La necesidad de un nuevo rol regulador del Estado para el desarrollo integral de los re-

What also needs more exploration is the relation between the material gift and communicable ―Gift‖. The distinction between the two was operative in the previous chapter. The difference between the gift-object (in the case that there is one, for in the act of giving love, time or

17 _{And one might ask also: Does the possibility of repeating this Event differently and indefinitely, make Gift the same as the}

Good? Is Gift divine?

18 _{To indulge in self-quotation: The excess of Gift, over and between giver and recipient, is only available to the recipient} qua recipient—only able to be manifest again, as the recipient lets herself by exceeded by Gift (and simultaneously repeats its excess over the giver)—insofar as it manifestly exceeds the giver (and recipient) with the giver‘s consent. The excess of Gift is not presented to the recipient directly, purely, and immediately, but only in and with the giver‘s conceding to excessive Gift, via the presentation of the gift.

127 attention, no object need be transferred) and the ―spirit‖19 of the gift seems necessary. According to Derrida,

[t]here would be, on the one hand¸ the gift that gives something determinate (a given, a present in whatever form it may be, personal or im-personal thing, ‗natural‘ or symbolic thing, thing or sign, nondiscursive or discursive sign, and so forth) and, on the other hand, the gift that gives not a given but the condition of a present given in general, that gives therefore the element of the given in general.20

Is communicable Gift, then, the meaningful ―element‖ of the given-thing, whereby the latter ―is‖ a gift? There does not seem to be any problem with the idea that the Same spirit animates the giver‘s act of giving and also gives the gift its gift-meaning.21 For it can be said that, if an act of giving is animated by Gift, then it also endows the gift with the radiance of Gift—such that the condition of accepting the gift as such, is participation in the Same Gift. On this account, the material gift manifests Gift—or more precisely, it manifests the giver‘s enactment of Gift—and therefore is the medium for the communication and repetition (re- expression) of Gift.22

19 _{Cf. Marshall Sahlines, ―The Spirit of the Gift‖ in Alan D. Schrift (ed.), The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of} Generosity (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), 70-99. Also relevant in the same volume is Claude Lévi-Strauss, ―Selections from Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss‖, 45-69. Lévi-Strauss claims, against Mauss, that it is not necessary to posit some mysterious ―spirit‖ or hau that animates the gift, in order to explain the structural unity of giving- and-receiving and of gift-and-countergift. If Mauss were true to his holistic anthropological method, there would be no need to posit hau to join the poles of giving and counter-giving together post hoc (see the article by Sahlines for other objections to Mauss‘s use of hau and to his interpretation of Maori practice and folklore). However, this objection assumes that spirit/hau would only be required to unite atomistically conceived elements post hoc, whereas it is arguable that the existence of something like spirit/hau (in this work, Gift) is the condition for a synergetic agency—gift-exchange conceived in non- atomistic terms. Hence, Mauss‘s use of hau may well be the only way (or at least, one valid way) of avoiding atomism, and this in accordance with his revolutionary anthropological holism, after all. Note that the ontology of Gift proposed in this chapter promises to give, perhaps even beyond Mauss, an account of the ―necessity‖ of giving at all. The ―teleology‖ of Gift is enacted by plural expression, in the form of an incipient ―being-with‖ (see §3.2.5. above).

20 _{―It is thus, for example, that ‗to give time‘ is not to give a given present but the condition of presence of any present in}

general …. To give time, the day, or life is to give nothing, nothing determinate, even if it is to give the giving of any possible giving, even if it gives the condition of giving‖. Derrida, Given Time, 54. Derrida‘s emphasis.

21_{―… in the semantics of the word ‗gift‘ it seems implied that the donating agency freely has the intention to give, that it is}

animated by a wanting-to-give and first of all by a wanting-to-say, the intention-to-give to the gift its meaning of gift.‖ Derrida, Given Time, 123. My emphasis.

22 _{This account might even be adapted and generalised to include facial expressions and bodily gestures which manifest and}

128 Yet to claim that the gift-object itself has, ontically speaking, a plurally expressible virtus—a life or power able to be participated in, plurally—seems problematic:

Does this [Maussian] property [―which forces the gift to circulate, to be given and returned‖] exist objectively, like a physical property of the exchanged goods? Obviously not. That would in any case be impossible, since the goods in question are not only physical objects, but also dignities, responsibilities, privileges …23

The gift of perfume, taken as a material thing with a certain physical nature, has the propensity to evaporate and create a certain aroma, not to signify the giver and bring lover and beloved together. On the other hand, between the former effects, and the latter effects which are of a different order, there is, phenomenologically speaking, a certain ―fitting‖ unity. Again, one should not confuse the ontic and the semiotic—even if, phenomenologically, the two are intertwined, such that meaning gains ―objectivity‖, and equally, things carry ―subjectivity‖:

A gift, in order to be a gift, must be a thing and no mere sign; yet it must also exceed this thingness in terms of meaning if it is to convey to the recipient the message of generosity, and therefore it must be a thing whose adoption as a sign exceeds in turn its mere thingness.24

Hence it would be problematic to read Milbank‘s ―non-identical repetition of gift‖ in terms of the plural ―expression‖ or ―mediation‖ or ―enactment‖ of the very same gift-object. It is obvious that the ―circulation of gift‖ envisaged by Milbank is not the circulation (and self- propulsion) of the same material thing. If the ―chains of affinity‖ formed between persons

23 _{Claude Lévi-Strauss, ―Selections from Introduction to the Work of Marcel Mauss‖, 55. I depart from Lévi-Strauss by}

denying that physical or ―ontic‖ properties exhaust the field of the ―objective‖—as if the only alternative to the above it to say that it is merely humansubjectivity that ―forces‖ gifts to circulate. To be sure, on my account the ―obedience‖ of individuals to the ―givability‖ of Gift is necessary for the plural mediation of Gift.

24 _{Milbank, ―Paul Against Biopolitics‖ in John Milbank, Slavoj Žižek, and Creston Davis, Paul‘s New Moment: Continental} Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 21-73, here 39. ―As anthropologists have for a long time told us, so-called primitive societies do not make our divisions between public contract and private gift, nor between the free active subject and the inert object. Hence for these societies, a thing exchanged is not a commodity, but a gift; and it is not alienated from the giver but expresses his personality, so that the giver is in the gift, he goes with the gift. Precisely for this reason, a return on the gift is always due to the giver, unlike our modern ‗free gift.‘‖ BR, 167, Milbank‘s emphasis.See alsoMilbank, ―The Gift and the Mirror: On the Philosophy of Love‖ in Kevin Hart (ed.), Counter-Experiences: Reading Jean-Luc Marion (Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 2007), 253-317 esp. 305-7.

129 and between communities are the work of gift-exchange, this is not necessarily a function of the circulation of the one fetishised object. In fact, that which is repeated could not even be some individual‘s singular act (not: Act) of gift-giving.