Memory Text: Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1940–2007)

Abstract

OCTOBER 122, Fall 2007, pp. 121–127. © 2007 October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On March 23, 2007, I spoke at an event sponsored by New York University, Columbia University, and the Slought Foundation commemorating Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. Since, I believed, I had been invited to contribute “intellectual-autobiographical” remarks, I did not write out a text. There were a thousand ways in which I could have begun my speech; so, like the narrator in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “Der Sandman,” I decided not to begin at all. As I listened to the ten eminent and articulate speakers before me read carefully composed texts, I began to wonder how I could have permitted myself to stand up before them with only a piece of paper with some notes. I realized, though, that I had not written a text in part because I was faced with a genre I did not understand: I did not know how to mourn LacoueLabarthe. Gathering together my remarks and subsequent thoughts here, I am faced with the same uncertainty about genre. Is this a eulogy? A personal memoir? An intellectual tribute?