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Perception-Framing-Love

  • Julian Wolfreys (author)
Chapter of: Going Postcard: The Letter(s) of Jacques Derrida(pp. 185–195)
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TitlePerception-Framing-Love
ContributorJulian Wolfreys (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0171.1.14
Landing pagehttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/going-postcard-the-letters-of-jacques-derrida/
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
CopyrightWolfreys, Julian
Publisherpunctum books
Published on2017-05-15
Long abstract

It’s always about the name. Everything comes down to this. Everything is due to the difficulty of properly naming the thing itself. Actually this difficulty is an impossibility, a diffi-culty whose limits can only be indefinitely pushed back. (PC, 382)Leave this, the limits being “indefinitely” pushed at, moved backwards, further and further, to recede, the harder one tries. This involves a question of perception.Perceive: apperceive. Always there: perception.On the one hand: perception of another.On the other hand: an other perception; perception of the other.There is always another perception in perception: there remains, in secret, hidden away, just below the surface, underneath the tongue, sublingually, as if the two were entwined, one tongue insinuating itself with the other’s tongue; or, say this the other way around so as to gain perspective if not to perceive correctly, the other’s tongue always already having insinuated itself un-der, in the mouth of the one. So it is with the action of per-ception. So it is with perception of apperception, and what it means to perceive. Traveling across tongues, leaving, as it were, can you perceive this, the trace of another’s perception in your own, Latin to French to English. To perceive: seize, understand, take entirely. The other’s tongue, in its being carried over into my mouth, knows me. I believe I take it on, make it conform to my will, to the power of my language — as if there were such a thing — when, and here is the other perception, perception that will never be mine, in imagining the other’s perception, percep-tion of the other, I perceive indirectly, I apperceive, that there, there is the other perception, perception of, on perception. In taking the other, seizing its tongue, making it conform, I take on a perception that perceives without being perceived necessarily, and which, in so doing, apprehends me. I am taken entirely by the other.

Page rangepp. 185–195
Print length11 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Julian Wolfreys

(author)
University of Portsmouth

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