Abstract

Since the publication of Marcel Mauss’ essay The Gift of 1924, the questions of the gift, generosity and reciprocity have become a focus of attention of philosophers and researchers and of various fields. Jacques Derrida contributed to the discussion by undertaking a deconstruction of Mauss’ ambiguous and influential text. In Donner le temps he asserted that the conditions of possibility of a gift are at the same time the conditions of its impossibility. He contended that the gift is impossible or, rather, is „the impossible”. Many critics overlooked or ignored that difference, the hardly perceptible shift from the adjective to the noun form. In this paper I attempt to trace and locate the question of the gift in the context of deliberations on the ethics of deconstruction. I argue that the task cannot be confined to the analysis of the concept of gift itself since it is vitally related to many Derrida’s central notions: dissemination, trace, differánce, the other, the impossible, madness, text, desire, etc. By demonstrating this, I attempt to justify the claim that Derrida’s view of the gift can enrich our way of thinking about theoretical as well as practical issues. Key words DERRIDA, DECONSTRUCTION