Insister of Jacques Derrida

• • Helene Cixous Translated by Peggy Kamuf

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Insister

Insister of By Helene Cixous Original Drawings by Ernest Pignon-Ernest Translated by Peggy Kamuf

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

2007

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Contents Stanford University Press Stanford, California © Editions Galilee, 2006. English translation © Peggy Kamuf, 2007 Originally published in France in 2006 by Editions Galilee, 9 rue Linne, 75007 Paris

I. Insister: How to Translate That?

Postscript: From Life

53 121 169 179

Notes

183

Description of the Original Manuscript of Veils

189

II. The Flying Manuscript III. The Infinite Tastes of Dreams

First published in the UK by Edinburgh University Press Ltd No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8047-5907-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8047-5908-3 (pbk.) Typeset in Bembo by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain

5

IV It's My Fault

'I have often declared my admiration for HeU~ne Cixous, for the person and for the work: immense, powerful, so multiple but unique in this century.' Jacques Derrida

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'It's a vision: you and I are two mice in sports clothes, two lilliputian beings full of life. And we're playing with a ball, football. My mouse is stage right. Yours is a hifty little male and you're getting ready to shoot stage lift. My little girl mouse is the goal keeper. She goes back and forth in front of the goal. She's guarding, but at the same time she's very frightened of the shot; she lets go sharp little yelps of apprehension. You are looking at her energetically. Notice: the dreaming woman is on your side. You crouch like a cat ready to shoot. The girl mouse screams at the same time as she cannot stop laughing, since after all it's a game. You're going to score, that's for sure. A force emanates from you. Your little muscled and centered body. The other agitated one who is running everywhere. All at once you burst out laughing: the spectacle if the adversary who is really frightened makes you laugh but benevolently. 'The title of this dream is: Scoring [Marquer]. It comes to sign this text.' Dream, April 2005.

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Insister: How to translate that?

- The chase of truth, that's our eternal conversation. - The chance of the chase. The chase of the chance - I run after truth, I chase it. Chasing it I chase it away, you say - Sussing that chasing it you chase it away, I say - I put in question all assayings, beginning with sayings and other meanings-to-say, and before beginning, beginning with words - The chase after happiness, that's Stendhal's chase and mine as well. - The question of truth obsesses me - You obsess it. One never knows who obsesses whom, who besieges, retains, captures whom, will have begun what - The question of veracity, even more so; no one can prove anything about lying. Hence my relation to literature. - Which relation? - Chance literature. No one will ever catch it lying or truth-telling in flagrante delicto. Literature, 7

neither lie nor veracity: no one will ever prove that I am lying - That's why you have always stayed in closest proximity to literature - In closest approximity, in the neighborhood. No one will ever prove that I am inside or outside. It so happens that sometimes I happen to find myself there, lost naturally. A naturally lost child. - But you don't stay there. Literature is your temptation. Between literature and you - There's naught, but a step. I give three long lectures at the Bibliotheque Nationale Fran r',Jl' '" 'j ..,

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