Catherine Malabou

Like a sleeping Animal: Philosophy between Presence and Absence

To recover: This verb alone ties together all the questions Derrida asked me the day of my
thesis defense on December 15, 1994, and that now appear in his beautiful text A Time for
Farewells (Le temps des adieux). I would like to pay homage to these questions and to the
decisive dialogue that we had that day. The discussion revolved around the signification
and range of several gestures or movements that are contained within the English verb to
recover: to heal, to return, to relocate a lost object or retum to a normal state. It involved
the characterization of a modality of philosophical invention that consists not in creating a
language or a conceptuality from nothing, but in relocating, in causing to return that which
is already there but which one does not see. The discussion interrogated the paradoxical
possibility of a philosophical event that situates itself between to recover and to discover.
Something like a rediscovering. Recovering, rediscovering: is there, between these two
verbs, a possible future for philosophy?
My thesis centered on Hegel and the role that the concept of plasticity plays in Hegelian
thought. You are attempting to invent Hegel in causing him to return, Derrida told me, in
making a word return that, to some extent, was asleep in language, awaiting its status as a
concept: »plasticity«. But is it possible to invent Hegel in causing him to return, in redis-
covering him, in healing him with a word, plasticity, that designates, precisely, according to
one of its principal meanings, the capacity to cure, to recoup health? Can such a return,
such a plastic surgery, such a •lifting«, as Derrida said, be compatible with new thought?
We spoke thus of the mode of thought that consists in awakening that which is already
found there, lying low and hidden in language like a sleeping animal:
»To invent, and most particularly understanding invention as an event, means here to
rediscover what was there without being there, both in language and in philosophy; it is a
question of finding, yes, but of finding for the first time what was always there and what had
always been there, to find again.[...) Such words, which seemed lost, hidden away in lan-
guage, almost asleep in language, but asleep with one eye open, hera they appear leaping
into the center of the stage, organizing and playing a lively and vigilant role. These words
are almost like animals.«1

Jacques Derrida, ~A Time for Farewells: Heidegger (read by) Hegel (read by) Malabou•. Preface to Catherine
Malabou's The Future of Hegel, Plastic;ty, Temporality and Di8lectic, Trans. Joseph D. Cohen and Lisabeth
LIKE A SLEEPING ANIMAL: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN PRESENCE AND .ABSENCE

The focus of this discussion did not and does not only apply to the motifs of invention
and recovery in general. The conceptual animals in question here come not just from any
forest nor are they ready to pounce onto just any scene. They claim to exceed two limits,
and it is certainly this claim that Derrida questions. The first limit, which Heidegger in The
Principle of Reason (Der Satz vom Grund) compares to the ring of fire through which the
tiger must jump, is the limit of metaphysics. If a philosopher is susceptjbfe to returning (to
recovering and to being rediscovered), it is necessary that he be able to do so after the end
of metaphysics; it is necessary that he be able to pass through the ring. The second limit is
the limit of deconstruction. If Hegel is susceptible to returning in the name of or in accor-
dance with his plasticity, he must be able to cross the circle of fire of his deconstruction. To
invent in causing to return is to cross this double limit, to jump beyond this duality.
Invention as rediscovery consists not only in reawakening authors and categories that
were thought achieved, accomplished, used, but also to revive them after their deconstruc-
tion. The question asked by Derrida is therefore that of knowing what chance a philosopher
like Hegel or a word like plasticity have of returning, after their deconstruction, after meta-
physics, and beyond the deconstruction of metaphysics. ..which is the scene of this good-
bye to which, without even having said farewell , we are now retuming?«,2 Derrida asks. Can
plasticity provide such a scene? Can it allow philosophy to recover from metaphysics and
to muffle the sound of its toll (glas)?
To recover-how does this movement, active and passive at the same time, this dis-
placement, this jump beyond the wound, beyond loss, beyond farewell, this passing of a
double history, inscribe itself in the mobility of »differance«, if it claims to overflow and pro-
ceed beyond this mobility? To cause to return, to differ (ditterer): Do these two movements
realty follow the same trace, or do they separate from one another due precisely to this very
question of the trace?
Today, the time has come to respond and to explain myself. To cause to retum is not to
repeat; it is not to mimic; it is not to reproduce. In causing Hegel and the concept of plas~
ticity to return, one obviously does not obey the fantasy of finding them again intact,
untouched by deconstruction. On the contrary, one must consider the manner in which
they can rebound after their double adhesion to tradition and deconstruction. That is to say,
and Derrida understood it perfectly, that such a manner of philosophizing brings the future
of deconstruction into play. When it is a question of interrogating oneself about Derrida's
legacy, when it is a question of causing Derrida to return, of recovering Derrida, it is not
about repeating, mimicking, or reproducing him. It is to invent him after the scene in which
he said goodbye to himself as well, after the scene of an internal dissidence, the
announcement of a separation of »differance« with itself, which at the same time will
engage •>differance"' in its future.
In order to tie these questions together, I chose to interpret a sentence, one sole sen-
tence, from the Phenomenology of Spirit (Phanomenologle des Geistes): nThe wounds of

