Between Story and Truth The Little Magazine: July-August 2001 Jean-Luc Nancy

One day, the gods retreated. On their own, they retreated from their divinity, that is to say, from their presence. What remains of their presence is what remains of all presence when it absents itself: what remains is what one can say about it. What can be said about it is what remains when one can no longer address it: neither speak to it, nor touch it, nor see it, nor give it a present. (One might even say that the gods retreated because one no longer gives a present to their presence: no more sacrifice, no more oblation, except by way of custom or imitation. One has other things to do: write, for example, calculate, do business, legislate. Deprived of presents, presence has retreated. What one can say of the absenting presence is always one of the two things: its truth, or its story (histoire . Of course, it could even be its true story. !ut because the presence has fled, it is no longer certain that any story about it can be absolutely true: for, no presence will be able to attest it. "hus what remains is straightaway divided into two parts: story and truth. "he one and the other have the same origin and are related to the same thing: the same presence which has retreated. #ts retreat is thus manifested as the line that separates the two, the story and the truth. One calls mythos the narrative of the divine actions and the passions, among which there are always those which concern the world and its working, man and his fate. Mythos signifies the saying about something, by which one can make known the thing, the situation: in $atin, the narratio of something refers to the knowledge about it. When the gods have retreated, their story can no longer be simply true, nor their truth be simply narrated. "here is absence of the presence which would testify to the existence of what is narrated, as well as to the veracity of the words that narrate. "here is absence of the body of gods. Osiris remains dismembered, the great %an is dead. "here is absence of the true body which would pronounce its own truth: its statue spattered with the blood of the victims, permeated by the incense vapours, or even the sacred wood within which one can hear the murmur of the spring into which pours forth a subterranean presence. "his speaking body is missing. What remains is what we can say of it & and the said (le dit has become incorporeal, like the void, like space and like time. "hese are the four forms of the incorporeal, that is, the interval in which some bodies can be found, but which is never one body. "he interval is ever being opened up and divided. "he said

is no longer given, attached to the divine body, as prayer on its lips: it is detached from self, it becomes distended, logos. "ruth and narration are separated thus. "heir separation is marked by the same line which shows forth in the retreat of the gods. "he body of the gods is what remains between the two: there it remains as its own absence. #t remains there as the body painted, figured, and narrated: but there is no longer the body as the sacred body. !etween literature and philosophy there is lack of this entwinement, this embracing, this sacred mingling of man with 'od, that is to say, with animal, with plant, with lightning, and with the rock. "he separation between them is indeed that of untwining, unclasping. "he mingling that is thus unmingled is divided by the sharpest of blades: but the cut itself forever shows the effects of the entanglement. !etween the two, there is something that cannot be disentangled. "ruth and narration are separated in such a manner that it is their separation that installs them as one and the other. Without the separation, there would be neither truth nor narration: there would be the divine body. (ot only is narration susceptible to or suspected of lacking in truth, but it is deprived of it by principle, being deprived of the body present as its own enunciation, its own exposition. "his deprivation is at the same time the deprivation of truth, and truth in principle is receding. #t is in retreat, it cannot be figured, it cannot be narrated. "ruth becomes a vanishing point which is anamorphosed into a )uestion mark. "ruth becomes: *what is truth+* ,urmounting the )uestion, and moreover, being delivered from it, remains the vanishing point, the infinite perspective of what from now on will be called logos. (arration exhibits the figures: it is constituted as figurality in general, that is to say, the sketch of the contours by which a body is distinguished and becomes body in the first place. !ut a sketch about which it is doubtful if the body that it outlines is real. "he narrative sketch reveals a manifestation of the body, regarding which it is not certain if it would be identical to a manifested body. Or rather, it is certain that it is not so: by figuring it, the narration declares it absent. #t is the same sketch which created 'od itself & the priest as the head of -ackal, or the drops of resin on the side of a tree & and which from now on is its figure. !ut this representation is devoid of self: the divine body is lacking in there. "he perspective of truth thus regards this lack as the site of what it desires -ust as well, but whose lack it is devoted to revealing. !y revealing the lack & the figure itself, the imitation, the representation, the allegory, the mythology, literature & it speaks the truth about it: that it is a lack, that it is false (error, illusion, lie, deceit . #n speaking this truth, it however speaks only half the truth: it lacks presence beyond the figure, or within the figure itself. !ut the discourse of truth claims that this presence is beyond being. "his discourse itself proceeds until this beyond, where it perishes in an excessive light, the da..le in which every possible figure disappears. !etween the figure and the da..lement remains the absent body of 'od. What remains is a singular body of absence, which is approached from every side by narration and the

perspective of truth. "he former describes the shape of the body, and the latter inscribes its excavation. !etween what is described and what is inscribed, there is only writing (l'crit , the interminable graph engraved on the lead of a seal affixed on the site of the retreat. "he scene is played around an empty tomb, a hollow mummy, a portrait resembling no one: around a body henceforth displayed and declared as *body*, that is to say, as absent outside. !ut it is a scene, and it is played very effectively. #t is a scene simultaneously of mourning and of desire: philosophy and literature, each in mourning and each in desire of the other, but each competing with the other in the accomplishment of the mourning and the desire. #f mourning is what prevails, and is shut up in ceaseless dereliction, the one or the other sinks into melancholy, with a lump in the throat over the lost body. !ut the latter (the lost body is as well, the image one has of the other: philosophy is choked by its own impossibility as literature & for, literature is its own impossibility & or it is even the reverse. ,ometimes it is literature which conducts the mourning that philosophy endures or denies. ,ometimes it is philosophy which sustains the absence that literature fakes. !ut the gesture of one can also be the fact of the other. "here can even be a philosophical poem which is spent up in the desire of the other: /arathustra concludes by exclaiming: *Do # then strive after happiness+ # strive after my work.* 0nd there may be a thought, tied irreligiously to its verses addressed to 1enus, which concludes thus its convulsively written, red2hued song of nature: 3pon the pyres erected With a loud uproar the men placed 0pplied the torches, engaged in 4ather than abandon the bodies.5 for their own bloody others, kinsfolk struggles,

Do not abandon the bodies, even if the work is to be shunned. ,uch is the task. Do not abandon the bodies of gods without wanting to call back their presence. Do not abandon the service of truth nor that of the figure, without however, filling up with meaning the gap that separates the two. Do not abandon the world, which becomes always more world, more under the spell of absence, more in interval, incorporeal, without saturating it with signification, revelation, proclamation or apocalypse. "he absence of gods is the condition for both literature and philosophy to be in. #t is the in2between which legitimates the one and the other, both of which are irreversibly atheological. !ut they both have the responsibility of taking care of the in2between: of guarding its open body, and of allowing it the possibility of this opening. Translated from the French by Franson Manjali
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"he original 7rench essay 8Entre deux8 first appeared in Magazine Littraire, (o. 9:5, (ovember 5;;;. "he translator has benefited from consultations with Wolf 7euerhahn and %ascale 4abault.
5

"hese are the concluding lines of $ucretius8s $atin poem (ature of "hings .

e natura rerum (On the

!ean"Luc #ancy heads the faculty of $hilosophy% Language &ciences and 'ommunication at the (ni)ersity of &trasbourg* +nown for his new approaches to philosophy and literature% rele)ant to contemporary society and politics% #ancy writes in French and li)es in &trasbourg 0vailable: $ittle <aga.ine, http:>>www.littlemag.com>-ul2aug;6>nancy.html. =uly20ugust 5;;6