It seems peculiar, but perhaps a form of poetic justice, that a film about the one person who has been so emphatically opposed to the metaphysics of presence, is so dependent on this very thing. Seeing Derrida puttering around his home, eating breakfast and smoking his pipe certainly disarms the myth of the outlaw which has formed around him. We may be comfortably disappointed when we see Derrida participate in family dinners without arguing that it is impossible to give a dinner, since the transaction disappears in the circle of exchange. The film wavers awkwardly between the desire to celebrate the myth of Derrida, following him when a new Derrida archive is inaugurated, and yet also wanting to deflate the very same myth. Why else choose to show him doing banal, everyday things? In the end, what we see on the screen is not really Derrida, not as academic outlaw, nor as family person. This brief talk will focus on the peculiar impossibility of showing Derrida.

Film, as a medium, is often regarded as the closest to an unmediated reality we can get. The imprint on the celluloid or images points to the things and people “having been there” in Roland Barthes’ words on the photograph (Barthes 1980:76). Andre Bazin argues for a certain transparency and immediacy of the images in relation to reality. Cinema can completely satisfy our appetite for illusion, and it can do so in a very specific way, namely in creating a reproduction where nobody plays a part, there is no artist to render, or interpret, what we see, everything is reproduced mechanically and automatically without any interference from an artist. (Bazin, 1945, from Braudy & Cohen (ed), 1999:197) This means that we see reality as it really is, that we are not ‘cheated’ by any symbolic codes or elements.

We owe all this to one specific thing; the camera and its objective lens. The invention of the camera means, for Bazin, that all of a sudden there is no intervening between the originating object and its reproduction, only a mechanical, nonliving agent. This means that the world of the film is formed automatically, with no ‘creative intervention’ as he calls it. No longer is there a psychological dimension to the image, it is pure and direct. (Bazin, 1945, from Braudy & Cohen (ed), 1999:197-198)

This creates an objective production of reality, and because of this our psychology or our interpretation of the cinematic image becomes radically different. We are forced to accept it as real, since the camera is an objective observer. Therefore, no matter how critical we might be we are forced to acknowledge that what we see is the factual existence of nature reproduced before us, or in fact re-presented, presented again. For Bazin, this actually creates a “transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction.” (Bazin, 1945, from Braudy & Cohen (ed), 1999:198) In other words, the image is as true as reality. The film apparatus is an innovation which does not truly mediate but instead simply records events with no intervention.

There are two problems with this; the problem of iterability and the problem of the frame. First, iterability or repetition. While the cinematic image promises an unmediated, immediate presence, we must realise that this presence is impossible because the images can be repeated in the absence of Derrida. Although we ‘see’ Derrida on the screen and so believe in his presence, the images can be repeated endlessly which in turn must make us realise that Derrida is exactly not there. The presence of the cinematic image of Derrida inevitably points out that it is not Derrida, Derrida is in fact absent because his image is ‘there’ on the screen. In a sense, Derrida must be absent in order for the image to work. If we imagine Derrida physically sitting beside us while watching the film, we would be unable to believe in the image as true since we know he cannot be two places at once. The image, then, can only be true, can only achieve its realistic effect when Derrida is physically absent. The photographic image so depends upon the absence of the subject.

Second, the frame. Film, by its nature, must frame what it chooses to show. Even Bazin agrees with this, but this choice of framing is itself an ambiguous choice. Not just because of what is chosen to be inside the frame in a political and ideological sense, but also because of the relation to what is outside the frame. If it is not in frame, it does not exist. This is in many ways the guiding principle of cinematography, yet at the same time what is outside the frame must still exist. While we only see a framed selection of space, any narrative understanding of the film must by its nature depend on a diegetic space which exists precisely outside the frame. As the camera tracks, pans, dollies, or cuts to a different angle we are as spectators reaffirmed in the existence of a larger diegetic space. Yet this space is itself simply another frame which depends on more diegetic space outside it. What is present inside the frame therefore depends on what is outside the frame, which must be by definition absent. There can ever be a totality which is in the frame and so the image in the frame depends on what is absent as much as on what is present. This totality is also not just the pure visual understanding of a holistic space, but is also cultural, historical, political, consciousness/desire, conventions, film history, etc which conceivably exist outside the frame yet must always be folded back into the image in order to ‘properly’ understand it.

