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Tenir au secret
La littrature aura t pour Maurice Blanchot et Jacques Derrida le lieu par excellence du secret. L'un et l'autre posent en effet qu'il y a dans le secret un " il est impossible de dire " qui ne peut tre lev mme lorsqu'il est dvoil ou rompu. Comment, ds lors, prsenter ce qui, dans ce secret sans contenu et non cach, se refuse toute prsentation et, surtout, comment en parler sans dchirer sa nuit propre et prive Cet essai se propose de suivre cette aporie dans le rcit de Maurice Blanchot, L'Instant de ma mort, texte testamentaire d'une inpuisable rserve paru en 1994, et dans la lecture minutieuse, pas pas, que lui consacrait Derrida dans Demeure-Maurice Blanchot. Prenant appui sur plusieurs sances indites du Sminaire de Derrida intitul " Rpondre du secret "", qui se tint en 1991, cet essai cerne dans un premier temps l'originalit de l'approche derridienne en retraant les choix que fait le philosophe de smantiques et de logiques qui le portent puiser un fond plus mystrieux et mme tranger au secret freudien ou (post-) psychanalytique. Dans un second temps, cette pense htronomique du secret est saisie tant dans le rcit de Blanchot, qui en offre une exemplaire mise en oeuvre, que dans les " effets de secret " qui viennent se dposer et se sceller en retour dans la propre lecture de Derrida. Forme de clbration de la parution de Demeure il y a quelque dix ans (et faisant constamment place cette question de la date), ce livre tente de prendre la mesure de l'vnement du secret qui s'est trouv nou entre ces textes de Blanchot et de Derrida. Plutt que d'interprtation ou d'hermneutique, c'est d'une autre exprience de la lecture qu'il sera aussi question une lecture qui souhaiterait elle-mme " demeurer ", loin de toute vidence, de toute explication et de toute certitude, une " exprience secrte au sujet d'un secret ", comme y appelait Derrida dans Donner la mort.
127 pages, Paperback
First published February 23, 2006
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March 19, 2022
Tenir au secret - keeping secret, holding to the secret, to what remains, demeurer, secret - as it must remain secret, il faut demeurer secret. But what is this secret, and what is the it, the il, of this demand? Would we be able to ask, to phrase the question, as such: what is the subject and what is the object of this secret and its keeping, its remaining and its remainder?
Michaud excels at explicating (which is not to say telling, avowing) the secret as it is marked between Maurice Blanchot and L'Instant de ma mort, and Jacques Derrida and Demeure. She traces the secret between these thinkers, these writers, and their texts, to the very limits of the secret and what can be said of it. Most appreciably, perhaps, is her questioning of Derrida's utilization and placement of a letter from Blanchot on the side of reality, truth, and the autobiographical, all after an extended questioning of the undecidable play which writing marks between fiction and testimony.
But the question remains - if Michaud, lending her name to those named openly in relation to the secret (as well, perhaps, to all those who are bound to it secretly, without name), holds to the secret in keeping it secret, what is this secret? What could it be but the secret which writing traces in or as a double movement, of a part opening, openly speaking and attesting to something unsaid, and of another part remaining closed, interdicted, by way of this very expressing or opening? The secret which writing keeps even in its attestation - attesting to the absence of attestation, as Blanchot puts it - to what must remain secret, unsaid, unavowed, in every saying. And would this necessary silence, this silent remainder traced in all language, not be related to the suspended instant of death, the experience without experience or unexperienced experience (unprovable experience, as the French might also suggest) which Blanchot’s récit marks as secret - speaking to it without being able to say it, to refer to what can never be openly said, to the silence of death always suspended, marking an infinite mortality, an interminable dying? The interruption, rupturing in secret, of the I who henceforth can only say, or write, in the displaced place of the il?
The question remains open, as it must. The secret must remain, must remain secret. And we hold to it, keep it in letting it pass in a passage which passes us by, with every word we would say or write - we keep it in letting it go, as the expiration of a breath short of a word, even a password, un mot de passe, a shibboleth without shibboleth perhaps...
Michaud excels at explicating (which is not to say telling, avowing) the secret as it is marked between Maurice Blanchot and L'Instant de ma mort, and Jacques Derrida and Demeure. She traces the secret between these thinkers, these writers, and their texts, to the very limits of the secret and what can be said of it. Most appreciably, perhaps, is her questioning of Derrida's utilization and placement of a letter from Blanchot on the side of reality, truth, and the autobiographical, all after an extended questioning of the undecidable play which writing marks between fiction and testimony.
But the question remains - if Michaud, lending her name to those named openly in relation to the secret (as well, perhaps, to all those who are bound to it secretly, without name), holds to the secret in keeping it secret, what is this secret? What could it be but the secret which writing traces in or as a double movement, of a part opening, openly speaking and attesting to something unsaid, and of another part remaining closed, interdicted, by way of this very expressing or opening? The secret which writing keeps even in its attestation - attesting to the absence of attestation, as Blanchot puts it - to what must remain secret, unsaid, unavowed, in every saying. And would this necessary silence, this silent remainder traced in all language, not be related to the suspended instant of death, the experience without experience or unexperienced experience (unprovable experience, as the French might also suggest) which Blanchot’s récit marks as secret - speaking to it without being able to say it, to refer to what can never be openly said, to the silence of death always suspended, marking an infinite mortality, an interminable dying? The interruption, rupturing in secret, of the I who henceforth can only say, or write, in the displaced place of the il?
The question remains open, as it must. The secret must remain, must remain secret. And we hold to it, keep it in letting it pass in a passage which passes us by, with every word we would say or write - we keep it in letting it go, as the expiration of a breath short of a word, even a password, un mot de passe, a shibboleth without shibboleth perhaps...
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