For the concept of the supplement
Which here determines that of the representative image
Harbors within itself two significations
Whose cohabitation is as strange as it is necessary.
The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus
A plenitude enriching another plenitude
The fullest measure of presence
But the supplement supplements
It adds only to replace.
It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of
If it fills, it is as if one fills a void
If it represents and makes an image
It is by the anterior default of a presence
The sign is always the supplement of the thing itself
The supplement will always be
The moving of the tongue or acting
Through the hands of others.
In it everything is brought together:
Progress as the possibility of perversion
Regression toward an evil
That is not natural and that adheres
To the power of substitution that permits us
To absent ourselves and act by proxy
Through representation
Through the hands of others
Through the written
This substitution always has the form of the sign
The scandal is that the sign, the image
Or the representer, become forces
And make the world move
Blindness to the supplement is the law.
We must begin ‘wherever we are’
And the thought of the trace
Which cannot not take the scent into account
Has already taught us that it was impossible
To justify a point of departure absolutely.
‘Wherever we are’: In a text where
We already believe ourselves to be
