-To make tremble from the start: I sometimes have the impression that for him,-not for him but for you [vous], with him, as though helping yourself to his strength-you seek to frighten, to frighten me. And in view of what? And why less in beginning by making tremble from the start, than in making tremble with the approach of the approach [l'abord de l'abord], with the beginning, to tremble from the start [trembler d'abord], refusing the fear, in order to frighten always more, the least possibility of it happening, of recognising a beginning, of taking a presentable landmark, of touching whatever this is, of appearing to itself from an edge, a bank. Pure dread, without life, without phenomenon, without relating to oneself. In view of what and from what dread does so organised a fascination...

-So little organised, all things considered, that it can only practice starting from the one who renounces making use of it, mastering it, dominating it, who subjugates it and would not know how to signal the effects or the organon. Whence the difficulty I was talking about earlier. The I, as the proper name of the signature, signs its own retreat, effaces, without remainder, its own signature, withdraws its retreat [retrait], and also itself, "pas-of-insistence", distances the approach. What I just called the "pas-of-insistence" he will have described earlier, in a still very Hegelian text, in accordance with the era, but already far from a certain Hegel, going toward himself: "The man who speaks at once demands the negation of the being about whom he speaks as well as his own existence, and this negation is demanded from [à partir de] his power to distance himself from himself, to be other than his being. The example which he then gives of this, on several occasions, is not [p. 99] only "I say a flower!" but "I say this woman". H–lderlin, Mallarmé, and all poets whose theme is the essence of poetry have felt that the act of naming is disquieting and marvellous. A word may give me its meaning, but first suppresses it. [...] Of course my language does not kill anyone. And yet: when I say, "This woman," real death has been announced and is already present in my language [...] my language essentially signifies the possibility of this destruction [...] My language dos not kill anyone. But if this woman were not really capable of dying, if she were not threatened by death at every moment of her life, bound and joined to death by an essential bond, I would not be able to carry out that ideal negation, that deferred assassination which is what my language is." Literature supposes this double death but if "it does not abide by it", it is powerless to be effaced like death: "If it were to become as mute as a stone, as passible as the corpse behind that stone, its decision to lose the capacity for speech would still be legible on the stone and would be enough to wake that bogus corpse." "...inexorable affirmation, without beginning or end-death as the impossibility of dying. (La Littérature et le droit à la mort.) My emphasis.
False step of death, starting from the distancing of self: the effacement itself ought no longer be effaced. To remain close to itself in its effacement, to sign again, to remain in its absence of remaining: the impossible, death as the impossibility of dying from what announces the death without death. The remainder without remaining of this effacement which is no longer effaced; this is perhaps what there is, by chance, but which is not or which is step [qui n'est pas ou qui est pas]: here is pas under the name of forgetfulness such that it wears it down, such that one can no longer think it, the thought "coming from" ["à partir" d'] a thought of being. If "being is still a name for forgetfulness", it names a forgetfulness of forgetfulness, which violently encrypts it, and not a synonym of forgetfulness, interchanging with it as its equivalent, making it think. [le donnant à penser, lit., giving it to think] Naming it, or rather, being names it, makes it disappear under its name. This thought which is no longer from being or from the presence of the present, this thought of forgetfulness perhaps says to us what would have to be understood [p. 100] under the name (thought), you remember it, which named, without declaring its name, about which L'Arrêt de mort said "eternally: Viens, and eternally it, she, is there"; or unique speech, to which, in Celui qui..., he said viens so that she cries out her name. "When I say `this woman..."
It is you, [C'est toi], your own name. Not yours, but the name to you, the one which is given to you in the call, without it ever belonging to you or possessing you.

 

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...