The Post Card

From Socrates to Freud and Beyond

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by Jacques Derrida,

Translated by Alan Bass

University of Chicago Press

Due/Published June 1987, 521 pages, paper

ISBN 0226143228

You were reading a somewhat retro loveletter, the last in history. But you have not yet received it. Yes, its lack or excess of address prepares it to fall into all hands: a post card, an open letter in which the secret appears, but indecipherably. You can take it or pass it off, for examplle, as a message from Socrates to Freud.

What does a post card want to say to you? On what conditions is it possible? Its destination traverses you, you no longer know who you are. At the very instant when from its address it interpellates, you, unique you, instead of reaching you it divides you or sets you aside, occassionally overlooks you. And you love and you do not love, it makes of you what you wish, it takes you, it leaves you, it gives you.