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B E I N G ,  T I M E ,  D E A T H
J u l i a  H ö l z l *
Because they were pressing me
to my body
and to the very body
and it was then
that I exploded everything
because my body
can never be touched.
[Antonin Artaud]
Dis/embodiments
Because my body can never be touched, because to touch my body 
is to touch some body else, always, this beginning will be, first and fore-
most, on the un-touch-ability of the body, of every body, of everybody; 
this beginning, as if there could be a beginning, will commence, then, 
with the question: “Comment toucher? And as the question or program 
of rhetoric, of an art of speech, is it only metaphorical? What does a 
word touch, if not a body? But there you have it: How can one get hold 
of the body?”1
There we2 have it: elsewhere, always somewhere else, as we will see.
And how can one get hold of the body if there is no body, but only my 
body—there is always a singular mine-ness involved with the body—
how can one, then, touch, or, rather, how does a—there is no the/re for 
it—body touch? How to touch that which touches, and how to touch 
that which cannot be touched? How, then, to think, how to think the 
body, how, then, to think no body? And what does a body touch if not 
itself, no body, that is, for there is no body for the body, and how to 
word this world3 — “a world in which nothing is either present or ab-
sent, where there is neither proximity nor distance, where everything 
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escapes, leaving us the illusion of having everything”?4 How, then, to 
word within this world, without any body to word?
The body, a no body, does not belong, the body belongs nowhere, 
now here, no where; and not only does it “not belong; it is mortal im-
mortal; it is unreal, imaginary, fragmentary. Patient. In its patientness 
the body is thought already—still just thought.”5 The body, and what is a 
body—we cannot and perhaps even must not know—“[t]he body does 
not know; but it is not ignorant either. Quite simply, it is elsewhere. 
It is from elsewhere, another place, another regime, another register”.6
Elsewhere, always, the body, being merely a medium, being, perhaps, 
in and as itself, being, maybe, some body else, someone else’s body, 
cannot be embodied by us. Thus “[w]hat if the body was simply there, 
given, abandoned, without presupposition, simply posited, weighed, 
weighty?”7 What if the body was simply there, out there, untouchable, 
what if the body eluded its appropriation? What, then, if all there is was 
a there is, a Blanchotian il y a? And, most importantly, what if it was 
precisely the body to de-signate such given?
Perhaps the body, as as-signed by Nancy,8 is indeed to be seen as 
“the articulation, or better yet, the organ or organon of the sign: it is, for 
our entire tradition, that in which sense is given and out of which sense 
emerges.” It makes, and it is to be made: “[s]ign of itself and being-itself 
of the sign”, formulates Nancy9 “the double formula of the body in all 
its states, in all its possibilities.” This double formula of the body makes 
for the body, makes the body to be first and last, makes it “total signi-
fier, for everything has a body, or everything is a body (this distinction 
loses its importance here), and body is the last signifier, the limit of the 
signifier”.10
All this implies, however, that there could be signification, and this 
is, after all, how we tend to speak of it: taking away its fundamentally 
origin-al mode, we grant it a meaning. But, we must not forget, “[a]
ll this would be possible only if we had access to bodies, only if they 
were not impenetrable, as physics defines them. Bodies impenetrable 
to language, and languages impenetrable to bodies, bodies themselves, 
like this word ‘body,’ which already withholds itself and incorporates 
its own entry.”11
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It is from this very impass(e)ability of the body that Nancy12 deduces 
that the body “never ceases to contradict itself. It is the place of contra-
diction par excellence. Either it is by the body and through it that signi-
fication occurs, and then signification falls within its boundaries […], 
or it is from the body and on it that signification takes shape and is de-
posited, and signification never stops reaching toward this proper locus 
where it should endlessly curl up into itself.”
By the body, from the body, on the body: all this implies the possi-
bility of proximity, of a certain intimacy to be had, and such is the site 
where contradiction takes place. To name the body a place of contradic-
tion is precisely this: the body is to be imagined (there is no is for it), and 
there is no proximity that were not bodily. There is no proximity that 
were not bodily, for there is nothing outside the body, any body, and 
no body that were no(t at a) distance. In distance, and perhaps only in 
distance, can there be relation, can there be relation of touch, can there 
be relation that touches.
(How) to touch: such is to form a(s) distance. In order to be touch-
able, the body must remain a(s) distance: as that which can/not be 
touched. For there is no relation that were not from a distance, no dis-
tance that would not bear relation.
There
our looking lead us
with this
half
we keep up relations
[Paul Celan]
No(t) wholes, but halves, eternally divided by and through differ-
ence. For, and to re-iterate Nancy13 once more, “[t]here can only be 
relation (the return, the appropriation of a subject to itself or between 
subjects, it amounts to much the same thing) if we start with an abso-
lute distancing, without which there would be no possibility of prox-
imity, of identity or strangeness, of subjectivity or thinghood. First and 
foremost, however, this distancing distends relation to the point of ex-
position: scarcely am I born before I am outside myself at an infinite 
distance, outside simply turned out, exposed to the rest of the world, to 
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all things. And the same goes for everything, each one exposing univer-
sal exposition differently.”
