In the following analysis, I will first investigate the concept of the gift through a series of introduction from Mauss to Derrida. The series of theoretical discussions on the gift can be viewed as a conversation between Mauss and Derrida.1 It is first discussed by Mauss and latter reached a peak when Derrida proposed his theories on the gift. Before we take a deeper probe into Derrida’s theoretical issues on the gift, the understanding of Mauss’s theory of the gift is indispensible.
1.1
The theoretical inspection of the gift begins with Mauss’s The Gift. Although the gift is generally understood to be offered on a voluntary basis, Mauss thinks the act of giving and taking plays the fundamental principles in gift giving. He proposes that the act of gift-giving which appears as a token of generosity in fact implies the mutual obligation and exchange. In this way, the seemingly generous act in fact turns into the mutual obligation to strengthen the social relationship:
[P]resentations which are in theory voluntary, disinterested and spontaneous, but are in fact obligatory and interested. The form usually
1 In addition to Mauss and Derrida’s works, there are still a number of insightful works which have been helpful in understanding what “a gift” is. The gift may refer to the birth in Emmanuel Levinas’s Otherwise than Being and Hélèn Cixous’s “Sorties: Out and Out: Attacks/Ways/Forays.” The gift as violence and obligation is posed by Pierre Bourdieu in his “Selections from The Logic of Practice,” and
“Marginalia—Some Additional Notes on the Gift.” Some points of view raised in George Bataille’s
“The Notion of Expenditure” discussion relate the gift to the notion of Expenditure.
taken is that of the gift generously offered; but the accompanying behavior is formal pretence and social deception, while the transaction itself is based on obligation and economic self-interest. (Mauss 1)
Mauss contends that rather than a voluntary and generous giving, the act to give in fact demands a return which the recipient is obligated to do. The reciprocal behavior therefore forms the idea of gift-exchange and circulation and constitutes the primary economic system. When gift-exchange happens, such an idea of obligation becomes one of the major principles in the universal culture codes. To illustrate the obligation of giving and return, nothing is clearer than the example of the potlatch.
The potlatch is the festival of gift-giving practiced by the primitive tribes in North America. In the potlatch, “[t]he obligation to give is the essence” (Mauss 39), since for the chief, the capability to give represents the abundant wealth and
superiority of himself and his tribes. Once a chief receives presents, he is “constrained”
to give back more, because “the obligation to accept is no less constraining [and one]
has no right to refuse a gift, or to refuse to attend the potlatch” (Mauss 41). If he fails to give more back, he may jeopardize himself in throwing himself into a shameful and inferior situation. Under the code of mutuality, it is implied that the chief either loses his face or gains more power by the choice he makes. Returning after receiving thus becomes imperative. Consequently, in a potlatch the reciprocity is by no means a generous act; instead, “under a voluntary guise [it is] in essence strictly obligatory”
(Mauss 3). However, the obligation that always demands one to repay in the future has much to do with the concept of taonga and hau.
The concept taonga is defined by Mauss as the products or objects people can possess, while the word hau signifies the spirit of the gift, due to which people feel obliged to return the gift:
-18-
The taonga and all strictly personal possessions have a hau, a spiritual power. You give me taonga, I give it to another, the latter gives me taonga back, since he is forced to do so by the hau of my gift; and … I must return to you what is in fact the product of the hau of your taonga.
(Mauss 9)
Based on Mauss’s words, taonga might not be the same every time when people exchange their gifts. However, hau is always traveling along with taonga from one giver to another, arousing the receiver’s obligation and urging him to return another
taonga with even greater value. We may infer that it is hau that maintains the
circulation of gift-exchange, or we may say hau is the root of every imperative in the economy of the gift (or primary cause of the receiver’s obligation). Mauss’s
arguments bring us to reach the conclusion: no gift can get rid of the economic circulation of exchange. However, Mauss’s theory of the gift is later persuasively challenged by Derrida. While Mauss claims that there is no such a gift which can isolate itself from the economy of exchange, Derrida proposes that in the economy of exchange there is no possibility to find a gift.
1.2
In Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, Derrida points out the ambivalence of the gift in terms of its conception by bringing forward the question of exchange in the gift. Based on the previous discussion on Mauss’s theory, a gift should be always considered in relation to economy; however, Derrida points out the conception’s aporia: [I]s not the gift, if there is any, also that which interrupts economy [and that ] which in suspending economic calculation, no longer gives rise to exchange” (7)?
What Derrida calls as a gift should not bear the value in terms of economy, because economy entails “the value of exchange, of circulation, of return” (Derrida 1992:6),
while these conditions “designate simultaneously the conditions of the impossibility of the gift” (Derrida 1992:12). If there is a gift, it should reside outside the circulation of exchange, defying the economic system and reciprocity. Up to this point, Derrida thoroughly reverses the Maussian gift by proposing that the foremost principle and premise of gift-giving is the lack of reciprocity between the giver and the receiver. To further illustrate what a gift is, Derrida assigns it the term aneconomic: “If the figure of the circle is essential to economics, the gift must “remain aneconomic” (Derrida 1992:7). In other words, a pure gift is non-reciprocal; it must not lay any return on the receiver. A gift must present itself as anti-economy.