During, Loodon 2005. Derrida. XVI-XVII.

2 Ibid. , x.
 LIKE A SLEEPING ANIMAL: PliLOSOPHY BElWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

the spirtt heal, and leave no scars behind.«3 In this sentence, Hegel Is speaking of the
»beautiful soul« that is always ready to pardon and to forget mistakes, that returns
perpetually to itself, relocates itself, reconstitutes itself. Quite often, this sentence is taken
out of context and used as the very definition of the labor of the spirit or the movement of
the absolute. You can understand why, then, I have chosen to isolate this sentence. Jt
speaks of »recovery«, of healing, of the return, of the reconstitution of the skin after a
wound, that is, of plasticity. However, according to Hegel, a true healing leaves no scars,
that is, no traces. The spiritual recovery is a process of erasing this trace.
Therefore, I would like to suggest that three readings of this sentence are possible: a
dialectical reading, a deconstructive reading, and a third reading that I will call post-decon-
structive. Between the first and the second stands the first ring of fire, between the second
and the third is the second ring of fire. These three readings come from three ways of
understanding recovery, healing, reconstitution, retum. or regeneration. I will present these
readings via three paradigms of recovery: the paradigm of the phoenix, tl1e paradigm of tis-
sue, and the paradigm of tl1e salamander.
In the first reading of the phrase, regeneration merges with the process of sublation
(Aufhebung, Ia re/eve). The spirit returns constantly to itself after its rending and without
exhibiting a trace. As Hegel maintains in the Lectures on the Philosophy of History (Vorle-
sungen Ober die Philosophie der Geschichte), the spirit is comparable to the phoenix, the
legendary bird that is reborn from its own ashes. Hegel says that »like the phoenix, the spirit
comes forth exalted, glorified, a purer spirit ... 4 In accordance with this paradigm, true
recovery is resurrection. The second reading tends to deconstruct the first in affirming that
there are only scars. If Derrida affirms that a trace attains only self-erasure, this erasure is
simultaneously and necessarily a mark. A trace attains only self-~asure, but the erasure in
its tum succeeds only in leaving a trace. For Derrida, the process of recovery, in all senses
of the word, is understood through the text as tissue. Tissue is at the same time a textile or
a web (toile) and a living tissue. To read, to understand, is to make wounds everywhere,
first cuts, gashes. in the textile or web and the flesh. The text always reconstitutes itself, but
it keeps imprints or traits of all readings and all acts of the spirit. In Dissem;nation (La
Dissemination) , Derrida writes: the text »reconstitut{es] it(sel~ too as an organism, indefi-
5
nitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading".
But here, the regeneration of living tissue coincides with the process of scarring and the
inscription of the memory of the wound. Therefore, it is in the name of such a device of
multiple inscriptions, both erased and unerasable, that Derrida writes G/as, for and against
the Hegelian phoenix. G/as is writing against resurrection.
The third reading of the phrase, which is beyond the dialectical and »differantial" or
textual signification of recovery, evokes the paradigm of the salamander. What is it about?
The response to this question accounts for all the risks of my lecture. My interest in plas-