And what is an exposition but an ex-position? Never from with/in, 
always at the edge, at an outside yet to be made, the close is a(s) closure; 
what is closest is the most distant, and this is why every touch, every 
body, bears its closure in and as itself. For only with,in such closure lies 
there an opening; and this is not a saying. To say is a saying of differ-
ence, to say is to say in difference.
Thence every relation is as ex-position, a(s) dis-appropriation of the 
self, always already different, always in difference. In difference: the only 
form of relation possible. “Difference: the non-identity of the same, the 
movement of distance; that which carries, by carrying off, the becom-
ing of interruption. Difference bears in its prefix the detour wherein all 
power to give meaning seeks its origin in the distance that holds it from 
this origin.”14
An origin-al difference inscribed in,to difference itself, and how to say 
this closure, how to say this closure that proximity is? Proximity is (as) 
approximation, it is the process of appropriation, and how to say this 
nearness, this nearest, the nearest, how to say it in and as nearness; and 
nearness is (as) distance, how to bring distance into relation, how to 
relate distance to relation, how to re-store (the etymological origin of 
“relate”) distance (origin/ally a “standing apart”)?
To say distance as and through distance without appropriating it 
and/or making nearness out of it: such must be the aim here. “The dis-
tant calls to the near, repelling it, not to define itself in it by opposition, 
nor to form a couple with it by resemblance and difference, but in such 
a way that the separation between the two still belongs to the distant.”15
A doubled distance, a separation of and in distance, then.
Thus what must be thought is this: that there is nothing that could 
be thought, that both body and that which is closest (to it), are not, but 
are only in relation to each other; that both elude their think-ability, 
that both are what cannot be appropriated.
Thus what must be said is this: that both relate to each other as that 
which is most distant; that all there is are distances, because there is no 
nearness for the body, no body for such nearness, but only dis/embod-
ied distances.
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In order for there to be relation, there is to be a relation that relates to 
its difference: it is to “have a relation to that which excludes itself from 
any relation and which nevertheless indicates itself as absolute only in 
the relative mode (of the relation itself, multiple).”16
A relation en route, en passant, bearing witness to the almost, to the 
inchoateness of relation/ality, to the fact that there is no close, and yet 
that such close is all there is. Hence relation is possible only as an ap-
proaching, always yet a(t) distance, an such relation is, evidently, a rela-
tion of and in Otherness, for such Other is the site where they assemble.
Such is, certainly, “a thinking that is more than a thought one can 
think, more than a thought can think”:17 for such un-thinkability is what 
means to think, such is to think the Other without thinking it as Same. 
And such is, after all, “a matter of thinking the heteronomy of the Other 
in the Same, where the Other does not subjugate the Same but awakens 
it and sobers it up. The Other sobers the Same by way of a sobering that 
is a thought more thoughtful than the thought of the Same, in a waking 
up that disturbs the astronomic repose of the world.”18
No reconciliation but a relating of different relations (“[t]o cross the dis-
tant, to turn the distant back toward the distant without approach”)19; 
Levinasian experiences of alterity, always.
There ought, then, to be a distance, always. In order for there to be 
relation, distance must be kept. And for there to be relation, such re-
lation must remain outside relation. Such relation is to remain differ-
ent, is to remain a(s) different relation, a(s) relation of difference and 
in,difference. Neither one nor the other, but the Other, always.
In order for there to be relation, there needs to be a fracture, and 
there needs to be a rupture, always.
“‘Always, I come again.’—‘In as much as you find in yourself the 
ability to remain at the furthest remove.’—‘It is only here that I would 
find the distant.’”20
An absolute closeness: a distance to one’s self. For the self “has its 
originarity in the loss of self ”;21 for the self is to remain Other, for the 
“identification of the self as such […] can only take place once the sub-
ject finds itself or poses itself originarily as other than itself ”.22 For there 
can be no other self than anOther self: such must be the relation thought 
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here. From one to the other, “[f ]rom the other to the one, there is a re-
lation, even if it is a relation without a link”.23
There is a nearness, always, a nearness without nearness to be given.
As Paul Celan “I insert–I have no choice–I insert the acute”,24 or, to de-
scribe it with Blanchot,25 I insert (I have no choice) the immediate—“a 
word that designates what is so close that it destroys all proximity—a 
word before which we once again find ourselves […] the immediate that 
allows no mediation, the absence of separation that is absence of rela-
tion as well as infinite separation because this separation does not reserve 
for us the distance and the future we need in order to be able to relate 
ourselves to it, to come about in it. Thus we can begin to surmise that 
“impossibility”—that which escapes, without there being any means of 
escaping it—would be not the privilege of some exceptional experience, 
but behind each one and as though its other dimension.”
It is thus that we enter the in/possibility26 of relation.
In/possibility: a possibility/not. The prefix “in” designates closeness and 
distance at the same time; a within, and yet also a without: neither, and 
nor. A possibility that is not yet given, but that might be inherent, a pos-
sibility always yet to be-come. As such, is has no presence.
