The place between: sending love and resisting identity or, between Derrida, Deronda and Deguy

Abstract

What is the place, the ‘taking place’, that the idea of the ‘between’ designates? What event does the figure of the ‘between’ acknowledge, for example in the act, in any act of writing, so that the subject finds himself or herself, positioned, albeit momentarily and in an instance which is both unique and iterable? Can we legitimately talk of ‘the between’ when no place exists as such, other than as the necessary and provisional correspondence between identities (which space exists as the taking place of identity)? Why might love name otherwise the place of ‘between’, not in some abstract fashion, but in the event of taking place?

We recognise the alphabet; we are not sure of the language

George Eliot

… car chacun est celui qui vient de perdre la face en l’autre … oublier l’unité

… for everyone is the one who has just lost face in the other … forget unity

Michel Deguy

When I write ‘what interests me’, I am designating not only an object of interest, but the place that I am in the middle of…

Jacques Derrida