Notes about On TouchingJean-Luc

Nancy by Jacques Derrida

Christine Irizarry
Abstract
In this text the translator of the English-language edition of Derridas
Le Toucher, the translator and former book editor Christine Irizarry,
discusses her experience of translating the volume. She discusses
translation as a philosophical problem, as the passage into philosophy
as well as specific problems of translation in this book. She discusses
her experiences of being taught by Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe and its
relation to translation.
*
My name, Christine Irizarry, appears opposite the title page in
On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy by Jacques Derrida, published by the
Stanford University Press in 2005, but the real translator is Peggy
Kamuf. She translated the earlier text that Jacques Derrida expanded
into his book Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy, published by Galile in
2000, embedding the earlier text in it. (Derrida finished the book on
20 September 1999, according to a letter reprinted in La Connaissance
des textes: Lecture dun manuscrit illisible, published by Galile in
2001.) Peggy Kamuf also edited the beginning of On Touching in
English. Peter Dreyer copyedited the manuscript.1 Jacques Derrida chose
the title, On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy, from a list of titles in English
that I gave him. He wrote to me about his choice and also left a phone
message on my answering machine (its still on my machine). Having
worked in book and newspaper publishing for nearly twenty years,
I am primarily a publishing kind of person. This has made me a little
bit inhuman. I learned that Derrida was dying and I worried about the
birth of the book more than about his death. Less than six months
before his death, I was bothering him with requests to approve the
manuscript of my translation, to make sure the publisher wouldnt turn

On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy by Jacques Derrida 191

it down a manuscript that had survived two hard-drive crashes, and
numerous flights, in both senses of the word, including a flight scheduled
on September 11, 2001, which was canceled. (I flew toward the West
ten days later, and Derrida, who by coincidence had been in Hong
Kong where I was headed, then flew toward the East Coast, I think.)
Book publishing involves editors, authors, translators, copy editors,
production assistants, fact checkers, book designers, cover designers,
marketing assistants, and publicity assistants. The result is always a
surprise.

Translating Derrida Translating

In Platos Pharmacy, Derrida shows how the failure by Lon Robin
(Derrida 1981, 71) to translate the Greek word pharmakon in a
satisfying way in the famous French Bud edition results in losing a
great deal of what Plato is saying in the Phaedrus. The multiple, layered
subtleties of the meaning of pharmakon (remedy, recipe, poison, drug,
philter . . . [Derrida 1981, 7172]) are lost in translation.
Hence, for example the word pharmakon . . . . It will also be seen to what
extent the malleable unity of this concept, or rather its rules and the strange
logic that links it with its signifier, has been dispersed, masked, obliterated,
and rendered almost unreadable not only by the imprudence or empiricism
of the translators, but first and foremost by the redoubtable, irreducible
difficulty of translation. (Derrida 1981, 7172)

The mistranslation leads to a misreading in this particular, authoritative

French translation of the Phaedrus of what the pharmakon does and
of what writing does, since writing according to Plato is a kind of
pharmakon.
The effect of such a translation [that is to say, such a failed translationci]
is most importantly to destroy what we will later call Platos anagrammatic
writing, to destroy it by interrupting the relations interwoven among different
functions of the same word in different places . . . . (Derrida 1981, 98)

(All right: Derrida scolds the translator, Mr. Robin. Bad translator. And
he isnt the only one who mistranslated Plato.)
All translations into languages that are the heirs and depositaries of Western
metaphysics thus produce on the pharmakon an effect of analysis that
violently destroys it, reduces it to one of its simple elements by interpreting
it . . . Such an interpretative translation is thus as violent as it is impotent: it

192 Christine Irizarry

destroys the pharmakon but at the same time forbids itself access to it,
leaving it untouched in its reserve. (Derrida 1981, 99)

But did Derrida really get up that morning just to give Platos French
translator and others a hard time? Im not sure. Derrida in fact gave
thought to this particular, I quote, irreducible difficulty of translation
(Derrida 1981, 72). If this particular translation is misleading, wrong,
weak, lazy, faulty, silly, idiotic, awful, ridiculous . . . , then, what would
a good translation of pharmakon be? Forget it, pharmakon is
untranslatable.
(By the way, drug in English is closer to pharmakon than remde
or drogue in French is to it. The specific difficulty of translation is
especially visible in the French rendering of the Greek Plato, more so
than the German or English. Platos Pharmacy had to be written in
French.)
The difficulty of translation points to the passage into philosophy.
With this problem of translation we will thus be dealing with nothing less
than the problem of the very passage into philosophy. (Derrida 1981, 72)