It is thus that we enter what Blanchot27 names “the relation of the 
third kind (the first being a mediate relation of dialectical or objective 
identification, the second a relation demanding immediate unity). Now 
what ‘founds’ this third relation, leaving it still unfounded, is no longer 
proximity—proximity of struggle, of services, of essence, of knowledge, 
or of recognition, not even of solitude—but rather the strangeness be-
tween us: a strangeness it will not suffice to characterize as a separation 
or even as a distance.
— Rather an interruption.
— An interruption escaping all measure. But—and here is the 
strangeness of this strangeness—such an interruption (one that neither 
includes nor excludes) would be nevertheless a relation; at least if I take 
it upon myself not to reduce it, not to reconcile it, even by comprehend-
ing it, that is, not to seek to consider it as the ‘faltering’ mode of a still 
unitary relation.”
It is thus that we might enter relation as such.
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Death
“Let us enter into this relation.
To death we are not accustomed.”28
To death we are not accustomed, for death, as the body, is that which 
cannot be owned, that which cannot be appropriated and that is yet 
ours. Death: that which we own (without which we cannot be), that 
which is ours, and that, at the same time, is Other, always Other. Death, 
it is well known, is the endless Other that cannot be attained. Its end-
ing is endless, and yet always already ending. There is no presence for 
the end.
To death we are not accustomed.
Death: the utmost ex-posure to distance, and, at the same time, to that 
which is closest.
We are with,in death, always already, to live is to die, for death does 
not take place. Death: a Blanchotian pas, a step, not, a step not beyond. 
Death cannot be done (with); each time, death must be faced, one time.
“They do not think of death, having no other relation but with death.”29
Let us, then, enter into this relation. Let us enter into this relation 
where there is no relation, for it is death that opens the in/possibility of 
relation. It does so by being in/possible: as possibility of impossibility 
(Heidegger) and as impossibility of possibility (Blanchot). And if, argues 
the latter,30 “if possibility has its source in our very end […] it is from 
this same source that “impossibility” originates, though now sealed orig-
inarily and refusing itself to all our resources: there where dying means 
losing the time in which one can still come to an end and entering into 
the infinite “present” of a death impossible to die”.
And yet, as pointed out by Levinas,31 “[i]t is not with the nothingness 
of death, of which we precisely know nothing, that the analysis must 
begin, but with the situation where something absolutely unknowable 
appears. Absolutely unknowable means foreign to all light, rendering 
every assumption of possibility impossible”.
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Let us enter into this (non-)relation, let us enter into this momentary 
site where distance and proximity meet.
Time
It is time it were time.
It is time
, reminds us Paul Celan in Corona. It is time it were about time, here, 
here, within time, as if there was an outside of, to time. And yet such 
outside of time is all there is.
For time is retarded. Time is remembrance, is anticipated remem-
brance, and we need to remember: Time does not take place, time is 
not, time [is]. Time is nothing but an ‘as if ’; there is no witness for time. 
Time, then, passes, and it origin/ates from this its passing.32
Here, we will follow Nancy33 once more and try to ex-pose ourselves 
“to what happens with time, in time”. Such ex-posure, such ex (forth) 
ponere (to put, to place), such putting forth then, is certainly itself an 
origination, and it is only within such ex-position to time that time, “the 
element of thinking”, can be thought. To think time from within time 
(and there is no inside of time):
This is to think, this is the task to be thought. A difficult task, cer-
tainly, and perhaps the only task ever given—maybe precisely because, 
as Derrida34 reminds us, it is always already too late “to ask the question 
of time. The latter has already appeared”. Its appearance is, of course, a 
dis/appearance.
À la recherche du temps perdu: For time, always unique, always out of 
(its) time, remains untimely. For time is behind the times, for time is 
a(s) beyond, is a(s its) withdrawal. Time is only when it is not; time is, 
to recall Bergson,35 “what hinders everything from being given at once. 
It retards, or rather it is retardation. It must, therefore, be elaboration. 
Would it not then be a vehicle of creation and choice? Would not the 
existence of time prove that there is indetermination in things? Would 
not time be that indetermination itself?”
And would not indetermination prove that there is time? Would not 
indetermination be the only way of experiencing time?
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The experience of time, we are well aware of this, is tied to the idea and, 
consequently, to the representation and/or represenciation of presence: 
„From Parmenides to Husserl, the privilege of the present has never 
been put into question. It could not have been […] no thought seems 
possible outside its element. Nonpresence is always thought in the form 
of presence […]. The past and the future are always determined as past 
presents or as future presents“.36
This is “the enigma of the now”;37 these are the indeterminable im-passes 
to be addressed here.
Far from being original—after all, origination does not possess an 
origin: the origin is nothing but origination itself—, far from being co-
herent—we will only touch on the impasse of touching some of the im-
passes it touches—, we shall thus continue to make up something that is 
not, something that is not even as ‘is not’, that is only as in/possibility.
