si elle répond même, ou si elle est seulement des voix dans ma tête.

Yes, dear Mario: we are, one is, indeed a confluence of histories. However, I — perhaps naively — refuse to give up on the possibility of a subject, however unstable; for, the site of I is also the site of the possibility of response, of responding to another, of responsibility itself.

Which does not mean that one can ever be responsible enough; or, that one can even respond to another. Even if one may dream of doing so. For, one must never forget that one writes on what is dear to oneself. Thus, a response is never only a response to someone; a response might not even know what it responds to, if it even responds, or if it is only voices in my head.

Peut-être, ce n’est qu’avec un rêve que je réponds, que nous pouvons répondre.

Ce qui signifie également — chers Joe et Josef — que dans ma fidélité à certaines possibilités de l’amour, à la fidélité, je suis également tout à fait irresponsable, infidèle, à tous les autres possibles, à tous les autres. Après tout, on n’a le choix que de choisir à qui, ou à quoi, on répond : et tout choix implique une coupure, une trahison, de toutes les autres possibilités.

Peut-être, c’est seulement dans un rêve que je peux répondre, que je réponds.

Perhaps, it is only a dream that I respond, that we can respond.

Which also means — dear Joe and Josef — that in my fidelity to certain possibilities of love, to fidelity, I am also absolutely irresponsible, unfaithful, to all other possibilities, to all others. After all, one has no choice but to choose whom, what, one responds to: and any choice involves a cut, a betrayal, of all other possibilities.

Perhaps, only in a dream can, do, I respond.

Ou, que chaque réponse n’est qu’un rêve.

Or, that each response is but a dream.

M ais, peut-être, voilà tout ce que je peux faire : continuer

à rêver. Il se pourrait bien que ce soit tout ce que je peux faire. Car, comme Donna Haraway pourrait dire : « stories and facts do not naturally keep a respectable distance; indeed, they promiscuously cohabit the same very material places. »1 On pourrait même risquer de poser que le site où les histoires et les faits viennent ensemble est toujours derrière notre dos — car, si c’était devant nous, nous aurions été obligés de distinguer les deux. Mais, le fait qu’il est derrière nous ne signifie pas que l’on ne peut pas sentir ses effets. Tout comme — peut-être comme — quand on rêve. Quoique nous ne pourrions jamais distinguer mon rêve du vôtre.

Donna J. Haraway. Modest Witness@Second Millennium. London: Routledge, 1997: 68.

1

B ut, perhaps, all I can do is: continue to dream. It might

well be all I can do. For, as Donna Haraway might say: “stories and facts do not naturally keep a respectable distance; indeed, they promiscuously cohabit the same very material places.”1 One could even risk positing that the site where histories and facts come together is always behind our back — for, before us, we would have been obliged to distinguish the two. But, the fact that it is behind us does not mean that one cannot feel its effects. Just as — perhaps like — when one dreams. Not that we would ever be able to distinguish my dream from yours.

FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience.

Dans ce sens, il y a une chance que — ou, du moins je l’espère — comme Doris Day dirait : my dream is yours.

In this sense, there is a chance that — or, at least I hope that — as Doris Day might say: my dream is yours.

E t pour cela — pour être une partie de la conversation

— et pour beaucoup plus, je voudrais offrir, et donner, mes remerciements à : Theresa Bachmann, Jim Batcho, Carole Babyak, Tekla Babyak, Mario Biagioli, Evan Buswell, Xan Chacko, Duskin Drum, Joe Dumit, Jim Griesemer, Kirk McGregor, Sophie Moore, Hélène Mialet, Josef Nguyen, Aaron Norton, Christina Owens, Diana Pardo Pedraza, Cristina Perez, Branko Popovic, et May Ee Wong.

A nd for this — for being part of the conversation —

and for much more, I would like to offer, give, my thanks to: Theresa Bachmann, Jim Batcho, Carole Babyak, Tekla Babyak, Mario Biagioli, Evan Buswell, Xan Chacko, Duskin Drum, Joe Dumit, Jim Griesemer, Kirk McGregor, Sophie Moore, Hélène Mialet, Josef Nguyen, Aaron Norton, Christina Owens, Diana Pardo Pedraza, Cristina Perez, Branko Popovic, and May Ee Wong.

Avec le souhait que ma chère amie, Berit Jane Soli-Holt, a prononcé pendant sa séance avec — à la mémoire de, dans un rêve avec — Friedrich Kittler : « ... may our own eyes remain as ever sparkling in the excitement of our studies ... »2

Berit Jane Soli-Holt (with Avital Ronell). ‘Material Engagement & Silent: A Commemorative Colloquium for Friedrich Kittler. New York University, March 14-16, 2013.