There is no philosophy without translation. There is a difficulty of

translation in philosophy.
Stop and think. Every time you stop and think, there is always already
a translation problem; let me quote it again: With this problem of
translation we will thus be dealing with nothing less than the problem
of the very passage into philosophy.
(But pharmakon, I said, is untranslatable. There is no promise of a
passage into philosophy, only the possibility of touching on the problem
of the passage into philosophy. Therefore nothing, just life. For he (or
she) who lives touches. And possibly touches philosophy, and possibly
touches both Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy and other French
philosophers, and always with pleasure or displeasure. [My point,
perhaps: pleasure and displeasure are the proof of the philosophical
pudding.])
Translator-bashing is a common practice. Derrida bashes the French
translator of Platos Phaedrus a little bit, but then he says, I repeat:
With this problem of translation we will thus be dealing with nothing
less than the problem of the very passage into philosophy.
Ponder this. Derrida may be promising you, the translator, that by
overcoming this problem of translation, by swallowing the bitter pill,
you will pass into philosophy. It shows too what a nice guy he is. And
what a cunning man he is. He seems to promise: Go ahead, overcome

On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy by Jacques Derrida 193

the problem of translating the pharmakon, of translating me and
I promise you passage into philosophy. Translate me, Derrida seems
to say, and you shall pass into philosophy.
In On Touching, nice guy that he is, he does recognize and honor all
translators:
Taking place and taking the place of: taking place while taking the place of,
taking place in lieu of taking the place ofby virtue of taking the place of
and in view of taking the place of: held (in place) to taking the place of:
taking the place of taking place. (If I wonder how any translator could take
this on and translate the idiomatic phrases I am suggesting and emphasizing
in this way, it is also because they say something about the operation of
every translation, in its im-possible essence, there where it is a mano a
mano struggle between idioms, which will never be spared its metonymies,
substitutions, and technical prostheses. Translation, where it is a considerable
event in thinking, is held to (the place of) taking the place of . . . ) (Derrida
2005, 221)

A translated book is an enigma. When I read a translated book, I am

reading the same book as the original, translated into another language.
I am aware that something is lost in translation, and I know it is helpful
to have dual-language editions, usually, in European languages, with the
language of origin on the left and the translation on the right, so that
I can conveniently check the translation and then bash the translator if
I want to. (Presumably this is what Derrida did with the Phaedrus in the
Bud edition, which has the Greek text on the left and the French on the
right.) A translation is the same book but a lesser book, a more anemic,
sickly, reductive book, which doesnt ever match the authors original.
(Note in passing, there are a few famous examples of translations that
may be better than the original. I remember hearing that Gabriel Garca
Mrquez thought that Gregory Rabassas translation of A Hundred
Years of Solitude is better than his original and that Rabassa deserved
part of Garca Mrquezs Nobel Prize. [I dont know if this is true.]
Samuel Beckett translated himself. And Descartes read the translation
into French by the Duc de Luynes of his Meditations in Latin and
approved the French text.)
Which brings us back to Jacques Derridas Le Toucher, On Touching.
Turn to the chapter titled Spacings, and the passage beginning on
page 24 of the book.
Here, so early in the manuscript, the possibly promised passage into
philosophy has taken on a new meaning for the translator.
Descartes Meditations are in Latin. Descartes signs the translation
into French. English readers, very quickly in the 17th century,

194 Christine Irizarry

translate Descartes French Meditations into English. Someone translates
Descartes Latin Meditations into English. There are several translations
of Descartes Meditations into English, some from the French
Meditations and some from the Latin Meditations. Jean-Luc Nancy, in
writing Ego sum, published by Aubier Flammarion in 1979, reads the
Meditations, in French. Nancy reads the Meditations in Latin, at least in
part. He retranslates a passage from the Latin Meditations into French.
This is an epigraph, actually:
denique statuendum sit hoc pronuntiatum, Ego sum, ego existo, quoties a
me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum.
enfin il faut statuer, tablir, dcider, riger en statue et fonder en statut que
ce prononcement, ce prononc, cet nonc, Je suis, jexiste, toutes les fois que
je le profre, le propose, le prononce, ou que je le conois dans mon esprit, ou
quil se conoit dans mon esprit, ou par mon esprit, est ncessairement vrai.
(Descartes, Second Meditation)