The first point, or rather text, of origin here is Derrida’s relatively ear-
ly ‘Ousia and Gramme: Note on a note from Being and Time’, wherein 
he, as Derrida himself traces his text in Aporias,38 “treated the question of 
the present, of presence and of the presentation of the present, of time, 
of being, and above all of nonbeing, more precisely of a certain impos-
sibility as nonviability, as nontrack or barred path”.
In the very beginning of the note that Derrida aims to extend—the 
longest in Being and Time—, Heidegger notes that Hegel, for prioritis-
ing the now, remains “under the sway of the traditional conception of 
time”, a vulgar conception that is, and, as he excitedly adds, “[it] can 
even be shown that his conception of time has been drawn directly from 
the ‘physics’ of Aristotle”.
This being quoted, we cannot and perhaps do not even wish to further 
elaborate on Derrida’s subsequent detailed elaborations on Hegel and 
Aristotle. Let us just note that already for Aristotle the now does by 
no means represent a present presence—rather, it is to be conceived as 
something that is not: “In one sense it has been and is no longer, and 
in another sense, it will be and is not yet”, as he is quoted by Derrida.39
Yet, as the latter40 rightly asks, “is not what Heidegger designates be-
neath these points of reference that which is most simple? […] Has not 
the entire history of philosophy been authorized by the ‘extraordinary 
right’ of the present?”
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It is obvious, perhaps all too obvious, what Derrida attempts to dem-
onstrate here: pre-cipitating his conclusion that time is metaphysical, he 
suggests that Heidegger (at least in Being and Time) remains metaphysi-
cal himself and that there might be no vulgar conception of time—for, 
as he states, the concept of time “names the domination of presence. 
Therefore we can only conclude that the entire system of metaphysical 
concepts […], develops the so-called ‘vulgarity’ of the concept of time 
[…], but also that an other concept of time cannot be opposed to it, 
since time in general belongs to metaphysical conceptuality”.41
And yet it is precisely the ordinary that is itself always already “ex-
ceptional, however little we understand its character as origin. What we 
receive most communally as ‘strange’ is that the ordinary itself is origi-
nary”, as Jean-Luc Nancy reminds us.42 The ordinary, seen as such, is al-
ways-already extra-ordinary; the ordinary is always originating an Other 
(access), just as time is always an Other. And just as the “desire for the 
exception presupposes disdain for the ordinary”,43 the metaphysical (de-
sire for a) conception of time assumes that time itself were extraordinary.
However, as there indeed can be no other concept of time, we must 
not succumb to the temptation of a mere overcoming of such thinking,44 
as such overcoming falls back into the same thinking it tries to over-
come: tà metà tà metàphysiká: metàphysiká, or: Plus ca change, plus c’est 
la meme chose. It was, after all, Heidegger himself to remind us that each 
reversion of metaphysics remains metaphysical.45 But it was also Hei-
degger who coined the term Verwindung: a concept somewhat similar to 
the term ‘overcoming’ (Überwindung), while at the same time replacing 
this dialectic connotation by two meanings, namely Genesung/convales-
cence and Verdrehung/distortion.46 There is no way out of metaphysics; 
the only way out is through.
To think presence differently is, therefore, not to be based on a re-
version of the metaphysical concept of time, but it is to be a tracing—
and it is thus that we enter Derrida’s second motif regarding his exten-
sion of the footnote,47 namely “[t]o indicate […] a direction not opened 
by Heidegger’s mediation: the hidden passageway that makes the prob-
lem of presence communicate with the problem of the written trace.”
Certainly the idea of the trace is by no means post-metaphysical; the 
metaphysical traces remain, remain within the trace itself, as the very 
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names given to the trace “belong as such to the text of metaphysics that 
shelters the trace, and not to the trace itself ”;48 there is no presence for 
this trace: being a trace, presence “could not appear or be named as 
such, that is, in its presence. It is the as such which precisely, and as such, 
evades us forever”. Like Barthes’49 third or obtuse meaning, presence “is 
a signifier without a signified, hence the difficulty in naming it”.50
And this very impasse of naming reflects the impasse of thinking; the 
task of thought, one might dare to name it philosophy, is to trespass this 
impasse. Probably the most non-metaphysical gesture, if it were possible 
at all, would be to name: To name is to release the name from an impos-
sible meaning—to name is to name the metaphysical trace that cannot 
be named. We are already beyond whatever we have words for, reminds us 
Nietzsche;51 and thus it has to be named as such, as the very naming of 
that which cannot be named: presence, and time as such.
And such time, it seems certain, must be a time beyond time; for it is 
outside time that presence takes place. To be in time is to be elsewhere.
Being
“Non-present, non-absent; it tempts us in the manner of that which 
we would not know how to meet, save in situations which we are no 
longer in”.52
Death, we remember, remains an in/possibility, the possibility yet to be/
come. As such, what we are facing is not a Heideggerian being-toward-
death, but rather a being-toward-the-end, always. Our being “is in the 
mode of being-toward-the-end, and that what constitutes an event in 
this being [Dasein] is to go to its end. The energy or the very power of 
being is already the power of its end. There is a new and irreducible re-
lationship here: it is irreducible to a distance in regard to what remains 
outside of and distinct from a ripening.”53
It is in finitude that being is, and being itself is finite. Being is (in) 
time, and this time, the time of being, is (in) finitude: finitude desig-
nates the horizon of time, the origin/ation of time; original time is finite, 
as elucidated by the early Heidegger.
