Archaelogy of the Exchange

Abstract

L’événement a lieu. The event takes place. It takes place and the task of writing consists in replacing it, in taking its place before it. Writing consists in occupying oneself with occupying this place and no longer with the event; literally in distracting oneself from the event through the preoccupation and the hustle and bustle of the place that takes it. The place of the event is not separated from it by an interval of time and, thus, we do not expect the event in that place. We have travelled to the place of the event by flipping over its marked face, using the channel that has replaced time, and which is the loan of money we have written out for the event. All of writing had to be invented in order to flip over this face of the event and to withdraw into that place. Writing is not a slight thing, the book even less so. To the question of what happens before the event, of what happens absolutely on the other side of the event — for even the possibility of the event cannot happen before the event given that it cannot do without it — we must respond: ‘But all of the market and all of the book happen before!’