It so follows that what we regard as the presence of the image actually depends on the absence of what we believe to be present. Does this result in the impossibility of realism in film? This can perhaps best be answered with a yes and a no. Yes in the political/ideological sense that film is as much a mediation and representation as anything else, there is nothing natural about it. No, in the sense that images are certainly not completely discontinuous with reality. There exists a certain analogical relationship between the photographic image and reality. This relationship is best explained through the supplement. Reality becomes the supplement which enables us to regard the image as realistic. Though what the image shows us is, in fact, radically absent, we continually supplement this absence with our belief in a pre-existing reality. This reality-supplement grafts itself to the image and allows us to regard the images as realistic. Curiously, it is precisely this move which means that it is the existence of the cinematic image, the monocular vision of the Renaissance-perspective, which proves to us that reality exists outside the cinema. This dependency on the image to guarantee reality is precisely Baudrillard’s concept of the hyperreal.

Documentaries are of course generally seen to have a special relationship to reality and truth, particularly as they are seen not to depend on aesthetic choices, nor to enforce a particular narrative on to the events. The problem with such documentaries is the claim to truth which they must make in order to exist as documentaries; one would hardly be interested in a documentary which makes no claim to truth and which continually denies its own authority. Such a claim to truth inevitably frames the subject, creating new areas to explore and so attempts to make that area meaningful; which often comes down to enforcing one meaning of the subject examined. This is certainly no less so in biographical studies. The filmmakers of Derrida the Movie are painfully aware of this unsolvable problem, as is Derrida himself. The constant references to the framing and distortion of reality which the cameras and the situation imposes are annoying, at least to me, because they interfere with the conventions of documentary filmmaking, which is of course precisely why they are there.

Yet a cinematic study of one person comes very close to fetishism; an aspect of filmmaking which has been recognised for a long time. Cinematic practices such as the close-up create fetishistic instances within the narrative, something often exploited or employed in most films. Derrida is clearly the fetish of this film and is so in a double sense. The attraction to such a documentary is of course based on the iconic status of Derrida. Yet while we see the film because of the status of Derrida we also see it with a desire to see something which we do not know; we wish to see the ‘real’ Derrida, the person behind the icon.

This desire is peculiarly split between the two ‘versions’ of Derrida. It is the iconic Derrida which signs the film in order to give the film authority. Signing the film in this figurative way is the way to ensure the presence of Derrida; it becomes a promise that seeing this film one will have seen Derrida. However, this is problematic because the signature exists only as the absence of the signer; if the signer were present there would be no reason to sign the utterance or text. Furthermore, the one who signs the film clearly cannot be within the film at the same time. We return, once again, to the absence of what we believe is present in the image and the framing which divides what is ‘inside’ the image and what is ‘outside’.

The signer of the film is the textual Derrida, it is the iconic Derrida. Yet this iconic status is disrupted because what he is known for; philosophy and deconstruction, is peculiarly absent compared to the presence of him eating breakfast, smoking his pipe, learning he has the same dresscode as Hugh Hefner. Even the passages from his books are read by another. The film tries to show the ‘real’ Derrida but this ‘real’ can only be spoken in quotation marks because the ‘real’ Derrida is both absent in no less than two senses; he is absent as the signer of the text because it is the nature of the signature to detach itself from the unique, singular moment, in order to be iterable. He is also absent because what authorises the film must be outside the film in order to authorise it; Derrida must frame himself and so the text doubles back on itself, containing the ‘real’ Derrida inside, but only by re-marking him, framing him and so destroys the possibility of seeing Derrida.

The film, then, becomes a trace of Derrida; we know that the trace denies the possibility of “a simple element be present in and of itself, referring only to itself” (Derrida 1972b/2002:26). Derrida is effaced in the process of the film as “The trace is not only the disappearance of the origin – within the discourse that we sustain and according to the path that we follow it means that the origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except reciprocally by a nonorigin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin.” (Derrida 1967/1976: 61). Derrida has then both come before the film and will come after, but can never be present in the moment. It seems that we are reduced to a familiar position; we must settle back, to await Derrida.

