| Chapter Intro: | Introduction |
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has read prior to reading what is in front of one. One must also always keep in mind what is ahead of one. This is especially true when one is reading to unearth the movement of thought in a text, when one is attempting to unveil the different registers in the text: one must speculate what is not-yet-read, one must remember the future, for otherwise, one cannot project how what one is currently reading fits in with respect to the entire text. 3 However, in order to open these registers, to allow these different readings to potentially surface, one must also forget what one has read, what one is reading; otherwise, one is merely reiterating what one already knows. At every point of reading that responds to the potentiality of the text, there must be a forgetting that occurs prior to the reading: each time one reads, no reading takes place if one does not forget.
It is precisely the double function of forgetting and memory that results in language being both general and specific simultaneously (and the two never being able to be reconciled). It is only because forgetting is the very basis of language 4 that there is the possibility that at each reading, a unique reading, a new reading (a reading as if reading had never before occurred) might occur. It is forgetting that allows for the single instance of a new reading, but at the same time, it is memory (of language and, more precisely, grammar and its rules) that allows for reading to take place at all. Hence, every act of reading is when memory and forgetting collide: every act of reading is aporetic, as one has to both remember and forget at the same time. Each time reading occurs, one is not just reading the text for the first time, but also reading for the first time.
It is forgetting that ensures that each reading is potentially a virginal reading: not a first reading in the sense of an original reading, but a first reading in the sense of there never being a second reading, there never being a repeated reading. After all,