The philosophical and anthropological conceptions of the gift are typically explored through analyses of human behaviour and economies. The economy, the nomos (rules) of the oikos (house) is normatively the human house or dwelling. But in this all too human formulation where global warming and irregular weather stirs our occupancy, we are reminded of the multilayered nature of our oikos, its geological, biological and meteorological architecture, susceptible to shaking and even toppling over like a tower of Jenga. The cycles and rhythms of Holocene nature are measured and predicted. But the disruption of these cycles are also calculated, the shocks to the system are surmised. Yet, they are still felt as shocks. We are still disturbed by what is piercing through our life-world, notwithstanding whether it was anticipated. Even the most switched on denier of climate denial, if you will, is susceptible to the 'denial' that is provoked by climate traumas.
There have been frequent heatwaves and wild fires in the UK this year. Concomitantly, the appearance and disappearance of nature's manifestations have been occurring prematurely. Blackberries emerged early in July, abundant, while they are normatively harbingers of autumn's unfolding. Although shocking, blackberry pickers took advantage of the premature abundance with basketfuls of the bounty. 'What's the problem?' I hear the bear asking, wiping jam off his lips. It might seem strange to air caution when nature appears to be gracing us with the gifts of fruit. But phenological disruptions are uncanny and their putative gifts in times of adversity are troublesome because they appear as indicators of desperate excess, as plants like the bramble shrub produce more fruit in a state of self-sustaining panic, disseminating extraneous seeds to the point of exhaustion. Phenology describes those biological life cycles inextricable to the givenness of seasonality. It therefore constitutes much of how climate change is experienced, as our perceptions of the seasons are evoked by the wildlife that is becoming drastically affected. Can the fruits of this crisis, perhaps even of our exploitative labour, be considered a gift? This depends on what we mean by the gift. As Jacques Derrida asks, in Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money:
'But is not the gift, if there is any, also that which interrupts economy? That which, in suspending economic calculation, no longer gives rise to exchange? That which opens the circle so as to defy the reciprocity or symmetry, the common measure, and so as to turn aside the return in view of the no-return? If there is gift, the given of the gift (that which one gives, that which is given, the gift as given thing or act of donation) must not come back to the giving (let us not already say to the subject, to the donor). It must not circulate, it must not be exchanged.' (Derrida, 1992, p. 7)
The gift for Derrida is admittedly therefore 'impossible' and yet doesn't necessarily preclude speaking about. It has a kind of 'aneconomic' potential, which means that it cannot be situated within the notion of exchange proper. It is not only unreciprocated, but also not identified as a gift. As Derrida argues, the 'gift as gift ought not appear as gift: either to the donee or to the donor' (Ibid, 14). Interestingly, he conjectures that 'the example of food or of what are called consumer goods will never be just one example among others' (Ibid, 12). Why is the gift in the form of food significant for Derrida? It might well have something to do with survival or 'survivance’, a key Derridean term, one that we shall not necessarily explore here in detail, but relate to his concept of the 'archive'. Also key to the gift is its 'excessive' nature, meaning that a 'moderate' and 'measured' gift would not be a gift at all for Derrida. Does it sound like gifts could have some ecological recourse in Derrida's reading? As Michael Marder has pointed out, Derrida seemed 'allergic' to the very word ecology, a compound word which contains both oikos and logos (presence, knowledge etc), those constitutive features of metaphysics Derrida was hellbent on deconstructing. Lingering perhaps disproportionately on the nomos of economy in his work, Marder thinks that Derrida's notion of aneconomy could be better characterised as ecology, a proclivity to engender a rupture, which reminds us of status of the dwelling we occupy, confounding the binary we uphold between host and guest. In Marder's chapter in the book 'Eco-Deconstruction', which puts into focus the environmental themes pervading Derrida's work, he writes:
'If economy is the default organization of our dwellings - whether at the level of the psyche, of the household, or of the planet as a whole - then ecology is the rupture that no longer obeys the economic order and that, within its confines, is experienced, precisely, as a disorder, if not chaos, a harbinger of crisis.' (Marder, 2018,142)
The ecological event, seismic in nature, perhaps unsettles the inhabitancy of our dwelling, so much so that we are forced to question our place in the world, how our sense of belonging is always in some bestowed and never promised, in spite of our territorialisation of the earth and the putative robustness of the nomos that lays claim to occupancy. But the gift also gives, not only takes. As Derrida says it 'It demands time, the thing, but it demands a delimited time, neither an instant nor an infinite time, but a time determined by a term, in other words, a rhythm, a cadence' (Derrida, 1992, 41). Moreover, the gift 'demands to have, to give, or to take time - and time is rhythm that does not befall a homogenous time but that structures it originally'. This temporal conception of the gift, construed in terms of rhythm over 'vulgar' or capitalist clock-time suggests that it is recalcitrant to what is inherently economising about gifts, but is perhaps abundant, excessive, generous even. However, as Derrida stresses, the gift 'cannot take place between two subjects exchanging objects, things, or symbols. The question of the gift therefore seeks its place before any relation to the subject, before any conscious or unconscious relation to self of the subject' (Ibid, 24).
