Given Time - Derrida

Derrida, Jacques. “Given Time: The time of the King.” Critical Inquiry 18 (Winter 1992). Tr. Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: U Chicago, 161-5.*

Epigraph The King takes all my time; I give the rest to Saint-Cyr, to whom I would like to give all. It is a woman who signs. For this is a letter, and from a woman to a woman. Madame de Maintenon is writing to Madame Brinon. This woman says, in sum, that to the King she gives all. For in giving all one’s time, one gives all, or the all, if all that one may give is constrained by time, and then one gives all one’s time. It is true that one who is known to have been the influential mistress and even the morganatic wife of the Sun King (the Sun and the King are subjects here), Madame de Maintenon, did not say in her letter that she was literally giving all her time, but rather that the King was taking it from her.1 Even if that means the same thing in her mind, one word does not equal the other. What she gives is not time, but the rest. However, since the King takes all her time, then the rest, according to the logic of economics, is nothing. She can no longer take her time. She has no more time. And yet she gives it. Lacan states, in speaking of love: “It gives what it does not have.”2 Madame de Maintenon wrote this sentence, and she says in writing that she gives the rest. What is the rest? Is it the rest? She gives the rest, which is nothing, since it is the rest of a time concerning which, she has just informed her correspondent, she has nothing of it left since the King takes it all from her. We must underscore this paradox. Even though the King takes all her time, she seems to have some left. “The King takes all my time,” she writes, a time that belongs to her therefore. How can a time belong? What is it to have time? If a time belongs, it is because the word time designates less time itself than do all the things with which one fills time, with which one fills the form of time, time as form. Time, then, is a matter of things one does in the meantime, or the things one has at one’s disposal during this time. As time does not belong to anyone as such, one can no more take it than give it. Time appears as that which undoes the distinction between taking and giving, and therefore also between receiving and giving, and perhaps even between receptivity and activity, or even between being affected and the affecting of any affection. Apparently, and according to the logic of economics, one can only take or give what is in time. That is indeed what Madame de Maintenon seems to want to say on a certain surface of her letter. Yet, though the King takes it all from her, altogether, this time, or whatever fills up time, she has some left, a remainder that is not nothing since it is beyond everything; a remainder that is nothing, but that is there since she gives it. It is essentially what she gives, that 1

Madame de Maintenon’s sentence is remarkable enough to have attracted the attention of the editors of Littré. There are those who will be surprised to see me invoke the secret wife of a great king, however, Madame de Maintenon seems to me to be exemplary because from her position as a grand dame she poses the question of the gift, the gift of time, and the gift of the rest. She played the role of Louis XIV’s sultan of conscience and was at the same time an outlaw. The word morganatic is from the low Latin morganegiba meaning “gift of the morning.” 2 The expression “to give what one does not have” is also found in Heidegger (Der Spruch das Anaximander).

1

*This typescript was prepared by James Nauenburg, MARS (University of Detroit-Mercy, Fall 2008)

very thing. The King takes all, she gives the rest. The rest is not, there is the rest that is given, or that gives itself. It does not give itself to a person, because Saint-Cyr is not a person, and it is above all not masculine. Saint-Cyr is a very feminine place; a charity, an institution, more exactly a foundation endowed by Madame de Maintenon, for the education of impoverished young ladies of good families. Its founder eventually retired there and was then able to devote all of her time to it, in accordance with her declared wish, after the death of the King in 1715. Is the question of this rest, of the rest of given time, secretly linked to the death of some king? Thus the rest, which is nothing, but that there is nevertheless, does not give itself to someone, but to a foundation of young virgins. And it never gives itself enough, the rest. Madame de Maintenon never gets enough of giving this rest that she does not have, and when she writes that she would like to give it all, one must pay attention to the literal writing of her letter. This letter is almost untranslatable; it defies exchange from language to language. I insist on the fact that it is a question of a letter since things would not be said in the same way in a different context. So when she writes that she would like to give all she allows to equivocations to be installed [elle voudrait le tout donner]. For le can be a personal pronoun (I would like to give it all), or it can be an article (I would like to give all, that is everything). This is the first equivocation. The second equivocation is tout meaning time (all of which the King takes from her), but it also means the rest of time, of the time, and of what presents itself in time, occupying time, or occupying the rest of time, or occupying the rest of time and what presents itself in the rest of time. This phrase allows one to hear the infinite sigh of unsatisfied desire. She is saying to her correspondent that everything leaves her something to be desired. Her wish is not fulfilled or attained either by what she allows herself to take from the King, nor even by the rest that she gives, in order to make a present of it, to her young virgins. Her desire is in what she would like, in the conditional, to give what she cannot give, the all; the rest of the rest of which she cannot make a present. Nobody takes it all from her, neither the King nor Saint-Cyr. The rest of the rest of time of which she cannot make a present, that is what she desires, what she would in truth desire, not for herself, but to be able to give it: for the power of giving, perhaps, in order to give herself this power of giving. She lacks not lacking time, she lacks not giving enough. She lacks this leftover time that is left to her and that she cannot give—that she does not know what to do with. This rest of the rest of time, of a time moreover that is nothing and that belongs properly to no one, is the whole of her desire. Desire and the desire to give would be the same thing, a sort of tautology, and maybe also a tautological designation of the impossible, maybe the impossible. The impossible may be, if giving and taking are also the same—that is, the same “the same thing” which would certainly not be a thing.

2

*This typescript was prepared by James Nauenburg, MARS (University of Detroit-Mercy, Fall 2008)