The Title Without the Title of the Title (Without Title)

Moebius makes Russian Dolls

On first accounts, scribes are said to be like automatons coloured in with the programming of their translators. Of course, being what they are, first accounts cannot recall the comic moment when the two changed places. If they could, they would notice that now it is only final reports that promise distant scribes choreographing contemporary translators.

Sumo a la tabac

Perhaps we were in the tobacconists. Michel and Jacques, both sporting madly white mops of hair, were on occasion difficult to distinguish, and certainly difficult to separate. No matter where we were, their voices managed to entangle themselves like a bowl of slippery eels. But we were, in all probability, Michel, Jacques and I, at the tobacconists. It was a strange place, soaked in ghosts and artefacts of another time. As soon as I had walked in, I had the impression faint archaic declamations were still travelling in rings between the narrow walls: 'Je suis la pipe d'un auteur…mon maitre est un grand fumeur…' It was indeed a narrow place and packed, crammed so much that its shelves and counters curved as if under fetes of dried stones, rather than leaves (no matter how seductive). The heavy shopkeeper, sporting a heavy moustache, was leaning on the largest counter-fete, staring deeply into our intentions.

We had entered upon the pretext of examining the availability of pipes (for our pockets and heads were already stuffed with smoke). I began to look for the desired objects on the shelves, but it was the strangest thing: the objects on every shelf I scrutinised disappeared as soon as I looked at them directly, and appeared in the corner of my eye as soon as I had looked away. Thankfully, I was interrupted in my vertigo by Michel, who was quarrelling with the shopkeeper. 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe!' Michel was shouting, 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe!' A girl, a riotous beauty we had not noticed when we stumbled in, began sobbing in the corner of the shop. With Michel now bashful, and the whole scene a mess, Jacques sacrificed any further inspection, and decided, quite without hesitation, upon a swift displacement.

As I was walking out, the twilight rushing into the shop as Jacques threw open the door, I noticed in the reflection on the windows, the strangest canvas, otherwise camouflaged in the shop by a clever collage of angles. The shopkeeper mustn't have been just a pretty face, I mused. However, I had no time to dip myself into a more circumspect examination, and casting one last glance at the girl in the corner, hurried to catch up with Michel and Jacques, both already deeply embroiled in a thicket of words. Out in the street, an accident had occurred-it looked as if a man had been hit by a truck. Someone was shouting for an ambulance. A whole crowd had gathered to witness the unfortunate incident. But Michel and Jacques paid no attention, and seeing they were my guests, I tried to focus and follow the shapes of their abstractions into the mangled shadows of the arcade.

Michel quoting Moliere: Do you not notice, once men have taken some tobacco, how obliging there are with everyone, and how delightfully they give it out, right and left, everywhere they go? They do not even wait to be asked and anticipate the wish of other men; so true it is that tobacco inspires feelings of honour and virtue in all those who take it.

Jacques quoting Baudelaire: As we were leaving the tobacconist's, my friend carefully separated his change…

Michel: From the beginning, the law which will govern the play, a law partially transgressed in the final balance sheet, a law flouted by every contingency, is prescribed on a limited scale. How does one become virtuous, a gentleman?

Jacques: Before the first act, before speech, there is, there was, there will have been tobacco. That is the point of departure, to wit, the first partition of sharing; everything comes out of it, everything issues from it, everything is born of it, as from the logos of which it is already the origin, and one can only depart from there, that is, proceed form there, that is, leave it in the distance…

Michel: The poor man prays on behalf of generous souls that their cup may run over…. The beggar, having thus received alms, offer sacred words destined to profit his benefactor…. The counterpart of charity, of the gift without counterpart, is the whole of the poor man's conduct. This is the only disrupting gesture where one can short-circuit the law: to give words for goods, but the word is sacred.

Jacques: By reason of their very marginality, by reason of their exteriority in relation to the circulation of labour and to the production of wealth, by reason of the disorder with which they seem to interrupt the economic circle of the same, beggars can signify the absolute demand of the other, the inextinguishable appeal, the unquenchable thirst for the gift.

Michel: The circle of giving is limited: I cannot resign myself to any limitation. The rupture of the circle or of the contract is brought about by a sham exchange: giving the same thing ten thousand times (saving it, that is) in order to acquire (conquer) ten thousand different things.

Jacques: So what then is counterfeit money? When is there counterfeit money? When does one give counterfeit money? And what is given, under this title, counterfeit money?…. Everything that will be said in the story, of counterfeit money (and in the story of counterfeit money) can be said of the story, of the fictive text bearing this title. This text is also the coin, a piece of counterfeit money provoking an event and lending itself to this whole scene of deception, gift, forgiveness, or non-forgiveness.

