Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
The Lack of Time and its Specters
This chapter examines Jacques Derrida's notion of time as a possible gift—an original gift, the event of the giving of time that cannot be registered or identified—as well as his description of the specter as a new, suggestive sign able to grant us insight into the medial and thus tell us about the fate of all other signs. In his book Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, Derrida performs an analysis of the inability to distinguish the authentic from the simulated within the context of the symbolic economy. In that book, he also names the medium that manifests itself through this undecidability. For Derrida, it is the medium of the event—understood not as an action that happens “in time,” but rather as the source from which time flows to us in the first place. This chapter also considers Derrida's search for an ideal, absolute, authentic potlatch that cannot be reciprocated; a gift that eludes the ostentation, theatricality, and visibility of the symbolic exchange.
Keywords: gift, Jacques Derrida, time, specter, signs, symbolic economy, potlatch, symbolic exchange, Given Time
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