2

Alongside the wish my dear friend, Berit Jane Soli-Holt, pronounced during her session with — in memory of, in a dream with — Friedrich Kittler: “... may our own eyes remain as ever sparkling in the excitement of our studies ...”2

Pedagogy: A Report from Kittler’s Last Seminar’ in The Sirens Go Organized by Avital Ronell & Arne Höcker at the Deutsches Haus,

En gardant à l’esprit que les yeux sont les fenêtres de l’âme, de ses mémoires, peut-être même son être. Et que l’on brille, que nos yeux brillent, quand on est confronté à quelque chose qui, à quelqu’un qui, capture l’imagination, ses rêves.

Peut-être, surtout quand on est debout en face de l’autre, de l’être, de nos rêves.

Keeping in mind that the eyes are the windows to the soul, to one’s memories, perhaps even to one’s being. And that one shines, one’s eyes shine, when one is confronted with something which, someone who, captures one’s imagination, one’s dreams.

Perhaps, especially when one is standing across from the other, the being, of one’s dreams.

En gardant à l’esprit que celui de nos rêves nous est souvent voilé. Et lorsqu’on est face à un autre, un autre qui nous reste voilé, il est souvent difficile de maintenir son sang-froid — car, tout ce à quoi on peut penser est le fait que l’on est nu devant l’autre. Et, à ce moment, tout ce que l’on peut penser est — pour faire écho à Jacques Derrida — qu’il y a « du mal à faire taire en moi une protestation contre l’indécence. » 3 Mais, maintenant, après avoir avoué ceci — même si ce n’est que dans les mots d’un autre — je pense que « j’avouais l’inavouable et que, comme on dit, j’avais voulu me mordre la langue. »4

Jacques Derrida. ‘A poil devant un chat’ dans L’animal que 4 Ibid: 18.

3

Keeping in mind that the one of our dreams is often veiled from us. And when faced with another, another who remains veiled to us, it is often difficult to maintain one’s composure — for, all that one can think of is the fact that one is naked before the other. And, at this time, all that one can think is — to echo Jacques Derrida — there is a “difficulty in silencing in me a protest against indecency.”3 But, now, after having admitted this — even if it is only in the words of another — I think that “I might have been admitting the unadmittable and that, as one says, I had wanted to bite my tongue.”4

donc je suis. Paris: Galilée, 2006: 18-28.

Tout comme quand on pense, sent, que l’on a trop dit. Surtout à l’autre pour qui l’on ressent l’amour, peut-être même que l’on aime trop. Où tout ce qui se dit peut toujours être déjà trop — et toujours pas assez.

Just like when we think, feel, that one has said too much. Especially to another for whom one feels love, perhaps even loves too much. Where all that can be said might always already be too much — and still not enough.

Où tout ce qui est dit, peut être dit, est dit dans la fidélité à l’autre à qui l’on le dit — même si ce qui est dit est peut-être impossible à dire.

Where all that is said, can be said, is said in fidelity to the other to whom one utters — even if what is said is perhaps impossible to say.

Tout comme quand on est amoureux …

Just like when one is in love …

le 15 mars 2014 à Singapour

15 March 2014 Singapore

Contributors

James Batcho is the author of Sound for Independent Audiovisual Storytelling, and has written for Media Culture & Society, and Journal of Sonic Studies, amongst other publications. He was sound designer and music supervisor for the documentary Ari Ari the Korean Cinema and previously taught film and media studies at Kyungsung University in South Korea. James is currently writing his dissertation on audibility and its possibilities with regard to agency and creativity at the European Graduate School. More information is available at http://www.jimbatcho.com.

Chan Kwang Guan Daniel is a French lecturer at the National University of Singapore, with over 10 years of experience in teaching the language to school students and adults. Formerly a Public Service Commission scholar, he holds a doctorate in Linguistics from Université Denis Diderot (Paris 7) after completing his Maîtrise with the equivalent of a first class honours from Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3). He is also a translator accredited by the French Embassy in Singapore, and has a passion for languages, cross-cultural communication, classical music, and cats.

Jeremy Fernando is the Jean Baudrillard Fellow at the European Graduate School, where he is also a Reader in Contemporary Literature & Thought. He works in the intersections of literature, philosophy, and the media; and has written seven books — including Reading Blindly, and Writing Death. His work has also been featured in magazines and journals such as Berfrois, CTheory, TimeOut, and Vice, amongst others. Exploring other media has led him to film, music, and art; and his work has been exhibited in Seoul, Vienna, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He is the general editor of both Delere Press, and the thematic magazine One Imperative; and a Fellow of Tembusu College at the National University of Singapore.