Michel: After giving and receiving, only taking remains….

Jacques: It is the system of the calculated and not excessive generosity, of the profitable gift…it is this 'economic paradise,' this gesture which consists of winning 'paradise economically' that the narrator…says he cannot forgive his friend.

Michel: Everyone knows that there is only one way to break the law and remain a gentleman, or, better yet, to become a nobleman. To give without receipt in kind is to give oneself honour and virtue, to display one's power: that is called charity. Who would offer tobacco to someone who has none, without hope of being repaid?

Jacques: Language gives one to think but it also steals, spirits away from us, whispers to us, and withdraws the responsibility that it seems to inaugurate; it carries off the property of our own thoughts even before we have appropriated them.

Michel: If I take back what I give, I acquire indefinitely. The taking back is the beneficial deviation which goes beyond equal rights, which rends the relationships between two persons and creates the possibility of communication between the one and the many.

Jacques: The Gift complicates itself, gets taken up in its own internal complication: giving itself to be an essay on the gift, it is also in truth an essay on taking. Even though it is given to be or as an essay on the gift, it can be taken as an essay on taking.

Michel: Now open The Gift, and you will undoubtedly be disappointed. There you will find match and counter-match…. But could we ever had read Moliere without Mauss?

Jacques: Neither Moliere nor Mauss, at bottom, has ever said anything about the gift itself. And what we are trying to explain here is why there is no fault in that.

Michel: …whoever will not join the chain of commerce finds himself condemned to death.

Jacques: That's the end, it's too late, there is no longer time: the narrator has said his last word. Without appeal.

Michel: The final word, as it should be is the moral of the story: contract, word, trust and faith, all broken.

The discussion, having bitten off its tail, found us standing outside a popular bar. Not wishing to miss out on the fun, we swung open the doors to relieve a suddenly conspicuous thirst. It was difficult to hear anything distinctly amongst the noise--snatches of words here and there, an occasional phrase. It was only when someone entered that I could make out the sheer joy of the place: 'Il est l'heure de s'enivrere! Pour n'etre pas les enclaves martyrises du Tempts, enivres-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poesie ou de veru, a votre guise.'

Under normal circumstances, this atmosphere would have suited me perfectly. But of course, it is not everyday one can stroll about on the body of Paris with such thoughtful giants. And having surmised that I was not going to profit too much from inspecting the rates of their liquid intake, I decided to play a little trick. I knew the bar was closing in about an hour, so I thanked them profusely for their company, told them I certainly hoped this was not the last time we liased in this fashion, and having noticed a man shaving an egg in the far right corner, opened the doors and escaped back onto the open boulevard.

My plan was, perhaps, too simple. I was going to dress (or undress) myself as a beggar, position myself strategically close to the bar (knowing which way they would be heading), and meet their approaching figures with a trembling hand holding out a pleading hat. I was going to put them before the law! And that is exactly what I did-I managed to steal a few scraps of cloth from about the neighbourhood, paint my face with mud, and soon enough looked the part, a veritable pauper, the scum of the earth. I had already recouped about half of my expenses at the bar, when Michel and Jacques walked out of the same establishment, and proceeded towards me in a harmonious rhythm.

You can imagine my distress, my frustration, my mounting anger (I was such an amateur leech!) when they walked straight passed my trembling hand. I had become invisible, dissolved by the surrounding coldness, swallowed by the faint light of the lamp that consumed my pitiful posture. Disgusted, I was about to stand up and offer my efforts to the altar of the heavens, when Michel, who was always gesticulating so violently with his hands, made a particularly energetic gesture, and caused a coin to drop out of his pocket, and come rolling in my direction. It made an enormous echo in the tiny alley, but Michel being ensconced in the whirlpools he was constructing, had not noticed at all. Jacques, however, always so acute to the smallest details, heard the fall of the coin, turned around to catch its trajectory, and very nearly tapped Michel on the shoulder. What made him stop and drop his arm? Hard to say, perhaps, but he did seem to look in my direction, and relax his face into the faintest of smiles. In any event, they continued on, while I, now frozen into a trance, watched the brave journey of the little coin across the wet pavement, glittering with specks of light, celebrating a little freedom.

Postscript:

All quotes have been taken from the following two sources:

Serres, Michel. Hermes: Literature, Science, Philosophy. Ed. Harari, Jouse and David Bell. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1982.

Derrida, Jacques. Given Time:I. Counterfeit Money. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992.

Max Leskiewicz