Memory Theater by Simon Critchley

Author:Simon Critchley [Critchley, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59051-741-3
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2015-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

I moved more rapidly through the stack of charts with a growing sense of unease. All of the remaining maps were devoted to philosophers who had been either superiors or contemporaries of Michel or whom he had met and become curious about, such as his predecessor Sarah Kofman, Reiner Schürmann (whose name was on my office door when I arrived in New York and remained. It felt like a tomb), Emmanuel Levinas, André Schuwer, Gilles Deleuze, Dominique Janicaud, Michel Henry, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. I thought this was clearly some eccentric mark of affection. Michel had secretly designed memory maps for the philosophers he admired and had met. But that hypothesis fell to pieces with the next discoveries.

Digging deeper, I found maps for philosophers who had died or were to die after Michel’s death. What was so terrifying was that all the predictions proved to be true, although Michel couldn’t possibly have known that. There was a chart for his longtime acquaintance Jacques Derrida, who would die from the effects of pancreatic cancer in October 2004, four months after I first discovered his map, at the same age as his father, who had died of the same disease. Richard Rorty, whom Michel had met and befriended during his frequent visits to Paris in the early 1990s, would die from the same disease as Derrida on June 8, 2007. Michel’s maps seemed deadly accurate.

Six maps remained unread. I knew all the names and they were all still very much alive and a few of them were close friends of mine.* Mine was fourth in the pile. My throat dried, but my mind was crystal clear. I made sure I was alone. As I put the magnifying glass to my eyes, I felt strangely exhilarated rather than afraid. I also suddenly recalled very clearly that when I’d met Michel in Perugia, as usual, in 1994, he’d asked me for my birth details, exact time and place. He was very insistent about the accuracy of the information I provided. I had to call my mum to find out (Saturday, 27 February 1960. 1500h. My dad was at the football: LFC/YNWA). I remember saying half-jokingly to Michel: “What, are you going to make my astrological chart?” He smiled.

I peered through the magnifying glass at my destiny. The detail was fascinating. Working through the concentric circles, I moved among briefly noted events in my life that Michel couldn’t possibly have known about: my father’s apprenticeship at Camel Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, his job as a sheet metal worker, my mother’s breast cancer in 1971, his infidelities, their divorce, the industrial accident in 1978, the names of the bands I played in, the dates of my university education, my ex-wife’s name, my son’s date of birth, the facts of our separation and estrangement, even the job in New York, followed by another job in the Netherlands, apparently beginning in 2009. In the inner circle was a list of works beginning with The Ethics of Deconstruction in 1992 and Very Little … Almost Nothing in 1997, both of which I had given to Michel.

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