(Not approved by Descartes, who is dead.) Derrida reads Nancys

retranslation of the famous passage. Derrida writes about it: Open
On Touching on page 33, second paragraph. Irizarry, navely believing
the promise that this will provide her passage into philosophy, translates
into English Derridas commentary of Nancys retranslation from Latin
into French of a passage of the Latin Meditations. Irizarrys task
is to translate a passage from Descartes Meditations into English
(which by the way isnt my native language). Or is it? There are
already many translations of the Meditations in English, some from the
French (approved by Descartes), some from the Latin, more original
but perhaps now rejected by Descartes who approved the French
Meditations and is known by every pupil in France to have been gung
ho (sorry) about the French language. There are translations of the
Meditations in English, but there is no translation of Jean-Luc Nancys
retranslation into French of the famous passage in the Latin Meditations.
So what does Irizarry do?
I almost gave up, before giving in to the game, the pleasure and the
displeasure of this craziness. Finding a typo in Nancys Latin was a small
gratification for me (et [sic] certe videre videor, in Ego sum, p. 136; it
should be: at certe videre videor . . . [audire, calescere. Hoc falsum esse
non potest; hoc est proprie quod in me sentire appellatur . . . the at
announcing a second at: . . . atque hoc praecise sic sumptum nihil aliud
est quam cogitare]). Each time I found a smallish error in the course of
translating the book, I felt a little gratified. At least, even if I slaughter

On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy by Jacques Derrida 195

Derrida in this translation, I am establishing a small correction, fixing a
small detail. Peter Dreyer, the copy editor, was also vigilant about this.
[This vigilance, which Peter and I share with Derrida, is what I think
of as our African connection, the secret web that ties this book in
English into a coherent whole. Derrida grew up in Algeria, I grew up
in Senegal and Peter grew up in South Africa: Derridas Algerian French,
my Senegalese French, Peters South African English meet in this book.
It would be easy to say more about the role of French and English on
the African continent but this is obviously not the time or place to do it.
I just want to say that our African connection makes us more vigilant,
perhaps, in the way we use the language.]
In this very small sense, you can say that in translation, sometimes
something is found. Errors are found. Lost and found, in translation.
But it doesnt matter. Its all the same. Why quibble about Descartes?
Descartes has been put to rest. If Jean-Luc Nancy were here, he could tell
us whether he has the slightest interest in Descartes now. I dont know.
Back in the seventies, back in the days when Jean-Luc Nancy went to the
trouble of retranslating a famous passage in Descartes Meditations from
Latin into French, back in the days of sex, pharmaka and rocknroll,
Nancy made Descartes and even Kant very pleasurable. Take my word
for it.
Jean-Luc Nancys work from that period may not be well known.
Only some of it is available in English translations. In Le Toucher,
Derrida rereads these early pieces by Nancy in Le Toucher, which
started among other things as a kind of heuristic exercise to keep
Nancy alive after his heart transplant: Nancy was scheduled to have
a heart transplant, Nancy was toast; I quote, bientt seems to signify
an advance, and we cannot be sure that it gives us time for the
future . . . [and on bientts etymology:] tostus means burned, and
toasted, from torreo, consumed by fire . . . (Derrida 2005, 13) (this is
what I believe, at any rate: Le Toucher kept Nancy alive, then but did
it kill Derrida? Scary stuff . . . ); the book would be a kind of pharmakon
or magic trick to keep Nancy from dying, to keep his heart beating all
the time, making it necessary for Derrida to pour his own whole heart
into it, to give Nancy a little piece of his heart, something you cant do
very well surgically (you can give pieces of your liver, I think).
Discours de la syncope, 1: Logodaedalus (I shall now refer to it simply
as Logodaedalus) is especially challenging as a work of pleasure. It
consists in good part of quotations about Immanuel Kant that Jean-Luc
Nancys friends collected and gave to him. Derrida quotes big chunks
of Logodaedalus. The sources of the quotations in Logodaedalus are

196 Christine Irizarry

often not clear or not given at all or misleading. Derrida doesnt give
the sources either. He quotes from this book of quotes. As a publishing
kind of person, I felt it was my duty, again, to find rather than lose, in
translation, and trace the sources of the sources of the passages from
Logodaedalus that Derrida quotes. One particular quote led me all the
way (via the Internet) to an archivist of Georg Groddecks original
manuscripts (I gave her credit in the preface) so that I could translate the
quote from Groddecks German text and not from the French rendering.
From beginning to end Le Toucher is a layering of translations.
Ricur translating Husserl; Didier Frank translating Husserl; Irizarry
translating Didier Frank translating Husserl. . . .
Husserl sits in the middle of the book, ready for anyone willing to
wrestle with him . . . But, surprise! Husserl turned out not to be too much
of a problem since so many people already wrestled with Husserl in the
past. And no Hegel. Derrida wrote a whole book about Nancy and only
mentioned Hegel a couple of times in passing. What isnt in the book is
as remarkable as what is in it.

