*This typescript was prepared by James Nauenburg, MARS (University of Detroit-Mercy, Fall 2008)
1
Derrida, Jacques. “Given Time: The time of the King.”
Critical Inquiry18 (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 toMadame 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 themorganatic wife of the Sun King (the Sun and the King are subjects here), Madame deMaintenon, did not say in her letter that she was literally giving all her time, but rather that theKing was
taking
it from her.
1
Even if that means the same thing in her mind, one word does notequal the other. What she gives is not time, but the rest. However, since the King takes
all
hertime, then the rest, according to the logic of economics, is nothing. She can no longer
take
hertime. She has no more time. And yet she gives it. Lacan states, in speaking of love:
“It giveswhat 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 timeconcerning which, she has just informed her correspondent, she has nothing of it left since theKing 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 bel
ongsto her therefore. How can a time belong? What is it
to have time
? If a time belongs, it is becausethe word
time
designates less time itself than do all the things with which one fills time, withwhich 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 thedistinction between taking and giving, and therefore also between receiving and giving, andperhaps even between receptivity and activity, or even between being affected and the affectingof any affection. Apparently, and according to the logic of economics, one can only take or givewhat is in time. That is indeed what Madame de Maintenon seems to want to say on a certainsurface of her letter. Yet, though the King takes it all from her, altogether, this time, or whateverfills up time, she has some left, a remainder that is not nothing since it is beyond everything; aremainder 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 deMaintenon seems to me to be exemplary because from her position as a grand dame she poses the question of thegift, 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
).
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