When I stop to think about it, “believing in” is an odd phrase—
or, at least, yet another phrase (or term) worth thought.
That’s why I’m so likely to put ordinary words or phrases in quote marks, readily calling that “Derridean” because I’ve been so influenced by
a sensibility I associate with his work—not to claim that my association is itself appropriately or “really” Derridean. And I have special affection (deeply so, actually) for someone who would balk at turning proper last names into adjectives.
Quote marks are a compromise irt a very common act: Platonic, Austenian, etc.—or taking any word to heart: ‘of’ or ‘is,’ etc.
Such a compromise would be at least about believing in
a Literary/artistic sensibility that aptly takes a so-called
tongue-in-cheek stance toward believing in anyone—or anything
—though I live so beyond nihilism.
OK, so two months have passed since I posted here, and you’ve lost “faith” in a reliability of this blog’s ongoingness, as if some ending came by my expressing, two months ago, fascination with beginning.
But you know the truth of the matter—and other readers face
the ambiguity of whom “you” are, as if you are any reader, and
idealized textual intimacy belongs to us in a way I’ll never know
apart from finding you here in my own way.
Let’s pretend I’ll never know you except that I believe in your presence, as if a True Love somewhere far away could not break silence, yet must be reading because our belief in our bond is irrevocable (as if an inner blog continues to one who wants to be invited, inside every word here).
So it’s delicious to me that a beginning seems to have been “the end.” (Yea, telic endlessness in a null time.)
A moment expressing outrageous desire is followed by disappearance, when actually it was as if only beginning transposition
from a 2-dimensional (lateral) world to depart “up” (or/and) “down.”
Derrida very well knew he was a precursor, in a sense of that which is late Heideggerian, the elder looking into an ever-emerging horizon.
Believing in our potential, believing in the future, implies primordial openness and entails prevalent yielding in light of a joy beholding
the lived time (a self-orienting, self oriented finitude) of a relatively young life—friend, student, intimate—as if something millennial is possibly emerging within you.
At the UC, Irvine, memorial for Derrida, December 2004, Peggy Kamuf remarks on her 30 years of influence by him, including note that, after 1974,
…by telling you that my friendship for him never thereafter looked back, I confess as well my belief that neither did his for me. For that was the very nature of what was sealed and consigned: a belief in the friend, which was and remains the belief that thereafter, henceforth, désormais, he would always believe me, believe in me.I feel that I was drawn into the best of myself, thanks to the advent of you—and loved you so defenselessly that I’m left dissolved into the opening of it all, as if standing on a high dive or a cliff nearly releasing myself into confidence I can fly over elating landscape.