To disclose the essence of a gift, one must stop identifying a gift as “a gift.”
Derrida continues to state that the simple “identification of the gift” will undermine the nature of a gift (Derrida 1992:14). Whenever there is a gift, it must not appear itself as a gift in the viewpoint of the giver and the receiver:
It cannot be gift as gift except by not being present as gift. Neither to the “one”
nor to the “other.” If the other perceives or receives it, if he or she keeps it as gift, the gift is annulled. But the one who gives it must not see it or know it either; otherwise, he begins, at the threshold, as soon as he intends to give, to pay himself with a symbolic recognition, to praise himself, to approve of himself, to gratify himself, to congratulate himself, to give back to himself symbolically the value of what he thinks he has given or what he is preparing to give. (Derrida 1992:14)
The definition of gift is therefore in extreme contrast to the popularly recognized meaning. A gift should maintain in the form that the donee – the receiver – “not give back, amortize, reimburse, acquit himself, enter into a contract, and that he never have contracted a debt” (Derrida 1992:13). Neither the giver nor the receiver should be
-20-
aware of the existence of the gift, whether it is viewed from the symbolic meaning or recognized as a real entity. The definition of the Derridean gift, through the denial of possession and dispossession, involves the renouncement of itself as “a gift.” To this point, a gift becomes a gift when it is not “a gift.” But the whole discussion of the gift does not end at the conclusion of its self-denial. If indeed there is a gift, it arises when one “gives what [he] does not have” (Derrida 1992:2).
A pure gift gives time. According to Derrida, “The difference between a gift and every other operation of pure and simple exchange is that the gift gives time. There where there is gift, there is time” (Derrida 1992: 41). It is very difficult to locate the notion of time into the economy of gift or the circle of exchange, precisely because time is not a substantial entity but “the medium in which things are given” (Guenther 52). When one gives time to the other, he does not lose nor does he gain anything.
To explain time as a gift, Derrida introduces a reading of Madame de Maintenon’s sentences: “The King takes all my time; the rest I give to Saint-Cyr, to whom I would like to give all” (Derrida 1992:1). In Madame de Maintenon’s phrases, despite the king occupying “all her time,” a remainder of time “slips through the grasp of the king, and which Madame de Maintenon gives to Saint-Cyr2” (Guenther 51). However, since the king has taken all her time, what remainder of time could she possibly have to give? Perhaps the insufficiency of the rest of the time becomes a drive to give more time, but what is to be noted is that in the gift of given time one gives what he does not have—thus, he does not lose when he gives. Therefore, in Madame de
Maintenon’s story, she does not lose any time when the king takes her time away.
Significantly, in The Gift of The Other, this formulation of the gift is adopted in search of the secret of birth: “The formulation of the gift sheds light on the sense in
2 Saint-Cyr is a school founded by her to enlighten young noblewomen.
which the process of reproduction exceeds circularity to merge as a gift of the other”
(52). What birth gives to a baby is not something which can be possessed by people.
Rather, birth as a gift gives time to the baby, precisely because the baby “comes t o presence in and through the gift” (Guenther 52). The process of growing, of coming to exist is the gift itself. The gift of time is not about to give a substantial entity; it
provides the “opportunities” to the other, so that more things will be brought by the given time. Therefore, in Guenther’s view, the gift of time is the gift of birth that ruptures the economy of circular exchange. However, that the gift ruptures the economy of exchange eventually renders the gift into the economy of sacrifice.
Though in Given Time it is not Derrida’s concern to explore the theme of sacrifice, in
The Gift of Death Derrida specifies this particular relation between the gift and
sacrifice. For this, I turn to the reading of The Gift of Death.
Pushing the concept of the gift to its extreme, Derrida further argues that a pure gift, in addition to its being secluded from the reciprocal economy, eventually renders itself in the economy of sacrifice. In The Gift of Death, it is possible to read a gift in a number of ways: a genuine gift derives from one’s death, from one’s sacrifice to whom he loves, and he must come to hate what he loves; he must sacrifice the ethical duty.
Relating the definition of the gift to the experience of death/sacrifice, Derrida implies that a gift comes from one’s death, from one’s willingness to sacrifice:
Between on the one hand this denial that involves renouncing the self, this abnegation of the gift, of goodness, or of the generosity of the gift that must with-draw, hide, in fact sacrifice itself in order to give, and on the other hand the repression that would transform the gift into an economy of sacrifice, is there not a secret affinity …? (Derrida 1995:30-31)
-22-
Interweaving the death and the gift together, Derrida actually assigns “a new
signification of death, a new apprehension of death” (Derrida 1995:31). The pure form of the gift, according to the Darridean theories, can be discovered when a person sacrifices his own life and when he dies under the condition of dying for the other.