The following was added for the paper’s publication

Framing
The infinite regress of Derrida watching Derrida watching Derrida also extends backwards unto us as spectators. Derrida envelops and penetrates us and so we must ask how we separate ourselves from the event of Derrida unfolding before us? We are framed by the film and so forced into the film itself. Through this we complete the film. Just as reality supplements the image to make it realistic, so do we as spectators supplement the film by our experience of it. The film’s framing of us is thus necessary to complete the film. Framing becomes the constitutive element of the film and so Derrida can only be in the film because he can be framed just as we are only spectators when we are framed by the film. Being framed by a text, that framing always occurs, is one of the basic parameters of Derrida’s writings. To break the frame is much of what his project has dealt with quite explicitly. Just because framing always occurs, is indeed necessary in order to communicate, it does not mean that framing should be quietly accepted. Rather, just as logocentrism is needed but must always be contested, so framing and the act of framing must always be exposed. Drawing attention to lights, microphones and the entire presence of a film crew is the only way to faithfully make a documentary; exposing the un-natural parts of what is supposedly the natural process of simply ‘being yourself’ in screen, which is a distinct impossibility. The natural is thus alienated and exposed as the artifice it ‘truly’ is.

Transmission
Just as Derrida signs the film to give it authority; to authenticate its existence as documenting parts of his life, so do we sign our papers and answers to authenticate the institutionalised validity and intellectual legitimacy. In this sense, the (abstract) signature is meant to comment on the validity of the transmission: this is Derrrida/this is intellectually valid. As such, the signature only applies to the status of the transmission; indicating an absent presence of the signer to guarantee and form the transmission as object. But this process of signing only occurs precisely because of the absence of the signer; hence the act of signing refers to the act of transmission in a different medium, since a signature is not required if one is present. As a transmission usually only exists as a potential communication, indicated by the fact that a transmission might never reach its goal, so is the signature also only a communicative potential. The signature then transforms and moves into the transmission to the extent that the two become inseparable. A signature signs a transmission in all three stages: potential, act, and object. But conversely a transmission requires a signature, otherwise the communicative action disintegrates as the sender evaporates. Hence signature and transmission are two sides of the same coin: inseparable and interdependent.

Faces
To say that the eyes remain the same is to say that we see everything anew, like a child. This seems a strangely naive thing to say; it sounds as if it must come from the mouth of a child. Though Derrida argues that the private and personal must be present in the writings of a philosopher, he also admits that his own life is only obliquely referenced in his works; they are hidden from the sight of others and must be spoken to be noticed. So even if the face of Derrida ‘shines through’ his writings, it seems to be a Janus-face looking at us and confronting us, while at the same time looking away from us and ignoring us. Acknowledging a personal presence within his works he reveals a face but it is not his own, or at least not wholly his own or his own whole face. The face always looks both ways and so refracts into many different faces. When one is shown, another is hidden. These faces become masks, hiding as much as revealing, making it impossible to touch or touch upon Derrida’s true face.

L’amour ou la mort?
If it is artificial to separate love and death, do we love death? Do we love Derrida or do we love what he did? The film inevitably changes now that Derrida has died. It will become even more fetishistic now that it is one of the few places to still see Derrida, and so he becomes an icon worshipped on screens around the world, just as the film poster can now be purchased, so that Derrida can be framed and hung on a wall like any other pop idol would be. Derrida’s death initiates, therefore, a different love of the film, showing him ‘how he was’ indicating a moment when he was alive but kept alive only through the death which the image enacts. Derrida was of course never an image but we can only fetishize an image and so must frame Derrida in order to love him and in this process he is frozen in time and so dies.

Archives
A tombstone presents the only two facts of a philosopher’s life: everything in between is just anecdote. Although Derrida disagrees with this notion of a philosopher’s life, this is never elaborated on in the film. Indeed, the film seems to function as an extended anecdote of a time in Derrida’s life. By not providing any ‘hard facts’ of Derrida’s work it instead remarks on his more personal life. These remarks are of course re-marked by the film which becomes an archive of Derridean anecdotes. An archive is thus a resting place of the anecdotes of Derrida’s life rather than his death. Derrida’s tombstone is thus a marker of Derrida’s death while the archives are markers of his life. It is indeed fitting that there are two Derrida archives so that his life does not become centred.

References
Barthes, Roland (1980). Camera Lucida, London: Vintage, 1993.
Bazin, Andre (1945). “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”, in Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen (eds) (1999), Film Theory and Criticism, New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brunette, Peter & Willis, David (1989). Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1972a). Margins of Philosophy, Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1982.
Derrida, Jacques (1972b). Positions, London & New York: Continuum, 2002.
Derrida, Jacques (1967). Of Grammatology, Baltimore & London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Lucy, Niall (2004). A Derrida Dictionary, Malden: Blackwell Publishers.