A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event

Abstract

Thank you. I assure you that what I’m going to say will be much more unequipped and exposed thanGadSoussana’s beautiful lecture.Beforebabbling a few words, I’d like to join in the thanks already expressed and tell Phyllis Lambert and all our hosts how grateful I am for the hospitalitywith which they’ve honored me. We settled on very little in advance, but we did agree that I’d try to say a few words after Gad Soussana, that I’d then turn the floor over to Alexis Nouss, andwould pick up afterwards in a somewhat more enduring way. I will try to carry through my task in the first part of this promised talk by saying a few very simple things. It is worth recalling that an event implies surprise, exposure, the unanticipatable, and we at least agreed to one thing between ourselves and that was that the title for this session, for this discussion, would be chosen by my friends sitting here beside me. I take this opportunity to say that it was on account of friendship that I thought I should accept to expose myself here in this way, friendship not only for those who are sitting here beside me but for all my friends from Quebec; some, whom I haven’t seen for a long time, are here today in the audience and to them I address a word of greeting. I wanted this open-ended and, to a large degree, improvised gathering to be placed in this way under the heading of an event of friendship. This presupposes friendship, of course, but also surprise and the unanticipatable. It was understood that Gad Soussana and Alexis Nouss would choose the title and that I would try as well as I could to present not answers but some improvised remarks. Obviously, if there is an event, it must never be something that is predicted or planned, or even really decided upon.