The work of mourning: Adieu, αντίο Jacques Derrida

'What happens when a great thinker becomes silent, one whom we knew living, whom we read and reread, and also heard, one from whom we were still awaiting a response, as if such a response would help us not only to think otherwise but also to read what we thought we had already read under his signature, a response diet held everything in reserve, and so much more than what we thought we had already recognised in that signature?' [1]

'Speaking is impossible, but so too would be silence or absence or a refusal to share one's sadness. Let me simply ask you to forgive me if today finds me with the strength for only a few simple words.' [2]

'I knew, in advance, that today I would be incapable of speaking, of finding the words, as it were.
Excuse me, therefore, if I read, and for reading not what I believe I must say (does one ever know what one must say in such a moment?), but simply enough to not let silence win out over everything else - just a few shreds of what I was able to tear away from the silence in the depths of which I would, like you, doubtlessly, have been tempted to close myself at this instant.
[...]
I haven't the heart either to recount anything or to pronounce a eulogy: there would be too much to say and this is not the moment. Our friends, your friends who are present here know why it is almost indecent to speak now - and to continue to direct our words to you. But silence is just as unbearable. I cannot stand the idea of silence, as if, within me, you too could not stand the idea.' [3]

'...to say adieu to him, to call him by his name, to call his name, his first name, such as he is called at the moment when, if he no longer responds, it is because he responds in us, from the bottom of our hearts, in us but before us, in us right before us - in calling us, in recalling to us...' [1]

[1] Jacques Derrida, 'Adieu: Emmanuel Levinas'
[2] Jacques Derrida, '(In Memorium) Paul De Man'
[3] Jacques Derrida, 'Text read at Louis Althusser's Funeral'