Derrida states one condition for the gift: 'In order for there to be a gift, gift event, some "one" has to give some "thing" to someone other, without which "giving" would be meaningless' (11). Would this not mean, then, that the cloud cannot be the perfect gift? I agree with you that the shade the cloud gives requires no return, gives all the benefits you have mentioned while placing no obligation on the recipient to return them, is "nothing". However, it cannot be given. If going by your argument that no Creator/donor is there to give this gift of the cloud, then it is not a gift at all because no "one" is giving this gift. Because of this, no gift event can take place. Thus, the "giving" is meaningless and the cloud can no longer be a gift. The cloud is also not a gift, but a cloud. It is nothing that anyone can give to any other person, because the cloud cannot be possessed by anyone in the first place.

I know that the donor 'must not see … or know'(Derrida 14) the gift as a gift because that would lead to the destruction of the gift as a gift. Yet would not the act of "giving" be meaningless if there is no donor in the first instance? There has to be an agent in order for an event to take place. Thus if there is no agent in the gift event of the cloud, then the gift even cannot possibly take place at all. Furthermore, because you see it as a gift, would that not also annul it as a gift? The conditions that make the gift possible 'designate simultaneously the conditions of the impossibility of the gift' (Derrida 12), thus the moment one defines a gift, it is annulled at the very same time.

Am I over simplifying things? One other thing that caught my attention when reading Serres is this: the sea would be the perfect donor. This is because Serres says that 'the sea has no memory' (31). If this were the case, wouldn't what the sea gives be the perfect gift? It will never remember what it gave, would never expect anything in return, and most people will not consider what they take from the sae as a gift. Hmmm…food for thought.

Karen Chen