Here, being shall be thought in and from the end: a(s) passage to-
wards the limit, a(s) relation not/beyond, but elsewhere, always some-
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where else. In order to think the time of being, absence must be thought 
beyond its own presence— beyond its absence, that is. A with-drawal 
of its relation to—(presence), a thinking-it as such. We must, therefore, 
by no means invent a different presence for this absence that is not. For 
such absence, as Derrida reminds us, would either “give us nothing to 
think or it still would be a negative mode of presence. Therefore the sign 
of this excess must be absolutely excessive as concerns all possible pres-
ence-absence, […] and yet, in some manner it must still signify, in a man-
ner unthinkable by metaphysics as such. In order to exceed metaphysics 
it is necessary that a trace be inscribed within the text of metaphysics, a 
trace that continues to signal […] in the direction of an entirely other 
text. […] The mode of inscription of such a trace in the text of meta-
physics is so unthinkable that it must be described as an erasure of the 
trace itself. The trace is produced by its own erasure”.54
Such inscription is, then, to inscribe a presence that is not is to in-
scribe only to withdraw. Thus, to inscribe a presence “not to (re)present 
it or to signify it, but to let come to one and over one what merely pre-
sents itself at the limit where inscription itself withdraws”.55
Consequently, ousia or Wesen shall no longer be conceived in terms 
of (its) presence, but thought (of ) as ap_ousiai,56 literally un-presences: 
In contrast to parousia,57 de-signating the presence of that which has al-
ready arrived, ap_ousiai, still bearing the metaphysical trace of the idea 
of presence and absence, is to de-signate the presence of absence, the 
absence of presence, and yet something situated beyond both.
For it is only here, within this very (non)passage of and towards such 
beyond, that the in/possibility of presence is opened, and it is, then, only 
through an ab-sense of sense that (its) presence is witnessed—a presence 
which, to write with Nancy,58 “is not essence, but […] birth to pres-
ence: birth and death to the infinite presentation of the fact that there 
is no ultimate sense, only a finite sense, finite senses, a multiplication of 
singular bursts of sense resting on no unity or substance. And the fact, 
too, that there is no established sense, no establishment, institution or 
foundation of sense, only a coming, and comings-to-be of sense.”
What is of relevance here is the gap between: its mode of relation is 
that of a Verwindung. The blank, the gap, or, in German, Leerzeichen, 
literally an empty sign, an empty character, designates the only relation 
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possible. Ap_ousiai are beyond, yet they are tracing themselves, and, as la 
différance, they might allow for “a writing without presence and without 
absence”.59 Situated beyond this opposition presence: absence, beyond 
themselves and, therefore also situated beyond the postmodern novum, 
they are both fracture and co-relation. Here, we obviously face the same 
impasse as is the case with différance: such fissure cannot be heard, but 
only written. Within the empty sign, without a signifier, presence is no 
longer thought (of ) as (its) and through presenciation.
Presence, it should be clear by now, presence is an empty sign. And 
“[p]resence, then, far from being […] what the sign signifies, what a 
trace refers to, presence, then, is the trace of the trace, the trace of the 
erasure of the trace”.60
What we still face, towards this ending, as if there was an end, is the 
impasse; what we still face is the in/possibility, or shall we say potential?, 
of and for presence, that is. We must thus insert, we have no choice, we 
must insert “the old, worn-out Greek term aporia”.61
We remember: aporos, without passage, “indeed the nonpassage, 
which can in fact be something else, the event of a coming or of a fu-
ture advent, which no longer has the form of the movement that con-
sists in passing, traversing, or transiting”.62 Having “come to pass”, al-
ways, “the aporia, that is, the impossible, the impossibility”, that which 
“cannot pass […] or come to pass”,63 the aporia might indeed attest to 
“the fact that the impossibility would be possible and would appear as 
such, as impossible, as an impossibility that can nevertheless appear or 
announce itself as such”64 —
it is as such that the aporia is.
There is in fact no possibility without impossibility, for such possi-
bility would not be possible. The possibility of presence would be past 
or future, for “[s]uch is the logic of the present: at this precise moment, 
the moment erases itself, and this is how it is a moment.”65 Such is “the 
paradox of the present: to constitute time while passing in the time con-
stituted”.66 Such is the impasse of the present: a poiesis of the only once, 
as the only once. Such is to be thought: To think the once at once; only 
one time: the only time.
But can we even pose the question of an in/possibility of presence?67 
Is not every saying of presence a pre-supposition, an anticipation of 
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something that is no(t) yet? And yet is within presence, and maybe 
within presence alone, that in/possibility occurs, for “it concerns the 
impossibility of [time] itself, and not merely the impossibility of this 
or that”?68
Presence is the ultimate aporia. And this is why presence “can never 
[…] be endured as such. The ultimate aporia is the impossibility of apo-
ria as such”.69 Can one then, Derrida70 asks, “[c]an one speak […] of an 
experience […] of the aporia as such? Or vice versa: Is an experience pos-
sible that would not be an experience of the aporia?”
