Transcript
Claire Parnet"X" is unknown, and "Y" is unspeakable, so we'll pass directly to the final letter of the alphabet, it's "Zed."
Ah, well, good timing! Ah, well, good timing!
Claire ParnetNow, it's not the Zed of Zorro, the Lawman, since we have understood throughout the alphabet, you don't like judgment. It's the Zed of bifurcation, of lightning, it's the letter that one finds in the names of great philosophers: Zen, Zarathustra, Leibniz, Spinoza, Nietzsche, BergZon, and of course, Deleuze.
You are very witty with BergZon and very kind toward me. I consider Zed to be a great letter that helps us connect with "A," the fly, the zed of the fly, the zigging movement of the fly, the Zed, the final word, there is no word after zigzag. It's good to end on this word. So, what happens, in fact, in Zed? The Zen is the reverse of Nez (nose), which is also a zigzag. Z as movement, the fly. . . What is that about? It's perhaps the elementary movement, perhaps the movement that presided at the creation of the world. I'm currently reading, like everyone else, I'm reading a book on the Big Bang, on the creation of the universe, an infinite curving, how it occurred, the Big Bang. One must say that, at the origin of things, there's no Big Bang, there's the Zed.
Claire ParnetSo, the Zed of the fly, the Big Bang. . . the bifurcation. . .?
We have to replace the Big Bang with the Zed, which is, in fact, the Zen, the route of the fly. What does that mean? For me, when I evoke the zigzag, it's what we said earlier about no universals, but rather aggregates of singularities. The question is how do we bring disparate singularities into relationship, or bring potentials into relationship, to speak in terms of physics. One can imagine a chaos full of potentials, so how to bring these potentials into relation? Now I no longer recall in which vaguely scientific discipline there is a term that I like a lot and that I used in my books. Someone explained that between two potentials occurs a phenomenon that was defined by the idea of a "dark precursor." This dark precursor is what places different potentials into relation, and once the journey of the dark precursor takes place, the potentials enter into a state of reaction, and between the two, the visible event flashes, the bolt of lightning. So, there is the dark precursor and then a lightning bolt, and that's how the world was born. There is always a dark precursor that no one sees, and then the lightning bolt that illuminates, and there is the world. Or that's also what thought must be, that's what philosophy must be. That's the great Zed, but that's also the wisdom of Zen. The sage is the dark precursor and then the blow of the stick comes, since the Zen master is always distributing blows. The blow of the stick is the lightning that makes things visible... And so we have finished. . .
Claire ParnetAre you happy to have a Zed in you name?
Delighted!
Claire ParnetThe end.
What happiness it is to have done this. Posthumous! Posthumous!
Claire ParnetPostZumous!
And so there we are... and thank you for all of your kindness.