3 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hagel, Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans. Arnold V. Miller. Oxford 1977. p. 407.
4 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Trans. John Sibree. London 1881. p. 76.
5 Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, Trans. Barbara Johnson, Chicago 1981, p. 63.
l.JKE A SlEEPING ANIMAL: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

ticity has driven me these last few years to an interest in what is today called regenerative
medicine, which consists in providing organs and tissues the means to mend themselves,
to heal themselves through self-regeneration or re-growth. For this, regenerative medicine
develops the potential of those surprising cells called stem cells. Regenerative medicine
works with either embryonic stem cells, cells that are totipotent and that can differentiate
themselves by giving rise to all the cell types of an organism; or adult stem cells, non-
specialized cells that are found in specialized tissue {brain, bone marrow, blood, blood-ves-
sels, retina, liver, and so on). The largest part of these stem cells generate, at the time of
regeneration, the same kind of cells as the tissue from which they came, but it has been
discovered that certain of these adult stem cells (notably dermis stem cells) can transform
into other types of ceffs (for example, nervous or muscular cells). They are said to »transdif-
ferentiatecc themselves. From these cells, it is therefore possible to make skin, muscle, and
neurons, to regenerate the sick organ without the help of outside contribution. Such medi-
cine is called regenerative in reference to the capacity that certain animals have to repro-
duce one or several damaged or amputated parts. The salamander is the most well known
and most spectacular example. It is capable of regenerating limbs (legs, tail) and portions of
organs, such as the eye or the heart. Today's regenerative medicine, with the use of stem
cells, aims to recover this self-restoring faculty inscribed in the memory of the species.
Regeneration is brought into play more and more often in the treatment of myocardial
infarction, burns, or Parkinson's disease.
These totally new therapeutic possibilities -which came into being only at the end of the
1990s-elicit philosophicaf thought in many ways. In particular, they prompt me to under-
stand the sentence from Hegel in a new way. When the tail of a salamander or lizard re-
grows, we have a healing process without scars. The timb identically reconstitutes itself
without leaving a trace. But this phenomenon of recovery does not appear to me to be
readable in dialectical terms, nor in the terms of >•differance« or textual logic. Such recovery
is not a sublation, nor is it a weaving. Without resurrection, but also without a graft, without
a pharmakon, without an intruder: what comes or returns after dialectics and after the text,
proceeding from an ancient memory, more ancient still than that of metaphysics? What is
thJs plasticity that invents itself in returning? I would like to confront these three structures of
recovery, of inscription, and of the erasure of the trace. On this path one can see the ani-
mals-phoenix, spider or silkworm, salamander-always ready to pounce. They will faith-
fully accompany me and help me to rephrase the question: »Again: •The wounds of the spi-
rit heal, and leave no scars behind•«.

The confrontation of presence and »differance• is played out between the two parad[gms of
the phoenix and tissue.
The paradigm of the phoenix, the legendary bird to which Hegel compares the spirit,
corresponds to the movement of presence that constantly reconstitutes itself from its
wounds. As such, the immortal phoenix symbolizes the parousia or the work of the spirit
that returns to itself from extreme rending. According to this paradigm, to recover neces-
 LIKE A SLEEPING ANIMAL: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN PRESEI\CE ANO ABSENCE

sarily signifies a modality of presentation. To heal, for example, implies a reconstitution of

presence from that which lacks, a cancellation of defects or of absence. So it is that Hegel
turns to the metaphor of skin that regenerates itself without leaving a scar. The image of the
return to the self also appears at the end of Phenomenology of Spirit in the form of the
liquid that, overflowing the chalice, flows simultaneously back into it and fills the chalice
anew.
Derrida shows several times that Aufhebung, the process of sublation or of dialectical
recovery, is deeply dependent on what he calls, in the lecture Differance (Ditterance), •the
value of presence• (nla valeur de presence«). 6 For Hegel, the trace, the wound, and its era-
sure, the healing, are still subjected to the authority of presence. The disappearance of the
scar coincides with the appearance of the spirit. Recovery is a disappearance that presents
itself, a phenomenology. Derrida shows very early, in Differance, »The Pit and the Pyramid•
(Le Puits et Ia pyramide), and G/as, that in Hegel's estimation wounds are only privileged
means for the spirit to return to itself from separation, suffering, and doubling. The negative
is fundamentally the work of presence. As such, the spirit, in the still abstract fonn of the
beautiful soul or in the completed form of absolute knowledge, always sublates itself after
extreme rending. As Hegel himself declares: Spirit »is its own restless process of super-
seding itself, or negativity ... 7 Dialectical plasticity is the constant regeneration of presence,
which each time finds the resources of its youth or health in the form of a superior life.
In one sense, the tissue paradigm also corresponds well to a structure of the erasure of
the trace and therefore also the scar. But such an erasure, far from permitting the comple-
tion of presence, corresponds to the originary impossibility of presence to be anything other
than a trace. In Differance, Derrida affirms:
»Since the trace is not a presence but the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates
itself, displaces itself, refers itself, it properly has no site [n'a proprement pas lieu). Erasure
a
belongs to its structure [/'effacement appartient sa structure]. And not only the erasure
which must always be able to overtake it (without which it would not be a trace but an
indestructible and monumental substance), but also the erasure which constitutes it from
the outset as a trace, which situates it as the change of site, and makes it disappear in its
appearance, makes it emerge from itself in its production ...8
It is therefore necessary to distinguish two concepts of the scar. On the one hand, if the
scar is that which bears witness to the presence of the wound, to the presence of the past,
then one must consider that »differance(( also does not leave a scar. As Derrida again
affirms: .
»The concept of trace is incompatible with the concept of retention, of the becoming-
past of what have been present... The conclusion is clear: •One cannot think the trace-
and therefore difference-on the basis of the present, or of the presence of the present [on

