- Friendship does not give the name, nor does it take it. It renders it anonymous. Not [Pas] to another. It gives, if it is possible, the anonymous in the name. It harbours and delivers the name without name. The words that you [tu] just detached (for example, blanchâtre or eau), without any right, can well resemble the elements of his name: as much the (indivisible) parts of his name as its elementary (indivisible) middle. But the element is also infinitely divisible, anonymous, in things and in syllables. The name does not include more of its elements than it disperses like the foam "before his eyes" or drowns in the absence of water of the anonymous sea. If this was the case, the signature, more anagrammatical than another, would lose the name to the infinite measure of its care. No more name. Not only because the name that we know him by can act as a mask, in his eyes or ours, working for a completely different name in silence, even using his text as a mask (literature can always play this role), but also in order to insist on its place and to track down the most ingenious readings, and therefore the most naive in the police kindness of the investigation. And then, again, by signing, whether it makes his name untouched and complete, safe, at the top or at the bottom of the text, on the border or outside it, whether it abandons the seeds in language, to the state of dispersion or magnetisation, it both keeps and loses the name, signs without signing. And the more it keeps, the more it loses. In both cases, the anonymous is the effect: by effacement or monumentalisation. This double bind is the structure of the proper name, before any decision as to its subject, before any subject. In any case it will have drowned in the waters of his name with his name, where everything is swallowed up: here is the no-more-name [plus-de-nom] or the no-name [pas-de-nom]. The gift of the name (to give a name to the other or to be given a name) is perverted in advance in the no-name. According to this syntagm, this false syntagm, the step [pas] crosses the line, toward the name to be put down, or toward the transgression of the name, beyond the anonymous or beyond the name; but it immediately folds up before itself, on this side, the pas of negation having marked the retracing. It does not pass beyond: it takes place in language, whilst beyond it and leaves the fold of this re-folding in the pas as you [tu] understand it here, but you could never take [prendre], take by surprise [surprendre], take in [comprendre]. Pas-de is impregnable [imprenable], but...
- Thus what surprises me is that it remains.
- Not even that/The same pas [Pas même].
- But then what do you [vous] do with his name? Do you want to give it to him or help him, or even urge him to lose it? Where, in which of these two cases, is the most friendship...
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...