We know that we cannot know about the aporia: this might be its 
first, its only condition. The aporia can be experienced only as such: as 
aporia. And it is precisely because of this its impossibility that the apo-
ria, that presence can be experienced. Like presence, it is (possible) only 
when it is not: when remaining impossible. Simultaneously witnessing 
and anticipating a presence that is always already a no longer, this trace 
re-presents a trace always already erasing itself.
And so it might be the no longer that bears witness to the present, 
and its presence presents itself as the very trace of the presence that it is 
pre-tend-ing to present.
There is, in this end, as if there was an end, no presence for proxim-
ity, no presence for the close.
Neither present nor absent, proximity is as approximation, relates to 
that which is furthest, is “the ability to remain at the furthest remove”.71
Every attempt to im-pose a presence external to it, every effort of making 
it a with—, violates its only once, its in/possibility of presence, that is. 
Touch, relation, proximity: a relating to and as presence, a simulation 
of the in/possible experience of the aporia.
There is no presence for relation. Neither present nor absent, relation 
is (as) impass(e)ability: the ability to bear the impossible, the impasse, 
the aporia: such must be the closeness of relation, each time. Only thus 
can there be opened a possibility of in/possibility, only thus can there 
be proximity. In/possibility: the only form of possibility possible. Such 
must be the condition for our being-in-time, for our being-toward-the-
end.
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* Julia Hölzl, currently pursuing a second doctorate at the Centre for Modern Thought at the 
University of Aberdeen, Scotland, is the Maurice Blanchot Fellow at the European Graduate 
School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. She is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute of International 
Studies at Ramkhamhaeng University, Bangkok.
N o t e s
1 Nancy, J.-L. (1993), “Corpus” (tr. by Claudette Sartiliot). In: J.-L. Nancy, The Birth to Pres-
ence (tr. by B. Holmes & others). Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 190 (pp. 189–207).
2 “We”: here by no means to be seen as violent appropriation, but rather to be understood in 
terms of a Being Singular Plural sensu Jean-Luc Nancy.
3 And what do we, after all, “know of the being-being of the body, and of the being-body of 
being? Perhaps nothing yet. Philosophy is certainly not the one to tell us.” (Nancy, J-L., “Cor-
pus”, p. 196).
4 Blanchot, M. (1993), The Infinite Conversation (translation and foreword by S. Hanson). 
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, p. 96.
5 Blanchot, M. (1995), The Writing of the Disaster (tr. by A. Smock). Lincoln: University of 
Nebraska Press, p. 45.
6 Nancy, J.-L., “Corpus”, p. 199.
7 Ibid., p. 199f.
8 Ibid., p. 192.
9 Ibid., p. 194.
10 Ibid., p. 195.
11 Ibid., p. 189.
12 Ibid., p. 192f.
13 Nancy, J.-L. (2003), “Res ipsa et ultima” (tr. by Steven Miller). In: J.-L. Nancy, A Finite 
Thinking (ed. Simon Sparks). Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 315 (pp. 311–318).
14 Blanchot, M., Infinite Conversation, p. 170.
15 Blanchot, M. (1992), The Step Not Beyond (translated and with an introduction by Lycette 
Nelson). New York: State University of New York Press, p. 69f.
16 Ibid., p. 6.
17 Levinas, E. (2000), God, Death, and Time (tr. by Bettina Bergo, edited and annotated by 
Jacques Rolland). Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 141.
18 Ibid., p. 143.
19 Blanchot, M., Step Not Beyond, p. 69.
20 Ibid., p. 33.
21 Nancy, J.-L. (2000), “Of Being singular plural”. In: Being singular plural (tr. by R. D. 
Richardson and A. E. O’Bryne). Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 78 (pp. 1–99).
22 Ibid., p. 77.
23 Levinas, E., God, Death, and Time, p. 140.
24 Celan, P. (2005), “The Meridian” (tr. by J. Glenn). In: J. Derrida, Sovereignities in Question. 
The Poetics of Paul Celan ( eds. T. Dutoit and O. Pasanen). New York: Fordham University Press, 
p. 175 (pp. 173–185).
25 Blanchot, M., Infinite Conversation, p. 44f.
26 In: “not, opposite of, without” (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=in-
&allowed_in_frame=0).
27 Blanchot, M., Infinite Conversation, p. 68.
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P O L I G R A F I
28 Thus begins Blanchot “The Step Not Beyond”.
29 Blanchot, M., Writing of the Disaster, p. 40.
30 Blanchot, M., Infinite Conversation, p. 44f.
31 Levinas, E. (1989), “Time and the Other” (tr. by R. A. Cohen). In: E. Levinas, The Levinas 
Reader (ed. S. Hand), Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, p. 41 (pp. 37–58).
