Forgiveness/Pipe (Rodrigo Oliveira)
According to Derrida, forgiveness, as a gift, is limitless. It cannot be calculated and it is different from
“excuse, regret, amnesty, prescription, etc” (27). Moreover, the language of forgiveness is pure and
disinterested: “each time forgiveness is at the service of a finality, be it noble and spiritual (atonement or
redemption, reconciliation, salvation), each time that it aims to re-establish a normality […] by the work
of mourning, by some therapy or ecology of memory, then the forgiveness is not pure” (32). And Derrida
still writes: “Forgiveness is not, it should not be, normal, normative, normalizing. It should remain
exceptional and extraordinary, in the face of the impossible: as if it interrupted the ordinary course of
historical temporality” (32). Therefore, the forgiveness is the impossible, and it can be such an aporia for
the reason that the unforgivable is the only thing to forgive. “The only thing that calls for forgiveness”
(32). “There is only forgiveness, if there is any, where there is unforgivable. […] It can only be possible
doing the impossible” (33). That is the reason why the crimes against humanity, by escaping from any
possibility of justice, renders the very call for forgiveness. It also finds itself out of the logic of the
exchange, of the necessity of being asked, of the obligation of not acting likewise from now to then. It has
to be “unconditional, gracious, infinite, aneconomic” (34). In other words, It has to be given to the same
person, to the same guilty person, above the law, beyond the law and the judgment, “being capable of
repeating itself, unforgivably, without transformation, without amelioration, without repentance or
promise” (39). Furthermore, forgiveness, if there is such a thing, must take place between two
singularities, the victim and the guilty. “As soon as a third party intervenes, one [cannot] again speak […]
pure forgiveness in a strict sense” (42). It has, consequently, nothing to do with judgment or a public
sphere. But it also has nothing to do with forgetfulness. On the contrary, forgiveness requires a deep
access to memory.
Forgiveness, as the pipe, interrupts the temporality, time in itself. Forgiveness, in this sense, is a
destructive force, outside the law. It is that third Benjaminian violence that neither deposes the law nor
maintains it, but it is truly revolutionary, atemporal, post-juridical, as is a messianic time. By putting
together Derrida and Eugine Jolas, one can say that forgiveness is one of the fashions by which the
tyranny of time is to be abolished. Tobacco, in its turn, has a historical connection with revolutionary
thought. Fernarndo Ortiz, in his famous book Contrapunteo Cubano, always refers to tobacco as an agent
of liberty, creativity, contestation, emancipation, and so on. However not only the pipe is linked to
revolutions, but also, I would say, to forgiveness in itself, to that impossibility that sometimes takes place
in literature or in marginal Western epistemologies. The idiot characters, for example, maybe are able to
forgive. Therefore, can pure stupidity give rise to pure forgiveness? As Derrida would say, forgiveness is
a madness (39), it has no intelligibility (45). The pure idiot, prince Muishkin, the full of pure stupidity, is
able to forgive. He shows, thus, that forgiveness can only exist as fictionality, as the total absence of
sovereignty in a human being: the incalculable goodness, the epilepsy, the impotence. By the way, prince
Muishkin is a pipe smoker. When a simple servant was offending him, making him to wait, to waste his
time, something that a prince would never accept, he just asked for a place to smoke: “well, look here, if I
have some time to wait, would you mind telling me, is there any place about where I could have a smoke?
I have my pipe and tobacco with me” (The Idiot, Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication, p. 18).
Maybe, in that moment, he was just forgiving the servant, asking only for a place to smoke, to find
another time. Derrida, nonetheless, would say that it was too little. The pure forgiveness can only forgive
the unforgivable, namely, the most horrendous and brutal crime, the maximum sin, something that
escapes from the human justice. How could someone forgive the slavery? No live human being could do
that. But if forgiveness has a great access to memory maybe it can only exists in the testimony. To forgive
is to bear witness, namely, is to be obsessed over not forgetting. But, as writes Agamben, the testimony is
also impossible, the true victim is already dead or she is in the threshold between life and death. There is
however a figure who can bear witness about slavery. It is a spirit called Preto-Velho, “black old man”.
When that spirit possesses a person in a ritual and creates something between life and dead, he smokes a
pipe. It is the symbol of goodness, of wisdom and also stupidity. But he never says that he forgives. He
only expresses it. The phenomenon of possession can be read as a performance. And performance is not
communicability, but pure expression. Thus, forgiveness is rather performative, not communication, but a
pure expression as well.