6 Jacques Derrida, •Differance• In: Margins of Philosophy, Trans. by Alan Bass, Chicago ~ 982, P· ~ 6.
7 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Ph6nomenology of Spirit, p. 491 .
8 Jacques Derrida, ~Differance• in: Margins of Philosophy. p. 25.
LIKE A s..EEPING ANIMAL: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN PF!ESENCE AND ABSENCE

ne peut penser Ia trace-et done Ia differance-a partir du present, ou de Ia presence du

present].« 9
On the other hand, if one thinks of the scar as the movement of the originary mourning
of presence, as witness to the impossibility of self-presence, that which designates writing,
then the medium of sense is full of marks, of first cuts, of scratches.
Thus, the •spelling mistake« that leads to writing »differance" with an a is surely an injury
made to language, which leaves in it a scar of this »infraction«. However, this fault »remains
silent, secret and discreet as a tomb«. 10 The scar bears witness to nothing, actualizes no
past. The a in differance hides nothing, promises neither revelation nor truth, ))reserving
itself, not exposing itself, in regular fashion it exceeds the order of truth at a certain and
precise point, but without dissimulating itself (... J. In every exposition it would be exposed to
disappearing as a disappearance. It would risk appearing: disappearing [En tout expos;tion
elfe serait exposee a
disparaitre comma disparition. Ella risquerait d'apparaJ'tre: de
11
disparaitre]."
Dffferance has no essence, it »is" not. That is why its paradigm is the tissue of the text,
and it is impossible to get out of this in order to attain a non-textual presence. There is
nothing but the text, the tissue. If one cuts into it, the section creates text again. Textiles or
webs are rewoven out of their torn pieces, creating a network, an entanglement of veils. But
in this constant regeneration, it is not the skin that re-grows in an identical way, no increase
in presence closes the wound nor corrects the mistakes. The tissue of the text spreads
itself out, becomes more complex and ramifies without ever achieving the clarity of a form .
Regeneration here is not the repetition of the eternal youth of the phoenix, but the indefinite
mending of the textiles or webs . This explains why the recovery model remains for Derrida
that of the graft.
The question then is to know if the concept of plasticity is susceptible to the characteri-
zation of the two modalities of recovery that I have just distinguished. Can plasticity, a con-
cept that appears for the first time in Hegel, have a signification outside of the "value of
presence«? According to Derrida, it seems not: in A Time for Farewells, he shows that the
reconstitution of tissue or of textiles resists plastic regeneration, which is always attached,
in his opinion, to salvation or redemption. The graphic differance, he says, »abandons the
assurance of repetition or of redemption« and »refuses all the assurances of salvation«. 12
Derrida also rediscovers the concepts buried in a language. He also causes philoso-
phers to return. But the modality of return that he implements Is not plastic. Plasticity,
Derrida declares. is »always interiorizing, incorporating, sublating, idealizing, spiritualizing
that which [it cures ... ]... 13 In this sense, plasticity would always be dialectical. Metaphysics
leaves scars, folds, marks. It would seem that neither plasticity nor Hegel can truly get over