Translate Life into Death or Death into Life

At a time when the Other was all the rage, especially in the social
sciences, anthropology and ethnology, prompting a sort of fierce tourism
to all the places, east and west, where the Other dwelled, Jean-Luc
Nancy wasnt writing about the Other, or the mysteries of the Other
or the bad luck or the exoticism or the face, eyes, nose or sex of the
Other. Instead Nancy was writing about the enigma of the Same.
Im not going to say anything about Nancys enigma of the same.
I made a copy of what he wrote in Logodaedalus and challenge each of
you to translate it into English or another language, for that matter. This
too is in On Touching, somewhere.
French and English are not the same. The passage from French to
English or English to French is not a passage into philosophy. What
kind of a passage is it? Its easy to look at their relationship from the
point of view of Latin. Latin is implicated in both English and French.
I would argue that one could show that in this way, too, in a larger
way, something is definitely found in translation each time you are
promised the passage from French to English or English to French. Since
before Descartes, the French language and the English language have
been having what Heideggerians might term an Auseinandersetzung,
an explication, or a dispute about Latin, every time a translator has tried
to make something French into something English or something English

On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy by Jacques Derrida 197

into something French. That is why every time you translate English into
French or French into English, you find something, and this something
touches on Latin.
When Derrida writes at length about the ramifications of the Latin
term tendere (On Touching includes a whole chapter, about Levinas,
titled Tender), he does it in French. But when you are under contract
to translate it into English, then you may find that there are more words
in English that include or derive from the Latin tendere you may find
some you didnt even know existed. There are more words in English
than in French.
I havent had much time to write down these remarks but if there is
more time now, Id like simply to mention a couple of words from the
immense list of untranslatable terms in Derrida.
For me, no word is more moving than the word salut, toward the
end of the book. A French philosopher named Pascal Massie told me
that it brings to mind the Greek verb chairein, still known today:
When you go to Greece, people greet you with: Chairete! A Greek
scholar named Kalliopi Nikolopoulou gave me some classical instances
(I should have written them down) when chaire is the greeting that
one god or another uses to say hello or goodbye. Be well, hello,
goodbye, take care of yourself. Better than Latin benedictions, better
than prayer, better than any greeting: Salut or chaire sends you off
(in fact thats how Barbara Johnson sometimes translates it) into whats
better than the pursuit of happiness. Not nirvana but a bath of wellness,
a farewell but youd have to say the two words very separately: fare
well. (My translation of salut as fare well was rejected, even by Derrida,
who during chemotherapy, less than a year before he died, did check the
beginning and the ending of the manuscript of my translation and asked
Avital Ronell, who happened to be with him at that time, to look over
more substantial parts: and so, I took out the fare well, left the salut,
and added the chaire.)
The verb chairein, corresponding with the French salut, brings me
back to Platos Pharmacy, which is the first thing I ever heard of
Derrida. It was in 1971 or 72, from the mouths of Jean-Luc Nancy and
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Lacoue-Labarthe would have turned sixtyseven three days ago, on March 6, but he died, in January. I want
herewith to dedicate these notes to Philippe. I still have notes from
1971 and 72 but I wont show them here. Too embarrassing. I was
17 and 18. Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe seduced us
with Parmenides. Its true. Derrida was mentioned. (I did bring the
mimeographed copy of the Parmenides fragment that we used: the Jean

198 Christine Irizarry

Beaufret translation of Parmenides. Believe it or not, there were no easily
available photocopying machines in 1972.)
And the chairein takes place in the name of truth. (Platos Pharmacy, Derrida
1981, 69)
To give myths a send-off: a salute, a vacation, a dismissal; this fine resolution
of the chairein, which means all that at once . . . (Derrida 1981, 68)

In On Touching, Derrida writes:

. . . recall Platos Phaedo, in which everything is already prefigured. I mean
to say that, in it, the figure of touch is prefigured. Socrates asks: when does the
psyche touch on truth and attain it? The answer: when it is troubled neither
by vision nor hearing, nor any pleasure or displeasure of the body; in other
words when it has dismissed the sensible, when it has been able to say hello/
goodbye [[that is], salut] to the senses and the body (chairein to soma).