32 To re-call Heidegger’s question [Heidegger, M. (2006), M., Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max 
Niemeyer Verlag, p. 425]: Why do we say that time passes and not that it originates? (We will 
not dwell on his answer here, which reads as: it is said to pass in order to re-tain it. The emphasis 
on the passing of time, Heidegger asserts in Sein und Zeit, expresses our experience that it can-
not be retained—at the same time, this very experience is possible only because of our desire to 
retain time).
33 Nancy, J.-L. (2003), “The Kategorein of Excess” (tr. by J. Gilbert-Walsh and S. Sparks). In: 
J.-L. Nancy, Finite Thinking, pp. 136 (pp. 133–151).
34 Derrida, J. (1982), “Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note from Being and Time”. In: J. 
Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (tr. by Alan Bass). Chicago: Harvester Press, p. 42 (pp. 29–67).
35 Bergson, H. (2005), “The Possible and the Real” (tr. by M. L. Andison). In: Bergson, H., Key 
Writings (eds. Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey). New York and London: Continuum, 
p. 224 (pp. 223–232).
36 Derrida, J. “Ousia and Grammē”, p. 34.
37 Ibid., p. 61.
38 Derrida, J. (1993), Aporias (tr. by T. Dutoit). Stanford: Stanford University Press, p. 13.
39 Derrida, J., Ousia and Grammē”, p. 39 (217b).
40 Ibid., p. 38.
41 Ibid., p. 63.
42 J.-L. Nancy, “Being singular plural”, p. 10.
43 Ibid.
44 See also Heidegger [Heidegger, M. (1989), Gesamtausgabe (ed. by F.-W. von Herrmann), III. 
Abteilung: Unveröffentlichte Abhandlungen, Vorträge-Gedachtes, Band 65, Beiträge zur Phi-
losophie (Vom Ereignis). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann: p. 173]: “Eben deshalb darf 
aber auch das übergängliche Denken nicht der Versuchung verfallen, das, was es als Ende und 
im Ende begriffen hat, nun einfach hinter sich zu lassen, statt dieses hinter sich zu bringen, d.h. 
jetzt erst in seinem Wesen zu fassen und dieses gewandelt in die Wahrheit des Seyns einspielen 
zu lassen.”
45 See Heidegger [Heidegger, M. (2000), Über den Humanismus. Frankfurt am Main: Vitto-
rio Klostermann, p. 20]: “Aber die Umkehrung eines metaphysischen Satzes bleibt ein meta-
physischer Satz”.
46 See Vattimo, G. (1994), “Nihilismus und Postmoderne in der Philosophie” (tr. by W. 
Welsch, assisted by B. Hesse). In: Wege aus der Moderne. Schlüsseltexte der Postmoderne-Diskussion 
(ed. W. Welsch). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, p. 240 (pp. 233–246).
47 Whereas the first one is “[t]o read in it […] the Heideggerian question about presence as the 
ontotheological determination of the meaning of Being” (J. Derrida, “Ousia and Grammē”, p. 
33ff.).
48 Ibid., p. 66.
49 Barthes, R. (1978), “The Third Meaning. Research notes on some Eisenstein stills”. In: 
Barthes, R., Image Music Text (tr. by S. Heath). New York: Hill and Wang, p. 61 (pp. 52–68).
50 As Barthes states for the obtuse meaning (=and idea of the letter a is neither a first defini-
tion nor a prophetic announcement of a forth-coming and yet unheard naming: see Derrida, 
135
I N / P O S S I B L E  R E L A T I O N :  B E I N G ,  T I M E ,  D E A T H
J. (2004), “Die différance” (tr. by E. Pfaffenberger-Brückner). In: Derrida, J., Die différance. 
Ausgewählte Texte (ed. P. Engelmann), Stuttgart: Reclam, p. 146 (pp. 110–149).
51 Freely adapted from his Götzen-Dämmerung [Nietzsche, F. (2005), Gesammelte Werke (eds. 
W. Deninger and W. Linden), Bindlach: Gondrom, p. 1086/§26, (pp. 1051–1101)]: “Wofür wir 
Worte haben, darüber sind wir auch schon hinaus”.
52 Blanchot, M., Step Not Beyond, p. 6.
53 Levinas, E., God, Death, and Time, p. 44.
54 Derrida, J., “Ousia and Grammē”, p. 65.
55 Nancy, J.-L. (2003), “Elliptical Sense” (tr. by J. Derbyshire). In: J.-L. Nancy, Finite Think-
ing, p. 110 (pp. 91–111).
56 In relation to Heidegger’s conception (Sein und Zeit, p. 25 of a “Bestimmung des Sinnes 
von Sein als Παρουσία, bzw. οὐσία”, which means Anwesenheit, presence.
57 8. Parousia: the second coming, the arrival of presence—the ultimate re-presentation.
58 Nancy, J.-L. (2003), “A Finite Thinking” (tr. by E. Bullard, J. Derbyshire, and S. Sparks). 
In: J-L. Nancy, Finite Thinking, p. 27 (pp. 3–30).
