The+Fifth+Week

media type="custom" key="23989606"

Speech acts are like a game of Risk. You can choose when you attack and how many dice you use, but you can't choose what the dice roll. Sometimes you get all sixes, sometimes its someone else. In the same way you can choose your words (intention isn't lost) but you can't choose what those words do or mean. __**Limited Inc**__ Perhaps he will understand it only in part and without judging it to be //quite// serious.

Others will probably read it after him. How is all that possible? What does it imply? That is precisely what interests me.

I shale place in the margin (I ask the publishers to follow this recommendation) the following question.

Thus, I place in the margin (but why must I already repeat it? I "mets a gauche" - placing it on the left, but also putting it aside, in reserve) the question

And I repeat (but why must I repeat again?) that I could have pretended to begin with a false start [//faux-depart//] with whatever seemed to me the "first" or "primary" utterance used or mentioned - I don't know which - in the //Reply//, as I read it, "originally," in manuscript.

On top, at the left, above the title, I then read the following:

I COULD HAVE pretended to begin with a "false" beginning, my penchant for falsity [//pour le faux//] no longer requiring special demonstration. I could have simulated what in French is called a "//faux depart//"

Why are copyright utterances making a serious claim to truth? Had I asserted a copyright, "for saying things that are obviously false," there could have been no doubt as to its appropriateness.

But that John R. Searle should be so concerned with this copyright, for saying things that are obviously true, gives on pause to reflect upon the truth of the copyright and the copyright of the truth.

If John R. Searle owes a debt to D. Searle concerning this discussion, then the "true" copyright ought to belong (as indeed is suggested along the frame of this //tableau vivant//) to a Searle who is divided, multiplied, conjugated, shared.

situated *within* the text as its "object," the signature no longer simply signs, even though it does still sign, being neither entirely in the text nor entirely outside, but rather *on the edge*?

Naturally, the J.D. that claims to guarantee the identity of the "I" and of the signatory is itself guaranteed by nothing but the //presumed// authenticity of the handwritten signature. The latter, however, is explicitly designed as being "counterfeit" and it is reproduced, typo-photographically, in thousands of copies. Searle //himself// could easily imitate it.

This signature is imitable in its essence. And always has been...it can *be* imitated, and it imitates *itself*. This is all that I ask my interlocutors to acknowledge. And yet, as wel shall see shortly, the consequences of this very simply fact are *unlimited* and //unlimitable//.

I should have to dwell on this question at length to do it justice, but among the many contextual constraints weighing up on us there is that - economical in nature - which concerns the spatial limits (despite he generous hospitality of //Glyph//, which nontheless has its own interest in inviting such aparasites to its table) as well as the temporal ones (the time that I can devote to this long, transcontintntal correspondecne, and above all that which we decently demand from the readers).

Let’s be serious.

But let's be serious.

I could have yielded to the temptation of suggesting to interested readers that they simply reread //Signature Event Context// instead of obliging myself to comment or to repeat myself more than once.
 * Either the reader would have to repeat Derrida or Derrida would have to repeat Derrida

and in any event as serious: seriously supposing itself to know all about the difference between the serious and the non-serious I decide here and from this moment on to give the presumed and collective author of the //Reply// the French name "Societe a responsabilite limitee" - literally, "Society with Limited

Responsibility" (or Limited Liability) - which is normally abreviated to //Sarl//.

I ask that the translator leave this conventional expression in French and if necessary, that he explain things in a note.

If this expression does not simply translate "Limited," "Incorporated," or "Limited Inc," it is not unrelated to those terms, for it pertains to the same legal-commercial context.

//Sec// has apparently been read, and is generally cited in English (we shall mention certain consequences of this) within a //Reply// written in English. I have read it in English but I am trying to respond in French, although my French will be marked in advance by English and destined in advance for a translation that will doubtless present certain difficulties.

Lets be serious.

The second type I shall call //mis//, mistype if you like.

They are situated beyond, around, beneath utterances that are apparently constative, but which through their gesture of "this is so and so" tend to produce determinate effects, often quite different from those apparently intended.
 * Like "lets be serious." But this isn't a mis?

Loyalty and the absence of simulation are so rare in French-language polemics, which are characterized by the use of elision, ellipsis, self-censorship and a strategy that is both artful and indirect. Why did I not succeed? This is just what I shall endeavor to explain.

Among all the adverbial locutions that I have just underlined, whose curious functions may be analyzed at one's leisure, on in particular deserves to become proverbial and I shall indulge myself by citing it once again: "...//more than simply a mis//reading..."!

I shall endeavor, therefore, to address myself now to what is at stake in this debate, and to do this in a manner as normal and serious, as strict, brief, and direct as possible, while reducing the parasitism as much as I can.

You can take my word for it.

My first technical convention: concerned to spare Sarl and possible readers the trouble of having to read or reread other texts of mine, I shall make reference only to //Sec//

As we shall see, these "important" points are hardly separable from a good many others, with which they form a systematic chain of a singular type.

But I will limit my arguments in number to eighteen. One of the conventions of this debate (and, says //Sec//, not the least determining, in the final analysis) is that it should take place, if it takes place, in a graphic element of a type that is phonetic, and more precisely, alphabetical. This is not without a certain arbitrariness. Its effect: henceforth I will have at my disposal only 18 letters or 18 blows and I will have to make the best of them. But, one will protest, is not this limit utterly contingent, artificial and external? Are all these parasites to be incorporated into the //economy// of discourse?

Must the surface of the paper, the contents of the time at our disposal, etc. all be integrated into our calculations? If so, what about the ink remaining in my typewriter ribbon?

And yet: why not? That is the question.

Finally, I give my word of honor that I shall be of good faith in my argument. I promise this in all sincerity and in all seriousness, literally, raising my hand above the typewriter.

(!?)

(?)

Since Sarl does not devote a single word to signature, event, context, I ask the reader intersted in this debate to consult //Signature Event Context//, which I do not want to cite or to mention in its entirety, so that he can judge for himself the effects of such serious negligence.
 * But I thought he didn't want the reader to read or reread his other texts?

Concerning iterability, for instance: in reiterating what can be read on each page of //Sec//, re-plying or reapplying it, it is difficult to see how the //Reply// can object to it.

"It reapplies" again, to and towards the "discourse from/to //Sec//" although this time things are a bit more complicated. In order to treat this second point, Sarl begins //again// with the question disqualified by //Sec//, determining what distinguishes "written from spoken language."

To object by citing cases where absence //appears in fact// not to be observable is like objecting that a mark is not essentially //iterable// because //here and there// it has not //in fact// been repeated.

What is limited by iterability is not intentionality in general, but its character of being conscious or present to itself (actualized, fulfilled, and adequate), the simplicity of its feature, its //undividedness//.

I begin.