The gift 'giver' is therefore not a conscious subject per se, nor does it know that what it bestows is a gift, otherwise the gift would be subsumed into economic exchanges. While Marder is right to point out the ways in which Derrida shows aversion to recognising the radical nature of the gift as ecological, he perhaps overlooks Derrida's adumbration towards the rhythms of 'nature' undergirding the gift, through his references towards the rhythms of the sun and his tacit invocation of Heideggerian physis. After the quote already cited, where Derrida refers to the precondition of the gift which precedes any such division between subject and object, he contends that this 'is indeed what happens with Heidegger when he goes back before the determination of Being as substantial being, subject, or object'. I would argue that this not only pertains to Heidegger's conception of physis, that is the self-revealing of life that manifests in a vegetal like manner, but also to Derrida's own concept of arche-writing, which occupies a space between and before subject and object, life and nonlife etc. In his book Archive Fever, largely on Freud and making use of the latter's notion of death drive, Derrida writes:
Arche, we recall, names at once the commencement and the commandment. This name apparently coordinates two principles in one: the principle according to nature or history, there where things commence-physical, historical, or ontological principle-but also the principle according to the law, there where men and gods command, there where authority, social order are exercised, in this place from which order is given-nomological principle. There, we said, and in this place. How are we to think of there? And this taking place or this having a place of the arkhe? (Derrida, 1995, 1)
Arche-writing is an earlier concept Derrida develops in his first substantial work Of Grammatology. Again, here is not the place to elaborate, but it broadly refers to the space before and between the above oppositions, namely between physis and tekchne (technology) etc, the space where the instability of the very spaces between are revealed. Though some authors have disavowed the word nature entirely (See Morton 2007 and Vogel 1996), a gesture ostensibly performed in a deconstructive fashion, I would argue that is antithetical to Derrida's notion of arche-writing, which already seems to involve and avow nature as a problematic, but indissociable current. What I call arche-nature writing, a form of writing that probes the space between ourselves and the natural world, is indicative of the space whereby 'nature' makes itself felt, forcing us to recognise our envelopment within a dwelling which appeared ours, but is actually other, the other who is also enveloped in us. In my reading of arche-nature, arche-writing, any kind of allergy that Derrida might have to ecology or 'nature' may in actual fact be an avowal of nature. If you permit me this rather bizarre analogy, this avowal could be compared to a victim of hay fever, pervaded by excess pollen and who must put up with the other that infiltrates their body even when they have stocked up on antihistamines. This drug targets the body's own natural histamine response, an excessive response to what it perceives to be a threat. Though not autoimmune (also textbook Derridean jargon), the allergy does not target the allergen, but targets the otherness of the self, the mysterious death-drive, inextricable to the trace of the allergen. This helps describe what we mean by arche-nature, which is never outside of us in the way we might think of nature as Timothy Morton problematises, or as Steven Vogel sees as a social construction. Whilst nature might be perceived as an object to be experienced, something we may desire to embed ourselves within, we are swayed by the bending of the plant following the tune of the sun, which invites us to reflect on the always-already porosity of our own bodies and the bodies of others, human and plant alike.
There is something inherently nomological about the 'arche', but it always seems constrained by an internal pressure that is irreducible to the law proper, not strictly speaking 'aneconomic' or even ecological per se, but pertaining to physis, the bending of the plant in accordance with the rhythms of nature, rhythms that manifest in discordant ways, certainly in crises. These rhythms might be chaotic, at odds with a homogenous nomos, but they are equally in line always with some kind of cycle, at least of day and night, the rising and setting of the sun. This is intimated by Derrida when he writes 'Nothing sees the light of day, no phenomenon, that is not on the measure of day, in other words, of the revolution that is the rhythm of a sun's course'. (Derrida, 1992, 6) Sharpening this link to the notion of the gift, Derrida also contends, 'The gift of life amounts to the gift of death, the gift of day to the gift of night, and so on' (Ibid, 54). Why was the blackberry a pertinent example of the gift? This abundant fruit is inherently part of a cycle which never truly escapes the rhythms of the sun, of weather more broadly. The effects of global warming, as we have suggested, may be calculated, but what appears and disappears still feels shocking, impactful, capricious even. Just as we may discern the ways that we are anthropogenically impacting the climate, the means by which we seek to mitigate these effects, perhaps by undoing our actions, the consequences will never quite align with how we envision them. As Ted Toadvine puts it, in his chapter in Eco-Deconstruction, this 'eco-eschatological narrative is always a phantasm or fable, a tale that we tell ourselves about the future that reflects our investments and anxieties in the present and that consequently constructs our current identities and institutions' (Toadvine, 2018, 51). The problem with this idea of reversing our actions as Toadvine suggests, is that it reflects a desire to reinstate the conditions that were at the root of the problem itself, reflecting a hubris which actually denies the emergence of the gift, a dynamic we've seen manifesting here in the UK, with authorities administering fines for blackberry picking, as if to conserve equalled to leaving alone.