59 Derrida, J., “Ousia and Grammē”, p. 67.
60 Ibid., p. 66.
61 Derrida, J., Aporias, p. 12.
62 Ibid., p. 8.
63 Ibid. p. 23.
64 Ibid., p. 73.
65 Nancy, J.-L., (1997), The Technique of the Present. Lecture given at the Nouveau Musée during 
the exposition of On Kawara’s works “Whole and Parts—1964–1995” (January 1997), available at 
www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-luc-nancy/articles/the-technique-of-the-present/.
66 Deleuze, G. (2004), Difference and Repetition (tr. by P. Patton). London and New York: Con-
tinuum, p. 100. Though we must avoid his “necessary conclusion— that there must be another 
time in which the first synthesis of time can occur”.
67 As Derrida (Aporias, p. 21 asks about the question of (his) death.
68 Ibid., p. 72.
69 Ibid., p. 78.
70 Ibid., p. 15.
71 Blanchot, M., Step Not Beyond, p. 33.
136
P O L I G R A F I
B i b l i o g r a p h y
1. Barthes, R. (1978), “The Third Meaning. Research notes on some Eisenstein 
stills”. In: R. Barthes, Image Music Text (tr. by S. Heath). New York: Hill and 
Wang, pp. 52–68.
2. Bergson, H. (2005), “The Possible and the Real” (tr. by M. L. Andison). In: H. 
Bergson, Key Writings (eds. Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey). New York 
and London: Continuum, pp. 223–232.
3. Blanchot, M. (1992), The Step Not Beyond (translated and with an introduction 
by L. Nelson). New York: State University of New York Press.
4. Blanchot, M. (1993), The Infinite Conversation (translation and foreword by S. 
Hanson). Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
5. Blanchot, M. (1995), The Writing of the Disaster (tr. by A. Smock). Lincoln: 
University of Nebraska Press.
6. Celan, P. (2005), “The Meridian” (tr. by J. Glenn). In: J. Derrida, Sovereignities 
in Question. The Poetics of Paul Celan (eds. T. Dutoit and O. Pasanen). New York: 
Fordham University Press, pp. 173–185.
7. Deleuze, G. (2004), Difference and Repetition (tr. by P. Patton). London and 
New York: Continuum.
8. Derrida, J. (1982), “Ousia and Grammē: Note on a Note from Being and Time”. 
In: J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (tr. by Alan Bass). Chicago: Harvester Press, 
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9. Derrida, J. (1993), Aporias (tr. by T. Dutoit). Stanford: Stanford University 
Press.
10. Derrida, J. (2004), “Die differance” (tr. by E. Pfaffenberger-Bruckner). In: 
Derrida, J., Die différance. Ausgewählte Texte (ed. P. Engelmann), Stuttgart: 
Reclam, pp. 110–149.
11. Heidegger, M. (1989), Gesamtausgabe (ed. by F.-W. von Herrmann), III. 
Abteilung: Unveröffentlichte Abhandlungen, Vortrage-Gedachtes, Band 65, Bei-
trage zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
12. Heidegger, M. (2000), Über den Humanismus. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio 
Klostermann.
13. Heidegger, M (2006), M., Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
14. Levinas, E. (2000), God, Death, and Time (tr. by B. Bergo, edited and anno-
tated by J. Rolland). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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pp. 37–58.
137
I N / P O S S I B L E  R E L A T I O N :  B E I N G ,  T I M E ,  D E A T H
16. Nancy, J.-L. (1993), “Corpus” (tr. by C. Sartiliot). In: J.-L. Nancy, The Birth 
to Presence (tr. by B. Holmes & others). Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 
189–207.
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Musée during the exposition of On Kawara’s works “Whole and Parts—1964–1995” 
(January 1997), available at www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-luc-nancy/articles/the-tech-
nique-of-the-present/.
18. Nancy, J.-L. (2000), “Of Being singular plural”. In: Being singular plural (tr. 
by R. D. Richardson and A. E. O’Bryne). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 
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S. Sparks). In: J.-L. Nancy, A Finite Thinking (ed. S. Sparks). Stanford: Stanford 
University Press, pp. 3–30.
20. Nancy, J.-L. (2003), “Elliptical Sense” (tr. by J. Derbyshire). In: J.-L. Nancy, 
Finite Thinking, pp. 91–111.
21. Nancy, J.-L. (2003), “The Kategorein of Excess” (tr. by J. Gilbert-Walsh and S. 
Sparks). In: J.-L. Nancy, Finite Thinking, pp. 133–151.
22. Nancy, J.-L. (2003), “Res ipsa et ultima” (tr. by Steven Miller). In: J.-L. Nancy, 
Finite Thinking, pp. 311–318.
23. Nietzsche, F. (2005), „Götzen-Dämmerung“. In: F. Nietzsche, Gesammelte 
Werke (eds. W. Deninger and W. Linden), Bindlach: Gondrom, pp. 1051–1101.
24. Vattimo, G. (1994), “Nihilismus und Postmoderne in der Philosophie” (tr. 
by W. Welsch, assisted by B. Hesse). In: Wege aus der Moderne. Schlüsseltexte der 
Postmoderne-Diskussion (ed. W. Welsch). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, pp. 233–246.