- Pas of negativity in this retracing, pas of negation of denegation in this neutralisation. The without (of) Blanchot must operate but it does not operate, it allows what has always been dissimulated to return as the entirely other and can only be dissimulated. It must operate without the negativity in which the without is taken care of in natural spoken language, formal or dialectical logic. And in this passive work the etymology as such is not of any help to us. According to a singular most untimely step [démarche], which we are perhaps least ready to follow or to recognise, we his so called contemporaries or readers; according to what would be the form of an advance only in the order of a slanted history, no longer having currency from the moment that this advance without advance is produced (try to read "my step without goal" in Celui qui...), the without is self-affected from all else (without without without...). It is thus infinitely passive as regards the entirely other which affects or approaches it. Such that he writes it, to him, and initials it, or rather he leaves it to recover its signature, to neutralise the sense, the language, the discourse, the writing, etc., all the words or [p. 93] words of the order of our "modernity". He does not play against them, he has, on the contrary alway written unreservedly for them, but without them, beyond them, in the course of the most discrete and most fascinating crossing. How, distanced from his signature, does this without mix with the water? and with what water? In view of what shore? in which parages?
Close to an abyss without depth, it is, in such a setting of scene of "Viens" (Celui qui...), sea water [l'eau de mer]. It [Elle] is, firstly, the sea [la mer].
This is not the only marine place of the récits. A remarkable reading of the "undecidable edge" has recently been proposed (I quote the reader) which opens and closes, on the sea, Thomas l'Obscur. I cannot name here...
John Leavey's authorized English translation of "Pas", by Jacques Derrida, is going to be published in its entirety in the near future. These lines, translated by Clive Madder, are but appetizers!
Step this way...