In rereading the biblical story of Abraham’s sacrifice of his only son – Issac, Derrida thinks the sacrifice of Issac is a genuine gift.3 The story in the Old Testament depicts the dilemma Abraham faces when God testifies him by asking him to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. By faith and loyalties to God Abraham must keep the sacrifice a secret and offer up his son. Therefore, he tells a lie to Issac, bring him to a mountain in order to supply a burnt offering to God. When he is about to slain Isaac, God sends an angels to prevent Abraham’s killing, saying “Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything upon him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me”(Genesis 22:12) . At last, Issac is spared the life and God provides a lamb in place of Issac to be burnt. On the side of Abraham, the sacrificial ritual is still completed, because he does not sacrifice the conception of sacrifice. Even though the sacrifice has been fully carried out without Issac’s being killed, the sacrifice of Issac is as real in reality as that which works in a symbolic way.
Substituting the lamb for Issac, Abraham consolidates a bond of love between he and God. Abraham’s love is a genuine gift to God; it is a gift given through sacrifice, a gift of death.
The sacrifice, from the Derridean viewpoints, can be interpreted as a pure gift for God, because Abraham has the determination to sacrifice his son’s life, or even to destroy his beloved. When such a sacrifice for the other gains nothing for one person,
3 The story is specified by Derrida mostly in the third chapter of The Gift of Death: “Whom to Give to (Knowing Not to Know)”.
what is bequeathed “is not some thing, but goodness itself, a giving goodness, the act of giving or the donation of the gift. A goodness that must not only forget itself but whose source remains inaccessible to the donee” (Derrida 1995: 41). The action of sacrifice involves goodness. It is a gift sent in order to love the other, to respond to the other, a good intention “beyond all calculation” (Derrida 1995:51). As Linda Greenwood states that “[d]eath is given as life for another, and death occurs at the point when the person is most alive” (187), the infinite love consists of a person’s will to renounce himself in order to offer the boundless love. In the discourse of dying for the other, the “will” to sacrifice relates a gift to goodness and death. Such a gift of death that renders a dissymmetrical relationship between the giver and the receiver appears itself without reciprocity. This gift, as Cheah proposes, is a genuine gift (43).
Nonetheless, the infinite love is never given in an easy way. Such a sacrificial gift that asks nothing in return would be hardly achievable, in that one must hate what he loves in order to give. A person must hate what he loves in order to give out his genuine gift. According to Derrida, despite his absolute pain, Abraham must give his infinite love to God by hating his son, since the conception of sacrifice presupposes that one sacrifices what he loves:
If I put to death or grant death to what I hate it is not a sacrifice. I must sacrifice what I love. I must come to hate what I love, in the same moment, at the instant of granting death. I must hate and betray my own, that is to say offer them the gift of death by means of the sacrifice, not insofar as I hate them, that would be too easy, but insofar as I love them. I must hate them insofar as I love them. Hate wouldn’t be hate if it only hated the hateful, that would be too easy. It must hate what is most lovable. Hate cannot be hate, it can only be the sacrifice of love to love. (Derrida 1995:64)
-24-
For Derrida, it is impossible to sacrifice what one hates, nor can one sacrifice what he wants to destroy. A genuine gift can only be given under the condition that one sacrifices the lovable, the charitable. In Linda Greenwood’s words, “[t]rue sacrifice occurs when one is willing to put to death what one loves, [and in this sense] ‘hate’
becomes an extension of a greater understanding of what love involves” (186).
Overall, a genuine gift demands us to sacrifice what we love.
In addition to the gift given out of death and love, what else does Abraham’s story teach us, in his way to sacrifice? In reading the biblical story, Derrida also implies that one must give the gift through the transgression of the ethical rules. Abraham, in showing his infinite love to God, is determined to kill his son. He desires to respond to the command ordered by God; however, slaughtering his son will surely render him in the situation of committing murderer, and in this way, Abraham might put himself at the risk of violating ethics and every human law, and especially the Sixth
Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill decreed by God.” While offering fathomless love to God, “the ethical [the possibility to commit human law and violate morality] is a temptation” that Abraham has to resist (Derrida 1995:61). His absolute duty and faith to God presumes that he should transcend and denounce all the ethical duties and human laws. Here, by taking Abraham’s story, Derrida points out that in order to offer a genuine gift to the other with whom one wants to maintain a relationship, the ethical duties he bears to the society must be suspended:
As soon as I enter into a relation with the other, […] I know that I can respond only by sacrificing ethics, that is , by sacrificing whatever obliges me to also respond, in the same way, in the same instant to all the
others. (Derrida 1995:68)
As far as the gift is concerned, one confronts the dilemma of either obeying the ethical or defying the ethical.