9 Ibid., p. 22.
10 Ibid.. p , 4.
11 Ibid., p, 6.
12 Jacques Derfida, A 77me for Farewells, xxxii.
13 lbid.,xxxix.
 LIKE A SLEEPING ANIMAL: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

it (that is, heal, recover}. It would seem that they do not self-regenerate, do not pass
through the ring of fire. How then is it possible to cause them to retum in any way other
than as ghosts?
That is just what I want to do here, in announcing »Again: >The wounds of the Spirit
heal, and leave no scars behind.•« If plasticity has a future, it is necessary to show that it
can be dissociated from the »value of presence«, and consequently also from resurrection
or redemption. Today, cellular biology proves the possibility of this dissociation, which is
why I bring it up. As I have said, the salamander can regenerate its limbs, tail, or other
organs. The hydra, when cut in two, proves to be capable of regenerating an entire animal
from each of the separated parts. If one truncates certain worms, each piece produces a
new organism that is identical to the original. Regeneration is, therefore, a kind of cloning.
The animal finds within itself at the margins of the process of reproduction the possibility of
repairing itself in its own replication.
One first remark is necessary. In all of these cases of healing, of recovery, the wounds
leave no scars. When the tail of a lizard grows back, there is no longer any trace of the
amputation. But this phenomenon does not correspond to dialectical sublation in the way I
have begun to define it. The organ reconstitutes itself without scarring, but this healing does
not elevate life to a superior form . This is the difference between the sa~amander and the
phoenix. The phoenix is eternally rebom from its ashes. The salamander is mortal. Rege-
neration is not a reconstitution of presence, which by definition implies infinity and eternity.
Recovery, here, is a finite survival, a momentary resource. The re-growth does not erase
finitude, but rather is an expression of it. In this sense, regeneration is therefore of the order
Derrida calls a supplement, stranger to the value of presence. The problem is that this sup-
plement exceeds or displaces the logic of differance as well and at the same time questions
the second understanding of the sentence with which I started, that of the tissue paradigm.

Let us examine the biological research. With man as with all mammals, regeneration is
practically extinct. Only a few rare memories of the regenerative capacities of the sala-
mander or the hydra persist naturally: the epidermis and the blood vessels tend to recon-
stitute themselves when they are damaged. The Hver can in some cases self-regenerate.
The last phalanx is susceptible to re-growth in children or adolescents. But these possibili-
ties are extremely limited and appear to be vestiges of an archaic past. Why? Why is rege-
neration extinct? This point is particular1y interesting for my subject: it is the scarring that
replaces it. In superior animals, it is less advantageous to remain for a long time with an
open wound than to scar over. Evolution would have deviated from regeneration in complex
animals, in the sense that it takes more time than scarring. The scar is therefore a late
means of healing in the history of species. The scar is a physical obstacle to regeneration; it
forms a crust or a fibrous shell that prevents the very reconstitution of the limb or the
damaged part.
For example, what happens if one cuts off a salamander's limb? The epidermic cells
migrate rapidly to the surface of the stump and cover it entirely in a sort of envelope. When
l.JKE ASlEEPIII.G ANIMAL: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABsENCE

the amputated surface is totally covered, a second phase begins, which is called »dediffe-
renUation«. Under this envelope, the stem cells that differentiated themselves as nervous,
muscle, or vascular, lose their specialization. They dedifferentiate themsetves and form a
kind of bud, the blastema, from which. in trans·differentiating, they are going to regenerate
all of the amputated structure. The wound heals, and leaves no scar behind. In contrast,
with mammals this blastema does not form in mammals; rather, a scar appears.
Today, regenerative medicine, in essence, rests on the possibility of reactivating these
lost functions, which signifies the need to inhibit the process of scarring, to erase the scar.
This is possible in two ways -by the activation of dedifferentiation and of trans· differentia-
tion of stem cells-which is therapeutic cloning-or by the neutralization of scarring
genes-which is a function of genetic therapy. Today Biologists work to relocate the trace
of the very process of erasure of the trace or of the scar. Thus, we are facing a double
operation of erasure. With the contemporary exploitation of the paradigm of the sala-
mander, we are therefore facing a double process of erasure of the trace; the first is the
erasure linked to natural regeneration: the limb or the tissue reconstitutes Itself, there is no
scar, the mar\< of the wound erases itself. Second Is the erasure of the scarring, caused by
medical technique. It is a question of erasing the mark that obliterates an ancient process of
erasure of the mark.
P-s I have said, natural regeneration and artificial or technical regeneration do not
implement the ,value of presence". One could say that stem cells are ropresent« in the
organism, in the manner of a potential that is always susceptible to belng active, like the
sleeping animals, ready to pounce, that I evoked as a starting point. But like these animals,
precisely, they can at the same time surprise by pouncing, passing through the ring of fire,
transgressing the limit. Stem cells are only present in the forms of reserves of presence
ready to explode, which can profoundly disrupt teleology, destination, and meaning. But
the paradigm of the salamander is not only irreducible to dialectjcal sublation, it is also irre-
ducible to the paradigm of tissue. The salamander does not allow itself to be entirely taken
into the folds of the text. The salamander heals in erasing writing.
In Of Grammatology (De Ia Grammato/ogie), Derrida declares: DNow we tend to say
writingc [...]to designate not only the physical gestures of literal pictographic or ideographic
inscription, but also the totallty of what makes it possible; and also, beyond the signifying
face, the signified face itself. And thus we say ·writing( for au that gives rise to an inscription
in general, whether it is literal or not[...). It is also ln this sense that the contemporary biolo·
gist speaks of writing and pro·gram in relation to the most elementary processes of infor-
mation within the living cell.« 14
Today, certainly, the salamander reminds us that regeneratlon is a deprogramming, a
»de·writing« if you prefer. Stem cells can change difference, change inscription. Regenera-
tive medicine proves the lapsed character of what was until a very recent period believed to
be, namely the irreversibility of cellular differentiation and of genetic programming. But the