This notion of the fruit appearing fecund in times of crisis made me think of what Derrida says about the gift, about survival and the archive. The capacity for gifts to emerge unpredictably is what makes life liveable, captured by actions like blackberry picking, mushroom foraging, or even a hunt, inextricable to survival. Rather than thinking of the bramble plant as a gift giver, it evokes something about what the process of a gift could mean in the way that Derrida refers to it, certainly in connection with the themes of survival and the archive. The archive deals with this 'originary physis' as Derrida calls it. The very risk of destruction and forgetfulness, as well as the desire engenders the archive, which Derrida links to the death drive, to survival and finitude. As he writes, 'There would indeed be no archive desire without the radical finitude' (Derrida, 1995, 18). The radicality of our finitude is inculcated by the events and stunted rhythms that put our inhabitancy into question. Yet, the archive is selective like memory, as Derrida problematises, a feverish panic-ridden proclivity to preserve, but always haunted by the selectivity of natural selection, subject to an ever changing physis, which welcomes crisis, but engenders unpredictable gifts, like dormant seeds of gingko and airborne spores of fern surviving after the pulverisation of the dinosaurs. The berry is arguably 'giftly', it carries the sense of the gift that Derrida evinces. The economic, however, is operative as soon as we recognise the fruit as a gift, as if it came delivered from a conscious subject, wishing to bestow generosity. But here the gift, as a rupture in the cyclicality of seasons is both excessive and indeed before the subject/object distinction. Yet the economising is perhaps unavoidable as Derrida always warns, because the blackberries become either part of a cycle of exchange value in the shape of commodity goods, or join the organic cycle of decomposition.
Arguably, the gift also has an archival structure; it can be 'put into reserve ("store"), accumulate, capitalize' (Ibid, 21). The intentions though are not clear, nor is what is potentially teleologically operative, especially potent when the bramble has a ‘wild’ rhythm of its own. Just because the berry can be economised, stored, persevered, frozen perhaps, doesn't mean that its 'end' purpose is predetermined, nor does it mean that the prospective recipient of the gift has even been allocated. This reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, where the father and son come across an underground storage unit that contains all kinds of delectable tinned goods, tinned peaches and the like. In the context of a post-apocalyptic climate dystopia, it is interesting that the least fresh ingredients become the most desirable. The 'fresh' and the 'dried', however, overlap, there being a blurred line between the instantaneous singularity of a fresh piece of fruit and the deferred gratification of the frozen good, which came clear to me when I recently foraged blackberries at the tail end of summer, only to preserve the berries for another time in my freezer. Some of the 'unripe' and red berries, ostensibly latent and yet to ripen, had completely hardened, as if to save wasteful energy they had frozen themselves in time, a passage of fecundity perhaps deferred, but that may never come to fruition. Also abundant are the dried up seed pods of once ripe blackberries, demonstrating the excess of the gift, which cannot evidently be reaped in full by the wildlife that utilise the bush for their sustenance. It also reveals the farce of the nomos to prevent blackberry picking as it if were a violent, unsustainable act...
This aspect of deferral, of the future to come, is part and parcel for Derrida, both to the gift and to the archive. As he contends:
It is not the question of a concept dealing with the past that might already be at our disposal or not at our disposal, an archivable concept of the archive. It is a question of the future, the question of the future itself, the question of a response, of a promise and of a re responsibility for tomorrow (Ibid, 35).
The gift and the archive seem embroiled in the economical, to what has been intended, when products are stored, packaged for a courier and sent out for delivery. But an untamed physis or nature prevails, moving to rhythms that perhaps aren't its own. We cannot necessarily know for sure where our stored goods will end up, but the very act of storing up, the archive, is intrinsically futural, harbouring a sense of responsibility for the future irreducible to the intentional subject. Even if we are well prepared for a probable climate apocalypse, we cannot be certain that our bunker won't be discovered by future survivors well after our time. Perhaps we never got to enjoy the bounty. But this is the logic of the gift and of justice that Derrida captures so well. The non-intention of the gift, however, arguably makes it a potential candidate for a gift that may soon come. Equally the bramble bush doesn't necessarily 'know' where its gifts will end up, with its excessive dissemination of seeds in times of crisis, reminding us of the excessive nature of our own economic behaviours, always at risk of sullying the gift. Maybe the fruit will end up being eaten by the right bird, only to find itself a part of the cycle of germination. Or perhaps it will end up in a jam, stored in a freezer of the future, or preserved in a jar that may never be found. As Derrida put it, 'The archive: if we want to know what that will have meant, we will only know in times to come. Perhaps. Not tomorrow but in times to come, later on or perhaps never (Ibid, 36).
References
Derrida. J. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1995). The University of Chicago Press. Tr. E. Prenowitz.
Derrida. J. Given Time: I. Conterfeit Money. (1992) The University of Chicago Press. Tr. P. Kamuf.
Marder. M. 'Ecology as Event' (pp.141-164) in Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy (2018) Fordham University Press: New York. Ed. M. Fritsch, P. Lynes and D. Wood.
Morton. T. Ecology without Nature (2007). Harvard University Press.
Toadvine. T. 'Thinking after the World: Deconstruction and the Last Things' in Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy (2018).
Vogel. S. Against Nature: The Concept of Nature in Critical Theory (1996). SUNY.
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