(Derrida 2005, 120)

The verb chairein is discussed in Vocabulaire europen des philosophies:

Dictionnaire des intraduisibles [Dictionary of Untranslatables]. On page
945, chairein pops up, under the heading plaisir.
Plaisir. Greek: hedone, khara, the verb khairein, terpsis, euphosune.
Latin: suavitas, voluptas, delectatio, fruitio. German: Lust, Wohlgefallen,
Vergngen. English: pleasure, enjoyment, delight. Spanish: goce, gozo. Italian:
piacere, diletto, gusto, godimento. (Cassin 2004, 945)

Chairein is in the same beehive, as Derrida puts it apropos of toast,

I mean tt and its etymologies, as khara and kharis, found in the
Christian grace. Khara, says the Dictionary of Untranslatables, is often
found in Greek tragedy and means joy.
On page 947 is a box within the article on Plaisir:
Khaire ou comment saluer: Khaire, or, How to Greet
Chaire, have fun, be good, vale in Latin, be well, farewell, be in good health,
etc. (Cassin 2004, 947)

Jacques Derrida gives a little bit of his heart to Jean-Luc Nancy and
he gives him this salut and then Nancy in his eulogy gives Derrida a
salut: a salut that traverses death as if salut, in French, were the
only passage not into philosophy but into life from death or death from
life.
Indeed, this is what happens to the young man in Parmenidess poem.
He meets the goddess, and she says to him: Salut. At least this is what
happens in Jean Beaufrets translation of Parmenides. Today it is to

On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy by Jacques Derrida 199

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe that I say salut, and I wish Jean-Luc Nancy
were here now to say something.
. . . And a brief Envoi or postscript about the word immense,
and thinking and thanking: I noticed that Derrida used immense
throughout his books (I was reading Derrida translations all the
time while doing this work). So, when Derrida writes immense, I
write immense. Peter wanted to change one of my immenses to
monumental, but I put my foot down . . . I had written Derrida a note
in which I said I noticed that he seemed to like the word immense. His
reply was a postcard, yes, a postcard, from Derrida, which I received on
July 15, 2004 and the ink is already fading. Here it is. He closes with
these words: Encore un immense merci pour cet immense travail, du
fond du cur, Jacques. And an immense thanks for this immense work,
from the bottom of my heart, Jacques.
How can you say thanks to a thank you? Perhaps you cant or it
becomes an infinite thanking for the thanking for the thanks . . . I thank
you thanking me thanking you, endlessly. Or perhaps thanking is really
thinking, which has an affinity with it in English and German, Derrida
tells us:
. . . for example, concerning thought, the affinity between denken and danken
and thinking and thanking. (Derrida 2004, 74)

And so, yes, by letting me translate merci into thanks and thanks into
thinks, Derrida has kept his promise to the translator, who thanks-andthinks about this passage into philosophy.

References
Cassin, Barbara, ed. (2004), Vocabulaire europen des philosophies: Dictionnaire
des intraduisibles, Paris: Robert and le Seuil.
Derrida, Jacques (1981), Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, Jacques (2005), On TouchingJean-Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry,
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc (1992), Discours de la syncope, 1: Logodaedalus, Paris:
Flammarion.

Notes
1. I would like to acknowledge and thank Peter Dreyers skill as a copy editor
and recognize his important role in the production of this book. Peter Dreyer
(b. 15 November 1939) is the author of A Beast in View (Andr Deutsch),
The Future of Treason (Ballantine), A Gardener Touched with Genius: The
Life of Luther Burbank (Coward, McCann & Geoghegan; rev. ed., University of

200 Christine Irizarry

California Press; new, expanded ed., Luther Burbank Home and Gardens, Santa
Rosa), and Martyrs and Fanatics: South Africa and Human Destiny (Simon &
Schuster; Secker & Warburg). He was born and brought up in South Africa,
where he was involved in the anti-apartheid struggle, serving on the Cape
Provincial Committee of the Liberal Party, founded and led by Alan Paton,
and as secretary of the Western Province Press Association, which published
the fortnightly The Citizen. Dreyer left South Africa in 1960 and subsequently
launched and edited Omphalos: A Mediterranean Review in Athens. In 1972,
however, he was expelled from Greece by the military junta then in power there
and moved to the United States. During the 1970s, he was book columnist for
San Francisco magazine. He has lived in Virginia since 1988.

DOI: 10.3366/E1754850008000225