Today is Derrida’s birthday.
Bon anniversaire, J.D.
In quitting us, you leave us facing the obscurity into which you vanish. And so: salut, obscurity! Salut to this erasure of figures and schemas! And salut to the blind whom we become. The blind were a theme that you favored: salut to the vision that did not cling to forms or ideas but that let itself be touched by forces.
You practiced being blind all the better to greet the clarity that only obscurity possesses, which is out of sight and envelops the secret—a secret not concealed but evident, the manifest secret of being, of life/death. And so, salut! to the secret that you safeguard.
— Jean-Luc Nancy
from “Salut to you, salut to the blind we become”
chthonic | boom 