14 J~ues Derrlda, OfGrammato/ogy, Trans. Gayatri Chakra110rty Spivak, Baltimore and London 1976, Corrected
edftron, 1998, p. 9.
 LIKE A SLEEPING ANIMAL: PHiLOSOPHY BETWEEN PRESE"-CE AND ABsENCE

concept of plasticity is employed today by biologists to designate this capacity of cells to

modify their program, to break away from their text.
The therapeutic and ontological work of plasticity disturbs the dialectical work of auto-
reparation of the absolute as well as the motifs of writing and of textuality in general. Repa-
ration here comes neither from the same nor from the other. Because of this complexity, it
appears not only as the supplement of the supplement, a simple replacement for writing. It
no longer belongs to the era of metaphysics but it likewise announces a change of system
of the supplement itself.
The fact that a scheme like writing, or plasticity, would be pregnant in culture at a given
moment indicates still that this scheme has an ontological expression too, which it is up to
the philosopher to decipher, as Derrida also shows in Of Grammatology. Plasticity takes
over from the regeneration of the spirit for Hegel, from the displacement of the letter for
Derrida. I call plasticity the resistance of differance to its graphic reduction. Or, if you prefer,
that which is not present in differance but that also does not write itself. That which is not
present, is not absent, is not written.
The deconstruction of presence is today a completed procedure. Consequently, if
deconstruction can retum, recover, it must change paradigms. Derrida says it himself in
Differance: >>[. .• ] I wish to underline that the efficacy of the thematic of ditterance may very
well, indeed must, one day be superseded, lending itself if not to its own replacement , at
15
least to enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will have governed.«
And to a certain extent, Derrida himself progressively abandoned, at least transformed,
the imperative of the deconstruction of presence. Deconstructive readings of the great phi-
losophers of the tradition are becoming less frequent and are increasingly rare in books.
The opposition of the phoenix and tissue is becoming less insistent. Derrida's guiding
question transforms itself and regenerates itself with time. Proof is in the emergence of the
problem of the »Undeconstructible«, which merges belatedly wit h justice and democracy.
That there are undeconstructible instances signifies that they can return, that they traverse
to a certain extent the two rings of fire of the history of metaphysics and the era of decon-
struction. The undeconstructible is not of the order of presence, but it is also certainly a
form of resistance to the text . Derrida must therefore admit that a type of substance exists
that, without being a parousia, is no longer contused with the incessant mobility of graphic
difference. But, due to a lack of time, it seems to me that Derrida did not sufficiently interro-
gate this ontological consistency of the undeconstructible. Would he have accepted the
possibility of seeing in it the secret of the salamander?
In my opinion, this is the essential question he has handed down to me. But who is to
say that Hegel did not ask it? The philosophical texts retum today as one has never before
seen them. They reconstitute themselves from their deconstruction. They have no scars,
however they are not the same, and they are not different either. They are neither the same
nor different, clones of themselves, that open up new means for thought . But is cloning not
one of the possible significations of absolute knowledge?

15 Jacques Derrida, »Differance- in: Margins of Philosophy, p. 7.

LIKE A SLEEPING ANIMAL: PHILOSOPHY BETWEEN PRESENCE AND ABSENCE

»The wounds of the Spirit heal, and leave no scars behind«: what is, in the end, the sig·
nification of recovery contained in this phrase? Presence? Writing? Regeneration? What
does the departed leave in me: a presence, a trace or another difference? It is up to me to
decide between these three what a time for farewells means.