A conflict of interpretations

Abstract

The writings of Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion have inspired a debate about the logic of the gift that disengages from any self-interest for reciprocity. Derrida's reading of Marcel Mauss's 'The Gift' pushes the gift into the realm of the impossible. Derrida's texts have been intensively discussed in contemporary philosophical and theological debates. The theoretical decisions by Marion and Derrida cannot enlighten us about actual social practices, as long as one has to characterize all of them either as exchange or one has to absurdly search empirically for gift phenomena that make do without the giver, the gift, and the recipient. For Marcel Hénaff it is mainly about understanding how the gift in the premodern societies described by Mauss is able to found alliances between groups. The ceremonial reciprocal gift prevailing in premodern societies, which could link rival clans to each other and prevent war, is found again today in institutional contexts, namely in legal forms of recognition.

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